1,471 karma · joined February 4, 2012
What does continue to amaze me is that users tolerate how much data FB collects, how they use the data, how duplicitous they have been over time with users, and how they manipulate your feeds/user experience to benefit their revenue/advertising income. But I have come to realize most people just don't seem to care about privacy that much.
Moreover, how would you balance these two algorithms' holdings?
Regardless, there are a great many nuances, complications, and technicalities involved in trying to keep an index fund on-target. Not just the pricing and liquidity issues mentioned in this article. This is especially true for very large funds with hundreds of billions under management. Index funds are as close as one can get to full automation today, but taking the last step to full automation won't happen without fundamental changes in underlying systems like the exchanges.
It's not clear if it would even be advantageous to automate human decisions away completely here. Proposed automations often run in parallel simulations to a manager's work and are plugged in when they seem empirically to do better than a human manager can. Obviously that hasn't been the case across the board just yet.
Most art, and certainly most paintings, movies, and most of Bach's work, is written for a general audience. Works of advanced, pure math however are written for a very specialized audience, purposefully.
This does not mean, though, that math cannot be written for a general audience and be understandable or even "beautiful". As an example, Cantor's diagnolization is understandable by a 10 year old. The profoundness of the question it asks is also understandable, as is its initially seemingly mind-bending inscrutability. What's more the solution and the logic of the proof are perfectly understandable and some of the easiest to understand explanations literally use a child's method of counting (mapping fingers to numbers). This is a beautiful work of math. And much math could be written for broader consumption. It's not done frequently only because that isn't the task most mathematicians set themselves to.
Moreover, even outside the actual proof, many math results can be described in understandable and even beautiful ways. And the derivative results of mathematical discoveries are often easy to describe, understand, and appreciate as impactful and beautiful.
So, I think this is a function of choice and focus. Perhaps math could indeed more popular if greater efforts were made here, but mathematicians as a group on the whole haven't set out to popularize it.
Now, no matter how much effort is applied, math will probably never quite be as enjoyable to most people as music or movies. But with such efforts math may be more appreciable to a wider audience, as say paintings or poetry are.
But with time then freed up, the question becomes how you spend it. Do you vacation? Do you start a side project, or a bevy of them? Or, do you invest your time and energy into your highest point of leverage: your existing large, profitable company.
In the latter case, you still want ultimately to be CEO. Your goal then is to structure the company, if possible, so that it continues to fulfill its mission and to grow while you focus on the things that you feel are most important and which are most well-suited to your interests and perceived talents. For some company+CEO pairs, that may in fact be the core operations themselves. For others, it may be building toward conglomeration or investing in strategic R&D.
This helps explain the Alphabet restructuring. But it doesn't mean that suddenly Page has less to worry about. He could if he chose to step back, but as long as he feels drive to make an impact, to make the highest use of his talents, and that he can do that largely through Google/Alphabet, he'll want to remain CEO, he'll want to work hard at the company, and he'll still feel the (admittedly self-induced, chosen) pressure.
Let's also quickly look at each of the aforementioned areas of focus for a CEO who continues to have drive and believes that drive is best leveraged at their existing large, profitable company.
For some company+CEO pairs, that may in fact be the core operations themselves.
Apple is a good example here. Tim Cook could delegate whatever aspects of Apple's operation that he likes. But if he continues to have drive and views Apple as a great way to realize that drive, then his best use today is in focusing on Apple's core operations. This is because Apple's continued growth and profitability is, today, almost entirely dependent on continuing to frequently ship cutting-edge devices worldwide. That requires a very heavyweight operation, and there isn't much "revenue momentum". Apple gains network effects in the power of its brand, its distribution, and its manufacturing chain. But its revenue growth and profitability are dependent, today, on each new generation of devices. Thus, Cook had best focus there, while trying simultaneously to build toward greater "revenue momentum" in the future.
Compare this to Google, who just like Apple is also primarily dependent on one profit stream. But Google's profit stream in advertising has more self-sustaining revenue momentum. This allows Google to have focused on other areas outside the core profit operation earlier, and helps explains the Alphabet restructuring. Apple may get there one day (and it seems to me they are trying to... witness all of their recent attention on and talk about services/subscriptions), but they're not there yet. In addition, Cook is an admittedly operations focused executive, while Page is more inclined toward R&D and long-term strategy.
In combination, these things help explain how both Cook and Page can delegate as much as possible, but still remain very busy (and in very different ways) at both of their companies.
The push toward conglomeracy that Google is undergoing now is largely based on build-outs of internal brands ad operations through R&D. Others, like Disney and GE, went down the conglomeration path through combinations of internal buildouts and acquisitions. While building a conglomerate, the CEO is wisest to delegate on the core profitable operations and focus on the conglomeration process itself. This is what we're seeing with Google now, and something we may see in the future with Apple. After achieving a large and diversified conglomeration, the CEO is wisest to focus on governance/guidance/measurement and strategic guidance of the groups as a whole. This is what we've seen with GE, Disney, et al in the past.
