hegemonicon

7 ms·

1.
Interactive Bayes' Theorem Visualization(coarsegra.in)
2 points by hegemonicon 15y ago|0 comments
2.
How Many Planets Could We Destroy?(coarsegra.in)
2 points by hegemonicon 15y ago|0 comments
3.
by hegemonicon 15y ago
According to google image search, it's Origin: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=On+the+Origin+of+Sp...
4.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
$1000 would barely cover 25% of the price of a current seat of AutoCAD.
5.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
This is what's known as a "superstimulus" - something that pinpoints our brain's reward and pleasure centers orders of magnitude more than anything that existed in the evolutionary environment. Heroin and candy bars fall into the same categ
6.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
Having tried to implement a certain form of this, I can say that forcing yourself into a certain mode of thinking, top down, is EXTREMELY mentally taxing. It's very difficult to keep up the mental focus necessary for an appreciable amount o
7.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
What I find irritating is that a neuroscientist would be so easily drawn into mysterious, magical thinking about what was going on in her head. Of course, I suppose I might see things differently if a blood clot turned half of my brain off
8.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
A philosophical zombie is not a decision tree incapable of learning. A philosophical zombie is something that is exactly like a human in every way except that it lacks consciousness. The concept has more than a few problems - see http://le
9.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
>Complexity research doesn't need its own institute, because complexity research is a pseudoscience that means whatever you want it to mean This. As far as I can tell, "complexity science" is really just a dumping ground for things we h
10.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
Careful. "The Black Swan" is a pop non-fiction book, and reading it won't give you an intimate understanding of markets. Taleb has taken his share of criticism ( http://www.efalken.com/papers/Taleb2.html ) and his ability to capitalize on t
11.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
Hrm, this submission is over 300 karma points as of this comment, which means that hacker monthly #2 will have to include an entire copy of hacker monthly #1...
12.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
Of course, at some point letting problems work themselves out just becomes laziness. "Mr Coolidge's genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is not an indolent inactivity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity, which
13.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
When you're talking about a profession though, engineer means something very specific. It means that you're trained and licensed and can be held legally responsible if whatever you're building should malfunction. Referring to your professio
14.
by hegemonicon 16y ago
You need a layout change - this looks more like a news aggregation site than a blog. News sites are designed to lure you in with a grabbing headline. With articles such as yours, you really need to put the text in front of me immediately -
15.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
It's well known that Google collects massive amounts of data, and does massive amounts of UI testing (such as the infamous testing between 85 different shades of blue), so I'm somewhat skeptical that it's design is mediocre because this guy
16.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Disclaimer: I haven't read the book OR the article. It's encouraging that Robin Hanson (who's a former physicist) has called the book excellent: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/01/from-eternity-to-here.... From his description, and fro
17.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Unfortunately, there's the small matter of them requiring orders of magnitude more energy than exists in the universe. Link to the Alcubierre Drive - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
18.
Surgeon stationed in Antarctica removes his own appendix (1961)(bmj.com)
78 points by hegemonicon 17y ago|24 comments
19.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
I seem to remember something (possibly posted here) about most company founders actually being in their 30's and 40's. There's something to be said for the value of years of knowledge and experience.
20.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
There's nothing wrong with trying to be smart. The problem is trying to show others how smart you are (as the guy so astutely wrote in your yearbook). It makes you look like a jerk. No one likes a jerk. I have an extremely similar problem,
21.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
I am not an expert on evolution, but much of this article strikes me as incorrect. The fact that genes are capable of modifying other genes (turning them off/on, splicing in new genes, etc.) doesn't refute the concept of natural selection o
22.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
I don't know about Japanese, but in Chinese, all the numbers have words that can be said extremely quickly - si, qi, etc. Because our working memory is implemented as a 2 second loop of audio, this allows Chinese people to have a working me
23.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
I guess 'five behaviors that people sometimes exhibit, some of the time' wasn't a punchy enough title.
24.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
This comparison doesn't seem particularly valid. Insurgencies operate by leveraging small-scale, decentralized groups against a large, slow-moving beaurocracy. They succeed by operating faster than the beaurocracy (inside their OODA loops),
25.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
"There is no such thing as information overload. There is only filter failure." - Clay Shirky
26.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Always appropriate, Vannever Bush's prescient "As we may think" http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush
27.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
That's what I'd like to know - how LITTLE does an assistant professor make that 60,000 dollars of debt will take a lifetime to pay off, even in the absence of a mortgage (and presumably a car) payment?
28.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Eliezer Yudkowsky.
29.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Agreed, there's no need for designers to be treated as some sort of cadre of white knights. This is just basic business ethics - you could find similar situations in any job at any company.
30.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
My favorite definition of math, courtesty of http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2008/08/what-is-mathematics-r... "Mathematics is the minimal environment to preserve ideas."

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