We're punters, not quarterbacks.
Please note that LW is not only read by americans and a lot of people from other countries have no idea what a punter and quarterback actually do. I had to look it up(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punter_%28football%29) but even so I'm not sure if I get the point you are trying to make.
EDIT: Great article, btw!
The quarterback is responsible for scoring points. He has decision-making latitude and delegates responsibility to other players. His skills are a superset of theirs.
The punter is the only player on the team who kicks the ball [1]. He's only on the field for a few minutes in any game. The job he does is important and failures are disastrous, but It's hard to tell the difference between a below-average punter and an excellent one.
[1] I know. But if it made sense it wouldn't work as a stand-in for industrial warfare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om_yq4L3M_I [language NSFW]
According to Tierney, Baumeister's source is Wilder-Mobasher-Hammer (not gated, but also). An intermediate observation is that local mitochondrial Eves tend to be twice as old as local Y-Adams. The paper goes on to draw the conclusion that the effective sex ratio was 2:1. (which is not quite the same as a male mode of 0.) I would be pretty negative about this deduction, except for the last couple of sentences (the ones citing Shen et al and Hedrick) which claim that this is compatible with autosomal observations.
Still, given the extent and... energy of the backlash underway when it was delivered, I doubt that an uncorrected version would still be available from FSU's official web servers if an easy refutation was available.
I think you have wildly false beliefs about universities. Can you point to documents that were pushed off of university servers or corrected due to political pressure in the context of that backlash?
Can you point to documents that were pushed off of university servers or corrected due to political pressure in the context of that backlash?
Er, shouldn't wrong papers be corrected or withdrawn, even in the absence of political pressure?
Anyway, I'm not insinuating anything here. I'm just pointing out that controversial statements get aggressive fact-checking
Can't easily find it. Karma to the finder/refuter.
"Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men."
I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.
From an address to the APA on gender differences delivered shortly after the Harvard/Summers business. Long and only tangentially related, but worth a full reading, IMHO.
It's not bulletproof in present context. The author doesn't cite primary sources and isn't an authority in the field. Still, given the extent and... energy of the backlash underway when it was delivered, I doubt that an uncorrected version would still be available from FSU's official web servers if an easy refutation was available.
What the teacher should say depends on what the formula is. If the formula ignores empty cells, then the teacher can say "I won't grade it". If, on the other hand, the formula treats empty cells as if they contained the value 0, then the teacher should not say "I won't grade it", but should instead say "I will assign it a grade of 0".
"Grading" means "scoring"; it does not refer to a specific ritual performed by the teacher to arrive at the score. What if the teacher decided to score each student's paper by means of a random process, such as rolling dice? Would you say that the teacher "did not grade" the papers, or would you say (as I would insist) that the teacher graded the papers in an unfair manner?
Furthermore, whatever the semantics of the verb "grade", it is the impact on the student's score, and not the teacher's behavior, that is relevant, and consequently it is to the former that the teacher should be referring. (Indeed, the reality is that that is the intended referent, and the teacher is simply referring to his/her own behavior as an oblique, implicit way of referring to the impact on the student's score. I object to such an oblique way of speaking.)
I honestly don't understand the resistance to conceding me this point. I can perhaps understand if people aren't as bothered by this kind of thing as I am, but...why the need to actually defend what is clearly less-than-maximally-considered language? Do people really not understand where I'm coming from here? In this, a place where I thought sympathy for logical precision mixed with skepticism of institutionalized education? Exactly what mistake do you think I'm making, all ye hordes-of-orthonormal-upvoters? Or is your apparent disagreement just a way of signaling disapproval of my having made the complaint (as I am inclined to suspect)?
I honestly don't understand the resistance to conceding me this point.
Surmise: that's because you've only gotten around to mentioning your real objection in this post, two replies down from the top of the thread. It's not the inconsistency. You mean to say you object to the prof's use of his greater power in this situation to frame the conversation to his benefit.
You're right that "I will not grade it" is the wrong phrase to use. The correct one is "I will fail you on this assignment," which the prof is deliberately avoiding because being honest makes him look more responsible for the student's bad outcome than necessary.
