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Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

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Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#101

Post by pjscott »

cookiecaper wrote: post #87
javert wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith consists of believing something without reference to reality, i.e., divorced of reason. A scientist engaging in an experiment is attempting to gain knowledge, and he may expect the experiment to go a certain way, based on what he knows. Someone engaging in faith says, "I believe this, just because I want to." There is no reference to knowledge, reason, or reality. It's putting an "I wish" over "It is." To engag…

Obviously, we disagree. Some may do that and call it faith, but people who are serious about faith do not believe without reference to reality or reason. Their faith is also predicated upon facts which they already know -- for instance, almost all people have an internal feeling that there is a God to be found out there. As such, based on their previous spiritual experiences, they will hear some information, believe…

This has turned into an argument over the definitions of words, at its core. One person is defining "faith" to mean "having a belief that significantly mismatches the evidence", and you're defining "faith" to mean something drastically different. May I suggest either agreeing on a definition for the sake of argument, or splitting it into two separate words? You could call the first definition "mimble", and the second definition "spuzz", for example, and then the discussion might be able to go somewhere.

(I also don't consider your definition of faith to be particularly useful, and I suspect that you're equivocating, but those are tangential to my point here.)

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#102

Post by Detrus »

lookACamel wrote: post #75
maxklein wrote: post #59

I've been pushing this idea: "A half-way house for suicidal people" Basically, if you're intending to commit suicide, you simply register for the project, and you get an all-expenses paid trip to Iraq, Afghanistan or Congo or some other really dangerous place. Spend two to three months helping people out, then feel free to commit suicide after that. No counseling, no attempt to talk you out of it, just a chance to be…

Nice idea but don't you think others would abuse the system?

Yea this is basically the system suicide bombers are in. Only there, the point is to make the suicide useful for political goals, here it is to make miserable life useful for said goals.

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#103

Post by Alex3917 »

maeon3 wrote: post #63
maxklein wrote: post #59

I've been pushing this idea: "A half-way house for suicidal people" Basically, if you're intending to commit suicide, you simply register for the project, and you get an all-expenses paid trip to Iraq, Afghanistan or Congo or some other really dangerous place. Spend two to three months helping people out, then feel free to commit suicide after that. No counseling, no attempt to talk you out of it, just a chance to be…

That's actually a great idea, because I think suicide has a "good of the collective" component to it. If you get rejected by your peers too much, ostracized and made to feel like a burden, your mind comes to the counter intuitive conclusion that the best way to ensure survival of your tribe is to die. Transplanting to an environment where your knowledge, ability and assets make you the most valuable and looked-up to…

That's interesting. One of my friends has a theory of a "social discard program" that she's been blogging a lot about recently. It's basically just noodling along the same lines:

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/proposed-demotedis...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/demotepromote-or-d...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/good-nutrition-to-...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-theory-about-w...

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/dont-trigger-disca...

Sorry for posting so many links, but taken as a whole it's a very provocative train of thought.

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#104

Post by pjscott »

anon_for_this_1 wrote: post #81
javert wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

faith in tandem with reason That's a contradiction. faith.. is necessary in the acquisition of all meaningful knowledge. I strongly disagree. Believe me, I've looked into it.

I agree with cookiecaper. I've never seen mars. I believe (blindly) that the books, pictures and lectures I've seen are real, and that other people's pronouncements (from NASA, etc) are real too, so I believe (ie have blind faith) that mars is real. I _assume_ (ie have faith) that I could do some research and become a little more sure. Heck, that goes for atoms, electricity, just about everything. All I KNOW (without…

Belief should not be absolute, but a matter of degree. If I flip a coin ten times, I believe that it'll land heads at least once. How strongly do I believe it? As a matter of fact, I'm a little more than 99.9% sure. The probability of getting at least one head is 1023/1024.

On more complex things, it's harder (and sometimes uncomputable) to come up with such precise probability estimates, but that doesn't change the principle. I believe with greater than 99% certainty that evolution happened. I believe with less certainty that Moore's law will continue for another two or three process nodes. I have very little belief that "psychics" can talk with the dead; equivalently, I have a very high degree of belief that they can not talk with the dead.

The degrees of belief we have about things should be revised upward or downward based on evidence, and should be based on the evidence we have available to us. Your belief that mars is real is supported by a lot of evidence, and therefore should have a high degree of confidence. But if I told you that there's a planet, unknown until now, called Uldune, and that this planet has space pirates using it as a supply base, then believing me with non-negligible certainty would be an act of blind faith. (Disbelieving me, with high certainty, would not be. My story about the planet Uldune contradicts a lot of evidence about the current state of the art in space travel, and the laws of physics, and so on.)

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#106

Post by pjscott »

MikeCapone wrote: post #35
kwoks wrote: post #32

You don't solve a problem by running away from it. This guy would have been very useful. He just needed counselling, attention and love to overcome the 'darkness and his ghosts'. But I don't think he was smart. He might have been clever in class and books but smart and brilliant people don't take their own lives. Brilliant is misused here. Anyway R.I.P.

