Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#101

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 12:42 AM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #93

dredmorbius wrote: post #31

Brian Eno is a skilled musician. He's a lousy economic, systems, and AI theorist. The Edge is revealing itself far more to be a forum in which people of provenance hold forth on that which they've no particular qualifications or grounds to discuss (something which never happens elsewhere on the Internet, of course ). Complex, highly-interdependent systems exibit fragility, nonlinear transitions, and multiple optima,…

This is one of the most elitist comments I've read on HN. What are your special qualifications that allow you to say who is and who is not qualified to comment on a topical issue? I'm guessing by your comment stating that he is a skilled musician that you aren't actually familiar with Brian Eno at all. He's an unskilled musician, that's by his own admission. He's not technically proficient on any instrument. He's qui…

Space alien cats don't need qualifications. Nor do they claim them.

As others have noted, Eno's piece is a poor rewrite of I Pencil, itself a poorly reasoned propaganda piece.

Crooked Timber has an excellent deconstruction of that: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-th...

The one at Freakonomics is weaker sauce but also pretty biting:

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/

I've pointed to several sources discussing technological unemployment, and more critically the long history of discussion of that topic from 1800 forward in mainstream and heterodox economic, as well as political and other literature. None of which Eno's careless handwave points at.

If informed, sourced, intelligent, and specifically refutable comment is elitist, I'll take it.

You've also focused on the irrelevant element of my argument, though if anything, you're also undercutting your own criticism of me. Eno's skill is evident in his body of work. Which I have listened to, own some of, and rather like. His self-description is at best inaccurate.

Your assumptions as to my familiarity or otherwise with Eno's works place you on the rather precarious precipice of a domain in which I am and insist privileged expertise of obvious nature.

Cheers.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#102

Post by cwsx » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 12:47 AM UTC

mastazi wrote: post #85

bryanph_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a road to madness. If every time you wouldn't understand something you would just plunge into the material and get familiarized you would do nothing else for the rest of your life. I think Eno means managing ignorance in the way of making a decision on when to stay ignorant (whilst being aware of your ignorance) and when to learn and hence "fix" this ignorance.

> This is a road to madness How so? > If every time you wouldn't understand something you would just plunge into the material and get familiarized you would do nothing else for the rest of your life That's how I've been spending a significant part of my out-of-work time, for most of my adult life. Is there anything wrong with being a curiosity-driven person?

Not at all, some might call that a 'hobby'.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#103

Post by SapphireSun » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 12:51 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

> I read once that human brains began shrinking about 10 thousand years ago and are now as much as 15% smaller than they were then. Timeline's a bit off, but the science is still a shocker: > Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. h…

A recent study came out showing birds are more intelligent than expected possibly because of neuron density. [1] I find it easier to believe, without evidence of course, that the brain became more compact rather than losing processing power.

A neuroscientist on brain size and intelligence: https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-do...

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/113/26/7255.full

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#104

Post by lswainemoore » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #68

grahamburger wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with habit reinforcement is that you've simply created a feedback loop. > "You like [music type]? Here are more bands/artists of [music type]." So far I've found the opposite. Pandora has exposed me to music that I never would have sought out on my own. In fact I can think of several artists that I would have judged by their cover, so to speak, and never given a chance even if I had stumbled on them on…

Contrast that with Spotify, which when given a song or artist that I like goes out of its way to recommend music that is superficially similar but that I hate. Or how it can recommend 80 songs to me a week based on things I have listened to and end up recommending me nothing that I like.

Huh. I've actually found the "Discover Weekly" feature to be remarkably good at picking music that I like. I'd say I affirmatively like about half to three-quarters of the songs per week, with only a couple that I find myself skipping.

I wonder if it's better at certain genres than others.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#105

Post by Qwertious » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 2:08 AM UTC

bryanph_ wrote: post #61

atemerev wrote: post #39

As a curious software engineer, I have a basic familiarity on where heating oil comes from (I remember my first sci-pop book with a section on basics of oil processing), where nuts are grown, basics of food industry supply chains, and every other example covered. My knowledge might be rudimentary and without much detail, but I try to cover all bases, and when I discover some area of human knowledge I genuinely know n…

This is a road to madness. If every time you wouldn't understand something you would just plunge into the material and get familiarized you would do nothing else for the rest of your life. I think Eno means managing ignorance in the way of making a decision on when to stay ignorant (whilst being aware of your ignorance) and when to learn and hence "fix" this ignorance.

Keyword is "basic", I think.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#106

Post by pajop » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 2:31 AM UTC

Tim Urban points out in his AI article that it might be dangerous to expect that the AI that we know now would still be the same AI we will have in the very near future http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu...

