434 karma · joined November 3, 2013
A second gust at 10 m/s is NOT enough to further accelerate the balloon to 20 m/s. Because the wind and the balloon are now travelling at the same speed. It follows intuitively that the second gust should contain more kinetic energy than the first gust.
> 3rjs1la7qe
I wonder what these two mean.
I think for most people, the aha-moment comes when they realize One's Compliment double-counts the zero. In contrast, linearity is simply assumed. Otherwise, why would anyone make a number system out of it?
More importantly, is it unproductive? I.e. would my threshing-method fail to reliably discriminate? I honestly believe my criterion is practical. Otherwise, I would not have made the suggestion. I challenge someone to find a case where the predicate returns a controvertible result.
[0] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=policy&allowed_in_f...
Politics is etymologically related to policy. Which is a set of norms over a group. I.e. all policy is group policy.
The role of the governmemt to set and enforce those policies. Governance is generally preferable to anarchy because governance allows us to reap economies of scale. Which is invaluable in a universe of scarce resources. But due to conflicts of interest, optimal policy is often disagreed upon. Therefore, it is common that policy is forced upon one or more parties which believe the policy suboptimal, in the name of compromise.
I personally dislike when someone forces something upon me. Likewise, I dislike when I must force something upon someone else. As a result, negotiation of policy can feel frustrating and exhausting. This sentiment is where I suspect the desire for "politics-free spaces" originates from.
Regarding Dang's flag experiment. I cautiously propose the rule that: any article whose thesis asserts "a normative statement which may affect an unwilling party" is worthy of a flag. E.g. while most think of the Supreme Court as an inherently political entity, and while litigation involves an unwilling party (whoever loses), the above article's thesis is informative rather than persuasive. Therefore, I would not flag the above article. This flag policy would aim to target the inciteful, rather than the insightful.
And of course each would think this way, given their backgrounds. Edison was an inventor and a CEO; Einstein a theoretical physicist. Perhaps HN is familiar with the Parable of the Elephant?
How convenient for you. The reason why you believe UHC is a useful stepping stone is probably because making UHC a reality will pull UBI within the Overton Window. But perhaps there are other ways to improve UBI's legitimacy. Like... discussing ramifications. Or performing an experiment.
Allow me to reiterate: "Voters' power over a coalition varies directly with the voters' volatility." Once a vote is pledged, the voter's negotiating leverage is lost. It's like haggling. If a potential buyer says "Oh what a nice sweater", the sweater's price is mysteriously doubles. People learn not to say things like that, because they don't want to waste their money.
Agglomeration is one tactic at one's disposal. Walking away is another. Maybe that sounds weird. Because as far as you know, the only force at work in politics is economies of scale. "Join us! Resistance is futile!" True, the power of a coalition (over other coalitions) is proportional to its size. But it comes at the cost of the voters' power over its residing coalition. By analogy. A heavier motorcycle is more powerful. But a lighter motorcycle has better handling. Meditation: why do states/provinces/municipalities exist if the federal government has stronger economies of scale?
UBI proponents should pledge their allegiance to liberals? Wouldn't that be convenient for you. Oops, the price just doubled. Question: how does a store convince a potential customer to part with their money? The store courts them with something of value. And how does a liberal convince a UBI proponent to part with their vote? "Your idea is dumb but mine is better. So buy into mine instead. Whoah, no need to compare -- trust me I'm a professional. Now shut up and give me your vote. By the way, your vote is worthless so you should totally give it to me." The pitch didn't start out bad, but things get sketchy fast. You're essentially trying to conscript (rather than entice) mercenaries into your coalition when you're not in a position to do so.
This suggests you believe UHC is a useful stepping stone to UBI. Is this actually your opinion? Because it doesn't reflect the vibe I got in your article. If I understand your article correctly, you believe
A) UBI is inherently fragile.
B) Conservative lobbyists will cause UBI to decay into something ugly.
C) UHC is more resilient.
D) Therefore UHC is better.
E) And France proves it.
But your comments upthread suggest you believe UHC is superior because it's easier to implement given its comfortable position within the Overton-Window. The Overton-Window Argument says it may become feasible in the future, while the Fragility Argument says it will never become feasible.
Frankly, I suspect the article is a Motte & Bailey. Maybe your real issue with UBI is that it will take too long to campaign for. I.e. you want your marshmallow sooner rather than later. Which is reasonable. But understand that it's another discussion entirely and was not clear to me from the article.
The more charitable interpretation is that you believe UBI's fragility is due to its immaturity. And that UHC will grant us experience. Okay. But if so, this was not clear to me from your article. And it would contradict your position that UBI experiments are a waste.
So you believe UHC is better than UBI. All good. But to end the debate on UBI because it subtracts from a related discussion is ridiculous. I read the link, and I recognize that political campaigns require large expenditures. I also believe the market place of ideas can accomidate both discussions.
By calling UBI a "distraction", you are implying it'd be more convenient if the UBI discussion didn't exist because it's more convenient than letting the UBI and UHC compete on a their merits. It signals that it is inconceivable to you that UBI might in fact be the better idea, and that you'd bet the farm on UHC's superiority.
Sam Altman: "Let's perform a UBI experiment and see how it goes."
Nicolas Colins: "I'm a historian. I already know the outcome. The experiment is a waste of time and money."
Okay bud.
"Momentum; i.e. the green party's candidacy is far less realistic" says Alice. "Therefore, the democratic party deserves your green vote." I don't like winner-takes-all elections since it incentives a two-party system. But despite this current state, I'd still vote for the green candidate if I preferred it over the dem candidate. Because in the long term, it gives the dems an incentive to more closely align with the greens if they want improve their chance of success.
