41 ms·
The Kolmogorov option
- yaacov 9y agoLooks like his blog's down? Guess I'll try again in the morning Edit: seems to be working now
- CrystalLangUser 9y agoThe 503 curse.
- hyperpallium 9y agoWhat's the hinted present-day ideology he dare not challenge?
- rodgerd 9y agoFrom the references to secret police and gulags I can only assume he's blogging from North Korea or Iran or Turkey or somesuch.
- idlewords 9y agoTexas.
- rodgerd 9y agoHuh. I must have missed the bit where there were secret police rounding up dissedents and sticking them in camps where they were worked to death in Texas. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it.
- defen 9y agoThe question is where he's blogging from, which is probably Texas since he's a professor at UT Austin. The beauty of his blogpost is that depending on your perspective you can choose to read as pertaining to Texas (probably going to ban most insurance coverage for abortion) or "gender stuff" (Google manifesto fallout)
- rodgerd 9y agoBut in either case, the comparison to the Soviet Union is so ridiculous as to undermine any ability to use it a resonable springboard for discussion.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kenbaylor 9y agoA veiled James Damore ('Google Manifesto') analogy perhaps?
- kurthr 9y agoHe says, 'I welcome discussion about the responses of Galileo, Kolmogorov, and other historical figures to official ideologies that they didn’t believe in; and about the meta-question of how a truth-valuing person ought to behave when living under such ideologies. In the hopes of maintaining a civil discussion, any comments that mention current hot-button ideological disputes will be ruthlessly deleted.' so it doesn't sound that way to me... more likely related to something in the Texas legislature, though he might be sympathetic to someone who's been dogpiled by the modern media.
- pron 9y agoDamore is no Galileo. He wrote about a subject he knows little about, didn't seriously research, and one that he actually doesn't seem too interested in studying at all. He wanted to enjoy the appearance of a "forbidden truth" while not caring to put in the effort of actually acquiring it. Aside from the fact that his opinion isn't popular in his immediate circle (yet far from revolutionary, and indeed very common among the ruling party in his country), he is a far cry from the iconoclast scientists who care deeply about a subject, devote their lives to studying it, know its ins and outs, and research it with fiery intensity.
- EliRivers 9y agoEquality / diversity attitudes such as those espoused by Google. See recent events.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoHe previously got caught up in an internet drama. It's hard to summarize, but he made a comment about how being a nerdy straight male was harder than being a woman or gay and how reading feminist books made him suicidal. He got a bit of blowback on that and so probably a reference to that: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664
- ianai 9y agoWe react to the harshness before us most. But what we perceive personally is always an anecdote.
- strken 9y agoTo add a bit more context, his comment is highly personal and deals with how he felt ashamed of his sexuality during his childhood and teenage years. His self-loathing was apparently so bad that he asked a doctor to chemically castrate him. His comments need to be read in the context of his life, because unlike the infamous memo they were highly personal, and that makes them hard to summarise fairly. I really like his blog, even if it's mostly beyond me. It would be a shame if anyone drew a negative conclusion about Scott without first reading what he wrote.
- idlewords 9y agoScott Aaronson is a wonderful human being, and seeing the attacks against him, and how they have changed him, has been very painful.
- defen 9y agoHe didn't say "being a nerdy straight male was harder than being a woman or gay" - he said that when he was a teenager he was so ashamed of his sexuality that he wished he were gay or a woman so that he wouldn't have what he perceived to be shameful sexual desire toward women. He was the rare self-loathing straight man, and people on the internet literally wanted to ruin his career or even kill him for admitting it. Imagine a white person who has so internalized the logic of white privilege that they are utterly ashamed of their race and wish they were black - it doesn't mean that person thinks black people have it easier than whites.
- frinxor 9y agoGood read - thanks
- tristram_shandy 9y agoThe difference, of course, between Galileo and Kolmogorov is that people are aware of Galileo. Acquiescing keeps intellectuals comfortable, but that's about all you can say for it. There's been a few of these articles linked on HN recently, including Paul Graham's original http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html, with a more or less identical thesis (be quiet) that camouflages real message: that the author is signalling support for the heresy, carefully.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoWhich heresy though? I'm not sure I can link either article to any particular issue.
- backpropaganda 9y agoPeople are assuming Aaronson is talking about Damore's note about diversity practices at Google.
