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VladKovac

67 karma · joined December 1, 2015

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VladKovac··on A Study That Bolsters the Lead-Crime Hypothesis
there's a sweet spot, obviously if you go too low you're talking about barely autonomous people
VladKovac··on The AI Misinformation Epidemic
sigh singularity hypothesis requires no "accelerating change" any eventually upward slope will do.
VladKovac··on If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists
Max Weber's theories on Protestantism being the cause of success in America have been pretty much thoroughly debunked when you control for differences in aptitude amongst the religious sects that arrived to America in it's early history. Not to mention his work led to the founding ideas of the Frankfurt School lol.
VladKovac··on Tech Interview Torture Chamber
One thing I found out from interviewing a lot (for junior-ish positions) was that dynamic programming questions are actually your friend. Since it's a "hard topic" they give you a relatively easy one that can be solved using brute force recursion with memoization slapped on top so it takes like 5-10 mins and looks super impressive.
VladKovac··on Office Hours with Sam Altman [video]
He has Ezra Klein voice. Or maybe it's called NPR voice.
VladKovac··on Artificial Addition (2007)
I believe the author himself said that computation improvements does make it easier to solve general AI. I think in value alignment theory there are still problems that they don't know how to do properly even with infinite computation though.
VladKovac··on IQ is only a minor factor in success
Stopped reading this comment after "Gladwell".
VladKovac··on IQ is only a minor factor in success
Contentiousness is a ~50% heritable personality trait, only slightly less than IQ.
VladKovac··on Why don't more physicists subscribe to pilot wave theory?
Can I just say this was very beautifully laid out. Much simpler and more convincing than what I could have done. Thank you.
VladKovac··on Why don't more physicists subscribe to pilot wave theory?
If you repeat the word "collapse" enough you can trick your brain into thinking you've actually explained something :P
VladKovac··on Why don't more physicists subscribe to pilot wave theory?
How convenient that this supposed "spooky action at a distance" can't actually send information ftl. Locality is very important for coherent laws of physics. Many worlds is still the most parsimonious explanation which is why it enjoys the most support from theoretical physicists. It's literally just extrapolating what we already see in small scale experiments to the macro scale, it's staring you in the face!
VladKovac··on Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores (2011) [pdf]
Turkheimer's laws are not the property of the man himself! I think it's pretty safe to say there's no clear winner on what the effects of schooling is on the margin at least.

You're right to correct me on school being part of the nonshared environment that's my mistake, you probably know more than me how complicated it is to extract meaning from the nonshared environment. Also the temporary nature of the improvements are very confusing. Thanks for the paper.

Here's a summary by SSC (not really an expert but worth reading): https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/19/teachers-much-more-tha...

VladKovac··on Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores (2011) [pdf]
Guys before you take this too seriously, PNAS is a publication repeatedly criticized by stats experts like Andrew Gelman. NHST techniques are bad, and there are many papers showing almost zero effects of education.

Plus your prior on this should be pretty low given Turkheimer's 3 laws of behavioural genetics. Especially since education is more like a shared environment variable rather than a unique environment variable.

VladKovac··on Simplify Your Message, and Repeat Often
Good way to get around NYT is open an Icognito window and paste the link, or use mobile which has a different article count already viewed.
VladKovac··on The legacy of Ada Lovelace (2015)
Actually we do have real female computer heroines like Grace Hopper which will do just fine.
VladKovac··on Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group
Angry rhetoric against middlemen, how predictably simplistic of you.
VladKovac··on Richard Stallman: How I do my computing (2015)
How is that refreshing? This has basically been the natural state of human thinking until maybe around the enlightenment. People used to just say things like "all is water" or "all is fire" in very principled assertive ways all the time.

What I find refreshing is the tiny tiny tiny percentage of people that treat their beliefs like a probability distribution that they update very frequently with new empirical and analytic information.

