Viewing profile — erdos2

"But the essay causes concern. I worry that lots of small ISVs will read his article and believe that they need to hire great hackers." Why does this rise to the level of concern? …

The author Elliott is miserable, negative, hateful, boastful and self-righteous. Don't forget (now there's a patronizing phrase, as if anyone forgets the obvious) that the article …

1. Zero 2. Infinity 3. It fails to maximize your expected utility while minimizing everyone else's.

The author misses the point that PG's essays are not intended to be understood literally, but as literature, to be appreciated on an aesthetic level only.

The idea of a static mindset is itself limiting. One needs to have a mindsheaf, which could be a time-varying sheaf of mindsets. This would be a contravariant functor F from the re…

Saul Kripke is an example of this. Terrified of publishing in case he doesn't live up to his immense talent.

The Times is usually scrupulous about fact checking--except when it comes to supporting Imperial adventures and warmongering.

It's expensive to raise a family in the United States. The economics and the culture are against it. Add to that the cost of raising a family with someone who turns out to be the w…

The article claims that "...a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their W…

This is Objectivism gone awry. A society of Ayn Randians will ultimately face challenges that leads to its collapse.

Thanks--I hope the experiment works also. It seems as though it should, based on my experience. It's also an opportunity to record the results of an experiment in Google docs, usin…

I've had lifelong problems maintaining anything remotely resembling a normal, consistent sleep schedule, coupled with chronic insomnia. Two sleep studies several years apart and a …

You asked for a source: I provided one. A request for an explanation is something else. I'll give you another source instead: http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/Mike.Shor/courses/GThe…

Exactly.

"Isn't that more relevant than your personal, negative opinion of her philosophy?" No, because it's not only a personal opinion, but a statement that Rand's philosophy of rational …

Who is Ayn Rand? An utterly dreadful writer and philosopher who believed that the axiom of reflexivity of identity had substantive ontological, social, moral and political conseque…

There are opportunity costs either way. When I was your age (I am now, on one leg), I didn't have my degree. After my father's premature death, I went to work to help support my mo…

If you like category theory, the lectures by The Catsters on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCatsters are entertaining. Their latest video describes Lawvere's example of …

Terrific link!

It's pretentious to say that it's pretentious; in fact, any use of the word pretentious is extremely pretentious, including this one. The use/mention distinction also breaks down f…

The only thing pretentious about 'autodidact' is the use of the word 'pretentious' to characterize a common vocabulary word.

Government funded research is one way of transferring the risk of product development from business to the tax payer. If the research succeeds in creating a marketable product, the…

Google broke off talks with Free411.com to start a competing service? So much for "Don't be evil."

Sagan intended this as an allusion to Thomas Carlyle. 'A sad spectacle!' exclaimed Thomas Carlyle, contemplating the possibility that millions of planets circle other suns. 'If the…