Viewing profile — jimwhite42

Here's an attempt to explaining the irrational part of programmers deciding which programming language to use. Part of it goes into more detail on ideas like C programmers insistin…

> IMO actual leaders are just people who think ahead so when other people don't know what to do they have some sort of answer. They may not be in positions of authority at all. Tha…

I think the Sorites paradox may point to something specific about these kinds of ideas, which is not shared with the meaning of things like evil or knowledge. There's a page on it …

> Microsoft just announced 10 million dollar effort to make Rust their default systems language for their infrastructure This seems like an incredibly low amount of money to achiev…

I think a little hesitance on the overall success of these sorts of projects is prudent, given the history of axiomatic and formal expections and reality. But let's say they make h…

I think it's likely that axiomatic approaches, and formal approaches will continue to produce interesting results and have some effect on regular mathematics. But this is very diff…

And you can apply it, when you do, it really works.

> It seems like it should be possible, in theory, but it takes too much work. The definition of a valid mathematical proof that I've heard mathematicians use is if it convinces oth…

I like some of what I think I understand about Feyerabend's ideas, but I didn't get on with his actual books. I expected something ethnographic-y or observation based, but only fou…

I think there's a subtlety which isn't implicit in what you say. There is the ideal of science - which I think there's a case to be made that it's not something that can be fixed, …

Aren't you mixing two distinct things here?

> To take the obvious example of using exactly what Popper was trying to oppose. the current Chinese communist party's claim that capitalism will eventually transition into sociali…

I've been wondering if falsifiability is misunderstood, based on what a few people have commented about it. The alternative version is only that if claims are made that a system ha…

I thought this was a good analysis of Patrick Brown's claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZUXQPqY3k

As far as I can tell, the issue is people misrepresenting what the review says, not that the review is faulty. The review concludes that we have evidence that masks are effective, …

Can you say where he does this? I only remember him referring to first normal form as something historical, that he doesn't use that particular normal form directly at all.

> Also I dont see how it isn’t hierachical? Nested tables create a hierachical structure just like nested records in a hierachical database. What is the difference? I haven't seen …

I'm a bit fuzzy, but I think Vertica allows duplicating tables stored in multiple orders - then I think the appropriate version is picked automatically by the query optimiser. So t…

> The "normal forms" could merely be suggestions for a database designer, not a technical limitation enforced by the software itself. I think most of the motivation for normal form…

Date and Darwen (spritual successors to Codd?), have a relational theory which allows nested relation values and I think it doesn't contradict the motivation behind first normal fo…

Here are some interesting videos on NMN: https://www.youtube.com/@DrBradStanfield/search?query=nmn I think the pragmatic position is that NR has better testing in humans and is a b…

I'm not sure if I'm remembering it right, but I think it was on a Raphaël Millière interview on Mindscape, where Raphaël said something along the lines of when there are many dimen…

Have you listened to Carroll on the subject? As someone who knows next to nothing on this subject, he seems to me to be claiming that dark matter explains a lot of things in the un…

The things you do name are unquestionably going to be massive issues, and yet these don't get nearly the airtime of the incredibly speculative 'AI will kill all humans if we don't …

It's either a simple mistake, or a deliberate troll. Sam Altman used to do a role on Hacker News very similar to what dang does today.