Double_Cast

6 ms·

1.
by Double_Cast 4y ago
My take is that pattern-matching is thinking. But it's low-quality thinking. High-quality thinking is logic. And higher still is causality, which is to logic what calculus is to algebra. I.e. if logic studies the relationship between x
2.
by Double_Cast 5y ago
Potential violence != actual violence. The potential to commit violence can be reframed as strength. It's useful because it grants you negotiating leverage, regardless of whether you are the aggressor or defender. Can't defend you
3.
by Double_Cast 5y ago
> The most energy you can extract from any type of bomb would be if it was converted to energy at 100% efficiency. Under normal circumstances, a bomb's energy is endogenous. But in the blog's thought-experiment, the energy is
4.
by Double_Cast 5y ago
fwiw, Tolkien wrote the trilogy only after fans requested an encore of The Hobbit. The ring's importance/malevolence was a retcon.
5.
by Double_Cast 5y ago
To me, the distinction maps onto the Effectual vs Causal distinction. For some path "A to B", some people prefer to consider their present tools/resources (point A) and work forward opportunistically. While others prefer to c
6.
by Double_Cast 5y ago
I tend to frame this in terms of the Multi-Armed Bandit Problem. It's a trade-off between exploration vs exploitation. It's often impossible to predict beforehand which strategy is optimal for a given environment. Which, I suspect
7.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
The retiree example is intended to demonstrate that a wealth tax is inherently perverse, regardless of who is targeted. Savings are just deferred expenditure and debt is just expedited expenditure. When you tax wealth, you expedite consumpt
8.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
One benefit of markets is price-discovery. But if you're not participating in a market, determining price is akin to shaking a magic 8 ball. It assumes a Just Price, which is a heuristic and a fiction. Also, quality of living is determ
9.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
The point isn't "matrix multiplication != scalar multiplication". The point is "the process of evaluating a reducible expression inherently discards information about the original expression", which is a fact about
10.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
I tend to think of multiplication as a transformation. "repeated additional" almost makes it sounds like we're merely telescoping an interval within a single dimension. Whereas "transformation" (to me), evokes more
11.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
Suppose your friend Alice arranges your wedding. You ask her to arrange the lawn chairs in an arrangement of 2 rows and 3 columns. But she misinterprets your request as 3 rows and 2 columns. Oops. Now a particular family can't all sit
12.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
Bubbles are inductive. Arbitrage is anti-inductive.
13.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
I think snarfy is expressing incredulity that meteorology doesn't already account for these types of emmissions. Analogously, suppose the headline had read > Water flows downhill. Scientists want to know why. "But gravity mak
14.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
A literal trigger is a lever that fires a gun. A figurative trigger is some event that sets in motion a cascade of events that occur in rapid succession. The root cause of firing a gun would probably be analogous to loading the chamber with
15.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
> Slowly I became like Gollum. Which is ironic because I love The Lord of the Rings for the exact opposite reasons: calling for adventure, exploration, to love your friends, and to live in harmony with nature. ... > When the lock-d
16.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
IIRC Grant formerly made videos for Khan Academy, and thus uses the same virtual-blackboard as Sal. However, Grant animates with a Python lib whereas Sal draws by hand.
17.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrPgsrfZWOU The Office – How Michael Scott Makes a Sale (7 min video essay) TLDR he's a people-person.
18.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
Ideally, the mapping from object to image is injective. What you're proposing will lead to "hash collisions" aka blurriness, since each point in the object will bleed colors into neighboring points in the image. The entire ob
19.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
I feel obliged to contextualize "Billionaires Build" on behalf of the unaware. Marc Andreesen published an essay "It's Time to Build" [0]. He claims that ostensibly, COVID-19 inflicted acute trauma on the U.S. econo
20.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
I think Barron92 is drawing a distinction between "lust for power" vs "effective use of power".
21.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
If the goal is truth, you cultivate a desire to learn to succeed under diverse scenarios. The incentive is success itself. In a particular scenario, Falsehood can offer greater benefit than Truth. But the advantage of Truth, is that it prov
22.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
Ironically, the Rationalists might frown on this. Several posts in the Sequences had a theme of "don't do what's raTi0NaL, do what actually wins." E.g. "The Ultimate Newcomb Problem" [0]. HN recognizes this sam
23.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
* It's instructive to track the underlying resource. If technology_A saves you time, it's more time-efficient (aka quick). If technology_B saves you money, it's more cost-efficient (aka cheap). * In game theory, "7 hospi
24.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
They're orthogonal for non-trivial decisions. Once you hit the efficient frontier of anything , you need to start making trade-offs.
25.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
Suppose you're playing a videogame. Your character just leveled up. You can upgrade either Attack or HP. * "Upgrade Attack" is more efficient. It allows you to beat the game faster. But since your HP is low, you can't af
26.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
From what I've read elsewhere, an octopus's pupils isolate colors via chromatic aberration. They can see a range of colors, but only one color at a time.
27.
by Double_Cast 6y ago
https://slatestarcodex.com/comments/
28.
by Double_Cast 7y ago
I see this as analogous to saying > Numbers are inherently binary. You could call 93 "a decimal number", but I would just call it "a number". There's no point in having the term "decimal" since the tec
29.
by Double_Cast 7y ago
I'm not complaining that teacher salaries are too high or too low. I'm complaining that: A) you're reinventing the Paradox of Value; and B) you're challenging the norm without proposing an alternative economic model. &qu
30.
by Double_Cast 7y ago
Wages vary according to marginal utility rather than total utility. The question is not "what if all teachers disappeared", but "what if one particular teacher disappeared".

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