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alentist

285 karma · joined December 17, 2019

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alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
> Way to make up strawman's argument.

Please explain what you think I’m strawmanning. If you demand that certain topics be banned from discussion, you must explain, as a matter of implementation, who gets to decide what is banned.

> Do you agree that there are objective facts that should be accepted by the society

What, concretely, do you mean by "should be accepted by the society"? To use an extreme but historically common example, does it mean that people should be executed for having different beliefs? You need to be more specific.

> If you do not believe such object facts exist

I do believe the Earth is round. I do believe it’s a fact. I don’t believe people should be banned (or worse) because they think otherwise.

In fact, flat Earth theories are interesting, because they challenge my assumptions and ultimately clarify my understanding of the subject.

This is why freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas is so important: It is the only mechanism by which we can correct our own epistemology and keep it in check, both at the individual and at the societal level!

> there must be some mechanism that raises certain statements into the status of "facts"

Sure. What does this have to do with censorship, though? The topic of discussion was policy, i.e. what is to be imposed on other people.

alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
> A private company stopping people spewing misinformation to huge numbers of people using their private platform isn't "censorship".

How does this relate to Twitter blocking private messages between two people for including the NYP article?

> because you have to be heard and we can't let everyone broadcast to everyone: there is too much noise.

How does this relate to Twitter blocking people from seeing an NYP article shared by people they explicitly chose to follow?

alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
> People are stupid.

But not people like you, of course.

> They're easily mislead.

That’s right. They need to be led by someone like you, instead.

> Those decisions effect me.

And your “stupid decisions” affect me. Which of us gets to subjugate the other, because the other is “stupid”?

See the problem, Colin? Where are you going to find these angels who will rule society for us? I’m not exactly eager to delegate the task to you.

alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
> They should be cancelled if they are proven to be dangerous to the society

“Proven” by who? You?

No thanks.

alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797040
alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
Are you taking issue with this sentence?

> BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police.

Because that sentence is literally correct.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte...

https://blacklivesmatter.ca/defund-the-police/

https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-lives-matter-philadelphia-l...

https://facebook.com/sometimesantisocialalwaysantifascist/po...

alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
> You cannot protect your family with a gun

Why make such an obviously false claim? It already has in the past.

> it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield

Non-sequitur.

alentist··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
> I'm imagining someone who messes up badly enough to get banned from all those places and still somehow blames the stores rather than their own actions.

That’s exactly what antisemites say of Jewish expulsions.

alentist··on Toward an API for the Real Numbers
Equality of computable reals is undecidable.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/40618/uncomputability-of-...

alentist··on Faster Than Light in Our Model of Physics: Some Preliminary Thoughts
If I understand correctly, condition 4 (see page 104) no longer holds. The new theory, in contrast to the old theory (see bottom of page 100), seems to be a multiway system.
alentist··on Faster Than Light in Our Model of Physics: Some Preliminary Thoughts
> Einstein's Theories forbid as fast as light, but say nothing about faster than light travel.

Yes it does. This is a basic consequence of the underlying pseudo-Riemannian geometry. In terms of PDEs, the field value at any point is fully determined by the initial conditions on a Cauchy surface within its past light cone.

Quantum mechanically, field operators at spacelike-separated points commute.

> Also, it seems pretty clear that Wolfram does not understand the concept of Warp drive, which is not used to propel the craft, but instead used to warp space to come to the craft

You didn’t read the article. This is addressed at the end, under “What about warp bubbles and the Alcubierre metric?”.

alentist··on Reasons Revealed for the Brain’s Elastic Sense of Time
What specifically do you find “disappointing”?
alentist··on Reasons Revealed for the Brain’s Elastic Sense of Time
Can you be more specific? Backlash from who? The Reddit/Twitter bubble?
alentist··on Uber secures right to continue operating in London
That’s not what externality means. That you don’t like something doesn’t make it an externality.
alentist··on FBI examined Google records to see if anyone had knowledge of Guccifer persona
> who then use that data to coerce you into buying products and services that you might never have purchased if left to your own devices.

