Yes, very much. Growing up I used to scramble to get whatever computer equipment I could. My parents didn't have much money but many of my friends parents did. I hated asking to borrow stuff even though people didn't seem to mind. Now when I see my extra equipment not get used I imagine some kid really wanting to just use it for a bit. Maybe just my own mental issues here but I know what you mean.
“This is the perfect time to top it up: prices are low and we’re engaged militarily in the Middle East. For once, Russia’s loss is our gain,” said Scott Nations, chief investment officer of NationsShares.” [0]
How would Russia’s loss, “For once”, be our gain? Considering the rival interests of Russia and the United States, it would seem that Russia’s loss is usually our gain. What am I missing here?
I actually share your confusion but If I had to guess, Nations is thinking about the oil market specifically, where both US and Russia are exporters and would usually both benefit from high prices.
Not so bad. Assuming a spherical Earth in a vacuum and a bunch of other slightly less reasonable assumptions we have:
1E+45 photons from sun per second
1.49598E+11 distance to sun in meters
6365000 earth radius in meters
2.81229E+23 surface area of solar flux at earth orbit
1.27276E+14 surface area of earth exposed to sun
4.5257E-10 ration earth area to solar flux
4.5257E+35 photons hitting earth per second
6.49E+15 one light year in meters
1.947E+25 meters in 3 billion light years
4.76367E+51 surface are of sphere 3 billion ly across
9.50046E-17 photons per m^2 at 3B ly
1.05258E+16 m^2 per photon
57883255.23 radius in meters for mirror to reflect 1 photon/second
57883.25523 radus in km (Only 10x larger than Earth!)
Then given a reasonably competent engineer to make a descent mirror with no aberration and a good telescope on a clear night away from the city, and a good bit a patience, you could watch a replay of the last 3 billion years.
You forgot to figure out how to communicate with said aliens faster than the speed of light so they have time to set this all up before the light, which has a 3 billion light-year head start, gets there.
In most ways, yes. For me the first 5 seconds or so were fantastic. It felt like seeing a behind the scenes "How it was made" documentary where I was seeing the actors out of character. Or like it removed the sense of being from another era. Soon the artifacts and warping became distracting, and then watching the original put it back in time. Maybe it was a sense of nostalgia but overall the original seemed better to me.
More like a gold sovereign in Piccadilly. I only skimmed, but it's a sweet result, and something an insightful undergrad could have come up with, but never did.
Linear algebra for large scale "muh big data" applications has had a mini renaissance in recent years. Haven't seen any this cute and basic though.
Johnny Cash recorded a song that's relevant. Wikipedia has a lengthy entry full of unisex names from around the world. Surely, someone, somewhere in the world makes up a new name every day. Based on a person's name alone, there's no way to assign a salutation with unattended automation without substantial and sustained effort and still not eventually fail in a potentially easily embarassing way. Much easier and safer to provide a field for users to fill in their own desired salutation. Bonus points if it's a text entry field instead of a dropdown list, for the same reasons that #24 through #29 are listed in the parent article.
I'm aware of this, having such name myself. Border control agencies eye me with various degrees of suspicion for this, depending on what gender my name is supposed to signify to them. (Yes, that's in the passport as well, but...well, bureaucracy)
My (Chileanized) Castilian is pretty rusty but I thought your translation was in line with how I read it. Instead of "withhold" I would say "hold onto for myself" ; as in "Retener mis derechos". The broader context seemed to imply preserve the records as in don't delete anything as we investigate, but I can see how it could be taken the other way. In the sentence as written what word would you use in place of retener if you meant to be clear to stop dissemination or publication of the content?
I agree with the main argument but would like to note "crank" in not an all or nothing description. Sometimes the problem as publicized doesn't exactly match the precise problem. For example you can trisect an arbitrary angle if allowed an infinite number of steps. Sometimes the problem is in breaking the abstraction layer. For example one of my kids thought you could make arbitrarily slow motion videos by taking slow motion videos of slow motion videos. And that brings up the issue of how to handle a crank. I loved that my son thought through the video issue and didn't want to inhibit future thinking. We ran some experiments taking video of the tv and it was fun. Sometimes people won't accept counter arguments and evidence (sometimes that person is me) and there's a time to move on. Still, in my experience few people are true die hard cranks and most people respond well if given the right direction.
I wonder how they take into account the kind of people who take a test like this are likely to have a good vocabulary. I suppose that might not be true but I don't think I'd do something similar for a test that measured something along the lines of matching faces to pop musicians.
