kkoncevicius

> daily stand-up doc of all the things I did on X day and what could be done better, and a value plan for the next day

Did you come up with this yourself, or did you copy it from somewhere else? Because I would like to know more. This sounds like a very good approach.

> I'm thinking what the the most optimal way might be

From my experience - don't even go looking for "most optimal ways" in this journey. The simpler, the more unstructured - the better. Otherwise maintaining the whole setup will take more than give.

Yes, 100% better.

If I add the time I spend on NH over the week, some weeks it can probably reach 3-5 hours. That's 3-5 hours reading about something, checking comments, sometimes replying. But there is no substantial, measurable gain that would justify spending this much time.

If instead I spend the same amount of time reading a book, meditating, socialising, working, or even staring through the window - all of these would be time better spent, in my assessment.

I originally upvoted the commend you replied to, as it seemed to make a good point, but after reading your reply I had to take the upvote down and give it to you. Just wanted to share.

Nowadays it seems like every other comment on Stack Exchange is full of forced and phony politeness. That's in their rules too.

Oh, based on the comment you replied to I thought this was about R. In R matrices can handle NaNs and NAs, have column and row labels, have dot products and much more.

> The difference is dataframes can also be seen like matrices. You can do row operations, row + column operations, multiply rows and columns, multiply different matrices, transpose them etc.

I think this is overblowing the similarities to matrices. Matrices have elements all of the same type, while data.frames mix numbers, characters, factors, etc. You certainly cannot transpose a data.frame and still have a data.frame that makes sense. Multiplying rows would not make sense either, since within one row you will have different types of data. Unless you have a data.frame that is all numeric, but in that case one should probably be using a matrix in the first place.

Maybe this (and the answers therein) can help: https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/550619/18417

The first distinction here should be what kind of "code" are we talking about. As far as I see there are two main possibilities:

  1. code for performing a scientific simulation or analysis (a script).
  2. code for solving a specific problem generally (a program).

There are different "best practices" for the two situations above. And the article primarily talks about applying "best practices" from the 2nd scenario to the 1st. Of course they don't apply.

Does it allow specifying columns when filtering for rows?

For instance, the shown example filters for "Bug" but seems to filter for rows that contain "Bug" in any of the columns. Can I specify to filter for "Bug" only looking at a certain column?

At the same time - is filtering by numbers implemented, like filtering for rows that have a numeric value above X in a certain column?

If not these should be on TODO list - those are very common operations for .csv type data.

Yeah, of course, maybe it would be 1.1. What I am trying to say is that the results could be reported in a more scientific manner.

For instance, about epigenetic clocks, there are a lot of them now. There is GrimAge for mortality, FitAge for fitness, and dozens of different clocks for chronological age. I cannot know for sure, but I am almost sure Bryan tried at least a few. Why did they select to showcase only this one? Is it because they liked the results the most?

Same for all other markers. All of them are "optimal" "above 95%", etc. Is there no marker that is not so great and can still be improved? Also showing the history of the measurements (how they fluctuate during years Bryan is on the protocol) would be wonderful. Or measuring the same markers for a different person, who is above him in the leaderboard, but not going through the protocol.

I want to repeat that I love what he is doing. But for some reason the website gives a marketing vibe. This is our protocol, everything is optimal, here is our olive oil. Which is a bit of a weird look, given the lengths Bryan Johnson is going through.

I love what the guy is doing. It is a one-man experiment that would be very very hard to reproduce, or even get ethics approval and funding for, by a research lab.

But on the other hand, I get a sense that the public side of his results are overblown. For example, my field is epigenetics, so I had a look at his "epigenetic clock" results. He uses "DunedinPACE" to track the rate of aging and his result is supposedly 0.72 (which very roughly estimates that he ages 0.72 years per a single astronomical year).

However, what is not mentioned, is that this result, while impressive, is not so extraordinary. He is number 6 in his own online leaderboard [1]. And the people who beat him at this metric don't do anything fancy to get better numbers than him [2]. Why not mention things like that along with all the optimism?

[1]: https://rejuvenationolympics.com/leaderboard/#absolute

[2]: https://fortune.com/well/2023/11/04/longevity-women-biohacke...

You might be right, thou I don't see that sentence as being exceptionally unclear. The first remark in the OP - stating that this is about fruit flies, made me think they might not have heard about circadian rhythms and were genuinely surprised, as it portrays a certain view often shared by people who have studied little about biology.

> Also, what?

Is this about that circadian rhythm line? It look true, if not under-stated. Shift between nights and days was one of the major constant things throughout the evolution of life. And the influence of this rhythm goes deeper than just physiology - it reaches a molecular level. Almost every cell in the body has a mechanism for keeping internal time of the day [1]. And they are kept in synch through suprachiasmatic nucleus, mainly via the light through the retina, changes in temperature, and food intake [2].

It is so prevalent, that even small things, like your sense of smell or which nasal side is more active and which one is congested falls under circadian regulation [3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_clock

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle

One of my favorite quotes:

"Politics has nothing to do with what a person personally advocates for." - Norman Finkelstein

An example he often gives is advocating for a world without borders. You can advocate for it, and create a group of like minded peiple and write blogs about it, but it will be like creating a cult. Politics, according to him, starts with what the people want. It has to have some concrete proposals and practical momentum that are accepted (or at least not resisted) by the general public.

In your case I would really doubt if apendix was the cause. As a teen I also loved milk, pancakes, pasta, etc, but around early 20s started to notice that they are bad for me. Now if I eat a lot of milk and glutamine I get digestive issues, skin rashes, etc. My apendix (afaik) is intact.

