Control theory is one of those things that permeates large parts of your understanding of the world about you once you've learned about it even a little bit.

I learned that this category of problems existed when I built a simulation of something equivalent to a quadcopter (not that they were A Thing at the time) in a video game prototype I was working on. This is an interestingly hard problem because it has three layers of state-needing-controlling between "be at point X" and "apply this amount of (asymmetric) thrust". Failure modes aren't just flipping over and crashing into the ground — they also can be like continuously orbiting your target rather than reaching it.

It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope.

His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there.

Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man -- and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whiz!

I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.

Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.

Lo! I show you the Last Man.

"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last Man, and blinks.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.

"We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink.

They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth.

Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men!

A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death.

One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.

One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.

No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

"Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest of them, and they blink.

They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled -- otherwise it upsets their stomachs.

They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.

"We have discovered happiness," -- say the Last Men, and they blink.

Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra,

I read this from the comfort of my couch, and I blink. Isn't that the right way to live, the model of polite society? Is it wrong to want to live that way?

EDIT: I have no idea how this weird formatting thing happened or how to undo it.

how do I teach them about this new world of critical thinking and data?

A phrase for this that I came across recently is 'unmediated access to reality.' That is, most things that people do are mediated by the people around them; you write an essay, and the teacher decides if it's a good essay on not based on their subjective standards. You write code, and the compiler determines whether or not there's a syntax error based on its objective standards, and there is no pleading with the compiler.

I think programming is the easiest way to get experience of living in an objective-truth-world, but it's worth pointing out that this is one of the reasons programming is so painful, and encouraging people to program because hunting for bugs is character-building* instead of because programming is useful seems like it might not go far.

*Specifically, it builds a lot of rationalist habits, and people talking about the heuristics and biases as 'bugs' in 'mental programming' seem to be making a very close analogy. I don't think it's an accident there are so many CS people running around here.

FYI, you have a sentence missing its end: “The standard deviations of the distributions are nearly identical: 0.6 points on a ”.

Also, I think the "refined estimate" plot would be improved by setting its x-axis scale to be the same as the previous plot (even though this would create empty space).

Tangentially, is it possible for a good reputation metric to survive attacks in real life?

Imagine that you become e.g. a famous computer programmer. But although you are a celebrity among free software people, you fail to convert this fame to money. So must keep a day job at a computer company which produces shitty software.

One day your boss will realize that you have high prestige in the given metric, and the company has low prestige. So the boss will ask you to "recommend" the company on your social network page (which would increase the company prestige and hopefully increase the profit; might decrease your prestige as a side effect). Maybe this would be illegal, but let's suppose it isn't, or that you are not in a position to refuse. Or you could imagine a more dramatic situation: you are a widely respected political or economical expert, it is 12 hours before election, and a political party has kidnapped your family and threatens to kill them unless you "recommend" this party, which according to their model would help them win the election.

In other words, even a digital system that works well could be vulnerable to attacks from outside of the system, where otherwise trustworthy people are forced to act against their will. A possible defense would be if people could somehow hide their votes; e.g. your boss might know that you have high prestige and the company has low prestige, but has no methods to verify whether you have "recommended" the company or not (so you could just lie that you did). But if we make everything secret, is there a way to verify whether the system is really working as described? (The owner of the system could just add 9000 trust points to his favorite political party and no one would ever find out.)

I suspect this is all confused and I am asking a wrong question. So feel free to answer to question I should have asked.

Early in November, I saw an announcement of a local-to-me meetup group for my current hobby, software-defined radio, and requested presentation topics.

I saw an opportunity to get around to working on an idea that I'd had scribbled down for a while, so I went and did it. In about one weekend of programming and writing, I prepared my presentation, and here's the video: “A Visual Introduction to DSP for SDR”.

I got a lot more praise for it than I was expecting. Besides the obligatory applause, people came up to me afterward to tell me how remarkable my visualizations were. And from Twitter afterward:

• "Coolest live 3D visualization of DSP concepts I've ever seen"
• “Finally a good 3D visualization example for complex valued waveforms!” — Michael Ossmann (actually builds SDR hardware)
• "The most impressive live SDR/RF visualizations I've ever seen. Implemented by @switchborg in JS w/HTML5 audio source!"

After I reviewed the video, I saw I'd flubbed my intro (I meant to follow up the "I have no credentials" speech with "so if I can do this, so can you", but I forgot), though I managed a satisfactory amount of looking-at-the-audience-not-the-screen and lack-of-"um" — but, I think the content of my presentation would have made up for all of those mistakes if I'd made them.

And if you're interested in digital signal processing, or if the Fourier transform is a mystery to you (that you want to solve), then you should watch my presentation.

(Also, in news of Being An Adult While Still Feeling Like You're Faking It, as of this month I have successfully navigated two major upheavals this year in my previously-arranged-to-my-satisfaction life which could be broadly described as outside forces telling me “You won't be able to keep that thing you currently have. Find a new one.” And I'm glad that worked out and I consider it a substantial accomplishment. But the above thing is considerably more awesome.)

At a later stage, possibly. Right now I'm just focused on getting a playable and fun version out in a language/framework I happen to be familiar with already, and think about optimizing the platform for maximal reach later on. Getting an in-browser version would be good, though.

Meta: I didn't read this thread for some time and only later got back to it (when I ran out of comments :-). On reflection I think it is due to the negative connotations with 'stupid'. We can hope that everyone here is immune to the halo effect. Or we can look for a better title.

• 'Simple questions'

• 'Quick questions' (implies urgency)

• 'Naive questions' (still connotations but not so strong ones)

• 'Less available Answers' (putting the idea on its head)

Took the survey. Did not read the comments first. Here are my observations after filling it out and reading the comments:

Problems encountered:

• I followed the instructions carefully for the digit ratio question. I then went to enter my answer and found that the instructions failed to tell me to image my left hand as well as my right, so I gave the partial answer I had rather than go through all the steps again for the left hand. As of this writing, one other person commented on this problem.

Criticism of questions:

• I realize after the fact that when answering “how many books have you read”, I counted only things which are books in the sense of "the kind of thing that has an ISBN", excluding book-length self-published-on-the-internet documents, and also thought only of new books as opposed to rereads. I request that future versions of this question clarify what counts as a book and whether rereading counts.

• "Hours Online": what counts as "on the Internet" in today's world is unclear. If I'm writing a book in Google Docs, does that count? If I'm focused on a problem, but I have an IRC channel open in the corner of my screen, does that count? If I'm walking down the street and my phone notifies me of a post which I immediately read, does that count?

  Generally: there is a spectrum of plausible interpretations from "performing any activity which requires a functioning Internet connection" (broad definition) to "aimless web surfing" (narrow definition).

• "Moral Views" could benefit from links to definitions.

In what units?