- jfoutz 9y agoMy only complaint is the 'truths everyone knows' but doesn't say. Most people just don't care. there are a few thousand people that think deeply about worldview A, and a handful of others that think deeply about worldview B. Everybody else is worried about milking their cow, or pilgrimage to the holy land, or picking the kids up from soccer practice. When worldview A is dominant, problems are framed in terms of A. It's literally hard to have those 'hey, that's funny' moments. And when I do, it's easy to dismiss them. I haven't thought as deeply as the worldview A people, i'm probably forgetting some minor detail. Worldview B people are trained scientists, who spend years honing the 'hey that's funny' detector. I can't compete with that. Maybe i'm weird. I don't think so. I've had my insights about programming problems, but there are so many topics where i'm simply ignorant. There are so many subjects where i'm a fish, i can't see the water. The author brought up sexual orientation. I am not a human sexuality researcher. I don't care to be one. My information comes from the culture i live in. I was incredibly happy for friends that were able to marry. If i lived a hundred years ago, i strongly doubt i would hold that same view. I agree with the author, because culture creates defaults. Push culture when you can. Make better defaults. Most people don't change the factory settings. They are lazy. Or busy. Or really just don't care.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThis sounds like "epistemic learned helplessness" - in which you realize that, in domains you're not a specialist in, you can't really discriminate between convincing-sounding arguments of different smart people, so you give up trying and default to whatever is the current majority consensus. See http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html.
- posterboy 9y agoThat's a consequence, because one can't be a specialist in most things at the same.
- jfoutz 9y agoAlthough i'm probably guilty of that as well, that's not quite the point i'm trying to make. The first example about _Ages of Chaos_ is a good one. I've never read the book. I've never read the crackpot theories on either side. It's probably a fascinating story. But it's just not relevant to my life. I've never tried to discriminate between those crackpot arguments, so i don't think i've even reached the giving up stage. Another example might be best player of $sport for $season. Lacking this knowledge has left me out of some conversations. That momentary exclusion hasn't been enough incentive to actually try to form an opinion. I just don't care enough. So i'm stuck with the factory settings. Someone names a player who's name i vaguely recognize, so i smile and nod and wait for the conversation to progress. or go do something else.
- wisty 9y agoA bit of game theory might be useful - https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/5/cj14n1-13.pdf https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/c... Riots and revolutions are difficult to start because of a number of obstacles: * It is not clear how many sympathizers you have. * Even if you believe you have the numbers, being the first to act may result in you being made an example of by the authorities. It's smarter then to rely on more ambiguous signals. Playing stupid is a good way to do this. The problem is, the people who want to "stick it to the man" are generally young people who still process emotions with their amygdala - they can't keep their ego in check and pretend they don't realize they are contradicting the official doctrine. It's fun to think you can be like Martin Luther, nailing The 95 Theses to the church door. We only hear about Martin Luther because of a quite literal survivor bias. Also, Luther survived because he claimed to not be challenging the Vatican's authority, but simply having a scholarly debate. He was also quite lucky that the secular authorities were lenient (perhaps for political reasons - there were lessor nobles who weren't so keen on the Holy Roman Emperor's authority).
- idlewords 9y agoSince I presume you're a techie, it's funny that you overlook the main reason for Luther's success, which was technological—the invention of the mass-printed pamphlet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_during_the_Reformation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_during_the_Reformat... I would also urge you to resist the lure of game theory in analyzing human behavior. It's a toy model that gives toy insights.
- wisty 9y agoMass communication was also a factor, but probably not one that Luther would have grasped until he was already committed. And he wouldn't have printed any pamphlets if the local authorities executed him immediately. As for game theory being a toy model, every model of human behaviour is a toy model. I'm not sure if game theory is a particularly bad one.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
- aatchb 9y agoSo he's willing to concede space on the scientific landscape in the face of increasingly oppressive 'political correctness'? Don't research something if it may hurt someones feelings! Great.
- sanxiyn 9y agoIt seems he is. It seems wise to me.
- ElmntOfSurprise 9y agoI think his point is, you can't fight all the battles.
- jdoliner 9y ago> if I don’t understand what is or isn’t hurtful, then I’ll defer to the leading intellectuals in my culture to tell me This essay was so promising, and then turned out to be a pledge of allegiance to the thought police.
- coldtea 9y agoYeah, god forbid a person thinks for themselves instead of referring to some cultural intellectuals for judgement. What kind of arguments are these? How to be more compliant? What happened to all those enlightenment ideals of being LESS compliant, judging for yourself, etc? And when did "hurtful" (as in feelings) became some huge consideration in public discourse?
- Frondo 9y agoI think you missed the point of that one. He doesn't want to hurt other people, but realizes he won't know all the ways he could do so accidentally. So, in the interest of not hurting people, if he is unsure whether something will or not, he'll defer to smarter people about what's appropriate behavior. If you don't care whether what you say hurts others, you need do nothing, need defer to no one any time, ever.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoWhat he's really doing is letting himself get censored by hecklers.
