I don't like notebooks.- Joel Grus (Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence) - YouTube
2 days ago by nhaliday
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856700
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/9a7usg/d_i_dont_like_notebooks/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/9aoi35/i_dont_like_notebooks_joel_grus_jupytercon_2018/
others:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4q9ev0/is_it_only_me_that_thinks_jupyter_is_horrible/
https://towardsdatascience.com/5-reasons-why-jupyter-notebooks-suck-4dc201e27086
video
presentation
techtariat
slides
programming
engineering
data-science
best-practices
python
frameworks
ecosystem
live-coding
hci
ui
ux
state
sci-comp
contrarianism
rhetoric
critique
rant
worrydream
multi
hn
commentary
reddit
social
org:med
org:popup
acmtariat
move-fast-(and-break-things)
summary
list
top-n
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/9a7usg/d_i_dont_like_notebooks/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/9aoi35/i_dont_like_notebooks_joel_grus_jupytercon_2018/
others:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4q9ev0/is_it_only_me_that_thinks_jupyter_is_horrible/
https://towardsdatascience.com/5-reasons-why-jupyter-notebooks-suck-4dc201e27086
2 days ago by nhaliday
You’re Probably Asking the Wrong People For Career Advice | Hunter Walk
2 days ago by nhaliday
Here’s what I believe: when considering a specific career path decision or evaluating an offer with a particular company, I’ve found people tend to concentrate mostly on the opinions and inputs of two groups: their friends in similar jobs and the most “successful” people they know within the industry. Seems like a reasonable strategy, right? Depends.
...
Ok, so who do advice seekers usually *undervalue*? (A) People who know you very deeply regardless of expertise in your specific professional work and (B) individuals who have direct experience with the company, role and people you’re considering.
techtariat
career
advice
communication
strategy
working-stiff
tech
judgement
decision-making
theory-of-mind
expert-experience
track-record
arbitrage
cost-benefit
contrarianism
rhetoric
...
Ok, so who do advice seekers usually *undervalue*? (A) People who know you very deeply regardless of expertise in your specific professional work and (B) individuals who have direct experience with the company, role and people you’re considering.
2 days ago by nhaliday
REST is the new SOAP | Hacker News
28 days ago by nhaliday
Nobody Understands REST or HTTP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2724488
Some REST best practices: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8618243
REST was never about CRUD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17563851
Post-REST: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18485978
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16360351/get-http-request-payload
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/978061/http-get-with-request-body
Ask HN: Were you happy moving your API from REST to GraphQL?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17565508
From REST to GraphQL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365555
REST in Peace. Long Live GraphQL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839576
GraphQL Didn't Kill REST: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17572154
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/five-common-problems-in-graphql-apps-and-how-to-fix-them-ac74d37a293c/
hn
commentary
techtariat
org:ngo
programming
engineering
web
client-server
networking
rant
rhetoric
contrarianism
idk
org:med
best-practices
working-stiff
api
models
protocol-metadata
internet
state
structure
chart
multi
q-n-a
discussion
expert-experience
track-record
reflection
cost-benefit
design
system-design
comparison
code-organizing
flux-stasis
interface-compatibility
trends
gotchas
stackex
state-of-art
distributed
concurrency
abstraction
concept
conceptual-vocab
python
ubiquity
list
top-n
duplication
synchrony
performance
caching
Some REST best practices: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8618243
REST was never about CRUD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17563851
Post-REST: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18485978
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16360351/get-http-request-payload
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/978061/http-get-with-request-body
Ask HN: Were you happy moving your API from REST to GraphQL?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17565508
From REST to GraphQL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10365555
REST in Peace. Long Live GraphQL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839576
GraphQL Didn't Kill REST: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17572154
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/five-common-problems-in-graphql-apps-and-how-to-fix-them-ac74d37a293c/
28 days ago by nhaliday
Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? | Hacker News
29 days ago by nhaliday
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/d65upt/how_did_you_know_what_niche_to_go_into/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/7yb9ol/how_did_you_find_your_nichespecialization/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/58qr8d/what_specialization_tends_to_have_the_biggest/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/b4jp0k/what_are_some_worthy_job_specializations_to_get/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/awabf7/what_are_some_underrated_specializations_in/
We’re in the Middle of a Data Engineering Talent Shortage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12454901
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/a4rhgu/is_programming_languages_a_good/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/ahyyib/recommended_areas_to_specialize_in_if_youre_not/
hn
discussion
q-n-a
ideas
impact
trends
the-bones
speedometer
technology
applications
tech
cs
programming
list
top-n
recommendations
lens
machine-learning
deep-learning
security
privacy
crypto
software
hardware
cloud
biotech
CRISPR
bioinformatics
biohacking
blockchain
cryptocurrency
crypto-anarchy
healthcare
graphics
SIGGRAPH
vr
automation
universalism-particularism
expert-experience
reddit
social
arbitrage
supply-demand
ubiquity
cost-benefit
compensation
chart
career
planning
strategy
long-term
advice
sub-super
commentary
rhetoric
org:com
techtariat
human-capital
prioritizing
tech-infrastructure
working-stiff
data-science
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/7yb9ol/how_did_you_find_your_nichespecialization/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/58qr8d/what_specialization_tends_to_have_the_biggest/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/b4jp0k/what_are_some_worthy_job_specializations_to_get/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/awabf7/what_are_some_underrated_specializations_in/
We’re in the Middle of a Data Engineering Talent Shortage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12454901
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/a4rhgu/is_programming_languages_a_good/
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/ahyyib/recommended_areas_to_specialize_in_if_youre_not/
29 days ago by nhaliday
How can we develop transformative tools for thought?
michael-nielsen tcstariat techtariat thinking exocortex form-design worrydream frontier metameta neurons design essay rhetoric retention quantum quantum-info communication learning teaching writing technical-writing better-explained education studying composition-decomposition skunkworks detail-architecture mooc lectures games comparison incentives software public-goodish hci ui ux ai neuro interface-compatibility info-dynamics info-foraging books programming pls differential geometry trivia unintended-consequences track-record questions stories examples error math
7 weeks ago by nhaliday
michael-nielsen tcstariat techtariat thinking exocortex form-design worrydream frontier metameta neurons design essay rhetoric retention quantum quantum-info communication learning teaching writing technical-writing better-explained education studying composition-decomposition skunkworks detail-architecture mooc lectures games comparison incentives software public-goodish hci ui ux ai neuro interface-compatibility info-dynamics info-foraging books programming pls differential geometry trivia unintended-consequences track-record questions stories examples error math
7 weeks ago by nhaliday
Notes from a Sun Tzu Skeptic
org:popup defense strategy war military china asia sinosphere critique essay rhetoric contrarianism flux-stasis history iron-age antiquity modernity interface-compatibility literature pragmatic realness psycho-atoms the-world-is-just-atoms war-nerd
7 weeks ago by nhaliday
org:popup defense strategy war military china asia sinosphere critique essay rhetoric contrarianism flux-stasis history iron-age antiquity modernity interface-compatibility literature pragmatic realness psycho-atoms the-world-is-just-atoms war-nerd
7 weeks ago by nhaliday
CppCon 2014: Chandler Carruth "Efficiency with Algorithms, Performance with Data Structures" - YouTube
8 weeks ago by nhaliday
- idk how I feel about this
- makes a distinction between efficiency (basically asymptotic complexity, "doing less work") and performance ("doing that work faster"). idiosyncratic terminology but similar to the "two performance aesthetics" described here: https://pinboard.in/u:nhaliday/b:913a284640c5
- some bikeshedding about vector::reserve and references
- "discontiguous data structures are the root of all evil" (cache-locality, don't use linked lists, etc)
- stacks? queues? just use vector. also suggests circular buffers. says std::deque is really bad
- std::map is bad too (for real SWE, not oly-programming). if you want ordered associative container, just binary search in vector
- std::unordered_map is poorly implemented, unfortunately (due to requirement for buckets in API)
- good implementation of hash table uses open addressing and local (linear?) probing
video
presentation
performance
nitty-gritty
best-practices
working-stiff
programming
c(pp)
systems
data-structures
algorithms
jvm
pls
metal-to-virtual
stylized-facts
rhetoric
expert-experience
google
llvm
efficiency
time-complexity
mobile
computer-memory
caching
oly-programming
common-case
hashing
multi
energy-resources
methodology
trees
techtariat
- makes a distinction between efficiency (basically asymptotic complexity, "doing less work") and performance ("doing that work faster"). idiosyncratic terminology but similar to the "two performance aesthetics" described here: https://pinboard.in/u:nhaliday/b:913a284640c5
- some bikeshedding about vector::reserve and references
- "discontiguous data structures are the root of all evil" (cache-locality, don't use linked lists, etc)
- stacks? queues? just use vector. also suggests circular buffers. says std::deque is really bad
- std::map is bad too (for real SWE, not oly-programming). if you want ordered associative container, just binary search in vector
- std::unordered_map is poorly implemented, unfortunately (due to requirement for buckets in API)
- good implementation of hash table uses open addressing and local (linear?) probing
8 weeks ago by nhaliday
What did Max Weber mean by the ‘spirit’ of capitalism? | Aeon Ideas
10 weeks ago by nhaliday
There was another kind of disintegration besides that of traditional ethics. The proliferation of knowledge and reflection on knowledge had made it impossible for any one person to know and survey it all. In a world which could not be grasped as a whole, and where there were no universally shared values, most people clung to the particular niche to which they were most committed: their job or profession. They treated their work as a post-religious calling, ‘an absolute end in itself’, and if the modern ‘ethic’ or ‘spirit’ had an ultimate foundation, this was it. One of the most widespread clichés about Weber’s thought is to say that he preached a work ethic. This is a mistake. He personally saw no particular virtue in sweat – he thought his best ideas came to him when relaxing on a sofa with a cigar – and had he known he would be misunderstood in this way, he would have pointed out that a capacity for hard work was something that did not distinguish the modern West from previous societies and their value systems. However, the idea that people were being ever more defined by the blinkered focus of their employment was one he regarded as profoundly modern and characteristic.
rec'd by Garett Jones
news
org:mag
org:popup
rhetoric
summary
philosophy
ideology
big-peeps
sociology
social-science
zeitgeist
modernity
history
early-modern
labor
economics
capitalism
individualism-collectivism
social-norms
psychology
social-psych
telos-atelos
garett-jones
rec'd by Garett Jones
10 weeks ago by nhaliday
Hayek's Tragic Capitalism
11 weeks ago by nhaliday
By: Edward Feser
org:mag
org:ngo
letters
essay
right-wing
rhetoric
reflection
review
books
summary
ideology
politics
polisci
philosophy
anthropology
sapiens
EEA
evolution
darwinian
deep-materialism
individualism-collectivism
n-factor
egalitarianism-hierarchy
capitalism
communism
farmers-and-foragers
economics
markets
polanyi-marx
institutions
nature
religion
christianity
protestant-catholic
civilization
europe
the-great-west-whale
mediterranean
the-classics
authoritarianism
leviathan
regulation
welfare-state
redistribution
supply-demand
info-econ
info-dynamics
bounded-cognition
instinct
retrofit
psychology
evopsych
microfoundations
morality
intricacy
cultural-dynamics
culture
society
tradition
prudence
history
mostly-modern
counter-revolution
domestication
left-wing
property-rights
culture-war
pessimism
realness
subjective-objective
absolute-relative
ethics
formal-values
values
social-norms
nationalism-globalism
corporation
identity-politics
westminster
managerial-state
🎩
new-religion
government
11 weeks ago by nhaliday
Peter Turchin Population Immiseration in America - Peter Turchin
turchin econotariat broad-econ rhetoric contrarianism economics politics polisci society class class-warfare cultural-dynamics usa pinker optimism pessimism nationalism-globalism westminster china asia africa wealth trends inequality econ-metrics realness heterodox metrics measurement compensation pro-rata gender labor flux-stasis homo-hetero malaise stagnation distribution time-series data the-bones embodied health longevity comparison europe EU the-great-west-whale world developing-world age-generation sex social-capital coming-apart demographics attaq
12 weeks ago by nhaliday
turchin econotariat broad-econ rhetoric contrarianism economics politics polisci society class class-warfare cultural-dynamics usa pinker optimism pessimism nationalism-globalism westminster china asia africa wealth trends inequality econ-metrics realness heterodox metrics measurement compensation pro-rata gender labor flux-stasis homo-hetero malaise stagnation distribution time-series data the-bones embodied health longevity comparison europe EU the-great-west-whale world developing-world age-generation sex social-capital coming-apart demographics attaq
12 weeks ago by nhaliday
Why general audience news will only get more ideologically polarized: propaganda pays the bills – Gene Expression
12 weeks ago by nhaliday
The “best” thing about the game that the Indian media played, and the game that the American media plays, is that the people believe that the propaganda is actually fair and balanced! Even the journalists themselves may believe the propaganda because many of them lack specialized knowledge to know when the people they interview are lying to them or misleading them (the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is really disturbing).
Finally, if you are one of those people who strangely prefer the truth, there is a way you can get it: become wealthy and buy the truth. If you are running a hedge-fund or some such other thing, information is not just a passive consumption good. Information is input into the production of more wealth and power. People in this sort of results-driven financial sector mine informants for truth in a very conscious manner to maximize returns for themselves and their clients. And of course, there exists a market for what is basically “reality-based journalism”. It’s just a market that is invisible to us plebs unless we find ourselves having access to nuggets of truth which no one wants to hear, but which global capital wants to profit from….
The “media” that you see and hear about. The media with the big budgets and large news organizations are actually just a simulacrum of an objective data-gathering and transmission institution. In reality, they are tribal newsletters. On the narrow scale, they often reinforce particular tribal narratives and ignore countervailing ones. But on a broader national scale, they collectively flatter our self-image as a people in a sometimes ludicrous fashion.
gnxp
scitariat
reflection
rhetoric
media
propaganda
cynicism-idealism
polarization
incentives
interests
supply-demand
truth
realness
biases
epistemic
politics
ideology
india
asia
gavisti
antiquity
iraq-syria
war
usa
class
finance
capital
paying-rent
prediction
trends
institutions
madisonian
civic
elite
vampire-squid
pessimism
contrarianism
info-dynamics
Finally, if you are one of those people who strangely prefer the truth, there is a way you can get it: become wealthy and buy the truth. If you are running a hedge-fund or some such other thing, information is not just a passive consumption good. Information is input into the production of more wealth and power. People in this sort of results-driven financial sector mine informants for truth in a very conscious manner to maximize returns for themselves and their clients. And of course, there exists a market for what is basically “reality-based journalism”. It’s just a market that is invisible to us plebs unless we find ourselves having access to nuggets of truth which no one wants to hear, but which global capital wants to profit from….
The “media” that you see and hear about. The media with the big budgets and large news organizations are actually just a simulacrum of an objective data-gathering and transmission institution. In reality, they are tribal newsletters. On the narrow scale, they often reinforce particular tribal narratives and ignore countervailing ones. But on a broader national scale, they collectively flatter our self-image as a people in a sometimes ludicrous fashion.
12 weeks ago by nhaliday
Overcoming Bias : How Idealists Aid Cheaters
september 2019 by nhaliday
I’ve been reading the book Moral Mazes for the last few months; it is excellent, but also depressing, which is why it takes so long to read. It makes a strong case, through many detailed examples, that in typical business organizations, norms are actually enforced far less than members pretend. The typical level of checking is in fact far too little to effectively enforce common norms, such as against self-dealing, bribery, accounting lies, fair evaluation of employees, and treating similar customers differently. Combining this data with other things I know, I’m convinced that this applies not only in business, but in human behavior more generally.
We often argue about this key parameter of how hard or necessary it is to enforce norms. Cynics tend to say that it is hard and necessary, while idealists tend to say that it is easy and unnecessary. This data suggests that cynics tend more to be right, even as idealists tend to win our social arguments.
One reason idealists tend to win arguments is that they impugn the character and motives of cynics. They suggest that cynics can more easily see opportunities for cheating because cynics in fact intend to and do cheat more, or that cynics are losers who seek to make excuses for their failures, by blaming the cheating of others. Idealists also tend to say what while other groups may have norm enforcement problems, our group is better, which suggests that cynics are disloyal to our group.
Norm enforcement is expensive, but worth it if we have good social norms, that discourage harmful behaviors. Yet if we under-estimate how hard norms are to enforce, we won’t check enough, and cheaters will get away with cheating, canceling much of the benefit of the norm. People who privately know this fact will gain by cheating often, as they know they can get away with it. Conversely, people who trust norm enforcement to work will be cheated on, and lose.
When confronted with data, idealists often argue, successfully, that it is good if people tend to overestimate the effectiveness of norm enforcement, as this will make them obey norms more, to everyone’s benefit. They give this as a reason to teach this overestimate in schools and in our standard public speeches. And so that is what societies tend to do. Which benefits those who, even if they give lip service to this claim in public, are privately selfish enough to know it is a lie, and are willing to cheat on the larger pool of gullible victims that this policy creates.
That is, idealists aid cheaters.
ratty
hanson
books
review
speculation
branches
ideology
cooperate-defect
coordination
alignment
social-norms
cynicism-idealism
unintended-consequences
propaganda
info-dynamics
cost-benefit
realness
truth
summary
contrarianism
things
rhetoric
phalanges
We often argue about this key parameter of how hard or necessary it is to enforce norms. Cynics tend to say that it is hard and necessary, while idealists tend to say that it is easy and unnecessary. This data suggests that cynics tend more to be right, even as idealists tend to win our social arguments.
One reason idealists tend to win arguments is that they impugn the character and motives of cynics. They suggest that cynics can more easily see opportunities for cheating because cynics in fact intend to and do cheat more, or that cynics are losers who seek to make excuses for their failures, by blaming the cheating of others. Idealists also tend to say what while other groups may have norm enforcement problems, our group is better, which suggests that cynics are disloyal to our group.
Norm enforcement is expensive, but worth it if we have good social norms, that discourage harmful behaviors. Yet if we under-estimate how hard norms are to enforce, we won’t check enough, and cheaters will get away with cheating, canceling much of the benefit of the norm. People who privately know this fact will gain by cheating often, as they know they can get away with it. Conversely, people who trust norm enforcement to work will be cheated on, and lose.
When confronted with data, idealists often argue, successfully, that it is good if people tend to overestimate the effectiveness of norm enforcement, as this will make them obey norms more, to everyone’s benefit. They give this as a reason to teach this overestimate in schools and in our standard public speeches. And so that is what societies tend to do. Which benefits those who, even if they give lip service to this claim in public, are privately selfish enough to know it is a lie, and are willing to cheat on the larger pool of gullible victims that this policy creates.