In this sense, the green vote wasn't a distraction, it was a message. The sentiment that incumbents feel entitled to third party votes and feel that third party votes are "wasted", I find baffling. I could argue that all votes are wasted, because nobody but me voted for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The only interpretation under which others' votes could be said to be "a distraction" rather than "political input" is if one believed in the objective superiority of their own beliefs.
I wonder if you would change your tune if (hypothetically) UBI one day gained more momentum than Universal Health Care. But in your ideal world, this could never happen. Because all reasonable people would expend effort only into the coalition with the most momentum, which A) happens to be Universal Health Care ATM and B) will only ever be Universal Health Care in the future since the positive feedback loop never breaks.
It's as if we claimed Spell Checking were as complex as Natural Language Processing because they were both called "linguistics". Yes, they both abstract over language. But the primitives of Spell Checking are glyphs while the primitives of NLP are morphemes. Glyphs don't exhibit the same patterns as morphemes. Which is why Spell Checking uses a Trie while NLP uses a Matrix. Debating whether glyphs or morphemes are "more fundamental" is a distraction.
Likewise, bits don't follow the same patterns as ADT's. Calling both the study of bits and the study of ADT's "Complexity Analysis" is misleading, which I believe is what Pressler was getting at. But we've put bits and ADT's in the same bucket for the entire history of computing, because the Church Turing thesis (i.e. anything a TM can do, lambdas can do too) lead us to believe Turing and Church were studying the same primitives.
I suspect this is a case of confusing epistemology with ontology.
Galaxies are ontologically composite in that they're the highest holonym in the supervenience hierarchy [0]. Atoms are ontologically fundamental in that they're the the lowest meronym in the supervenience heirarchy.
Galaxies are epistemically abstract in that the notion of galaxy is far removed from everyday experience. Atoms are also epistemically abstract in that the notion of atoms are also far removed from everyday experience. What's epistemically fundamental are the immediate objects of our everyday experience, like chairs and food. (My impression of Zen is that it advises to focus more on things like chairs and food [1].)
In the xkcd, which is more "fundamental", Math or Economics? Well, it depends. Likewise, what's more "fundamental", bits or ADT's? Well, it depends.
[0] powers of 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
[1] http://www.itsokblog.com/2011/01/wash-your-bowl-zen-of-mothe...
Plausible Deniability is why these gestures are socially acceptable. "I'm sorry to hear that" or "that sucks" (i.e. acknowledgment) would suffice. But that's not what Pieter Hintjens' associates told him, is it? Instead, they went the extra mile by offering unwarranted advice. Notice that "I'm sorry to hear that" doesn't connote that the speaker holds relevant information, and is therefore important and worth paying attention to. Regardless of how we define gesture, it is not lost on Hintjens that the stock phrases he receives nudge the conversation in a particular direction.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/12/funeral.html
> (...) The hyena is caught awkwardly, so he rests his paws on the woman's shoulders, and now the sobbing woman must associate her last chance to be with what is left of her father with the stale breath of a sycophant waiting for his moment to be relevant.
> And while that's going on others are whispering to the quivering back of her coat, "oh, I'm so sorry", "I'm sure he really loved you", "are you ok?"
> Why did any one of them think they had the power, the right, to interfere with another person's mourning? This was between her and her father and God and no one else. Did no one notice that even the husband had given her space? Did they just think he was being a jerk? "I just wanted to comfort her." No, you didn't know what else to do, so you did that. "I didn't want her to be alone." That's because you are a terrible person.
I.e. the woman struggled to spend her last moments with her father while the surrounding mourners (each vying for her attention) entered a pissing-contest to prove who had more empathy.
More seriously. The selling point of the triangle operator is that it highlights isomorphisms between the three more traditional operators as a cyclic group. Which is a symmetry, just not the commutativity that students might naively expect. So I suppose it's a double-edged sword. I agree that it sucks as an operator. Nonetheless, the video could help a lot of students.
Multiplication and division can also be put into a triangle, such that filling in each corner constitutes an equation. See my comment [0] about the density equation. I suspect such triangles reflect some deeper relation of abstract algebra.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=12138817&goto=threads%...
I should have included this quote to begin with. I'll put it in now.
In any case. A direct connection does exist. If you follow the link, there are other examples where the (+) operator would be useful besides parallel resistance.
The operator in question is actually quite common.
> Buying stocks. Suppose you buy $1000 worth of stocks each month, no matter the price (dollar cost averaging). You pay $25/share in Jan, $30/share in Feb, and $35/share in March. What was the average price paid? It is 3 / (1/25 + 1/30 + 1/35) = $29.43 (since you bought more at the lower price, and less at the more expensive one). And you have $3000 / 29.43 = 101.94 shares. The “workload” is a bit abstract — it’s turning dollars into shares. Some months use more dollars to buy a share than others, and in this case a high rate is bad.
https://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-analyze-data-usi... (harmonic averages section)
The concept describes various processes which contribute towards identical workloads at different speeds (or rates).
Notation may not be the hardest part. It is however (as you say) the first part. If our goal is to make math more readily accessable to the masses, perhaps the greatest immediate gains entail improving the notation to better reflect the concepts -- exactly because it is the first barrier.
Later in high school (in a different state), a mathematically-challenged friend was studying logarithms during study hall. Our curriculum used this bizarre, three-step arrow rule to transform logs into the familiar (y = b^e). Having remembered the density triangle, I showed my friend a similar diagram for logs. He said "Thanks. I was probably going to get a zero on the next quiz. I might actually pass now."
d = m / v
v = m / d
m = v * d
.
/m\
/---\
/v | d\
.-------.