pure-awesome

> Finally, humans, while not optimally satisfying all the above tasks, do quite a decent job at these tasks, which is surprising if humans themselves were some sort of algorithm.

Whilst I agree with everything in your comment before this point, I don't agree with this.

There is a very big difference between almost achieving something and actually achieving it. For example, there exist algorithms which are able to determine whether a given program halts, for a large class of programs, or to give some probability that a program halts prior to some point, even if they are unable to solve the general halting problem. So you haven't really argued that humans are doing something computers can't do.

In addition, I take issue with your statement that humans "do quite a decent job at these tasks". On the face of it, I agree that yes, (when sufficiently motivated) (some) humans do indeed do a pretty good job of e.g. proving mathematical theorems and writing programs that halt when they should. Certainly better than the best computers we can build. But that "pretty good" is a _far_ cry from the optimality referenced in the theorems you've stated. And if you are using this "pretty good" to indicate that humans are better than any possible algorithm, that argument doesn't follow-through.

I think that human-level algorithms are in principle possible. They will have to incorporate a lot of probability and approximate results and the like, and likely will have something similar to "intuition" where the path from input to output is not clear, whether to human onlookers or to the algorithm itself (whatever that might mean). We already see hints of this today with our deep learning algorithms. Not to say that we are necessarily close to achieving this, or that we ever will, but on the other hand it might very well be just around the corner!

> they'd choose features that majority of customers are requesting

Just an interesting Side-note: features customers REQUEST and features customers CARE ABOUT are not the same.

People are great at telling what they like or don't like when you show it to them, but they're not always great at telling you how to improve it.

I can't find the source now, but I've come across a story of a game in which players were complaining that the shotgun was too weak. The game devs solved this problem by... increasing the reload time on the sniper rifle, and the complaints went away. The players could correctly tell that there was a problem, but incorrectly diagnosed the best solution (assuming the devs were right in their decision).

Here are some random articles going over this argument in more detail:

https://www.appcues.com/blog/dont-give-users-what-they-want

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/first-rule-of-usability-don...

https://uxplanet.org/stop-asking-users-what-they-want-21e9ba...

* If it's easier to see with poor vision, it's also easier to see with normal vision / projected on a projector / over someone's shoulder on their screen / on a phone or tablet.

* Supporting screen-readers often makes it easier to scrape the site / app (not an 'average' use-case, I realize, and maybe even something the site / app owner wants to discourage) and to copy-paste.

* Supporting screen-readers also makes it easier to switch to 'text-only' or 'de-clutter' modes.

* Supporting (good) keyboard input can make things faster even for people with the option of using a mouse.

* Alt-text is useful if on a slow internet connection and images don't load, or even to describe an image you maybe didn't understand. It also usually gets copy-pasted out if you do a ctrl-a ctrl-c, so you have context of what images were shown where in the text.

* Video subtitles are useful for you to be able to choose to watch a video without sound.

* If your app / site can be used by someone with mental impairments, it's easier for all users.

Most web accessibility stuff does not involve adding disability-specific aid such as sign language, or braille, or ramps. For websites, you can get at least 50% of the way by just following the basic web standards, which I think is self-evidently beneficial.

Note: I am not arguing that the cost-benefit is necessarily in the company's best interest. I.e., I am not saying that including an accessibility feature is beneficial enough to the average user that it's worth the cost of development. I am merely claiming that adding an accessibility feature almost invariably does bring some benefit to other users. However, I will say I think that programmers and companies do routinely underestimate the benefits and overestimate the costs of actually developing these basic accessibility features.

Fair enough; I am glad that those are mentioned, at least.

EDIT: I wouldn't say they're 100% accessibility, though. I think it actually supports my point that even when you aren't thinking about accessibility, the accessibility features still aid your average user.

Not Greek, but here's an economics Stackexchange question which handles this:

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27662/do-greeks...

tl;dr of the accepted answer: It's not for tax evasion, it's to make later expansion cheaper. They don't count as "Unfinished buildings". If the house has power (empty or not), or someone lives inside (with or without electrical power), the owner must pay the full 100% of the normal property taxes.

I'm quite sad that accessibility is not mentioned at all, because I'd say it is THE CLASSIC feature that many users pine for but developers frequently overlook.

Just to name a few of the major ones:

* Screen-Reader Support

* Alt-text for images

* Sensible zoom behaviour

* Options for keyboard input (instead of relying on mouse)

* Colour-blind & high-vis color schemes (Though "change color of things" covers that, at least)

Funny side-effect is that implementing this stuff very often (I'd even say almost always) makes the product better for your non-disabled/non-handicapped customers as well.

See my other response to rini17 for more info.

But yeah, seems to me these "shifted geometric progressions" are actually just a special case of a more general concept of a "polynomial progression".

The abstract of the paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.00309) says

> Let P1, … , Pm ∈ Z[y] be polynomials with distinct degrees ... progressions of the form x, x+P1(y), … , x+Pm(y)

Such progressions are a generalization of the "shifted geometric" progressions described in the article.

In particular, let P1 to Pm be y^i for i=1,...,m. Consider, say, x=0 and y = 3. Then the above gives us:

0, 3, 9, 27, ... , 3^m

Which is (almost) a geometric progression.

