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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

johnsalvatier.org

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Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#231

Post by ChiliConKanye »

Johnny555 wrote: post #175
le-mark wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're like my old boss, just tell the employees to assemble their own desks, and then wonder why all these developers who requested a standing desk, are still using their old sit down desks.

I'd be happy to assemble all of my office furniture if my company paid for it -- though paying $100+/hour engineers to do the work of a $15+ handyman seems like a bad deal for the company - especially when the guy that assembles desks all day will do it faster (and correctly).

I question how handy a handyman who only charges minimum wage could possibly be. The union guys who put together the furniture in my last office were getting $50 or $60/hr IIRC.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#232

Post by jessaustin »

dwaltrip wrote: post #162
k__ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, this guy is simply too much.

Eliezer Yudkowsky is quite smart with some deep understandings of the world (along with some less good ideas), as best I can tell. I've definitely learned interesting things or been sent down interesting paths from articles of his that I've read. However, he would be served very well to work on eliminating the moderate pomposity that permeates much of his writing. He is also overly verbose sometimes. Fixing those two…

It was my impression that he intentionally cultivates those aspects of his public persona. That is, if I can't deal with those particular points of personal obnoxiousness, I probably also won't hang credulously on his every word. In that case why would he want to interact with me at all? He's not the only person to employ this strategy. Personally I'm more willing to endure the idiosyncrasies of e.g. RMS.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#233

Post by jackfrodo »

dsacco wrote: post #147
sly010 wrote: post #117

A few years ago I co-founded a standing desk company without any experience in real world products in general. The plan was to source desks and sell them to companies. How complicated could it be? Well, the freight company requires a lot of information about the destination building. The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a litt…

> The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a little different. Automating this sounds like a business worth several million in annual revenue, easily.

Sounds like a mechanical turk:)

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#234

Post by bluetwo »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…

Even better, everyone thinks they know the right solution to a problem by reading a headline about it.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#235

Post by wetmore »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #211
skolos wrote: post #159

> If your screws are longer than 2”, you’ll need different ones, otherwise they will poke out the top of the board and stab you in the foot. Actually nominal 2 inch lumber has thickness of 1.5" [1]. So your screws should be shorter than 1.5". [1] https://www.archtoolbox.com/materials-systems/wood-plastic-c...

> Actually nominal 2 inch lumber has thickness of 1.5" And, as I've recently learned, two-by-four is in fact 1½ × 3½ inches. How on Earth does that make sense? Why do people call things as if they were X, while knowing perfectly well they're not X? Is this an American thing?

2x4 lumber is cut into rough boards in the milling process which are actually 2 by 4. These are dried (at which point they shrink) and planed (the wood will warp a bit during the drying process, jointing and planing will help correct this) so the resulting boards are smaller than their original 2x4 size.

Some more surprising detail in reality :)

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#236

Post by whatshisface »

rytill wrote: post #189
yyzhero wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't blame yourself. Go read argument culture. Everything is positioned as a debate rather then a discussion ; take an opposing side and it's about winning not understanding. As an example If you've caught yourself ever leveraging syntax in a discussion to derail someone's ideas

Can you elaborate on “leveraging syntax”? Like commenting on the structure of their argument?

I think the author is talking about making bad-faith but very defensible interpretations. You can accomplish that by purposely taking hyperbole too literally, or by intentionally overlooking that a statement was meant as a metaphor. (Just a couple of examples.)

Very often, English-language experts can appear to defeat subject-matter experts in debates. When this happens it's usually because of footwork on the "language layer."

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#237

Post by RMGgondella »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…

I think that you identify Mr. Salviatier's main thesis: That knowing or not knowing are equally invalid until observation has been done. Of course, it's said the the very act of observation exerts change on the observed, but that's neither here nor there.

So, when I take tech teams into uncharted waters, the first thing we do is observe. Otherwise we create "ivory tower solutions" better suited to ourselves than actual users.

And, yes. Your're right. If you're supposed to be the "expert founder" then "I don't know" is not, generally in your vocabulary. However, I do suspect this is a male problem, more so, than female. Having said that, in this great time of social upheaval, vis a vis gender, perhaps it's a great time to learn from our sisters!

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#238

Post by zaxomi »

le-mark wrote: post #127
sly010 wrote: post #117

A few years ago I co-founded a standing desk company without any experience in real world products in general. The plan was to source desks and sell them to companies. How complicated could it be? Well, the freight company requires a lot of information about the destination building. The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a litt…

If you're like my old boss, just tell the employees to assemble their own desks, and then wonder why all these developers who requested a standing desk, are still using their old sit down desks.

A former boss of mine told the employees to assemble the furniture at the new location. It was fast and it looked good.

After a week the monitors started to fail, because the cable to the monitor was too tight, so when they moved the monitor, the contact on the back of the monitor broke.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#239

Post by kakarot »

barry0079 wrote: post #50
codingdave wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I jump into a thread, on any site, just to say I don't know? There are thousands of threads just on HN that I just let scroll by without participating because I don't know enough to add to the discussion. Explicitly calling out my lack of knowledge on every thread would serve no purpose to anybody. Online written communications will never follow the same patterns as direct communication, and that is a good…

The problem isn't people not admitting ignorance online. The problem is that the internet might be the cause of people not admitting ignorance in real life.

> the internet might be the cause of people not admitting ignorance in real life.

I remember the good old days, before the internet, when people would always admit their ignorance in real life and the Dunning–Kruger effect didn't exist.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#240

Post by pavel_lishin »

kleer001 wrote: post #221
pavel_lishin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a language that has citations built into statements of fact or belief; you modify statements based on how you came to know them. If someone asks, "Where is Alice?", your answer of "Alice is fishing" would be phrased differently depending on whether he told you he was going fishing, or whether Bob told you he saw her fishing, or whether you saw her fishing. There's nothing like that online, so any given advice…

Are you thinking of Ithkuil? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil

I think I was likely thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Pomo_language
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