However, the answer seems mostly to cover what it feels like to study tractable problems. Things like reading and understanding others' research or work, or studying new questions which seem "within reach, or nearly so." This is representative because this kind of work forms the majority for most mathematicians, and nearly all of the work for non-professional mathematicians who have studied math deeply and keep abreast of their fields, but don't research full-time.
One aspect of the experience of understanding advanced mathematics which doesn't seem to be covered thoroughly here is what it feels like to study truly intractable questions, let alone those questions which you fear may actually be inscrutable. The simultaneous awe, respect and consternation one feels when confronting truly difficult questions which you intuitively feel you just don't have the tools for. The problems which you think you'll need to discover new tools to even begin breaking down. This answer generally projects confidence and fluidity in tackling problems. And that's fair, in that this is the biggest change one undergoes when tackling mathematical questions after studying advanced mathematics deeply.
For deeper questions-- those which you feel you are very far from being able to answer-- the experience isn't quite opposite of what is described here, but it is different. When you feel that all of your fluid mappings and transformations, all of the most powerful tools at the ready in your toolbox, and all of your simpler analogues are not only not going to solve the problem, but are unlikely even to lead to a truly deeper understanding of it... when you're not even sure whether breaking the problem down in a particular way will be productive or counterproductive... when you've wrestled with a problem for days, weeks, and months and you're still not sure if the "foundations and frameworks" you've built are even of the right type or in the right vicinity to solve the problem... then the sense of confidence projected in this answer falls away. The sense of assured solution-- even assured understanding-- and fluidity of movement in problem solving is no more. You're still confident in your mathematical knowledge and ability, and certainly you feel differently than you did as a beginner. But it is a humbling experience.
The process of tackling these questions is not quite so structured as the impression that might be given by reading this answer. In these situations, Wiles' analogy of stumbling in the dark through a great mansion for months and years (which the author also quotes) is closer than the analogy given by the author of building a house. What even Wiles' analogy doesn't quite capture, at least in the section quoted here, is the uncertainty of the process of stumbling through that mansion. At various points you ask, "does this room even have a light switch? At least one that I can reach?" There is tremendous backtracking as well, rather than the sense of steady progression in discovering and understanding room after room. Imagine stumbling through the dark for weeks or months, finally discovering the lightswitch in a room... moving to the next room and doing the same... then on again to the next room to do the same again for yet more weeks and months... then only to discover, based on what you've seen in these rooms, that you must in fact be in the wrong hallway. Or the wrong wing. Or even the wrong mansion entirely.
In any case, I think this is a wonderfully insightful answer overall and its author deserves great credit for being so thorough, so accurate regarding the great majority of work, and so descriptive and relatable. I just wanted to enhance the picture painted here, or expand one little corner of it, as it relates to other types of experiences one is almost sure to have in understanding advanced mathematics and trying to apply that understanding to work in the field.
Fun game concept!
Good stuff, thanks for sharing!
One potential "great filter" always stood out as likely to me, even if all the other leaps before we came along had been made:
That filter is developing the combination of (i) self-aware intelligence to a degree that you are capable of deep layers of abstraction, (ii) the physical ability to adeptly physically build complex creations, (iii) an inclination toward social living that encourages cooperation. Other relatively high intelligences have evolved here on earth: octopuses, dolphins, elephants, etc. But it's hard to imagine any of them being physically capable of dramatically modifying their environment and building complex, useful creations. And we mammalian humans, dolphins and elephants are all social and cooperative to some degree, but octopuses don't seem to be. The combination of these three occurrences is extremely powerful, but may also be extremely rare. And it's difficult to imagine a space-faring civilization that wouldn't need all 3.
And Group 2 seems reasonable too. In particular, it's interesting to consider that while we currently hold an expansionist mindset because expansion has driven the course of our civilization, this may be a temporary thing. It makes sense when competing locally with enemies (other tribes, cities, nations, empires, etc) that are very similar to yourself. And we believe that survival and expansion go hand in hand. But it may well be the case that intelligent species generally discover that survival is maximized when not expanding aggressively, beyond some point, and when conserving resources. Hiding themselves so as to minimize the risk of contact with other alien species may go hand in hand with that as well.
So, between seemingly plausible filters in both Group 1 and Group 2 explanations, I think it's reasonable to entertain the possibility that it'll be a long time before we meet another alien civilization, if we ever do.
To;dr: fairly strong and reliable correlation between depression and posting images that are bluer, grayer and darker. This is predictive in that users can be identified as depressed before they are disgnosed. # of faces appearing in user pics was also indicative of depression. Fewer faces per picture correlated with depression. # of comments more weakly correlated with depression, and # of likes was negatively correlated. Mechanical Turk-tasked humans were also able to fairly accurately identify depressed users, but often identified different users than the machine.
