zmj

21 ms·

211.
by zmj 15y ago
PG's old spam filter ( http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html ) is another example of applied Bayesian inference. Not directly related to Pearl's work, but he basically deserves credit for the wider renaissance in Bayesian techniques.
212.
by zmj 15y ago
You've probably heard of Hidden Markov Models. They're widely used in many machine learning applications. An HMM is just a simple, easy-to-compute Bayesian inference network. The idea of Markov chains predates Pearl. His work was a demonstr
213.
by zmj 15y ago
> Perhaps the simplest explanation of the Fermi Paradox is that potential growth for a starfaring civilization is geometric (being a sphere ultimately limited by the speed of light) while growth rates are exponential. And exponential w
214.
by zmj 15y ago
Depends who I am. If I didn't know anything about carpentry, I would choose method 1. I don't have the specialized knowledge to judge his work. Insert obvious parallel about hiring managers who can and can't program.
215.
by zmj 15y ago
I wrote an Auction House bot and ran it for most of a year without any interference from Blizzard. It was a simple poll/buy/sell script against a price database that I maintained. When Blizzard launched the web interface to the auction hous
216.
by zmj 15y ago
This is not a good article. The panelists discuss problems that Google has already solved - pedestrians, literal interpretations of traffic laws, etc.
217.
by zmj 15y ago
There is no such thing as an objectively "accurate" search result. It's all relative to the question in your head.
218.
by zmj 15y ago
Why does everyone need a job? There are many people without jobs already. We call them 'retirees'.
219.
by zmj 15y ago
> Primary problem with producing movie/TV shows is money. It costs A LOT of money. Even shows you think can be done with a lower budget, it can't... currently. Sure it can. Read: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-com
220.
by zmj 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite_fallacy
221.
by zmj 15y ago
I want to look back and say “I worked harder than I had to. I gave up time with my kids, with my friends, to do what needed to be done. To give back to the rest of the world, to enable them to live just a little bit happier, a little bit b
222.
by zmj 15y ago
I'm not even sure where to start. Failure to whom? The people making money by providing a service? The users of the service? The marriage industry?
223.
by zmj 15y ago
"Evil" is a label for a particular subset of human behaviors, which are a subset of all possible minds. Thus it is said: > The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something els
224.
by zmj 15y ago
What's the difference between a spaceship and a missile once you remove the human passengers and pilots?
225.
by zmj 15y ago
I don't think that's true. I consider myself an ok coder, but I'm lazy. I work in bursts, but even a good day is likely to be less than six hours of actual work. Bad days are near 0. If I had the work ethic of the parent commenter, I could
226.
by zmj 15y ago
Gotcha. Agreed.
227.
by zmj 15y ago
I'm not sure I understood you correctly about FizzBuzz, but if you're saying that it isn't necessary then I'd have to disagree. I wish the world was such that FizzBuzz wasn't an effective filter, but it is. I really like the rest of your qu
228.
by zmj 15y ago
Lasher at NCSU?
229.
by zmj 15y ago
Have you done all the other homeworks? I also missed only 1 question on HW6 and I did get the letter.
230.
by zmj 15y ago
Here's a good Rob Pike quote from later on in the thread: "This is exactly the kind of thing the proposal tries to avoid. Panic and recover are not an exception mechanism as usually defined because the usual approach, which ties exceptions
231.
by zmj 15y ago
Here's another great Laundry story: http://www.tor.com/stories/2008/07/down-on-the-farm
232.
by zmj 15y ago
The "applied" number theory reminds me of a couple other stories: -the Laundry novels (Charlie Stross). Here's one novella: http://www.goldengryphon.com/Stross-Concrete.html -Luminous/Dark Integers (Greg Egan).
233.
by zmj 15y ago
Hey, I bought this after the Ars review. Thank you for your work on it! I got well more than 99 cents of entertainment value out of it. I'm curious: did you make the puzzles by hand or generate them algorithmically?
234.
by zmj 15y ago
These style guidelines correspond exactly to idiomatic Go. I'm impressed how well Pike executed on his philosophy.
235.
by zmj 15y ago
Email is not a good way to reach your Congressman. They get too much of it to address, and most of it is automated. Call, send a letter, or visit in person.
236.
by zmj 15y ago
There's a similar problem in psychology. Tell someone about the bystander effect or scope neglect, and they'll agree that it's neat but not that it could possibly apply to them. Advertising works. At some point, engineers will practice what
237.
by zmj 15y ago
There have been some psychology experiments that cast doubt on the naive econ treatment. In behavioral economics, the alternative hypothesis is called the "endowment effect". The short version is that people get attached to something they i
238.
by zmj 15y ago
Awesome, thanks.
239.
by zmj 15y ago
You're not meant to retain your prior forever. When you update, you replace it. Think of it as a FOR loop over incoming evidence. On each iteration, you increment or decrement the probability of the proposition in proportion with the eviden
240.
by zmj 15y ago
"You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you will tell me precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that!" John von Neumann, 1948

More ›