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I am no academic of any kind, but it strikes me as arrogant to quote that text and claim it to be drivel, while nodding in agreement to “Word embeddings utiliz

I am no academic of any kind, but it strikes me as arrogant to quote that text and claim it to be drivel, while nodding in agreement to “Word embeddings utilize neural networks to create high-dimensional vector representations of words [..]” I had to look up ontological choreography and it‘s just a concept, not unlike the weird jargon in CS. Is there at least a tiny speck of a sliver of possibility that we lack actual perspective and competency in these fields?

techno_tsar 4y ago
Your intellectual humility is refreshing. Most of these discussions devolve into very obvious cases of Dunning-Kruger effect.
Natsu 4y ago
I looked up both terms, being familiar with neither offhand. The term "ontological choreography" comes across to me as something like an arrangement or dance of meanings and appears to have been coined by someone whose concern was normalization of LGBTQ families via surrogate parents and possibly other technology. I could not have guessed any connection there from the actual meanings of those words and it doesn't really convey any information I know how to use. Reading "Word embeddings utilize neural networks to create high-dimensional vector representations of words" is something precise enough that I could probably make software to create an embedding and feed it to a neural net given time and a few more details. It sounds like it's not so distant from what I did more than 20 years ago making a simple Markov chain in a few lines of Perl. The only ambiguous part is what the neural networks actually do with the Markov chain of words, because that's not stated in your quote.
- SanderNL 4y ago
  I'll give you that the term, heck even the field, is fuzzy. I could not give you a good description of either, but that's also true of homological algebra and interpretive dance. > I could not have guessed any connection there from the actual meanings of those words and it doesn't really convey any information I know how to use. The word "I" is important here. I could not do anything with this either: "Let X be a compact connected Riemann surface of genus g, equipped with a holomorphic differential ω having a non-zero integral over X [..]" I'm not saying social studies have the same level of rigor and precision, but it's another thing entirely to dismiss a whole field of study just because you couldn't reproduce it in perl. Some topics just cannot be grasped with tweezers. You just have to try to be precise with the fuzziness and that's not easy.
  - skissane 4y ago
    I think, every academic discipline, we should demand it demonstrate that its got something true and useful to say. And, “Word embeddings utilize neural networks to create high-dimensional vector representations of words..." – "word embeddings" and "neural networks" are true (they clearly exist), and they are clearly useful (we can do things with them, that we couldn't do before). Their truth and usefulness is really beyond dispute; any impartial person, sufficiently familiar with the discipline, has to admit that. Of course, there are still some things up for debate – how far these technologies will scale, whether scaling them or searching for completely new approaches to replace them is the more fruitful path for future research, etc. But the basic validity of the concepts (truth and usefulness) no longer is. Compare that to the following sentence taken from the field of "feminist technoscience": "Examples of masculine-coded technologies under these categories included ARPANET..." [0] Even if we can provide some kind of meaningful definition of "masculine-coded technology" such that ARPANET counts as one – is that saying anything true or useful? That seems far more open to debate than the equivalent questions for "word embeddings" and "neural networks". And that's why it isn't really fair to compare machine learning, as a discipline, to feminist technoscience – the truth and usefulness of the former is rather beyond dispute, the same things are much much more open to question for the latter. > I'm not saying social studies have the same level of rigor and precision, but it's another thing entirely to dismiss a whole field of study just because you couldn't reproduce it in perl. There are some approaches to social studies, which while they might not be "reproducible in Perl", seem on a much firmer footing – I mentioned before the rational choice theory of religion, advocated by the late sociologist Rodney Stark. It is far easier to derive testable hypotheses from it, for one thing. People write whole books attacking it (whether successfully or not) – like Steve Bruce's Choice and Religion – precisely because it makes claims which are firm enough to be attacked. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience
    - SanderNL 4y ago
      For the record, I'm no proponent of feminist cyborgism. I'm a programmer, I don't know shit. But I find these statements interesting. I held them for a long time and am now doubting their usefulness: > Their truth and usefulness is really beyond dispute; That's what I call things that can be picked up by tweezers, concrete issues that have clear and unambigious manifestations that we all - or virtuall all - agree on. Those are the easy things. It's very comfortable to pick them up and turn them around and analyze them. There is no ambiguity, no pesky fuzziness. I understand why certain personality types gravitate towards it and I belief myself to be such one, but I'd say be careful about proclaiming them the only things worth studying. Sometimes things are not that clearly demarcated and even in a rigorous field such a abstract mathematics the concept of "usefulness" is not of primary concern. Also sometimes the reality of a thing itself is not obvious and needs to be studied. Sometimes it's not even clear what we are looking at - try reading anything by Heidegger. Philosophy is a field riddles with those kind of studies. > is that saying anything true or useful? That seems far more open to debate Throw me a bone here, but is the fact that it's not yet clear if it is true or useful, but cannot be ruled out immediately a signal that there's more to it than we currently know? Again, not saying "biomedical homological technofeministic cyborgism wrt ecosystemical unidirectionalism" (me having fun now) is equivalent to studying the properties of neural networks, but just pointing out that reality is multifaceted and that you cannot just skip entire domains of reality just because you cannot replicate it in, again, perl (or math). It's uncomfortable, it lacks precision, but we have to start somewhere and math ain't cutting it.
watwut 4y ago
One element of lack of critical thinking is taking something you dont understand at all, make bad faith attempt at reading it and then extrapolate the result the the whole of humanities.

techno_tsar 4y ago

Your intellectual humility is refreshing. Most of these discussions devolve into very obvious cases of Dunning-Kruger effect.