Standard Divisive Topic Warning: I suspect there are some here who object to the power dynamics in academia, which are covert for reasons both good and ideological. I know there are also academics here who will naturally take issue with that characterization.
Some senses of "erroneous" that might be involved here include (this list is not necessarily intended to be exhaustive):
Mathematically incorrect -- i.e. the proofs contain actual logical inconsistencies. This was argued by some early skeptics (such as Kronecker) but is basically indefensible ever since the formulation of axiomatic set theory and results such as Gödel's on the consistency of the Axiom of Choice. Such a person would have to actually believe the ZF axioms are inconsistent, and I am aware of no plausible argument for this.
Making claims that are epistemologically indefensible, even if possibly true. E.g., maybe there does exist a well-ordering of the reals, but mere mortals are in no position to assert that such a thing exists. Again, axiomatic formalization should have meant the end of this as a plausible stance.
Irrelevant or uninteresing as an area of research because of a "lack of correspondence" with "reality" or "the physical world". In order to be consistent, a person subscribing to this view would have to repudiate the whole of pure mathematics as an enterprise. If, as is more common, the person is selectively criticizing certain parts of mathematics, then they are almost certainly suffering from map-territory confusion. Mathematics is not physics; the map is not the territory. It is not ordained or programmed into the universe that positive integers must refer specifically to numbers of elementary particles, or some such, any more than the symbolic conventions of your atlas are programmed into the Earth. Hence one cannot make a leap e.g. from the existence of a finite number of elementary particles to the theoretical adequacy of finitely many numbers. To do so would be to prematurely circumscribe the nature of mathematical models of the physical world. Any criticism of a particular area of mathematics as "unconnected to reality" necessarily has to be made from the standpoint of a particular model of reality. But part (perhaps a large part) of the point of doing pure mathematics (besides the fact that it's fun, of course), is to prepare for the necessity, encountered time and time again in the history of our species, of upgrading -- and thus changing --our very model. Not just the model itself but the ways in which mathematical ideas are used in the model. This has often happened in ways that (at least at the time) would have seemed very surprising.
For the sake of argument, I will go ahead and ask what sort of nonconstructive entities you think an AI needs to reason about, in order to function properly.
Well, if the AI is doing mathematics, then it needs to reason about the very same entities that human mathematicians reason about.
Maybe that sounds like begging the question, because you could ask why humans themselves need to reason about those entities (which is kind of the whole point here). But in that case I'm not sure what you're getting at by switching from humans to AIs.
Do you perhaps mean to ask something like: "What kind of mathematical entities will be needed in order to formulate the most fundamental physical laws?"
Regarding your three bullet points above:
It's rude to start refuting an idea before you've finished defining it.
One of these things is not like the others. There's nothing wrong with giving us a history of constructive thinking, and providing us with reasons why outdated versions of the theory were found wanting. It's good style to use parallel construction to build rhetorical momentum. It is terribly dishonest to do both at the same time -- it creates the impression that the subjective reasons you give for dismissing point 3 have weight equal to the objective reasons history has given for dismissing points 1 and 2.
Your talk in point 3 about "map-territory confusion" is very strange. Mathematics is all in your head. It's all map, no territory. You seem to be claiming that constructivsts are outside of the mathematical mainstream because they want to bend theory in the direction of a preferred outcome. You then claim that this is outside of the bounds of acceptable mathematical thinking, So what's wrong with reasoning like this:
"Nobody really likes all of the consequences of the Axiom of Choice, but most people seem willing to put up with its bad behavior because some of the abstractions it enables -- like the Real Numbers -- are just so damn useful. I wonder how many of the useful properties of the Real Numbers I could capture by building up from (a possibly weakened version of) ZF set theory and a weakened version of the Axiom of Choice?"
Property rights are government regulation. There are no such inherent rights.
Not so fast. People certainly think they are grabbing different clusters of thingspace with these terms, and you'd have to show how they reduce.
Not that I see your claim as totally outrageous. Many property rights can be equivalently expressed as government regulation, and vice versa. I've certainly run into trouble on that issue in debating intellectual property with libertarians.
