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Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

Biologists hypothesize that Mantis shrimps perceive 12 primary colors. Do you expect a sea creature the size of my fist to share art and literature about its inner experience?

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

> Well according to wikipedia it means knowledge independent of experience not "dependent on logic".

wikipedia:

> Thus, the two kinds of knowledge, justification, or argument, may be glossed:

> A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience, as with mathematics (3 + 2 = 5), tautologies ("All bachelors are unmarried"), and deduction from pure reason (e.g., ontological proofs).[3]

> A posteriori knowledge or justification depends on experience or empirical evidence, as with most aspects of science and personal knowledge.

There's nothing wrong or controversial about my definition. Non-Experiental Knowledge is Logical Knowledge by exhaustion. "Feeling" is exactly the kind of thing "a priori" was intended to exclude.

> In this sense it is similar to saying that something is axiomatic.

In no sense of the word, colloquial or academic, does "a priori" mean "axiomatic". They are different beasts.

> Besides I'm not at all sure there is a difference between knowledge gained from logic or from experience: <skims youtube video>

The video redefines the Problem of Infinite Regress as "Modus Morons". I've read What the Tortoise said to Achilles myself. Yes, the truth of modus ponens is arguably derived from induction. But that's a topic I'm not going to get into right now. At the very least, the terms are useful to label their disparate track-records.

If you want to dig further, your general position is called Idealism.

Double_Caston We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change

All words have framing. Don't make me link Zizek.

More seriously. My takeaway is not "I wish Patreon hadn't issued an apology", but to beware promises without binding contracts or strong signals of fidelity.

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

You probably think I'm being pedantic. But the point of the article is to conceptually distinguish color from wavelength. If we're going to distiniguish them, we might as go all the way. There's no reason to bind yellow (and cyan) to a single wavelength, while magenta gets special status. All three are secondary colors and all three are composites.

This is important because privileging magenta does not generalize to higher-dimensional color-spaces, and therefore impedes to our understanding of phenomenology.

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

2% of the population perceive a 4th primary color.

  Do you know what it looks like? 
  Can you imagine what it looks like? 
  Can Maxwell's equations predict what it looks like?

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

Suppose I have a coffee machine. I can weigh it, clean it, measure titration. But is the machine edible? No, because the machine isn't coffee per se.

Similarly, suppose scientists discover a neural-structure (or chemical-interaction, etc) responsible for blueness. I can dissect it, electrocute it, soak it in LSD. But will the scientists experience blueness? No, because the structure isn't qualia per se.

The prevailing ideology is that by studying the mechanical nature of coffee machines, we'll ipso facto understand the biochemistry of the beverage. danielam is arguing that this ideology is probably wrong. This is why the Problem of Qualia is a problem.

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

Nature has already engineered a dedicated yellow-detector. And it qualitatively differs from what us normies think of as "yellow". Pseudo-yellow is bimodal in the same way that purple is bimodal, while true-yellow is monomodal.

Suppose humans experienced 12 primary colors. Is a combination of the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 12th "on the spectrum" any more than an exclusive combination of the 2nd and 3rd?

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

Yellow, cyan, and magenta don't correspond to particular wavelengths. They each correspond to a combination of two particular, adjacent wavelengths.

E.g. a "yellow" wavelength is only as bright as its decomposition into red and green. The fact that red & blue aren't adjacent is a red herring.

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

A priori means derived from logic rather than perceptions and experience. Not "more fundamental".

Double_Caston The Problem of Colour

Unfair. We also lack cones for yellow and cyan.

(Except for the tetrachromatic 2%, who experience a 4th primary color where "yellow" ought to be.)

Double_Caston Why Does the Neocortex Have Columns? A Theory of Learning Structure of the World [pdf]

> Error! Problem, or Page Not Found

> Sorry, the page you were looking for does not exist.

Link is broken. From browsing, I believe the correct link is

https://numenta.com/papers-videos-and-more/resources/layers-...

Double_Caston DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

Buildings snap to a grid. Units take up space according to a hitbox. Hitbox size varies according to each type of unit (E.g. Thors are huge). This becomes important when dealing with AoE.

Consider a group of mutalisks. If you select-all and issue an attack-command or move-command, the mutalisks will bunch up tight and then disperse. Cf a video on the "magic-box technique".

So I wouldn't be surprised if position-values were floats.

Double_Caston DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

It's possible you're referring to the tradeoff between exploration vs exploitation.

Double_Caston DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

Skill is often divided into 3 components: macro-management; micro-management; and mechanics.

Macro refers to decisions regarding economy. It includes finances, build order, counters, etc. Macro is mostly strategic.

Micro refers to decisions regarding battle. It includes troop positioning, focus fire, kiting, etc. Micro is mostly tactical.

