zimablue

There are a lot of overlapping distinctions, some blurry, I think. He chooses some for wizardry vs engineering but I don't know whether they're best. For example he puts "magic"=implicit, but I would normally say highly implicit code is "engineering" because it implies that someone has understood and explored the problem enough to write a very tuned framework or library. I think reasons for putting very implicit code in with wizardry could be that it might be that the person using it doesn't understand it, and that it's somewhat in opposition to strong typesystems

wizardry/engineering high uptime/downtime possible efficiency important/efficiency not important large codebase/small codebase not implicit/implicit (I disagree most with this one) problem is understood/code is exploratory (I think this is the most important distinction) high specialism/low specialism of coders changes slowly/changes quickly typed/untyped

I would say websites are engineering because the problem space is well understood, they need high uptime and they tend to be written by specialists (React guy, django guy etc).

An equivalent but probably equally not-the-real-explanation argument would be that we've gone from an era of opportunity into an era of oligopoly as the internet titans have emerged and so the "coolest kids" who everyone cargocults have gone from being fast-growing startups to members of the big-5 elite. Kind of the same as his argument just with detail on who his "people" are and why, but it changes the implications.

I think it's more as he touches on that the two are converging. I think eventually some sort of pluggable typing will win (the "proofs" on your system won't be a single compilation pass but maybe different typing for different parts of the system, and specific proofs run between compile and runtime as the two blur), which will look more like gradual typing.

I think that is a reason why there's a lot of python/c++ in hedge fund land. I've written some clojure but don't know the c interop story for it.

This is maybe the best internet answer, by the author:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28467011/what-are-the-ma...

What I'm referring to is the "now-cast", but his other two definitions both seem to shy away from saying "this is flat-out the probability we think of the election".

The point is, you can redefine or choose a definition of probability if you want, but if it's less useful than the normal definition (and confusing to people!) then people are free to criticize your work on that basis.

And there's a very useful, testable, mathematical definition of probability that allows us to equally assess everyone's predicting ability, and Nate Silver is dodging it.

If you're interested in this subject, there's a non-mathematical discussion somewhere in Tetlock's book Superforecasting which is interesting in general.

If I then make another prediction that's always 1 year out, you can decide how good that prediction is and start to make a curve of how good my predictions are by how far out they are.

Taleb is saying that the blue line is so incorrect it's meaningless and deceptive and Nate should product a red line which is a real probability that he can actually be judged on.

Now if someone tells you something is a 90% chance today, and a 10% chance tomorrow, again you don't trust their predictions.

There is a probability associated with "changes in probability". The probability of going from 100 to 0 should intuitively be 0%. The probability of going from 90 to 10 intuitively must be something like 20% (it's like 80 of the 90s "didn't happen", with a probability of 20).

A key point is that you can add this up every day, if something goes from 90->10->90 then it's even more unlikely than going 90->10.

So if you extend that intuition, put some real maths behind it, you can tell whether something is "likely to be a real probability" by the rate at which it changes. And if you have lots and lots of repeated predictions, you can be confident that something isn't a good probability (every timeseries has like a <10% chance of doing exactly what it does, so their combined probability [of being good probabilities] is like 0).

Now Nate Silver accepts this, but says that he's not actually putting a probability on the event in the future, but some non-existent "probability on that event in the future if the future was now". But that doesn't correspond to anything useful or measurable (it's untestable!!), and most people will assume it follows the normal meaning of probability, and it's honestly just silly.

Looks, competence, workexp, interview skills, height, rich background, any positive discrimination, nepotism etc etc. All should be negatively correlated with eachother this. Although there are limits to the strength of the effect right, it depends on how much of a slice is being excluded and if the two variables have an enormous correlation that might outweigh it?

You'd also expect the effect to be stronger the more selective the environment (for each pair of variables). So if your place hires very strongly on looks and competence they'll be very negatively correlated.

Also it depends on the hiring policy, we're assuming some sort of (A+B) > C evaluation over things that they care about, but if it's (A>A0, B>B0, C>C0), pass all of those and you're in then this effect should be totally absent in those variables.

If you exclude the (~a, ~b) sample then within the population that remains it looks like a and b are negatively correlated. (p(a|~b) = 1, p(a|b)=0.5)

It's interesting because this is something that happens a lot => when dating, looks negatively correlate with niceness within people you date because you don't date people who are neither. Diseases in hospital populations are negatively correlated because if you don't have anything you're not in hospital.

You only disputed some of my points, "most people will download it with spyware", "it will damage existing more truly extensible efforts" seems to be a pretty key ones you haven't disputed. If only those two were true it would be enough for me to dislike it.

For example, you can't easily implement a shell which moves around the windows and can also sit on a side, because windows and sidebars are totally different concepts in the code.

VSCode depresses the hell out of me, it's almost a summary of the bad things of open source. Open source but most people will download it with spyware Open source but not really built as a nice platform to be meaningfully extended Open source and controlled by a single company Open source and used cynically as a wedge to pull developers into your orbit Open source and not at all written from an extensible mindset, just enough extensibility to trap people in Open source and will dominate other offerings because it has a big name behind it, so damages atom/emacs/etc Open source and pretty much an inferior copy of an existing thing (Atom)

Developers who are proud of using VSCode baffle me, have a word with yourselves.

Your answer is so baffling to me that I checked whether you're a real person, and you seem to be. I'd be surprised if either China or the US launched a war because of your personal communications so the question seems to come more down to who you trust to abuse the information more/screw you in an unaccountable way.

Substitute "army" "crushing economic leverage"