That is, idealists aid cheaters.
september 2019 by nhaliday
On the referendum #33: High performance government, ‘cognitive technologies’, Michael Nielsen, Bret Victor, & ‘Seeing Rooms’ – Dominic Cummings's Blog
albion wonkish unaffiliated polisci leadership organizing institutions government britain thinking bret-victor michael-nielsen techtariat let-me-see worrydream exocortex notation math arbitrage policy nascent-state tcstariat technocracy elite ability-competence complex-systems management prediction-markets tetlock frontier skunkworks data-science dataviz evidence-based essay rhetoric contrarianism rationality paying-rent alt-inst ratty art visual-understanding lens
september 2019 by nhaliday
albion wonkish unaffiliated polisci leadership organizing institutions government britain thinking bret-victor michael-nielsen techtariat let-me-see worrydream exocortex notation math arbitrage policy nascent-state tcstariat technocracy elite ability-competence complex-systems management prediction-markets tetlock frontier skunkworks data-science dataviz evidence-based essay rhetoric contrarianism rationality paying-rent alt-inst ratty art visual-understanding lens
september 2019 by nhaliday
What’s the Homicide Capital of America? Murder Rates in U.S. Cities, Ranked.
september 2019 by nhaliday
source appears consistently mendacious but the data is useful
news
org:ngo
rhetoric
data
visualization
analysis
urban-rural
within-group
usa
ranking
list
top-n
distribution
moments
crime
death
pro-rata
chicago
virginia-DC
september 2019 by nhaliday
Why the humanities can't be saved - UnHerd
august 2019 by nhaliday
- John Gray the philosopher
news
org:mag
org:popup
letters
trends
rhetoric
critique
essay
journos-pundits
academia
philosophy
nietzschean
big-peeps
pessimism
rot
roots
myth
values
religion
the-classics
apollonian-dionysian
unintended-consequences
pinker
reason
politics
ideology
debate
managerial-state
contrarianism
crux
westminster
volo-avolo
counter-revolution
enlightenment-renaissance-restoration-reformation
anglo
august 2019 by nhaliday
Why are gradual static types so great? | benkuhn.net
ratty core-rats rhetoric comparison review engineering programming pls plt types python jvm parsimony tradeoffs trends intricacy whole-partial-many static-dynamic design cost-benefit extrema marginal system-design techtariat
august 2019 by nhaliday
ratty core-rats rhetoric comparison review engineering programming pls plt types python jvm parsimony tradeoffs trends intricacy whole-partial-many static-dynamic design cost-benefit extrema marginal system-design techtariat
august 2019 by nhaliday
Leslie Lamport: Thinking Above the Code - YouTube
heavyweights cs distributed systems system-design formal-methods rigor correctness rhetoric contrarianism presentation video detail-architecture engineering programming thinking writing technical-writing concurrency protocol-metadata
august 2019 by nhaliday
heavyweights cs distributed systems system-design formal-methods rigor correctness rhetoric contrarianism presentation video detail-architecture engineering programming thinking writing technical-writing concurrency protocol-metadata
august 2019 by nhaliday
Purpose of proof: semi-formal methods : Inside 245-5D
techtariat reflection rhetoric contrarianism programming engineering formal-methods rigor proofs communication collaboration c(pp) concurrency plt correctness pragmatic math lens abstraction flux-stasis flexibility documentation system-design impetus ends-means technical-writing trust
august 2019 by nhaliday
techtariat reflection rhetoric contrarianism programming engineering formal-methods rigor proofs communication collaboration c(pp) concurrency plt correctness pragmatic math lens abstraction flux-stasis flexibility documentation system-design impetus ends-means technical-writing trust
august 2019 by nhaliday
OCaml For the Masses | November 2011 | Communications of the ACM
july 2019 by nhaliday
Straight out of the box, OCaml is pretty good at catching bugs, but it can do even more if you design your types carefully. Consider as an example the following types for representing the state of a network connection as illustrated in Figure 4.
that one excellent example of using algebraic data types
techtariat
rhetoric
programming
pls
engineering
pragmatic
carmack
quotes
aphorism
functional
ocaml-sml
types
formal-methods
correctness
finance
tip-of-tongue
examples
characterization
invariance
networking
that one excellent example of using algebraic data types
july 2019 by nhaliday
Zero-based numbering - Wikipedia
july 2019 by nhaliday
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm
idk about this guy's competence. he seems to want to sensationalize the historical reasons while ignoring or being ignorant of the legitimate mathematical reasons:
http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation-needed/
nibble
concept
wiki
reference
programming
pls
c(pp)
systems
plt
roots
explanans
degrees-of-freedom
data-structures
multi
hmm
debate
critique
ideas
techtariat
rant
q-n-a
stackex
compilers
performance
calculation
correctness
mental-math
parsimony
whole-partial-many
tradition
worse-is-better/the-right-thing
mit
business
rhetoric
worrydream
flux-stasis
legacy
elegance
stories
blowhards
idk
org:junk
intricacy
measure
debugging
best-practices
notation
heavyweights
protocol-metadata
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm
idk about this guy's competence. he seems to want to sensationalize the historical reasons while ignoring or being ignorant of the legitimate mathematical reasons:
http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation-needed/
july 2019 by nhaliday
The Scholar's Stage: Against Human Sexual Selection
july 2019 by nhaliday
PROBLEM #1: WHO SELECTED MATES—CHILDREN OR PARENTS?
PROBLEM #2: CHOICE OR FORCE?
unaffiliated
wonkish
broad-econ
rhetoric
critique
debate
psychology
social-psych
evopsych
gender
sex
selection
anthropology
evolution
social-structure
kinship
scitariat
sapiens
history
antiquity
roots
egalitarianism-hierarchy
parenting
power
institutions
alignment
coordination
interests
EGT
volo-avolo
PROBLEM #2: CHOICE OR FORCE?
july 2019 by nhaliday
Integrated vs type based shrinking - Hypothesis
july 2019 by nhaliday
The big difference is whether shrinking is integrated into generation.
In Haskell’s QuickCheck, shrinking is defined based on types: Any value of a given type shrinks the same way, regardless of how it is generated. In Hypothesis, test.check, etc. instead shrinking is part of the generation, and the generator controls how the values it produces shrinks (this works differently in Hypothesis and test.check, and probably differently again in EQC, but the user visible result is largely the same)
This is not a trivial distinction. Integrating shrinking into generation has two large benefits:
- Shrinking composes nicely, and you can shrink anything you can generate regardless of whether there is a defined shrinker for the type produced.
- You can _guarantee that shrinking satisfies the same invariants as generation_.
The first is mostly important from a convenience point of view: Although there are some things it let you do that you can’t do in the type based approach, they’re mostly of secondary importance. It largely just saves you from the effort of having to write your own shrinkers.
But the second is really important, because the lack of it makes your test failures potentially extremely confusing.
...
[example: even_numbers = integers().map(lambda x: x * 2)]
...
In this example the problem was relatively obvious and so easy to work around, but as your invariants get more implicit and subtle it becomes really problematic: In Hypothesis it’s easy and convenient to generate quite complex data, and trying to recreate the invariants that are automatically satisfied with that in your tests and/or your custom shrinkers would quickly become a nightmare.
I don’t think it’s an accident that the main systems to get this right are in dynamic languages. It’s certainly not essential - the original proposal that lead to the implementation for test.check was for Haskell, and Jack is an alternative property based system for Haskell that does this - but you feel the pain much more quickly in dynamic languages because the typical workaround for this problem in Haskell is to define a newtype, which lets you turn off the default shrinking for your types and possibly define your own.
But that’s a workaround for a problem that shouldn’t be there in the first place, and using it will still result in your having to encode the invariants into your your shrinkers, which is more work and more brittle than just having it work automatically.
So although (as far as I know) none of the currently popular property based testing systems for statically typed languages implement this behaviour correctly, they absolutely can and they absolutely should. It will improve users’ lives significantly.
https://hypothesis.works/articles/compositional-shrinking/
In my last article about shrinking, I discussed the problems with basing shrinking on the type of the values to be shrunk.
In writing it though I forgot that there was a halfway house which is also somewhat bad (but significantly less so) that you see in a couple of implementations.
This is when the shrinking is not type based, but still follows the classic shrinking API that takes a value and returns a lazy list of shrinks of that value. Examples of libraries that do this are theft and QuickTheories.
This works reasonably well and solves the major problems with type directed shrinking, but it’s still somewhat fragile and importantly does not compose nearly as well as the approaches that Hypothesis or test.check take.
Ideally, as well as not being based on the types of the values being generated, shrinking should not be based on the actual values generated at all.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but it actually works pretty well.
...
We took a strategy and composed it with a function mapping over the values that that strategy produced to get a new strategy.
Suppose the Hypothesis strategy implementation looked something like the following:
...
i.e. we can generate a value and we can shrink a value that we’ve previously generated. By default we don’t know how to generate values (subclasses have to implement that) and we can’t shrink anything, which subclasses are able to fix if they want or leave as is if they’re fine with that.
(This is in fact how a very early implementation of it looked)
This is essentially the approach taken by theft or QuickTheories, and the problem with it is that under this implementation the ‘map’ function we used above is impossible to define in a way that preserves shrinking: In order to shrink a generated value, you need some way to invert the function you’re composing with (which is in general impossible even if your language somehow exposed the facilities to do it, which it almost certainly doesn’t) so you could take the generated value, map it back to the value that produced it, shrink that and then compose with the mapping function.
...
The key idea for fixing this is as follows: In order to shrink outputs it almost always suffices to shrink inputs. Although in theory you can get functions where simpler input leads to more complicated output, in practice this seems to be rare enough that it’s OK to just shrug and accept more complicated test output in those cases.
Given that, the _way to shrink the output of a mapped strategy is to just shrink the value generated from the first strategy and feed it to the mapping function_.
Which means that you need an API that can support that sort of shrinking.
https://hypothesis.works/articles/types-and-properties/
This happens a lot: Frequently there are properties that only hold in some restricted domain, and so you want more specific tests for that domain to complement your other tests for the larger range of data.
When this happens you need tools to generate something more specific, and those requirements don’t map naturally to types.
[ed.: Some examples of how this idea can be useful:
Have a type but want to test different distributions on it for different purposes. Eg, comparing worst-case and average-case guarantees for benchmarking time/memory complexity. Comparing a slow and fast implementation on small input sizes, then running some sanity checks for the fast implementation on large input sizes beyond what the slow implementation can handle.]
...
In Haskell, traditionally we would fix this with a newtype declaration which wraps the type. We could find a newtype NonEmptyList and a newtype FiniteFloat and then say that we actually wanted a NonEmptyList[FiniteFloat] there.
...
But why should we bother? Especially if we’re only using these in one test, we’re not actually interested in these types at all, and it just adds a whole bunch of syntactic noise when you could just pass the data generators directly. Defining new types for the data you want to generate is purely a workaround for a limitation of the API.
If you were working in a dependently typed language where you could already naturally express this in the type system it might be OK (I don’t have any direct experience of working in type systems that strong), but I’m sceptical of being able to make it work well - you’re unlikely to be able to automatically derive data generators in the general case, because the needs of data generation “go in the opposite direction” from types (a type is effectively a predicate which consumes a value, where a data generator is a function that produces a value, so in order to produce a generator for a type automatically you need to basically invert the predicate). I suspect most approaches here will leave you with a bunch of sharp edges, but I would be interested to see experiments in this direction.
https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/646k3d/ann_hedgehog_property_testing/dg1485c/
techtariat
rhetoric
rant
programming
libraries
pls
types
functional
haskell
python
random
checking
design
critique
multi
composition-decomposition
api
reddit
social
commentary
system-design
arrows
lifts-projections
DSL
static-dynamic
In Haskell’s QuickCheck, shrinking is defined based on types: Any value of a given type shrinks the same way, regardless of how it is generated. In Hypothesis, test.check, etc. instead shrinking is part of the generation, and the generator controls how the values it produces shrinks (this works differently in Hypothesis and test.check, and probably differently again in EQC, but the user visible result is largely the same)
This is not a trivial distinction. Integrating shrinking into generation has two large benefits:
- Shrinking composes nicely, and you can shrink anything you can generate regardless of whether there is a defined shrinker for the type produced.
- You can _guarantee that shrinking satisfies the same invariants as generation_.
The first is mostly important from a convenience point of view: Although there are some things it let you do that you can’t do in the type based approach, they’re mostly of secondary importance. It largely just saves you from the effort of having to write your own shrinkers.
But the second is really important, because the lack of it makes your test failures potentially extremely confusing.
...
[example: even_numbers = integers().map(lambda x: x * 2)]
...
In this example the problem was relatively obvious and so easy to work around, but as your invariants get more implicit and subtle it becomes really problematic: In Hypothesis it’s easy and convenient to generate quite complex data, and trying to recreate the invariants that are automatically satisfied with that in your tests and/or your custom shrinkers would quickly become a nightmare.
I don’t think it’s an accident that the main systems to get this right are in dynamic languages. It’s certainly not essential - the original proposal that lead to the implementation for test.check was for Haskell, and Jack is an alternative property based system for Haskell that does this - but you feel the pain much more quickly in dynamic languages because the typical workaround for this problem in Haskell is to define a newtype, which lets you turn off the default shrinking for your types and possibly define your own.
But that’s a workaround for a problem that shouldn’t be there in the first place, and using it will still result in your having to encode the invariants into your your shrinkers, which is more work and more brittle than just having it work automatically.
So although (as far as I know) none of the currently popular property based testing systems for statically typed languages implement this behaviour correctly, they absolutely can and they absolutely should. It will improve users’ lives significantly.
https://hypothesis.works/articles/compositional-shrinking/
In my last article about shrinking, I discussed the problems with basing shrinking on the type of the values to be shrunk.
In writing it though I forgot that there was a halfway house which is also somewhat bad (but significantly less so) that you see in a couple of implementations.
This is when the shrinking is not type based, but still follows the classic shrinking API that takes a value and returns a lazy list of shrinks of that value. Examples of libraries that do this are theft and QuickTheories.
This works reasonably well and solves the major problems with type directed shrinking, but it’s still somewhat fragile and importantly does not compose nearly as well as the approaches that Hypothesis or test.check take.
Ideally, as well as not being based on the types of the values being generated, shrinking should not be based on the actual values generated at all.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but it actually works pretty well.
...
We took a strategy and composed it with a function mapping over the values that that strategy produced to get a new strategy.
Suppose the Hypothesis strategy implementation looked something like the following:
...
i.e. we can generate a value and we can shrink a value that we’ve previously generated. By default we don’t know how to generate values (subclasses have to implement that) and we can’t shrink anything, which subclasses are able to fix if they want or leave as is if they’re fine with that.
(This is in fact how a very early implementation of it looked)
This is essentially the approach taken by theft or QuickTheories, and the problem with it is that under this implementation the ‘map’ function we used above is impossible to define in a way that preserves shrinking: In order to shrink a generated value, you need some way to invert the function you’re composing with (which is in general impossible even if your language somehow exposed the facilities to do it, which it almost certainly doesn’t) so you could take the generated value, map it back to the value that produced it, shrink that and then compose with the mapping function.
...
The key idea for fixing this is as follows: In order to shrink outputs it almost always suffices to shrink inputs. Although in theory you can get functions where simpler input leads to more complicated output, in practice this seems to be rare enough that it’s OK to just shrug and accept more complicated test output in those cases.
Given that, the _way to shrink the output of a mapped strategy is to just shrink the value generated from the first strategy and feed it to the mapping function_.
Which means that you need an API that can support that sort of shrinking.
https://hypothesis.works/articles/types-and-properties/
This happens a lot: Frequently there are properties that only hold in some restricted domain, and so you want more specific tests for that domain to complement your other tests for the larger range of data.
When this happens you need tools to generate something more specific, and those requirements don’t map naturally to types.
[ed.: Some examples of how this idea can be useful:
Have a type but want to test different distributions on it for different purposes. Eg, comparing worst-case and average-case guarantees for benchmarking time/memory complexity. Comparing a slow and fast implementation on small input sizes, then running some sanity checks for the fast implementation on large input sizes beyond what the slow implementation can handle.]
...
In Haskell, traditionally we would fix this with a newtype declaration which wraps the type. We could find a newtype NonEmptyList and a newtype FiniteFloat and then say that we actually wanted a NonEmptyList[FiniteFloat] there.
...
But why should we bother? Especially if we’re only using these in one test, we’re not actually interested in these types at all, and it just adds a whole bunch of syntactic noise when you could just pass the data generators directly. Defining new types for the data you want to generate is purely a workaround for a limitation of the API.
If you were working in a dependently typed language where you could already naturally express this in the type system it might be OK (I don’t have any direct experience of working in type systems that strong), but I’m sceptical of being able to make it work well - you’re unlikely to be able to automatically derive data generators in the general case, because the needs of data generation “go in the opposite direction” from types (a type is effectively a predicate which consumes a value, where a data generator is a function that produces a value, so in order to produce a generator for a type automatically you need to basically invert the predicate). I suspect most approaches here will leave you with a bunch of sharp edges, but I would be interested to see experiments in this direction.
https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/646k3d/ann_hedgehog_property_testing/dg1485c/
july 2019 by nhaliday
Cleaner, more elegant, and harder to recognize | The Old New Thing
july 2019 by nhaliday
Really easy
Writing bad error-code-based code
Writing bad exception-based code
Hard
Writing good error-code-based code
Really hard
Writing good exception-based code
--
Really easy
Recognizing that error-code-based code is badly-written
Recognizing the difference between bad error-code-based code and
not-bad error-code-based code.
Hard
Recognizing that error-code-base code is not badly-written
Really hard
Recognizing that exception-based code is badly-written
Recognizing that exception-based code is not badly-written
Recognizing the difference between bad exception-based code
and not-bad exception-based code
https://ra3s.com/wordpress/dysfunctional-programming/2009/07/15/return-code-vs-exception-handling/
https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200501/more_exception_handling_debate.html
techtariat
org:com
microsoft
working-stiff
pragmatic
carmack
error
error-handling
programming
rhetoric
debate
critique
pls
search
structure
cost-benefit
comparison
summary
intricacy
certificates-recognition
commentary
multi
contrarianism
correctness
quality
code-dive
cracker-prog
Writing bad error-code-based code
Writing bad exception-based code
Hard
Writing good error-code-based code
Really hard
Writing good exception-based code
--
Really easy
Recognizing that error-code-based code is badly-written
Recognizing the difference between bad error-code-based code and
not-bad error-code-based code.
Hard
Recognizing that error-code-base code is not badly-written
Really hard
Recognizing that exception-based code is badly-written
Recognizing that exception-based code is not badly-written
Recognizing the difference between bad exception-based code
and not-bad exception-based code
https://ra3s.com/wordpress/dysfunctional-programming/2009/07/15/return-code-vs-exception-handling/
https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200501/more_exception_handling_debate.html
july 2019 by nhaliday
paradigms - What's your strongest opinion against functional programming? - Software Engineering Stack Exchange
june 2019 by nhaliday
The problem is that most common code inherently involves state -- business apps, games, UI, etc. There's no problem with some parts of an app being purely functional; in fact most apps could benefit in at least one area. But forcing the paradigm all over the place feels counter-intuitive.
q-n-a
stackex
programming
engineering
pls
functional
pragmatic
cost-benefit
rhetoric
debate
steel-man
business
regularizer
abstraction
state
realness
june 2019 by nhaliday
Less is exponentially more
june 2019 by nhaliday
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16548684
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6417319
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158865
https://aras-p.info/blog/2018/12/28/Modern-C-Lamentations/
https://thephd.github.io/perspective-standardization-in-2018
https://sean-parent.stlab.cc/2018/12/30/cpp-ruminations.html
http://ericniebler.com/2018/12/05/standard-ranges/
techtariat
rsc
worse-is-better/the-right-thing
blowhards
diogenes
reflection
rhetoric
c(pp)
systems
programming
pls
plt
types
thinking
engineering
nitty-gritty
stories
stock-flow
network-structure
arrows
composition-decomposition
comparison
jvm
golang
degrees-of-freedom
roots
performance
hn
commentary
multi
ideology
intricacy
parsimony
minimalism
tradeoffs
impetus
design
google
python
cracker-prog
aphorism
science
critique
classification
characterization
examples
subculture
culture
grokkability
incentives
interests
latency-throughput
grokkability-clarity
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6417319
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158865
https://aras-p.info/blog/2018/12/28/Modern-C-Lamentations/
https://thephd.github.io/perspective-standardization-in-2018
https://sean-parent.stlab.cc/2018/12/30/cpp-ruminations.html
http://ericniebler.com/2018/12/05/standard-ranges/
june 2019 by nhaliday
One week of bugs
may 2019 by nhaliday
If I had to guess, I'd say I probably work around hundreds of bugs in an average week, and thousands in a bad week. It's not unusual for me to run into a hundred new bugs in a single week. But I often get skepticism when I mention that I run into multiple new (to me) bugs per day, and that this is inevitable if we don't change how we write tests. Well, here's a log of one week of bugs, limited to bugs that were new to me that week. After a brief description of the bugs, I'll talk about what we can do to improve the situation. The obvious answer to spend more effort on testing, but everyone already knows we should do that and no one does it. That doesn't mean it's hopeless, though.