"So as AI zooms upward in intelligence toward us, we’ll see it as simply becoming smarter, for an animal. Then, when it hits the lowest capacity of humanity—Nick Bostrom uses the term “the village idiot”—we’ll be like, “Oh wow, it’s like a dumb human. Cute!” The only thing is, in the grand spectrum of intelligence, all humans, from the village idiot to Einstein, are within a very small range—so just after hitting village idiot level and being declared to be AGI, it’ll suddenly be smarter than Einstein and we won’t know what hit us:"

Compare the images:

http://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#107

Post by DonaldFisk » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 3:13 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #89

grahamburger wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with habit reinforcement is that you've simply created a feedback loop. > "You like [music type]? Here are more bands/artists of [music type]." So far I've found the opposite. Pandora has exposed me to music that I never would have sought out on my own. In fact I can think of several artists that I would have judged by their cover, so to speak, and never given a chance even if I had stumbled on them on…

And more generally, I would say it just depends on the quality of the AI. There is no fundamental reason why such a system would have to recommend only similar music. It could try contrasting music, and build a picture of what aspects of the music you like. It could draw conclusions to recommend seemingly different genres which nonetheless share some commonality that might make them appeal to you. It could also occas…

The algorithms used to make musical recommendations do statistical analysis on numerical ratings given by different people to different songs. They typically know nothing about music, as musical knowledge is understood not to improve their results. I wouldn't call them AI - they're neither knowledge-based systems nor neural networks.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#108

Post by bogomipz » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 3:20 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #101

bogomipz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most elitist comments I've read on HN. What are your special qualifications that allow you to say who is and who is not qualified to comment on a topical issue? I'm guessing by your comment stating that he is a skilled musician that you aren't actually familiar with Brian Eno at all. He's an unskilled musician, that's by his own admission. He's not technically proficient on any instrument. He's qui…

Space alien cats don't need qualifications. Nor do they claim them. As others have noted, Eno's piece is a poor rewrite of I Pencil , itself a poorly reasoned propaganda piece. Crooked Timber has an excellent deconstruction of that: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-th... The one at Freakonomics is weaker sauce but also pretty biting: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/ I've pointed to s…

"Your assumptions as to my familiarity or otherwise with Eno's works place you on the rather precarious precipice of a domain in which I am and insist privileged expertise of obvious nature."

That is one poorly formed run-on sentence. What does that even mean? That's sounds as though it came out of a babble generator. Is that an AI joke?

"You've also focused on the irrelevant element of my argument, though if anything, you're also undercutting your own criticism of me."

Really? So your inaccuracy is irrelevant? How convenient for you. And no I've not focused on that, I focused on elitism and now some strange sense of entitlement you seem to reserve for yourself.

Sorry I don't give a toss about your brand of pop-econmics? You should get over yourself. I am not alone in this view either:

"We and others have noted a discouraging tendency in the Freakonomics body of work to present speculative or even erroneous claims with an air of certainty."

Source: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/freakonomics-wha...

The fact that you're all bent out of shape over content on the Edge and yet you support your infallibility by citing a pop entertainment show on NPR is kind of laughable.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#109

Post by carterehsmith » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 3:23 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #95

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

> I read once that human brains began shrinking about 10 thousand years ago and are now as much as 15% smaller than they were then. Timeline's a bit off, but the science is still a shocker: > Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. h…

There has been incredibly strong selection pressure for babies being able to get down the birth canal - the death rate in child birth pre-modern times was something like 10%. The human brain is about as big as you can make it and still reproduce. What we would expect when you have strong selection for two competing forces (smaller head size and greater intelligence) is for the brain to shrink in size and become more…

When we look at the baby-in-a-birth-canal problem, you can obviously go two ways: smaller baby head (and torso) or wider birth canal. Apparently Neanderthals had wider pelvis _and_ larger heads/brains. So they kind of picked the #2 route.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#110

Post by steplee » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 3:29 AM UTC

mastazi wrote: post #85

bryanph_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a road to madness. If every time you wouldn't understand something you would just plunge into the material and get familiarized you would do nothing else for the rest of your life. I think Eno means managing ignorance in the way of making a decision on when to stay ignorant (whilst being aware of your ignorance) and when to learn and hence "fix" this ignorance.

> This is a road to madness How so? > If every time you wouldn't understand something you would just plunge into the material and get familiarized you would do nothing else for the rest of your life That's how I've been spending a significant part of my out-of-work time, for most of my adult life. Is there anything wrong with being a curiosity-driven person?

There's no way you could actually do this. Going an hour on a normal day you'd have a life time of material to learn so I agree yes it is madness. You can't learn thousands of years of engineering, math, science, etc.