71–80 of 96 posts
Some times I feel inferior while reading such stories, they are of almost the same age as me. Even though I am very well placed in my career sometimes it just stings :(
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You'd think it would be a hot take but I had someone arguing against me that it's not a good indicator since only approx 20% of competitors get a PhD in Math. I felt that he was emotionally invested in his argument, likely due to wanting to do a math PhD and not being food at the competitions. I even agreed that you don't need to be good at competitions to get a PhD but he still kept to his argument that being good d…
What's a "hot take"? I agree with the answer above. You need to pour a fair bit of effort into getting on an Olympiad team. Whether you get a PhD is more a question of economics, IMO. If you're showing that much promise there will be many other temptations, and bear in mind it's not just rich countries that have math kids, there's plenty of olympiad kids who need to get out and make money when they've done their degr…
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This particular comment was probably downvoted because he basically just took the hottest buzzword of the last decade and inserted it with a very weak link to the topic at hand. You could copy and paste this comment to any article about any achievement and it would have the same relevance. It is certainly not a “new way of thinking”. First of all, there is hardly any thought here. Secondly, “understanding deep learni…
You know, some of us work in the field that you call "hottest buzzword of the last decade", we constantly see problems that could have benefited enormously from geniuses like above. So for people like me at least, it's not a "very weak link to the topic at hand".
BTW, I am not using 'hottest buzzword of the decade' to denigrate the field of deep learning. I am using it to emphasize the op's shallow reference to the field.
Some times I feel inferior while reading such stories, they are of almost the same age as me. Even though I am very well placed in my career sometimes it just stings :(
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Even though? Is there a problem with Quanta that I am not aware of? I find it a nice magazine to read about various math-y subjects and researchers despite the editorial click-bait-ish style sometimes. It is a nice starting point to discover new stuffs.
I find their writing overdramatic and often missing the central point. For an example recently discussed on HN: "Computer Scientists Achieve ‘Crown Jewel’ of Cryptography" -- misunderstanding the science, not investigating the larger context (in which it's just a form of FHE), pulling out the (overwrought) term of one person, to call it the "crown jewel", describing other work as "dazzling newcomers" and, of course,…
Also, not to nitpick, but I thought the crypto article was well-written and covered the subject properly. It seems you are the one misunderstanding the science if you believe that iO is just a form of FHE, which makes me doubt your whole enterprise of discrediting Quanta's work ;) Speaking as a (former) cryptographer here.
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You'd think it would be a hot take but I had someone arguing against me that it's not a good indicator since only approx 20% of competitors get a PhD in Math. I felt that he was emotionally invested in his argument, likely due to wanting to do a math PhD and not being food at the competitions. I even agreed that you don't need to be good at competitions to get a PhD but he still kept to his argument that being good d…
What's a "hot take"? I agree with the answer above. You need to pour a fair bit of effort into getting on an Olympiad team. Whether you get a PhD is more a question of economics, IMO. If you're showing that much promise there will be many other temptations, and bear in mind it's not just rich countries that have math kids, there's plenty of olympiad kids who need to get out and make money when they've done their degr…
In this case, by "that doesn't seem like a hot take to me" I mean that as far as opinions go this seems pretty uncontroversial.
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This is perhaps one of my biggest downside surprises about university. Although there were plenty of fun people to hang out with, there were very few people who had a seriousness about getting work done, along with a collaborative instinct. Maybe I was unlucky, but I'd thought that an Oxbridge college would yield a few people who could keep me focussed on the academics. And yes, in another world I would have brought…
Intellectualism hasn’t matured as Barbarism has (still going through refinement). Your gym partner is never going to even attempt to prove to you they are stronger, and you yourself won’t even care if they are (or vice versa). There’s a natural understanding of the physical, and mostly we as a society realize how futile it is to exert physical dominance on one another. So you are stronger, what are you going to do, b…
It’s why the paradise birds dance.
Being physically fit used to be the main factor and while it still helps today, it’s only one smaller component of status.
I don’t see the physical fitness and intellectual posturing as two distinct areas that have separately matured.
It’s one sexual selection continuum - only the environment and what’s adaptive for attracting mates has changed.
There’s a new dance to learn.
I don’t think this is something we can easily overcome.
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That doesn’t seem like a hot take to me. Success at a Math Olympiad (at the international level) is almost certainly a good indicator because you have to be an outlier in both talent and willingness to grind in order to get that far, and that level of achievement is the type of success that snowballs because people respect the achievement.
In computer science world, I've personally noticed there is a dismissive attitude towards programming competitions among many, including some of my teachers. Here, it is a hot take. I never understood this sentiment though. Competitions like ICPC aren't like silly quizzes, you need to have incredibly good understanding of algorithms and data structures. Now I understand that the breadth required here is of course bro…
If you're good at competition programming, you can probably sling code pretty well, but that doesn't mean you're good at writing maintainable code in team contexts. But if there aren't other red flags I'd take it as positive signal that you're smart enough and hard-working enough to learn to do it quickly.
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That doesn’t seem like a hot take to me. Success at a Math Olympiad (at the international level) is almost certainly a good indicator because you have to be an outlier in both talent and willingness to grind in order to get that far, and that level of achievement is the type of success that snowballs because people respect the achievement.
In computer science world, I've personally noticed there is a dismissive attitude towards programming competitions among many, including some of my teachers. Here, it is a hot take. I never understood this sentiment though. Competitions like ICPC aren't like silly quizzes, you need to have incredibly good understanding of algorithms and data structures. Now I understand that the breadth required here is of course bro…
Contrast that with programming, where there are practical challenges abound whichever way you look. So those choosing to participate in competitions instead presumably have a much more narrow range of motivations. I can't tell you why this should translate into dismissing these people, but there is certainly a difference.