...
Here's where I'm supposed to write an appeal to take testing more seriously and put real effort into it. But we all know that's not going to work. It would take 90k LOC of tests to get Julia to be as well tested as a poorly tested prototype (falsely assuming linear complexity in size). That's two person-years of work, not even including time to debug and fix bugs (which probably brings it closer to four of five years). Who's going to do that? No one. Writing tests is like writing documentation. Everyone already knows you should do it. Telling people they should do it adds zero information1.
Given that people aren't going to put any effort into testing, what's the best way to do it?
Property-based testing. Generative testing. Random testing. Concolic Testing (which was done long before the term was coined). Static analysis. Fuzzing. Statistical bug finding. There are lots of options. Some of them are actually the same thing because the terminology we use is inconsistent and buggy. I'm going to arbitrarily pick one to talk about, but they're all worth looking into.
...
There are a lot of great resources out there, but if you're just getting started, I found this description of types of fuzzers to be one of those most helpful (and simplest) things I've read.
John Regehr has a udacity course on software testing. I haven't worked through it yet (Pablo Torres just pointed to it), but given the quality of Dr. Regehr's writing, I expect the course to be good.
For more on my perspective on testing, there's this.
Everything's broken and nobody's upset: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUpset.aspx
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549
https://hypothesis.works/articles/the-purpose-of-hypothesis/
From the perspective of a user, the purpose of Hypothesis is to make it easier for you to write better tests.
From my perspective as the primary author, that is of course also a purpose of Hypothesis. I write a lot of code, it needs testing, and the idea of trying to do that without Hypothesis has become nearly unthinkable.
But, on a large scale, the true purpose of Hypothesis is to drag the world kicking and screaming into a new and terrifying age of high quality software.
Software is everywhere. We have built a civilization on it, and it’s only getting more prevalent as more services move online and embedded and “internet of things” devices become cheaper and more common.
Software is also terrible. It’s buggy, it’s insecure, and it’s rarely well thought out.
This combination is clearly a recipe for disaster.
The state of software testing is even worse. It’s uncontroversial at this point that you should be testing your code, but it’s a rare codebase whose authors could honestly claim that they feel its testing is sufficient.
Much of the problem here is that it’s too hard to write good tests. Tests take up a vast quantity of development time, but they mostly just laboriously encode exactly the same assumptions and fallacies that the authors had when they wrote the code, so they miss exactly the same bugs that you missed when they wrote the code.
Preventing the Collapse of Civilization [video]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452
- Jonathan Blow
NB: DevGAMM is a game industry conference
- loss of technological knowledge (Antikythera mechanism, aqueducts, etc.)
- hardware driving most gains, not software
- software's actually less robust, often poorly designed and overengineered these days
- *list of bugs he's encountered recently*:
https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk?t=1387
- knowledge of trivia becomes more than general, deep knowledge
- does at least acknowledge value of DRY, reusing code, abstraction saving dev time
techtariat
dan-luu
tech
software
error
list
debugging
linux
github
robust
checking
oss
troll
lol
aphorism
webapp
email
google
facebook
games
julia
pls
compilers
communication
mooc
browser
rust
programming
engineering
random
jargon
formal-methods
expert-experience
prof
c(pp)
course
correctness
hn
commentary
video
presentation
carmack
pragmatic
contrarianism
pessimism
sv
unix
rhetoric
critique
worrydream
hardware
performance
trends
multiplicative
roots
impact
comparison
history
iron-age
the-classics
mediterranean
conquest-empire
gibbon
technology
the-world-is-just-atoms
flux-stasis
increase-decrease
graphics
hmm
idk
systems
os
abstraction
intricacy
worse-is-better/the-right-thing
build-packaging
microsoft
osx
apple
reflection
assembly
things
knowledge
detail-architecture
thick-thin
trivia
info-dynamics
caching
frameworks
generalization
systematic-ad-hoc
universalism-particularism
analytical-holistic
structure
tainter
libraries
tradeoffs
prepping
threat-modeling
network-structure
writing
risk
local-glob
...
Here's where I'm supposed to write an appeal to take testing more seriously and put real effort into it. But we all know that's not going to work. It would take 90k LOC of tests to get Julia to be as well tested as a poorly tested prototype (falsely assuming linear complexity in size). That's two person-years of work, not even including time to debug and fix bugs (which probably brings it closer to four of five years). Who's going to do that? No one. Writing tests is like writing documentation. Everyone already knows you should do it. Telling people they should do it adds zero information1.
Given that people aren't going to put any effort into testing, what's the best way to do it?
Property-based testing. Generative testing. Random testing. Concolic Testing (which was done long before the term was coined). Static analysis. Fuzzing. Statistical bug finding. There are lots of options. Some of them are actually the same thing because the terminology we use is inconsistent and buggy. I'm going to arbitrarily pick one to talk about, but they're all worth looking into.
...
There are a lot of great resources out there, but if you're just getting started, I found this description of types of fuzzers to be one of those most helpful (and simplest) things I've read.
John Regehr has a udacity course on software testing. I haven't worked through it yet (Pablo Torres just pointed to it), but given the quality of Dr. Regehr's writing, I expect the course to be good.
For more on my perspective on testing, there's this.
Everything's broken and nobody's upset: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/EverythingsBrokenAndNobodysUpset.aspx
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531549
https://hypothesis.works/articles/the-purpose-of-hypothesis/
From the perspective of a user, the purpose of Hypothesis is to make it easier for you to write better tests.
From my perspective as the primary author, that is of course also a purpose of Hypothesis. I write a lot of code, it needs testing, and the idea of trying to do that without Hypothesis has become nearly unthinkable.
But, on a large scale, the true purpose of Hypothesis is to drag the world kicking and screaming into a new and terrifying age of high quality software.
Software is everywhere. We have built a civilization on it, and it’s only getting more prevalent as more services move online and embedded and “internet of things” devices become cheaper and more common.
Software is also terrible. It’s buggy, it’s insecure, and it’s rarely well thought out.
This combination is clearly a recipe for disaster.
The state of software testing is even worse. It’s uncontroversial at this point that you should be testing your code, but it’s a rare codebase whose authors could honestly claim that they feel its testing is sufficient.
Much of the problem here is that it’s too hard to write good tests. Tests take up a vast quantity of development time, but they mostly just laboriously encode exactly the same assumptions and fallacies that the authors had when they wrote the code, so they miss exactly the same bugs that you missed when they wrote the code.
Preventing the Collapse of Civilization [video]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452
- Jonathan Blow
NB: DevGAMM is a game industry conference
- loss of technological knowledge (Antikythera mechanism, aqueducts, etc.)
- hardware driving most gains, not software
- software's actually less robust, often poorly designed and overengineered these days
- *list of bugs he's encountered recently*:
https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk?t=1387
- knowledge of trivia becomes more than general, deep knowledge
- does at least acknowledge value of DRY, reusing code, abstraction saving dev time
may 2019 by nhaliday
Is backing up a MySQL database in Git a good idea? - Software Engineering Stack Exchange
may 2019 by nhaliday
*no: list of alternatives*
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/115369/do-you-use-source-control-for-your-database-items
Top 2 answers contradict each other but both agree that you should at least version the schema and other scripts.
My impression is that the guy linked in the accepted answer is arguing for a minority practice.
q-n-a
stackex
programming
engineering
dbs
vcs
git
debate
critique
backup
best-practices
flux-stasis
nitty-gritty
gotchas
init
advice
code-organizing
multi
hmm
idk
contrarianism
rhetoric
links
system-design
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/115369/do-you-use-source-control-for-your-database-items
Top 2 answers contradict each other but both agree that you should at least version the schema and other scripts.
My impression is that the guy linked in the accepted answer is arguing for a minority practice.
may 2019 by nhaliday
programming languages - Grokking Java culture - why are things so heavy? What does it optimize for? - Software Engineering Stack Exchange
may 2019 by nhaliday
You may enjoy Steve Yegge's essay Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns
https://dev.to/mortoray/what-is-your-tale-of-lasagne-code-code-with-too-many-layers-3lp2
“In the one and only true way. The object-oriented version of 'Spaghetti code' is, of course, 'Lasagna code'. (Too many layers)." - Roberto Waltman
https://www.silasreinagel.com/blog/2018/10/30/indirection-is-not-abstraction/
q-n-a
stackex
programming
engineering
subculture
jvm
comparison
parsimony
intricacy
build-packaging
community
best-practices
python
pls
impetus
roots
culture
links
essay
rhetoric
rant
critique
elegance
oop
system-design
ecosystem
code-organizing
grokkability
static-dynamic
direct-indirect
multi
org:com
techtariat
quotes
aphorism
abstraction
structure
tip-of-tongue
degrees-of-freedom
coupling-cohesion
scala
error
blowhards
grokkability-clarity
https://dev.to/mortoray/what-is-your-tale-of-lasagne-code-code-with-too-many-layers-3lp2
“In the one and only true way. The object-oriented version of 'Spaghetti code' is, of course, 'Lasagna code'. (Too many layers)." - Roberto Waltman
https://www.silasreinagel.com/blog/2018/10/30/indirection-is-not-abstraction/
may 2019 by nhaliday
When to use C over C++, and C++ over C? - Software Engineering Stack Exchange
may 2019 by nhaliday
You pick C when
- you need portable assembler (which is what C is, really) for whatever reason,
- your platform doesn't provide C++ (a C compiler is much easier to implement),
- you need to interact with other languages that can only interact with C (usually the lowest common denominator on any platform) and your code consists of little more than the interface, not making it worth to lay a C interface over C++ code,
- you hack in an Open Source project (many of which, for various reasons, stick to C),
- you don't know C++.
In all other cases you should pick C++.
--
At the same time, I have to say that @Toll's answers (for one obvious example) have things just about backwards in most respects. Reasonably written C++ will generally be at least as fast as C, and often at least a little faster. Readability is generally much better, if only because you don't get buried in an avalanche of all the code for even the most trivial algorithms and data structures, all the error handling, etc.
...
As it happens, C and C++ are fairly frequently used together on the same projects, maintained by the same people. This allows something that's otherwise quite rare: a study that directly, objectively compares the maintainability of code written in the two languages by people who are equally competent overall (i.e., the exact same people). At least in the linked study, one conclusion was clear and unambiguous: "We found that using C++ instead of C results in improved software quality and reduced maintenance effort..."
--
(Side-note: Check out Linus Torvads' rant on why he prefers C to C++. I don't necessarily agree with his points, but it gives you insight into why people might choose C over C++. Rather, people that agree with him might choose C for these reasons.)
http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus
Why would anybody use C over C++? [closed]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/497786/why-would-anybody-use-c-over-c
Joel's answer is good for reasons you might have to use C, though there are a few others:
- You must meet industry guidelines, which are easier to prove and test for in C.
- You have tools to work with C, but not C++ (think not just about the compiler, but all the support tools, coverage, analysis, etc)
- Your target developers are C gurus
- You're writing drivers, kernels, or other low level code
- You know the C++ compiler isn't good at optimizing the kind of code you need to write
- Your app not only doesn't lend itself to be object oriented, but would be harder to write in that form
In some cases, though, you might want to use C rather than C++:
- You want the performance of assembler without the trouble of coding in assembler (C++ is, in theory, capable of 'perfect' performance, but the compilers aren't as good at seeing optimizations a good C programmer will see)
- The software you're writing is trivial, or nearly so - whip out the tiny C compiler, write a few lines of code, compile and you're all set - no need to open a huge editor with helpers, no need to write practically empty and useless classes, deal with namespaces, etc. You can do nearly the same thing with a C++ compiler and simply use the C subset, but the C++ compiler is slower, even for tiny programs.
- You need extreme performance or small code size, and know the C++ compiler will actually make it harder to accomplish due to the size and performance of the libraries
- You contend that you could just use the C subset and compile with a C++ compiler, but you'll find that if you do that you'll get slightly different results depending on the compiler.
Regardless, if you're doing that, you're using C. Is your question really "Why don't C programmers use C++ compilers?" If it is, then you either don't understand the language differences, or you don't understand compiler theory.
--
- Because they already know C
- Because they're building an embedded app for a platform that only has a C compiler
- Because they're maintaining legacy software written in C
- You're writing something on the level of an operating system, a relational database engine, or a retail 3D video game engine.
q-n-a
stackex
programming
engineering
pls
best-practices
impetus
checklists
c(pp)
systems
assembly
compilers
hardware
embedded
oss
links
study
evidence-based
devtools
performance
rant
expert-experience
types
blowhards
linux
git
vcs
debate
rhetoric
worse-is-better/the-right-thing
cracker-prog
multi
metal-to-virtual
interface-compatibility
- you need portable assembler (which is what C is, really) for whatever reason,
- your platform doesn't provide C++ (a C compiler is much easier to implement),
- you need to interact with other languages that can only interact with C (usually the lowest common denominator on any platform) and your code consists of little more than the interface, not making it worth to lay a C interface over C++ code,
- you hack in an Open Source project (many of which, for various reasons, stick to C),
- you don't know C++.
In all other cases you should pick C++.
--
At the same time, I have to say that @Toll's answers (for one obvious example) have things just about backwards in most respects. Reasonably written C++ will generally be at least as fast as C, and often at least a little faster. Readability is generally much better, if only because you don't get buried in an avalanche of all the code for even the most trivial algorithms and data structures, all the error handling, etc.
...
As it happens, C and C++ are fairly frequently used together on the same projects, maintained by the same people. This allows something that's otherwise quite rare: a study that directly, objectively compares the maintainability of code written in the two languages by people who are equally competent overall (i.e., the exact same people). At least in the linked study, one conclusion was clear and unambiguous: "We found that using C++ instead of C results in improved software quality and reduced maintenance effort..."
--
(Side-note: Check out Linus Torvads' rant on why he prefers C to C++. I don't necessarily agree with his points, but it gives you insight into why people might choose C over C++. Rather, people that agree with him might choose C for these reasons.)
http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus
Why would anybody use C over C++? [closed]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/497786/why-would-anybody-use-c-over-c
Joel's answer is good for reasons you might have to use C, though there are a few others:
- You must meet industry guidelines, which are easier to prove and test for in C.
- You have tools to work with C, but not C++ (think not just about the compiler, but all the support tools, coverage, analysis, etc)
- Your target developers are C gurus
- You're writing drivers, kernels, or other low level code
- You know the C++ compiler isn't good at optimizing the kind of code you need to write
- Your app not only doesn't lend itself to be object oriented, but would be harder to write in that form
In some cases, though, you might want to use C rather than C++:
- You want the performance of assembler without the trouble of coding in assembler (C++ is, in theory, capable of 'perfect' performance, but the compilers aren't as good at seeing optimizations a good C programmer will see)
- The software you're writing is trivial, or nearly so - whip out the tiny C compiler, write a few lines of code, compile and you're all set - no need to open a huge editor with helpers, no need to write practically empty and useless classes, deal with namespaces, etc. You can do nearly the same thing with a C++ compiler and simply use the C subset, but the C++ compiler is slower, even for tiny programs.
- You need extreme performance or small code size, and know the C++ compiler will actually make it harder to accomplish due to the size and performance of the libraries
- You contend that you could just use the C subset and compile with a C++ compiler, but you'll find that if you do that you'll get slightly different results depending on the compiler.
Regardless, if you're doing that, you're using C. Is your question really "Why don't C programmers use C++ compilers?" If it is, then you either don't understand the language differences, or you don't understand compiler theory.
--
- Because they already know C
- Because they're building an embedded app for a platform that only has a C compiler
- Because they're maintaining legacy software written in C
- You're writing something on the level of an operating system, a relational database engine, or a retail 3D video game engine.
may 2019 by nhaliday
its-not-software - steveyegge2
may 2019 by nhaliday
You don't work in the software industry.
...
So what's the software industry, and how do we differ from it?
Well, the software industry is what you learn about in school, and it's what you probably did at your previous company. The software industry produces software that runs on customers' machines — that is, software intended to run on a machine over which you have no control.
So it includes pretty much everything that Microsoft does: Windows and every application you download for it, including your browser.
It also includes everything that runs in the browser, including Flash applications, Java applets, and plug-ins like Adobe's Acrobat Reader. Their deployment model is a little different from the "classic" deployment models, but it's still software that you package up and release to some unknown client box.
...
Servware
Our industry is so different from the software industry, and it's so important to draw a clear distinction, that it needs a new name. I'll call it Servware for now, lacking anything better. Hardware, firmware, software, servware. It fits well enough.
Servware is stuff that lives on your own servers. I call it "stuff" advisedly, since it's more than just software; it includes configuration, monitoring systems, data, documentation, and everything else you've got there, all acting in concert to produce some observable user experience on the other side of a network connection.
techtariat
sv
tech
rhetoric
essay
software
saas
devops
engineering
programming
contrarianism
list
top-n
best-practices
applicability-prereqs
desktop
flux-stasis
homo-hetero
trends
games
thinking
checklists
dbs
models
communication
tutorial
wiki
integration-extension
frameworks
api
whole-partial-many
metrics
retrofit
c(pp)
pls
code-dive
planning
working-stiff
composition-decomposition
libraries
conceptual-vocab
amazon
system-design
cracker-prog
tech-infrastructure
blowhards
client-server
...
So what's the software industry, and how do we differ from it?
Well, the software industry is what you learn about in school, and it's what you probably did at your previous company. The software industry produces software that runs on customers' machines — that is, software intended to run on a machine over which you have no control.
So it includes pretty much everything that Microsoft does: Windows and every application you download for it, including your browser.
It also includes everything that runs in the browser, including Flash applications, Java applets, and plug-ins like Adobe's Acrobat Reader. Their deployment model is a little different from the "classic" deployment models, but it's still software that you package up and release to some unknown client box.
...
Servware
Our industry is so different from the software industry, and it's so important to draw a clear distinction, that it needs a new name. I'll call it Servware for now, lacking anything better. Hardware, firmware, software, servware. It fits well enough.