I've always understood "tits or gtfo" to suggest that if you are mentioning you are a girl then do something related to it (show breasts) or else shut up about being a girl when its not relevant.

A Bayesian proponent wanting an objective standpoint ... Sorry, could not resist :) But I edited the comment. Sorry if it ruined your mood. I shared it with good intentions, not to pick a fight.

Hm, that line doesn't seem bad to me. But I can certainly edit it if you think it's harsh in some way. Which would you prefer?:

  1. "I think your view about the difference between Frequentist and Bayesian methods is biased"
  2. "I think your view about the difference between Frequentist and Bayesian methods is wrong".
  3. Any other suggestion?

> Bayesian methods are not easy to use, I agree. But that's because they're trying to answer much more meaningful (but harder) questions than frequentist ones

I think your view about the difference between Frequentist and Bayesian methods is wrong. There is this rant I like from Larry Wasserman [1] on the subject:

  My opinions have shifted a bit. [...] Bayes-Frequentist debate still matters. And people — including many statisticians — are still confused about the distinction. I thought the basic Bayes-Frequentist debate was behind us. A year and a half of blogging (as well as reading other blogs) convinced me I was wrong here too. And this still does matter.
  My emphasis on high-dimensional models is germane, however. In our world of high-dimensional, complex models I can’t see how anyone can interpret the output of a Bayesian analysis in any meaningful way.
  I wish people were clearer about what Bayes is/is not and what frequentist inference is/is not. Bayes is the analysis of subjective beliefs but provides no frequency guarantees. Frequentist inference is about making procedures that have frequency guarantees but makes no pretense of representing anyone’s beliefs. In the high dimensional world, you have to choose: objective frequency guarantees or subjective beliefs. Choose whichever you prefer, but you can’t have both. I don’t care which one people pick; I just wish they would be clear about what they are giving up when they make their choice.
  [...]
  Of course, one can embrace objective Bayesian inference. If this means “Bayesian procedures with good frequentist properties” then I am all for it. But this is just frequentist inference in Bayesian clothing."

[1]: https://errorstatistics.com/2013/12/27/deconstructing-larry-...

Here are a few essay recommendations for anyone interested in more heretical takes on the same topic:

- "The fate of empires and search for survival"

- "The population cycle drives human history"

- "Our fragile intellect"

> I would recommend anyone who works with websites to look into the way typography influences the reader's subconscious.

To me, paradoxically, it reached a point where my subconscious associates light or poor typography with serious material, and pretty web pages with empty ad-ridden content:

Serious vibe: http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/t/transint.html

Intermediate vibe: https://drewdevault.com/2023/06/30/Social-and-parasocial-med...

Empty content vibe: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/12/23792382/google-notebookl...

I once saw this funny take on time management by J. Blow, and now I cannot help myself but remember it every time todo-lists are mentioned [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SW7CsUrIy4

I don't understand why it has to be added to every single page. Is there a reason this is not implemented as a default browser behaviour for devices where it matters (i.e. mobile phones)?

I would disagree and here is why:

> When I try to get this point across about techniques like the PCA, I like to show that the measurement units strongly affect the inference.

In such a case the problem is not with PCA but with application. PCA is just a rotation of the original coordinate system that projects the data on new axes which are aligned with the directions of highest variability. It is not the job of PCA to parse out the origin of that variability (is it because of different units, or different effects).

> Really, if your conclusions change depending on whether you measure in inches or centimeters, there’s something wrong with the analysis!

To get a statistical distance one should: subtract the mean if the measurements differ in origin; divide by standard deviation if the measurements differ in scale; rotate (or equivalently compute Mahalanobis distance) if the measurements are dependant (co-vary). The PCA itself is closely related to Mahalanobis distance: Euclidian distance on PCA-transformed data should be equivalent to Mahalanobis distance on the original data. So, saying that something is wrong with PCA because it doesn't take units of measurement into account is close to saying that something is wrong with dividing by standard deviation because it doesn't subtract the mean.

If anyone wishes to pursue this topic of "quantization" further, I recommend "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times" - a book by Rene Guenon [1]. Guenon examines the direction the world is going to as a shift from quality to quantity, and with this simple analysis he covers topics ranging across democracy, science, art, crafts, production, etc. The book was written in 1945 and some of the topics he touches upon can at first seem quite esoteric - i.e. that a tendency to measure the effect of some tragedy according to how many people were affected by it is already a sign of quantitative thinking. But I am surprised how well it captured many trends we see in society today. For example it can be argued that under the view he proposed, AI would be yet another step away from quality and towards quantity.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Reign-Quantity-Signs-Times/dp/0900588...

I think it claims the opposite, that P != NP:

> Since there is at least one algorithm (WESP) that is NP (verifiable in polynomial time) but not P (solvable in polynomial time), P cannot be the same set as NP.

A lot of what was said can be inferred from the comments left in the code. Would be interesting to see whether it would produce the same description when all the comments are removed.

Compression-oriented programming [1]. It is not something that "totally changed the way I approach programming", but more like something I was doing intuitively and reading about it made a lot of sense and provided a framework for why it is appealing. Also, keep in mind that I am not a real programmer in a sense that I mostly write scripts for data analysis.

The gist of it: you program procedurally without thinking too much about the code and only add "compressions" when the need for them arises. The compressions can take various forms like encapsulating data types within objects, behaviour within functions, extracting often-repeated operations into separate libraries and then loading and referencing them when needed, etc.

[1]: https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0015

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Interesting bit: I've been watching this one conspiratorial YouTube channel from time to time, and there it is claimed that the link between sun, radioactivity, and earthquakes, is old news. Here is a video exactly about this, from more than 7 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEyflcAlqZc