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taeric

17,613 karma · joined September 14, 2010

My (often incorrect) views and opinions are my own and not those of anyone I currently or have ever worked for. Please help me make them more informed (and hopefully more correct) whenever you can!
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taeric··on I should have loved biology (2020)
I'm sympathetic to this; but hard for me to really think this is actionable. Odds are quite high that someone did push for these perspectives a few times, but someone didn't have the vantage point to appreciate them at the time.

That can be a really hard thing for people to realize. We will ask, "why didn't someone use this really compelling framing to get me hooked on something?!" And then move to something like "how come nobody has ever said just walking an hour a day will get you in pretty good physical shape?" Thing is, plenty of people say stuff like that.

And don't mistake this as blaming the listener! The point is messages can often come when you flat out aren't prepared for them.

So, what do we do? We spend time on the rote muscle memory of facts. In the hopes that that will prepare you for the next time a message comes and you are then ready for it.

Ideally, you rinse and repeat this. Constantly. All too often, the cycle gets subverted, though, and you forget to reopen yourself to the messages that came before.

taeric··on Moving integer division to floating-point is trivial
I'm curious that the latency of these is actually worse than the latency of floating operations. Yes, they are worse than many integer instructions, but they seem to be on basically the same order as the equivalent float operations?
taeric··on The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You
This feels like an excessive hate of "Silicon Valley" that is just awkward. Yes, it turns out it is easier to do easier tasks. No, it is not cheaper to pound the table with claims that all infrastructure should be better.
taeric··on Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
This feels wrong. Did the vacuum make cleaning worse for employees? What about sewing machines? Modern looms?

It is probably a safe case that most tech revolutions reduced the number of needed employees for most things. But even then, it would be great if this would provide evidence of that!

Notably, it isn't like people strongly missed this work! Yes, there are fewer secretaries. But there aren't none, and the ones that were responsible for being a scribe to bad bosses almost certainly don't miss that work.

taeric··on Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2
This is great news! That was such a fun game.
taeric··on Emacs Is a Lispboard
Right, but that about halves the age of JavaScript as noted in this thread.

I fully agree that it is reaching a more stable place now than it was 5 or 10 years ago. It is still nowhere near as old as elisp.

taeric··on Emacs Is a Lispboard
Also notable that the way changes are introduced to the different languages is so different that this is just hard to really look at. Notably, elisp of today is not dramatically different from elisp of 20 years ago. JavaScript? Basically a brand new language after ES6+.
taeric··on Emacs Is a Lispboard
Many people that do this are almost certainly freelance contractors in some facility?

Probably, though, many are just using personal as not strictly personal, but the kind of personal things you might do while at a desk job.

taeric··on Does creatine make you smarter?
Heavily agreed. The supplement industry has such a low level of reliability that it has really soured me on so many practices people have. And I flat out do not understand how some of the supplement stores survive.
taeric··on New US homeownership measure puts people first
This depends heavily on the industry of the area. Go to a college town and you will find owner occupancy is not that big of a deal. Go to a luxury resort town and they literally make their money from non-residents transiently moving through.

I don't think you can get any of these situations non-organically. But schools and worker dormitories have a lot in common. More than most seem to admit to.

taeric··on 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support
I highly challenge this. For a region, industry booms drive upward movement. And regions that are only held by one industry when it busts build rust belts.

Ideally, you have industry for a region treated like a well balanced investment portfolio. But you have to internalize that balancing investment portfolios is is a protection against downside risks. And it specifically loses against the lucky portfolio that was heavy on something during a boom.

So, the question heavily looms on if the regions we are looking at are diverse enough that they can sustain some downturns.

taeric··on SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading
To be fair, I think they just meant the stock price shape post IPO. Jumped up, then fell back down.

That said, I'm also not sure how accurate that is.

taeric··on A Beautiful Theory Falls to Ugly Data
This feels apples to oranges. There has to be a "cost of inventory" consideration that applies to non digital goods far far stronger than to digital ones. To the point that expecting electronic book sales to give any insight to durable goods feels farcical.

Similarly, the marginal cost of a new release has to include all of the creative production of it to that point. Authoring and editing. Not just the marginal cost of replication of a completed work.

That is, the marginal cost of a new release is creating the new release's content! Which is very very different from the marginal cost of just making a copy of it months later.

taeric··on Agnes Callard’s theory of the uni-context
The numbers just don't support this, though? Social media remains at an all time high in engagement numbers. And climbing.

What is also growing is the number of people signaling that they are out of it.

This is extra pernicious because the people that are staying in control of these environments are maintaining a large amount of leverage over everyone.

taeric··on The Human Cost of DOGE's War on USAID
I confess it has been awkward to see the pearl clutching on this one. Like, the folks that were flat out proud of the implications are now offended at being tied to them. Just, what?
taeric··on Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church
That isn't really addressing my question, I don't think? The assertion is that most of the Arab mixing into region came at the same time as the later invasions. Yes, they would have remained fewer in absolute numbers. But they weren't even there after the earlier raids.
taeric··on New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices
Is NYC the first just because every city in California does it by state rules? I'm confused.
taeric··on Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church
Legitimate question, in the early days was this a large distinction? Specifically, my understanding was that the earliest raids where this distinction is most accurate, they didn't actually change the local societies much. Mostly were raids for resources and did not stay.