- Frondo 9y agoNo. If you don't care about hurting other people, do whatever you want. If you do care about hurting other people, do your best but recognize the limits of your knowledge--and where your knowledge is insufficient, defer to other, smarter people. But again, if you don't care about hurting others, do what you want. You don't have to share his goals in life. You can have your own. It's simple, and it's not censorship.
- jdoliner 9y ago
- zem 9y agoThe fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain"
- wrinkl3 9y agoI think what he's saying that if Kolmogorov was cautious enough to keep his unpopular opinions to himself, so can you.
- zem 9y agoyeah, but he was very clearly casting the whole thing as an "emperor's new clothes" situation with the implication that the unpopular opinions were self-evidently true but unmentionable.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoThat there exist unpopular opinions etc.; in other words, mathematical implication, not equivalence. From this, it doesn't follow that any unpopular opinion is etc.: I think that the existence of {unpopular and {false and/or mentionable}} opinions is also evident.
- wrinkl3 9y agoHe's not saying that any unpopular opinion is self-evidently true if people oppose it with such zeal. He's saying that there exist self-evidently true opinions that will be treated that way, and if you harbor one of those you should choose the Kolmogorov option. How do you know you're harboring one of those? The evidence will support it.
- Ar-Curunir 9y agoBut the pre-requisite to this advice is that your belief should have a modicum of truth to it.
- 9y ago
- tpeo 9y agoBesides ideological self-righteousness, Aaronson left out one important component of oppressive regimes, which I think is actually far more important: it takes a relatively large amount of people to topple a regime, while small groups as well as individuals do nothing but expose themselves by rebelling. So no individual with any regard for his own personal safety has any incentive to rebel, and will instead go along with the flow for as long as it's tolerable to him. But this, on the other hand, would create an odd situation where actually the vast majority of people might actually wish for rebellion, but none of them actually acts out on that wish. Which I also think is actually much more likelier than what he's putting forward. True crusaders are rare, most of people are "just following orders".
- crocal 9y agoIs this situation really odd? I personally believe it is the norm. The conditions to have a rebellion are two: 1/ Sufficient people around the place dreaming/hoping/yearning for change; 2/ An unusual event that cannot be managed by "just following orders" As soon as the two are reunited, it's like throwing a lit match in a black powder keg. The larger the keg or the more powerful the match, the more spectacular the resulting rebellion will be. In the case of the Soviet Union, the match was Chernobyl.
- tpeo 9y agoAs I said, I also believe it's much more common. I meant "odd" in the sense that it might lead to unintuitive situations if we only consider the preferences of the people involved. For instance, there might be situations where not a single person in the room might be in favor of the status quo, but not a single one of them dares to say it either, all out of fear that one of the others might be. Of course, it isn't "odd" if we also consider the incentives involved.
- jacalata 9y agoI don't think you need something as serious as an oppressive regime to get into this state. It sounds like an instance of the Abilene paradox - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
- mseebach 9y agoI don't know anything about Kolmogorov, so I can't evaluate the assumption that he obviously saw through the lies and was horrified by the brutality - but I will note that a great number of prominent intellectuals, who were in absolutely no private danger from the soviet regime whatever they'd believe and say, and who definitely had access to information about the brutality, who still chose to support and defend the regime. Without evidence to the contrary, it's plausible that Kolmogorov simply supported his government and found the brutality to be acceptable collateral damage. If we've learned anything from the 20th century, one thing should be the lesson that even very smart people can be found supporting extreme brutality in support of an ideology.
- johanvts 9y agoI wondered the same thing, there is an excellent book on this topic called "The reckless mind" that might interest you if you didn't already read it. I portrays great thinkers who got swayed by totalitarian systems and asks why.
- crocal 9y agoThanks for the tip, it looks really interesting.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoRelated, I was shocked to learn just how popular Soviet ideology was with western intellectuals in early- and mid-XX century, even though there was already plenty of evidence available about how huge a disaster it was. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-of-wasted-time/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-...
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoIt's easy to identify a disaster with the safety and comfort of decades of hindsight, but rather less easy to see today's contemporary equivalents.
- softbuilder 9y agoWhat I find myself wanting to fight is not the prevailing views on a topic, it's the willingness to lie and mislead to promote those views. I saw that this past week with the Google memo situation. I also saw a shocking amount of it last year with the US election. Sloppy journalism feeds the people who seem to want to believe the worst in everything, who in turn feed entire social networks. Eventually sufficient people have heard a thing that the network as a whole believes it. Individuals have little influence. I suppose public consciousness (and social media in particular) could be thought of as a big NN.