Servware is stuff that lives on your own servers. I call it "stuff" advisedly, since it's more than just software; it includes configuration, monitoring systems, data, documentation, and everything else you've got there, all acting in concert to produce some observable user experience on the other side of a network connection.
may 2019 by nhaliday
Why books don’t work | Andy Matuschak
may 2019 by nhaliday
https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage/status/1199702832728948737
https://archive.is/cc4zf
I reviewed today my catalogue of 420~ books I have read over the last six years and I am in despair. There are probably 100~ whose contents I can tell you almost nothing about—nothing noteworthy anyway.
techtariat
worrydream
learning
education
teaching
higher-ed
neurons
thinking
rhetoric
essay
michael-nielsen
retention
better-explained
bounded-cognition
info-dynamics
info-foraging
books
communication
lectures
contrarianism
academia
scholar
design
meta:reading
studying
form-design
writing
technical-writing
skunkworks
multi
broad-econ
wonkish
unaffiliated
twitter
social
discussion
backup
reflection
https://archive.is/cc4zf
I reviewed today my catalogue of 420~ books I have read over the last six years and I am in despair. There are probably 100~ whose contents I can tell you almost nothing about—nothing noteworthy anyway.
may 2019 by nhaliday
Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia - Wikipedia
wiki reference exocortex increase-decrease info-dynamics info-foraging multi ratty gwern wire-guided cost-benefit tradeoffs debate contrarianism rhetoric essay inhibition thick-thin thinking measure data analysis trends stagnation rot organization reflection quality quantitative-qualitative open-closed worse-is-better/the-right-thing
may 2019 by nhaliday
wiki reference exocortex increase-decrease info-dynamics info-foraging multi ratty gwern wire-guided cost-benefit tradeoffs debate contrarianism rhetoric essay inhibition thick-thin thinking measure data analysis trends stagnation rot organization reflection quality quantitative-qualitative open-closed worse-is-better/the-right-thing
may 2019 by nhaliday
The Architect as Totalitarian: Le Corbusier’s baleful influence | City Journal
april 2019 by nhaliday
Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy.
news
org:mag
right-wing
albion
gnon
isteveish
architecture
essay
rhetoric
critique
contrarianism
communism
comparison
aphorism
modernity
authoritarianism
universalism-particularism
europe
gallic
history
mostly-modern
urban-rural
revolution
art
culture
april 2019 by nhaliday
The Scholar's Stage: On The Tolkienic Hero
unaffiliated wonkish broad-econ rhetoric literature tolkienesque big-peeps old-anglo fiction nietzschean virtu homo-hetero humility power prediction scifi-fantasy noblesse-oblige shakespeare class aristos civil-liberty leviathan responsibility leadership history mostly-modern classic canon
march 2019 by nhaliday
unaffiliated wonkish broad-econ rhetoric literature tolkienesque big-peeps old-anglo fiction nietzschean virtu homo-hetero humility power prediction scifi-fantasy noblesse-oblige shakespeare class aristos civil-liberty leviathan responsibility leadership history mostly-modern classic canon
march 2019 by nhaliday
Lateralization of brain function - Wikipedia
september 2018 by nhaliday
Language
Language functions such as grammar, vocabulary and literal meaning are typically lateralized to the left hemisphere, especially in right handed individuals.[3] While language production is left-lateralized in up to 90% of right-handers, it is more bilateral, or even right-lateralized, in approximately 50% of left-handers.[4]
Broca's area and Wernicke's area, two areas associated with the production of speech, are located in the left cerebral hemisphere for about 95% of right-handers, but about 70% of left-handers.[5]:69
Auditory and visual processing
The processing of visual and auditory stimuli, spatial manipulation, facial perception, and artistic ability are represented bilaterally.[4] Numerical estimation, comparison and online calculation depend on bilateral parietal regions[6][7] while exact calculation and fact retrieval are associated with left parietal regions, perhaps due to their ties to linguistic processing.[6][7]
...
Depression is linked with a hyperactive right hemisphere, with evidence of selective involvement in "processing negative emotions, pessimistic thoughts and unconstructive thinking styles", as well as vigilance, arousal and self-reflection, and a relatively hypoactive left hemisphere, "specifically involved in processing pleasurable experiences" and "relatively more involved in decision-making processes".
Chaos and Order; the right and left hemispheres: https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2018/05/23/chaos-and-order-the-right-and-left-hemispheres/
In The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist writes that a creature like a bird needs two types of consciousness simultaneously. It needs to be able to focus on something specific, such as pecking at food, while it also needs to keep an eye out for predators which requires a more general awareness of environment.
These are quite different activities. The Left Hemisphere (LH) is adapted for a narrow focus. The Right Hemisphere (RH) for the broad. The brains of human beings have the same division of function.
The LH governs the right side of the body, the RH, the left side. With birds, the left eye (RH) looks for predators, the right eye (LH) focuses on food and specifics. Since danger can take many forms and is unpredictable, the RH has to be very open-minded.
The LH is for narrow focus, the explicit, the familiar, the literal, tools, mechanism/machines and the man-made. The broad focus of the RH is necessarily more vague and intuitive and handles the anomalous, novel, metaphorical, the living and organic. The LH is high resolution but narrow, the RH low resolution but broad.
The LH exhibits unrealistic optimism and self-belief. The RH has a tendency towards depression and is much more realistic about a person’s own abilities. LH has trouble following narratives because it has a poor sense of “wholes.” In art it favors flatness, abstract and conceptual art, black and white rather than color, simple geometric shapes and multiple perspectives all shoved together, e.g., cubism. Particularly RH paintings emphasize vistas with great depth of field and thus space and time,[1] emotion, figurative painting and scenes related to the life world. In music, LH likes simple, repetitive rhythms. The RH favors melody, harmony and complex rhythms.
...
Schizophrenia is a disease of extreme LH emphasis. Since empathy is RH and the ability to notice emotional nuance facially, vocally and bodily expressed, schizophrenics tend to be paranoid and are often convinced that the real people they know have been replaced by robotic imposters. This is at least partly because they lose the ability to intuit what other people are thinking and feeling – hence they seem robotic and suspicious.
Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West as well as McGilchrist characterize the West as awash in phenomena associated with an extreme LH emphasis. Spengler argues that Western civilization was originally much more RH (to use McGilchrist’s categories) and that all its most significant artistic (in the broadest sense) achievements were triumphs of RH accentuation.
The RH is where novel experiences and the anomalous are processed and where mathematical, and other, problems are solved. The RH is involved with the natural, the unfamiliar, the unique, emotions, the embodied, music, humor, understanding intonation and emotional nuance of speech, the metaphorical, nuance, and social relations. It has very little speech, but the RH is necessary for processing all the nonlinguistic aspects of speaking, including body language. Understanding what someone means by vocal inflection and facial expressions is an intuitive RH process rather than explicit.
...
RH is very much the center of lived experience; of the life world with all its depth and richness. The RH is “the master” from the title of McGilchrist’s book. The LH ought to be no more than the emissary; the valued servant of the RH. However, in the last few centuries, the LH, which has tyrannical tendencies, has tried to become the master. The LH is where the ego is predominantly located. In split brain patients where the LH and the RH are surgically divided (this is done sometimes in the case of epileptic patients) one hand will sometimes fight with the other. In one man’s case, one hand would reach out to hug his wife while the other pushed her away. One hand reached for one shirt, the other another shirt. Or a patient will be driving a car and one hand will try to turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction. In these cases, the “naughty” hand is usually the left hand (RH), while the patient tends to identify herself with the right hand governed by the LH. The two hemispheres have quite different personalities.
The connection between LH and ego can also be seen in the fact that the LH is competitive, contentious, and agonistic. It wants to win. It is the part of you that hates to lose arguments.
Using the metaphor of Chaos and Order, the RH deals with Chaos – the unknown, the unfamiliar, the implicit, the emotional, the dark, danger, mystery. The LH is connected with Order – the known, the familiar, the rule-driven, the explicit, and light of day. Learning something means to take something unfamiliar and making it familiar. Since the RH deals with the novel, it is the problem-solving part. Once understood, the results are dealt with by the LH. When learning a new piece on the piano, the RH is involved. Once mastered, the result becomes a LH affair. The muscle memory developed by repetition is processed by the LH. If errors are made, the activity returns to the RH to figure out what went wrong; the activity is repeated until the correct muscle memory is developed in which case it becomes part of the familiar LH.
Science is an attempt to find Order. It would not be necessary if people lived in an entirely orderly, explicit, known world. The lived context of science implies Chaos. Theories are reductive and simplifying and help to pick out salient features of a phenomenon. They are always partial truths, though some are more partial than others. The alternative to a certain level of reductionism or partialness would be to simply reproduce the world which of course would be both impossible and unproductive. The test for whether a theory is sufficiently non-partial is whether it is fit for purpose and whether it contributes to human flourishing.
...
Analytic philosophers pride themselves on trying to do away with vagueness. To do so, they tend to jettison context which cannot be brought into fine focus. However, in order to understand things and discern their meaning, it is necessary to have the big picture, the overview, as well as the details. There is no point in having details if the subject does not know what they are details of. Such philosophers also tend to leave themselves out of the picture even when what they are thinking about has reflexive implications. John Locke, for instance, tried to banish the RH from reality. All phenomena having to do with subjective experience he deemed unreal and once remarked about metaphors, a RH phenomenon, that they are “perfect cheats.” Analytic philosophers tend to check the logic of the words on the page and not to think about what those words might say about them. The trick is for them to recognize that they and their theories, which exist in minds, are part of reality too.
The RH test for whether someone actually believes something can be found by examining his actions. If he finds that he must regard his own actions as free, and, in order to get along with other people, must also attribute free will to them and treat them as free agents, then he effectively believes in free will – no matter his LH theoretical commitments.
...
We do not know the origin of life. We do not know how or even if consciousness can emerge from matter. We do not know the nature of 96% of the matter of the universe. Clearly all these things exist. They can provide the subject matter of theories but they continue to exist as theorizing ceases or theories change. Not knowing how something is possible is irrelevant to its actual existence. An inability to explain something is ultimately neither here nor there.
If thought begins and ends with the LH, then thinking has no content – content being provided by experience (RH), and skepticism and nihilism ensue. The LH spins its wheels self-referentially, never referring back to experience. Theory assumes such primacy that it will simply outlaw experiences and data inconsistent with it; a profoundly wrong-headed approach.
...
Gödel’s Theorem proves that not everything true can be proven to be true. This means there is an ineradicable role for faith, hope and intuition in every moderately complex human intellectual endeavor. There is no one set of consistent axioms from which all other truths can be derived.
Alan Turing’s proof of the halting problem proves that there is no effective procedure for finding effective procedures. Without a mechanical decision procedure, (LH), when it comes to … [more]
gnon
reflection
books
summary
review
neuro
neuro-nitgrit
things
thinking
metabuch
order-disorder
apollonian-dionysian
bio
examples
near-far
symmetry
homo-hetero
logic
inference
intuition
problem-solving
analytical-holistic
n-factor
europe
the-great-west-whale
occident
alien-character
detail-architecture
art
theory-practice
philosophy
being-becoming
essence-existence
language
psychology
cog-psych
egalitarianism-hierarchy
direction
reason
learning
novelty
science
anglo
anglosphere
coarse-fine
neurons
truth
contradiction
matching
empirical
volo-avolo
curiosity
uncertainty
theos
axioms
intricacy
computation
analogy
essay
rhetoric
deep-materialism
new-religion
knowledge
expert-experience
confidence
biases
optimism
pessimism
realness
whole-partial-many
theory-of-mind
values
competition
reduction
subjective-objective
communication
telos-atelos
ends-means
turing
fiction
increase-decrease
innovation
creative
thick-thin
spengler
multi
ratty
hanson
complex-systems
structure
concrete
abstraction
network-s
Language functions such as grammar, vocabulary and literal meaning are typically lateralized to the left hemisphere, especially in right handed individuals.[3] While language production is left-lateralized in up to 90% of right-handers, it is more bilateral, or even right-lateralized, in approximately 50% of left-handers.[4]
Broca's area and Wernicke's area, two areas associated with the production of speech, are located in the left cerebral hemisphere for about 95% of right-handers, but about 70% of left-handers.[5]:69
Auditory and visual processing
The processing of visual and auditory stimuli, spatial manipulation, facial perception, and artistic ability are represented bilaterally.[4] Numerical estimation, comparison and online calculation depend on bilateral parietal regions[6][7] while exact calculation and fact retrieval are associated with left parietal regions, perhaps due to their ties to linguistic processing.[6][7]
...
Depression is linked with a hyperactive right hemisphere, with evidence of selective involvement in "processing negative emotions, pessimistic thoughts and unconstructive thinking styles", as well as vigilance, arousal and self-reflection, and a relatively hypoactive left hemisphere, "specifically involved in processing pleasurable experiences" and "relatively more involved in decision-making processes".
Chaos and Order; the right and left hemispheres: https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2018/05/23/chaos-and-order-the-right-and-left-hemispheres/
In The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist writes that a creature like a bird needs two types of consciousness simultaneously. It needs to be able to focus on something specific, such as pecking at food, while it also needs to keep an eye out for predators which requires a more general awareness of environment.
These are quite different activities. The Left Hemisphere (LH) is adapted for a narrow focus. The Right Hemisphere (RH) for the broad. The brains of human beings have the same division of function.
The LH governs the right side of the body, the RH, the left side. With birds, the left eye (RH) looks for predators, the right eye (LH) focuses on food and specifics. Since danger can take many forms and is unpredictable, the RH has to be very open-minded.
The LH is for narrow focus, the explicit, the familiar, the literal, tools, mechanism/machines and the man-made. The broad focus of the RH is necessarily more vague and intuitive and handles the anomalous, novel, metaphorical, the living and organic. The LH is high resolution but narrow, the RH low resolution but broad.
The LH exhibits unrealistic optimism and self-belief. The RH has a tendency towards depression and is much more realistic about a person’s own abilities. LH has trouble following narratives because it has a poor sense of “wholes.” In art it favors flatness, abstract and conceptual art, black and white rather than color, simple geometric shapes and multiple perspectives all shoved together, e.g., cubism. Particularly RH paintings emphasize vistas with great depth of field and thus space and time,[1] emotion, figurative painting and scenes related to the life world. In music, LH likes simple, repetitive rhythms. The RH favors melody, harmony and complex rhythms.
...
Schizophrenia is a disease of extreme LH emphasis. Since empathy is RH and the ability to notice emotional nuance facially, vocally and bodily expressed, schizophrenics tend to be paranoid and are often convinced that the real people they know have been replaced by robotic imposters. This is at least partly because they lose the ability to intuit what other people are thinking and feeling – hence they seem robotic and suspicious.
Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West as well as McGilchrist characterize the West as awash in phenomena associated with an extreme LH emphasis. Spengler argues that Western civilization was originally much more RH (to use McGilchrist’s categories) and that all its most significant artistic (in the broadest sense) achievements were triumphs of RH accentuation.
The RH is where novel experiences and the anomalous are processed and where mathematical, and other, problems are solved. The RH is involved with the natural, the unfamiliar, the unique, emotions, the embodied, music, humor, understanding intonation and emotional nuance of speech, the metaphorical, nuance, and social relations. It has very little speech, but the RH is necessary for processing all the nonlinguistic aspects of speaking, including body language. Understanding what someone means by vocal inflection and facial expressions is an intuitive RH process rather than explicit.
...
RH is very much the center of lived experience; of the life world with all its depth and richness. The RH is “the master” from the title of McGilchrist’s book. The LH ought to be no more than the emissary; the valued servant of the RH. However, in the last few centuries, the LH, which has tyrannical tendencies, has tried to become the master. The LH is where the ego is predominantly located. In split brain patients where the LH and the RH are surgically divided (this is done sometimes in the case of epileptic patients) one hand will sometimes fight with the other. In one man’s case, one hand would reach out to hug his wife while the other pushed her away. One hand reached for one shirt, the other another shirt. Or a patient will be driving a car and one hand will try to turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction. In these cases, the “naughty” hand is usually the left hand (RH), while the patient tends to identify herself with the right hand governed by the LH. The two hemispheres have quite different personalities.
The connection between LH and ego can also be seen in the fact that the LH is competitive, contentious, and agonistic. It wants to win. It is the part of you that hates to lose arguments.
Using the metaphor of Chaos and Order, the RH deals with Chaos – the unknown, the unfamiliar, the implicit, the emotional, the dark, danger, mystery. The LH is connected with Order – the known, the familiar, the rule-driven, the explicit, and light of day. Learning something means to take something unfamiliar and making it familiar. Since the RH deals with the novel, it is the problem-solving part. Once understood, the results are dealt with by the LH. When learning a new piece on the piano, the RH is involved. Once mastered, the result becomes a LH affair. The muscle memory developed by repetition is processed by the LH. If errors are made, the activity returns to the RH to figure out what went wrong; the activity is repeated until the correct muscle memory is developed in which case it becomes part of the familiar LH.
Science is an attempt to find Order. It would not be necessary if people lived in an entirely orderly, explicit, known world. The lived context of science implies Chaos. Theories are reductive and simplifying and help to pick out salient features of a phenomenon. They are always partial truths, though some are more partial than others. The alternative to a certain level of reductionism or partialness would be to simply reproduce the world which of course would be both impossible and unproductive. The test for whether a theory is sufficiently non-partial is whether it is fit for purpose and whether it contributes to human flourishing.
...
Analytic philosophers pride themselves on trying to do away with vagueness. To do so, they tend to jettison context which cannot be brought into fine focus. However, in order to understand things and discern their meaning, it is necessary to have the big picture, the overview, as well as the details. There is no point in having details if the subject does not know what they are details of. Such philosophers also tend to leave themselves out of the picture even when what they are thinking about has reflexive implications. John Locke, for instance, tried to banish the RH from reality. All phenomena having to do with subjective experience he deemed unreal and once remarked about metaphors, a RH phenomenon, that they are “perfect cheats.” Analytic philosophers tend to check the logic of the words on the page and not to think about what those words might say about them. The trick is for them to recognize that they and their theories, which exist in minds, are part of reality too.
The RH test for whether someone actually believes something can be found by examining his actions. If he finds that he must regard his own actions as free, and, in order to get along with other people, must also attribute free will to them and treat them as free agents, then he effectively believes in free will – no matter his LH theoretical commitments.
...
We do not know the origin of life. We do not know how or even if consciousness can emerge from matter. We do not know the nature of 96% of the matter of the universe. Clearly all these things exist. They can provide the subject matter of theories but they continue to exist as theorizing ceases or theories change. Not knowing how something is possible is irrelevant to its actual existence. An inability to explain something is ultimately neither here nor there.
If thought begins and ends with the LH, then thinking has no content – content being provided by experience (RH), and skepticism and nihilism ensue. The LH spins its wheels self-referentially, never referring back to experience. Theory assumes such primacy that it will simply outlaw experiences and data inconsistent with it; a profoundly wrong-headed approach.
...
Gödel’s Theorem proves that not everything true can be proven to be true. This means there is an ineradicable role for faith, hope and intuition in every moderately complex human intellectual endeavor. There is no one set of consistent axioms from which all other truths can be derived.
Alan Turing’s proof of the halting problem proves that there is no effective procedure for finding effective procedures. Without a mechanical decision procedure, (LH), when it comes to … [more]
september 2018 by nhaliday
Jordan Peterson is Wrong About the Case for the Left
july 2018 by nhaliday
I suggest that the tension of which he speaks is fully formed and self-contained completely within conservatism. Balancing those two forces is, in fact, what conservatism is all about. Thomas Sowell, in A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles describes the conservative outlook as (paraphrasing): “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.”
The real tension is between balance on the right and imbalance on the left.
