duvenaud

11 ms·

1. 61.▲
   by duvenaud 4y ago

   Can you explain a bit what neuroscience adds to the picture? To use your example, once we know that humans can take a difference perspective, what does it help to know which structure in particular is responsible for that ability?
2. 62.▲
   by duvenaud 4y ago

   They should have cited Robin Hanson's excellent proposed explanation of the Fermi hypothesis, which is that the universe is probably already about half full of civilizations, but that because they're expanding near the speed of li
3. 63.▲
   by duvenaud 5y ago

   I'm confused - it sounds like you're simply agreeing with Paul here, while claiming to disagree.
4. 64.▲
   by duvenaud 5y ago

   > If IQ doesn’t further our knowledge of human behavior nor the human mind it is at best a useless construct. I mean, I think it does further our knowledge of these things, but even if it didn't, that wouldn't make it useless,
5. 65.▲
   by duvenaud 5y ago

   It sounds like you're just saying that IQ is overhyped. You agree that IQ can be a useful tool. And everyone agrees that having more data than just IQ lets you make better predictions. How is IQ not "explaining behavior" a
6. 66.▲
   by duvenaud 5y ago

   Thanks for elaborating. But I still don't understand in what sense a skewed distribution "fits the underlying data". I presume that for any given task, we would have to write down a model or likelihood that relates intellig
7. 67.▲
   by duvenaud 5y ago

   Thanks for explaining. It sounds like we agree that "OP is wrong because normal distribution is not a sufficient indicator for some underlying phenomenon". And that we're not sure that there's a "true distribution
8. 68.▲
   by duvenaud 5y ago

   I don't understand what one could mean by the true marginal distribution of a latent quantity that's only defined in terms of its joint distribution with measurements. What difference would it make if we transformed IQ scores to
9. 69.▲
   by duvenaud 5y ago

   I'm not sure I understand the objection. I agree that standardizing to a normal distribution might be arbitrary, but how could one argue what the true transform of the distribution is? After all, a log-normally distributed variable i
10. 70.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    Thanks for actually answering my question! I guess no one wants to be a downer, but I'm pretty shocked that no one else in this thread, or that I've talked to about this issue, or anything I've read about fusion, has mention
11. 71.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    Okay, but the other commenters are saying that fuel is around 6% of the cost of running a fission plant. Do you really think fuel availability will be a decisive factor in say, the next 60 years?
12. 72.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    It sounds like you're pretty knowledgeable on this topic - care to speculate about the economic pros and cons of fusion vs fission?
13. 73.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    Finally some numbers! Thank you. So again, this sounds like more evidence against an economic advantage of fusion over fission, is that correct in your opinion?
14. 74.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    Thanks. So it sounds like there isn't an economic advantage of fusion over fission, except indirectly through less political opposition.
15. 75.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    Thanks. So it sounds like you're saying that, unless there is some radically different plant design in the future, that there won't be an economic advantage to fusion over fission, at least in the near term.
16. 76.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    Okay, but is the fuel a major cost for fission plants? And it's not clear to me how nuclear waste can both be extremely long-lived and also very dangerous that entire time.
17. 77.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    Thanks, but is the fuel cost a significant factor in fission plants? And the waste disposal? There's already lots of radioactive material in the ground, after all, for example in uranium mines.
18. 78.▲
    by duvenaud 5y ago

    This is a bit off-topic, but can anyone here explain the expected economic advantages of fusion power over fission? My understanding is that fusion plants would also use heat-driven turbines, and be pretty capital intensive. Would they fi
19. 79.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    Sorry, what's the proposed limitation? It's presumably not a rule against saying "fire" at all, since that what fire alarms are for. I presume you mean that the limitations on speech take the form of punishments after t
20. 80.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    Theatres do indeed have an app to let someone yell "fire", which is the fire alarm. It funny to me that the standard example of speech that shouldn't be protected is the only one that's required to be protected by buildi
21. 81.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    They were all unblinded weeks ago, the authors are listed on the workshop website: https://beyondbackprop.github.io/
22. 82.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    Good question. I do think there are some bogus workshops, and at least a couple of the papers at this workshop seem to be written by people who don't understand the area very well. However, there's also a lot of great work in th
23. 83.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    To be charitable, you could call it misleading laziness. But the article was published long after all the papers were de-anonymized, so it seems perverse to explain that the submissions were originally anonymous instead of just giving the
24. 84.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    Yes, good point!
25. 85.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    The names of all the authors are clearly listed on the workshop website [1]. I think this is just a case of incompetence on the part of the journalist. https://beyondbackprop.github.io/
26. 86.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    Thanks for your question! But as I said, no one is really worried about the asymptotic time complexity of reverse mode differentiation, although there is scope for improving constants). The main scope for improvement is in the space compl
27. 87.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    Yes, "tuning for criticality" was the paper I was thinking of ! But I'm afraid I'm a dilettante when it comes to neuroscience. I basically just know the basic theories about consolidating learning during sleep.
28. 88.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    This is basically what the chain rule / backprop does. The only caveat is that it's pretty hard to make a network with only positive weights. And once you allow negative weights, you have to know whether your downstream neighbou
29. 89.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    Sure. First of all, I want to say that backprop, by which I mean reverse-mode differentiation for computing gradients, combined with gradient descent for updating parameters, is pretty great. In a sense it's the last thing we should
30. 90.▲
    by duvenaud 6y ago

    I'm one of the speakers at the workshop mentioned [1]. The article is a bit of a concept salad. I'm not familiar with all of the papers mentioned but am happy to try to answer questions. [1] https://beyondbackprop.git