However, the supposed similarity does break down quickly: while property rights have a definite owner, there generally isn't someone I can go to in order to buy back my right to own a tank, no matter what precautions I agree to take.
However, the supposed similarity does break down quickly: while property rights have a definite owner, there generally isn't someone I can go to in order to buy back my right to own a tank, no matter what precautions I agree to take.
Actually, it's legal for private individuals to own tanks in the US, so long as the main gun has been decommissioned. You can get a Soviet T-72 starting at around 50k Euro. Know your rights, you sheeple!!!!111
One obvious example is opt-out system for organ donations. Who can honestly say it would have worse results than either forced organ donations, or opt-in?
Those who are against easy organ donation often argue that it would provide incentives for doctors to strive less to save people in accidents or suffering from issues like brain tumors, since on strict utilitarian grounds, that person's death might save several others. This isn't something you know is happening except statistically, which means no redress for those (or their heirs) so affected. Lots of people don't want to feel as though they cannot trust their doctor, even if more lives might be saved overall.
Those who are against easy organ donation often argue that it would provide incentives for doctors to strive less to save people in accidents or suffering from issues like brain tumors, since on strict utilitarian grounds, that person's death might save several others.
Unless there are technical subtleties in the organ transplantation process I'm not aware of, this sounds completely insane to me.
Whatever accidental cognitive goldbricking doctors are guilty of, they're most likely to be guilty of it now, when organs are very scarce, making it highly likely that each organ recovered from a goldbricked patient will be given to some other needy person. If organ donation were the norm, the supply would outstrip demand, and recovering organs wouldn't be a big enough deal to (accidentally) risk your career and your humanity over.
It sounds to me like opponents of organ donation [1] are just voicing squeamish emotions without bothering to make sense.
[1] I think this phrase is actually a complete, isomorphic formulation of the problem. "Who could possibly oppose organ donation?" and so on.
[2] I've restricted my commenting to HN for too long. How do I make pretty superscript footnotes?
I've done the googling that Annoyance considers so vital to our moral development. Here are the results, for those who wish to remain slothful and debased. For the truly pious, youtube has a video of the so-called icepick psychosurgery from a PBS documentary.
Googling "effect of lobotomy on IQ" returns a Google Books excerpt from a Neuroscience textbook. The author is professor of Neuroscience at MIT. The text claims that "...lobotomy can be performed with little decrease in IQ..." It also says that in the most popular lobotomy technique, it was impossible for the doctor to see what sections of the frontal lobe he was "treating."
An online psychology textbook here describes the behavior of lobotomy patients as "stimulus-bound," and reports that they were easily distracted by their immediate surroundings and had little ability to plan or set goals.
This site and this book (see p. 20) have more information on the general effects of damage to the frontal lobe.
Bond is being caustic so people will pay attention to him. It's his schtick. He reviews Ender's Game and calls it 'pornography'.
His claim is backwards. People instinctively share their favorite stories for signaling reasons. Read Comeuppance if you don't believe me. The urge is probably strong enough that they'll drive across several states to get to a convention to find a receptive group of people with whom they can signal their approval. Indiana Jones fans don't have conventions because they aren't atypical -- most people like Indiana Jones movies.
He is sort of right, though. Anything that's good enough to attract a rabid fan base but still alienate the general public in spite of its virtues is pretty obviously going to have some even bigger faults.
Proust's following is small, rabid, and (being composed mostly of literary critics) is very far out of touch with reality. Why don't we call them a fandom?
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People complaining about the ad being anonymous: obviously, the first test for people applying is to work out what they're applying for. Emails should begin,
"Dear [name] of [company],"
I might be willing to negotiate with a guy who calls me up and claims he's kidnapped my girlfriend. I'd do just about anything to get her back safely. But If he asked me to pay for proof she was still alive, I'd start making funeral plans.
People who are serious about making a deal go out of their way to demonstrate they're acting in good faith. Withholding information and setting up hoops for prospects to jump through are not the actions of someone who expects a mutually beneficial arrangement.
If they're willing to impose this much on strangers, how do they treat their employees?