Statistical methods: Bayesian feature extraction with uninformed priors. 100-tree random forest for classification.
Some points of caution: depression is a broad, fairly fuzzy term. The authors acknowledge that this complicates matters. Some self-selection bias possible, as users had to provide permission to access Instagram streams and many users opted not to.
There is nothing uncomfortable about this, unless you somehow have trouble distinguishing this fantasy world from reality, or believe this game for some reason should teach you life lessons and influence your personal values.
I personally am sick of this kind of hand-wringing, navel-gazing writing online. Especially as regards games, of all things. This isn't thoughtful critique or meaningful introspection. The original tweets are good critique. This writer's article is simply melodrama, false-intellectualism, and pseudo-ethics.
In terms of videogame critique, there is no doubt a lot to say about No Man's Sky. Including that it is disappointing that a game which is so creative, innovative, and envelope-pushing in so many ways reverts to rote mechanics like point-and-shoot and a trite explore-collect-upgrade-expand core loop design. I personally would have loved to see NMS' core loop be about discovery and improvement -- leaving planets better than you found them, perhaps. (Though "better" on what dimensions and metrics would be an interesting question.) And one could actually write a meaningful article on philosophy, culture, or even sci-fi and futurism based on the universe NMS presents for consideration. Unfortunately, this article does none of this and is a lazy aping of more thoughtful tweets.
As much as the article critiques NMS for relying on the tropes of shooting, and extracting+expanding in games, it leans entirely on its own tropes of online "journalism" today, with shallow thinking, false moral criticism, and pointless hand-wringing for the sake of attention.
I imagine this is true for many trades. One can be an effective autodidact carpenter. An effective autodidact musician. An effective autodidact writer.
It's interesting to consider which trades being an autodidact is seemingly most difficult in. Being an autodidact doctor or surgeon seems a major stretch, regulatory issues aside. Being an autodidact civil architect or even mechanical engineer seems difficult as well, though no doubt possible for some. Perhaps the worse the consequences of mistakes (doctor, surgeon, architect) and the higher the bar of knowledge to be effective (mechanical engineer in advanced spaced, doctor, etc) the less likely autodidacts are to be effective. This reconciles well with programming being a feasible autodidact field -- consequences are neither as dire as being a surgeon nor failures as clear to see and measure as being an architect, and it doesn't take a great deal of knowledge to get started and be productive in programming.
Think this a smart move on Hulu's part. And depending on the economics, potentially smart for Yahoo+Verizon too.
Bloomberg's early-stage VC fund will only invest in Series A or earlier companies. Then when looking at AI companies they ask two questions: "1) Do you have access to your own user? 2) Do you have access to a data set that's yours? If they have both those things, then they can create a virtuous cycle where the user contributes the data, the data gets better, and it makes for a better user experience."
Asking about access and usage rights to data and means of applying learnings from the data is a very obvious qualifier, so there is little valuable insight here.
The study seems very well-constructed and powerful. They demonstrate that direct stimulation of reward neuralchemistry produces specific and varied immune system responses, and also discover the pathways for this effect. They demonstrate causality well and also show that if the specific pathway they identify (the sympathetic nervous system connecting to lymphatic cells) is blocked, the increased immunological response no longer follows the neural reward stimulation. This seems really, really well done and it's high-impact science.
Upon reading the study, I wondered what might have created this mind-body link, in evolutionary terms. It turns out the authors considered this question as well. From the SciHub piece on this paper: "Many activities that are known to stimulate reward-system signaling in the VTA, including engaging in sex, socializing and traveling, markedly increase exposure to pathogens. Therefore, it can be envisioned, as the authors suggest, that coupling the reward center to the immune system would offer a selective advantage, which helps to explain the intertwining of these two systems from an evolutionary perspective."
Really cool stuff!
> The biggest axe against it being an alien megastructure project is the fact its an F-type star. F-types only live a couple billion years, depending on mass.
> But the drop in the radiant flux... a sustained drop. That could be something far more interesting. If you could do stellar engineering... you could draw the material off an F-type star while altering its core. You could reduce the mass to a G or K star, greatly increasing its lifespan... and gaining trillions upon trillions of tons of raw material with which to build an alien megastructure...
He wasn't talking about "liberty of the state". He was talking about individual liberty, as protected and empowered by the state.
The debate is on (potentially) trading short-term security for long-term security and the individual liberty that security protects.
And so, in less bombastic terms, it seems Franklin's meaning is that trading a small measure of short-term safety at the cost of long-term security (from threats of any source-- external, domestic, or from the state itself) and liberty is a recipe for disaster. Franklin says here that being willing to trade short-term safety at the cost of longer-term security (and therefore liberty) is fretful and unwise and means you will ultimately forfeit actual liberty.
One can question whether or not such a trade-off truly exists with respect to the current encryption debate. But it seems fallacious to draw a dichotomy between this quote's original meaning and it's meaning as used in the debate today.