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DecayingOrganic

1,435 karma · joined May 2, 2018

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DecayingOrganic··on Advice to Young Mathematicians [video]
I really resonate with this. I've also struggled with perfectionist mindset when it comes to learning, especially in mathematics. Recently, I tried to meticulously add math problems to Anki for better retention, only to realize the time cost was too high. This perfectionist mindset often maximizes one variable (retention in my case) at the cost of all others (time as the most important one).

I've grown to really like this Richard Feynman quote: “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” It feels like I've been finally granted permission to embrace my natural, messy way of learning.

DecayingOrganic··on Benchmarking GPT-4 Turbo – A Cautionary Tale
Memorization often gets a bad rap as the underachiever's shortcut. However, it's a fundamental component of any learning process! Our ability to reason, solve problems, and innovate is all built upon a foundation of memorized information. In fact, it's precisely the reason humans have thrived for so long; we were able to memorize and pass down knowledge culturally long before the written word, not because we were 100 times smarter than our nearest cousins. Without memorization, be it in our brains or AI algorithms, there's no foundation to build upon for higher reasoning.
DecayingOrganic··on Drugmakers are set to pay 23andMe to access consumer DNA
Just because the benefits of sharing DNA data appear large, doesn't mean we should take potential drawbacks lightly. Imagine this: a future where a specific gene is linked to hard work. Companies start screening job applicants based purely on their genetic makeup -- if you don't have the gene, you don't get the job. Or even more worryingly, imagine the government starts surveillance on a group of people with a particular gene, claiming they're more likely to commit a certain crime based on some obscure study. It would lead to moral and ethical havoc. DNA data might not seem worth protecting right now, but unchecked, the misuse could be catastrophic.
DecayingOrganic··on My solopreneur story
I've noticed that negative comments often float to the top. That’s a bit of a bummer. No one's entrepreneurial success should make you question your life choices or become a reason for your frustration.

Congratulations Tony! I remember the time you quit your job and set a goal of reaching $10K/mo with a few products on twitter, it seemed crazy. But you pulled it off! Hats off to you.

DecayingOrganic··on About math limitations
Math as we know it, due to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, is not fully consistent - we can't even prove everything that is true with our current mathematical framework. This means that our understanding of math is indeed limited, not just by our intellectual capabilities, but by the very structure of the math we currently use also.

This makes me wonder, will we be able to develop new mathematical frameworks that bypass these issues? And if so, what will they look like?

DecayingOrganic··on Child pornography on sale from hacked Hikvision cameras using Hik-Connect app
Even with heavy licensing in the medical field, research cites medical errors like wrong diagnoses and surgical mishaps causing over 250,000 US deaths yearly [0]. Granted, some studies argue over the exact number, but the core truth remains. Licenses don't eliminate human error.

[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139

DecayingOrganic··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
Well, I don't agree with myself too anymore! I stand correct, and I apologize for the confusion I created with my poor argument. I need to read more carefully.
DecayingOrganic··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
Instead of arguing further, I'll directly drop the verbatim quote from the transcript here so that people can decide for themselves:

Christian: I said "If you want Apollo to go quiet". Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage.

DecayingOrganic··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
Great charitable interpretations! I wish you had done this impartially for both parties, but no worries! Now, let's look at the situation realistically. Let's say that instead of Steve's side asking for clarifications, he had agreed to pay Christian $10M when he said "I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. Six months of use. We're good. That's mostly a joke." Would Christian then say, "Oh no, I was merely making a joke," or would he accept the offer?

And do you think if Steve had made this offer, would we have even heard a second of this recording?

I mean, come on guys. He literally said "I can make it easy on you," named a price, and then clarified that he was mostly joking.

edit: Thank you for catching that! I've now changed "Steve" with "Steve's side."

DecayingOrganic··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
After carefully reading the comments and going back to the post, I take back my argument. It was flawed and did not represent the whole picture. I apologize for that. I think it wasn't a threat, but rather an unsuccessful attempt to sell Apollo before time runs out. I apologize for the confusion I created with my poor argument. I need to read more carefully.

