gambling8nt

12 ms·

61.
by gambling8nt 17y ago
It may seem that way, but that has more to do with the fact that agreement is not inherently comment worthy, since it does not do anything to further the discussion (note that expansion of an existing argument is comment worthy, but signifi
62.
by gambling8nt 17y ago
Humor is not automatically downvoted. One-liners that add nothing to a discussion are. Humor can be used to great effect in order to make a point--but, more often than not, it represents much less of an increase in signal and much more of
63.
by gambling8nt 17y ago
Statistically, wouldn't one expect to find oneself in a many-observer universe (assuming that those universes weren't vastly rarer than the single-observer ones)?
64.
by gambling8nt 17y ago
Precisely what makes you think that a group of people who dismiss a concept as simple and transparent as natural selection will accept a collection of--probably significantly more complex--"reductionist principles upon which our consciousne
65.
by gambling8nt 17y ago
Sexual selection yes, and--presumably by some of the very bonding instincts the author is railing against--the author always referred to selection in the same direction. However, the sort of selective methods the author is angry about occu
66.
by gambling8nt 17y ago
This is not Newton's method; it is a random walk with pruning. Newton's method is a very specific way of finding roots of a function.
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
The problem presented--how do the people at the top advance--has a simple solution. Have them select people to specifically mentor (via a mutual selection process) and pay them bonuses based on how much those people improve. You motivate t
68.
UC Berkeley Shows Radio Controlled Live Beetle(techon.nikkeibp.co.jp)
1 points by gambling8nt 18y ago|0 comments
69.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
A roommate of mine from college graded papers for an introductory astronomy class (a class commonly taken to fulfill a distribution requirement for those majoring in the humanities); one of the students in the class (after, apparently, not
70.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
In order for everything to be a search query away, you need to know what terms to search for; I've known students to do reasonably well without even that level of competency in a subject.
71.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
This is unnecessary; the solution is fairly straightforward, although it would have been more elegant if the problem constrained question 20 better.
72.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
On HN, when you have an interesting topic about which there is very little to say, you find topics voted to near the top with no comments. On Reddit, a popular topic with no comments gets garnished with one-liners. On HN, contentless one-
73.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
The UK has a much more effective public transit system than most of the US. Also, the distance scale there lower than it is in the US. These factors together mean that changing driving patterns in the UK may not be matched in the US (pers
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
PG presented a definition of useless that set the bar too high; I (in another comment) presented a more reasonable definition of useless which accurately applies to most of philosophy--something is useful insofar as it answers questions ask
75.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
1) A "small" sample is often sufficient reason to accept a statement. If I tell you that there exists a Turing machine that can solve SAT in polynomial time, all I have to do to prove it is supply one (incidentally, if you have one lying a
76.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
We can't guarantee anything about the world. Empirically, science seems to work, and that is all we can ever get from it. Math is true regardless of its utility in science, and we use it in science because it is convenient to do so. There
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
The substance of mathematics is figuring out what is still true when one applies the highest standard for rigor that still permits the possibility of determining things not yet known to be true. That any philosopher might continue to debate
78.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
As a programmer, you don't see obvious practical use in understanding results in number theory? These have importance in a wide variety of computer applications. What about linear algebra? Do you really think that understanding its applic
79.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
Philosophy, at one point, was the catch-all phrase for any type of thought. Mathematics was philosophy. Science was philosophy. Law was philosophy. Economics was philosophy. Every form of thought (more or less) was philosophy. Over th
80.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
The study of mathematics is both more useful, and carries most of the same benefits (although it typically lacks the forced experience with communicative writing).
81.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
1) In this universe, it appear that there is a property -- lets call it mass -- that determines how things pull towards each other. But our universe is just a sample of size 1; so that might be confirmation bias or suppressed evidence. In
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
The argument in this essay relies heavily on, among other things, the idea that extraordinarily abstract mathematical discussions are similar to extraordinarily abstract discussions in philosophy or literary theory. This premise (among the
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
In the letter he suggested that it might be used to cause significant damage to a port. He had no idea that it would be (1) anywhere near as destructive as it was, or (2) small enough or light enough to drop from aircraft rather than only
84.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
Successfully giving out the money--especially if there is (for example) the romantic, swooping in ending that staunch stated that he wanted (in his post above)--will generate a lot more positive PR for Netflix than the remaining 0.44% impro
85.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
The claims made aren't all that falsifiable (like anything else in psychology, it isn't ever possible to know to what extent a person is lying to themselves), and the specificity of the claims is something of a red herring; when 90% of a li
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
The same thing that is there if you ask a bunch of computer science students whether or not they like computers. Sure, the result is statistically significant; it just doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know. The categories of t
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
I don't think we actually want to have chair-throwing debates over who the karma leaders are...while the leaderboard is a slight concession in the general direction of caring about karma, this site has always been set-up to stress the conte
88.
by gambling8nt 18y ago
"Basically, the Myers-Briggs type determines your preferences for particular cognitive functions." This is backwards; your Myers-Briggs type is determined by your preferences, and is ultimately little more than a form of horoscope targeted
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
Community website operators do have a duty to monitor for suicides to some extent, just as they have a duty to monitor for other things. But failure to meet perfection in the pursuit of a virtue is not morally the same as a vice. Online c
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by gambling8nt 18y ago
But we're not talking about some tiny community where everyone can be watching for this sort of thing from everyone else. What we're talking about is approximately the moral equivalent of blaming the mayor of New York for someone hanging t

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