DSimon comments on The Power of Noise - Less Wrong

28 Post author: jsteinhardt 16 June 2014 05:26PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (80)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Lumifer 17 June 2014 12:34:40AM 0 points [-]

I think an example of what jsteinhardt is referring to would be quicksort.

Quicksort as a piece of software does not require any particular distribution. It is perfectly happy to work with "perversely ordered inputs".

A human running quicksort with certain expectations about its performance might require a particular distribution, but that's not a characteristic of software.

Recall that the original claim was that expecting a particular distribution breaks modularity.

Comment author: DSimon 17 June 2014 02:39:43PM *  2 points [-]

A human running quicksort with certain expectations about its performance might require a particular distribution, but that's not a characteristic of software.

I think this may be a distinction without a difference; modularity can also be defined as human expectations about software, namely that the software will be relatively easy to hook into a larger system.

Comment author: Lumifer 17 June 2014 04:18:10PM 1 point [-]

modularity can also be defined as human expectations about software

I don't find this a useful definition, but YMMV, de gustibus, and all that...