The web lately did more for my dictionary than books, since I'm pretty much living on it while I'm getting my books in audio form. Audio helps with training to understand spoken language and improved the numbers of ‘read’ books a lot, but there's definitely the downside that unfamiliar words often fly by without impact.
A few years ago the guy I was sharing an office with at work was cleaning off his desk and found a stack of resumes. He said they were all from the batch that I was hired from and asked if I wanted to know why I was picked. Very cautiously I said yes. He told me I was the only one who when really pushed during the technical interview said "I don't know". Their initial strategy had been to start easy on some topic and just keep going deeper until they had a measure of what level the applicant was at. After a certain point they were just surprised at how far people would carry on into nonsense.
The older and more confident I got the less I felt a need to 'know everything.' I'm not perfect, but these days when it comes to anything whether it be technical or cultural (e.g. bands or movies) I strive to not be afraid to say "I don't know what that is" and be excited to learn about it.
There's so much out there. I actually picked this up from reading Hacker School's user manual, "no feigning surprise"[1] and of course an xkcd comic[2].
It was a comfort to see an engineer who I highly respect (Dan Abramov) post a list of things he doesn't know[3].
That is an extremely uncharitable read of the comment.
I don't think it comes off as bragging at all, but just an observation of what worked, and how it's interesting that people will go into levels of nonsense to avoid saying they don't know something.
It's really interesting to get a retrospective, once you get to know your co-workers/managers, on what they were thinking when hiring you. It is DEFINITELY NOT what you might expect!
I was once was hired as a "career-changer" because I had worked in one of my early jobs as a science museum staff-member doing demonstrations for school groups. For some reason, the hiring manager thought that was indicative of communication ability and curiosity. I guess it was, but I never thought it to be very important nor formative at the time.
As an interviewer at one of the FAANG companies I can confirm this is one tactic we use as well. A lot of people are very confident spewing trash for as long as you'll let them.
Likewise. I open my interviews with the explicit statement that I’d like them to disclaim when they don’t know, and that furthermore, the discussion is arranged around challenging them until we reach that point. We have less than an hour together and I need to judge your technical abilities in an intrinsically imperfect medium. Help me help you - I can only work with what I’m given. If you bullshit, what I’m given isn’t good.
I don’t really get it. I can perhaps understand that some candidates might have gotten good feedback from blatantly guessing in the past, but that’s why I now explicitly tell them to disclaim guesses. If anything it looks more impressive when you honestly don’t know something but intuit the substantially correct answer (as long as it’s something that could be realistically intuited).
Yet even with my disclaimer, I’ve still conducted phone screens and onsite interviews where the candidate eventually started bullshitting. It’s one thing to say you don’t know and give a wildly incorrect answer - at least then I can try and steer the interview towards another of the candidate’s strengths. It’s even okay to preface your wild guess with an, “I think...”. But the cavalier way in which people will just spout nonsense is disturbing. Even if you’ve been performing well up to the point, engaging in bullshit is nearly immediate grounds for me to discount you as a candidate.
Well yeah, that's why I continue to ask. I guess what I was getting at is that I'm sort of shocked people will still bullshit despite my explicit declaration ahead of time.
After they said "I don't know" I'd then encourage (or nudge) them to derive a solution. It gave me a very good insight into their thought process and their ability to apply their knowledge to solve an unseen problem.
For instance, students (during campus interview) would at some point reach a dead end while explaining process scheduler. However after encouraged to work it out about 70% ended up with some version of timer interrupt. It was fascinating to watch them go through the process.
It depends on what you mean by derive a solution. If a candidate doesn't know an algorithm they couldn't be expected to derive it on the spot.
In many cases the popular algorithms were carefully designed by Computer Scientists as part of their research. People don't pass that type of test because of the ability to derive solutions on the spot, they pass based on their skill at rote memorisation and application.
(I absolutely agree that if despite not knowing they show signs of being able to reason their way towards something sensible - robust, likely to be efficient, etc - that is a very good sign.)
Same thing when I interview people. I don’t know is a sign of confidence to me. It is the right answer in so many situations. Unless you have a reasonable shot at deriving the answer on the spot, it’s what more people should be saying, and not only in interviews.
That's reminiscent of the nasty version of 20 questions, where everyone bar the subject is told the only rule is to give an answer that is consistent with previous answers.
Never been on the receiving end, but what I've seen you don't want to be on the receiving end.
