kkoncevicius

Which R equivalent for circular plots did you use?

I remember there was a study (can't find it quickly) that said people who swear are more honest and lie less. If that is true then it's not surprising for such qualities to somehow affect other things.

From personal anecdotes I would add that swearing seems to be associated with action and getting things done. People who work with their hands and tools: plumbers, car mechanics, etc, swear a lot. But even in academia I've met quite a few very intelligent people who swear in private conversations and one common characteristic among them is they hate when things are not moving.

Yes I came to post exactly this, and found your comment, so will reply instead. The bug doesn't seem to be obscure. It is there in the right place. Someone thinking about checking "why some players are attacked more often?" would probably choose this as the first place to double check, since it is directly related to selecting the player for attack.

Maybe the most occult part of this is figuring out that the unique IDs assigned to the players play a role.

Interesting, I am using a similar convention, but for GitHub issue labels, not commit messages [1]. Then, the commit messages often just refer to the issue number as a reference.

[1]: http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/posts/improving_github_issue_l...

> Appeals to authority when the person isn't an expert in that field are terribly weak.

Hey, I agree. These were not as much appeals to authority as a reply to "your form of mysticism", just to get the focus off myself.

> Please give some concrete examples of what cannot ever be explained.

We can try it this way. We both look at a red apple. We both say it's "red". Can you device an experiment or some procedure to check wether we perceive red in the same way? Maybe what you see as "red" I see as "blue".

Please note that this is not about which pathways fire upon seeing a light of a certain wavelength. Just assume we are both healthy and same regions are activated when looking at red light. Is the experience of red light the same for both of us and how to prove it, or check it?

Another attempt to clarify what I mean.

> Bacteria react to their environment, but most people don't think they are conscious.

This is precisely one of the points. You don't have to be conscious to react, learn, etc. A thermostat can react to changes in temperature and adjust the dials without any consciousness. In the same way many people often find themselves to have done something automatically without them being aware, as in "I was thinking about something and I drove to the wrong place" (or indeed, more often to the correct place, doesn't matter). Have you not had an experience like this?

> For most other topics, saying "you'll get what I'm talking about with some instrospection" would be immediately rejected

You are aware of things and you are aware that you are aware of things. This is something that can be pointed to and discussed. Just like any other concept in the world.

> Also, how does it work for people with aphantasia and without inner monologue?

The same way it works for blind and/or deaf people. They are aware of different sensations. When you have an inner dialogue you concentrate on it and you have a sort of "light" shining on that process, while maybe performing a lot of different tasks at the same time (like driving). This attention/focus/light is the thing. Damaging an organ cuts out signals sent by your body and you can no longer be aware of them, because there is nothing there. But awareness remains and can be directed to other things.

> Only if you are sure of the loose / hand-wavey definition of consciousness

I disagree that it's hand-wavey. It's a concrete thing that is difficult to communicate the first time, but becomes easier after familiarity, like all the other concepts and definitions.

> I'm sure a hypothetical organism that's vastly more intelligent than us, but with the same loose definition, would consider us barely conscious

Intelligence and this definition of consciousness have nothing to do with each other. In fact the opposite might be true. I've had similar discussions in the past, and the most intelligent people often have the most difficulty with understanding this concept. I think this is because they are used to living in their heads and being aware of their ideas and thoughts all the time. What I would say to such a person is to first entertain the proposition that you are not your thoughts, and try to watch your thoughts as they arise and go and then who is the one watching? And when you watch your breath instead, there is no one watching the thoughts, thou they are still happening without you being aware of them. The "watching" part is consciousness.

Or another idea - do a thought experiment. Imagine a universe without any life forms some billion years ago. Rocks and dust and darkness and stars. But no one to observe this. This universe is "dark" in that sense - there is no one watching. Reactions just take place without being witnessed or observed. This is a place with no consciousness. In this place nothing that happens ever matters to anyone else, because no one is there to experience.

Now imagine a future, where general AI takes over and humanity is dead. This AI - we can never measure if it is conscious or not. It is doing complicated computations inside, but is there a "ghost in the shell" watching and witnessing? No one can tell. It can act, optimise, combine, memorise, improve, create new ideas and formulas, and execute them in a stochastic manner. But at the same time it can be entirely unconscious. Again this version of the universe is "dark". Nothing there matters to anyone.

Now imagine an unconscious person, a thing called a philosophical zombie. It is just like a human being, but has no consciousness. When it is afraid the heart-rate rises, the adrenaline pumps, limbs start to shake, it sweats, and a lot of calculations quickly run through the neurons. But at the same time the "ghost" might not be there and theoretically no one might have an experience of being in this state of stress. The being of such a person would be "dark".

Hope these examples help somewhat...

> What makes you so sure? Just because you 'feel' you are experiencing consciousness doesn't mean other people are. How do you know other people are? By means of objective perspective from your subjective one? By doing so your consciousness already reached out into the material world and so you only validate materialism by acknowledging the presupposed immaterial consciousness of others.

