Viewing profile — arakyd

Yeah, he says that Lisp is too hard for the common man, and then sort of implies that this is because it doesn't use ALGOL derived syntax. I don't think that's the issue. It's not …

In this case your better off just reading Norvig's original presentation.

The thing about OOP is that it is described as way to make programming easier because objects are so "intuitive," and the examples for this are all toy simulations with naive objec…

My favorite book of this type is Thinking Forth , available online at http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ . You will get a large dose of the Forth mindset, but it's mostly highe…

Is that Charley the Charley Shattuck mentioned in the 7/21 entry at http://www.ultratechnology.com/blog.htm ? Looks like he's still working with Chuck. Lucky guy. The best thing ab…

Second the idea that a lot of statisticians don't know what they're doing. The first mistake is to make things easier by glossing over, or mangling, the mathematical details. Many …

There's something a little strange about the idea that a company/product becomes real when it appears in a movie (or in the research/advertising for a movie). Isn't it the other wa…

It's not a fundamental difference, it's a consequence of the fact that hardware people are at the bottom of a very big stack and have a massive financial incentive to be as solid a…

Yeah, I tend to say "computer science" when I mean "theoretical computer science." To me there is a clear split between the stuff that's math/logic and the rest of it which I'm hap…

It's not "different strokes," it's a change of perspective causing massive confusion all 'round. Computer science isn't a knock-off approximation of mathematics, it's a subfield of…

Actually the whole av8n.com site is a great resource for anyone interested in learning more about physics. One of the reasons why I linked it ;).

The "nice little tear-down" is in the book review mentioned, but not linked, by the parent ( http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/unscientific_amer... ). Apparently these guy…

It's true that the usual explanation with the Bernoulli effect is wrong, but the idea that the Coanda effect is important for normal flight is also wrong. The relationship between …

I don't understand your analogy. Is the Wizard of Oz repulsed because he thinks the illusion is bad, or because he knows how it's made? Would "This is the worst hunk-a-junk impleme…

All religious traditions take guidance from more than just holy books (many religions do not even have holy books), and the idea (or assumption) that laypeople can determine religi…

What about if nearly everyone is worse off? Putting the burden of responsibility on the actor is fine, but Swoopo is not in the same category as Starbucks and EA, and claiming that…

Yeah but that doesn't explain why one would write a brainfuck interpreter in brainfuck . Day 163: Project complete. Strength nearly gone. Must.. complete... evaluation.... Data str…

Considerably less fun to toy around with now that the only way to get a non completely crippled version is to pay megabucks (or work at a company that develops in it). If I'm wrong…

Or like extruding peacock feathers for any animal that doesn't have peacock feathers.

Both of our posts would be funnier if the project was anything other than vaporware.

From the RTI website, a presentation they supposedly gave to the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute in April: A code of moral behavior for intelligent robots will be deve…

They cite their sources - just follow the trail a few more steps. http://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/EATR : At the sixth (System of Systems) level, which has not yet bee…

If not realizing that 95% of your consumer loans (not just 95% of mortgages) are sub-prime mortgages, and then keeping them on the books because of what amounts to a pure gamble on…

It sounds pretty good when you focus on the payoff, gloss the probability of success (as if the difference between 77% and 0.002% is negligible, or either estimate is anything othe…

Sorry, it would be more accurate to restrict that to "Based on the above FAQs and other discussions on Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong, cryonics advocates don't seem...." From http:…