nmrm

Probably, and this is just a guess, neither Simons or Sullivan claim they could've written the paper alone. And it's certainly impossible to write essentially the same paper without plagiarizing. So probably there are either zero or two people who meet the "could've written this paper" criteria.

So, why didn't you just say "there are more than zero/two billionaires who read HN"? Seems less round-about.

Or do you mean just maybe understand the general essence of the paper's title, and understand major contributions after spending some time reading the paper?

If the former, well... yes. That's probably true for almost all significant research, especially in mathematics.

If the latter, I think you're probably wrong. And that's not to trivialize the work presented in the paper; if anything, the contrary -- the paper's actually quite well-written.

But at the same time, I'm always surprised when people claim these sorts of comments are self-defeatist.

Unrealistic expectations can be just as psychologically and socially damaging as viewing the world through a billionaire-or-powerless-prole lens. Witness the periodic comments from founders whose failed start-ups ruin their marriages as well; if anything, unrealistic expectations for one's self can be even more damaging than self-re-enforced feelings of powerlessness.

So it's not that this comment is healthy. It's just that many responses here are almost hilariously as unhealthy. It's like an alcoholic criticizing a chain smoker.

(Okay, so now I'm the most unhealthy, most negative person in the thread :-( )

I have four major points:

1. You can assess even major-agnostic, general skills in content-specific ways. Such assessments are far less likely to have the negative externalities of more generic tests (e.g. first or last semester "Literature" courses which are basically CLA et al. boosters. These most definitely exist). But even still, I think this is a bad idea and too ripe for abuse.

2. Generic "Critical Thinking" is often not all it's cracked up to be, and some experts claim it is not statistically correlated with the sort of critical thinking purported to be mastered in science and mathematics courses. (Oh, CLA really likes hedge words. They mean you're smart... I mean... that "you've likely acquired transferable critical thinking skills" [1].)

3. Higher Ed shouldn't be responsible for filling in gaps in High School and even Elementary education. Also, grammar!? I rest my case!

4. The CLA is computer-graded (no, really, it is [1]).

--

1. A Problem with Generic Critical Thinking

Generic "critical thinking" is often nothing more than "the right kind of sophistry". The author of [1] agrees with this sentiment w.r.t the CLA (although, it should be stated, not in general. See the source; what follows are my own opinions, not those of the author of [1]).

In addition to pointing out that any answer along the lines of "IDK" is treated as sufficient, he also notes that the model answers provided for the CLA are full of logical fallacies.

But the author of [1] really hits the nail on the head in this paragraph:

This is exactly the kind of instruction and practice students receive in a dedicated critical-thinking or informal logic course. Critical-thinking skills are not statistically significantly enhanced by content-specific courses like introduction to philosophy or chemistry, or by content-independent courses such as symbolic logic.

I argue that the what the CLA measures is not what colleges and universities are or should ever be intended to teach. Instead, it measures a tortured form of "critical thinking" that is somehow not statistically significantly improved even by courses in the hard sciences and mathematics. Not even by courses in formal logic! Only by courses in informal logic. If science and math don't improve "critical thinking", I'm not sure what "critical thinking" is supposed to mean. Except, of course, the right kind of sophistry+.

Ergo, it's likely that if performance on the CLA significantly improves, it will be because colleges and universities are teaching to the test in the guise of "Critical Thinking and Informal Logic" (although I'm sure universities will have better names for their mandatory freshman CLA courses).

I'm very concerned that the true humanities -- one place where actual critical thinking is taught -- will be gutted in order to cover the costs of such instruction (I already know of one instance where this has happened).

2. Higher Education Should Assume the Basics

As for grammar and mechanics, things are even simpler. Colleges and universities are absolutely not responsible for those sorts of basic skills.

[1] http://www.assessmentupdate.com/sample-articles/a-fatal-flaw...

+ My use of the word sophistry is definitely intentional. It's worth noting that the sort of persuasion rooted in a combination of informal logic and careful rhetoric ("always use hedge words" is a modern equivalent) is exactly the sort of thing that the Sophists were known for!

Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of assessment-driven education. I just don't think it's right for institution-level assessment at the higher education level. Not unless it's content-specific.

Oh how true!

> Or you can take interesting classes which might be challenging.

Yes. With flexibility comes the possibility of abuse. We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

I had quite a large humanities load in undergrad (majored in STEM fields, but with a BA), and purposefully took in-major, junior and senior level courses in art, English and history. There were pre-reqs but most instructors would waive them because the classes never filled. Others decided to take 100-level communications and business electives to fill the same elective slots. Even after taking graduate-level STEM courses, a junior-level art history course remains the most difficult course I've ever taken. The way the course was taught was a pretty intense combination of "right" and "left" brain thinking.

In retrospect, forcing students to choose to challenge themselves (or not) is probably the single best way to prepare students for the "real world", and probably not a bad predictor at success either.

