926 karma · joined September 18, 2020
Wise that you omit adding other credible sources that do not agree with the main editor's views. What you're describing sounds like already preserving their work, no matter if it happens to be provide info based on multiple convergent sources or not.
Meanwhile you have a whole separate discipline [1] for potential weaknesses on machine learning algorithms. Of course they may win when it comes to interdisciplinary ubiquity in CS, but any algorithm that relies on data assimilation and has little analytic formulation will suffer in robustness.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_machine_learning
AIMA is Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig.
PRM is Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher Bishop.
ESL is Elements of Statistical Learning by Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani and Jerome Friedman.
Apart from these 3 you literally need nothing else for the very fundamentals and even advanced topics.
That's the main problem, it's becoming the standard in everything.
And ok, let's agree for the sake of it that it is like astrology. Astrology is unnervingly popular, there are columns of big newspapers HN reveres dedicated to zodiac signs.
A cult consisted of people buying into something very close to eugenics masked as science doesn't sound it would have trouble gaining mainstream appeal in today's American society.
In fact, there's a great example of such discipline having already gained significant traction, even on this website, and it is none other than the field of evolutionary psychology. This field has provided close to zero replicable hypotheses yet it has been successfully weaponized into justifying prejudice and antisocial behavior, especially in the context of racial differences and dating.
Something like advertising reliable prediction of behaviors based on DNA would be cherry on top.
This is a trait of delusional people as well as those very deep into some "technocratic" ivory tower without any formed code of ethics, too.
In the case of PRS assessment where it's already an established discipline, and not at all as unreliable as fortune-telling, it wouldn't be so hard to weaponize it.
I don't think they would care much for scientific validity in this case. It won't matter to them if the methods used are reliable. All they'll get is appraisal from mainstream media for their revolutionary approach, further ingraining social darwinism.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9_jI1bdZmz0hIrNCMQW1...
While we all can agree to that, reducing the PhD to just the new MSc comments is a bit worrisome.
But then take a look at so many ML PhD theses and one can truly see this is the case. So much unregulated garbage on ICML, NeurIPS as well.
What matters though is how efficient were the H. Sapiens brains.
Is it a USA/Silicon Valley thing to miss the arrogance and insufferability most fresh grads have when entering the workforce?
It's kind of tone-deaf to attempt to self-victimize as someone with significant work experience being concerned of being replaced by a demographic that is notoriously challenged to build experience.
Also the chin is slightly shorter and less sharp in the women's preference in both short and long-term cases. But yeah it's true that the women's replies seem to not deviate that much from the neutrally dimorphic male face.
Otoh it's surprising to see how both men and women thought the preferred female faces have to possess more than double the neutral dimorphic one.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28711970/
The occurrence of a genetic background in the etiology of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) represents the rational basis to postulate the existence of a male PCOS equivalent. Hormonal and metabolic abnormalities have been described in male relatives of women with PCOS. These males also have a higher prevalence of early onset (<35 years) androgenetic alopecia (AGA).
Hence, this feature has been proposed as a clinical sign of the male PCOS equivalent.
Clinical evidence has shown that men with early onset AGA have hormonal and metabolic abnormalities. Large cohort studies have clearly shown a higher prevalence of type II diabetes mellitus (DM II) and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in elderly men with early onset AGA. In addition, prostate cancer, benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) and prostatitis have been described.
These findings support the existence of the male PCOS equivalent, which may represent an endocrine syndrome with a metabolic background, and might predispose to the development of DM II, CVDs, prostate cancer, BPH and prostatitis later in life. Its acknowledgment would be helpful for the prevention of these long-term complications.Perfect pitch, for me, was an incredibly smooth and long learning curve. For each new instrument or texture I learned, I went from only hearing relative intervals, to being able to say, “this piece is probably in D major”, to being able to trace along the exact notes of the melody and bass lines, to being able to instantly lock onto notes when I wanted to. These weren’t discrete transitions either; I would have good days and bad days for recognizing pitches, and over time I would have more and more good days.
All this is indistinguishable from a person who has had received substantial ear training as is indeed the case with the author, and that is ofc commendable.
However AP is a completely different ability which largely boils down to at the very least being able to immediately [1] recognize the Hz aka note-name of any pitch-producing entity (keyboard/string/woodwind/brass instruments, toothbrush, drinking glass, car horn, airplane engines, door rattles etc.) with 100% success rate. There are even more strict definitions like being able to identify every single note of a specific cluster and there's variability of maximum number of notes each AP possessor is able to distinguish.
Also, short of old age and intoxication/sickness, the distinguishing ability is not affected i.e. no good or bad days.
