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Beware the Casual Polymath

applieddivinitystudies.com

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Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#81

Post by jhbadger »

alynn wrote: post #14

Unfortunately this article seems to be written in the same casual polymath style it claims to warn of, with people making broad generalizations without any deep knowledge of what they are talking about. I stopped reading at the point where JFK’s 1947 election was claimed to be purely due to wealth. Although JFK is today remembered much more for other historical events-- He was already a nationally known war hero befo…

But why was this article in the New Yorker in 1944? There were thousands of war stories as thrilling or more as the story of the PT 109. The second sentence gives a clue: "Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, the ex-Ambassador’s son and lately a PT skipper in the Solomons...". His story was told because he was the son of Joseph Kennedy, who had been the US ambassador to the UK. And then as now, ambassadorships (at least to pleasant developed countries) were generally gifts to wealthy people like Joseph Kennedy who had helped the current president (FDR in his case) to get elected.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#83

Post by moron4hire »

zzzeek wrote: post #63

We are told to be wary of who is speaking, what their qualifications are, if they are only casually opining on something, they may be wrong, we may not know any better. We are told in the form of a long, wordy blogpost on a blog that is called "Applied Divinity Studies", there is no author named, there is no "about" for the page at all. Although at the bottom of the page is a link to another article that seems to be…

What's equally hilarious to me is that this self-descriptive article, is being argued over by folks on this website, which was started by a man who also engaged in this style of writing.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#85

Post by magusdei »

liweiyang wrote: post #46

I'm about 95% certain this article was written with GPT or some similar algorithm. I don't have clear evidence for this other than that personal experience writing code that utilized the API looking at the outputs it gives on the playground defaults extensively. This looks exactly like what GPT output looks like to my eyes. If I'm wrong I apologize for the insult but the article doesn't appear very cohesive or cohere…

I don't think so. Uncurated GPT-3 output is generally very noticeable because it is unable to hold coherence for an article of this length, and will often make the same points over and over in slight variations and sometimes even contradict itself. I see none of that in this article. I do agree that the general "feel" of the text is similar to reading GPT-3 output, but this seems to be just because the author has a somewhat rambling argumentation style. (I can relate; my own tendency is to ramble on loosely related topics when writing down my thoughts.)

This could of course be curated GPT-3 content, but sufficiently curated GPT-3 output is indistinguishable from human writing, so there's little reason to criticize the article on those grounds.

edit: Well, inspecting the site some more, I agree that there's a moderate chance that this is a test run for a process or a program that uses some kind of novel technique to get GPT-3 or some other LM to produce more coherent essays. I'm still about 80% confident there's a human in the loop, though.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#86

Post by willvarfar »

alexfromapex wrote: post #54
flipactual wrote: post #2

This seems much less about being casual or being a polymath and more about those who overestimate the value of their own input I’m leaving this comment only because I most often do not overestimate the value of my input and therefor don’t leave comments, but this seems the perfect place to deviate

The warning should really be “beware listening to advice without doing your own research”.

I think the author is more saying "don't listen to experts when they are not talking about their field of expertise".

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#87

Post by jwilk »

tzs wrote: post #80
gilleain wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point about Leonardo da Vinci makes sense, but is definitely unfair. Of course, an art historian might assume Leonardo's mathematics was as great as his artistic ability. In practice, no one has the time or the ability to be equally great in all fields of knowledge. This paper : https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00004-007-005... talks about what mathematics he did > . The equation a^n + b^n = c^n doe…

> And the final demonstration of the so-called “Fermat’s third theorem”, which is that the general equation does not have a solution for n > 2 , was given by Andrew Weil in 1993 That should be Andrew Wiles [1]. There was a mathematician who did important work in number theory named Andre Weil [2]. I wonder if they got him mixed up with Wiles? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wiles [2] https://en.wikipedia.org…

And I'm pretty sure it's "last", not "third" theorem.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#88

Post by cheschire »

onecommentman wrote: post #16
flipactual wrote: post #2

This seems much less about being casual or being a polymath and more about those who overestimate the value of their own input I’m leaving this comment only because I most often do not overestimate the value of my input and therefor don’t leave comments, but this seems the perfect place to deviate

Which may mean you underestimate the value of your input and, in some sense, leech off the contributions of others...leaving a vacuum that gets filled by shills and hacks. Why would you do that? A little preparation and basic work-study and critical thinking skills is all a post needs, along with something you really want to say and is actually worth saying, of course. Maybe once a day, maybe once a week or once a mo…

Commenting is not zero sum. Lack of response from one does not create a vacuum for another to fill. Quality and quantity are orthogonal measurements.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#89

Post by rawoke083600 »

Very good article !

Could all of the "claims" or "awards" better be seen if the person (doing the awarding or admiration) were only to ask - the critical question:

"How likely is this data (purposed solution) ?"

Not to side track the post, but I've seen time and time again in my daily life, how valuable this question is, even if you know nothing about the domain.

Example: S.O buying an android phone for the first time and trying to move her "contacts and Apple life" to Android device.

The "only solution" she found was some "app for $50". I simply stated (long time android user) , I can't believe that over the years that an APP of $50 is the only way to move from Phone-System1(Apple) to Phone-System2(Android)

Turns it it's not, there are many "free" ways todo it.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#90

Post by tempestn »

alexfromapex wrote: post #54
flipactual wrote: post #2

This seems much less about being casual or being a polymath and more about those who overestimate the value of their own input I’m leaving this comment only because I most often do not overestimate the value of my input and therefor don’t leave comments, but this seems the perfect place to deviate

The warning should really be “beware listening to advice without doing your own research”.

I don't actually think that's quite right. Doing your own research into subjects where you're not an expert, at least for most people I think, is just as likely to lead you astray as listening to non-experts. (Most conspiracy theorists do a great deal of research.) I think the real key skill is differentiating between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources of information (on any given subject), and learning to logically estimate probabilities when multiple trustworthy sources differ.

It's just not feasible to follow the proofs of everything back to first principles for yourself, so at some point you need to trust an authority, at least to form a prior. The key is doing that in a logical manner.

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