rosser

It's interesting that you chose to wiki-splain the scientific method in response to ... what? The notion of anthropogenic climate change? The accusation of being a denier?

Whatever, the reason that's interesting is that an increase in the frequency and severity of "anomalous" weather events is, in point of fact, one of the chief falsifiable predictions of the climate scientists whose work you dismiss.

Everyone always points to the hyper-specific, obviously catastrophic, missed predictions for which, e.g., Al Gore is probably most infamous as a failure of the models [0], when one of the main things they actually, specifically, said would (would, not could) happen, as more energy was added to the atmosphere ... is happening.

[0] The thing about those predictions, which I think the people watching in good faith assumed (on the basis that they were, you know, explicitly thusly disclaimed) is that they were known worst-case, hypothetical for illustrative purposes kinds of deals — which, yes, was a terribly dumb move, given how those predictions were taken, and have been pilloried since.

EDIT: Footnote and phrasing.

> Meanwhile blaming every weather anamoly on climate change is rather tiresome.

Not nearly as tiresome as disregarding the clear and ongoing increase in the frequency and intensity of these anomalous weather events, where every record set just the previous year being toppled yet again is somehow another mere "weather anomaly", only to be considered in isolation.

We seem to have rather a lot of these anomalies, though, don't we? They also seem to be getting more extreme. Perhaps those are data points we might consider. When a class of anomaly becomes less anomalous in frequency (that is, they happen more often, perhaps even becoming the norm), but more anomalous in intensity (read: are bigger), mightn't that suggest something beyond mere fluctuation in a dynamic system?

I wonder what might be dumping all kinds of extra energy into the system, such that it behaves like we're observing...

EDIT: Phrasing

See Brandolini's Law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...

In most of the communities I've taken ayahuasca with, the "standard" dose is 1.5oz, which is ~42.5g. In others, it's even higher (or was, but has been reduced as they've refined their cook).

Also, note that was 40g of fresh truffles. That makes a difference.

Not quite true. The default behavior changes, and new syntax is added allowing users to specify their desired behavior, but if the sub-query in the CTE does certain things, it will still be materialized instead, regardless.

That is: they mostly aren't a fence any more, but can be when you want them to, and sometimes still must be.

Are you thinking of the "[NOT] MATERIALIZED" clause?

Yes, that's coming.

https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commit...

Heed the caution about CTEs being optimization fences. I had a case just this past week, where one of our engineers needed help with a query that used a LEFT JOIN against a CTE which generated text-search vectors for some subset of rows, in some large table. The query was taking 9-10 minutes, cache-warmed.

Used that way — an outer join against a CTE — the planner was forced to generate a plan that produced a row for every candidate row in the table being used as input for the text-search, whether or not it would be needed, visiting nearly all of its pages.

Just by moving the CTE inline (that is: "LEFT JOIN ( #{ subquery } ) AS blah"), the query completed in 17ms.

This way, the planner could apply conditions from the rest of the query to the subplan from which text-search vector rows were being produced, such that it only pages containing rows it already knew it would care about would even be retrieved.

The rest of this article is pretty on-point, too.

Source: This stuff is my day job.

EDIT: As a counter-point, because they are incredibly useful, I've also had countless cases where rewriting a query to use CTEs was the several orders of magnitude win. This also wasn't the only possible fix; the qualifying conditions in the CTE could have been improved, eliminating the extra work where it would have occurred.

Like all things computers, the real answer is, "it depends..."

That is one hell of a false dilemma.

Can a mod please collapse or detach this thread? There's nought but noise here, unsurprisingly.

When a child expresses curiosity, an adult who responds in a manner that involves a dismissive "instead" should probably seriously reconsider their life choices — especially the ones that led to them interacting with children in the first place.

Clearly, in this account, the adult's manner made the child feel awkward about their interest and curiosity. I remember countless times as a child being interested in something, or curious about how it worked, only to be told I was being annoying, or distracting, or rambunctious, or whatever. Some of those curiosities continued, and led to me becoming a technologist. Others, I can't even remember what I was interested in — just the feeling of having had my emotions manipulated by an adult, so that I wouldn't be "in their way".

It is, in the general case, shitty adulting to shut children down like that.

In a world where you have SLAs with your customers, in which you commit to something better?

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to with "glossolalia", offhand. The shamans I work with variously use a mix of Spanish, English, and Quechua, or Shipibo-Conibo, and although all of those (if moreso the indigenous tongues) have what seem to be "filler words" with no specific (known) meaning, the overwhelming majority of the sounds they utter are recognizably from those languages, or whistling, or whatever.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19576425

Thanks for your perspective, I appreciate it. I can see that being a legitimate read of the comment, if one punts on the guideline to assume good faith, and interpret people's arguments in the strongest light, rather than, e.g., dismiss them on the basis of formatting.

It's just disappointing when that happens, because I try to engage that way, and assume my comments will be treated the same.

EDIT: That said, I didn't exactly offer much in the way of argument there, did I?

I think we're in agreement. This is him saying, "I think it's interesting enough to expend that effort." No one else has to agree, but that a mind like his thinks so, and based on what I've read of these accounts, I'm inclined to agree.

I have no idea how to go about falsifying that, though. You'd at a minimum have to strictly monitor the information flow into a child's environment, probably from birth, to control for any other vectors for verifiable details. All in the hopes that some of the study population's children will mention something you can confirm they didn't overhear, or whatever, which turns out to comport with the life of someone who's passed. That's perhaps a tough sell to the ethics committee.

