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dexenon Are Humans Intelligent? An AI Op-Ed

Ah apologies for having been unclear. No, not like that - I was thinking about more meta aspects of it:

- shared context (shared biological & cultural heritage)

- recognition & willingness to ascribe intelligence

Basically trying to imply that the general AI problem is of similar nature to the 10x programmer problem - communication & recognition, or lack of thereof.

A 10x programmer makes a hard problem look easy. A general AI makes people around it feel very smart & productive.

Which is also why I prefaced it with, The terrain is not the map - we humans know surprisingly little about our intelligence.

[edit]

Case in point, an older discussion about intelligence in animals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772648

dexenon Why there’s so little left of the early internet (2019)

A good example of a website that stood the test of time: the C2 Wiki, aka Portland Pattern Repository:

https://wiki.c2.com/

Sadly it's been recently made read-only, and development shifted to a convoluted "Web 2.0" JS app.

dexenon Are Humans Intelligent? An AI Op-Ed

In AI research, the territory is not the map.

A half-joking prediction:

at some point we'll solve all arbitrarily hard milestones for AIs and will still find ourselves 'nowhere near having real general intelligence'.

At that point we might start questioning our assumptions about intelligence.

dexenon Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

  In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat
  hacking at the PDP-6.  "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.  "I am
  training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."  "Why is the
  net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.  "I do not want it to have any
  preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes.  "Why do you
  close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.  "So the room will be
  empty."  At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

dexenon Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

With intelligence, the territory is not the map :-)

dexenon Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

A half-joking prediction:

at some point we'll solve all arbitrarily hard milestones for AIs and yet find ourselves 'nowhere near having real general intelligence'.

At that point we might start questioning our assumptions about intelligence.

dexenon Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news

>Are both of us HackerNews' products?

Yes. We the users of HN are product - both individually, and also as a market segment, and also as a smart[0] crowd.

From [1],

  Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups.

To Y Combinator, the HN is both entry to the sales (investment) funnel, and a PR machine. And also early opinion & commentary, early beta-testing, load testing [2], and more.

That is not to detract from the (very probable) angle of pg & team wishing to render a public service for the public good :-)

[0] the occasional bad thread notwithstanding ;-)

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/about/#whatwedo

[2] aka HN hug of death

dexenon New York Times word usage frequency, 1970-2018

An exploratory thread by Zach Goldberg [1] where he discusses more words & expressions, and compares to other, broader trends.

[1] https://twitter.com/ZachG932/status/1133440945201061888

dexenon Questions that changed my life (2016)

Under the somewhat clickbait-y title, the post is both insightful and also encourages further thinking and exploration.

dexenon Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members resign

>a true democracy only exists when a huge number of very complicated systems and institutions are working properly

Falsehood. True democracy only exists when the voters' will is unimpeded by very complicated systems or institutions.

What you are describing is known as "managed democracy"[1] - i.e., political system that's notionally purely democratic, but where will of the voters is surreptitiously influenced, and their voice channeled through and shaped by gatekeepers, and their consent is manufactured by unelected institutions. North Korea and USSR are examples of such.

The free, effective, and prosperous countries like USA are democratic republics rather than true democracies - for a reason.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_democracy

dexenon 72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

It's true. Sadly it takes strong familiarity with wide range of subjects to be able to point out the biases of omission, and a big name to point it out without attracting too much of dismissive shrugs.

In my opinion, the bias is primarily derived from the bias of the sources Wikipedia uses, with influence by the WP editors being only a secondary influence.

dexenon 72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

>Wikipedia is vastly different from anything I’d normally recognise as news media

Agreed - Wikipedia is not news media.

Instead it's media fact & opinion aggregator and editor. It does function as media platform, with content provided by the media and only by the media. The editors' opinions are a secondary consideration; they are obliged by the rules to only ever derive content from the published reliable sources.

My "not much different from any other part of the media ecosystem" statement is connected with how the ideas & opinions flowing back and forth between Wikipedia and other medias (as shown in the citogenesis xkcd) - a process that's typical, even characteristic, of media.

dexenon 72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

The key point was wrong wrt Wikipedia :-)

>a forum for free thought >if it [isn't] policed by content moderators around a set of culture rules

The rules are mostly invisible to us because we are surrounded with, and submersed in, this very culture 24/7.