I propose that you fundamentally cannot measure what a given person learned or didn't learn in college from a major-agnostic test. Learning at this level is far too specialized.

College is NOT and never should be about getting really good at basic skills. These tests treat college as an iteration on elementary and secondary education.

For example, I majored in math and now I'm in grad school in a related field. I'm sure I would score about the same -- if not worse -- on a standardized mathematics test now as I did in high school. The tests are generally a combination of calculation/arithmetic and Euclidean geometry. Real mathematics has very little to do with calculation, and I was definitely better at churning out Euclidean-style deductions in high school than I am now (I could trivially recover a lot of the useful clever identities I had internalized in high school, but I haven't looked at that material in years).

To conclude that this means I didn't improve tremendously in mathematics during college is just sloppy.

In fact, I would be highly unsurprised to see a negative correlation between actual outcomes (number of top tier grad school admissions, desirability in the market place, professional success 5, 10, 15 years after graduation) and institutions which score very highly on these standardized assessments. Iterating on high school is an absurd waste of the college years.

edit: computation -> calculation.

If you're not using Office or other Windows-only productivity software, why pay the Windows licensing fee?

For instance, even most police officers in the area where I live don't need special software. Some do, but most use a few web apps and java apps to do their paper work.

It's like a non-tech mid-sized business, really. All the management and many of the employees don't need anything more than word processing. And then there are people in technical roles whose needs are served on an individual basis (or, in good environments, their manager is handed a budget and told "have you people get what they need")

You can write down the list of sharepoint features you need, and then find individual OSS projects that fill the gap. It's not a one-stop thing, but it doesn't have to be a deal breaker either.

> First page of google for Jonathan Edwards produces a 17th century philosopher and a singer.

Because all real programmers are on the first page of Google when you search for their name.

It's also worth noting the historical Jonathan Edwards is a pretty important figure in American history. The First Great Awakening set the tone for American religion; it's standard material in any high school History class. And if there's one person you teach about from that period, it's Edwards. In fact, I would be somewhat surprised if most Americans don't recognize the name. So being out-ranked by him isn't exactly unexpected

> Adding "Jonathan Edwards programming" produces Subtext

Right. So even if you haven't heard the name before, some very simple google searching turns up the fact that he isn't a non-programmer.

And even without that, you could flip through his prior blog posts and figure out that non-programmer isn't an accurate description.

> yawning about how programming needs to be more academic?

I mean, the article says basically the exact opposite of this?

> Honestly, I have no idea who he is.

Yeah, I don't know who most of the world's programmers are. So they must not be real programmers (well, unless googling their name turns up their github account? But self-hosted projects don't count!).

But in 10 seconds of Google you figured out that non-programmer probably isn't a great description. And in a few more you might've figured out he's a fellow at MIT's CSAIL, which isn't particularly well-known for hiring programming-illiterate people.

My point was that it's usually a good idea to actually research the author of a piece before firing off the ad homs.

I've not read this particular book, but a lot like it. The typical pattern is that engineering majors don't see order-of-magnitude in writing and "critical thinking", and humanities students don't see order-to-magnitude improvements in science and math.

But then the author averages everything together and concludes no body's learning much. Go figure.

Getting a lot of value out of college isn't hard. Attend a state school or reputable private college (read: typically for-profits and online programs are a waste of money; mileage may vary). Once there, major in math, a science, or a core humanity (the latter typically doubled with education or another "practical" major). Meet people and have a good time, but make sure you're spending 30-40 hrs/wk on course work.

CS1 should be an introduction to the nature of the discipline. I can think of many things more important and more representative of the nature of computing than the semantics of C.

This is an interesting characterization of Jonathan Edwards... did you not do research on the author before writing this, or are you really claiming he's a "non-programmer"?

It's when I'm churning out ridiculous amounts of front-end kluge that I start over-engineering or introducing complexity and indirection where it's totally unnecessary.

This seems like a particularly cogent hypothesis for the web, where a majority of the programming is not very intellectually stimulating* but is simultaneously time-consuming and mentally taxing.

* IMO and in my experience, mileage may vary. And this isn't to say you don't need to be intelligent. But requiring mental energy != intellectually stimulating.

> During a raid last week on one of the suspects' homes, investigators seized a portfolio of Bitcoins - worth some 9,000 euros per unit - as well as credit cards and computer hardware.

I have no idea what the facts of this case are, but this wording strongly connotes a carding operation or similar. I wouldn't be surprised if the "seized credit cards" were just the suspect's personal, totally legit cards.

It's also kind of strange that they delineate the "portfolio of bitcoins" and the hardware...

> The two suspects were being investigated on possible charges of illegal banking, money laundering and illegally operating a gambling website.

Again, the article is too light on details to know. But this sounds like they have no idea why Bitcoin is bad, but they just know it It Is Bad.

You seem to believe that search engines are not force multipliers for for-profit gossip mongering; this is demonstrably false.