- akvadrako 9y agoSome of the worst offences are these new "fact-checkers" which all seem heavily biased towards the left. When so many people are committed to a motivated and shallow version of the truth, it's hard to find the people who care ONLY about the truth.
- wfunction 9y agoLinks to support this claim?
- 9y ago
- habitue 9y agoLet's say this is about the Google memo. And let's say, for the sake of argument, you're a person who thinks Damore had some good points and some bad points but you think the hysterically censorious response to him was way over the line. But you don't want to become a pariah yourself, so you stay quiet about it. The argument Damore was making was fiddly, kind of subtle and takes a long time to explain, it's not worth the trouble you're going to get into. You take the Kolmogorov option and decide to wait out this insane time period. Only it turns out, when you don't decide to argue for that subtle and qualified defense of Damore, a bunch of alt-right internet trolls make some terrible fallacious defenses of things he didn't say. Suddenly, the original censorious instincts seem much more righteous and justified. After all, "Now there are only full-throated red-pillers arguing in Damore's defense! We were right all along!" Now there are two sides to this issue, and they're both identity politics and brain-dead shouting. Because no one stopped and offered a third option: actually discussing his argument, acknowledging where he was right, and discussing what he got wrong.
- mjw1007 9y agoSo: subtle and qualified defence under a pseudonym; stay quiet under your own name?
- danarmak 9y agoThe ability to doxx is too great today for pseudonyms to work well enough. The necessary opsec is more akin to that used when publishing illegal things the (real) government actively persecutes.
- hellopier 9y agoWhat would you need to do to limit doxxing potential?
- danarmak 9y agoMost of all, consistently apply the maximum level opsec right from the beginning. Even if the first hundred posts on your new blog are inoccuous, you can't let them be connected to you when five years from now you find out that you actually want to write about something controversial for once. The hardest part is planning ahead and investing a lot of time and effort before the point where you actually publish the dangerous thing you don't want to be doxxed for. A blog (or any other publishing mechanism) needs an audience, assuming your goal is to affect public discourse. You can post anonymously or using a short-lived pseudonym on Hacker News and other forums, or on any blogging/publishing platform like Medium, and this is very secure if you never use the same identity before or after. But you're very unlikely to affect many people with your writing that way. You can't use your regular identity's reputation to drive attention to a one-off post ("Steven Pinker responds to the Google Memo controversy!"). And you can't (reliably) produce one or a few posts so well written and timed that they spread virally and affect many people even though you've never published under that identity before. So you need to spend a lot of time and effort publishing other things under that identity to acquire a following. You need to be able to consistently write things that attract the kind of people you want to reach and give you the right reputation. Obviously regular good IT security is needed: don't let your server / publishing account be compromised, vet your hosting service's security, etc. Access it via Tor, setup posts to go up at unpredictable times not tied to your timezone or what you're doing at the time (work/leisure), cultivate a style of writing that's clearly similar across that identity's posts and dissimilar from other things you write. Don't refer to the pseudonym when in any other identity; even if others mention it, don't say you've read it or discuss it. And so on.
- macrael 9y agoTell me, truly, is this a view held by many here? That, as the church denounced Galileo's observation that we turn around the sun as heretical, so too our modern PC culture suppresses legitimate inquiry into wether gender is a determinant of programming aptitude? This is a comparison worth drawing? Galileo was a scientist. He published papers, books, treatises. He devoted his life to the pursuit of the truth, found a big piece of it, and was punished by society for it. He is one of the giants whose shoulders we stand on. Kolmogorov sounds cut of the same cloth. He built a research center, helped other scientists on the way up, and left a legacy. James Damore is a junior programmer who wrote a 10 page 'manifesto' accusing his colleagues of having inferior genes. This created a textbook hostile work environment,[1] leading to his firing. The amount of sympathy I've seen here is dismaying. It is illustrating just how far we have to go until equality is the rule of the day. Please, before you throw in your lot with him, consider how ridiculous the analogy OP made here is. The Google Manifesto is manifestly not A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. I will say, some of the heavyweight commenters here do give me hope. tptacek linked this graph[2] on one of the early threads on this. It's a pretty solid rebuttal to any and all concerns that women are innately unsuited to computers rather than that our computer culture has driven them away. [1]: https://medium.com/@scurphey/googles-response-to-employee-s-anti-diversity-manifesto-ignores-workplace-discrimination-law-97c7c729cf86 https://medium.com/@scurphey/googles-response-to-employee-s-... [2]: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
- apsec112 9y ago"Please, before you throw in your lot with him, consider how ridiculous the analogy OP made here is. The Google Manifesto is manifestly not A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems." Aaronson doesn't mention Google or Damore.