To get written up in Wikipedia one must first get published in a reliable source. This mostly means a journal or "books published by respected publishing houses" (full list: [1]). The publishing is the gatekeeper here; the wikipedia moderators are a secondary consideration.

This does indeed silence out a priori (i.e., censors) ideas that are culturally unpopular or frowned upon or just held by small number of individuals. To avoid muddling the argument with hot button issues, here's a very mild and barely objectionable example: picoLisp, a modern interpreted programming language with dynamic scoping. Having it written up, and then kept, in Wikipedia is an uphill struggle spanning years, and with sad reversals & losses. And that's with ideas that are only mildly unpopular.

Again, Wikipedia's utility is clear and recognized. Let's just not mix it up with a public square.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#What_c...

dexenon 72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

The citogenesis xkcd is right, but could & should take one more step and say openly:

Wikipedia has became part of the media ecosystem, not much different from any other part of the media ecosystem.

Journalists at typical outlets are also engaged in re-publishing -edited or verbatim- content from other outlets. Among those practices, churnalism [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churnalism

dexenon 72% of Americans say social media companies have too much political influence

Excellent post, one nitpick:

>Wikipedia is another example [of the public square]

Quite the opposite; Wikipedia is explicitly based on published reliable sources. They have a specific rule[1] excluding information that was not published in such way.

There are certain advantages to this rule, and its utility has been validated through Wikipedia's long, and ongoing, run. Nonetheless this cathedral mindset cannot be compared to a public square in any way other than being a very opposite.

In particular the published reliable sources rule excludes general blogs and public forums and the likes, thus excluding the majority of discourse & voices on the internet. Even expert sources, if self-published, can only be used in limited way and with caution.

[1] "If no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

dexenon Hacker95.css – Make Hacker News look like Windows 95

Simplicity has strong potential for standing the test of time.

dexenon Show HN: Oops I deleted my bin/ dir

Very amusing - and brings back memories of when a friend actually did remove the /bin (and IIRC the /lib64) a couple months ago :-)

Getting stuck on #/oops_print_file_contents - the command times out. Not sure if I'm missing a better solution or perhaps the server is overloaded

The command I tried was (here protected with rot13):

zncsvyr sbbone < zl-qvffregngvba.gkg; rpub "${sbbone[@]}"

A mild irritant is that the usual ^W (delete word to the left) instead closes tab in Firefox. Perhaps this could be prevented...?

dexenon Almost one-third of Florida children tested are positive for the coronavirus

The alternative - hiding people in homes until vaccine is widely available - means death.

From alcohol & substance abuse, from increased suicides, from domestic violence, and so on. Extended period of being prevented from running your business (or out of employment) without steady income, and bottled up at home is a major stresor and silent killer. The hospitals already reported significantly elevated suicides.

There is no magical strategy to stave off all the problems; balancing the risks and managing precautions as our knowledge expands is the correct, if hard to politically sell, way to go.

dexenon Orthodox Privilege

>If someone says they can hear a high-pitched noise that you can't

I guess this is an accidentally in-apt example...? It certainly detracts from the essay (mildly and in oh so many words) pushing against accusations of wrongthink - which includes accusations of dogwhistling.

dexenon Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts

Ah yes, the angels on hairpin.

The debate was about inifinite vs. finite, not about a particular number. It was couched in the terms of angels rather than physical items specificaly to avoid preconceived notions about our physical world - notions which were limited, and recognized as limited, back then. Do we even recognize our notions as limited in our beautiful early XXI century...?

dexenon Epigrams on Programming (1982)

>As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free variable."

There is a reason behind every single epigram selected for the list.

>As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free variable."

If you meditate for a while on any epigram on the list, you'll start thinking about another meaning.

One of the more interesting examples - if you have a somewhat broad overview of programming languages, and a pinch of cross-cultural awareness: If your computer speaks English it was probably made in Japan.

dexenon Pattern Matching, Racial Diversity and the Hypocrisy of Big Tech Media

Please try your luck with Quillette[1] - it's a dissident media magazine, not only open for, but indeed interested in, publishing articles that go against the popular narrative.