In Towards a Cognitive Theory of Polics in the online magazine Quillette I make the case that left and right are best understood as psychological profiles consisting of 1) cognitive style, and 2) moral matrix.
There are two predominant cognitive styles and two predominant moral matrices.
The two cognitive styles are described by Arthur Herman in his book The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization, in which Plato and Aristotle serve as metaphors for them. These two quotes from the book summarize the two styles:
Despite their differences, Plato and Aristotle agreed on many things. They both stressed the importance of reason as our guide for understanding and shaping the world. Both believed that our physical world is shaped by certain eternal forms that are more real than matter. The difference was that Plato’s forms existed outside matter, whereas Aristotle’s forms were unrealizable without it. (p. 61)
The twentieth century’s greatest ideological conflicts do mark the violent unfolding of a Platonist versus Aristotelian view of what it means to be free and how reason and knowledge ultimately fit into our lives (p.539-540)
The Platonic cognitive style amounts to pure abstract reason, “unconstrained” by reality. It has no limiting principle. It is imbalanced. Aristotelian thinking also relies on reason, but it is “constrained” by empirical reality. It has a limiting principle. It is balanced.
The two moral matrices are described by Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Moral matrices are collections of moral foundations, which are psychological adaptations of social cognition created in us by hundreds of millions of years of natural selection as we evolved into the social animal. There are six moral foundations. They are:
Care/Harm
Fairness/Cheating
Liberty/Oppression
Loyalty/Betrayal
Authority/Subversion
Sanctity/Degradation
The first three moral foundations are called the “individualizing” foundations because they’re focused on the autonomy and well being of the individual person. The second three foundations are called the “binding” foundations because they’re focused on helping individuals form into cooperative groups.
One of the two predominant moral matrices relies almost entirely on the individualizing foundations, and of those mostly just care. It is all individualizing all the time. No balance. The other moral matrix relies on all of the moral foundations relatively equally; individualizing and binding in tension. Balanced.
The leftist psychological profile is made from the imbalanced Platonic cognitive style in combination with the first, imbalanced, moral matrix.
The conservative psychological profile is made from the balanced Aristotelian cognitive style in combination with the balanced moral matrix.
It is not true that the tension between left and right is a balance between the defense of the dispossessed and the defense of hierarchies.
It is true that the tension between left and right is between an imbalanced worldview unconstrained by empirical reality and a balanced worldview constrained by it.
A Venn Diagram of the two psychological profiles looks like this:
commentary
albion
canada
journos-pundits
philosophy
politics
polisci
ideology
coalitions
left-wing
right-wing
things
phalanges
reason
darwinian
tradition
empirical
the-classics
big-peeps
canon
comparison
thinking
metabuch
skeleton
lens
psychology
social-psych
morality
justice
civil-liberty
authoritarianism
love-hate
duty
tribalism
us-them
sanctity-degradation
revolution
individualism-collectivism
n-factor
europe
the-great-west-whale
pragmatic
prudence
universalism-particularism
analytical-holistic
nationalism-globalism
social-capital
whole-partial-many
pic
intersection-connectedness
links
news
org:mag
letters
rhetoric
contrarianism
intricacy
haidt
scitariat
critique
debate
forms-instances
reduction
infographic
apollonian-dionysian
being-becoming
essence-existence
The real tension is between balance on the right and imbalance on the left.
In Towards a Cognitive Theory of Polics in the online magazine Quillette I make the case that left and right are best understood as psychological profiles consisting of 1) cognitive style, and 2) moral matrix.
There are two predominant cognitive styles and two predominant moral matrices.
The two cognitive styles are described by Arthur Herman in his book The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization, in which Plato and Aristotle serve as metaphors for them. These two quotes from the book summarize the two styles:
Despite their differences, Plato and Aristotle agreed on many things. They both stressed the importance of reason as our guide for understanding and shaping the world. Both believed that our physical world is shaped by certain eternal forms that are more real than matter. The difference was that Plato’s forms existed outside matter, whereas Aristotle’s forms were unrealizable without it. (p. 61)
The twentieth century’s greatest ideological conflicts do mark the violent unfolding of a Platonist versus Aristotelian view of what it means to be free and how reason and knowledge ultimately fit into our lives (p.539-540)
The Platonic cognitive style amounts to pure abstract reason, “unconstrained” by reality. It has no limiting principle. It is imbalanced. Aristotelian thinking also relies on reason, but it is “constrained” by empirical reality. It has a limiting principle. It is balanced.
The two moral matrices are described by Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Moral matrices are collections of moral foundations, which are psychological adaptations of social cognition created in us by hundreds of millions of years of natural selection as we evolved into the social animal. There are six moral foundations. They are:
Care/Harm
Fairness/Cheating
Liberty/Oppression
Loyalty/Betrayal
Authority/Subversion
Sanctity/Degradation
The first three moral foundations are called the “individualizing” foundations because they’re focused on the autonomy and well being of the individual person. The second three foundations are called the “binding” foundations because they’re focused on helping individuals form into cooperative groups.
One of the two predominant moral matrices relies almost entirely on the individualizing foundations, and of those mostly just care. It is all individualizing all the time. No balance. The other moral matrix relies on all of the moral foundations relatively equally; individualizing and binding in tension. Balanced.
The leftist psychological profile is made from the imbalanced Platonic cognitive style in combination with the first, imbalanced, moral matrix.
The conservative psychological profile is made from the balanced Aristotelian cognitive style in combination with the balanced moral matrix.
It is not true that the tension between left and right is a balance between the defense of the dispossessed and the defense of hierarchies.
It is true that the tension between left and right is between an imbalanced worldview unconstrained by empirical reality and a balanced worldview constrained by it.
A Venn Diagram of the two psychological profiles looks like this:
july 2018 by nhaliday
Frontiers | The Predictive Processing Paradigm Has Roots in Kant | Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
study article rhetoric essay critique psychology cog-psych yvain ssc accuracy meta:prediction predictive-processing neuro neuro-nitgrit neurons models thinking philosophy big-peeps history early-modern europe germanic enlightenment-renaissance-restoration-reformation duplication similarity novelty wire-guided
june 2018 by nhaliday
study article rhetoric essay critique psychology cog-psych yvain ssc accuracy meta:prediction predictive-processing neuro neuro-nitgrit neurons models thinking philosophy big-peeps history early-modern europe germanic enlightenment-renaissance-restoration-reformation duplication similarity novelty wire-guided
june 2018 by nhaliday
Contingent, Not Arbitrary | Truth is contingent on what is, not on what we wish to be true.
april 2018 by nhaliday
A vital attribute of a value system of any kind is that it works. I consider this a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for goodness. A value system, when followed, should contribute to human flourishing and not produce results that violate its core ideals. This is a pragmatic, I-know-it-when-I-see-it definition. I may refine it further if the need arises.
I think that the prevailing Western values fail by this standard. I will not spend much time arguing this; many others have already. If you reject this premise, this blog may not be for you.
I consider old traditions an important source of wisdom: they have proven their worth over centuries of use. Where they agree, we should listen. Where they disagree, we should figure out why. Where modernity departs from tradition, we should be wary of the new.
Tradition has one nagging problem: it was abandoned by the West. How and why did that happen? I consider this a central question. I expect the reasons to be varied and complex. Understanding them seems necessary if we are to fix what may have been broken.
In short, I want to answer these questions:
1. How do values spread and persist? An ideology does no good if no one holds it.
2. Which values do good? Sounding good is worse than useless if it leads to ruin.
The ultimate hope would be to find a way to combine the two. Many have tried and failed. I don’t expect to succeed either, but I hope I’ll manage to clarify the questions.
Christianity Is The Schelling Point: https://contingentnotarbitrary.com/2018/02/22/christianity-is-the-schelling-point/
Restoring true Christianity is both necessary and sufficient for restoring civilization. The task is neither easy nor simple but that’s what it takes. It is also our best chance of weathering the collapse if that’s too late to avoid.
Christianity is the ultimate coordination mechanism: it unites us with a higher purpose, aligns us with the laws of reality and works on all scales, from individuals to entire civilizations. Christendom took over the world and then lost it when its faith faltered. Historically and culturally, Christianity is the unique Schelling point for the West – or it would be if we could agree on which church (if any) was the true one.
Here are my arguments for true Christianity as the Schelling point. I hope to demonstrate these points in subsequent posts; for now I’ll just list them.
- A society of saints is the most powerful human arrangement possible. It is united in purpose, ideologically stable and operates in harmony with natural law. This is true independent of scale and organization: from military hierarchy to total decentralization, from persecuted minority to total hegemony. Even democracy works among saints – that’s why it took so long to fail.
- There is such a thing as true Christianity. I don’t know how to pinpoint it but it does exist; that holds from both secular and religious perspectives. Our task is to converge on it the best we can.
- Don’t worry too much about the existence of God. I’m proof that you don’t need that assumption in order to believe – it helps but isn’t mandatory.
Pascal’s Wager never sat right with me. Now I know why: it’s a sucker bet. Let’s update it.
If God exists, we must believe because our souls and civilization depend on it. If He doesn’t exist, we must believe because civilization depends on it.
Morality Should Be Adaptive: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/morals-should-be-adaptive.html
I agree with this
gnon
todo
blog
stream
religion
christianity
theos
morality
ethics
formal-values
philosophy
truth
is-ought
coordination
cooperate-defect
alignment
tribalism
cohesion
nascent-state
counter-revolution
epistemic
civilization
rot
fertility
intervention
europe
the-great-west-whale
occident
telos-atelos
multi
ratty
hanson
big-picture
society
culture
evolution
competition
🤖
rationality
rhetoric
contrarianism
values
water
embedded-cognition
ideology
deep-materialism
moloch
new-religion
patho-altruism
darwinian
existence
good-evil
memetics
direct-indirect
endogenous-exogenous
tradition
anthropology
cultural-dynamics
farmers-and-foragers
egalitarianism-hierarchy
organizing
institutions
protestant-catholic
enlightenment-renaissance-restoration-reformation
realness
science
empirical
modernity
revolution
inference
parallax
axioms
pragmatic
zeitgeist
schelling
prioritizing
ends-means
degrees-of-freedom
logic
reason
interdisciplinary
exegesis-hermeneutics
o
I think that the prevailing Western values fail by this standard. I will not spend much time arguing this; many others have already. If you reject this premise, this blog may not be for you.
I consider old traditions an important source of wisdom: they have proven their worth over centuries of use. Where they agree, we should listen. Where they disagree, we should figure out why. Where modernity departs from tradition, we should be wary of the new.
Tradition has one nagging problem: it was abandoned by the West. How and why did that happen? I consider this a central question. I expect the reasons to be varied and complex. Understanding them seems necessary if we are to fix what may have been broken.
In short, I want to answer these questions:
1. How do values spread and persist? An ideology does no good if no one holds it.
2. Which values do good? Sounding good is worse than useless if it leads to ruin.
The ultimate hope would be to find a way to combine the two. Many have tried and failed. I don’t expect to succeed either, but I hope I’ll manage to clarify the questions.
Christianity Is The Schelling Point: https://contingentnotarbitrary.com/2018/02/22/christianity-is-the-schelling-point/
Restoring true Christianity is both necessary and sufficient for restoring civilization. The task is neither easy nor simple but that’s what it takes. It is also our best chance of weathering the collapse if that’s too late to avoid.
Christianity is the ultimate coordination mechanism: it unites us with a higher purpose, aligns us with the laws of reality and works on all scales, from individuals to entire civilizations. Christendom took over the world and then lost it when its faith faltered. Historically and culturally, Christianity is the unique Schelling point for the West – or it would be if we could agree on which church (if any) was the true one.
Here are my arguments for true Christianity as the Schelling point. I hope to demonstrate these points in subsequent posts; for now I’ll just list them.
- A society of saints is the most powerful human arrangement possible. It is united in purpose, ideologically stable and operates in harmony with natural law. This is true independent of scale and organization: from military hierarchy to total decentralization, from persecuted minority to total hegemony. Even democracy works among saints – that’s why it took so long to fail.
- There is such a thing as true Christianity. I don’t know how to pinpoint it but it does exist; that holds from both secular and religious perspectives. Our task is to converge on it the best we can.
- Don’t worry too much about the existence of God. I’m proof that you don’t need that assumption in order to believe – it helps but isn’t mandatory.
Pascal’s Wager never sat right with me. Now I know why: it’s a sucker bet. Let’s update it.
If God exists, we must believe because our souls and civilization depend on it. If He doesn’t exist, we must believe because civilization depends on it.
Morality Should Be Adaptive: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/morals-should-be-adaptive.html
I agree with this
april 2018 by nhaliday
Imagine there’s no Congress - The Washington Post
april 2018 by nhaliday
- Adrian Vermeule
In the spirit of John Lennon, let’s imagine, all starry-eyed, that there’s no U.S. Congress. In this thought experiment, the presidency and the Supreme Court would be the only federal institutions, along with whatever subordinate agencies the president chose to create. The court would hold judicial power, while the president would make and execute laws. The president would be bound by elections and individual constitutional rights, but there would be no separation of legislative from executive power.
Would such a system be better or worse than our current system? How different would it be, anyway?
news
org:rec
rhetoric
contrarianism
usa
government
elections
democracy
antidemos
alt-inst
proposal
institutions
axioms
law
leviathan
leadership
obama
nascent-state
counter-revolution
journos-pundits
douthatish
responsibility
the-founding
benevolence
In the spirit of John Lennon, let’s imagine, all starry-eyed, that there’s no U.S. Congress. In this thought experiment, the presidency and the Supreme Court would be the only federal institutions, along with whatever subordinate agencies the president chose to create. The court would hold judicial power, while the president would make and execute laws. The president would be bound by elections and individual constitutional rights, but there would be no separation of legislative from executive power.
Would such a system be better or worse than our current system? How different would it be, anyway?
april 2018 by nhaliday
Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development
org:junk ratty bostrom study article letters essay rhetoric philosophy formal-values analysis civilization space expansionism entropy-like thermo phys-energy scale pro-rata population cost-benefit risk existence futurism decision-theory decision-making data speed outcome-risk ems big-picture ideas
april 2018 by nhaliday
org:junk ratty bostrom study article letters essay rhetoric philosophy formal-values analysis civilization space expansionism entropy-like thermo phys-energy scale pro-rata population cost-benefit risk existence futurism decision-theory decision-making data speed outcome-risk ems big-picture ideas
april 2018 by nhaliday
The Coming Technological Singularity
march 2018 by nhaliday
Within thirty years, we will have the technological
means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after,
the human era will be ended.
Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can
events be guided so that we may survive? These questions
are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further
dangers) are presented.
_What is The Singularity?_
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central
feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge
of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise
cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of
entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means
by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another
reason for having confidence that the event will occur):
o The development of computers that are "awake" and
superhumanly intelligent. (To date, most controversy in the
area of AI relates to whether we can create human equivalence
in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there
is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed
shortly thereafter.
o Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake
up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
o Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users
may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
o Biological science may find ways to improve upon the natural
human intellect.
The first three possibilities depend in large part on
improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has
followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [16]. Based
largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than
human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles
Platt [19] has pointed out the AI enthusiasts have been making claims
like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a
relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if
this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)
What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human
intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid.
In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve
the creation of still more intelligent entities -- on a still-shorter
time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past:
Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster
than natural selection can do its work -- the world acts as its own
simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability
to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can
solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.
Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher
speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human
past as we humans are from the lower animals.
org:junk
humanity
accelerationism
futurism
prediction
classic
technology
frontier
speedometer
ai
risk
internet
time
essay
rhetoric
network-structure
ai-control
morality
ethics
volo-avolo
egalitarianism-hierarchy
intelligence
scale
giants
scifi-fantasy
speculation
quotes
religion
theos
singularity
flux-stasis
phase-transition
cybernetics
coordination
cooperate-defect
moloch
communication
bits
speed
efficiency
eden-heaven
ecology
benevolence
end-times
good-evil
identity
the-self
whole-partial-many
density
means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after,
the human era will be ended.
Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can
events be guided so that we may survive? These questions
are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further
dangers) are presented.
_What is The Singularity?_
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central
feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge
of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise
cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of
entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means
by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another
reason for having confidence that the event will occur):
o The development of computers that are "awake" and
superhumanly intelligent. (To date, most controversy in the
area of AI relates to whether we can create human equivalence
in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there
is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed
shortly thereafter.
o Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake
up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
o Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users
may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
o Biological science may find ways to improve upon the natural
human intellect.
The first three possibilities depend in large part on
improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has
followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [16]. Based
largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than
human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles
Platt [19] has pointed out the AI enthusiasts have been making claims
like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a
relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if
this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)
What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human
intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid.
In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve
the creation of still more intelligent entities -- on a still-shorter
time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past:
Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster
than natural selection can do its work -- the world acts as its own
simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability
to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can
solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.
Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher
speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human
past as we humans are from the lower animals.
march 2018 by nhaliday
In Defense of Posthuman Dignity
humanity dignity org:junk bostrom ratty essay rhetoric philosophy letters morality ethics formal-values biotech enhancement technology frontier futurism egalitarianism-hierarchy religion christianity theos gnosis-logos dysgenics tribalism us-them ethnocentrism prejudice nature reason eden-heaven society coordination cooperate-defect evolution democracy civil-liberty nietzschean nihil analytical-holistic tradeoffs paradox
march 2018 by nhaliday
humanity dignity org:junk bostrom ratty essay rhetoric philosophy letters morality ethics formal-values biotech enhancement technology frontier futurism egalitarianism-hierarchy religion christianity theos gnosis-logos dysgenics tribalism us-them ethnocentrism prejudice nature reason eden-heaven society coordination cooperate-defect evolution democracy civil-liberty nietzschean nihil analytical-holistic tradeoffs paradox
march 2018 by nhaliday
Unaligned optimization processes as a general problem for society
february 2018 by nhaliday
TL;DR: There are lots of systems in society which seem to fit the pattern of “the incentives for this system are a pretty good approximation of what we actually want, so the system produces good results until it gets powerful, at which point it gets terrible results.”
...
Here are some more places where this idea could come into play:
- Marketing—humans try to buy things that will make our lives better, but our process for determining this is imperfect. A more powerful optimization process produces extremely good advertising to sell us things that aren’t actually going to make our lives better.
- Politics—we get extremely effective demagogues who pit us against our essential good values.
- Lobbying—as industries get bigger, the optimization process to choose great lobbyists for industries gets larger, but the process to make regulators robust doesn’t get correspondingly stronger. So regulatory capture gets worse and worse. Rent-seeking gets more and more significant.
- Online content—in a weaker internet, sites can’t be addictive except via being good content. In the modern internet, people can feel addicted to things that they wish they weren’t addicted to. We didn’t use to have the social expertise to make clickbait nearly as well as we do it today.
- News—Hyperpartisan news sources are much more worth it if distribution is cheaper and the market is bigger. News sources get an advantage from being truthful, but as society gets bigger, this advantage gets proportionally smaller.
...