That’s been my go-to interview technique for years. I want to see candidates say they don’t know under pressure.
Unless it’s for a very senior role, I think attitude and personality are greater predictors of success than technical competency, so long as their technical competency is ‘good enough’ to begin with.
I'd say attitude and personality are greater predictors of success than technical competency for very senior level people too. I can't think of many people who reach senior levels with poor attitude and personality. And those that do often hit a wall. Eventually, their attitude and personality gets in the way of their brilliance and other people's willingness to work with them.
I think it doesn't matter only in cases where you were the guy who started it all or you're some crazy skilled mercenary for hire brought in only for emergencies. You can treat people like crap for as much as you want if you're in control like that. Maybe it's even necessary for those unicorn situations. And yet, even Linus Torvalds has said that he needed to change.
Finally, I'd say poor attitude and personality lends itself to arrogance, which also makes technical people hit a wall because their arrogance decreases their technical curiosity. Improving one's skill really does require a certain intellectual humility.
> I'd say attitude and personality are greater predictors of success than technical competency for very senior level people too.
Yeah I’d agree. But I think somebody with a good attitude, who can get on well with others, has a greater chance of being able to quickly fill in any competency gaps they have in non-senior positions. For senior positions, the baseline is higher. I’d hire somebody with good character, but inadequate competency (within reason) for a lower IC position, but for a senior position, I’d want both.
I do a lot of interviewing... I've found that folks who say "I don't know, but I'd guess x based on y" is a fantastic answer. Lets me know how they are thinking as they walk through an educated guess.
To be fair, both christians and atheists who are interested in debating each other tend to have a hard time understanding the limits of their knowledge. The criticism can be directed equally in both directions.
The entire sum of scientific knowledge is based on unprovable axioms, just the same as the entire sum of religious knowledge is based on unprovable axioms. Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove, and people have faith in scientific knowledge in exactly the same way that others have faith in religious knowledge.
A wise person would understand that scientific knowledge and the various forms of religious knowledge are based on completely different foundational axioms, and as a result, any attempt to debate the merits of one over the other is entirely pointless. A wiser person might understand that criticising somebody for what they choose to have faith in is both pointless and hypocritical.
Faith is a belief in something without evidence, correct?
Science is rooted in empirical evidence. It may be with imperfect models and imperfect measurement, but there is indeed fairly reasonably-measured evidence.
Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove. The munchausen trilemma invalidates all logical proofs. As such, all forms of knowledge are based on unprovable axioms from which knowledge is derived. If you were to try generalise some of the axioms that form the foundation of scientific knowledge, you might say that ‘empirical evidence is a source of absolute truth’ or that ‘everything we don’t understand about the physical world will either be explained by science, or is not possible to explain’. Any individual might consider those ideas and decide that they are worthy of having faith in, or they might not. But any unprovable axiom has no more or less merit than any other unprovable axiom. To say otherwise is to be ignorant to the limits of your own knowledge. You might say that scientific knowledge is more complex or rigorous than religious knowledge, but that doesn’t speak to its merit either. Flat earthers rigorously promote an incredibly complex system of beliefs, it is naturally more complex than science, because it needs to add additional ideas to explain scientific ideas that conflict with their own. That doesn’t speak to its merits at all.
Just the ordinary dictionary definition. Using evidence and arguments to establish a fact or truth.
Of course the arguments and evidence that you use to prove your truth must also be proven themselves, and so and and so forth. No matter what it is you’re trying to prove, there are only three possible outcomes. Circular reasoning, infinite regression, or stopping at an arbitrary point (usually described as an axiom). This is known as the munchausen trilemma.
Although this question has lead me to see that my previous argument is incomplete. It is possible to believe a truth without faith. That is, through ignorance. A failure to scrutinize your belief sufficiently to understand that it is based on an unprovable axiom, and is thus an act of faith. People who debate the merits of science vs religion tend to be ignorant of this, equally on both sides.
Nothing about what I’m arguing is even remotely controversial. It would be a part of any entry level course on logic at any university.
A wise person might also be aware that words can have multiple meanings, that "faith" is one of those words, and that equivocation fallacies don't make for good reasoning.
The general meaning of the word is belief in any idea that you can’t prove. Belief in scientific knowledge requires no more or no less faith than belief in any religious system.
Yes, I am aware that you can use equivocation fallacies to explain that we can't know anything and all claims are equally likely to be true. I was talking about what a wise person would do, though.
