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jabgrabdthrow

154 karma · joined June 6, 2012

IAmA shithead AMA
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jabgrabdthrow··on Causal Inference Book
My theory: It’s a touchy subject. It has not been inhibitory up to this point (mid late 2010s) to divide things into things that follow laws, and things that are complex intersections of many systems of social power and where each individuals personal epistemology must be considered in the context of a holistic analysis that is not loaded with preconceptions about values we acquired during socialization and now that you can process fifty exabytes of data did you even think about what if your programs aren’t accurate representations of reality, sheesh this is why engineers shouldn’t make public policy

Case in point: other comment links to Pearl’s book. He has been writing about general causality for decades, but his latest book shows he realized there is a desperate need to communicate the basics to people who like the modes of thinking that cause them to avoid trusting mathematical “solutions”

jabgrabdthrow··on Guide to Angel Investing
Founders should be willing to take less pay and their biggest motivator should be their name in lights, not traction
jabgrabdthrow··on Airbnb canceled booking, saying city rejected license number
If we get rid of zoning and residence/hotel distinctions how will we know who to tax without introducing oppressive measures like voter ID?
jabgrabdthrow··on Airbnb canceled booking, saying city rejected license number
I would guess it’s a zoning issue, it’s an issue to the extent communities have a right to do zoning at all
jabgrabdthrow··on Researchers find IQ scores dropping since the 1970s
But Nazis ! We have to go to war with China
jabgrabdthrow··on Researchers find IQ scores dropping since the 1970s
What is the current state of the art? I thought it was all progress towards eliminating things that are actually “knowledge” and so look more and more like the abstract IQ tests we see today.
jabgrabdthrow··on Researchers find IQ scores dropping since the 1970s
Bullshit, the tests are all pattern recognition and specifically avoid anything that must be taught.
jabgrabdthrow··on Has there been progress in philosophy?
Do you think you contributed to the conversation or that anyone might have been missing part of the picture but you pointing out that black swans are a literal thing that are not uncommon unlike fairies that don’t exist or “black swans” (like “bull runs”) that are by definition extremely rare?

I once said “there’s no such thing as a bull run” in some context with a group of friends. Do you think you would have chimed in to say that there’s a big one in Madrid every year?

jabgrabdthrow··on Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened?
If the chatbot revolution didn’t happen then did those people make a return? Or are you saying it’s the employees getting paid (who also piled onto the dad) who are now the ones with capital?
jabgrabdthrow··on When a College Takes on American Poverty
Why was this flagged?
jabgrabdthrow··on When a College Takes on American Poverty
No, he’s describing redistribution (some people get a bigger payout proportional to what they paid in). You can have solvent pyramid shaped schemes, and SS isn’t even pyramid shaped except incidentally.
jabgrabdthrow··on The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?
> I suspect that we would see that we need as many categories as there are children to get anything predictive.

Making a category to predict human behavior generally hurts those who are “miscategorized” much more than it helps those who are accurately categorized (there aren’t really “positive stereotypes” that jump into active-decision processes like with negative stereotypes).

Therefore, we should not try to predict behavior by making even fuzzy-categories other than one-child-per-category, since this may literally hurt children, especially systemically underprivileged and underrepresented children.

It’s important to control your own decision factors against your local collection of “known non-causations”!

jabgrabdthrow··on The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?
Wait a second, when did the discussion narrow to standardized test scores? I only read the article and did not follow through with sources, it seemed to imply “success” was measured more broadly, by their end socioeconomic status.
jabgrabdthrow··on The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?
Reminds me of how I grew up wishing I could eat cereal and watch TV - at all.

It’s good to know that it’s my parents’ active decisions to shape how I think, and not something I can’t control like my innate willpower, which led me to be so successful.

jabgrabdthrow··on Has there been progress in philosophy?
Maybe conspiracy theory is a bad example because they’re true often enough to not be like fairies or black swans at all.

Domestic mass surveillance is a debunked conspiracy theory, remember

jabgrabdthrow··on A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life
In the familiar Game of Life automata the smallest known replicator takes 34 million generations:

http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=399&start=0

But in HighLife there is a trivial replicator:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(cellular_automat...

Of course for life you need not just replication but mutation and antifraility

jabgrabdthrow··on 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense
No, you are talking deep state (unelected “eternal beaurocracy”), they’ve just associated that term with crazies and racists like everything else that threatens them, so you’re scared to use it.
jabgrabdthrow··on 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense
You sound like you’re trying to be edgy. Are Democracy and Polio Vaccines actively harmful?

Parent comment is right.

jabgrabdthrow··on Ask HN: Hacker News thread about alcoholism
Thank you, it is that thread, but it’s none of those comments.

I also remember they had a weekly timeline of how much they drank in their post.

Maybe they deleted it.

jabgrabdthrow··on QuitGenius (YC W18) raises $2M to help people quit smoking
I bet in another context you’d happily point out which logical fallacies you just used for points 1 and 2.

I used to think like you - while I was still addicted.

jabgrabdthrow··on Launch HN: Dharma (YC S17) an open protocol for borrowing/lending cryptoassets
As a lighthearted differentiator I was going to have “The RSS Koran” instead of “The RSS Bible” but I got death threats
jabgrabdthrow··on Mosaicism: The genome varies from cell to cell
Huh, this makes me think, culture is like artificial selection. Some “organisms” have evolved to live off of the land, and others evolved to live off of other humans!
jabgrabdthrow··on The Pentagon Can't Account for $21T
It’s the military and it’s tax money. “Manually transferred” or “unsupported” or “doesn’t meet proper accounting standards” doesn’t debunk “can’t account for”, it directly supports that point!
jabgrabdthrow··on Study: Students did not benefit from studying according to “learning style”
FWIW I follow your argument but my perception is not visual at all but “grammatical”. Do you read punctuation out loud in your head? If not then whatever you do is how I chunk “fn”, which if it has to be verbalized gets pronounced by inserting schwas wherever convenient so like “fun”
jabgrabdthrow··on One-Of-a-Kind Private Train Takes on Florida’s Traffic Nightmare
This one goes to west palm beach and eventually to Orlando. I think it is faster too but not sure.
jabgrabdthrow··on Bitcoin estimated to use 0.5% of the world's electric energy by end of 2018
I’ll just have you drop a suitcase of cash in a high foot traffic area with no camera. Much smoother than it sounds, nobody pays attention. You’ll still have to do a few other illegal things in any case though.
jabgrabdthrow··on Bitcoin estimated to use 0.5% of the world's electric energy by end of 2018
If you don’t own crypto this can’t happen to you. What other things are you afraid of happening to me? Can you please ban me from visiting the Middle East?
jabgrabdthrow··on Carnegie Mellon Launches Undergraduate Degree in Artificial Intelligence
At CMU plenty of undergraduates took grad machine learning (10-601 or 701), high achievers sometimes in sophomore year. CMUs ML grad program is a top grad program and be sure not to move the goal posts to PhDs defined as contributing new knowledge
jabgrabdthrow··on The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers
Sarcastic historical case study of opposite

Long argument about instrinsic value

Peaceful resolution where we agree not to kill each other if our portfolios fuck us over

jabgrabdthrow··on The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10B of Bitcoin in Bunkers
Those are all true? I mean sure "some X" is a great way to say almost nothing about X, but the literal statement is true
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