Programming Language Creator or Serial Killer? | Hacker News Reader

Programming Language Creator or Serial Killer?

vole.wtf

My takeaway is both programmers and serial killers look like regular people (and have some unflattering photos). The bias that you can tell killers apart by what they look like is created by the media, who probably choose sinister-looking photos when reporting on murderers.

I think the bias is fundamentally human, it’s been a thing since ancient times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy

It goes far deeper than that.

I remember a conversation with an i.r.c. user who claimed he “imagined” users to have a certain hair color based on little more information than their i.r.c. nickname. Until I pointed out to them that surely that cannot be accurate at all, especially given that he imagined two different hair colors of the same user under a different nickname on different networks, he also did not even quæstion the accuracy of this and simply silently assumed it to be accurate.

It was really quite weird. He proffered an entire description of what he thought I would look like based on very little information which, needless to say, was mostly objectively quite false.

The user with different nicknames went even further and at one point seemed to expect me to be able to correctly assume what so-called “race” he categorized himself as, without having seen so much as a picture. Given that this same user had prior expressed surprise about my so-called “race” when seeing a picture, thus having assumed it wrongly prior, this was especially odd.

I find that, ironically, a great deal of advice given to people on how to “be safe” is very counter-effective, for it inspires within them the mistaken confidence that they can easily recognize who is dangerous, and are thus more likely to drop their guard when such recognition yields a false negative.

I also recently saw a comment on a forum along the lines of “If Hollywood started to consistently cast beautiful people as murderers, murder would become more socially acceptable.”; — it wouldn't surprise me.

Well that's the issue, if we give people rules for people to follow when assessing the danger of a situation or someone's behaviour, then they are at a danger to anyone who can hack those rules and not set off the red flags. We have to teach people intuition, and to deeply question people's motives and what they have to gain versus what the person has to lose.

One doesn't even have to deliberately hack them; acting as one naturally does will be sufficient.

Most human beings do not naturally act as easily-identifiable Hollywood villains.

When does Hollywood cast any but beautiful people in any role?

Probably because a biography of Patricia Highsmith just came out, my first thought was of the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley. Matt Damon played Ripley.

"The face of crime", face shape theory, originated around Lombroso: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso

right up there with phrenology.

I got 8/10 which says otherwise. I voted serial killer for both women just because of how unlikely it is for a female to invent a programming language. If it wasn't for that I would be basically 90% correct.

This means statistically that there likely is a difference.

I can't put my finger on what it was though, I just knew. Basically anybody who looked insane must be an inventor of a programming language and anyone who looked normal must've not invented a language and therefore must be a killer.

I assume you were trying to describe how you did well using statistics and demographics, but your wording comes off sexist. It hits my ear as bragging about the disparity in the field, and I have to consciously try to change my initial interpretation to allow for something different. I also got an 8/10, but I had at least one woman in my set who was a language developer (one of the Cobol designers) and I got that right too. I went with the intensity in the eyes. By my method, I most certainly would have marked Steve Jobs as a serial killer, so it's not perfect, although in his biography he said he learned his trademark expression from a guy he knew who later started a cult.

I said something akin to men are unlikely to be nurses, so I didn't choose men.

I think the ideological rhetoric of feminism has infected the viewpoints of normal people so much so that one needs to tiptoe around something that is obviously true. This may be good from a social standpoint as it opens up equality of opportunity but it is bad for science. The movement has silenced people who point out inevitable differences in observation. Women are different then men and giving them equal opportunities will yield unequal outcomes based simply off of actual biological differences in behavior and physical stature. Such censorship is bad for science.

I stated an observation between sexes that is completely obvious and avoided even entertaining the reasoning behind why such observations are true because I don't know why they're true. Yet it still hit your ideological nerve, no doubt due in big part to the tenets spread by ideological feminists. I support equality but not equality to the point where it denies reality.

I'm sorry I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I shouldn't take the bait but, hey, you played a GAME that was structured such that you'd have a 50/50 shot of being right. Rather than assume that the balance of demographics in the photos were waited towards that game's premise, 50/50 split, you used your own biased heuristic and happened to get a good score. You happened to get a set of 10 that included no female language developers. I had a mixed set. 8 coin flips out of 10 of heads is not special. I had a heuristic too and I'm probably equally wrong about it meaning something. I'm being honest with myself, though.

>I'm sorry I gave you the benefit of the doubt.