For these reasons, I think it’s quite plausible that humans are fundamentally unable to have a “good” society with a population greater than some threshold, particularly if all these people have access to modern technology. Humans don’t have the rigidity to maintain social institutions in the face of that kind of optimization process. I think it is unlikely but possible (10%?) that this threshold population is smaller than the current population of the US, and that the US will crumble due to the decay of these institutions in the next fifty years if nothing totally crazy happens.
ratty
thinking
metabuch
reflection
metameta
big-yud
clever-rats
ai-control
ai
risk
scale
quality
ability-competence
network-structure
capitalism
randy-ayndy
civil-liberty
marketing
institutions
economics
political-econ
politics
polisci
advertising
rent-seeking
government
coordination
internet
attention
polarization
media
truth
unintended-consequences
alt-inst
efficiency
altruism
society
usa
decentralized
rhetoric
prediction
population
incentives
intervention
criminal-justice
property-rights
redistribution
taxes
externalities
science
monetary-fiscal
public-goodish
zero-positive-sum
markets
cost-benefit
regulation
regularizer
order-disorder
flux-stasis
shift
smoothness
phase-transition
power
definite-planning
optimism
pessimism
homo-hetero
interests
eden-heaven
telos-atelos
threat-modeling
alignment
...
Here are some more places where this idea could come into play:
- Marketing—humans try to buy things that will make our lives better, but our process for determining this is imperfect. A more powerful optimization process produces extremely good advertising to sell us things that aren’t actually going to make our lives better.
- Politics—we get extremely effective demagogues who pit us against our essential good values.
- Lobbying—as industries get bigger, the optimization process to choose great lobbyists for industries gets larger, but the process to make regulators robust doesn’t get correspondingly stronger. So regulatory capture gets worse and worse. Rent-seeking gets more and more significant.
- Online content—in a weaker internet, sites can’t be addictive except via being good content. In the modern internet, people can feel addicted to things that they wish they weren’t addicted to. We didn’t use to have the social expertise to make clickbait nearly as well as we do it today.
- News—Hyperpartisan news sources are much more worth it if distribution is cheaper and the market is bigger. News sources get an advantage from being truthful, but as society gets bigger, this advantage gets proportionally smaller.
...
For these reasons, I think it’s quite plausible that humans are fundamentally unable to have a “good” society with a population greater than some threshold, particularly if all these people have access to modern technology. Humans don’t have the rigidity to maintain social institutions in the face of that kind of optimization process. I think it is unlikely but possible (10%?) that this threshold population is smaller than the current population of the US, and that the US will crumble due to the decay of these institutions in the next fifty years if nothing totally crazy happens.
february 2018 by nhaliday
Earmarks and Total Spending, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
january 2018 by nhaliday
https://twitter.com/GarettJones/status/949751614402957312
https://archive.is/1X80c
https://twitter.com/AaronMehta/status/949403824451616768
https://archive.is/iXsfE
Trump endorses earmarks as a path toward bipartisanship: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/trump-endorses-earmarks-329575
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-09/congress-needs-to-bring-back-earmarks
A handout here or there would help end partisan gridlock.
org:econlib
econotariat
cracker-econ
commentary
garett-jones
contrarianism
institutions
usa
government
polisci
political-econ
economics
incentives
interests
models
explanation
summary
wonkish
money
monetary-fiscal
policy
law
axioms
social-choice
multi
twitter
social
discussion
backup
coordination
corruption
trade
politics
rhetoric
trump
polarization
sulla
conquest-empire
news
org:mag
org:biz
org:bv
marginal-rev
organizing
fungibility-liquidity
https://archive.is/1X80c
https://twitter.com/AaronMehta/status/949403824451616768
https://archive.is/iXsfE
Trump endorses earmarks as a path toward bipartisanship: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/trump-endorses-earmarks-329575
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-09/congress-needs-to-bring-back-earmarks
A handout here or there would help end partisan gridlock.
january 2018 by nhaliday
Christianity in China | Council on Foreign Relations
january 2018 by nhaliday
projected to outpace CCP membership soon
This fascinating map shows the new religious breakdown in China: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-religious-breakdown-in-china-14
Map Showing the Distribution of Christians in China: http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Oct/18/map-showing-distribution-christians-china/
Christianity in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China
Accurate data on Chinese Christians is hard to access. According to the most recent internal surveys there are approximately 31 million Christians in China today (2.3% of the total population).[5] On the other hand, some international Christian organizations estimate there are tens of millions more, which choose not to publicly identify as such.[6] The practice of religion continues to be tightly controlled by government authorities.[7] Chinese over the age of 18 are only permitted to join officially sanctioned Christian groups registered with the government-approved Protestant Three-Self Church and China Christian Council and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church.[8]
In Xi we trust - Is China cracking down on Christianity?: http://www.dw.com/en/in-xi-we-trust-is-china-cracking-down-on-christianity/a-42224752A
In China, Unregistered Churches Are Driving a Religious Revolution: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/china-unregistered-churches-driving-religious-revolution/521544/
Cracks in the atheist edifice: https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21629218-rapid-spread-christianity-forcing-official-rethink-religion-cracks
Jesus won’t save you — President Xi Jinping will, Chinese Christians told: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/14/jesus-wont-save-you-president-xi-jinping-will-chinese-christians-told/
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001611/noodles-for-the-messiah-chinas-creative-christian-hymns
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-china-exclusive/exclusive-china-vatican-deal-on-bishops-ready-for-signing-source-idUSKBN1FL67U
Catholics in China are split between those in “underground” communities that recognize the pope and those belonging to a state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association where bishops are appointed by the government in collaboration with local Church communities.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42914029
The underground churches recognise only the Vatican's authority, whereas the Chinese state churches refuse to accept the authority of the Pope.
There are currently about 100 Catholic bishops in China, with some approved by Beijing, some approved by the Vatican and, informally, many now approved by both.
...
Under the agreement, the Vatican would be given a say in the appointment of future bishops in China, a Vatican source told news agency Reuters.
For Beijing, an agreement with the Vatican could allow them more control over the country's underground churches.
Globally, it would also enhance China's prestige - to have the world's rising superpower engaging with one of the world's major religions.
Symbolically, it would the first sign of rapprochement between China and the Catholic church in more than half a century.
The Vatican is the only European state that maintains formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. It is currently unclear if an agreement between China and the Vatican would affect this in any way.
What will this mean for the country's Catholics?
There are currently around 10 million Roman Catholics in China.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-vatican-deal-on-bishops-reportedly-ready-for-signing/2018/02/01/2adfc6b2-0786-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/02/06/china-is-the-best-implementer-of-catholic-social-doctrine-says-vatican-bishop/
The chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences praised the 'extraordinary' Communist state
“Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese,” a senior Vatican official has said.
Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, praised the Communist state as “extraordinary”, saying: “You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.
The bishop told the Spanish-language edition of Vatican Insider that in China “the economy does not dominate politics, as happens in the United States, something Americans themselves would say.”
Bishop Sánchez Sorondo said that China was implementing Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ better than many other countries and praised it for defending Paris Climate Accord. “In that, it is assuming a moral leadership that others have abandoned”, he added.
...
As part of the diplomacy efforts, Bishop Sánchez Sorondo visited the country. “What I found was an extraordinary China,” he said. “What people don’t realise is that the central value in China is work, work, work. There’s no other way, fundamentally it is like St Paul said: he who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat.”
China reveals plan to remove ‘foreign influence’ from Catholic Church: http://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/06/02/china-reveals-plan-to-remove-foreign-influence-from-catholic-church1/
China, A Fourth Rome?: http://thermidormag.com/china-a-fourth-rome/
As a Chinaman born in the United States, I find myself able to speak to both places and neither. By accidents of fortune, however – or of providence, rather – I have identified more with China even as I have lived my whole life in the West. English is my third language, after Cantonese and Mandarin, even if I use it to express my intellectually most complex thoughts; and though my best of the three in writing, trained by the use of Latin, it is the vehicle of a Chinese soul. So it is in English that for the past year I have memed an idea as unconventional as it is ambitious, unto the Europæans a stumbling-block, and unto the Chinese foolishness: #China4thRome.
This idea I do not attempt to defend rigorously, between various powers’ conflicting claims to carrying on the Roman heritage; neither do I intend to claim that Moscow, which has seen itself as a Third Rome after the original Rome and then Constantinople, is fallen. Instead, I think back to the division of the Roman empire, first under Diocletian’s Tetrarchy and then at the death of Theodosius I, the last ruler of the undivided Roman empire. In the second partition, at the death of Theodosius, Arcadius became emperor of the East, with his capital in Constantinople, and Honorius emperor of the West, with his capital in Milan and then Ravenna. That the Roman empire did not stay uniformly strong under a plurality of emperors is not the point. What is significant about the administrative division of the Roman empire among several emperors is that the idea of Rome can be one even while its administration is diverse.
By divine providence, the Christian religion – and through it, Rome – has spread even through the bourgeois imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Across the world, the civil calendar of common use is that of Rome, reckoned from 1 January; few places has Roman law left wholly untouched. Nevertheless, never have we observed in the world of Roman culture an ethnogenetic pattern like that of the Chinese empire as described by the prologue of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三國演義: ‘The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.’1 According to classical Chinese cosmology, the phrase rendered the empire is more literally all under heaven 天下, the Chinese œcumene being its ‘all under heaven’ much as a Persian proverb speaks of the old Persian capital of Isfahan: ‘Esfahān nesf-e jahān ast,’ Isfahan is half the world. As sociologist Fei Xiaotong describes it in his 1988 Tanner Lecture ‘Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of the Chinese People’,
...
And this Chinese œcumene has united and divided for centuries, even as those who live in it have recognized a fundamental unity. But Rome, unlike the Chinese empire, has lived on in multiple successor polities, sometimes several at once, without ever coming back together as one empire administered as one. Perhaps something of its character has instead uniquely suited it to being the spirit of a kind of broader world empire. As Dante says in De Monarchia, ‘As the human race, then, has an end, and this end is a means necessary to the universal end of nature, it follows that nature must have the means in view.’ He continues,
If these things are true, there is no doubt but that nature set apart in the world a place and a people for universal sovereignty; otherwise she would be deficient in herself, which is impossible. What was this place, and who this people, moreover, is sufficiently obvious in what has been said above, and in what shall be added further on. They were Rome and her citizens or people. On this subject our Poet [Vergil] has touched very subtly in his sixth book [of the Æneid], where he brings forward Anchises prophesying in these words to Aeneas, father of the Romans: ‘Verily, that others shall beat out the breathing bronze more finely, I grant you; they shall carve the living feature in the marble, plead causes with more eloquence, and trace the movements of the heavens with a rod, and name the rising stars: thine, O Roman, be the care to rule the peoples with authority; be thy arts these, to teach men the way of peace, to show mercy to the subject, and to overcome the proud.’ And the disposition of place he touches upon lightly in the fourth book, when he introduces Jupiter speaking of Aeneas to Mercury in this fashion: ‘Not such a one did his most beautiful mother promise to us, nor for this twice rescue him from Grecian arms; rather was he to be the man to govern Italy teeming with empire and tumultuous with war.’ Proof enough has been given that the Romans were by nature ordained for sovereignty. Therefore the Roman … [more]
org:ngo
trends
foreign-policy
china
asia
hmm
idk
religion
christianity
theos
anomie
meaningness
community
egalitarianism-hierarchy
protestant-catholic
demographics
time-series
government
leadership
nationalism-globalism
org:data
comparison
sinosphere
civic
the-bones
power
great-powers
thucydides
multi
maps
data
visualization
pro-rata
distribution
geography
within-group
wiki
reference
article
news
org:lite
org:biz
islam
buddhism
org:euro
authoritarianism
antidemos
leviathan
regulation
civil-liberty
chart
absolute-relative
org:mag
org:rec
org:anglo
org:foreign
music
culture
gnon
org:popup
🐸
memes(ew)
essay
rhetoric
conquest-empire
flux-stasis
spreading
paradox
analytical-holistic
tradeoffs
solzhenitsyn
spengler
nietzschean
europe
the-great-west-whale
occident
orient
literature
big-peeps
history
medieval
mediterranean
enlightenment-renaissance-restoration-reformation
expansionism
early-modern
society
civilization
world
MENA
capital
capitalism
innovation
race
alien-character
optimat
This fascinating map shows the new religious breakdown in China: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-religious-breakdown-in-china-14
Map Showing the Distribution of Christians in China: http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Oct/18/map-showing-distribution-christians-china/
Christianity in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China
Accurate data on Chinese Christians is hard to access. According to the most recent internal surveys there are approximately 31 million Christians in China today (2.3% of the total population).[5] On the other hand, some international Christian organizations estimate there are tens of millions more, which choose not to publicly identify as such.[6] The practice of religion continues to be tightly controlled by government authorities.[7] Chinese over the age of 18 are only permitted to join officially sanctioned Christian groups registered with the government-approved Protestant Three-Self Church and China Christian Council and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church.[8]
In Xi we trust - Is China cracking down on Christianity?: http://www.dw.com/en/in-xi-we-trust-is-china-cracking-down-on-christianity/a-42224752A
In China, Unregistered Churches Are Driving a Religious Revolution: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/china-unregistered-churches-driving-religious-revolution/521544/
Cracks in the atheist edifice: https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21629218-rapid-spread-christianity-forcing-official-rethink-religion-cracks
Jesus won’t save you — President Xi Jinping will, Chinese Christians told: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/14/jesus-wont-save-you-president-xi-jinping-will-chinese-christians-told/
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001611/noodles-for-the-messiah-chinas-creative-christian-hymns
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-china-exclusive/exclusive-china-vatican-deal-on-bishops-ready-for-signing-source-idUSKBN1FL67U
Catholics in China are split between those in “underground” communities that recognize the pope and those belonging to a state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association where bishops are appointed by the government in collaboration with local Church communities.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42914029
The underground churches recognise only the Vatican's authority, whereas the Chinese state churches refuse to accept the authority of the Pope.
There are currently about 100 Catholic bishops in China, with some approved by Beijing, some approved by the Vatican and, informally, many now approved by both.
...
Under the agreement, the Vatican would be given a say in the appointment of future bishops in China, a Vatican source told news agency Reuters.
For Beijing, an agreement with the Vatican could allow them more control over the country's underground churches.
Globally, it would also enhance China's prestige - to have the world's rising superpower engaging with one of the world's major religions.
Symbolically, it would the first sign of rapprochement between China and the Catholic church in more than half a century.
The Vatican is the only European state that maintains formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. It is currently unclear if an agreement between China and the Vatican would affect this in any way.
What will this mean for the country's Catholics?
There are currently around 10 million Roman Catholics in China.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-vatican-deal-on-bishops-reportedly-ready-for-signing/2018/02/01/2adfc6b2-0786-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/02/06/china-is-the-best-implementer-of-catholic-social-doctrine-says-vatican-bishop/
The chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences praised the 'extraordinary' Communist state
“Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese,” a senior Vatican official has said.
Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, praised the Communist state as “extraordinary”, saying: “You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.
The bishop told the Spanish-language edition of Vatican Insider that in China “the economy does not dominate politics, as happens in the United States, something Americans themselves would say.”
Bishop Sánchez Sorondo said that China was implementing Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ better than many other countries and praised it for defending Paris Climate Accord. “In that, it is assuming a moral leadership that others have abandoned”, he added.
...
As part of the diplomacy efforts, Bishop Sánchez Sorondo visited the country. “What I found was an extraordinary China,” he said. “What people don’t realise is that the central value in China is work, work, work. There’s no other way, fundamentally it is like St Paul said: he who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat.”
China reveals plan to remove ‘foreign influence’ from Catholic Church: http://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/06/02/china-reveals-plan-to-remove-foreign-influence-from-catholic-church1/
China, A Fourth Rome?: http://thermidormag.com/china-a-fourth-rome/
As a Chinaman born in the United States, I find myself able to speak to both places and neither. By accidents of fortune, however – or of providence, rather – I have identified more with China even as I have lived my whole life in the West. English is my third language, after Cantonese and Mandarin, even if I use it to express my intellectually most complex thoughts; and though my best of the three in writing, trained by the use of Latin, it is the vehicle of a Chinese soul. So it is in English that for the past year I have memed an idea as unconventional as it is ambitious, unto the Europæans a stumbling-block, and unto the Chinese foolishness: #China4thRome.
This idea I do not attempt to defend rigorously, between various powers’ conflicting claims to carrying on the Roman heritage; neither do I intend to claim that Moscow, which has seen itself as a Third Rome after the original Rome and then Constantinople, is fallen. Instead, I think back to the division of the Roman empire, first under Diocletian’s Tetrarchy and then at the death of Theodosius I, the last ruler of the undivided Roman empire. In the second partition, at the death of Theodosius, Arcadius became emperor of the East, with his capital in Constantinople, and Honorius emperor of the West, with his capital in Milan and then Ravenna. That the Roman empire did not stay uniformly strong under a plurality of emperors is not the point. What is significant about the administrative division of the Roman empire among several emperors is that the idea of Rome can be one even while its administration is diverse.
By divine providence, the Christian religion – and through it, Rome – has spread even through the bourgeois imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Across the world, the civil calendar of common use is that of Rome, reckoned from 1 January; few places has Roman law left wholly untouched. Nevertheless, never have we observed in the world of Roman culture an ethnogenetic pattern like that of the Chinese empire as described by the prologue of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三國演義: ‘The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.’1 According to classical Chinese cosmology, the phrase rendered the empire is more literally all under heaven 天下, the Chinese œcumene being its ‘all under heaven’ much as a Persian proverb speaks of the old Persian capital of Isfahan: ‘Esfahān nesf-e jahān ast,’ Isfahan is half the world. As sociologist Fei Xiaotong describes it in his 1988 Tanner Lecture ‘Plurality and Unity in the Configuration of the Chinese People’,
...
