91–100 of 148 posts
The AI faces... wow.
I want to know more about how they're formed. Did the AI basically generate them from scratch, or did it stitch existing images together.
Assuming they are sufficiently different from the source images, is it enough to effectively anonymize someone in a picture?
I really enjoyed: World GDP animation by country: - it is insane how near japan got to us even being such a small country - kudos to china for falling way out of the race to the top and then "out of the blue" reaching #2 at the very end -- shows exponential growth How camera lenses change the way we look: - at the first shot with the 20mm or so lens, the guy's nose looks huge and funny compared to the rest of the pic…
Reading Factfulness got me to pay attention to per capita GDP growth rates over decades, as opposed to static comparisons at the moment. China blew my mind. Their per capita GDP has increased around 130x (in constant dollars) since 1960, from the $60/year range to over $8000/year. I now use it as a rebuttal to the stock assumption that Western-style democracy, capitalism, and individualism are the only route to prosp…
The classic line is something to the effect of 'capitalism is the best system of generating wealth, but not for distributing it'. That does seem wrong. Once the innovations exist, systems like russia or china seem to successfully and efficiently reproduce the wealth generation. What happens after they have caught up to some baseline of industrial prosperity is a different economic issue altogether. I don't think we have enough examples from modern history to draw any sweeping conclusions.
I really enjoyed: World GDP animation by country: - it is insane how near japan got to us even being such a small country - kudos to china for falling way out of the race to the top and then "out of the blue" reaching #2 at the very end -- shows exponential growth How camera lenses change the way we look: - at the first shot with the 20mm or so lens, the guy's nose looks huge and funny compared to the rest of the pic…
Reading Factfulness got me to pay attention to per capita GDP growth rates over decades, as opposed to static comparisons at the moment. China blew my mind. Their per capita GDP has increased around 130x (in constant dollars) since 1960, from the $60/year range to over $8000/year. I now use it as a rebuttal to the stock assumption that Western-style democracy, capitalism, and individualism are the only route to prosp…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Why are you assuming I'm "suggesting it's preferable"? Put down the pitchfork for a moment! I'm not arguing that Chinese-style communism is a better system. I'm arguing that the belief that western values and economics are the only path to prosperity is incorrect. I'd rather live in the American system. I'm sure there are a lot of people who grew up in China and would rather live in the Chinese system. As for your la…
> Instead of arbitrarily memorizing things, look for the explanation that makes it obvious. This is a higher learning method that I’ve always found most natural. I don’t memorize stuff, I try to understand it instead. That said, there is still great value in the classical learning model—if you don’t know the terminology of the subject it’s difficult to reason about that subject.
*Memorizing takes less time but you sacrifice depth of understanding and duration of retention. Understanding the "why" provides a great depth of understanding and a lengthy duration of retention but, depending on the material, it can take a long time and potentially lead you down a rabbit hole if you continue to seek understanding of the underlying abstractions.
Is it normal for professional soccer players to be so blatantly afraid of the ball?
And yeah, it's typical for players to turn around in a situation like that.
I like how Bezos' fridge quote is planted OVER one of his kid's drawings.
Interesting read. Thank you very much for posting. I also read about a Hubble Extreme Deep Field image in December last year. I am still left flabbergasted that that image exposes only the space of the night sky covered by your thumbnail if you had to extend your arm straight in front of you. Just a thumbnail. And these are galaxies, not stars! Each one with hundreds of billions of stars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think part of this is just highlighting the differences between our language center and the analytic part of our brains. And I also think this differs greatly between individuals (a huge reason why our family home-schools). For instance, I have never had trouble with things like English grammar and spelling. For grammar, the rules have just always made sense, and, for spelling, usually just seeing the word written…
I must have expressed myself poorly: When I try to pick up a new skill, I would start by asking "what are the higher-level rules?" or some variation. Generally speaking, I've had a very, VERY low success rate at getting answers. When I did get answers, they always relied on a context I didn't have, because I was brand new. Some areas I pick up intuitively, others take work, and others I completely suck at, but in non…
It's only after we are familiar with the language that the underlying structures emerge.
This applies to learning math too. Unless we are already familiar with the structures in place, we typically first read the axioms, then look at the examples and try to work through some of them to gain familiarity, and then the underlying structure reveals itself to us.
It reminds me of a quote:
"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, it doesn't bother you any more."
Familiarity precedes true understanding.
This is also why people who read textbooks in a linear passive fashion don't do well in tests. They read and think they know the material, but if they are tested on it, they fail because they haven't truly grappled with the problem space.
Corollary: people aren't always as boring as they may seem - digging in a little, asking questions - I often find what people are doing outside of work (which seems to be the default "interesting or not" metric) can be rather interesting.
