jimwhite42

7 ms·

1.
by jimwhite42 2y ago
Here's an attempt to explaining the irrational part of programmers deciding which programming language to use. Part of it goes into more detail on ideas like C programmers insisting 'on the danger because they cannot stand the pos
2.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
> IMO actual leaders are just people who think ahead so when other people don't know what to do they have some sort of answer. They may not be in positions of authority at all. That's a really great pithy summary. It gels with
3.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I think the Sorites paradox may point to something specific about these kinds of ideas, which is not shared with the meaning of things like evil or knowledge. There's a page on it on SEP: https://plato.stanford.edu/entr
4.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
> Microsoft just announced 10 million dollar effort to make Rust their default systems language for their infrastructure This seems like an incredibly low amount of money to achieve something like that.
5.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I think a little hesitance on the overall success of these sorts of projects is prudent, given the history of axiomatic and formal expections and reality. But let's say they make huge amounts of progress - they might improve the ergono
6.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I think it's likely that axiomatic approaches, and formal approaches will continue to produce interesting results and have some effect on regular mathematics. But this is very different to suggesting that most regular mathematics will
7.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
And you can apply it, when you do, it really works.
8.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
> It seems like it should be possible, in theory, but it takes too much work. The definition of a valid mathematical proof that I've heard mathematicians use is if it convinces other mathematicians. I think there's integrity in
9.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I like some of what I think I understand about Feyerabend's ideas, but I didn't get on with his actual books. I expected something ethnographic-y or observation based, but only found incredibly abstract stuff. I listened to a few
10.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I think there's a subtlety which isn't implicit in what you say. There is the ideal of science - which I think there's a case to be made that it's not something that can be fixed, but constantly evolves - and the practic
11.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
Aren't you mixing two distinct things here?
12.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
> To take the obvious example of using exactly what Popper was trying to oppose. the current Chinese communist party's claim that capitalism will eventually transition into socialism once a certain level of development is achieved,
13.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I've been wondering if falsifiability is misunderstood, based on what a few people have commented about it. The alternative version is only that if claims are made that a system has made specific predictions that proved to be true, the
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by jimwhite42 3y ago
I thought this was a good analysis of Patrick Brown's claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZUXQPqY3k
15.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
As far as I can tell, the issue is people misrepresenting what the review says, not that the review is faulty. The review concludes that we have evidence that masks are effective, but the set of papers reviewed cannot be used to conclude we
16.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
Can you say where he does this? I only remember him referring to first normal form as something historical, that he doesn't use that particular normal form directly at all.
17.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
> Also I dont see how it isn’t hierachical? Nested tables create a hierachical structure just like nested records in a hierachical database. What is the difference? I haven't seen any reasonable uses of nested relations in base relv
18.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I'm a bit fuzzy, but I think Vertica allows duplicating tables stored in multiple orders - then I think the appropriate version is picked automatically by the query optimiser. So this works not that differently to an index (which is al
19.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
> The "normal forms" could merely be suggestions for a database designer, not a technical limitation enforced by the software itself. I think most of the motivation for normal forms is to avoid 'update anomalies', whi
20.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
Date and Darwen (spritual successors to Codd?), have a relational theory which allows nested relation values and I think it doesn't contradict the motivation behind first normal form, and it isn't hierarchical in the pre-relationa
21.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
Here are some interesting videos on NMN: https://www.youtube.com/@DrBradStanfield/search?query=nmn I think the pragmatic position is that NR has better testing in humans and is a bit cheaper, and there's no reason
22.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
I'm not sure if I'm remembering it right, but I think it was on a Raphaël Millière interview on Mindscape, where Raphaël said something along the lines of when there are many dimensions in a machine learning model, the distinction
23.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
Have you listened to Carroll on the subject? As someone who knows next to nothing on this subject, he seems to me to be claiming that dark matter explains a lot of things in the universe and is very established, whereas MOND is very fringe.
24.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
The things you do name are unquestionably going to be massive issues, and yet these don't get nearly the airtime of the incredibly speculative 'AI will kill all humans if we don't do something drastic'.
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by jimwhite42 3y ago
It's either a simple mistake, or a deliberate troll. Sam Altman used to do a role on Hacker News very similar to what dang does today.
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by jimwhite42 3y ago
Is it too cynical to claim the the noise about existential risks is a convenient distraction from these unquestionably real issues we will face, maybe even a deliberate part of helping it happen? Here's a random bit of fun prescience:
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by jimwhite42 3y ago
True, but I think slightly pedantic for this context. I think there have been proposed relational operators which produce the result you describe - a join, then remove the join key fields from the result. If we are in a pedantic mood, also,
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by jimwhite42 3y ago
In the functional interpretation of relational theory, a join is function composition, surprised that one was left out.
29.
by jimwhite42 3y ago
There's a document that I think was an unofficial project management document from NASA, I can't find it now, but one of the items was something along the lines of 'if your space mission isn't reusing an existing launch
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by jimwhite42 3y ago
On the "Async/await" wrt IO and FFI, I wonder what Graydon and others think about the Erlang BEAM or the GHC runtime implementation.

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