Would you mind explaining what about my comment was either rude or a flame, given the context in which rationality was named as a sign of being unwise?
... when "stupid thing X" is making an argument that doesn't address the problem, and "you can do stupid thing X" is actually an explanation of what the problem with that argument is, and it's also not calling anyone names, but just calling out fallacious reasoning as what it is: Fallacious reasoning? Fallacious reasoning might well be correlated with stupidity, but that doesn't make pointing out fallacious reasoning an insult in itself.
Equally, if the topic of the discussion is what makes a certain decision wise or not, as it happened to be the case here, I don't see how pointing out that a suggested methodology does not qualify due to fallacious reasoning in that methodology is either rude or a flame. That is, unless you consider the start of that discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20129547) a rude flame, which you possibly could, even though I don't think it was intended as such.
I'm afraid I'm not really following this. In a way it doesn't matter, though, because even if I missed some subtlety in perceiving your comment as rude, I can guarantee you that most readers would miss that subtlety as well. Since there are plenty of ways to make your substantive points, why not just choose ones that don't straddle that line?
> I’ve only asserted that it is impossible to prove any absolute truth.
No, you have also asserted that there is no way to distinguish different levels of justification for "non-absolute truths", or else your whole argument makes no sense. Which is also exactly what an equivocation fallacy is: Claiming that two things are the same because you can decide to ignore the differences.
I made no such assertion. I’m made no comments that attempted to ignore the differences that exist between different belief systems, nor made any comments that said you couldn’t qualitatively differentiate them. Simply that you can’t use the truth as the basis of that differentiation. All belief systems, whether they’re a belief in science as a source of truth, or a religion as a source of truth, are based on assertions that cannot be proven, and are therefor all equally unprovable. This is a perfectly rational equivalence, and doesn’t present a fallacy on any level. If you were more intellectually humble this might be easier for you to accept, but as it stands, you are no different from anybody else who chooses to reject the limits of their knowledge.
> All belief systems, whether they’re a belief in science as a source of truth, or a religion as a source of truth, are based on assertions that cannot be proven, and are therefor all equally unprovable.
Or in other words: There is no such thing as absolute (mathematical, provable) truth about reality, and if you ignore that there is such a thing as evidence for claims about reality, then all claims are equally justified, as long as you make assumptions that are consistent with your claims.
> If you were more intellectually humble this might be easier for you to accept, but as it stands, you are no different from anybody else who chooses to reject the limits of their knowledge.
Well, yeah, it is tragic how religion poisons minds to the point where everything about the world is upside down.
The funny thing is, you yourself don't actually believe that that supposed limit to our knowledge is there. You yourself do constantly make decisions prefering empirical evidence over other "belief systems". When the stove is hot, you don't put your hand on it "because it can't be proven that I will hurt myself (true!), and if I assume that heat doesn't hurt you, that is just as proven as the assumption that empirical evidence tells me something about reality (true!), so I am just as justified in my belief system that putting your hand on a hot stove won't hurt you as people with a scientific 'belief system'! Believing the science requires just as much faith as believing that a hot stove won't hurt you!" You are not actually stupid enough to believe that. In your daily life, for the most part, you constantly act consistent with the belief that empirical/scientific methodology gives you reliable information about reality, and inconsistent with the belief that any other assumptions instead of what possibly underlies scientific "belief systems" is just as justified/just as much "faith based". Nor would you accept so from anyone who disagree with you about something. If someone made the assumption that murdering people made their loved ones happy, and started murdering people on that basis, you would not say "oh, well, it's their assumption, and it can not be proven, but science can't either, so it proably makes people happy". You would immediately call that out as completely moronic reasoning that is way overstretching the implications of an iteresting conundrum of epistemology to be more real than the obvious immediate experience that killing people does not make their loved ones happy.
All of this is not actually a set of principles that you believe in. It's a set of excuses you give so as to avoid seriously examining the epistemic foundations of this one particular belief that you happen to have, and that you apply only very selectively to that one claim.
This is really just an incoherent anti-religious rant, with a whole lot of completely unfounded assumptions you’ve made about me personally thrown in.
I have a tremendous amount of faith in science, I have a degree in physics. I simply happen to understand the contextual limitations of the knowledge that I’ve derived from it, something you seem far too arrogant to do yourself.
Of course. Choosing to value a set of beliefs that make the most sense to you is how we give meaning to our lives. We all have opinions about what makes sense and what doesn’t. The only thing we can’t do is prove anything to be an absolute truth.