Mechanics refers to execution. I.e. do your fingers have the dexterity and APM to accomplish your goals effectively? If not, practice makes perfect.

Double_Caston How Did Anyone Do Math in Roman Numerals?

According to Wikipedia [0], the most efficient radix is Euler's Number.

But what would it even mean to construct a numeral-system with a non-integral radix?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy

Double_Caston How Did Anyone Do Math in Roman Numerals?

Since I learned programming, my personal notes draw a distinction between "=" (defines set of coordinates) and ":=" (assignment).

cf.

  f(x) = x^2 + 1
  x := 2
  f(2) = 5

Double_Caston Machine Learning Crash Course: The Bias-Variance Dilemma

citizens labeled illegals: 1,000,000

illegals labeled citizens: 0.01

Double_Caston Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

I don't remember my personal source. Wikipedia citation [15] seems pretty comprehensive.

[15] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-...

> Plagued by the realities threatening many retail stores, Sears also faces a unique problem: Lampert. Many of its troubles can be traced to an organizational model the chairman implemented five years ago, an idea he has said will save the company. Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.

Double_Caston Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

You might wanna check out the story of Edward Lampert (the CEO of Sears). Ayn Rand inspired him to pit departments against one another. Sears devolved into a battle royale and profits dropped like a rock.

Double_Caston Japan's fertility crisis is terrifying and unprecedented

I'd always wondered about the trope "if someone sees my panties I have to marry them". That Quora explanation really put it in context.

Double_Caston Japan's fertility crisis is terrifying and unprecedented

One reason is that Social Security transfers wealth from the young to the old. The shift in demographics may strain the program.

Double_Caston Reddit Users Lose Real Money After Meme Currency Bot Dies

This happened in Eve Online. Some guy acted as a defacto bank, built trust over several years, then blew all the credits on a flagship.

Held legally accountable? Lmao. Guile is part of the game and all your credits belong to Eve.

Double_Caston Get started making music

I memorize chord progressions in terms of interval-number. E.g. {F# m; B dom7; E Maj} becomes {ii; V7; I}. I've memorized which intervals are major chords and which intervals are minor chords. So if I can figure out the tonic, then I can figure out the key. And if I figure out the key, I need only remember a pattern of ordinals (modulo non-triads).

Double_Caston Get started making music

One advantage of the 5-Line Staff is use of both lines and spaces. It's compact, easy to print, and easy to stack notes vertically.

Another advantage: each note of a diatonic scale is mapped injectively. Cf. representing each line (or space) as a whole-tone, which leads to hash-collisions (e.g. "is that a G or a G#?"). Each note on a line (or space) on which collisions occur would need an accidental. Which defeats the purpose of key signatures.

A diatonic scale contains an odd number of unique notes. The fact that C lies on a line while C' lies on a space is an unfortunate artifact of representing a 7-note scale with alternating lines and spaces.

Double_Caston My Struggles with Rust

  .beware("could not open file");

Double_Caston Nontransitive dice

Seasoned gamblers count "outs" (winning outcomes), convert to "hand odds" (out:loss ratio), then weigh hand odds against "pot odds" (weigh expected profit vs investment).

Double_Caston Nontransitive dice

You two are speaking past each other. CydeWes is using EV in the "first moment" sense. Amalcon is using EV in the "expected utility" sense. E.g. consider rock-paper-scissors. The expected utility of rock is 1/2. But since rock is represented non-numerically, each event has no first moment.

Double_Caston Explain mathematically a video from a space station (2011)

Given Tao's rotating frame:

* For each M-mass, the centrifugal-vector lies along the x-axis.

* For each m-mass, the centrifugal-vector lies along the z-axis.

* For each centrifugal-vector, the magnitude is proportional to "the point-mass's distance from the disk's axis-of-rotation (the y-axis)". Since the m-masses move along a unit circle in the yz-plane, their magnitudes vary.

E.g. an m-mass which starts at (0, .9, .1) will accelerate towards (0, 0, 1) then deccelerate towards (0, -.9, .1). Then it will retrace its path. This results in oscillation between (0, .9, .1) and (0, -.9, .1) along a semi-circle in the yz-plane.

N.b. no oscillation will occur if an m-mass starts at exactly (0, 1, 0).

Double_Caston No bullshit guide to linear algebra – v2

Fror a high-level overview of linear algebra, 3Blue1Brown's youtube series I cannot recommend highly enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjBOesZCoqc&list=PLZHQObOWTQ...

Double_Caston The Big Dig: Istanbul’s city planners have a problem: too much history (2015)

I don't understand the article's comment about the "big difference" between Roman artifacts vs Byzantine artifacts. Did she mean Roman artifacts are well-studied enough that archaeologists find them uninteresting? Or was the reason political?