That’s not what coercion means.

coerce: persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats

Don’t cheapen the word by misusing it.

alentist··on Stereotype accuracy: One of the largest, most replicable effects in psychology [pdf]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)#Cogni...
alentist··on Modeling a Wealth Tax
Note: Income inequality [0] and poverty rate [1] are in-distribution relative measures, not absolute measures. You could “improve” these measures by making everyone worse off (i.e. a Pareto worsening).

[0] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm

[1] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm

alentist··on Facebook Fired Employee Who Collected Evidence of Potential Political Bias
Their comment history, in conjunction with recent comments like this one [0], makes me wonder why this individual hasn’t been banned already.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24190744

alentist··on Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus
> that's one of the MOST conservative media outlets in the world

That is far from true.

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/financial-times-media-b...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/financial-times/

alentist··on A Darker View of the Renaissance
The “Dark Ages” does not mean what most laypeople think it means. Most historians don’t use the term anymore, because it’s too difficult to shake off the misleading connotations it has to the public.
alentist··on Math Overflow users resolve PhD thesis crisis
There’s the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC): https://www.avcconsortium.org/aboutus
alentist··on On Using Twitter
> If you are tweeting about programming in a robotic manner...

What do you mean by “in a robotic manner”?

> ...you do have a hidden agenda.

What agenda? Why is it hidden?

> Pretending that you can talk about the programming in a 'neutral' way is a radically political opinion.

Why do you think that’s a political opinion? Why do you think it’s “radical”? What is it radical in relation to?

> I get it, you actively and loudly...

What do you mean by “actively and loudly” here?

> you... don't want to discuss anything that isn't immediately interesting to you

How do you know that? Do you know the GP?

> that itself is a strongly political statement.

What is?

alentist··on A philosophical difference between Haskell and Lisp (2015)
This comment would be more informative if you briefly explained why you abhor it and hate almost everything about it.
alentist··on The Soviet web: the tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet (2017)
What makes you think central planning within a single corporation is comparable to central planning for an entire society?

I recommend reading about the theory of the firm to understand why they emerge and what makes them efficient.

alentist··on The Khmer Rouge: Genocide in the Name of Utopia (2016)
This is not an isolated incident, unfortunately. He also praised Mao’s policies shortly after they caused the worst famine in human history.

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2003/5/the-hypocrisy-of-noam...

alentist··on Division by zero in type theory: a FAQ
> it is (in some sense) arbitrary that X^Y means Y -> X or its size (cardinal exponentiation)

Are you referring to the notation? I don’t think notation is what’s being contested.

> in analysis may mean exp(y log x)

Doesn’t work with a base of 0.

> We accept that for natural X,Y except (0,0)

Why “except”?

> that does not imply that they should agree at (0,0), because the definitions are simply not the same.

The definition of exponentiation of reals typically starts with exponentiation of naturals as a given (see Baby Rudin).

> The usual way to transport a definition from a discrete domain to a continuous one is a technique called analytic continuation. I am curious if there is an analytic continuation of the discrete X^Y which contains 0^0=1

Analytic continuation refers to something else, but I get what you’re trying to say.

The answer is simple: Real exponentiation is an extension of natural exponentiation. Hence, it should have the same value as the latter wherever the latter is defined.

Yes, I’ve read that SE question before. It’s good that you brought it up. I recommend reading the comments under the accepted answer and the other answers as well.

alentist··on Goodhart's Law and how systems are shaped by the metrics you chase
Somalia, Congo, and North Korea produce very little. Is this what you had in mind? If not, could you clarify?
alentist··on Division by zero in type theory: a FAQ
It IS semantically correct. The number of functions from a set of 0 elements to a set of 0 elements is exactly 1. No parallel argument exists for division by zero. The two situations are not analogous at all.
alentist··on YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech
Interesting speculation. On the other hand, there is an association between strongly opposing principles of free markets and problematic ethics.
alentist··on Julian Assange in Limbo
I’m a victim of sexual assault as well, and what you said is not true.
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