A List of Open Questions • Hacker News Board

Re: A List of Open Questions

#61

Post by glastra » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 11:46 AM UTC

matt-attack wrote: post #58

throwawaymath wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a mathematical perspective it's pretty silly to claim your vote doesn't matter just because it's not the tie breaking vote. You should give this a read: https://www.skishore.me/voting.html . Frankly this viewpoint has always puzzled me. Your specific claim that a vote almost certainly doesn't matter because elections don't come down to a single vote seems...unsupported, to put it politely. It might be more intui…

Bit logically where was he wrong? It seems like a bit of a paradox to me. You keep say it’s wrong but can you point out exactly where his reasoning is wrong? My vote yesterday simply didn’t change any of the outcomes. That is a fact. None of the races were won by a single vote.

Or maybe it did, if you voted for the winning side. What if you ordered the winning votes and losing votes randomly, side by side, and eliminated pairs of opposing votes. You would be left with a set of winning votes, cast by individual people. You could attribute the victory to exactly those people.

Now, to extrapolate this to all of the winning voters, simply "sample" reorderings, or average it, and you have a spread responsibility amongst all those people who voted for the winning candidate/party.

In other words, votes cast for the winning side did decide the result, because of their collective behaviour. The effect of a single vote can be defined in statistical terms as being interdependent with the rest of the votes in the same direction. This means any winning vote cannot be said to lack all effect, meaning or power. If the vote is not without effect, then it must have some effect, albeit not absolute.

Another way to look at this is that if the voting is won by a difference of exactly one vote, whose vote was it anyway? You would spread the responsibility of turning the election equally amongst all voters for that side.

If we wanted to somehow quantify the "contribution" to winning that each vote has, we have to take into account how many votes were actually required to win. Let X be the number of votes in the winning side and Y in the losing side. Of all the X votes in the winning side, only Y+1 were actually necessary to win. So the contribution of each voter could be (Y + 1)/X, which is always So if the voting is won by exactly one vote, all votes in the winning side are decisive: without any one of them, the voting would not be won.

If, however, everyone voted for the same side, it would be 1/X, where you could remove all but one vote and still be short of removing a whole "decisive vote".

Re: A List of Open Questions

#62

Post by garmaine » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 11:47 AM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #52

lostdog wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow kicking or kneeing someone in the face when they're down?

I am not sure if such is allowed in another martial arts league. But from my experience in fighting, kicking someone anywhere on the body while they are on the ground will quickly and inevitably result in serious injuries. Standing up, you can "elastically catch" the kick and reduce the damage it does. On the floor, you will absorb the full force.

Which is why the rules exist, and why MMA is wrestling/boxing, not a martial art. Either you are training to score points within a rule system, or you are training to kill/maim/incapacitate. Don’t confuse the two.

Re: A List of Open Questions

#63

Post by garmaine » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 11:49 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #25

andrewstuart wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that jiu jitsu makes UFC / MMA less interesting. I'm more interested in of the stand up combat sports like kickboxing. I reckon UFC is missing out by not having a pure standup division, without the wrestling/bjj. I know a former world champion kickboxer who says "Ground and pound? Where's the honor in that?". I thought about it a bit and realised he is right - where is the honor, sportsmanship in beating the h…

Why is there more honor in beating someone while standing? The reason to include wrestling is that it makes the contest more closely approximate a real fight. In a real fight your opponent does have the option to go to the ground.

> The reason to include wrestling is that it makes the contest more closely approximate a real fight. In a real fight your opponent does have the option to go to the ground.

And be immediately killed by anyone nearby, who need merely step on their windpipe or something. Going to the ground gets you killed in a “real fight.”

Re: A List of Open Questions

#64

Post by Xophmeister » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 11:56 AM UTC

> What happened to the famous genome sequencing cost curve after late 2012, which stopped price decreases, damaged genetics, and delayed the advent of whole-genome sequencing by perhaps a decade? Was it really just the Illuminati’s fault?

Note that the Y-axis is logarithmic; so this is simply a matter of diminishing returns. The massive fall in 2007-2008 was due to the invention of so-called "next generation sequencing", but this is bound by technical constraints -- not least the sheer deluge of data -- that have basically been hit. Newer methods of sequencing, which are now starting to come online in anger, ought to start pushing the price down again; although note that the data/processing constraints haven't really gone away and this is now the principal bottleneck for analysis.

Re: A List of Open Questions

#65

Post by virtualized » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 12:02 PM UTC

aasasd wrote: post #27

> Does listening to music while working serve as a distraction, or motivation? There was a study which determined that people do mundane, routine work equally well with music or without it, but if the work required creative thinking, music lost to no music. A possible conclusion is that music engages the regions of the brain which are required for creative thinking. That's just one study, however, and I doubt that I…

IMO it goes more like this: Music makes you happy, being happy makes you more productive. Don't overthink this too much.

Re: A List of Open Questions

#66

Post by techstrategist » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 12:13 PM UTC

aasasd wrote: post #47

> Why does writing in the morning (anecdotally so far) seem to be so effective for writers, even ones who are not morning persons? While programmers, which seems like a similar occupation, are invariably owls? I frankly didn't read the whole linked article, but do the writers, by any chance, do the writing in the morning, but not editing? Because personally, I regularly have a sorta-confused rush of ideas and notions…

>Because personally, I regularly have a sorta-confused rush of ideas and notions early after sleep, that subsides after a couple hours―after which I may find the morning ideas stupid, or sometimes discover a gem among them, but almost always I find that calm logic of the day doesn't produce such wild reaches.

