• 12 Posts
  • 571 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • I largely analyze data and create software to automate business tasks. This allows people in my company to make informed decisions about the business, how money is or should be spent, who & where to hire, helping non-techical people automate repetitive tasks. I also present/interpret data and influence decision-making.

    This might mean creating forecasts. Automating data analysis with reports. Building data sources (gathering and manipulating data from different places and compiling it). Building interactive software or excel sheets for non-technical users. Creating white papers or presentations on analysis I’ve done. Etc.

    I use excel, google sheets, google app script (basically javascript), tableau, python, and SQL.








  • What’s worked best for me is looking at education and credentials. Make sure they are actually certified, don’t have any faith based stuff in their info (even as “optional”), do client centered or CBT approaches, have been practicing a while, etc. Beyond that it’s luck of the draw, but imo that improves the chances of them being good. Also, with remote therapy being an option, that allows you to have more options which helps too.






  • I think the problem with corrections (positive punishment is the behavioral psych term, applying a punishing stimulus) is you have to ensure the dog pairs the punishment with the thing you want them to stop doing. That is actually really difficult to do.

    For instance imagine this chain of events:

    Your dog is wearing a shock collar

    Dog sees another dog

    Dog feels anxious and barks

    Dog receives a shock and stops barking

    Success! Right? Your dog paired the bark with the shock! Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it paired seeing the other dog with the shock. You repeat this dozens of times, now your dog thinks whenever it sees other dogs it gets shocked. Congrats, now your dog is either scared of other dogs, aggressive toward other dogs, or both. It’s basically luck of the draw if your dog will respond well to positive punishment AND it is hard to time positive punishment in a way that improves your dog’s chances of responding well - even if the timing is instant like in the case of a bark collar.

    Imo, it is best to go positive reward only because the risk of you messing up your dog’s training is MUCH lower. And then if it doesn’t respond to positive reward, you can try positive punishment. But always go with the minimally aggressive/aversive training method first. Then escalate if you have to.

    Edit: another problem with punishment is it can teach your dog to hide healthy communication behaviors. Say you correct your dog when it snarls/growls at a child or dog that is getting up in its face. It learns not to snarl/growl, but it doesn’t learn to not be bothered by things up in its face. Now instead of communicating that it is pissed off, it goes from seeming fine (i.e. not snarling or growling) to escalating to snapping or biting. Whenever I see people with shock collars, they often correct healthy behaviors like this and it freaks me out because they could be teaching their dog not to telegraph its aggression.







  • Idaho is surprisingly really pretty though, that’s the one stand-out thing about it imo, otherwise pretty mid.

    I’d have to be basic and say Ohio. It isn’t ugly, but it isn’t pretty. The weather is average. Schools/universities are pretty average. Economy is pretty average. Politics are average. There is nothing really special or noteworthy about Ohio. They do tons of market research in Ohio because of how average it is for the US.