> He might have been clever in class and books but smart and brilliant people don't take their own lives. Honestly: How do you know? Should I invoke Alan Turing or look up suicides on Wikipedia? I think we, who are not going through these kind of things, tend to underestimate just how damaged people can be. I'm not saying he made the right choice, but I'm definitely saying that it's not as clear cut as you imply.

Maybe he's defining "smart and brilliant" in such a way that his statement is tautologically true? It's obviously pretty silly otherwise. Of course, such a definition is also silly, since it has such a large mismatch with the conventional definitions of those terms.

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#107

Post by alsomike »

maxklein wrote: post #59

I've been pushing this idea: "A half-way house for suicidal people" Basically, if you're intending to commit suicide, you simply register for the project, and you get an all-expenses paid trip to Iraq, Afghanistan or Congo or some other really dangerous place. Spend two to three months helping people out, then feel free to commit suicide after that. No counseling, no attempt to talk you out of it, just a chance to be…

So giving suicidal people lots of opportunities to harm themselves? Something doesn't add up there.

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#108

Post by anon_for_this_1 »

WingForward wrote: post #93
anon_for_this_1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with cookiecaper. I've never seen mars. I believe (blindly) that the books, pictures and lectures I've seen are real, and that other people's pronouncements (from NASA, etc) are real too, so I believe (ie have blind faith) that mars is real. I _assume_ (ie have faith) that I could do some research and become a little more sure. Heck, that goes for atoms, electricity, just about everything. All I KNOW (without…

You haven't seen Mars? Really? It's often visible in the sky at night.

... says the "astronomy priest" to me :) I have to take your word for it. I know there is what appears to be a star that looks brighter than most others. I, personally, don't have a means at my disposal to know it's mars. I just have to believe you.

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#109

Post by anon_for_this_1 »

javert wrote: post #84
anon_for_this_1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with cookiecaper. I've never seen mars. I believe (blindly) that the books, pictures and lectures I've seen are real, and that other people's pronouncements (from NASA, etc) are real too, so I believe (ie have blind faith) that mars is real. I _assume_ (ie have faith) that I could do some research and become a little more sure. Heck, that goes for atoms, electricity, just about everything. All I KNOW (without…

Please see my response to cookiecaper. You don't "blindly believe" the scientific facts/phenomena to which you refer. First, you have ample evidence to suggest that they exist. Second, they do not contradict anything else in reality that you are aware of. Third, you have reason to trust the process of cognition that led to those conclusions, i.e, the thought process and work of scientists that reference reality in th…

I, personally, have no _evidence_ that the big bang really happened. I have heard people tell me it's so. I've read books claiming it's so. I have to have faith in these books and these people. That's the essence of my argument -- very, very few of us have actual evidence. What we have is the words of others. In other words, there are only a small handful of people that have built a device that can measure background microwave radiation and devices to measure red-shift, etc. Those few people know what they have observed and can interpret that information. Everything else that is built on those observations (many more theories, etc) is based on a belief in those original few peoples' work. And we, the masses, then have to believe those secondary interpretations. Heck, I haven't even gotten the information from the data interpreters, but rather from other writers who have interpretted it further and written text books, blog posts, etc. So yeah, it's pretty close to blind faith since I'm so many steps away from the truth, and don't have the ability (currently, with my existing education) to truely know it anyway even if I could speak directly to one of those scientists that built the space probe. I'd STILL have to trust him when he showed me the raw data.

Re: Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

#110

Post by anon_for_this_1 »

pjscott wrote: post #104
anon_for_this_1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with cookiecaper. I've never seen mars. I believe (blindly) that the books, pictures and lectures I've seen are real, and that other people's pronouncements (from NASA, etc) are real too, so I believe (ie have blind faith) that mars is real. I _assume_ (ie have faith) that I could do some research and become a little more sure. Heck, that goes for atoms, electricity, just about everything. All I KNOW (without…

Belief should not be absolute, but a matter of degree. If I flip a coin ten times, I believe that it'll land heads at least once. How strongly do I believe it? As a matter of fact, I'm a little more than 99.9% sure. The probability of getting at least one head is 1023/1024. On more complex things, it's harder (and sometimes uncomputable) to come up with such precise probability estimates, but that doesn't change the…

Evolution is a good example. Why do you believe it happened? Because someone told you. You read someone else's words. It sort of makes sense. You saw what you assume are dinosaur bones in a museum. All of that is faith, and perhaps blind faith.

I'm assuming you're not a geneticist, so you probably didn't verify that the bones that were stacked nicely into a skeleton actually came from the same being. You likely weren't part of the dig team that found them. You don't know where they came from, or even if they are actual bone. And I'm not even talking about people purposely misleading us, but rather the fact that we have to take at face value what we are told. That's blind faith. We both _assume_ we could dig and verify the facts (with enough time, money and education), but we don't -- we just believe.

My argument is the 'evidence' we think we have, is nothing more than blind faith in 99% of the time, simply because we don't have the time and resources to follow up on everything. We simply believe because everyone else does.

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