- jacalata 9y agoPerhaps if you were hoping for comments here not to mention it, now was a bad time to post it.
- 9y ago
- rodgerd 9y agoHe may be a wonderful person, but if he genuinely thinks being a straight white guy in the US is harder than being gay, he's not as clever as he thinks he is.
- kamilner 9y agoI'm not sure what about this thread precipitated this comment, but it sounds like you'll be relieved to discover he doesn't think that.
- DanBC 9y agoPossibly when zerogravitas says "It's hard to summarize, but he made a comment about how being a nerdy straight male was harder than being a woman or gay".
- Sacho 9y agoYou(or GP) seem to be implying that all straight white males are nerdy, or that being nerdy has no effect on the hardship you face in life. Which one is it?
- jacalata 9y agoIt probably wasn't prompted by this thread, but by Scott's previous quotes about how he was, as a nerdy male, among the least privileged in society.
- sctb 9y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966371 and marked it off-topic.
- guillaumec 9y agoI really enjoyed reading the The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the state of mind of the population during Stalin leadership. He relates the story of a conference of the party where nobody in the room dared to be the last one to stop applauding in honor of Stalin. After a while everybody started to realize how stupid the situation was, yet they couldn't stop clapping because they all knew that this would be a death sentence for the first one to do so.
- paganel 9y ago> He relates the story of a conference of the party where nobody in the room dared to be the last one to stop applauding in honor of Stalin. For those interested of how that might look, here's a clip of people applauding Ceausescu just one month before his fall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk_EnsIr8lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk_EnsIr8lw .
- abecedarius 9y agoThat scene stuck with me too. They keep going for, like, 15 minutes? Until finally some old fellow sits down. And he's taken away by the next day.
- igravious 9y agoQuick question. “Every mathematician believes that he is ahead of the others. The reason none state this belief in public is because they are intelligent people.” The others here, does it refer to other mathematicians, or other people in general?
- idlewords 9y agoOther mathematicians.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if a sizeable fraction, perhaps even the majority, of mathematicians are in fact ahead of all the others. They just have to be best at their own chosen specialization. (Also, one may need a little hubris to actually do something. I would never have written my crypto library if I didn't started with the overconfidence required to brave mainstream advice.)
- igravious 9y agoYou fool! Don't you know by now that you're not meant to roll your own crypto :-/ (I jest, of course)
- loup-vaillant 9y agoDon't worry, I survived the non-jest version as well. :-) I reckon opposition was not as unanimous as one might expect, though. If this thread¹ is to be believed, there's a rather wide range of opinions. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917378
- igravious 9y agoI should very much hope so! :)
- minipci1321 9y agoI think in his intrepretation of the Kolmogorov's life, Aaronson might be totally missing the evolution of views of someone born in 1903 in Russia and having lived through what followed. It is not like Kolmogorov was parachuted overnight from some free country into the oppressive regime.
- Tossrock 9y agoVery similar to pg's "What you can't say" essay - http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
- myth_drannon 9y agoI'm surprised no one is mentioning Jordan Peterson and the attacks on him. He is quite successful in defending himself speaking his truths.
- jack_pp 9y agoThe already huge and rising support he's getting on patreon proves that enough people want to rebell. I believe he is doing tremendous work
- fnord123 9y agoFirst they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I took the Kolmogorov option. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I the Kolmogorov option. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I the Kolmogorov option. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. -With apologies to Martin Niemöller.
- philh 9y agoOne of the things TFA is pointing at is that the alternative might be: First they came for the Socialists, and I spoke out, and they decided I was a Socialist and took me away too.
- fnord123 9y agoThat's also correct. In some situations, we can die on our feet or live on our knees. The choice is ours. I am fortunate that I don't live in a regime that requires me to make this choice.