In the response to the original reply of this trhead the proposition that we cannot even be sure of the consciousness in others was one of my main points. I just used "you are having a conscious experience" here for the sake of a conversation that followed with a different person.

> Honestly I don't think either materialism or immaterialism can be argued for without contradictions of some kind because one (immaterialism)

I must say I agree, but would add that instead of immaterialism there are multiple other views, like idealism, dualism, phenomenalism - each rival with one another.

> But why be either/or? Why can't both be valid?

Definitely agree here. I am leaning towards a belief that majority of cultures from the past and present around the world had it right: there is a duality between the body and the mind (or "soul"). We just lost the touch with that second part after trying to explain everything in terms of material things. But we probably reached a gate where materialism breaks down.

> You can't say something exists if you don't have a definition for it

There are many definitions for it, but for a definition to work the definition has to make sense for the person receiving it. Hence why the descriptions vary and can appear vogue. The first step is an attempt at showing to the other person what the discussion is about. So here is my another attempt: the sensation that appears in your "minds eye" when you see or imagine a red color. The awareness of this color is what consciousness is about. Perhaps it's so intimate that people don't think often about it and so it's hard to point to it, hence the difficulty with definitions.

> Just because you feel in your guts you have consciousness doesn't mean you have it

I can be an extreme sceptic and doubt anything. I can see a cat, close my eyes, open them again and see the same cat standing there. Was the cat there when I closed my eyes? I can certainly doubt that. Maybe it was quickly abducted and returned a moment later in the same place. Maybe some objects disappear when they are not looked at? Maybe there is no cat in the first place but this is a mirage or a hallucination of mine. Maybe I am now dreaming. All this I can doubt. What I cannot doubt is the fact that I am seeing a cat now. And the fact that I have a memory of seeing a cat before closing my eyes. So to the contrary - whatever you think you know can be doubted. The fact that you are having a conscious experience of something cannot be doubted.

BTW, I liked the humorous response to this position from the posted article:

> The ultra-materialists [...] go all in, they take the plunge, they crash the plane into the building: they deny that consciousness even exists! No, really.

> Just shoot them, they won't notice.

Here is what I think: I think the definition of consciousness I used here is the same that was used in the posted article. It is not "my definition". I also think that some people never thought about it and are so unfamiliar with the subject that they misinterpret and cannot imagine what the discussion is actually about.

It is not God of the gaps in one fundamental way. God of the gaps arguments attempt to justify something invisible by saying you cannot measure it. Consciousness is something visible - in fact it's the only thing that's visible - yet we cannot measure it, and likely never will be able to.

As Schrödinger put it: "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."

Or to take another grand physicist, Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."

Now these are people who thought a lot about both physics and consciousness. I think that when we do justice to both sides - the conclusion that one cannot arise from the principles of the other is inescapable. However, when we only immerse ourselves in materialism or only in spiritual new-age philosophies, we miss this scale of the problem of this mind-body gap the article talks about.

> The experiences of different observers appears to be largely in agreement.

This kind of argument has an unverifiable assumption that there are multiple other conscious observers besides yourself.

Yes, but this is a definition of something that exists. And on the contrary - the fact that, seemingly, it cannot be tested in materialistic terms, to me, makes it that much more interesting.

In that sense it is not like a concept of God or ghosts or aliens - all of which are merely imagined and cannot be tested. The thing with consciousness is - you know it exists. In fact we can doubt many things, if not everything. But you can never doubt you are having a conscious experience right now.

Compelling reason... First thing I would say is that, I think, I know where the person is coming from. I used to have similar worldview and opinions about consciousness. What is required to see things from the other side is not an argument so much as an insight and a shift of perception. Also, I've had this discussion with people quite a few times it rarely leads to any kind of agreement. But let me try to put out the view from the other side.

First, my statement about consciousness having nothing to do with optical illusions. Consciousness is not about "seeing correctly". It's about the perception itself. When I look at an apple I see red. If we played with lights I assume I can see it as green, or as a banana, or don't see it at all. Same with brain trauma. None of these affected the awareness I have of seeing something. This seeing something and being aware of what is it like to see it is consciousness, not the content.

Then, going to the second thing I wrote, there is no way for me to test whether, for example, you are conscious or not. It gets cold and you reach for a jacket and put it on. I have no way of telling whether in this process you actually had the perception of what it's like to feel cold, or did your neurons simply fire at certain temperatures and activated the pathways in your brain that led to the memory (without being aware you are having a memory at the time) and a habit of putting on a jacket. This is the famous "philosophical zombie" thought experiment.

> Finally, I think it is important to appreciate just what a facade our consciousness is. It is a veneer that works well most of the time, but if it is probed too deeply one discovers what a hodge-podge it really is. Optical illusions are one window into seeing that our perceptions are often pretty shallow.

Many people understand the concept of consciousness differently and I think you and the author are talking about different "consciousness". I agree more with the author so will try to defend and say a few things. First - optical illusions or brain trauma/surgery confusing your vision and thoughts has nothing to do with consciousness. Second - nobody can prove or even check whether some other person is conscious or not, which makes investigating consciousness on any physical level a non-starter. There is nothing in physical sciences that can potentially open any paths to this investigation.