I think sleep clears out working memory, and starting the day writing lets your brain express some things that had been cached previously. I find that writing in the evening after reading / web surfing / normal daily activities results in output that is derivative or responsive to what I've read that day.

Re: A List of Open Questions

#67

Post by aasasd » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

virtualized wrote: post #65

aasasd wrote: post #27

> Does listening to music while working serve as a distraction, or motivation? There was a study which determined that people do mundane, routine work equally well with music or without it, but if the work required creative thinking, music lost to no music. A possible conclusion is that music engages the regions of the brain which are required for creative thinking. That's just one study, however, and I doubt that I…

IMO it goes more like this: Music makes you happy, being happy makes you more productive. Don't overthink this too much.

That's addressed right in the post linked in the question: https://www.gwern.net/Music-distraction

Re: A List of Open Questions

#68

Post by gnulinux » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

glastra wrote: post #56

gnulinux wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally believe carbs are mostly to blame (as opposed to fats and protein). In the Western world there is this idea that fats are bad, carbs are good but somehow this idea coincidences with astronomic increase in obesity. We load everything with high-fructose corn syrup and kick fats out of our diet. There is not much research behind this and my claims aren't evidence based either. I'm more than happy to refuted…

Definitely. I don't understand why you're getting down-voted without actual refutals. I guess it generates some internal/psychological discomfort, but I expected better of HN readers. Indeed, the only animals suffering from obesity and modern civilisation diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's and other degenerative or systemic diseases) are humans and those animals of other species unfortunate enoug…

This might be true but is very surprising (since Omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids are found poultry, eggs, nuts etc... which I thought to be rather "healthy" in general) I found this [1] abstract which supports your point. Is there more evidence? Also what's the relation between inflammation and obesity?

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29610056

Re: A List of Open Questions

#69

Post by zaarn » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #34

craftyguy wrote: post #7

> Why do humans, pets, and even lab animals of many species kept in controlled lab conditions on standardized diets appear to be increasingly obese over the 20th century? What could possibly explain all of them simultaneously becoming obese? Because diet is only part of the equation. The other major factor being exercise/physical activity (and probably some genetics). If you eat 'well' but sit at a desk all day, calo…

I personally believe carbs are mostly to blame (as opposed to fats and protein). In the Western world there is this idea that fats are bad, carbs are good but somehow this idea coincidences with astronomic increase in obesity. We load everything with high-fructose corn syrup and kick fats out of our diet. There is not much research behind this and my claims aren't evidence based either. I'm more than happy to refuted…

That wouldn't explain the change with standardized diets though, which presumably did not change over time, yet the lab animals did gain more weight than before.

Re: A List of Open Questions

#70

Post by throwawaymath » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

matt-attack wrote: post #58

throwawaymath wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a mathematical perspective it's pretty silly to claim your vote doesn't matter just because it's not the tie breaking vote. You should give this a read: https://www.skishore.me/voting.html . Frankly this viewpoint has always puzzled me. Your specific claim that a vote almost certainly doesn't matter because elections don't come down to a single vote seems...unsupported, to put it politely. It might be more intui…

Bit logically where was he wrong? It seems like a bit of a paradox to me. You keep say it’s wrong but can you point out exactly where his reasoning is wrong? My vote yesterday simply didn’t change any of the outcomes. That is a fact. None of the races were won by a single vote.

I pointed out the error in reasoning. You are repeating the intuitive heuristic, which is that a single vote doesn't change outcomes. I'll try to explain my point more fully, but there isn't much more ground to cover here. glastra made a good sibling comment covering the basic probabilistic points, so I'll try a different direction.

If your bar for voting to have meaning is that your individual vote will change outcomes, you'll find that not a single model of democracy (much less implementation) is satisfying. That's an impossible, nonsensical bar. You can't possibly hope to swing a state to your party if everyone on the underdog side stays home because it seems unlikely to happen.

Your vote has meaning even if you weren't personally the arbiter of political change. Aggregates are defined by their constituent parts. You're acting as though voting is worthless if your cause doesn't receive enough votes to pass a cutoff point. It's true that it won't pass, but that doesn't mean the vote didn't matter. Apply this model of thinking elsewhere: if you made 2 points in a basketball game and your team lost, were those 2 points meaningless just because you didn't win? Should you recuse yourself from playing because it's unlikely your team can win? How about raising money for a Kickstarter - was it a waste of time just because you didn't raise the goal and won't receive the funds? Should you not try to raise money and find as many donors as you can, just because there's a minimum cutoff for payout?

Since analogies are imperfect it might be instructive to consider whether or not you can come up with a point at which you think your vote matters. If your vote is one of five, is that meaningless because two are on your side and three are not? How about one of 100? One of 10,000? One of 1,000,000? Can you - in a way that isn't arbitrary - come up with a point at which it stops mattering?

The fundamental problem is that if one vote doesn't matter, two cannot possibly matter either, and so on. Unless you disagree with very straightforward math, you can clearly see a single vote has some inarguable meaning. At that point you're just haggling on how much meaning it has as an individual, not on whether or not it has meaning. From there we can continue to have a discussion about why you should take this knowledge and vote with it, because regardless of your party affiliation the 2016 election was won with fewer than 100,000 votes. 1/n != 0.

On the other hand if you disagree with the basic math I probably can't convince you. But I can at least just tell you you're wrong without as much handwringing. There is no real paradox here. The only problem is that we as humans slip into intuition more than rationality. There is no perspective from which it is irrational to vote. It costs you nothing and can only have upside for your party affiliation. If you disagree we're separated by an axiomatic impasse, not a logical one.