- smackay 9y agoOne problem with creating an island of reason in what is apparently a sea of chaos is that the values that are cherished: reason, truth, rationality and merit are quite possibly the very things the regime is trying to suppress - or at least use a fuel for their outrage in order to promote their views and desire to be seen and hear at the expense of everything else. The problem I see here now is that the regime is much more distributed with no apparent central authority to work against, however quietly. Comparisons have been made with the Soviet Union, the Vatican and the Nazis but they were all based on an ideology. Social outrage, social signaling and self-righteousness are more fundamental characteristics of humans' group behaviour than politics and for that reason it will be much harder to oppose and even harder to change. A more apt example might be the effort it took/will take to topple slavery - which despite the change won in the Americas still unhappily exists today in other forms. Other fundamental beliefs can be so deeply rooted in culture that they persist for many hundreds of years and change, even it if is superficial, can take a very long time.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI think it's worse. Slavery was ultimately an economic problem. Here we're fighting against "more fundamental characteristics of humans' group behaviour". The particulars of this problem have some economic aspects, true, but also plenty of non-economic ones.
- mathzthrowaway6 9y agoI wrote the present comment to 1) teach something about mathematics and probability 2) share enlightenment. In summary this comment should change your thinking about all subjects, forever. -------------- Program of study for this comment: 1. Read section 1 (approx. 1 hour.) Goal: improve your mathematical reasoning. 2. 30 minute break. 3. Read section 2 (approx 5 minutes). Goal: enlightenment. 1. The most important mathematical video you will ever see in your life. Firstly, unless you are a practicing mathematician this is the most important mathematical video you will ever see in your life. It is purely about mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8 Watch it. Suppose that you take an hour and learn this. You have just improved your rational thinking forever. - Break. Please now take a 30-minute break. During this time you can reflect and assimilate the knowledge you have learned. - 2. The most important social insight you will read in any comment. This section requires you to understand section 1. Next, suppose that you are perfectly rational. If I present you a (fair) coin and ask you to judge whether it is fair, after, say, thirty or forty flips you will conclude that it is fair. If I give you the same coin but also the knowledge that it was drawn from an infinite bag with 1 fair coin in it -- for example, let's say coins are numbered, I select a real number between 0 and 1, and only the coin with the exact value 0.5 is fair, any other coin is unfair, weighted - then even given hours, days, weeks, or years of flipping, you will come to me with the same conclusion: there is a 0% chance that the coin is fair and 100% chance that the coin is weighted. This includes your running every test for randomness, flipping it millions of times and analyzing the result, anything you want. So let's look at what happened. You have been moved from being able to quickly decide whether a coin is fair, to being completely unable to accept that the coin is fair. No matter how much evidence you can collect, you can only conclude with 100% certainty that the coin is unfair. The only thing that changed is the understanding of the population it was drawn from. Why is this a problem? For the simple reason that the coin labelled 0.5 exists. If you reflect on the plight of coin 0.5 you forever understand why it is very wrong to talk about the bag from which it was drawn or how.
- sackofmugs 9y agoAppreciate you trying to share some insight. But from the hype, I was expecting some kind of world changing revelation. But basically you're just explaining the basics of bayesian statistics? A lot of people already know this stuff. It's part of an intro course in probability/stats that you'd take while doing a CS degree, or a course about experiments for other science degrees.
- thanatropism 9y agoYeah, but many of us, even if aspiring to be our best, will never reach the importance of a Kolmogorov, or a Terry Tao, etc. Our optimal mix of political iconoclasty and mathematical progress may be much much different. There's a sense in which way the ideal mathematician (or ultramarathoner, or classical composer...) is like a monk. Many of us are not built like that.
- scandox 9y agoI want to say this as respectfully as I can, but it isn't easy: the quality of discourse on these topics is really low on HN. At the same time I do think it's really important for them to be discussed. Time and again, though, I'm disappointed by how reductive and unmeditative these discussions are. I'm also surprised by how angry people seem. This is a site used by a lot of very smart people, but I think there is an element of people transferring the confidence of their domain expertise from one area into another, without noticing that they've crossed that border. I think people need to approach these topics with a humility they wouldn't need to bring to say, hashing algorithms or distributed databases. edit: typo
- noam87 9y agoThis week has really lowered my opinion of this industry and its members (and people in general, once again). From the flimsy and arrogant arguments presented on one side, to the inexcusable hysteria and verbal abuse coming from the other. I've lost trust and respect for developers I followed and had for some reason assumed were level-headed adults. This is highschool stuff guys. It's embarrassing. More generally, if we can't trust our most capable minds to not act like children and blood-thirsty mobs, what hope is there for general discource as a society.
- jtmarmon 9y agocan you be more specific? in what way do you think the HN comments are generally reductive and unmeditative?
- yorwba 9y agoIn case you missed the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 Personally, I think quite a lot of the comments in that thread are reasonable, some even insightful and the majority are definitely well-intentioned. I didn't read completely through, because it's just so much and there is a lot of repetition with different people saying the same things replying to different other people. But well worth reading at least a bit if you somehow missed the controversy.