--- I initially clicked on this post fully prepared to be outraged at Reddit and its CEO, but after carefully going through the audio, I just can't share that sentiment. I've listened to the recording multiple times, making sure that I'm not missing any crucial points in the conversation. It is evident to me that this statement, "if you want Apollo to go quiet," did come across as a threat.

Yes, the developer tried to backtrack later in the call by adding "in terms of API usage," but the damage was already done. Steve's side even provided several opportunities for him to clarify his statement, claiming that he couldn't hear him properly. I understand that many members of this community are rightfully upset with Reddit and its actions in recent years (me included), but we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that it really felt and sounded like a threat. ---

Transcript of the call: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f9...

Audio: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-3...

DecayingOrganic··on Tailwind CSS v3.3
Also to help with the maintainability, don't forget to use automatic class sorting (prettier plugin) for Tailwind! It works wonders:

https://tailwindcss.com/blog/automatic-class-sorting-with-pr...

DecayingOrganic··on New cognitive skills in the age of AI tailored information
Just run it by AI Text Classifier (OpenAI) [0], it said that it was likely to be AI-generated. I know the accuracy of such classifiers is nowhere near acceptable, but it really reads quite shallow.

[0]: https://platform.openai.com/ai-text-classifier

DecayingOrganic··on Anki and GPT-3
Anki's key benefits stem from its utilization of two highly supported and extensively researched pedagogical strategies: (1) retrieval practice and (2) spaced repetition. In contrast, the practice of note-taking, which essentially entails summarizing information in one's own words, has been found to have 'low utility' in academic literature. [0]

[0]: https://sci-hub.ru/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26173288/

DecayingOrganic··on Critical brain hypothesis: A physical theory for when the brain performs best
Any idea on how this would affect learning with a spaced repetition software? Perhaps, the practice of excessive recalling with, say, Anki could essentially be detrimental to learning in some aspects? As it would make certain connections in a neural network unnaturally strong and cause saturation and overactivation in the last layer.
DecayingOrganic··on Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?
Here's a detailed explanation for the application process: https://www.toptal.com/top-3-percent
DecayingOrganic··on Why I built a dictionary app
That is the App Store's age rating, not the actual age of the app.
DecayingOrganic··on DALL·E now available in beta
Since many people will start generating their first images soon, be sure to check out this amazing DALL-E prompt engineering book [0]. It will help you get the most out of DALL-E.

[0]: https://dallery.gallery/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/The-DALL%... (PDF)

DecayingOrganic··on Wealth as a predictor of whether an person pursues a creative profession (2019)
This advice of "make money first, then you can have time for your real passion" definitely reminded me of this blog post I read: https://siliconvict.com/articles/1-choose-money-first
DecayingOrganic··on A prompt engineering guide for DALLE-2
I signed up just over a month ago and from what I've seen, it looks like you won't have to wait more than two months to get your invite. A lot of people who signed up around the same time as me have already received their invites, so it looks like they're speeding things up and getting ready for a public launch soon.
DecayingOrganic··on A prompt engineering guide for DALLE-2
Hang in there — I only got my invitation a couple days ago. They're still rolling out invitations at a steady pace. But, just as a side note, one of the first things they tell you is that they own the full copyright for any images you generate.

You definitely have to play around with prompts to get a feel for how it works and to maximize the chance of getting something closer to what you want.

DecayingOrganic··on He dropped out to become a poet – now he’s won a Fields Medal
Although this article is well-written, I'm not convinced that he was "lost," or that he didn't really like math, based only on a few anecdotal stories. Furthermore, the article says that "he dropped out of high school to become a poet," but please note that, a number of students drop out of high school in South Korea to fully focus on the college entrance exam, in hopes of getting into better universities. This is not uncommon at all. And sure enough, he got accepted into the best university in South Korea, majoring in astronomy and physics. One of his classes was even taught by a Fields Medalist. If this is his definition of "being lost," I'm not sure if I'll ever be found.
DecayingOrganic··on Floating Point Math
I don't think you're being charitable here. Sure, their explanation wasn't perfect, but their line of reasoning was absolutely on point.

