blahblah3

8 ms·

1.
by blahblah3 8y ago
The third criteria of immediate feedback seems too stringent. In chess, feedback is often not immediate. If one were to run a reinforcement learning algorithm on chess with no human coded rewards, the only objective feedback would come at t
2.
by blahblah3 9y ago
Something that has been disturbing to me has been the rise of the phrase "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences." On some level, this is true. People can of course legally react in certain ways to someone'
3.
by blahblah3 9y ago
If M ~ N(u,v_m) and W ~ N(u,v_w) [where N refers to the normal distribution], with v_m > v_w, then P(M > T) > P(W > T) for all T > u. I.e if the trait is approximately normally distributed with equal means among two groups, t
4.
by blahblah3 9y ago
Just to respond to a few specific points: >Despite that unjustified leap, the document goes on to suggest strongly that women working at Google are less qualified than men Can you elaborate on this? Just because FEWER women may be qualif
5.
by blahblah3 9y ago
Seems like a lot of the controversy around these types of discussions comes from the consequences of bayesian inference. If you know that men and women differ in a distributional sense with respect to some trait, that gives you a prior to w
6.
by blahblah3 9y ago
I think that's being too results driven and doesn't take into account the risk that was taken. As another example, suppose your uber driver drove you home while intoxicated. Even if the trip ended up being fine (no accidents, smoo
7.
by blahblah3 9y ago
Just because his investors made money doesn't excuse him. Suppose you lent 10,000 to a friend and the friend promised to return it within a year. A year later, your friend doesn't pay you back and makes a bunch of excuses. Instead
8.
by blahblah3 9y ago
All the stats stuff you mentioned (and more) is laid out very nicely in the second chapter of "Elements of Statistical Learning" https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/Papers/ESLII.pdf
9.
by blahblah3 9y ago
It's hard to know if the returns are statistically significant given annual returns, but I'm sure he's providing more granular statistics to investors. Kinda annoying how the articles hypes this by distinguishing it from stat
10.
by blahblah3 10y ago
My suggestion would be to slow down when reading math or about math. Let's take Wikipedia's integer factorization for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization First paragraph is: "In
11.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Doug Polk is completely right and the binary "statistically significant or not" way of thinking is often stupid
12.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Really nice proof! The "clearly" thing isn't too hard to see even if you aren't aware of the "alternating series theorem": Consider the sequence a1, a2, a3... with the sum being a1 - a2 + a3..., note we can wri
13.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Well properly understanding why certain number systems work (fractions, negative numbers) requires some understanding of set theory, and the great mathematicians of the past struggled with a lot of these concepts we take for granted (negati
14.
by blahblah3 10y ago
What is disagreeable about his comment? Do you disagree that examining a statistic by subgroup could provide more insight into the question?
15.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Growth comes from reinvestment of capital into the business. This makes sense from a shareholder perspective when the risk-adjusted return on this invested capital outweighs the returns capital could get elsewhere (other stocks). Some compa
16.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Why not both? Both preparation and inherent ability are important. I find it implausible that everything can be explained by "mindset." Perfect pitch is a good example, it's a useful ability and cannot really be developed thr
17.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Yeah but the money he made from this doesn't sound like flow, sounds like a large directional bet (similar to the london whale event, except this one happened to work)
18.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Whether or not it's a "fundamental principle of democracy" , the hyperbole and moral policing sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Yes, trump would be a terrible president but he's not Hitler (I know you didn't co
19.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Yes, preparation makes a big difference in math olympiad but most of those competing at a high level are already very talented to begin with. The problem is when a parent expects their kid to achieve similar performance when they don't
20.
by blahblah3 10y ago
In my experience, asian parents tend to vastly underestimate the importance of genetics that predetermine a child's strengths and dispositions. Kids that are born with some combination of great working memory, processing speed, and abs
21.
by blahblah3 10y ago
The desire to "keep up with the Jones's" is one of the strongest human motivators in my opinion and very hard to fight. Most people want to feel respected or on par with their social circle. And even if one can resist the urg
22.
by blahblah3 10y ago
This can be mitigated by evaluating all the models on a hold-out test set (similar to what kaggle does and what was done in the netflix prize). The multiple comparisons problem is also mitigated by the fact that the models wont be completel
23.
by blahblah3 10y ago
it's r^2 in the denominator. one idea is to think of the geometry: the surface area of a sphere is proportional to r^2. therefore if you think of a constant "influence" at a given distance, you might divide it by the surface
24.
by blahblah3 10y ago
of course they wouldn't have sued if theranos had scored, that doesn't make their lawsuit invalid. companies should be accountable for the statements they make (see Enron)
25.
by blahblah3 10y ago
absolutely agree with 0xfffafaCrash on this, just because a measure is imperfect and has varying levels of validity depending on the person doesn't mean it has no signal. i'm pretty sure someone who has gotten INTP every single te
26.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Maybe this is an unpopular view, but I think there is something unnatural about mathematics for most people. It tends to be much more abstract than other subjects. I say this as someone who has always enjoyed math and majored in it. And it
27.
by blahblah3 10y ago
well I can only speak to my own experience. personally I really enjoyed geometry but can't say the same for most students
28.
by blahblah3 10y ago
Unfortunately, probability and stats are not easy to teach, and even many professional scientists / researchers have major confusions about the subjects. Common sense actually provides a decent enough guide for most people (i.e a baseb
29.
by blahblah3 10y ago
The problems he suggests overall seem too difficult for the average non-mathematically inclined student. And they also require quite a skilled teacher to teach. I'm not sure stuff beyond "algebra 1" needs to be taught to ever
30.
by blahblah3 10y ago
That's a great example and I don't disagree with you. The way I think about "intelligence" is not to mull over what it "really means" but to think about lots of common "intellectual" tasks (in which a

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