And this Chinese œcumene has united and divided for centuries, even as those who live in it have recognized a fundamental unity. But Rome, unlike the Chinese empire, has lived on in multiple successor polities, sometimes several at once, without ever coming back together as one empire administered as one. Perhaps something of its character has instead uniquely suited it to being the spirit of a kind of broader world empire. As Dante says in De Monarchia, ‘As the human race, then, has an end, and this end is a means necessary to the universal end of nature, it follows that nature must have the means in view.’ He continues,
If these things are true, there is no doubt but that nature set apart in the world a place and a people for universal sovereignty; otherwise she would be deficient in herself, which is impossible. What was this place, and who this people, moreover, is sufficiently obvious in what has been said above, and in what shall be added further on. They were Rome and her citizens or people. On this subject our Poet [Vergil] has touched very subtly in his sixth book [of the Æneid], where he brings forward Anchises prophesying in these words to Aeneas, father of the Romans: ‘Verily, that others shall beat out the breathing bronze more finely, I grant you; they shall carve the living feature in the marble, plead causes with more eloquence, and trace the movements of the heavens with a rod, and name the rising stars: thine, O Roman, be the care to rule the peoples with authority; be thy arts these, to teach men the way of peace, to show mercy to the subject, and to overcome the proud.’ And the disposition of place he touches upon lightly in the fourth book, when he introduces Jupiter speaking of Aeneas to Mercury in this fashion: ‘Not such a one did his most beautiful mother promise to us, nor for this twice rescue him from Grecian arms; rather was he to be the man to govern Italy teeming with empire and tumultuous with war.’ Proof enough has been given that the Romans were by nature ordained for sovereignty. Therefore the Roman … [more]
january 2018 by nhaliday
Bitcoin-is-Worse-is-Better - Gwern.net
ratty gwern analysis reflection rhetoric contrarianism bitcoin cryptocurrency blockchain novelty pragmatic engineering ideas minimum-viable explanation roots innovation discovery atoms crypto frontier distributed szabo decentralized p2p hashing rigorous-crypto carmack shipping worse-is-better/the-right-thing protocol-metadata
december 2017 by nhaliday
ratty gwern analysis reflection rhetoric contrarianism bitcoin cryptocurrency blockchain novelty pragmatic engineering ideas minimum-viable explanation roots innovation discovery atoms crypto frontier distributed szabo decentralized p2p hashing rigorous-crypto carmack shipping worse-is-better/the-right-thing protocol-metadata
december 2017 by nhaliday
Overcoming Bias : Exclusion As A Substitute For Norms, Law, & Governance
ratty hanson rot zeitgeist values ideology politics polisci polarization coordination industrial-org management organizing institutions duty egalitarianism-hierarchy unintended-consequences open-closed authoritarianism farmers-and-foragers leviathan tribalism us-them usa social-norms inequality democracy conquest-empire gibbon sulla cohesion systematic-ad-hoc analytical-holistic things class-warfare anthropology social-structure fashun social-capital trends rhetoric contrarianism cultural-dynamics integrity trust sociology modernity honor prejudice discrimination econotariat marginal-rev flexibility civil-liberty roots phalanges mobility status hari-seldon alignment judgement psycho-atoms
december 2017 by nhaliday
ratty hanson rot zeitgeist values ideology politics polisci polarization coordination industrial-org management organizing institutions duty egalitarianism-hierarchy unintended-consequences open-closed authoritarianism farmers-and-foragers leviathan tribalism us-them usa social-norms inequality democracy conquest-empire gibbon sulla cohesion systematic-ad-hoc analytical-holistic things class-warfare anthropology social-structure fashun social-capital trends rhetoric contrarianism cultural-dynamics integrity trust sociology modernity honor prejudice discrimination econotariat marginal-rev flexibility civil-liberty roots phalanges mobility status hari-seldon alignment judgement psycho-atoms
december 2017 by nhaliday
Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer - Quillette
news org:mag org:popup letters scitariat essay rhetoric contrarianism academia social-science sapiens farmers-and-foragers egalitarianism-hierarchy absolute-relative anthropology civilization food death malthus agriculture status inequality econ-metrics male-variability gender gender-diff sex sexuality social-structure westminster attaq truth longevity peace-violence pro-rata primitivism eden-heaven sociality
december 2017 by nhaliday
news org:mag org:popup letters scitariat essay rhetoric contrarianism academia social-science sapiens farmers-and-foragers egalitarianism-hierarchy absolute-relative anthropology civilization food death malthus agriculture status inequality econ-metrics male-variability gender gender-diff sex sexuality social-structure westminster attaq truth longevity peace-violence pro-rata primitivism eden-heaven sociality
december 2017 by nhaliday
The Automated Public Sphere by Frank Pasquale :: SSRN
november 2017 by nhaliday
This article first describes the documented, negative effects of online propagandists’ interventions (and platforms’ neglect) in both electoral politics and the broader public sphere (Part I). It then proposes several legal and educational tactics to mitigate platforms’ power, or to encourage or require them to exercise it responsibly (Part II). The penultimate section (Part III) offers a concession to those suspicious of governmental intervention in the public sphere: some regimes are already too authoritarian or unreliable to be trusted with extensive powers of regulation over media (whether old or new media), or intermediaries. However, the inadvisability of extensive media regulation in disordered societies only makes this agenda more urgent in well-ordered societies, lest predictable pathologies of the automated public sphere degrade their processes of democratic will formation.
study
media
propaganda
info-dynamics
internet
automation
bots
social
facebook
google
tech
politics
polisci
law
rhetoric
regulation
madisonian
november 2017 by nhaliday
Friedrich von Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945)
november 2017 by nhaliday
“The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use ... Through it not only a division of labor but also a coördinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible.”
“there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made”
pdf
org:junk
org:ngo
randy-ayndy
essay
big-peeps
economics
rhetoric
classic
markets
capitalism
coordination
info-dynamics
knowledge
bounded-cognition
supply-demand
decentralized
civil-liberty
institutions
quotes
reason
“there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made”
november 2017 by nhaliday
Places, not Programs – spottedtoad
november 2017 by nhaliday
1. There has to be a place for people to go.
2. It has to be safe.
3. There preferably needs to be bathrooms and water available there.
Schools fulfill this list, which is one reason they are still among our few remaining sources of shared meaning and in-person community. As Christ Arnade has often remarked, McDonalds fast-food restaurants fulfill this list, and are therefore undervalued sources of community in low-income communities. (The young black guys in my Philadelphia Americorps program would not-entirely-jokingly allude to McDonalds as the central hub of the weekend social/dating scene, where only one’s most immaculate clothing- a brand-new shirt, purchased just for the occasion- would suffice.) Howard Schultz, for all his occasional bouts of madness, understood from the beginning that Starbucks would succeed by becoming a “third space” between work and home, which the coffee chain for all its faults has indubitably become for many people. Ivan Illich argued that the streets themselves in poor countries once, but no longer, acted as the same kind of collective commons.
ratty
unaffiliated
institutions
community
alt-inst
metabuch
rhetoric
contrarianism
policy
wonkish
realness
intervention
education
embodied
order-disorder
checklists
cost-disease
2. It has to be safe.
3. There preferably needs to be bathrooms and water available there.
Schools fulfill this list, which is one reason they are still among our few remaining sources of shared meaning and in-person community. As Christ Arnade has often remarked, McDonalds fast-food restaurants fulfill this list, and are therefore undervalued sources of community in low-income communities. (The young black guys in my Philadelphia Americorps program would not-entirely-jokingly allude to McDonalds as the central hub of the weekend social/dating scene, where only one’s most immaculate clothing- a brand-new shirt, purchased just for the occasion- would suffice.) Howard Schultz, for all his occasional bouts of madness, understood from the beginning that Starbucks would succeed by becoming a “third space” between work and home, which the coffee chain for all its faults has indubitably become for many people. Ivan Illich argued that the streets themselves in poor countries once, but no longer, acted as the same kind of collective commons.
november 2017 by nhaliday
Were There Dark Ages? | Slate Star Codex
october 2017 by nhaliday
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE COMMENTS ON DARK AGES: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/17/highlights-from-the-comments-on-dark-ages/
ratty
yvain
ssc
commentary
critique
realness
social-science
academia
history
iron-age
mediterranean
the-classics
gibbon
medieval
europe
the-great-west-whale
civilization
zeitgeist
truth
multi
poast
list
links
occident
egalitarianism-hierarchy
increase-decrease
absolute-relative
data
visualization
econ-metrics
wealth
demographics
population
economics
philosophy
big-peeps
literature
maps
giants
rhetoric
contrarianism
info-dynamics
books
studying
october 2017 by nhaliday
President Trump believes in IQ tests. He’s not wrong. - The Washington Post
october 2017 by nhaliday
- Stuart J. Ritchie
Most scientists feel a certain nervousness when the topic they research appears in the news. Overstatement is par for the course, misunderstanding a near-inevitability. But what could be more cringe-worthy than the president of the United States engaging in a macho contest with his secretary of state over the area you research? I am, of course, talking about IQ testing: After Rex Tillerson (allegedly) called him a “moron,” President Trump this week suggested that he and Tillerson “compare IQ tests.” Naturally, Trump could “tell you who is going to win.” This isn’t the first time that the president has spoken — and tweeted — about his apparently sky-high IQ.
news
org:rec
current-events
trump
lol
iq
psychometrics
psychology
cog-psych
albion
scitariat
contrarianism
rhetoric
realness
westminster
attaq
truth
intelligence
is-ought
Most scientists feel a certain nervousness when the topic they research appears in the news. Overstatement is par for the course, misunderstanding a near-inevitability. But what could be more cringe-worthy than the president of the United States engaging in a macho contest with his secretary of state over the area you research? I am, of course, talking about IQ testing: After Rex Tillerson (allegedly) called him a “moron,” President Trump this week suggested that he and Tillerson “compare IQ tests.” Naturally, Trump could “tell you who is going to win.” This isn’t the first time that the president has spoken — and tweeted — about his apparently sky-high IQ.
october 2017 by nhaliday
Read Houellebecq To Free Your Mind - Quillette
news org:mag org:popup houellebecq essay rhetoric recommendations literature fiction contrarianism gallic culture gender sex sexuality gnon tradition dignity life-history age-generation aging nihil zeitgeist malaise inequality modernity quotes islam europe rot morality virtu social-structure polanyi-marx markets status right-wing social-norms unaffiliated left-wing gedanken cost-benefit competition beginning-middle-end
october 2017 by nhaliday
news org:mag org:popup houellebecq essay rhetoric recommendations literature fiction contrarianism gallic culture gender sex sexuality gnon tradition dignity life-history age-generation aging nihil zeitgeist malaise inequality modernity quotes islam europe rot morality virtu social-structure polanyi-marx markets status right-wing social-norms unaffiliated left-wing gedanken cost-benefit competition beginning-middle-end
october 2017 by nhaliday
THE PARIS STATEMENT – A Europe We Can Believe In
october 2017 by nhaliday
- Roger Scruton, etc.
announcement
rhetoric
list
politics
ideology
current-events
europe
the-great-west-whale
occident
nationalism-globalism
world
big-peeps
right-wing
tradition
self-interest
universalism-particularism
religion
christianity
theos
islam
diversity
westminster
attaq
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the-classics
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prudence
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vampire-squid
kumbaya-kult
antidemos
democracy
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aphorism
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social-structure
virtu
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populism
meta:rhetoric
paleocon
anomie
gallic
modernity
interests
october 2017 by nhaliday
Taboo Issues in Social Science: Questioning Conventional Wisdom
october 2017 by nhaliday
sample of book
1 Postmodernism, Political Correctness and the Tyranny of the Academy 17
2 Feminism: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 39
3 Whiteness Studies and Racist Amerikkka 59
4 Ideological Battles over Human Nature 79
5 Social Constructionism and Gender 99
6 Race: A Dangerous Concept? 119
7 Politics and Personality: Callous Conservatives and Loving Liberals? 139
8 Capitalism and Socialism: The Devil’s Dung versus Satan’s Spore 161
9 Socioeconomic Success: Talent Plus Effort or White Privilege? 181
10 Cultural Relativism, Multiculturalism, Violence, and Human Rights 201
11 “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics:” Crime and Justice 223
12 Culture, Constitution, and Government 243
pdf
books
essay
rhetoric
social-science
academia
sociology
criminology
crime
westminster
race
identity-politics
truth
gender
politics
personality
psychology
social-psych
capitalism
communism
left-wing
diversity
absolute-relative
biases
🎩
class
economics
ideology
egalitarianism-hierarchy
envy
biodet
realness
epistemic
1 Postmodernism, Political Correctness and the Tyranny of the Academy 17
2 Feminism: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 39
3 Whiteness Studies and Racist Amerikkka 59
4 Ideological Battles over Human Nature 79
5 Social Constructionism and Gender 99
6 Race: A Dangerous Concept? 119
7 Politics and Personality: Callous Conservatives and Loving Liberals? 139
8 Capitalism and Socialism: The Devil’s Dung versus Satan’s Spore 161
9 Socioeconomic Success: Talent Plus Effort or White Privilege? 181
10 Cultural Relativism, Multiculturalism, Violence, and Human Rights 201
11 “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics:” Crime and Justice 223
12 Culture, Constitution, and Government 243
october 2017 by nhaliday
Why study Economic History? – Anton Howes – Medium
org:med econotariat broad-econ wonkish albion rhetoric lens history antiquity iron-age medieval early-modern mostly-modern summary big-picture course cliometrics economics multi pdf divergence malthus britain spearhead gregory-clark industrial-revolution mokyr-allen-mccloskey growth-econ europe the-great-west-whale MENA china asia sinosphere occident orient institutions north-weingast-like path-dependence trade markets leviathan justice capitalism democracy inequality nationalism-globalism heavy-industry 🎩 microfoundations wealth-of-nations
october 2017 by nhaliday
org:med econotariat broad-econ wonkish albion rhetoric lens history antiquity iron-age medieval early-modern mostly-modern summary big-picture course cliometrics economics multi pdf divergence malthus britain spearhead gregory-clark industrial-revolution mokyr-allen-mccloskey growth-econ europe the-great-west-whale MENA china asia sinosphere occident orient institutions north-weingast-like path-dependence trade markets leviathan justice capitalism democracy inequality nationalism-globalism heavy-industry 🎩 microfoundations wealth-of-nations
october 2017 by nhaliday
Peter Turchin Catalonia Independence Drive: a Case-Study in Applied Cultural Evolution - Peter Turchin
october 2017 by nhaliday
The theoretically interesting question is what is the optimal size of a politically independent unit (“polity”) in today’s world. Clearly, optimal size changes with time and social environment. We know empirically that the optimal size of a European state took a step up following 1500. As a result, the number of independent polities in Europe decreased from many hundreds in 1500 to just over 30 in 1900. The reason was the introduction of gunpowder that greatly elevated war intensity. The new evolutionary regime eliminated almost all of the small states, apart from a few special cases (like the Papacy or Monaco).
In today’s Europe, however, war has ceased to be an evolutionary force. It may change, but since 1945 the success or failure of European polities has been largely determined by their ability to deliver high levels of living standards to their citizens. Economics is not the only aspect of well-being, but let’s focus on it here because it is clearly the main driver behind Catalonian independence (since culturally and linguistically Catalonia has been given a free rein within Spain).
...
This is applied cultural evolution. We can have lots of theories and models about the optimal polity size, but they are worthless without data.
And it’s much more than a scientific issue. The only way for our societies to become better in all kinds of ways (wealthier, more just, more efficient) is to allow cultural evolution a free rein. More specifically, we need cultural group selection at the level of polities. A major problem for the humanity is finding ways to have such cultural group selection to take place without violence. Which is why I find the current moves by Madrid to suppress the Catalonian independence vote by force criminally reckless. It seems that Madrid still wants to go back to the world as it was in the nineteenth century (or more accurately, Europe between 1500 and 1900).
A World of 1,000 Nations: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/a-world-of-1000-nations/
Brief note on Catalonia: https://nintil.com/brief-note-on-catalonia/
This could be just another footnote in a history book, or an opening passage in the chapter that explains how you got an explosion in the number of states that began around 2017.
Nationalism, Liberalism and the European Paradox: http://quillette.com/2017/10/08/nationalism-liberalism-european-paradox/
Imagine for a moment that an ethnic group declared a referendum of independence in an Asian country and the nation state in question promptly sought to take the act of rebellion down. Imagine that in the ensuing chaos over 800 people were injured in a brutal police crackdown. Imagine the international disgust if this had happened in Asia, or the Middle East, or Latin America, or even in parts of Eastern and Central Europe. There would be calls for interventions, the topic would be urgently raised at the Security Council —and there might even be talks of sanctions or the arming of moderate rebels.
Of course, nothing of that sort happened as the Spanish state declared the Catalonian independence referendum a farce.
...
Remarkably, EU officials have largely remained mute. France’s new great hope, Monsieur Macron has sheepishly supported Spain’s “constitutional unity,” which is weasel-speak for national sovereignty—a concept which is so often dismissed by the very same European nations if it happens immediately outside the geographical region of EU. And this attitude towards nationalism—that it is archaic and obsolete on the one hand, but vitally important on the other—is the core paradox, and, some would say, hypocrisy, that has been laid bare by this sudden outbreak of tension.
It is a hypocrisy because one could argue that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a consistent and very real attempt to undermine sovereignty in many different parts of the world. To be fair, this has been done with mostly good intentions in the name of institutionalism and global governance, the “responsibility to protect” and universal human rights. With history in the Hegelian sense seemingly over after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, nationalism and great power politics were thought to be a thing of the past—a quaint absurdity—an irrelevance and a barrier to true Enlightenment. But unfortunately history does tend to have a sardonic sense of humour.
The entire European project was built on two fundamentally different ideas. One that promotes economic welfare based on borderless free trade, the free market and social individualism. And the other, promoting a centralized hierarchy, an elite in loco parentis which makes decisions about how many calories one should consume, what plastic one should import, and what gross picture of shredded lungs one should see on the front of a cigarette packet. It endorses sovereignty when it means rule by democracy and the protection of human rights, but not when countries decide to control their borders or their individual monetary and economic policies. Over time, defending these contradictions has become increasingly difficult, with cynical onlookers accusing technocrats of defending an unjustifiable and arbitrary set of principles.
All of this has resulted in three things. Regional ethnic groups in Europe have seen the examples of ethnic groups abroad undermining their own national governments, and they have picked up on these lessons. They also possess the same revolutionary technology—Twitter and the iPhone. Secondly, as Westphalian nation-states have been undermined repeatedly by borderless technocrats, identity movements based on ethnicity have begun to rise up. Humans, tribal at their very core, will always give in to the urge of having a cohesive social group to join, and a flag to wave high. And finally, there really is no logical counterargument to Catalans or Scots wanting to break apart from one union while staying in another. If ultimately, everything is going to be dictated by a handful of liege-lords in Brussels—why even obey the middle-man in Madrid or London?
https://twitter.com/whyvert/status/914521100263890944
https://archive.is/WKfIA
Spain should have either forcibly assimilated Catalonia as France did with its foreign regions, or established a formal federation of states
--
ah those are the premodern and modern methods. The postmodern method is to bring in lots of immigrants (who will vote against separation)
turchin
broad-econ
commentary
current-events
europe
mediterranean
exit-voice
politics
polisci
anthropology
cultural-dynamics
scale
homo-hetero
density
composition-decomposition
increase-decrease
shift
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cohesion
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ratty
unaffiliated
leviathan
civil-liberty
universalism-particularism
institutions
government
group-selection
natural-experiment
conquest-empire
decentralized
EU
the-great-west-whale
hypocrisy
nationalism-globalism
news
org:mag
org:popup
whiggish-hegelian
elite
vampire-squid
managerial-state
anarcho-tyranny
tribalism
us-them
self-interest
ethnocentrism
prudence
rhetoric
ideology
zeitgeist
competition
latin-america
race
demographics
pop-structure
gnon
data
visualization
maps
history
early-modern
mostly-modern
time-series
twitter
social
discussion
backup
scitariat
rant
migration
modernity
frontier
allodium
In today’s Europe, however, war has ceased to be an evolutionary force. It may change, but since 1945 the success or failure of European polities has been largely determined by their ability to deliver high levels of living standards to their citizens. Economics is not the only aspect of well-being, but let’s focus on it here because it is clearly the main driver behind Catalonian independence (since culturally and linguistically Catalonia has been given a free rein within Spain).
...
This is applied cultural evolution. We can have lots of theories and models about the optimal polity size, but they are worthless without data.
And it’s much more than a scientific issue. The only way for our societies to become better in all kinds of ways (wealthier, more just, more efficient) is to allow cultural evolution a free rein. More specifically, we need cultural group selection at the level of polities. A major problem for the humanity is finding ways to have such cultural group selection to take place without violence. Which is why I find the current moves by Madrid to suppress the Catalonian independence vote by force criminally reckless. It seems that Madrid still wants to go back to the world as it was in the nineteenth century (or more accurately, Europe between 1500 and 1900).
A World of 1,000 Nations: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/a-world-of-1000-nations/
Brief note on Catalonia: https://nintil.com/brief-note-on-catalonia/
This could be just another footnote in a history book, or an opening passage in the chapter that explains how you got an explosion in the number of states that began around 2017.