It's broken thinking to assume something is safe on the basis of a lack of proof otherwise. We have a pretty substantial body of research exonerating cannabis of a lot of the harms other drugs of abuse can bring. Literally no-one ever has died of a cannabis overdose, that we know of. We know it's safe that way.

There is of course a risk with any mind-altering substance that it might trigger a latent or occult mental illness. Those odds go up, sometimes significantly, with more powerful substances, and even more so when the user has any genetic predisposition towards those conditions. There's also a risk of having a difficult or traumatic experience, which can likewise increase with dose or different substances. That said, those of us who work with these substances intentionally often find that those experiences can be where the really transformative stuff happens.

It's interesting to note that some time after writing this, Sagan became aware of the work of Jim Tucker, at the University of Virginia, attempting to validate the "past life" reports of children who've offered verifiable details in their accounts. Many children make such claims, but, as Sagan observed, “Young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.”

I won't assert the truth of it, and I can think of a couple plausible vectors that don't involve consciousness surviving death and into another body (however unlikely they might be), but if it's compelling enough for the author of The Demon Haunted World to suggest it deserves "serious study", I'm the last person in the world to gainsay him.

Right, because it's clearly the domain name I take issue with, and not at all the literal lies that have been published under it.

Would you care to speculate again about how much time I've spent reading their literature before this discussion? I promise you, it's non-zero. Please try not to dismiss people's positions that shallowly; it's a disservice to the conversation we're trying to have, and it's rude.

I am involved in a number of communities that engage intentionally, even sacramentally, with psychedelics. The amount of sheer bullshit they continue to promulgate on that matter, about which I consider myself advanced-lay to burgeoning-expert, is staggering, and is sufficient for me to be default skeptical of anything else they might have to say. When you lie to me about things I know something about, I'm obligated to trust the rest of your oeuvre somewhat less, aren't I?

Finally, I said nothing whatsoever about the conclusion of the paper under general discussion. In point of fact, I generally agree with it.

I do a lot of work with psychedelics. I'm very, very well aware of the power of consciousness-altering chemicals to have profound effects. That's kind of the whole point of using them. They should be respected but I don't see how that implies they should be feared.

EDIT: Phrasing

drugabuse.gov should probably not be considered an un-biased source on the topic of drugs of abuse. Some of their material will be propaganda and FUD.

The association between cannabis and schizophrenia remains, as far as I'm aware, primarily statistical, and other factors like familial history are significantly more predictive.

EDIT: That is, I don't think we have sufficient understanding to say whether pot abuse causes schizophrenia, or schizophrenics are more likely to abuse pot. Given what I know of how awful a ride that is, self-medicating that devolves into abuse seems far more plausible to me. Further, there's research that takes into account family history of these mental illnesses out to 3rd — and further — degrees, and which suggests a much stronger link between that and the illness, than the drug use.

I have worn a beard nearly continuously for approaching three decades, now.

I used to keep my beard neat enough with a pair of scissors, a mirror, and few minutes every few days. Then I got a wet-dry trimmer that I used periodically in the shower. Now I'm just growing it out (about 5 months in), and I work a dab of shampoo in occasionally.

Beard maintenance really isn't that onerous. I spend vastly more time grooming my untrimmed whiskers than I ever spent trimming them. Being clean-shaven takes significantly more frequent effort, and though I have no data points, given all the process involved in shaving, it probably takes a lot more time, all-in, too.

EDIT: Phrasing

Or turn it off.

EDIT: Yes, that creates a data point that police could also search for — "give me all the phones in the vicinity that were turned off and then back on surrounding the incident." Okay, how far away? That would be a massively larger search, geographically, wouldn't it? How far before and after is your window for turning off and back on events?

That's still an additional search. It's also probably got a far worse signal:noise ratio than proximity to the incident — assuming the robbers were dumb enough to have their phones on them (and on) in the first place.

It's not a "conspiratorial plot", no. But time and again, research has shown that the implicit biases held by the people building these tools [0] are observable in the tool's results — and all people hold implicit biases.

It's not the tool we need to debug; it's us.

[0] Where, by "these tools", I mean machine learning writ large.

EDIT: I highly doubt your comment's parent was suggesting we had to be irrational in order to be ethical. Rather, I believe they meant we should be rational and ethical. Wouldn't you agree?

> The researchers Joy Buolamwini at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Timnit Gebru, then at Microsoft Research in New York City, showed that some of the most advanced facial-recognition software failed to accurately identify dark-skinned women 35% of the time, compared to a 1% error rate for white men. Separate work showed that these technologies mismatched 28 US members of Congress to a database of mugshots, with a nearly 40% error rate for members of colour. Researchers at the University of Essex in Colchester, UK, tested a facial-recognition technology used by London’s Metropolitan Police, and found it made just 8 correct matches out of a series of 42, an error rate they suspect would not be found lawful in court.

> ...for suggesting sea mammals have a "gland" that filters salt from water.

No-one made any such suggestion. One person lamented that such a gland didn't exist; they did not assert its existence. The other person didn't mention glands at all.

Just because you don't see a particular value in something does not mean it lacks that value for others.

Frankly, I find this to be far more a "My way or the highway" kind of attitude than the quoted bit from The Fine Article — you don't seem even to concede the possibility of marriage being more than a "contract", when, for most people, that's among the least of what it's about.

> ...if I wasn’t going to be with her, I had to let her go so she could find someone else.

That's not an ultimatum, though I can see how it might read that way. She felt a need, which he wasn't meeting. She told him that if he wouldn't meet it, he needed to let her go seek its fulfillment elsewhere.

It's not the same format, but here's a few slide decks from Bruce Momjian's site, describing PostgreSQL's internals:

https://momjian.us/main/presentations/internals.html