All of meanerelk's Comments + Replies

I am looking forward to the API. I am much more likely to continually use Beeminder if it can be automatically updated or, failing that, updated easily from a mobile device. The site is actually OK (not great) to navigate with a phone, but typing updates is not that easy.

Thanks for the hard work. Beeminder looks like a great tool.

0dreeves
Yeah, I personally really love the graphs that I don't have to manually enter data for, like my weight (withings scale) or any time-based goal [http://tagti.me] or pushups (sort of, thanks to an Android app that Bethany Soule wrote [1]). Thanks for the kind words, and be sure to upvote the API suggestion here: http://beeminder.uservoice.com/forums/3011-general/suggestions/2281597-publish-the-beeminder-api- Oh, and note we have an SMS interface: http://blog.beeminder.com/textbot (US only, unfortunately; via Twilio) [1] It counts pushups by touching your nose to your phone. You still have to enter on Beeminder but it's an odometer-style goal so no need to enter every day. It would actually be pretty easy to connect it to Beeminder so no data entry is needed at all, if there's demand for that...
meanerelk280

It is too easy to come up with a just so story like this. How would you rephrase it to make it testable?

Here is a counterstory:

Children have a survival need to learn only well-tested knowledge; they cannot afford to waste their precious developmental years believing wrong ideas. Adults, however, have already survived their juvenile years, and so they are presumably more fit. Furthermore, once an adult successfully reproduces, natural selection no longer cares about them; neither senescence nor gullibility affect an adult's fitness. Therefore, we should expect children to be skeptical and adults to be gullible.

This counterstory doesn't function.

A child's development is not consciously controlled; and they are protected by adults; so believing incorrect things temporarily doesn't harm their development at all.

If you wish to produce a counterstory, make it an actual plausible one. Even if it were the case that children tended to be more skeptical of claims, your story would REMAIN obviously false; whereas Constant's story would remain an important factor, and would raise the question of why we don't see what would be expected given the relevant facts.

meanerelk130

The quantum physics textbooks I read were happy to define linear operator-ness in great gory detail, but they never actually came out and said, "This is not something physically happening to the wavefunction. We are just using this math trick to extract an average value."

I think is is a common problem for many mathematical conventions in physics.

The same thing happened be me in high school physics. I was confused by the torque vector, and I spent an entire year thinking that somehow rotation causes a force perpendicular to the plane of motion.... (read more)

I'm an artist, and believe that any two given individuals will not share an identical color perception.

Being an artist has nothing to do with the accuracy of this belief.

I've always had issues with infinity and transcendental numbers. For instance, pi is said to be transcendental as it cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers; yet, in a sense, is the ratio of two numbers - the circumference over the diameter.

There are two problems here. First, irrational numbers are the ones that cannot be expressed as a fraction of integers. Transendentals ... (read more)

-1ellenjanuary
First of all, thank you for your reply. Honestly, I'm here because I love this place. I guess one is required to figure out the rules as one commiserates, hmmm? ;) 1) I agree. Being an artist does not validate the belief, it is merely shorthand for the formation of the belief. 2) Thank you for the definition of transcendentals. I'm a passionate writer more than an accurate one. That shall improve, and is part of the reason why I am here. The contradiction formed in my mind due to "skipping a couple of steps" and concluding that "all infinities converge at infinity." I agree that there is no contradiction. 3) We're going to have to agree to disagree in this area. Previously I was told I was "confusing the referent for the symbol" when I sat on a thread and took all comers with the proclamation that "zero is not a number, it is a concept." Glory days in the mind of a mathematician. (Yes, we are strange. ;) ) Irrelevant. I fully intend to dedicate the next four years on discovering the reality of concepts, and I will be sure to look into what you have recommended. The bookstore on the corner had the last tome; if it is still there in two weeks, that baby is mine. Thanks. PS. In writing "thank you for the definition of transcendentals," it occurs to me that it sounds sarcastic. It is not. Previously, the stupid brain did not have a concise definition; and now it does. I fully intend to be polite, courteous, and respectful in all discussion on this blog. If I am not, please let me know. Thanks again. :)