All studies that attempted training any person past the infancy for this type of ability have failed and this probably includes even the notorious Valproate study [2].
I'm not saying this particular ability has no neuroscientific interest and I get the appeal of it being 'magical' however one can't help but sigh at how dreadfully disappointed so many musicians, some of them even very talented, feel for not possessing this. Maybe one could argue about it being a bit more important, not crucial though, in orchestral composition however the target audience feeling desperate to acquire it, which is perfomers of music, is definitely misdirected.
But even then, the article unintentionally presents a 'happy-ending' type of story; the author most likely definitely did not obtain AP ability but what they're describing is exactly what everyone who wants to have impeccable aural skills should strive for, and I'd wager there are many studying musicians that haven't developed their skills to the extent the author managed (and would greatly benefit from). Let's just don't perpetuate elitist obsolete conservatoire culture, which is largely where the AP possessor superiority comes from.
Not even the most vicious polemicists of communist states deny that i.e. the superiority of the Soviet-era education system.
https://www.amazon.com/What-Ivan-Knows-Johnny-Doesnt/dp/4871...
which is also why the following statement
> Most people suck at math, and will always suck at it.
is strictly US-centric.
> Anyway, most of your argument boils down to: there's a bunch of people that can't do a certain task, there's a bunch that has mediocre skills, a few that are good, and a handful that's really good. There's no argument, just observation, not even related to effort, which is what this discussion is about.
No, you came up with that cause you have a very poor understanding of what constitutes a good musician which, like any other typical HNer believes, is another LeetCode type of thing where the more problems like a good little monkey you can solve, the smarter you become. And I already stated that there are people striving in the arts, even more than the ones with the supposedly 'better' skills according to absurd and clueless standards you set, i.e. no, those who can't access specific repertoire easily are not people that can't do a certain task or a bunch that has mediocre skills.
> And maths is no different from sports or music in that sense.
Let me guess, you also think that if painters can't draw photorealistically they're not deserving the artist title and lack talent? Or that the opera is all about who can sing the highest note?
Anyone who lumps every discipline within one other like that without realizing they require completely different things to be considered successful at and believe everything boils down to some supposedly 'objective' absurd video-game like character strategy always serves to remind that the US today has nothing to offer other than hi-tech bombing technology and horrific subculture.
Nowhere did I deny the existence of some people having the innate ability to absorb skills faster and better than the others and of course this is an interdisciplinary fact. But it definitely doesn't hold the same weight for every single discipline for one to strive.
Bad example, it's much more likely to create a musical prodigy by providing early and appropriate guidance. Of course this is not easy as it assumes already ideal teaching methods and adequate motivation to the youngling, but even those with some learning difficulties have the potential to excel. The subtypes of intellect required to play complex music and absord advanced abstract math subjects are quite different, former requiring strong short-term memory (sightreading) the latter fluid intelligence -I think almost everyone is familiar with these terms by now and knows that one can score high/low on certain subtypes of an IQ test affecting the total score-.
BTW IDK if the Rachmaninoff choice was deliberate to imply that even the most capable who lack the hand size won't be able to perform his works well yeah, but there are like 1000s of others composers accessible that the audiences appreciate even more. Attempting to equate music with sports in such manner is heavily Americanized and therefore completely absurd. Tons of great pianists who didn't have the hand size to interpret his most majestic works and of others. Tons of others who could but never bothered. There have been winners of large competitions who barely played any of his works during all stages of audition or generally music requiring immense bodily advantage. Besides, it's almost 100% not a hand size issue when there are 5 year old kids playing La Campanella with remarkable fluidity.
And even in this case this isn't even the point. Most conservatory alumni today are 100x skilled than the pianists of previous generations... yet they all sound the exact same, their playing lacks character/variability, deepness, elegance to the point where the composers ideas end up distorted. And those can be very skilled but just have poor understanding of the art, which is what music is, not the fast trills/runs, clean arpeggios, very strict metronomic pulse.
> So no, unless you've placed the bar for "mathetical skill" pretty low, or can show me proper evidence, I'm not going to believe it. "Everyone is capable of..." reeks of bullshit.
Well the vast majority of people in the Soviet Union were very math literate, regardless of what they ended up working as (although indeed most became engineers) and in quite advanced subjects. This is obviously a product of the extensive focus of primary and secondary education on the sciences back then.
So the point isn't to make everyone have PhD level math background and I heavily dislike the dork undertones/culture that everyone should love doing abstract math on their freetime or have to have some mathematical temperament' . But let's not go the other way and claim that those not coming close to achieving the knowledge those in the top % of the fields possess, they are chumps.
Why is HN so brainrot shit at times man wtf. And you're just proving that you're exactly the type of arrogant techbro I was talking about.