- 9y ago
- TheAceOfHearts 9y agoThis quote comes to mind: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” ― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
- tome 9y agoSimilarly, > I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do. > -- Charlie Munger
- typon 9y agoThis was such an incredibly self serving post that it's almost funny. Thanks for the bravery Scott, you chose not to argue for what you believe in from your position of immense privilege. A martyr indeed. In any case, people like Scott and others in this thread sound so incredibly childish when talking about "rational" argument being the antidote to the venom of "political correctness" ruining western society. You know what's ruining western society? Income inequality, racial discrimination, mass consumerism, disregard for environmental destruction, etc. That this is the hill where software engineers choose to fight their battle for western civilization is just depressing
- backpropaganda 9y agoPC is particularly harmful, since it restricts talking about controversial topics. Most of the other topics you picked has PC problems. For instance, income equality between the genders could be fixed if we recognize that there are innate differences between the genders, and actively work to make the workplace more inclusive to styles of working which would favor the other gender. Scott Alexander also argued that the constant proclamation that "tech has a sex problem" sends a message that tech is not for women. Such unhealthy fixation with "women in X" is arguable harming X's diversity plans more than helping. But this is not an opinion I'm allowed to have or discuss with you. tl;dr: we need to fix communication which would allow us to fix other problems of today.
- typon 9y agoDo you have any evidence for your assertions?
- zimablue 9y agoIt isn't the hill that engineers choose to fight their battle though, is it. The fact that this is the first time such a memo has been written vs the numbers of the internal Google poll demonstrate pretty well that there is a lot of silent dissent. I agree completely that there are bigger issues but we're human, being told that you will be discriminated against in hiring for whatever reason really bites. In our society your job is everything, your entire security and most people's egos. Africa etc is more important but I understand the magnitude of the personal stakes and sheer sense of injustice moving this up people's agenda.
- red_admiral 9y ago> This is where you build up fortresses of truth in places the ideological authorities don’t particularly understand or care about Isn't this exactly what safe spaces were originally meant to be?
- backpropaganda 9y agoSure. I don't think anyone here is going to be embarrassed to call it a safe space. But safe spaces protect you from harm from individuals. The idea here is create spaces to protect you from the state.
- mathzthrowaway6 9y agoNote: as a throwaway I was unable to complete edits to this comment, therefore please upvote (and endorse) only this version. The first version should remain dead as a dupe. ----- In the spirit of the article we're discussing, I wrote the present comment to 1) teach something about mathematics and probability 2) share a bit of social enlightenment. In summary this comment should change your thinking fundamentally. You will need to read it carefully but I promise it is relevant. (Please endorse it and upvote it, if you agree.) -------------- Program of study for this comment. I suggest you go through this comment as follows. 1. Read section 1 (approx. 1 hour.) Goal: improve your mathematical reasoning. 2. 30 minute break. 3. Read section 2 (approx 5 minutes). Goal: social insight. 4. Generalize the insight just gained. Goal: make the example more practical. This is an exercise for the reader. ---------- 1. One of the most important mathematical videos you will ever see. Firstly, unless you are a practicing mathematician this is one of the most important mathematical video you will ever see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8 Watch it. As a result you will improve your rational thinking forever. - Break. I suggest you next take a 30-minute break. During this time you can reflect on and assimilate the knowledge you have learned. - 2. An important social insight. This section requires you to understand section 1. Next, suppose that you are perfectly rational. We will introduce an extreme case, and you will have to generalize it yourself, to come up with the social insight I promised. Base (extreme) case. If I present you a (fair) coin and ask you to judge whether it is fair, after, say, thirty or forty flips you will conclude that it is likely fair. You can never be sure, of course, but you will have a high confidence. However, if I give you the same coin but also the knowledge that it was drawn at random from an infinite bag with 1 fair coin in it -- for example, let's say coins are numbered, I select a real number at random between 0 and 1, and only the coin with the exact value 0.5 is fair, any other coin is unfair, weighted - then even given hours, days, weeks, or years of flipping, you will come to me with the same conclusion: there is a 0% chance (you will have 0% confidence) that the coin is fair and 100% chance that the coin is weighted.[0] If I bet you a thousand to one that it is fair, you would put any amount of money that it is weighted: regardless of the amount of testing you did and the results of your tests. This includes your running every test for randomness, flipping it millions of times and analyzing the result, anything you want. So let's look at what happened. You have been moved from being able to quickly decide whether a coin is likely fair, to being completely unable to accept that the coin is fair. No matter how much evidence you can collect, you can only conclude with 100% certainty that the coin is unfair. The only thing that changed is the understanding of the population it was drawn from. Okay. So why is this a problem? For the simple reason that the coin labelled 0.5 exists. If you reflect on the plight of coin 0.5 you will understand why it is very wrong to talk about the bag from which it was drawn or how. Exercise: generalize this result for finite cases. References: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely
- thiagoharry 9y ago"As far as I can tell, the answer is simply: because Kolmogorov knew better than to pick fights he couldn’t win." This is documented in some place and represent Kolmogorov views, or the author is just projecing it's own views and opinions? Because kolmogorov could just have being neutral about the politics in its country (like the majority of people) or perhaps even had some degree of support at the time. This opinion "its obvious that the soviets were E-V-I-L" are opinions coming from the other side of the cold war.
