dbpokorny

> This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the relationship with user generated content sites

By providing members of the general public with quality news aggregation and community management tools, Reddit has thrown a wrench into the gears of public relations, which today still resembles the model Edward Bernays outlined back in the 1920s. (Aside: I highly recommend "Crystallizing Public Opinion" for anyone who cares about PR. It is sill relevant after 90 years.) For decades there was a gaping chasm between the general public and public figures, their representatives, and little need to revolutionize the field. Today that chasm isn't closing gradually; it's collapsing with enormous force. The bubble is bursting.

On Reddit, it just doesn't matter how much money you have or how much you've invested in the community or how much perceived legitimacy you have outside Reddit; anytime you make a comment, you're throwing yourself to the lions. Lions who upvote the most caustic, brutal, and incisive questions they can come up with, focusing the community's attention and demanding more of public figures in a way no one could have predicted in 1995 or even 2005.

Do you know what happens when you type "reddit new york times" into Google? The top result is /r/nytimes. As a subreddit, it is essentially dead. Do you think it would be dead if the New York Times did not have its own user-generated commenting system? Do you think the New York Times would like to remain in control of its own user-generated commenting system? Of course it would. The point I'm arguing is that Reddit, by its very nature, has helped push the New York Times to adopt a policy of accepting user comments, and many other news sources have followed suit. Of course this point is impossible to prove, but even if there is merely a grain of truth to it, the implications are that those who own the news business are no longer living in a unidirectional media world.

The larger argument is that Reddit (and its predecessors such as Slashdot and Digg of course; I've unfortunately unintentionally marginalized their role in this comment), by its very nature, has systematically and irrevocably altered the public's expectations for online participation and engagement. There is much more going on here than textbook case studies.

> Now…people are doing math on tablets

This just isn't true. Every once in a while you see a student trying one out, but the technology isn't there. People do math with notebooks and pencils.

The author of this article fails to incorporate two relevant prior explorations of this topic: (1) from the Buddhist perspective and (2) from Wilfrid Sellars' work, in particular "Empiricism And The Philosophy Of Mind". The remarks below pertain to the first; the second is beyond my philosophy-fu to say anything meaningful.

Take the idea, "We see with our brains, not with our eyes" as a criticism of the "naive view" that sense data / fabrications are neutral, that they are just "out there", and it is only when they come into contact with the mind that the mind infuses the raw sense data with desire and aversion. The idea that we are just passive observers of phenomena.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu critiques this idea from the Buddhist perspective:

"040920 Disenchantment & Dispassion \ \ Thanissaro Bhikkhu \ \ Dhamma Talks" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8M-_Msav1Q

He says that on the contrary, desire and aversion are involved a priori in the formation of the fabrications (sense data).

So this is not a new idea. It is a very old idea. The idea that the technology of ML can confirm this particular critique of the naive view is novel (although I'm not convinced it is wise to draw conclusions about the mind in this way, just as I'm not convinced it is wise to draw conclusions about the way evolution operates based on artificial life simulations).

Please create a reddit throwaway and post your thoughts on /r/Buddhism.

Edit: why am I being down-voted?

What are your thoughts on scheme vs. python for teaching programming grades 4-8? UC Berkeley switched from SICP to (SICP - Scheme + Python) and I love both scheme and python but haven't the foggiest idea which is actually better for the student. I grew up on Simply Scheme (by Brian Harvey and Matt Wright) and SICP. In the mid 90s, python wasn't available as an option for me. After using HyperTalk '92-'95, learning Scheme was enlightening, and it was my language of choice '96-'04. Then I found python in '04, which addressed the "thicket of incompatible implementations" problems Scheme had and provided more powerful data structures (list and dict) out of the box. Python code is easier on the eyes as well; the human eye is not designed to quickly differentiate six ")" in a row from five ")" in a row.

The added syntactic readability of python comes at the cost of increased complexity of the parser, complicating the design of the meta-circular interpreter (SICP ch. 4).

The added power of the built-in data structures (list and dict) comes at the cost of increased complexity of the implementation of the built-in library, complicating the design of the explicit control evaluator (SICP ch. 5).

What are your thoughts? Is there any hope of adapting the ideas of SICP for 4th-8th graders?

> look at source code

A smart high-school student who enjoys a challenge comes up to you and asks which projects to look at, and (if you say more than one) which one to start with. What do you say?

Programming talent is developed through practice, and in order to practice, you need a foundation. This book gives you a good foundation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of...

SICP is an extraordinarily difficult book; "Simply Scheme" by Brian Harvey and Matt Wright is a good stepping-stone.

noble strategy - thanissaro bhikkhu

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/nobles...

Very readable introduction to the dhamma.

> And yet any media player beats it at its core functionality: video playback.

But can you build a democratic 24/7 music/video feed with a native video playback app? Maybe, but it is much easier with the web. And it has already been done:

http://botwillacceptanything.com:3000/video

https://github.com/botwillacceptanything/botwillacceptanythi...

I invite anyone with the time and inclination to submit a pull request that changes the content of the video feed.

> until their inability to drive a car keeps them from the polls...

According to http://www.mtvoters.org/node/356

If you're unable to drive to the polls yourself, you have several options:

You can vote by mail.

You can catch a ride with a friend or neighbor.