[1] https://quillette.com/about/ the "How can you pitch an article?" question

dexenon Bye

underrated - for a very meta reason

dexenon The End of the Redis Adventure

Thank you for the interesting angle.

>the lengths people will go, to try and control community projects

I've heard that echoed a couple times in Tim Pool's discussions of the (american) OWS. Scary stuff indeed.

dexenon The End of the Redis Adventure

Counting contributors & contributions is about as sensible as counting kLOC and pages of manual.

Conway's law about software architecture implies existence of management-space CAP theorem equivalent.

Communication suffers combinatorial explosion[1], and graph problems are pretty expensive to solve in meatspace.

Attention is an exhaustible resource, and easily DDoSed.

[edit]

dilandau - please note I've carefully avoided certain spicier keywords & expressions in the previous post as to not off put a casual reader and avoid attracting quick downvotes.

The couple spicy keywords in your response end up needlessly detracting a casual reader from the correct point you are making. And I'm not talking about the "fucking" adjective :)

[1] l = (n-1)*n/2

dexenon The End of the Redis Adventure

This.

The underground in underground programming refers to maintaining low visibility, as to present low target silhouette. Additional benefit is not attracting too many participants that are in it for the clout, rather than for solving problems & good engineering.

Open Source is no longer sufficient for software freedom; the current 'battlefield' is maintaining security from activist pressure or gradual take-over.

dexenon What Is the Morning Writing Effect? (2011)

Thank you for the visual write-up. You've named and described something that wasn't even aware of - how I came to develop my best functionalities. Initial work in a half-dreamy state, and clean up later on. Probably more of a holistic, rather than analytical, approach to design.

The secret might have been, all along, wake up late, arrive at work shortly after without doing much in between[1], and start designing already while commuting.

Notably I've been able to achieve a little bit of the same while half-falling asleep, with the added caveat that it requires jotting down good ideas for the next day. And they may be not quite discernible the next day.

Bears repeating - not quite the best code, but certainly the best functionalities.

[1] breakfast before work is a productivity killer

dexenon What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture, part 2

While you are making convincing case for that particular farm, let's take it into the next decade or two:

The difference between a U graduate and a non-U software developer is in the experience (and mindset) of fixing a problem vs scaling the solution. I.e., fixing the meta-problem.

A scalable solution is the one that becomes permanent, what moves the needle of the market, and what gets written up in history books.

dexenon De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

The list of police chiefs is solid.

I share your concerns over Qualified Immunity (and other problems). The relevant discussions are here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379910 ("As Qualified Immunity Takes Center Stage, More Delay from SCOTUS")

and here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386260 (a subthread of this discussion)

[edit]

>It focuses on race of one part of police leadership >Highlighting police chief race

Excuse me? Where are you going with this?

I've updated my post with clear, sourced information on how the police leadership got put in their respective roles, to clearly indicate how it works.

The examples are mostly appointment by the (locally elected) major or by the (locally elected) city council.

dexenon De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

>cherry picking

Baseless accusation. The protests are mostly in the blue-voting cities, and the GP's list is representative.

[edit]

Here is how it works:

Minneapolis, Chief of Police: nominated (...) by the Mayor of Minneapolis (Betsy Hodges) [1]

Seattle, Chief of Police: [n]ominated by Mayor Jenny Durkan [2]

St Louis, Comissioner of Police: appointed as the 35th Commissioners of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department on December 28, 2017 by Mayor Lyda Krewson [3]

Atlanta Chief of Police: Mayor of Atlanta Kasim Reed announced on December 1, 2016, that he had chosen Shields [4]

Chicago Superintended of the Chicago Police Department: The City Council on Wednesday voted 50-0 to appoint former Dallas Police Chief David Brown to lead the Chicago Police Department [5]

Oakland Chief of Police: Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced Monday that she has appointed former San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer as Oakland’s interim police chief [6]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medaria_Arradondo

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/carmen-be...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hayden_Jr.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erika_Shields

[5] https://news.wttw.com/2020/04/22/david-brown-confirmed-chica...

[6] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-Mayor-ap...