HN has really changed. This question is an example. This is not readdit.
Ask HN: What annoys you?
261–270 of 355 posts
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#262Non-teaching of explicit rationality annoys me. The most fundamental, elementary, and basic concepts of rationality are not systematically explained anywhere that I know of. It is impossible to engage the average PhD in a dialogue with agreed-upon rules of reasoning because they do not know why you can't prove things about the real world by arguing about the definitions of a word, or why it's a bad idea to pick a con…
Interesting, this reminds me of a book I thought about writing at one point titled something like "How To Tell What Is True" Which would cover topics like: * Peer review * Double blind experiments * Anecdotal evidence * Statistical Significance But I sort of lost interest and ended up just making it a blog post instead... http://www.startbreakingfree.com/504/how-to-tell-whats-bulls...
This reminds me of a book I thought of writing, titled "The Limits of Certainty and the Quest for Authorization."
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#263Finding people to work on short, proof-of-concept projects with. I have a list of more than 25 items that I would love to work on, but have little motivation without someone willing to help out. I don't necessarily want to form a startup on these ideas, just get the ball rolling and see where it leads. I would like a site that enables me to find others and create prototype apps in a matter of days, almost like a flas…
Not to recurse on your comment, but can we build a web app for this some weekend?
Sure. Happy to work with you and conorgil if interested. See my profile for my email.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, this reminds me of a book I thought about writing at one point titled something like "How To Tell What Is True" Which would cover topics like: * Peer review * Double blind experiments * Anecdotal evidence * Statistical Significance But I sort of lost interest and ended up just making it a blog post instead... http://www.startbreakingfree.com/504/how-to-tell-whats-bulls...
Parent's ideas are much more applicable to the general public, which is who needs this training the most.
Now there's an interesting question: how can you teach some low-hanging fruit of rationality to someone with maybe half an hour to spare? The best attempt at this I've seen is Carl Sagan's article "The Fine Art of Boloney Detection", from his book The Demon-Haunted World. Sagan was an engaging writer, and does a good job making it easy to understand. I found a copy here:
http://dannybhoy1.tripod.com/baloney.htm
It would be even better if we had effective sound bites. I suppose we have "Correlation does not equal causation", which rhymes nicely, but too many people think it means that correlation isn't evidence for causation, which is wrong. I guess this is a problem with soundbites in general.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's a really powerful concept, and like religion and superstition, I think it's fine in fiction (books and movies would be boring without that imagery). But in the real-world, it's just plain bad and we need to do something about it. Nobody is in favor of malaria or smallpox, but most people turn a blind eye to the diseases of aging even though they kill a lot more people. The real question is: If dying of o…
You guys seem to think death isn't inevitable? Huh?
Not death, just the diseases of aging (which aren't so different from other diseases in their effects, when it comes down to it).
The general idea is that our bodies accumulate damage as a side product of metabolism (stuff that evolution hasn't equipped us to deal with - various long-lived molecules that we can't break down); over a certain threshold, that damage turns into pathologies. So your skin is less elastic, your arteries aren't as flexible, your immune system doesn't work as well, your brain accumulate beta amyloids that lead to alzheimer's, etc. If we could periodically repair that damage before the pathologies happen, we could potentially keep young bodies indefinitely and cure many diseases without having to understand how metabolism works, thus reducing human suffering tremendously (about 150k deaths each day).
For more on this, check out this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-Breakthrough...
Or these presentations:
http://citywire.kuluvalley.com/player.html?pguid=E586AD51-41...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8554766938711591377&...
Or the work of this foundation (I'm in no way affiliated with them - I'm just a fan and individual donor):
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#266Finding people to work on short, proof-of-concept projects with. I have a list of more than 25 items that I would love to work on, but have little motivation without someone willing to help out. I don't necessarily want to form a startup on these ideas, just get the ball rolling and see where it leads. I would like a site that enables me to find others and create prototype apps in a matter of days, almost like a flas…
I am the exact opposite of you. I can put up entire projects myself (design, code etc...) but when it comes to heavy lifting I try and out source it because even though I can do it, it would take as much time as putting up a whole mobile web app. I am currently working on 3 apps (2 will go live in the next few weeks). If you are interested in working on some stuff together send me an email.
What do you mean by "heavy lifting"? Are you saying you tend to work on simpler mobile apps as opposed to more complex apps, since the back-end calculations are too intense?
If so, then we definitely need to work together. :)
Note: I don't see an email in your profile.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to recurse on your comment, but can we build a web app for this some weekend?
I would also love to help build a web app for a site like this. I tried to email you, but there is no contact info in your profile. Shoot me an email (in my profile) if you are interested!
If you make an app for this, please do announce it on HN. It sounds like a great idea.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#268The absolute disgusting nature of standardization of data sets in the world, and this insane notion that we should maintain legacy data as the status-quo of doing things. Just look at the airline industry. IATA, ICAO, ISO, all competing and separate, all with insane and bat-shit psychotic rules and conventions (eg, IATA lets multiple airlines have the same "two letter designator" [by the way, it's sometimes three, bu…
Medical information standards are similarly convoluted, but getting better.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#269The fact that 100s of years of art and music are available, but people still gravitate towards whatever is being promoted--typically something recent and inferior. This is partly a function of marketing, partly of herding--both poor selectors of quality.
And 100, 200 or 300 years ago, some people were undoubtedly saying the same. It might be intellectually trendy to slam modern things, but it doesn't necessary make such criticisms universally true.
I didn't see a criticism of modern things per se. The argument was that people are flocking to things based on poor evidence of quality, like advertising and lists of the latest things, rather than finding good stuff regardless of when it was produced.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#270Things that assume/require that I have exactly one physical address. That includes banks, insurance companies, government agencies, utilities, and pretty much every business that I need to deal with to do anything. 90% of the pain I encounter during my life on the road stems from the fact that I don't own or rent property in the US, and therefore don't have a fixed address. There are tons of people in my situation (e…
Or even just physical addresses in general. I wish there was an official registry a-la-dns, people would mail things to me, and the post office would route it to me based on what that registry said. Yes, you'd have to update it, but it beats having to update my address in a half-dozen places every time I move. There are actually a few places that deal with this - http://earthclassmail.com/ being one of them.
There's a similar service, myus.com , which accomplishes this for non-US residents.