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72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

washingtonpost.com

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Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#111

Post by jrumbut »

themodelplumber wrote: post #60
jrumbut wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand on the unwanted factors? This is an interesting post and I want to hear more.

The currently new core of cultural values will solidify and there will be some new level of general practice to act on those values. IOW values will fall in line in a general way as they usually do, once the battle lines fade. Diehards will be way more awkward and will fade as attention moves away from them. These were never quality positions in the first place though. You'll probably see new silent generation(s) com…

The last silent generation (those a bit too young to fight in WW2 but born before the baby boom) was created by the distribution of massive new rewards. A lot of people were born poor but quickly became middle class. The system worked for them early and often, so they learned not to question it. That seems unlikely in the near future, to me anyway.

Perhaps the mechanism for a new one would be avoiding repeats of the various disasters of the last five years. Except to me it seems like whoever delivers that will want to get paid for it, so that seems to point in the opposite direction from an anti-corruption campaign.

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#112

Post by ngoilapites »

themodelplumber wrote: post #78
ngoilapites wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess life processes are quite different at maturity, e.g. routines, roles and responsibilities they all condition time and available attention, which condition the possibility space for learning.

And that's just conscious learning. The automated/subconscious patterning stuff has been very interesting to me. We have known for a long time that various stuff will be learned by you whether you prefer it or not, depending on your past and barely mitigated by even a generally conscious developmental bent. If you can move it into the conscious zone you can control future outcomes to some extent and possibly control…

Speaking of the sub-conscious of learning, before studying a topic, I "scroll" through it e.g. with fast page flipping.

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#113

Post by themitigating »

themodelplumber wrote: post #60
jrumbut wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand on the unwanted factors? This is an interesting post and I want to hear more.

The currently new core of cultural values will solidify and there will be some new level of general practice to act on those values. IOW values will fall in line in a general way as they usually do, once the battle lines fade. Diehards will be way more awkward and will fade as attention moves away from them. These were never quality positions in the first place though. You'll probably see new silent generation(s) com…

"Anecdotally one will still be able to see whatever one needs to see in government to reflect preferred perspectives"

What?

I read your post several times until I realized you're saying nothing with a huge amount of fluff

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#114

Post by ngoilapites »

082349872349872 wrote: post #109
ngoilapites wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you reach 40s you will see...

I'm well past 40s and haven't seen? (There are some days when I don't learn anything, but that only happens if I'm really, really careful.)

I mean, is not only our brain and its gradual natural change, it is also the unsurmountable unavoidable attention-consuming routines.

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#115

Post by dbish »

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #108
dbish wrote: post #16

Master’s in CS with a concentration in AI is a better description. Cool to see a representative actually learning about the tech instead of just having legal education which is sadly far too common (same focus as my MS in CS though that was 10+ years ago and things have changed just a little on the AI side)

As someone considering my MS in CS with a focus in AI, I gotta ask you why you did it, and was it worth it for your career? Would greatly appreciate the insight, thanks.

Happy to share. My main reason was that I really wanted to get more into machine learning and didn’t feel like it was going to be as fast to go deep on my own. It’s much easier now, both in terms of educational materials available and the amount of people publicly talking about the field, but there’s something to the structure that helped me set aside the time to learn too. I made the choice to not do it full time at a higher ranked school and instead do part time classes because I didn’t think it was worth paying for myself, and my employer would pay for it as long as I kept working for them. Not sure that trade off was worth it in the end, and working while going to school was exhausting, but it was fun to both keep a career and get to be a grad student for a bit. It helped with practicing to work hard and manage my schedule well. I did also spend most of my career after this in ML so it helped with positioning and preparation to start taking ML-related roles, but there are a lot more companies now in the space where you can likely learn quickly by coming in as a junior engineer and learning on the job. Feel free to email me or send me a DM on Twitter if you have more specific questions I can help with. Info is in my profile.

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#116

Post by 082349872349872 »

ngoilapites wrote: post #114
082349872349872 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm well past 40s and haven't seen? (There are some days when I don't learn anything, but that only happens if I'm really, really careful.)

I mean, is not only our brain and its gradual natural change, it is also the unsurmountable unavoidable attention-consuming routines.

Those I avoid. Kids are grown and I have enough financial options to be picky with my contracts, so YMMV.

(and, come to think of it, I've finally convinced my spouse of the value of letting me have 4-hour blocks of focus time)

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#117

Post by cjohansson »

cm2187 wrote: post #36
wolverine876 wrote: post #7

A major problem in our society is that '72-year-old' is in the headline. If you are not growing, you are declining or dead. Not only does the world change under your feet, you need that stimulation just to stay healthy. We ruin the talent, economic value, and freedom and opportunity of a very large portion of the population by dimissing the growth of anyone in late middle-age or later. 72 years old shouldn't be remar…

The reality is that most people's mental abilities have started to decline by this age, particularly the capacity to learn new things. That makes this story all the more remarkable. Part of that I think is certainly as you suggest, that the brain is a muscle, you need to use it to keep it fit. But you can't escape nature either. To keep the muscle analogy, you won’t compete as an athlete at 72 no matter how fit you r…

This is not true, it varies by personality, some personalities have high neuropasticity even when they get older. It depends on individual differences in the dopaminergic system

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#118

Post by Brian_K_White »

neilv wrote: post #90

> The proctor administering an exam in his pre-calc class this spring leaned in and whispered, “What are you doing here?” as Beyer handed in his test. I could read that multiple ways, but it doesn't sound good, not when we should already be sensitized not to discourage people. Imagine saying that to a more familiar kind of less-represented student. The next time someone asks why a university needs initiatives in dive…

Maybe it was just a question, and maybe they were fine with the simple answer.

What if the answer was "I'm gathering data so that I can go back and get congress to close all schools" ?

Not likely to ever be his particular angle, but in fact he is gathering understanding at least in part to inform his policy role, and his being a congressman does make his presense validly noteworthy in a way that his merely being 74 years old or any other property does not.

Maybe it was asked in a challenging disparaging unwelcoming way, but I see nothing in here to lead to that assumption.

Re: 72-year-old Congressman pursues a Master's in AI

#119

Post by neilv »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #118
neilv wrote: post #90

> The proctor administering an exam in his pre-calc class this spring leaned in and whispered, “What are you doing here?” as Beyer handed in his test. I could read that multiple ways, but it doesn't sound good, not when we should already be sensitized not to discourage people. Imagine saying that to a more familiar kind of less-represented student. The next time someone asks why a university needs initiatives in dive…

Maybe it was just a question, and maybe they were fine with the simple answer. What if the answer was "I'm gathering data so that I can go back and get congress to close all schools" ? Not likely to ever be his particular angle, but in fact he is gathering understanding at least in part to inform his policy role, and his being a congressman does make his presense validly noteworthy in a way that his merely being 74 y…

As I said, I could read it multiple ways. But what's the most likely immediate perception of the person who is putting themselves out there, somewhere they're obviously underrepresented? I think probably they'll feel discouraged and excluded. That's the problem.
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