Retra

You think, so you know you exist. That doesn't mean you know what you are, only that you are.

If the only reason Wolfram is writing about Feigenbaum in the first place is because it promotes his product, that makes it seem even more self-serving.

Out of all the ways he could get his point across, you think he just landed within a hamming distance of 2 of a misleading one on accident?

>But then I can't imagine a layperson having any idea what almost any of the sentence you quoted means anyways so your point seems pretty moot.

You're not being honest here. If you can't imagine it, it is because you're not trying. People walk away with impressions, even if they don't retain the facts. He always writes to give an impression, not to give facts. Facts are always the cover for the impression.

Here's another example from the article:

>But what is actually going on in a phase transition? I think the clearest way to see this is by looking at an analog in cellular automata.

Is he being honest here? Is this actually the best way to understand a phase transition? And is this cellular automata the one he should be using?

Of course! It's His Holy Cellular Automata. It must be introduced, even if only in passing.

Yeah, "it's fine." He knows what he knows, and you can't fault someone for speaking to what they know. But it is a grating and self-serving stylistic choice, and it does undermine his message. But if you're an investor or someone looking for a savior to worship or a bandwagon to jump on, he's certainly got all the answers for you.

I'm not even arguing with you, let alone constructing a straw man to argue with. I'm simply explaining why an explanation that justifies a belief is appropriate here. I don't care what you believe, I care why you believe it.

Labradors usually have a genetic disorder that causes them to gorge themselves, so they are highly prone to obesity. They are also very popular breeds in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labrador_Retriever#Inherited_d...

It's a bit incongruous to talk about "all humans" when you haven't experienced them all. Asking for a citation is asking for a justification for this generalization, not for a citation about the experience itself.

I mean, if the argument was "no human I've met can stand being alone for long periods of time", the obvious problem is selection bias: you don't meet people who like being alone.

Not being wrong doesn't absolve you from being deceptive. ("Save up to $1000!") A scientist doesn't hide the truth in fine print and technicalities, they expose it.

There is an example right in this article:

>(Confusingly enough, with typical “machine precision” computer arithmetic, this doesn’t work correctly, because even though one “runs out of precision”, the IEEE Floating Point standard says to keep on delivering digits, even though they are completely wrong. Arbitrary precision in the Wolfram Language gets it right.)

The man can't help but promote himself. He worded this in a way that makes it look to a lay person like he invented arbitrary precision arithmetic, but in a way that is still technically correct. It's like he's actively trying to peddle something to people who don't know any better.

How much does a home installation cost?

They're not booleans in ruby, python, js; they're objects that can be null.

I don't think the problems are meaningless because words might have different meanings, but because problems are often posed as if the words can't have multiple meanings so questions are often arranged in a way such that any reasonable solution will end up contradicting the meaning of words in the question.

IMO, the best thing to take away from Wittgenstein is that he understood how words acquire meaning -- through usage in context -- and that two people can think they are talking about the same thing but if there is any difference in how they use the terms, or any variation in what contexts they consider them appropriate, then they cannot be talking about the same thing, because they aren't using the words the same way in the same context.

Learning language is like learning a certain kind of morality: which words are 'proper' to use in which order, situation, etc. (And you can always find stark disagreement where any moralities diverge.) The wisdom of all this is to instead focus on where people have agreement, by establishing shared definitions, axioms, or even participation in activities. These kinds of things are 'meaning multipliers'.

So would going to a gym. But it's easier to build a habit of taking care of something you love at home than doing a chore you have to drive/walk across town to do.

If IQ functions that way, you don't need to measure it because people are already doing what you want it to enable.

People tend to preferentially value things that they understand. If you understand your employer's business platform, you'll naturally prefer it. I don't think you need such a cynical explanation to get the same end result...

Perfect doesn't mean absence of pain, conflict, or struggle. Certainly a physical fitness regiment would suffer under that attitude. Why should a mental or social fitness program be any different? Yes, perfect means perfect, but that doesn't actually tell you what perfect means.

How much you care isn't as important as how effective you are at running the organization. That seems like a counter-productive optimization. Let's say we have two charities: one that is run by 'bleeding-heart' passionista's who live in near poverty themselves, or one run by master marketeers and logistic experts who collect sustainable and fair wages. Which do you donate to and why? Which one will actually solve the problems you want them to solve?

Just because you work for a charity doesn't mean your work is itself charity. If you're collecting money to buy food for people, you still pay for the food, you're not demanding that the growers and packagers of that food simply give it away. Thus they still work to produce the food, and still make the market rate for that work. There's no reason anyone working at any organization should work for less than market rate.

I'm regularly imagining what I would actually be able to accomplish if I went back in time 200-2000 years. Details are always the problem. It reminds you how little you know, but also helps you to form a background interest in engineering, metallurgy, geology, chemistry, etc.

Think of it as a linguistic problem instead. What is the minimum number of symbols needed to express the complexity of nature together with the complexity of the interpreter needed to parse them? Simple forms are just those that compress notions well.

What you've said is not profound. When you go around saying "the sky is blue" people aren't wrong to assume you meant something relevant, rather than just tossing out vague and trivial statements.

>we must struggle to agree on a useful definition of intelligence, therefore it is a social construct.

This makes everything a social construct, which negates any usefulness of the distinction. Having to agree to definitions cannot be a realistic definition of social construct, because it's a basic part of using language.

They're not only checking two degrees though, they're checking as far as they can and just happen to find them within two degrees. So it's not "how likely are they to find them in two degrees", but "how likely are they to find them at any depth, and then given that they've found them, how likely are they to lie with two degrees."

Rust is not based on C++. People coming from Haskell/ML aren't used to C's backwards type declarations, and that's why they're not in Rust; the people who make Rust have experience with more than just C/C++. So it's not different for the sake of being different, it is actually trying to be similar ... just not similar to C.

"Released" isn't really important; "marketed and/or advertised" is.

>According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK.

That's not an objective way to look at things. If there were only 1 model of car being sold this year, you can bet it will sell with record numbers and produce more profit than any other vehicle in the past. The fact that records are being broken so rapidly is a bad thing; it means there's very few films worth watching, so everyone is going out to see the same thing.

Making it more abundant doesn't necessarily make it more affordable. You need the costs of extraction to be low, because if you want platinum, you can recycle and mine it here, it is just expensive. So the question is only whether it is more expensive to do it here or on an asteroid.

And what if they cure cancer and you haven't actually given them opportunities or assistance? Or what if they don't cure cancer? Did you not raise them sufficiently well?

People are also unreasonably squeamish toward unpleasant smells. Some things just don't smell great, and that's not actually a problem. It's life, move on.

You can record an encrypted message and get it decrypted by anyone who demonstrates knowledge of the key. The process is identical to finding someone who demonstrates knowledge of Haitian. Encryption is nothing more than an uncommon encoding.