Natsu 4y ago

I looked up both terms, being familiar with neither offhand. The term "ontological choreography" comes across to me as something like an arrangement or dance of meanings and appears to have been coined by someone whose concern was normalization of LGBTQ families via surrogate parents and possibly other technology. I could not have guessed any connection there from the actual meanings of those words and it doesn't really convey any information I know how to use. Reading "Word embeddings utilize neural networks to create high-dimensional vector representations of words" is something precise enough that I could probably make software to create an embedding and feed it to a neural net given time and a few more details. It sounds like it's not so distant from what I did more than 20 years ago making a simple Markov chain in a few lines of Perl. The only ambiguous part is what the neural networks actually do with the Markov chain of words, because that's not stated in your quote.

SanderNL 4y ago
I'll give you that the term, heck even the field, is fuzzy. I could not give you a good description of either, but that's also true of homological algebra and interpretive dance. > I could not have guessed any connection there from the actual meanings of those words and it doesn't really convey any information I know how to use. The word "I" is important here. I could not do anything with this either: "Let X be a compact connected Riemann surface of genus g, equipped with a holomorphic differential ω having a non-zero integral over X [..]" I'm not saying social studies have the same level of rigor and precision, but it's another thing entirely to dismiss a whole field of study just because you couldn't reproduce it in perl. Some topics just cannot be grasped with tweezers. You just have to try to be precise with the fuzziness and that's not easy.
- skissane 4y ago
  I think, every academic discipline, we should demand it demonstrate that its got something true and useful to say. And, “Word embeddings utilize neural networks to create high-dimensional vector representations of words..." – "word embeddings" and "neural networks" are true (they clearly exist), and they are clearly useful (we can do things with them, that we couldn't do before). Their truth and usefulness is really beyond dispute; any impartial person, sufficiently familiar with the discipline, has to admit that. Of course, there are still some things up for debate – how far these technologies will scale, whether scaling them or searching for completely new approaches to replace them is the more fruitful path for future research, etc. But the basic validity of the concepts (truth and usefulness) no longer is. Compare that to the following sentence taken from the field of "feminist technoscience": "Examples of masculine-coded technologies under these categories included ARPANET..." [0] Even if we can provide some kind of meaningful definition of "masculine-coded technology" such that ARPANET counts as one – is that saying anything true or useful? That seems far more open to debate than the equivalent questions for "word embeddings" and "neural networks". And that's why it isn't really fair to compare machine learning, as a discipline, to feminist technoscience – the truth and usefulness of the former is rather beyond dispute, the same things are much much more open to question for the latter. > I'm not saying social studies have the same level of rigor and precision, but it's another thing entirely to dismiss a whole field of study just because you couldn't reproduce it in perl. There are some approaches to social studies, which while they might not be "reproducible in Perl", seem on a much firmer footing – I mentioned before the rational choice theory of religion, advocated by the late sociologist Rodney Stark. It is far easier to derive testable hypotheses from it, for one thing. People write whole books attacking it (whether successfully or not) – like Steve Bruce's Choice and Religion – precisely because it makes claims which are firm enough to be attacked. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience
  - SanderNL 4y ago
    For the record, I'm no proponent of feminist cyborgism. I'm a programmer, I don't know shit. But I find these statements interesting. I held them for a long time and am now doubting their usefulness: > Their truth and usefulness is really beyond dispute; That's what I call things that can be picked up by tweezers, concrete issues that have clear and unambigious manifestations that we all - or virtuall all - agree on. Those are the easy things. It's very comfortable to pick them up and turn them around and analyze them. There is no ambiguity, no pesky fuzziness. I understand why certain personality types gravitate towards it and I belief myself to be such one, but I'd say be careful about proclaiming them the only things worth studying. Sometimes things are not that clearly demarcated and even in a rigorous field such a abstract mathematics the concept of "usefulness" is not of primary concern. Also sometimes the reality of a thing itself is not obvious and needs to be studied. Sometimes it's not even clear what we are looking at - try reading anything by Heidegger. Philosophy is a field riddles with those kind of studies. > is that saying anything true or useful? That seems far more open to debate Throw me a bone here, but is the fact that it's not yet clear if it is true or useful, but cannot be ruled out immediately a signal that there's more to it than we currently know? Again, not saying "biomedical homological technofeministic cyborgism wrt ecosystemical unidirectionalism" (me having fun now) is equivalent to studying the properties of neural networks, but just pointing out that reality is multifaceted and that you cannot just skip entire domains of reality just because you cannot replicate it in, again, perl (or math). It's uncomfortable, it lacks precision, but we have to start somewhere and math ain't cutting it.

watwut 4y ago

One element of lack of critical thinking is taking something you dont understand at all, make bad faith attempt at reading it and then extrapolate the result the the whole of humanities.