tw1010

44 ms·

481.
by tw1010 9y ago
After I wrote it I read it again, trying to get some grasp of the space of possible interpretations and associations people might think my ideas are stemming from. (The truth is that I have just formed a habit out of using this terminology,
482.
by tw1010 9y ago
"Died" means "no one is talking about it". But that could just as well be a consequence of it doing its job without fault, silently being a good boy in the background, rather than any depletion of use.
483.
by tw1010 9y ago
This whole "RSS died" narrative illustrates a basic problem with how we understand the internet. Since there's no unified unbiased sort of "index", like GDP, to tell us just what proportion of users on the internet
484.
by tw1010 9y ago
One of the smartest things you can do is to work on dumb things no-one else wants to do.
485.
by tw1010 9y ago
PR stunts also produce value, indirectly
486.
by tw1010 9y ago
The history of the internet is like a plane sweeping a metropolis starting in the sky. Each epoch intersects a number of buildings, and the level-set it creates can be seen as a representation of the demographic that used it in that instanc
487.
by tw1010 9y ago
"Have been"? This is not a new phenomenon. "Culture" in various forms have for ages (long before you and I were born) been used as a tool to control mindset. See Engineering Culture by Gideon Kunda for more[1]. [1] http
488.
by tw1010 9y ago
This is a great great point. The higher the derivative of the learning curve, the higher the adoption rate. It's as if the product sweeps into the population and the magnitude of the derivative acts as a friction or an accelerant. It c
489.
by tw1010 9y ago
Man, people are working hard on this idea still. I like the persistence, but something tells me the ambition aught to in most cases be directed towards something less of a winner-take-all hollywood style success market, and more towards som
490.
by tw1010 9y ago
You superimpose inequality on the national mindscape and out comes a radical extremist on the mentally unstable subset of the map, and you infer that that is a signal that the rest will cascade into an occupy style phase shift? Alarmist muc
491.
by tw1010 9y ago
I wish there was more to this article. I think it's an interesting point, almost of an @dril flavour. But all this article seemed to boil down to was "hey, before anyone else covers this, look how weird the homepage of the shooter
492.
by tw1010 9y ago
I agree. This reminds me of a famous mathoverflow answer by Thurston: https://mathoverflow.net/a/44213
493.
by tw1010 9y ago
Great video. I think the book The Elephant in the Brain is required reading in this context: http://elephantinthebrain.com/
494.
by tw1010 9y ago
The argument that the field is still immature I think is not very convincing. Or in the very least, whatever needs to change is not going to do so within at least the next few decades, because otherwise they would have already done so. Thin
495.
by tw1010 9y ago
This is what we get when we encourage rather than actively discourage new innovative ways to explain things. There are so many academic fields that could reduce their learning curve if they only embraced this idea rather than close off any
496.
by tw1010 9y ago
"Thing I have publicly shorted will not survive in the long term."
497.
by tw1010 9y ago
This is such an important point. The world would be a wonderful place if we defaulted to feeling an enthusiastic opportunity to pedagogically and patiently teach people something when we notice they're naive about it (instead of shamin
498.
by tw1010 9y ago
There are several properties that make the lottery and startups different, if we really want to take seriously the attempt to analyse the degree to which the analogy is a faithful representation. For one, the lottery is winner-take-all, whi
499.
by tw1010 9y ago
What you're saying is true. But it's also true that some decisions make your luck surface large, while doing nothing gives you no chance of being hit by the lightning. In fact, some strategies to increase your luck surface scale,
500.
by tw1010 9y ago
This is a common sentiment but I don't think it should be the end of the story. So what if people from two hundred years lived significantly worse lives than ourselves? I didn't live then and I'm not a UPS driver. I have all
501.
by tw1010 9y ago
I love this post for two reasons. First, it's a great reminder to question assumptions about high abstraction mathematical models that tries to say something about reality. And to not take what a community of even scientists say as sta
502.
by tw1010 9y ago
Dude, there's so much you can learn from books before 2000. If for no other reason than that it's an amazing way to get out of your filter bubble.
503.
by tw1010 9y ago
I would assume that quota could be lifted if they set about writing an article like that.
504.
by tw1010 9y ago
While you're definitely onto something, I think it's also worth pointing out that a lot of the scientists that really revolutionized their field were those who excelled at either intuitively or explicitly tackling the areas where
505.
by tw1010 9y ago
This reminds me of the part in the Robert Moses biography when he was made responsible over implementing a more meritocratic employee review system for the government. Just like this story, that one also ended in flames, though Moses made i
506.
by tw1010 9y ago
That seems like a very engineering-skewed perspective on knowledge. I'm not sure how that advice could apply to a philosophy or sociology student. If doing means writing research papers, then that is going to be a hugely inefficient wa
507.
by tw1010 9y ago
If you'd have to bet, do you think it's going to go significantly up or down within the first few days?
508.
BBC Open University on Group Theory(youtube.com)
3 points by tw1010 9y ago|0 comments
509.
by tw1010 9y ago
Cool project! But I have a hard time shaking the feeling that a lot of the content and comments are bots or are paid for.
510.
by tw1010 9y ago
You are correct, there is nothing wrong with what the people in the article are saying. But I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we deny the fact that the reason this article is in discussion here on HN is in large part not because we

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