mgregory22

I totally remember that article and how pissed I was that I didn't have the extended basic cartridge. I loved that magazine, though.

Yeah, agreed. I guess the real point I want to make is that you need to forgive yourself for not knowing everything, and don't delude yourself into thinking your value as a human being is based on how much you know about computer stuff. It's a fine thing to learn, and we have a professional responsibility to learn on a constant basis, but if your whole identity is defined by your work, then you're building your house on sand.

Oh I'm sure it is, but surely a well-engineered product is easier to sell than a badly-engineered one?

I've never had impostor syndrome, but I imagine it comes from not realizing that everyone is finite and has a finite amount of time to experience the universe. But the universe is infinite, so you can never know everything there is to know. Even if you limit it to a narrow field like programming, the infinitude is still there. The universe is literally infinite in every respect; you cannot escape it. No matter how small you limit your focus, there is an infinite amount of information to learn in that thing. I think studying fractals gave me this insight, but it's not hard to realize that the universe itself has the same property that no matter how carefully you examine some aspect of it, the complexity is never eliminated. In fact it only increases.

Tell me how sales changed your view that there was a point where products mostly sold themselves.

Will Far Manager still work?

Maybe the key idea is to put all the global state mutations as closely together as possible, so they can be compared and contrasted as easily as possible.

What's sad about being alienated from fools?

How about what a few different PIECES of music look like? You can't draw any conclusions about whole genres from 3 or 4 examples.

Crucial Conversations is good.

1. We don't know if the universe follows any rules precisely. We can never know because the only way to know that a rule is being followed unconditionally would be to exhaustively verify every event in the universe to see if it follows that rule, which is impossible.

2. There's not just one mental process. There are an infinite number (most likely) of mental processes. But even though we're not both part of the same mental process, we're both part of the same causal process. The reason we perceive ourselves as discrete entities is: 1. mental processes (thoughts) can be both true and false, 2. true thoughts are more rare than false thoughts, 3. false thoughts are still capable of doing work, and therefore, our survival has relied on the false thought that each of us is a separate individual, even though the truth is that we're causally dependent on one another, our environment, etc.

Information is fast, wisdom is slow.

Actually use the framework (every feature) and write down everything you needed to know to use it. Really, the more time you put into something the better it will be, so just make a good effort and it will be good.

Any fact that depends on observation is uncertain, no matter how small or trivial it may seem. This whole physical world could be an incredibly elaborate computer simulation. We can never know the true nature of our observations, so nothing we observe can ever prove anything.

The difference between correlation and causation is merely conventional. Does the striking of a match cause it to ignite? There is no way to prove that it does, only the correlation between the striking and the ignition makes us say they're causal. Correlation is the only way to determine what's causal and what's not.

On the other hand, if you want to look at it philosophically, then the only sensible definition of "causation" is "anything necessary for a thing to exist." So what's necessary for a thing to exist? Every other thing in the universe that is not that thing! Pluto causes us to exist right now because it hasn't turned into a giant space goat and swallowed the Earth. Yes, the fact that something DIDN'T prevent the existence of a thing is also ultimately a cause of that thing's existence. Causation in its purest form can help us understand the nature of reality, but it can't help us predict anything. It's only when we draw a line between causes that we can control and causes that we can't that it becomes a practical tool (not that understanding reality isn't practical).

So you can see, this whole correlation != causation discussion is pure nonsense. Get some philosophical skill before you try to discuss philosophical issues and stop embarrassing yourselves. Sheesh, it's ridiculous.