VladKovac··on Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay
So the way to counteract information asymmetry (if we assume it exists) is to artificially enforce less information on the employers? That can't possibly be the right answer unless there's some systematic bias that leads to worse economic outcomes when employers happen to know a candidate's past income.
VladKovac··on Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay
>It was really intrusive

Imagine how painful it is to be an entrepreneur with a very weak signal about how much you can pay people to remain happy to work with you without going broke and still retaining good enough talent.

VladKovac··on Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay
What are the chances that in this particular case, enforcing noise in the data actually leads to better economic results?

Technically less information can lead imperfect human reasoners to more rational allocation of resources, but you'd have to do a lot more work to prove that to me than some policymaker's "feeling".

VladKovac··on Movable Housing for Scalable Cities: A Reply to YC
Two questions about the Poverty Equilibrium:

1. Are the majority of the evil extractors (a)regional powers that impose uniform rents or are they (b)targeted extractors that specifically exploit low educated/frail-minded individuals?

2. Does a subset of the latter group of wealth extractors (b) benefit from high mobility in any way? I don't know the full range of extraction schemes which is why I'm asking.

PS. There is a lot of overlap between a&b (see: Ferguson PD and private prisons) but the questions still stand.

VladKovac··on Livestream: Peter Thiel Speaks at Republican National Convention
> I don't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform

Pretends that party agrees with everything he's saying.

VladKovac··on Destroy All Ifs – A Perspective from Functional Programming
Functional programmers love to emphasize how all the aspects of programming that their pet language is uniquely good at dealing with also happen to be the biggest problems in code maintenance. Is there any actual data on what the biggest problem sources are?
VladKovac··on Spotify: Apple rejected our app update to drive iPhone users to Apple Music
They have a big market share, they protect the IP, and they are technically beholden to their clients. Why wouldn't you do business? The cost-benefit for Apple probably always leans towards "Hope competitor X fails".
VladKovac··on Longevity Inc
I can't resist: "I want to live one more day. Tomorrow I will still want to live one more day. Therefore I want to live forever, proof by induction on the positive integers." - http://hpmor.com/
VladKovac··on Why Infinite Scrolling is probably a bad idea (2015)
I don't think infinite scrolling is an obvious lowest common denominator manipulation technique like sexy photos, pimple popping thumbnails, or clickbait titles. Mainly because it isn't signalling that the content is obviously low quality, it's just a more accessible reorganization of the layout.
VladKovac··on Why Infinite Scrolling is probably a bad idea (2015)
This misses the most important question: Does it work better than alternate designs at baiting customers to keep reading?
VladKovac··on Why Young Americans Are Giving Up on Capitalism
This isn't some local trend in history, everyone is born with anti-market bias. We come from small bands of hunter-gatherers with fairness and egalitarianism built in through reciprocal altruism. The problem is a lot of market policies seem unfair when you look at them at a glance. That's why older people become more fiscally conservative (including older liberals) because you start to understand the underlying mechanisms and the empirical support of market strategies. Read Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter" if you want a more thorough discussion of this.
VladKovac··on 'We're in a Bubble'
So you're telling me you can only tell if it isn't a bubble if the market steadily declines eventually? Also how much should it steadily decline by before we're sure it's not some local decline phenomenon unrelated to the bubble?

Whatever "bubble" means, it should probably only be used as a description of an abrupt crash in retrospect, otherwise we're always in a non-falsifiable bubble state. Saying "We're in a bubble" really just means colloquially "I think this market segment is overvalued", probably not much more than that.

VladKovac··on Laid-Off Americans, Required to Zip Lips on Way Out, Grow Bolder
Ceteris paribus allowing anyone in the world to take a job if the employer wants them leads to better outcomes on average. That includes the situation where America is paying for global protection and other special negotiated treaties.

Even if you wanted to specially protect American workers, it would still be more beneficial to allow anyone to take the job then use the excess GDP to make up for the lost wages of Americans. The estimate by Borjas (the most anti-immigrant economist) is that wages would drop at most 5% (IIRC) if open borders happened.

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