This means that the 100% certain probability that people are currently marginally hurt by search-engine-magnified sleazy journalism far outweighs the almost-negligible probability of high-magnitude abuse of the law.

Other threads on this story have also dealt with other mitigating factors which decrease the probability of abuse, such as the fact that public figures are excluded.

I'm not trivializing censorship; I'm entering a cost-benefit analysis where the importance of an impact is a function of both its probability and the magnitude of the impact, instead of attributing certainty to every outcome and reasoning on impact alone.

Incidentally even the US Supreme Court -- a country where free speech and anti-censorship are (constitutionally) paramount -- does this sort of analysis. Libel, inciting violence, and a slew of other exceptions to free speech have been upheld by that court.

What I'm doing is considering the overall welfare of society, instead of picking and choosing individual issues that always much come first no matter what. In this case, there's a clear and present good done by the law and the chances of bad things happening are minimized by safeguards.

edit: my comments are sometimes living documents. Mostly tweaking of the last 2 paragraphs.

For the NSA, terrorism > privacy every time. For Karunamon, "censorship" > privacy every time. In both cases, the mechanism is an appeal to security in order to avoid a more nuanced discussion of the issue.

> to scrub the entire internet of information

And this is where the rubber hits the road. "Any possible risk of <bad thing here> means privacy doesn't matter". That's the sort of crap reasoning used by the NSA.

The fact is that the risk of what you're describing is incredibly low, and the good of the law outweighs even a high-magnitude abuse because effectively abusing this law in that manner is highly unlikely to succeed.

This is what I mean. After rejecting the "stop <bad thing here> at all costs!" logic, we can do an actual cost-benefit analysis and take into account the extremely low probability of <bad thing here> actually happening.

The information is still there, but private citizens don't need to pay hundreds/thousands to SEO firms in order to get embarrassing gossip sites off the first page of Google results.

Let's be clear: the dichotomy in this case is between lazy reporter's and SEO firm's right to profit, and an individual citizen's right to privacy. Since I view lazy reporters and SEO as parasites anyways, the choice is clear for me.

Reframing this issue as a "security from dictatorial abuse of power" is playing the same game as the NSA. And worse, it's disingenuous. If the mechanism is abused, Streisand effect always solves back. But there's no reason to go around harming private citizens just because "censorship!"

In any case, the EU policy specifically excludes public figures. So to the extent that you're correct, s/he's reacting to an fictional interpretation of the law.

Which would be somewhat ironic, given that the premise of grandparent's argument is that an informed citizenry is crucial to the security of civil society.

NSA et al. argue that they need to know about everyone's dirty laundry in order to protect civil society from terrorists (or whatever).

You argue that the public needs at-your-fingertips access to everyone's dirty laundry in order to protect civil society from (idk? dictatorship that will inevitably ensue if sleazy reporters don't get their ad revenue?)

How about this alternative: whenever something actually important is de-listed, concerned citizens can mirror en masse. But when some trivial bit of gossipy sleaze reporting that no on cares about is de-listed, we let it die its rightful death.

I see no reason to Streisand-effect private citizens trying to rebuild their life after some reporter decided to make a quick buck profiting off of a single stupid mistake. The fact that you're so gung-ho about contributing to these people's continued misfortune in the name of your political agenda is deeply troubling.

* The Daniels-Dwyer article serves no obvious public good.

* The post-it thing is a huge wtf. No idea why anyone would even care.

* The train thing is embarrassing; again, reporting on this amounts to gossip mongering for cash and serves no public good.

* The Osborne thing seems like a politically-motivated intrusion into the private life of a politician's brother. Again, trash reporting.

So unless you disagree that these all amount to unhelpful gossip mongering (well, except to the wallet of a lazy reporter/news agency), a little less than half of the unbalanced results demonstrate no harm to the public good.

edit: tone clarification. Also, I agree with your last paragraph.

The only reason some of the currently listed sites even exist is that some reporter figured they could make a few bucks of ad revenue and didn't care about other's privacy. Removing them does absolutely no harm to society; I have no problem with starving sleazy reporters out of their jobs.

edit: the law is clearly unworkable, but I'm a huge fan of its intent.

So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom.

The really persistent students would get things to almost work -- often with hundreds or thousands of lines for something that, with a tree, doesn't take more than 10-50 lines.

This is also an interesting case study in human behavior; the students were typically too impatient to spend 20 minutes thinking about the problem before coding, but could spend 20-30 hours on a single assignment. Odd combination of work ethic and lack of patience...

This is probably the best TL;DR: The author created a nice way of specifying loot dropping behavior such that (begin quote): "Any monster has a chance of dropping almost any item, so you have that pleasant anticipation. At the time time, the probabilities are weighted so that each monster still has a unique “feel” to their drops, and you can seek out monsters that are more likely to drop what you want."

And the author achieved this with a concise but clear DSL in which you specify the probability of starting at a particular point in the equipment hierarchy, and then an object is chosen by traversing (probabilistically) the equipment hierarchy.