This is basically your way of saying that my viewpoint is sexist. I have not acted in such a manner, and please cite evidence as to where I am acting that way if you believe otherwise. Basically all I'm saying is that people should stop turning every freaking conversation about real demographic differences into an ideological witch hunt. It's completely off topic and nobody is thinking about such things yet there always has to be some social justice warrior pointing out some "infraction" whoops did I say women are physically weaker than men even though it's generally the truth? My bad for being a heathen sexist.

>Rather than assume that the balance of demographics in the photos were waited towards that game's premise, 50/50 split.

I assumed the balance was not weighted towards sex. I assumed he picked random set of people where the sex and race were random and only whether or not they were language developers/serial killers was the heuristic. It was a mistaken assumption because if the picks were truly random, it is highly unlikely for women to appear in the question set at all (assuming women are unlikely to be serial killers as stated by some people in this thread). Obviously, because two women appeared in the question set, the heuristic is biased for other attributes as the test maker deliberately made sure the question set included two women.

Frankly, the test actually masks reality as we know it. Programmers, Language creators and serial killers are highly, highly unlikely to be women.

I'll confess I possibly misread your initial post. Were you saying your score would have been higher if you hadn't picked serial killer for both women?

The alternative pick which is marking both women as programmers would have made the score exactly the same.

Women are also highly unlikely to be serial killers. I don't know which is more unlikely.

Camille Paglia (feminist academic, professor) has written and lectured about why that is. She has a famous line: "There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper."

People need to balance there weaknesses with strengths. Just because one demographic is weak at something doesn't mean they're strong in another.

While intuitively I agree that what Camile Pagila says makes sense, there is no definitive evidence that was causes men to more likely be serial killers is what causes men to more likely be geniuses. Scientifically we still need to entertain the possibility that women aren't geniuses because of biology and this has nothing to do with the fact that they're unlikely to be serial killers. It might be true it might not be true, don't let ideology or pride in your own race/sex blind you from the truth.

Case in point, white people are more likely to be serial killers than other races. You may automatically think a racial centered biological origin of serial killer behavior is absurd but again this is the irrational need for "balance" and equality that is throwing you off. There is no scientific evidence either way, it could be Caucasian in origin it could not be.

Behaviorally we should be ideologically neutral for different demographics, but for observations of reality and discussing truth we should be scientifically neutral.

> Case in point, white people are more likely to be serial killers than other races

According to Wikipedia, that is false. There are more serial killers that are white in the US, but based on percentages of the U.S. population, whites are not more likely than other races to be serial killers.

I really don’t understand this. Is she saying that women tend to be less bold, outgoing, risk-taking? I’m a bit confused.

Basically that men tend to be more obsessive and more likely to occupy the extremes.

Here's a lecture where she explains in more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=243&v=HrscwJYO8G8

That's new information to me. Thanks for pointing it out, it might have changed my selection process for the women.

I found that qualities of the photo played a strong role in my 8/10 score. I can't say exactly which qualities helped make that determination, aside from one case which looked like a police photo.

Oddly enough, I thought that both women were programming language creators for similar reasons to yours. This is because they were older women. (Well, a new photo of an old woman and an old photo of a young woman.) While my impressions may be off, it seems like women played a much stronger role in computer programming before the 1980's than in the 80's and 90's.

It's pretty well documented that there's been a general decline of women in computer science over the past two or three decades. There are various theories.

The probability to get 8/10 choosing randomly with equal probability is 4.4%. This has 241 points now, so if we assume that the number of people that took the test and has an account to write a comment is similar to the amount of people that upvoted, we get 10.6 with 8/10. I prefer to round it to 10, because there are too many approximations.

So it's not unexpected to get a few person that got 8/10, even if it were a topic anyone knows nothing about.

(With a similar calculation we get 2.5 persons with 9/10 and .2 with 10/10.)

(From other posts informal statistics, there are like x100 visits for each upvote, but I guess more of them don't have an account or don't want to make a comment.)

The logic is sound when applied to my singular observation. But a good number of people got > 8/10. Read the thread.

I count 6 people with 8/10. So there are approximately 4 shy ones.

Anyway, one said that can recognize Guido. If you know one, you only have to get 7 out of 9, that has a probability of 7%. As expected, knowing one answer make the test easier.

The numbers are off. You can't have votes be your basis in how many people took the test ( I didn't vote for example) and you can't have the amount of 8/10 comments be a metric for the sole count of people who scored that much. The numerical game can't be played here because the information is too cloudy.