- jancsika 9y agoTwo things: * for a society that enjoys even minimal levels of freedom of speech, the Kolmogorov option isn't easily distinguishable from opportunism or careerism. * for a society like the U.S. that enjoys minimal levels of freedom of speech, what is an example of an unspeakable truth? Charles Murray's research exists. Brendan Eich is still rich. Richard Stallman has an extremely unpopular opinion about child porn on his website and he still does talks to people who worship the ground he walks on. Frankly, it seems like the height of narcissism for a tenured professor to defend not speaking out against Trump by appealing to Kolmogorov. It would be so refreshing to see the author instead appeal to Occam's razor and just call it cowardice. Edit: grammar
- psyc 9y agoI think your examples show that the mob is fickle, and that one's audience has a lot to do with how one is received, not that we enjoy very much practical freedom of speech.
- sounds 9y agoHere are three unspeakable truths for the United States. Bringing them up is a risk: there is almost no chance for calm, composed conversation. 1. The US Federal Government is not held accountable to the Constitution any more. 2. Income inequality is back to 1930's levels. Beside US Federal Government solutions, across-the-aisle solutions are attacked by corporations and large news sources. 3. Belief systems, their movements and organizations, that unite the populace against the US Federal Government are attacked by corporations and large news sources. I like your optimism. The US has legs. Though we're crippled, we're not out of the race. I like to engage in quiet, one-on-one conversations and subtly advocate for better solutions. I think Kolmogorov was a master at that.
- mark_edward 9y agopeople post this stuff all the time, you should stop crying about persecution.
- Bartweiss 9y agoI'm pretty sure you can find all of those positions in national newspapers today. You can also openly advocate for them at a lot of workplaces without significant backlash. "People feel strongly and argue with you" is a vastly different thing than the Kolmogorov situation. (Which, again, was "you're punished harshly and no debate happens at all".)
- stefantalpalaru 9y agoReminds me of Niven's philosophical cowards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers
- abecedarius 9y agoThere's an interesting book about that dynamic where some unknown number of people privately doubt a core public value -- "preference falsification": https://www.amazon.com/Private-Truths-Public-Lies-Falsification/dp/0674707583 https://www.amazon.com/Private-Truths-Public-Lies-Falsificat... I read it after the 2016 election, but it's pretty old -- is there newer work anyone can recommend?
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoI'm curious about the remark that Kolmogorov was gay. This is the first time I hear of this. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, this claim first surfaced in an article at The Mathematical Intelligencer from 2001. Are there any accounts from his contemporaries that would confirm this?
- my_first_acct 9y agoCertain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability within subgroups of the population. In contrast to the minefields that Kolmogorov deliberately avoided, this minefield was not put in place by a repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic band of social-justice zealots. My observation, which I will offer without citation, is that this particular minefield was put in place, mine by mine, over a period of decades, through a process of fairly broad societal consensus. To those who suggest clearing the minefield, thus permitting this topic to be discussed freely in public, I will invoke the principle of Chesterton's fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- senthil_rajasek 9y agoI always thought at least in the U.S stand up comedians were the ones who did not choose the kolmogorov option.
- kkylin 9y agoVery much off-topic: I understand the post and the present discussion are not about Kolmogorov's scientific work, but I could not resist pointing out that in addition to all the great things Scott mentioned, Kolmogorov also made significant contributions to fluid turbulence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov.27s_theory_of_1941 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov.27s_theo...) and linear filtering (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_filter#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_filter#History), among many, many other things.
- emiliobumachar 9y agoThe page appears to be down. HN hug of death, probably.
- wuch 9y agoWhen I reached the comment field at the end of page, to my big surprise the name and email have been already filled in. In fact, it seems like data of the person last to comment have been present there. Something along the way have gone quite wrong.