That is, until the Islamic raids started, the indigenous groups took losses, but were not nearly as transformed. Is that not accurate?

taeric··on A Road to Lisp: Why Lisp
If it helps, https://taeric.github.io/CodeAsData.html was my attempt at exploring "code as data" and what makes lisp different here. My specific focus was more to point out that "eval" in lisp doesn't just take in a string. But I think the same general points remain.
taeric··on A road to Lisp: Why Lisp
Largely agreed.

I do think it is worth highlighting how many advanced parts of hot-reloading have already been covered in Common Lisp. Same with highlighting how the REPL is largely not used to directly type into, but is instead a very powerful interface for tools to interact with a running image.

But, again agreed that simply these existing are not that notable today.

taeric··on It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history
To be fair, this is no different than any other thing people might want to do more of. Increasing the amount you can bench press, cycle, run, read, write, cook, whatever. Most will allow you to progress at something that most people don't care about. Nor, necessarily, should they.

By far, the best thing to learn when learning to progress at something, is learning to be satisfied with your own progression.

taeric··on It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history
Largely fair. This is one where the specific goals, I think, work against people. I know most coaches will attach "attainable" to goals, to combat that.

To that end, if your goal is just to read more, there is no reason to worry about how substantial your books are. However, if you goal is to read more substantially, you should start by aiming a bit higher than where you are. Achieve that, then adjust target.

Progress, then, can come either in more volume of reading where you are; or in more substantive reading. Either are valid, to me.

To take this to the exercise. If your goal is to do a fast mile, agreed that just walking the dog is unlikely to help. If your goal is to be physically active, simple walks punch well above what people think they do.

taeric··on It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history
To add to this, it isn't "doing it bad" if you aren't out there reading deep texts. Just as it isn't "doing it badly" if you can't run a 4 minute mile.

As you say, you get better at what you are doing. If you want to get faster, at anything, you don't really have the option of skipping the slow phase.

taeric··on The revenge of the philosophy majors
Wow, it is hard not to immediately think of that meme. There are indeed dozens of them!
taeric··on A better way to tie your gym shorts. (Or any drawstring) [video]
I've become a huge fan of the secure knot. Holds easily as well as any double knot I have ever seen, with the massive advantage of easy release.
taeric··on In Praise of Observational Evidence
Right, but you are just relying on a different form of random, there. The whole point of making controls and then building experiments on changing them, is to get more power from fewer observations. No?

Again, it is off to think that one is automatically superior to the other. Certainly to the exclusion of the other. And that is what feels off with the framing of the parent post. I am perfectly fine saying you should use both observational and controlled trials. But I think it is also wrong to think you don't have to build experiments to test interventions.

This is why you put metrics in your service code. So that you can observe them behave and look for things to change. This is also why you do test cases on your code, so that you can specifically target your change.

Now, I fully back the idea that just A/B testing something doesn't automatically mean you learn something true. But neither does observing a strong outcome on uncontrolled data.

taeric··on In Praise of Observational Evidence
This feels off. In medicine, any evidence can also be blinded by confounding factors that are far easier to miss without adding specific controls. Really, in any field this will be the case.

Should we demand an RCT before we accept evidence? Of course not. At some point you do have to make a choice on things.

And it should be noted that most drugs do have early cutoff criteria if the evidence is strong enough that it is working. It isn't like people are wanting to withhold good treatments from the world. Adding controls and randomizing them, though, has proven to be highly effective at helping progress.

taeric··on What Breaks a Cell's Ribs Can Make It Stronger
Everything that grows does this, to an extent? Consider software that gets more development effort. If it is getting more updates, it is likely getting "stronger" than that which is not getting updates.

Now, you can also argue that software is likely to get vulnerabilities if it grows too fast. But, that is also true for living things. Trees that grow too fast for their roots fall. Animal populations that grow too heavily will destroy their food sources and become more vulnerable to plenty of problems.

taeric··on Nintendo has raised its employees base salary by 10%
Thanks! And yeah, I knew a few markets were tanking. I was hoping there was evidence that people were starting to offer SRO style places.

Alas, I think there is such a heavy anti-landlord attitude around that nobody wants to be said landlord. Worse, towns don't like having apartment complexes. Worse still, we don't do anything to incentivize moving back to these neighborhoods for the people that do move away to work.

taeric··on Nintendo has raised its employees base salary by 10%
Right, I should have been clear that my assertion was not that there is lack of demand. My assertion is we don't build and offer this style. Outside of school dormitories. And even then, there is still a preference for bigger.

Would love to see more on the correction you are referencing. So much of the discourse I see focusing on "starter homes." Which, these are not that.

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