That being said, anecdotally a good number of people got 8/10, 9/10 and 10/10 which anecdotally makes it likely to be statistically significant. Hard to say quantitatively but we can make a qualitative prediction here.

I think that everyone that upvoted played the game. So I think that at least 241 persons played the game. (The actual number of players is probably way higher.)

If you assume that players have no knowledge, With 241 the expected to number of persons with 8/10 in 10, and with 10/10 is 0.2. (The actual number of players is probably way higher, so these expected values are way higher, but we must not count lurkers.)

Last time I counted, I found 6 comments that say 8/10, so even if only 241 persons played and none of them have any insight, it would be underreported. This is not unexpected, not everyone is posting the result.

Last time I counted, I found 3 comments that say 10/10, that's much more than the expected value if only 241 persons played and none of them have any insight. So that's slightly interesting. (Did a lot of people get 10/10 and didn't upvote? The people that say 10/10 is lying or cheating? Do they recognize a few of the photos and were lucky in the others? Do they have a sixth sense to recognize serial killers?...)

You were just lucky. There is at least one woman who developed a programming language on the list this quiz is using. I got Jean E. Semmet and she did invent the FORMAC programming language.

With a sample of one, it is hard to make any meaningful inferences ;) But intuitively, I do tend to agree with your point. Perhaps PL creators look a touch more... extravagant?

But I took 10 samples.

Let's take it to the extreme. Lets say the test had 100 questions.

If out of all the people who took the test, one person got a score of 100/100 out of 10 million people who took the test it means that there are meaningful differences, it's just that most people can't identify those differences.

it's also statistically unlikely for females to be serial killers as well.

It's also statistically unlikely for males to be serial killers as well.

hmm yes that's true, but not in the same way it is a statistically unlikely for females.

It is statistically unlikely for a male to be a serial killer, but it is statistically likely for a serial killer to be male.

Hmmm, didn't know this, thanks for pointing it out.

A similar game is Quant Fund or Metal Band:

http://www.quantfundormetalband.com/

My score there was only slightly better than on Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer.

Pokemon or Big Data? https://pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/

Ah I know Pokemon too well to fall for this one.

My guesses were worse than a coin toss. Why is there not a metal band called Wolverine?

There is: http://www.wolverine-overdose.com/

Doubly so: https://youtu.be/t1nuz1bvg8Y

You might also enjoy Goth or Moth?

https://vole.wtf/goth-or-moth/

10/10. Might help that I am quite into goth music.

Someday I want to make a version called Startup or Indie Band.

And there is https://www.proforhobo.com ...

I got cheated by this! Wolverine is both the name of a band (prog metal from Sweden) and a Quant fund.

There was also one for swedish metal band or ikea furniture

Yep, also totally reminded me of that: http://ikeaordeath.com/

haha yeah embarrassed thought I was gonna get 95%+

Magic card or Metal band is also a fun game.

Dang, quant funds are pretty metal!

I was a bit disappointed by the missed opportunity for a joke: Steve Jobs for the demise of serial ports.

Ironically, Steve Jobs supported USB, the Universal Serial Bus ;-). Maybe we could agree that Jobs wanted to kill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature ? :-)

I thought Apple was pushing FireWire at the time?

FireWire was replacing SCSI.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3

> The iMac was a huge success for Apple, revitalizing the company and influencing competitors' product designs. It played a role in abandoning legacy technologies like the floppy disk, serial ports, and Apple Desktop Bus in favor of Universal Serial Bus. The product line was updated throughout 1998 until 2001 with new technology and colors, eventually being replaced by the iMac G4 and eMac.

> ...

> A later hardware update created a sleeker design. This second-generation iMac featured a slot-loading optical drive, FireWire, "fanless" operation (through free convection cooling), a slightly updated shape, and the option of AirPort wireless networking. Apple continued to sell this line of iMacs until March 2003, mainly to customers who wanted the ability to run the older Mac OS 9 operating system. USB and FireWire support, and support for dial-up, Ethernet, and wireless networking (via 802.11b and Bluetooth) soon became standard across Apple's entire product line. The addition of high-speed FireWire corrected the deficiencies of the earlier iMacs.

USB promptly kicked out the ADB peripherals.

