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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

johnsalvatier.org

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Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#211

Post by Terr_ »

wruza wrote: post #167
Terr_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be cautious about the word "fractal" misleading us into looking for a scale-spanning pattern that dictates both large and small details simultaneously. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and fine features occur for different reasons than coarse features.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4 (3B1B: Fractals are typically not self-similar)

My point isn't about outcome similarity, but shared causation.

All possible different-looking snapshots of a Mandelbrot fractal may look extremely very different, but they come from the same mathematical cause.

In contrast, the jagged molecules of my wood tabletop come from the nature of organic polymers and how biological systems are able to manufacture them, while the smooth scale of my tabletop comes because I made it that way with a belt sander.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#212

Post by MichaelZuo »

swiftcoder wrote: post #201
MichaelZuo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clearly don’t think your opinions match the definition found in merriam webster… or else I wouldn’t have asked.

You don't think his comment is "an assumption put forward for the purposes of discussion"? That seems a fairly low and generic bar for a comment to reach...

I don’t think the parent meant that interpretation, as that would also apply to the output of sufficient chimpanzees bashing keyboard and LLMs too…

Which would be practically meaningless without some attached non-zero credibility.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#213

Post by akoboldfrying »

procaryote wrote: post #183
akoboldfrying wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sound argument. The argument that culturally homogeneous teams perform better due to more efficient communication (more is "already understood" at the outset, so there's less need to communicate explicitly, and fewer misunderstandings) is also sound. So from a purely team-performance-maximising perspective, the question is: Which coefficient is higher? (More generally: What level of mixture is optimal?)

> The argument that culturally homogeneous teams perform better due to more efficient communication (more is "already understood" at the outset, so there's less need to communicate explicitly, and fewer misunderstandings) is also sound. Did you just define Groupthink, but in positive sounding words?

Did you just fall prey to the commonly groupthunk idea that things with downsides must also have no upside?

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#214

Post by akoboldfrying »

rramadass wrote: post #149
akoboldfrying wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sound argument. The argument that culturally homogeneous teams perform better due to more efficient communication (more is "already understood" at the outset, so there's less need to communicate explicitly, and fewer misunderstandings) is also sound. So from a purely team-performance-maximising perspective, the question is: Which coefficient is higher? (More generally: What level of mixture is optimal?)

> The argument that culturally homogeneous teams perform better due to more efficient communication (more is "already understood" at the outset, so there's less need to communicate explicitly, and fewer misunderstandings) is also sound. False Equivalence. Efficient Communication is secondary to Different Whats and Whys which is what a diverse collection of people from different cultural backgrounds bring to the table…

Non-sequitur.

I'm not claiming any "equivalence", only that performance is a function of (among other things) these two mutually exclusive things.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#215

Post by akoboldfrying »

tikhonj wrote: post #193
akoboldfrying wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sound argument. The argument that culturally homogeneous teams perform better due to more efficient communication (more is "already understood" at the outset, so there's less need to communicate explicitly, and fewer misunderstandings) is also sound. So from a purely team-performance-maximising perspective, the question is: Which coefficient is higher? (More generally: What level of mixture is optimal?)

One aspect seems pretty clear to me: it's much easier to learn how to communicate effectively as a team than it is to massively broaden your collective knowledge and experience. So, given a sound team culture and environment—great regardless of the style of team you have!—you can start with a diverse team and then collectively improve team cohesion and communication. You need some baseline level of effective leadersh…

>One aspect seems pretty clear to me: it's much easier to learn how to communicate effectively as a team than it is to massively broaden your collective knowledge and experience.

But what fraction of that massively broader knowledge and experience is actually relevant to what the team works on? I think it will vary. It could be fairly high for UI design (as another commenter suggested), but low for, say, optimising backend APIs.

And do you really think it's easy to fix deep-seated communication issues? Do you think you could take someone from an Ask culture, and in a couple of weeks they'd be a happy, high-performing member of a Guess culture team (or vice versa)?

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#216

Post by andrewflnr »

swiftcoder wrote: post #201
MichaelZuo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clearly don’t think your opinions match the definition found in merriam webster… or else I wouldn’t have asked.

You don't think his comment is "an assumption put forward for the purposes of discussion"? That seems a fairly low and generic bar for a comment to reach...

Truthfully, I hold those ideas a little more confidently than purely "for the purposes of discussion", but I suspect you at least understand that the real-world usage of "hypothesis" is quite broad.

I'm kind of tickled at the idea that a "hypothesis" is some hyper-specific thing with trappings of "credibility", and that anything less would be an insult, like we're not all just a bunch of nerds arguing on the internet. It's also kind of sad, though. This is why computer people need liberal arts education.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#217

Post by rramadass »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #214
rramadass wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument that culturally homogeneous teams perform better due to more efficient communication (more is "already understood" at the outset, so there's less need to communicate explicitly, and fewer misunderstandings) is also sound. False Equivalence. Efficient Communication is secondary to Different Whats and Whys which is what a diverse collection of people from different cultural backgrounds bring to the table…

Non-sequitur. I'm not claiming any "equivalence", only that performance is a function of (among other things) these two mutually exclusive things.

> only that performance is a function of (among other things) these two mutually exclusive things.

You can have efficient communication even in culturally/racially/whatever diverse teams. Your original implication that somehow only homogeneity leads to more efficient communication is not quite correct.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#218

Post by karparov »

timewizard wrote: post #168
karparov wrote: post #112

And this is one of the main utilitarian arguments for diversity in teams. If everybody has the same socio-cultural background, it's harder to leave the frame.

It seems like you want a diversity /of/ teams, not specifically /in/ teams, as human competition is the best known way to advance the scope of the frame in general.

Hm not sure. Workplaces which have multiple teams compete on the same thing tend to have quite toxic cultures.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#219

Post by karparov »

rramadass wrote: post #217
akoboldfrying wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-sequitur. I'm not claiming any "equivalence", only that performance is a function of (among other things) these two mutually exclusive things.

> only that performance is a function of (among other things) these two mutually exclusive things. You can have efficient communication even in culturally/racially/whatever diverse teams. Your original implication that somehow only homogeneity leads to more efficient communication is not quite correct.

Exactly. If I want to hire a group of people who are good at communicating I should focus on that aspect during the interview process rather than ensuring that they are all homogeneously white or brown or black or asian or men or women or catholic or middle class.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#220

Post by procaryote »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #213
procaryote wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument that culturally homogeneous teams perform better due to more efficient communication (more is "already understood" at the outset, so there's less need to communicate explicitly, and fewer misunderstandings) is also sound. Did you just define Groupthink, but in positive sounding words?

Did you just fall prey to the commonly groupthunk idea that things with downsides must also have no upside?

Is that even a common idea?
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