Nationalism, Liberalism and the European Paradox: http://quillette.com/2017/10/08/nationalism-liberalism-european-paradox/
Imagine for a moment that an ethnic group declared a referendum of independence in an Asian country and the nation state in question promptly sought to take the act of rebellion down. Imagine that in the ensuing chaos over 800 people were injured in a brutal police crackdown. Imagine the international disgust if this had happened in Asia, or the Middle East, or Latin America, or even in parts of Eastern and Central Europe. There would be calls for interventions, the topic would be urgently raised at the Security Council —and there might even be talks of sanctions or the arming of moderate rebels.
Of course, nothing of that sort happened as the Spanish state declared the Catalonian independence referendum a farce.
...
Remarkably, EU officials have largely remained mute. France’s new great hope, Monsieur Macron has sheepishly supported Spain’s “constitutional unity,” which is weasel-speak for national sovereignty—a concept which is so often dismissed by the very same European nations if it happens immediately outside the geographical region of EU. And this attitude towards nationalism—that it is archaic and obsolete on the one hand, but vitally important on the other—is the core paradox, and, some would say, hypocrisy, that has been laid bare by this sudden outbreak of tension.
It is a hypocrisy because one could argue that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a consistent and very real attempt to undermine sovereignty in many different parts of the world. To be fair, this has been done with mostly good intentions in the name of institutionalism and global governance, the “responsibility to protect” and universal human rights. With history in the Hegelian sense seemingly over after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, nationalism and great power politics were thought to be a thing of the past—a quaint absurdity—an irrelevance and a barrier to true Enlightenment. But unfortunately history does tend to have a sardonic sense of humour.
The entire European project was built on two fundamentally different ideas. One that promotes economic welfare based on borderless free trade, the free market and social individualism. And the other, promoting a centralized hierarchy, an elite in loco parentis which makes decisions about how many calories one should consume, what plastic one should import, and what gross picture of shredded lungs one should see on the front of a cigarette packet. It endorses sovereignty when it means rule by democracy and the protection of human rights, but not when countries decide to control their borders or their individual monetary and economic policies. Over time, defending these contradictions has become increasingly difficult, with cynical onlookers accusing technocrats of defending an unjustifiable and arbitrary set of principles.
All of this has resulted in three things. Regional ethnic groups in Europe have seen the examples of ethnic groups abroad undermining their own national governments, and they have picked up on these lessons. They also possess the same revolutionary technology—Twitter and the iPhone. Secondly, as Westphalian nation-states have been undermined repeatedly by borderless technocrats, identity movements based on ethnicity have begun to rise up. Humans, tribal at their very core, will always give in to the urge of having a cohesive social group to join, and a flag to wave high. And finally, there really is no logical counterargument to Catalans or Scots wanting to break apart from one union while staying in another. If ultimately, everything is going to be dictated by a handful of liege-lords in Brussels—why even obey the middle-man in Madrid or London?
https://twitter.com/whyvert/status/914521100263890944
https://archive.is/WKfIA
Spain should have either forcibly assimilated Catalonia as France did with its foreign regions, or established a formal federation of states
--
ah those are the premodern and modern methods. The postmodern method is to bring in lots of immigrants (who will vote against separation)
october 2017 by nhaliday
Definite optimism as human capital | Dan Wang
october 2017 by nhaliday
I’ve come to the view that creativity and innovative capacity aren’t a fixed stock, coiled and waiting to be released by policy. Now, I know that a country will not do well if it has poor infrastructure, interest rate management, tax and regulation levels, and a whole host of other issues. But getting them right isn’t sufficient to promote innovation; past a certain margin, when they’re all at rational levels, we ought to focus on promoting creativity and drive as a means to propel growth.
...
When I say “positive” vision, I don’t mean that people must see the future as a cheerful one. Instead, I’m saying that people ought to have a vision at all: A clear sense of how the technological future will be different from today. To have a positive vision, people must first expand their imaginations. And I submit that an interest in science fiction, the material world, and proximity to industry all help to refine that optimism. I mean to promote imagination by direct injection.
...
If a state has lost most of its jobs for electrical engineers, or nuclear engineers, or mechanical engineers, then fewer young people in that state will study those practices, and technological development in related fields slow down a little further. When I bring up these thoughts on resisting industrial decline to economists, I’m unsatisfied with their responses. They tend to respond by tautology (“By definition, outsourcing improves on the status quo”) or arithmetic (see: gains from comparative advantage, Ricardo). These kinds of logical exercises are not enough. I would like for more economists to consider a human capital perspective for preserving manufacturing expertise (to some degree).
I wonder if the so-called developed countries should be careful of their own premature deindustrialization. The US industrial base has faltered, but there is still so much left to build. Until we’ve perfected asteroid mining and super-skyscrapers and fusion rockets and Jupiter colonies and matter compilers, we can’t be satisfied with innovation confined mostly to the digital world.
Those who don’t mind the decline of manufacturing employment like to say that people have moved on to higher-value work. But I’m not sure that this is usually the case. Even if there’s an endlessly capacious service sector to absorb job losses in manufacturing, it’s often the case that these new jobs feature lower productivity growth and involve greater rent-seeking. Not everyone is becoming hedge fund managers and machine learning engineers. According to BLS, the bulk of service jobs are in 1. government (22 million), 2. professional services (19m), 3. healthcare (18m), 4. retail (15m), and 5. leisure and hospitality (15m). In addition to being often low-paying but still competitive, a great deal of service sector jobs tend to stress capacity for emotional labor over capacity for manual labor. And it’s the latter that tends to be more present in fields involving technological upgrading.
...
Here’s a bit more skepticism of service jobs. In an excellent essay on declining productivity growth, Adair Turner makes the point that many service jobs are essentially zero-sum. I’d like to emphasize and elaborate on that idea here.
...
Call me a romantic, but I’d like everyone to think more about industrial lubricants, gas turbines, thorium reactors, wire production, ball bearings, underwater cables, and all the things that power our material world. I abide by a strict rule never to post or tweet about current political stuff; instead I try to draw more attention to the world of materials. And I’d like to remind people that there are many things more edifying than following White House scandals.
...
First, we can all try to engage more actively with the material world, not merely the digital or natural world. Go ahead and pick an industrial phenomenon and learn more about it. Learn more about the history of aviation, and what it took to break the sound barrier; gaze at the container ships as they sail into port, and keep in mind that they carry 90 percent of the goods you see around you; read about what we mold plastics to do; meditate on the importance of steel in civilization; figure out what’s driving the decline in the cost of solar energy production, or how we draw electricity from nuclear fission, or what it takes to extract petroleum or natural gas from the ground.
...
Here’s one more point that I’d like to add on Girard at college: I wonder if to some extent current dynamics are the result of the liberal arts approach of “college teaches you how to think, not what to think.” I’ve never seen much data to support this wonderful claim that college is good at teaching critical thinking skills. Instead, students spend most of their energies focused on raising or lowering the status of the works they study or the people around them, giving rise to the Girardian terror that has gripped so many campuses.
College as an incubator of Girardian terror: http://danwang.co/college-girardian-terror/
It’s hard to construct a more perfect incubator for mimetic contagion than the American college campus. Most 18-year-olds are not super differentiated from each other. By construction, whatever distinctions any does have are usually earned through brutal, zero-sum competitions. These tournament-type distinctions include: SAT scores at or near perfection; being a top player on a sports team; gaining master status from chess matches; playing first instrument in state orchestra; earning high rankings in Math Olympiad; and so on, culminating in gaining admission to a particular college.
Once people enter college, they get socialized into group environments that usually continue to operate in zero-sum competitive dynamics. These include orchestras and sport teams; fraternities and sororities; and many types of clubs. The biggest source of mimetic pressures are the classes. Everyone starts out by taking the same intro classes; those seeking distinction throw themselves into the hardest classes, or seek tutelage from star professors, and try to earn the highest grades.
Mimesis Machines and Millennials: http://quillette.com/2017/11/02/mimesis-machines-millennials/
In 1956, a young Liverpudlian named John Winston Lennon heard the mournful notes of Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel, and was transformed. He would later recall, “nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles.” It is an ancient human story. An inspiring model, an inspired imitator, and a changed world.
Mimesis is the phenomenon of human mimicry. Humans see, and they strive to become what they see. The prolific Franco-Californian philosopher René Girard described the human hunger for imitation as mimetic desire. According to Girard, mimetic desire is a mighty psychosocial force that drives human behavior. When attempted imitation fails, (i.e. I want, but fail, to imitate my colleague’s promotion to VP of Business Development), mimetic rivalry arises. According to mimetic theory, periodic scapegoating—the ritualistic expelling of a member of the community—evolved as a way for archaic societies to diffuse rivalries and maintain the general peace.
As civilization matured, social institutions evolved to prevent conflict. To Girard, sacrificial religious ceremonies first arose as imitations of earlier scapegoating rituals. From the mimetic worldview healthy social institutions perform two primary functions,
They satisfy mimetic desire and reduce mimetic rivalry by allowing imitation to take place.
They thereby reduce the need to diffuse mimetic rivalry through scapegoating.
Tranquil societies possess and value institutions that are mimesis tolerant. These institutions, such as religion and family, are Mimesis Machines. They enable millions to see, imitate, and become new versions of themselves. Mimesis Machines, satiate the primal desire for imitation, and produce happy, contented people. Through Mimesis Machines, Elvis fans can become Beatles.
Volatile societies, on the other hand, possess and value mimesis resistant institutions that frustrate attempts at mimicry, and mass produce frustrated, resentful people. These institutions, such as capitalism and beauty hierarchies, are Mimesis Shredders. They stratify humanity, and block the ‘nots’ from imitating the ‘haves’.
techtariat
venture
commentary
reflection
innovation
definite-planning
thiel
barons
economics
growth-econ
optimism
creative
malaise
stagnation
higher-ed
status
error
the-world-is-just-atoms
heavy-industry
sv
zero-positive-sum
japan
flexibility
china
outcome-risk
uncertainty
long-short-run
debt
trump
entrepreneurialism
human-capital
flux-stasis
cjones-like
scifi-fantasy
labor
dirty-hands
engineering
usa
frontier
speedometer
rent-seeking
econ-productivity
government
healthcare
essay
rhetoric
contrarianism
nascent-state
unintended-consequences
volo-avolo
vitality
technology
tech
cs
cycles
energy-resources
biophysical-econ
trends
zeitgeist
rot
alt-inst
proposal
multi
news
org:mag
org:popup
philosophy
big-peeps
speculation
concept
religion
christianity
theos
buddhism
politics
polarization
identity-politics
egalitarianism-hierarchy
inequality
duplication
society
anthropology
culture-war
westminster
info-dynamics
tribalism
institutions
envy
age-generation
letters
noble-lie
...
When I say “positive” vision, I don’t mean that people must see the future as a cheerful one. Instead, I’m saying that people ought to have a vision at all: A clear sense of how the technological future will be different from today. To have a positive vision, people must first expand their imaginations. And I submit that an interest in science fiction, the material world, and proximity to industry all help to refine that optimism. I mean to promote imagination by direct injection.
...
If a state has lost most of its jobs for electrical engineers, or nuclear engineers, or mechanical engineers, then fewer young people in that state will study those practices, and technological development in related fields slow down a little further. When I bring up these thoughts on resisting industrial decline to economists, I’m unsatisfied with their responses. They tend to respond by tautology (“By definition, outsourcing improves on the status quo”) or arithmetic (see: gains from comparative advantage, Ricardo). These kinds of logical exercises are not enough. I would like for more economists to consider a human capital perspective for preserving manufacturing expertise (to some degree).
I wonder if the so-called developed countries should be careful of their own premature deindustrialization. The US industrial base has faltered, but there is still so much left to build. Until we’ve perfected asteroid mining and super-skyscrapers and fusion rockets and Jupiter colonies and matter compilers, we can’t be satisfied with innovation confined mostly to the digital world.
Those who don’t mind the decline of manufacturing employment like to say that people have moved on to higher-value work. But I’m not sure that this is usually the case. Even if there’s an endlessly capacious service sector to absorb job losses in manufacturing, it’s often the case that these new jobs feature lower productivity growth and involve greater rent-seeking. Not everyone is becoming hedge fund managers and machine learning engineers. According to BLS, the bulk of service jobs are in 1. government (22 million), 2. professional services (19m), 3. healthcare (18m), 4. retail (15m), and 5. leisure and hospitality (15m). In addition to being often low-paying but still competitive, a great deal of service sector jobs tend to stress capacity for emotional labor over capacity for manual labor. And it’s the latter that tends to be more present in fields involving technological upgrading.
...
Here’s a bit more skepticism of service jobs. In an excellent essay on declining productivity growth, Adair Turner makes the point that many service jobs are essentially zero-sum. I’d like to emphasize and elaborate on that idea here.
...
Call me a romantic, but I’d like everyone to think more about industrial lubricants, gas turbines, thorium reactors, wire production, ball bearings, underwater cables, and all the things that power our material world. I abide by a strict rule never to post or tweet about current political stuff; instead I try to draw more attention to the world of materials. And I’d like to remind people that there are many things more edifying than following White House scandals.
...
First, we can all try to engage more actively with the material world, not merely the digital or natural world. Go ahead and pick an industrial phenomenon and learn more about it. Learn more about the history of aviation, and what it took to break the sound barrier; gaze at the container ships as they sail into port, and keep in mind that they carry 90 percent of the goods you see around you; read about what we mold plastics to do; meditate on the importance of steel in civilization; figure out what’s driving the decline in the cost of solar energy production, or how we draw electricity from nuclear fission, or what it takes to extract petroleum or natural gas from the ground.
...
Here’s one more point that I’d like to add on Girard at college: I wonder if to some extent current dynamics are the result of the liberal arts approach of “college teaches you how to think, not what to think.” I’ve never seen much data to support this wonderful claim that college is good at teaching critical thinking skills. Instead, students spend most of their energies focused on raising or lowering the status of the works they study or the people around them, giving rise to the Girardian terror that has gripped so many campuses.
College as an incubator of Girardian terror: http://danwang.co/college-girardian-terror/
It’s hard to construct a more perfect incubator for mimetic contagion than the American college campus. Most 18-year-olds are not super differentiated from each other. By construction, whatever distinctions any does have are usually earned through brutal, zero-sum competitions. These tournament-type distinctions include: SAT scores at or near perfection; being a top player on a sports team; gaining master status from chess matches; playing first instrument in state orchestra; earning high rankings in Math Olympiad; and so on, culminating in gaining admission to a particular college.
Once people enter college, they get socialized into group environments that usually continue to operate in zero-sum competitive dynamics. These include orchestras and sport teams; fraternities and sororities; and many types of clubs. The biggest source of mimetic pressures are the classes. Everyone starts out by taking the same intro classes; those seeking distinction throw themselves into the hardest classes, or seek tutelage from star professors, and try to earn the highest grades.
Mimesis Machines and Millennials: http://quillette.com/2017/11/02/mimesis-machines-millennials/
In 1956, a young Liverpudlian named John Winston Lennon heard the mournful notes of Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel, and was transformed. He would later recall, “nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles.” It is an ancient human story. An inspiring model, an inspired imitator, and a changed world.
Mimesis is the phenomenon of human mimicry. Humans see, and they strive to become what they see. The prolific Franco-Californian philosopher René Girard described the human hunger for imitation as mimetic desire. According to Girard, mimetic desire is a mighty psychosocial force that drives human behavior. When attempted imitation fails, (i.e. I want, but fail, to imitate my colleague’s promotion to VP of Business Development), mimetic rivalry arises. According to mimetic theory, periodic scapegoating—the ritualistic expelling of a member of the community—evolved as a way for archaic societies to diffuse rivalries and maintain the general peace.
As civilization matured, social institutions evolved to prevent conflict. To Girard, sacrificial religious ceremonies first arose as imitations of earlier scapegoating rituals. From the mimetic worldview healthy social institutions perform two primary functions,
They satisfy mimetic desire and reduce mimetic rivalry by allowing imitation to take place.
They thereby reduce the need to diffuse mimetic rivalry through scapegoating.
Tranquil societies possess and value institutions that are mimesis tolerant. These institutions, such as religion and family, are Mimesis Machines. They enable millions to see, imitate, and become new versions of themselves. Mimesis Machines, satiate the primal desire for imitation, and produce happy, contented people. Through Mimesis Machines, Elvis fans can become Beatles.
Volatile societies, on the other hand, possess and value mimesis resistant institutions that frustrate attempts at mimicry, and mass produce frustrated, resentful people. These institutions, such as capitalism and beauty hierarchies, are Mimesis Shredders. They stratify humanity, and block the ‘nots’ from imitating the ‘haves’.
october 2017 by nhaliday
Benedict Evans on Twitter: ""University can save you from the autodidact tendency to overrate himself. Democracy depends on people who know they don’t know everything.""
october 2017 by nhaliday
“The autodidact’s risk is that they think they know all of medieval history but have never heard of Charlemagne” - Umberto Eco
Facts are the least part of education. The structure and priorities they fit into matters far more, and learning how to learn far more again
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Facts are the least part of education. The structure and priorities they fit into matters far more, and learning how to learn far more again
october 2017 by nhaliday
Christopher Lasch's "For Shame: Why Americans Should Be Wary of Self-Esteem" | New Republic
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september 2017 by nhaliday
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september 2017 by nhaliday
Personal thoughts on careers in AI policy and strategy - Effective Altruism Forum
ratty miri-cfar effective-altruism summary rhetoric article ai risk ai-control essay research research-program frontier speedometer 🤖 china asia bostrom polisci foreign-policy institutions social-science uncertainty volo-avolo
september 2017 by nhaliday
ratty miri-cfar effective-altruism summary rhetoric article ai risk ai-control essay research research-program frontier speedometer 🤖 china asia bostrom polisci foreign-policy institutions social-science uncertainty volo-avolo
september 2017 by nhaliday
WHAT IS CONSERVATIVE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT ?
september 2017 by nhaliday
Introduction to Jerry Z. Muller's book (recommended by Razib)
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september 2017 by nhaliday
Can Our Democracy Survive Tribalism?
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september 2017 by nhaliday
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september 2017 by nhaliday
Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the Gold Standard for Psychotherapy? | Psychiatry | JAMA | The JAMA Network
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september 2017 by nhaliday
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september 2017 by nhaliday
The Wire, (Not Quite) Ten Years Later – spottedtoad
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september 2017 by nhaliday
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september 2017 by nhaliday
Liturgy of Liberalism by Adrian Vermeule | Articles | First Things
september 2017 by nhaliday
The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
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by ryszard legutko
september 2017 by nhaliday
Neue Rheinsiche Zeitung No. 194 January 1849
september 2017 by nhaliday
- Friedrich Engels
The Magyar cause is not in such a bad way as mercenary black-and-yellow [colours of the Austrian flag] enthusiasm would have us believe. The Magyars are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall gloriously, as the last heroes of the 1848 revolution, and only for a short time. Then for a time the Slav counter-revolution will sweep down on the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarity, and the camarilla will see what sort of allies it has. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
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The Magyar cause is not in such a bad way as mercenary black-and-yellow [colours of the Austrian flag] enthusiasm would have us believe. The Magyars are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall gloriously, as the last heroes of the 1848 revolution, and only for a short time. Then for a time the Slav counter-revolution will sweep down on the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarity, and the camarilla will see what sort of allies it has. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
september 2017 by nhaliday
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