You can get a ride from one of numerous organizations and agencies that offer voter transportation. Call your local election office to find out who is providing transportation in your community.

The NSA has lost the trust of the American public and now needs to work hard to regain that trust. This is tone deaf in the extreme...the NSA must be in full-blown denial mode. Job #1 is admitting you have a problem. We have a problem. The NSA needs to figure out how it will achieve all of those positive outcomes (example: healthcare) while mitigating the risk of abuse of Big Data. Isn't this the story of the founding of America? Build bureaucratic and political structures to mitigate the abuse of power? Isn't this our heritage?

I think the NSA has already hired most of the people qualified to understand how best to build NSA 2.0 which I can only hope will lead to USA 2.0. A crack team of political scientists, social scientists, computer scientists, some historians, some mathematicians, and a couple of representatives from the organization without a name should be able to come up with something.

The democratic processes need to be renewed from time to time...isn't the NSA in the best vantage point to understand the future of democracy? If we could all get together and just nudge it in the right direction...

Why not use scheme streams and the SICP chapter 4 query language? This was done in the 1980s.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-24.html...

3.5.2 Infinite Streams

    And doge said,
    Let there be parody programming languages

    And there were parody programming languages

If even one person picks up "A Shorter Model Theory" because of this, much wow

How does it work when the subject matter is compilers, for example in the context of CompCert?

You are correct; Good art has an amplification effect on what already exists. It translates an experience that affects one person (the artist, or a character in the artist's imagination) to an experience that resonates for a larger audience.

If a work of art has enough emotional impact to change the habits of thought, then it is plausible that it could change behavior as well; but here it may be difficult to discern the primary work of art from second-order effects: the discussions that arise in response to or in criticism of the art. These second-order effects may drive the actual impetus for change.

I just finished http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide

Great book, I got the Peter Constantine translation. It was published 30 years before the French revolution.

To answer your question, the fact that the powers that be at the time took the trouble to ban the book is some indication as to the potential they felt it had for disruption.

If you want a behavioral explanation, you should consider the morale of any kind of resistance. Such morale depends on some kind of foundation and support. Inspiration for these may be found in art.

This is great news, it feels like the future is finally starting to arrive. Check this out: http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/

The essay "What happened to the future?" is, I think, notable for what it does not contain, which is any mention of mathematics.

The Digital Math Library project has been going on for years in the background (mostly in Europe). They have been doing conferences for years, and, at 30,000 feet, it looks like fascinating work: http://cicm-conference.org/2014/cicm.php?event=nop&menu=gene...

The computerization of mathematical reasoning, and in particular directing AI toward the study of the "pre-rigorous reasoning" aspect of mathematical work is, in my opinion, a great "plan of attack" toward general AI. Mathematics is about problem solving, and if computers can learn to do problem-solving well in the mathematical domain, in a general way, it seems to me that there is hope that computers will be able to solve problems in other domains as well.

Still no epsilon-delta support? This is the sort of thing I have in mind: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/110573/continuous-fu...

"Regulating the internet under Title II would invoke a firestorm of criticism from conservatives as well as centrist-liberals who see it as inconsistent with how regulatory agencies should operate in the modern era."

You end with FUD. Your credibility is at risk.

It is dangerous to go alone! take this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen

"When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes"

Clearly never used HyperCard.

Why don't we just shut down the FCC? (Serious question)

http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown-Septembe...

"forcing the deliberate use of different programming languages"

...wait, what? I don't see how this solves anything. It's like asking American schoolchildren to learn English, Russian, and Chinese before doing math. Makes no sense.

This is what happens when you don't have real competition in the operating system market. Shameful.

Wikipedia is getting very awkward - it is clear that some articles are 100% propaganda, while others appear to have honest insight into world events.

I guess it's good to break the habit of thinking that history (like AP US History) can be read in an "unfiltered" way, but without something like a comprehensive database of every single Wikipedia edit, with tools to help detect bias (example: CIA wants to edit an article) Wikipedia will become a victim in the information arms race.

In this particular case, I think statistics can reverse the obvious "tragedy of the commons" situation with Wikipedia.

For example: tools to help with associating edits / edit conspiracy / sockpuppet detection

If this is legal, is legality meaningless?

Control-F "asm.js", found nothing, Control-F "emscripten", found nothing, closed window.

Dude, JavaScript is the new assembler. Forget about JavaScript. It's irrelevant. Cat's out of the bag, IE+Safari are going to have to step up, and when that happens, it's game over. I, for one, welcome our new compiler overlords.

https://www.scirra.com/blog/132/more-about-asmjs-powered-phy...

Well, why don't you infringe the copyrights and then tell us how it goes?

I suspect that asm.js will obliterate the existing space of web browsers soon. They are bloated dinosaurs from the last millennium. In fact, a "browser-in-browser" project along the lines of jslinux and vim.js, where the entire browser tool chain is emulated (in the browser) is possible.

If a browser can be shown to be a lightweight dev tool with integrated toolchain servicing CPython, C, and JavaScript, rather than a glorified porn watching device, then there is hope for civilization.

It is really very nice that the source code is available. I do hope that open source will eat Capitalism alive soon. Not to mention copyright law. Right now, the tech industry looks like a bunch of crackpot inventors and psychopath totalitarian wannabes.