1,763 karma · joined June 24, 2012
1) "All things are ready, if our minds be so." - Shakespeare
2. Holon para ta moria (ὁλον παρα τα μορια). From Aristotle's Metaphysics. The whole is something beyond the parts. Commonly mistranslated as "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" -- which misses the point completely. Mathematical understanding and metaphor is only one type of thinking, one way to understand a complete system. Valuable, for sure, but incomplete. The whole system -- e.g. a human, a team, an entrepreneurial opportunity with all its moving parts -- in its full expression and action, is beyond mathematics. Only your whole human mind can hope to comprehend it.
3) Companies tend to die -- but people tend to survive. People matter infinitely more. The most valuable thing of all is human relationships.
https://www.idquantique.com/random-number-generation/product...
Hope you're better soon. Glad you can still meet with friends.
Agreed, 100%. It's amazing how HN, Reddit and other places select so strongly for the pessimism of the intellect, but quickly shoot down the optimism of the will. Without the latter (informed by the former, sure), civilization would never have advanced this far.
Sure, we need realism. And knowledge of what will go wrong. But find the positive -- otherwise, it's more like a withdrawal of people's energy.
Thankfully, like you mentioned, the real world, away from these artificial rectangles, is often way more empowering. :)
Quantum systems have wavefunctions though, which collapse to a state. And before collapse, these can interfere. The math of this involves way more than normal linear algebra. Especially when you consider the things we've simplified away -- e.g. how exactly the wave function collapses. (We just say it's 'abrupt' and kinda leave it there. But it's possible this has implications for quantum computing, once we think in quantum theory terms rather than CS.)
And most things in business are neither truly linear nor simple exponential. Yet most people in business revert to these two mathematical concepts.
For example, it might convince a CEO to keep working on a project because this 'emergence' thing may be happening -- where a non-complexity-empowered CEO might kill the project because there is no linear return, and no apparent potential for exponential return.
"The severity of the virus from country to country is a reflection of media coverage, not the other way around."
As Victor Hwang put it [1]:
"While other countries fight a global war for top talent, America just packs up the tent.
Facts: - Immigrants start new businesses at twice the rate of native-born Americans. - Immigrants founded 44 of the 100 largest companies in America."
[1]: https://twitter.com/rainforestbook/status/127517996429236633...
https://dailyvoice.com/new-jersey/mercer/obituaries/covid-19...
I went through some of his work in detail while in college. While a mathematician, he clearly had the complexity-compression ability of a top-tier theoretical physicist. A great loss indeed.
Often engineers need to look at multiple designs to figure out how to most effectively re-tool. Especially because lots of parts may become scarce soon.
Agree on those vents and partnering with existing device manufacturers. My guess is we will see more applications of the Defense Production Act in the coming weeks and months, and so we might have a list of large companies scrambling to fulfill federal orders. Hence I think the FDA will attempt some innovation to implement approvals at crisis speed. (Hard to know for sure, of course. I have dealt personally with only the NIH in a limited capacity years ago, not the FDA.)
An international comparison of the second derivative of COVID deaths after implementation of social distancing measures
Protect yourself, your family, and simply do good for others as much as you can.
Question: is there an OSX version? Or am I just blind? :)
Human technology can't do that yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-dimensional_integrated_c...
Heat dissipation becomes a major challenge there though.
What other emerging technologies could help us restart Moore's Law?
Or is this truly the end of the line?
Can anyone speculate at the reasons for this? Is it the extreme cultural closeness, the Special Relationship fostered through WW2, or simply realpolitik -- i.e. US-UK having broadly speaking the same national interests?
Or something else?
Or do we just get on so well because we like each other's accents? :)
(No criticism intended -- I really want to know.) :)
[Side note: thank you for doing these repeated AMA's, Peter. You address a vital, often deeply emotional problem for countless people. Hats off to you for taking the time to de-mystify so much of this.]
Humans are biased to view themselves as the most evolved, sophisticated and important species. A glance at the history of science shows this.
Slowly, we become aware of our bias and notice how damn lucky we are to survive to this day.
Ages ago, nature almost killed us off:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Geneti...
And in modern times, we almost wiped out our civilization many times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
We are lucky to be here. Gotta make the most of it. IMO a good place to start: to value the other surviving animals on this planet. You could travel 10,000 light years but you will find them only on Earth.