We can "shift" it by setting e.g. x = 1.

Though of course the polynomials can be much more general than just y^i.

The article says: > In the type of polynomial progressions studied by Peluse, you still pick a starting value, but now you add powers of another number. For example: 2, 2 + 3^1, 2 + 3^2, 2 + 3^3, 2 + 3^4. Or 2, 5, 11, 29, 83. (Her progressions also had only one term for each power, a requirement that makes them more manageable.)

I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that, since I don't see any reference to "one term for each power" in the abstract of the paper, nor in a quick glance through it.

It's a bit like the BeeLine reader that can make it easier to read text:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj...

But the advantage of the syntax highlighting is it also gives vertical structure.

If my eyes drift away or something, I can use "pictoral landmarks" via the blocks of colour to figure out where I was.

I like it. I often retweet specific paragraphs.

I come across many such threads because of specific paragraphs others have retweeted.

I also find I'm more likely to read almost everything, rather than skim like I would with many articles. Even with the thread reader version, I find I take in less information - the Twitter format breaks up the wall of text.

But then, I also sometimes copy plaintext into Notepad++ and turn on syntax highlighting for a random language to make it easier to read.

(Also, I don't have Dyslexia nor ADD, I read novels, and I read Slatestarcodex blog posts without skimming, so I'm not really sure what's going on here).

When you say "weird definition", do you mean it's a strange concept, or a strange name for that concept?

Edit: Or do you mean that "polynomial progression" has an existing definition, and this definition is equivalent, but is a strange way of stating it? Or do you mean the definition as stated in the article is wrong / differs from the standard definition?

Has a Douglas Adams quality about it; if it's possible to write a book containing an infinite improbability drive, a restaurant at the end of the universe, and a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue, it's probably possible to write this.

It's loading for me today (and wasn't yesterday).

Try it again and see if it works better now.

Possibly hugged to death. Try it again tomorrow.

This article references both:

https://davidburr.co.uk/rooftops/winter18/files/basic-html/p...

You mean asking a legal professional?

Scott Alexander wrote up a review of this book on Slatestarcodex. At over 11'000 words it's pretty hefty and goes quite in-depth.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-lik...

> Can anybody who is not into climbing even tell this is all fake?

Yes, quite clearly from the following:

> She made the first ascent of 8,832-meter K2 in China, the second highest mountain in the world, in 2009 and the third highest mountain in Europe.

Firstly, this sentence scans poorly. I'm guessing it should be:

> In 2009, she made the first ascent of 8,832-meter K2 in China, the second highest mountain in the world, and the third highest mountain in Europe.

Second, how can a mountain in China be the third highest mountain in Europe? How can the second highest mountain the world be the third highest in Europe?

If I came across this in the wild, then even if I didn't think it was fake, I'd definitely think it was poorly proofread.

Ironically, the lights in these "green" houses will be anything but green precisely for the reason that greenhouses are called that in the first place!

Most leaves are green. This is to say that green light is reflected, and it's the OTHER wavelengths that are absorbed by the chlorophyll. So you need a light that is brighter in other parts of the spectrum where the absorption is strongest. Hence, a NON-green light.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll

The proper formulation of the light-speed restriction is that no information can travel between two points in space faster than light-speed.

The expansion of space itself doesn't violate that - you couldn't use it to communicate with someone in an FTL way.

Perhaps one can see them as simplified examples of the type of message you're aiming for, and it's left as an exercise to the reader to phrase it naturally.

For many terms of (programming) jargon, there's a strict academic definition, perhaps as defined in a paper in which the term was originally introduced, and the usage of the word in the broader (programming) community.

The latter is the colloquial definition.

Honestly, usage of the word "sanction" should just be sanctioned.

I'm surprised "original" didn't make the list.

For example, consider "An original telling of the story" vs "The original telling of the story".

The name for this effect is Banner Blindness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness

I know you're just quoting Wikipedia here, but any idea what does "non-cognitive" mean in this context? What are some examples of cognitive and non-cognitive traits and why does grit fall into the latter category?

The way I understand the parent comment (and I am open to correction), the question is why do we specifically describe functional programming with terms such as 'beautiful' - why do we not use say 'beautiful' for paradigms such as object-oriented, or aspect-oriented, or event-driven?

Wikipedia says

> While it has been claimed that Born's law can be derived from the many-worlds interpretation, the existing proofs have been criticized as circular.

So it seems you aren't alone in feeling this way.

Edit: Forgot the link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_rule

Ah, you're right; I didn't make the connection, thanks.

There's a book called "The Secret of Our Success" which covers this topic. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Our-Success-Evolution-Domestic...

I have not read the book, but I've read a pretty good summary and blog post about it here (~7'700 words): https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...

I found the arguments fascinating. Especially surprising was the argument that e.g. using bones to divine where to hunt can serve a useful role despite the apparent uselessness of divination. In this case, the argument goes, it serves as a randomizing tool to prevent over-hunting in one spot by independent groups (though of course the tribes themselves could not provide that reasoning).

---

Follow-up blog posts:

A list of excerpts chosen by the blog author: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/05/list-of-passages-i-hig...

Comments on the previous blog posts (useful particularly because some comments point out potential errors in the book): https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/11/highlights-from-the-co...