After some reflection I came to a conclusion that I rarely (if ever) watched anything of value on YouTube, and so the best method to make YouTube less distracting in my case was adding:

  0.0.0.0         youtube.com
  0.0.0.0         www.youtube.com
  0.0.0.0         youtu.be
  0.0.0.0         www.youtu.be
  0.0.0.0         youtube-nocookie.com
  0.0.0.0         www.youtube-nocookie.com
  0.0.0.0         ads.youtube.com

to /etc/hosts

Thanks for the recommendation. I've found a free HD version here:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x68r4b5

Maybe a slow day for me, but from the homepage and video it isn't clear - does it do anything that cannot be achieved with plain Google Docs?

True, but in R (at least in S3) it's probably avoided by design because of default parameters. A short example:

  genericfun.type1 <- function(x, sub=1) x - sub
  genericfun.type2 <- function(x, y)     sum(x, y)

The single case can be differentiated:

  genericfun(x)

But which function are we calling with:

  genericfun(x, y)

I don't know about Julia and how it solves this. Maybe by not allowing to pass nameless optional arguments.

R can handle the examples in the article with generic functions:

  oddsratio         <- function(x, ...)     UseMethod("oddsratio", x)
  oddsratio.integer <- function(a, b, c, d) (a * d) / (b * c)
  oddsratio.numeric <- function(p1, p0)     ((p1)/(1 - p1)) / ((p0)/(1 - p0))
  oddsratio.matrix  <- function(x)          (x[1, 1] * x[2, 2]) / (x[1, 2] * x[2, 1])

Then:

  oddsratio(12L, 6L, 2L, 29L)         # 29
  oddsratio(12/(12+2), 6/(6+29))      # 29
  oddsratio(matrix(c(12,6,2,29), 2))  # 29

It depends. Take for example any omic dataset where you might need to run a GLM model on ~500,000 rows. Codes I've seen for this operation can range in time from taking 30 minutes to 2 days.

My take away here is that, sure, for one operation the speed is not that critical, but there is always the case where that one operation will be used close to a million times in one analysis and then it all adds up. On top of that if it's implemented in C then the invocation from R to C and back will be happening that many times which adds to the slowness.

I think it is dying and my bet for the reason why would be the policy changes.

Take it as you might, but I think the main reason many people were answering questions in the first place is the feeling of competition and wanting to establish oneself as someone with knowledge. This included gaining high scores and for some reason correlated with being quite blunt in the comments. But SO changes a few years ago made it so that asking questions got the same amount of points as answering them. Also people were forced to play nice with the new-comers who didn't even bother reading the rules of the site. And with these changes the whole atmosphere changed from being "a database of questions and answers" to just a site where people ask for free help.

> I still recommend it to others but you guys need to produce a stable version soon.

This is a bit uncharitable - the browser is currently in beta.

What is this "in-place window switching" feature you mentioned?

My situation is a bit different. I am on some kind of minimalism streak and started to rarely use tabs. It helps with focus and concentration. Would use a browser that enforces a no-tab policy. That's why I enjoy the focus mode so much.

Installed it an I love the focus mode - I just wish I didn't have to leave it when checking how many tabs were secretly opened or when manually navigating to another site with "command-l".

Been using Brave for many 5 years now but this could easily become my new default browser.

This snippet from an old interview seems to be relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeIIpLqsOe4

In words: Schmidt here is saying that Google returning lots of pages is a "bug" and the future of search is understanding what the user wants and providing a single best answer.

Thank you for sharing, this was an interesting read and very clearly written.

So it seems in Germany you can only fire employees if you are undergoing a downsizing or internal restructuring. I wonder if this Google layoff would apply. If they closing off whole teams this could potentially count as "restructuring".

> Companies are imaginary entities chasing profits for its owners. There's nothing sacred about it and they shouldn't EVER be more important than people.

A company of 50,000 operating at a loss will eventually fire 50,000 people. If it can turn things around by firing 10,000 - why not?

Further, in a company there might be temporary teams that implement a project and then are laid off. Surely it's better to have these positions than to not hire any people at all.

Even further, life is not static and things change. Not adapting to changes eventually would lead to stagnant and disfunctional situations, where a product would be made more expensive for everyone, just so a some company has the capital to continue hiring 10,000 or so people who are not longer doing any work. But, perhaps more importantly, those 10,000 people are stuck in meaningless positions doing empty "work" for the sake of numbers on some accounting sheet.

And even further futher, if these no longer useful jobs are in manufacturing then continuing them would mean wasting natural resources and polluting the environment.

Oh, this is new to me. Which developed countries have the right to stay employed?

I don't understand some of the comments here, maybe someone can explain.

Does a company need to have an excuse to let people go? Is there a right to stay employed? As far as I am aware working for a company is not a life-long situation.

And further - why don't we invert it and praise these companies for supplying thousands of six figure jobs for years. Surely being employed for several years is better than never being hired at all?