You almost gave a really good explanation yourself on why this should be the case but stopped short of it. Don't know why. Any terminating decimal can be written in the form a/10^{n} where a and n are both integers. After we have our p/q, there exists an integer c such that p/q · c/c = p/10^{n} if and only if q consists solely of the primes 2 or 5 (or both). And if not, then there isn't an integer c to satisfy said condition, thus making it impossible to write our p/q in the form of a/10^{n} (white still keeping the numerator an integer at least) so it's an infinitely repeating decimal.

DecayingOrganic··on The brain has a ‘low-power mode’ that blunts our senses
Ghrelin is not the only hormone involved in hunger, there are many hormones involved in different aspects of hunger. Secondly, even if ghrelin levels were to decrease, that does not mean that someone would not feel hunger, as hunger is not just determined by ghrelin levels.
DecayingOrganic··on Play with TailwindCSS in the Browser
As a side note, you can configure prettier for automatic class sorting for tailwind! It makes a huge difference in terms of code readability and maintenance.

https://tailwindcss.com/blog/automatic-class-sorting-with-pr...

DecayingOrganic··on Tools for Better Thinking
This is something I also did in the past. I would “ankify” the books I read, hoping to maximize my retention of the material.

However soon I ran into some problems, turns out I couldn’t remember the cues. The same way you can’t remember the capital of a country if you don’t remember the country itself first!

This led me to question the actual value I was getting from this whole ordeal.

DecayingOrganic··on Incremental Learning
Retrieval practice is one of the most effective ways to learn and retain new information. Research shows that it's more effective than summarization, elaborate interrogation, self-explanation, highlighting, imagery use for text learning, rereading and interleaved practice [0].

Not only that, retrieval practice has shown not only to boost retention but meaningful learning [1] as well. For example, in one study, students who studied a given text solely by practicing retrieval performed significantly better on creating concept maps than students who studied by creating concept maps.

Retrieval practice is not the only superweapon Anki entertains in its arsenal, it also employs distributed practice, which is another very powerful tool and finding in cognitive research with plenty of evidence supporting it.

[0]: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1177/1529100612453266

[1]: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1126/science.1199327

DecayingOrganic··on In Praise of Memorization
Anyone who's interested in this way of learning, I'd recommend you to check out retrieval-based learning (1):

"Retrieval is the key process for understanding learning and for promoting learning, yet retrieval is not often granted the central role it deserves. Learning is typically identified with the encoding or construction of knowledge, and retrieval is considered merely the assessment of learning that occurred in a prior experience. The retrieval-based learning perspective outlined here is grounded in the fact that all expressions of knowledge involve retrieval and depend on the retrieval cues available in a given context. Further, every time a person retrieves knowledge, that knowledge is changed, because retrieving knowledge improves one’s ability to retrieve it again in the future. Practicing retrieval does not merely produce rote, transient learning; it produces meaningful, long-term learning. Yet retrieval practice is a tool many students lack metacognitive awareness of and do not use as often as they should. Active retrieval is an effective but undervalued strategy for promoting meaningful learning."

1: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1177/0963721412443552

DecayingOrganic··on Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
You’re absolutely right, I do need to spend more time with users and really listen to them. It’s just my ego doesn’t want to be hurt so it feels safer just looking at the event log lol
DecayingOrganic··on Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
Marketing, sales people, and such are all great but if you don't have product-market fit yet, you're beating up a dead horse here by focusing on growth. One of the first things I do when starting a new SaaS is setting up an event tracker (think mixpanel). At this stage, you barely have any users so no need for fancy analytics stuff. I just stare at the event log until I figure stuff out. Why are they not clicking on that button? Why are they skipping this card? Lots and lots of problems can be discovered and tracked by this way.

After all this, if I have a weekly user retention hovering around 30%, I can't be more happy. Then it's time to grow.

DecayingOrganic··on Show HN: Free and open-source illustrations for your projects
I'd also recommend https://www.evernote.design/categories/illustrations which besides illustrations it also has categories such as free icons, design systems, sounds, and so on.
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