FireWire is serial, too. It seems that, over larger distances, parallel only is faster up to a certain clock frequency (or if you want to go to extreme lengths to ensure each wire in a parallel channel has the same transmission delay, as Cray did (https://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn/comments/11vku2/each_of_t...)

Right. There was a period in maybe the 2000s? when a number of the formerly parallel interconnect technologies were being replaced by serial ones because the frequencies had gotten high enough that clock skew was becoming a big problem.

Different purposes. Roughly FireWire replaced SCSI, and USB replaced ADB/serial.

And floppy disks! I was astounded at the time.

5/10. It's surprisingly hard...I even hesitated over Guido!

Presumably if it was easy to tell killers by their looks, they'd find it considerably harder to get away with the 'serial' part.

I got 9/10

But I think I know why... I started going partly by the style of the photograph, and partly by facial expression, but not their actual face.

[Edit] shame it's not random or a pool larger than 10, I can't do multiple trials to figure out if I just got lucky.

Even just applying filters or some more recent, casual killer photos would be helpful. For some, the "photo scanned from newspaper" look was identifiable.

Same here. It didn't help that his T-shirt was similar in colour to the stereotypical orange prison jump-suit :)

Lol

It should be “programmer or killer” and as a trick question it should include Hans Reiser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

The internet needs more stuff like this. I got 7/10 but I couldn't resist calling Guido a killer after the way he murdered Perl slowly for like a decade.

I don't care, I still love quirky perl.

I hope Perl 7 helps Perl make a comeback. Given Larry Wall's Christian background, it would be appropriate for his language to be crucified and then be resurrected later.

8 out of 10. To be fair, both avocations are attractive to unbalanced personalities.

> both avocations are attractive to unbalanced personalities

I thought to make a comment about an excess of meticulousness, but then I remembered Larry Wall and thought about Perl, so I suppose that doesn't really fly.

This reminds me of Cringley's theory that there are two main types of programmer, hippies and nerds. Hippies do big picture stuff and are good at UI/UX etc. but their low level code is sometimes untidy, nerds are great at fine detail and micro-optimization but can lose sight of the overall goal.

He's the analogue of the guy who just blew away whole families point-blank.

You can still set the record for being both though. To balance it out...

I was thinking there would be at least one that's both programming language creator and serial killer.

Would you settle for a filesystem creator?

EDIT: BTW they did include Randy Kraft [1].

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

Woh, there have been two file system creators that are murderers?

maybe creating a file system makes people... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kraft and Reiser, right?

What filesystem did Kraft create? Wikipedia is silent on the matter.

Sorry, I was unclear. Kraft was [merely] a programmer+serial killer.

Score cards are a filing system.

Hah!

Yeah. Unless there are others?

Not serial (AFAIK!)

But I guess he’ll have to do.

...yet

Well this got too dark after four tries before I backed out (I got three right). Gonna go take a shower and do some skin and hair grooming now.

It rubs the lotion on its skin

Or else it gets the code again

(Is probably how my compiler feels when I try to be clever)

I’m glad this comment got undead so I could upvote

When you click on a comment's timestamp, you can "vouch" for it, thereby raising it from the dead.

I had no idea! This site has too many weird hidden features

10/10, I am mildy disturbed with myself that I know by sight with seemingly equal weight both language creators and serial killers.

They say it takes one to know one. The question is if that refers to language inventors or murderers. I got 8/10 right, so I guess I had better come up with a programming language pretty soon. ;-)

Just one question: do you have a basement?

I've got 10/10. I've chosen to select people that I was instinctively afraid of as serial killers. It would be interesting to try this experiment on a larger dataset.

Next time I'm on a zoom call with my colleagues I'll be studying their faces for signs of evil intent

Scored 10/10. Marking mugshot-looking pics for serial killers and professional-looking portraits for programming language creators.

In terms of UX and a11y, please add a <form> for the Next button, so that we can do next without having to click (pressing enter, or even allow right key). Same for the Language creator / Serial killer buttons, use a <form>

I feel like the guy who was both a programmer and a serial killer was kind of an unfair question. :)

I wonder if the ones where they are smiling (e.g. Guido van Rossum) were replaced with stone-faced pictures, if the scores would be different.

That and this discussion was a brief moment of escape. Brings me back to my care-free days. Thank you!

8/10 I had the advantage of recognizing Sussman, Sammet and Guido. I don't think they look like killers. But I also didn't think that about Dorothea Puente and John Christie who I mistook for planguage designers :-)