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God's Lonely Programmer

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Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#321

Post by zafka »

Nursie wrote: post #306
zafka wrote: post #33

I really enjoyed this window into the life of "LoseThos". I am glad that he seems to be both relatively safe and happy. I think in the long run the value his life's work will be comparable or greater than the worth of most of his peers.

How do you figure that? I'm genuinely interested. He's made a network-less OS with a fixed, low-resolution display, that is of seriously limited utility in the modern world and (AFAICT) doesn't advance the state of the art, all as an act of worship. It's a curiosity, but of value? Not so much.

We don't have an argument here, but rather two different ways of looking at the same facts. For comparison, I was paid rather well to add diagnostic code to large PBX systems in the late 1990's, recently I have been working on a variety of embedded projects, some for solar, some for medical devices. In 50 years, my guess is that all of my code will have fallen out of use. Most likely, so will Terry's,but there is a small chance it will hold out as a curiosity. Now we are down to one of my hobbies: What is meant by Quality? What is Meant by Value? As a side note, I think the whole project is an interesting view into how the mind works. I am very much in agreement with theories that posit very high intelligence is often intertwined with what we call mental illness. The same reduced filters that can cause so much anguish give others the ability to see hidden facts in everyday objects.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#322

Post by dragonwriter »

btilly wrote: post #319
dragonwriter wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example the Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal to make an IQ test be part of a job hiring practice because allowing it will discriminate against blacks. Don't believe me? Go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. ! Perhaps you should read Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971), particularly at 436: "Nothing in the Act precludes the use of testing or measuring procedures; obvio…

Yes, there is no question that Duke Power Co had racist intent. However the measure that they hit on is actually a reasonable way of improving your interview process. There is general research to that end, and it was presented in that case. But the sample set of previous employees hired by Duke Power Co was not large enough to statistically demonstrate that fact. Therefore the court decided as it did. As a result the…

> As a result the fact that IQ tests are more effective at figuring out who to hire than human interviews is no longer actionable by any normal employer.

If it can be established as a fact, its actionable. It can't be assumed to be a fact for the specific jobs it is applied to, however -- and while Griggs may be a leading case, that's pretty clearly the intent of the burden established by the Civil Rights Act for the employer in disparate impact situations.

> But very few companies are in a position to do such research for themselves.

Any company is in the position to do it (or pay to have it done), for very few companies is the expected benefit justify the cost, because the expected utility of general intelligence testing, even where any such benefit is rationally expected to be born out, is pretty low compared to more specific job-focused alternatives that are also easier to demonstrate are job related if they have a disparate impact.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#323

Post by lmm »

_exec wrote: post #219
lmm wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nash was great in spite of his issues, not because of them; his work was a real, useful contribution to human knowledge, because (in contrast to this guy) he worked with the wider mathematical community, which then in turn later built on his work. Being afraid of men in red ties is still a dumb thing to do, and won't make you a great mathematician. We romanticize the outsiders, but the great bulk of the mathematical…

What about Erdős :) ?

Erdős was one of the greats, but emphasis on "one of". Again, it's easy to romanticize someone who's different, like a microcosm of orientalism. Erdős may even have been the best mathematician of his generation, but he wasn't head and shoulders above everyone else the way people sometimes seem to imply, and he wasn't (IMO, if the question even makes sense) the best of all time.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#324

Post by Dylan16807 »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #309
Dylan16807 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really an aspect of racism. It's the way races are (poorly) defined. He qualifies as black unless we can kill the meme of races entirely, even in a world that had no prejudice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Yeah yeah, that rule of thumb is in the racist area but you can discount it and he's still obviously 'black' as much as the term 'black' has any meaning.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#325

Post by btilly »

dragonwriter wrote: post #322
btilly wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there is no question that Duke Power Co had racist intent. However the measure that they hit on is actually a reasonable way of improving your interview process. There is general research to that end, and it was presented in that case. But the sample set of previous employees hired by Duke Power Co was not large enough to statistically demonstrate that fact. Therefore the court decided as it did. As a result the…

> As a result the fact that IQ tests are more effective at figuring out who to hire than human interviews is no longer actionable by any normal employer. If it can be established as a fact, its actionable. It can't be assumed to be a fact for the specific jobs it is applied to, however -- and while Griggs may be a leading case, that's pretty clearly the intent of the burden established by the Civil Rights Act for the…

Any company is in the position to do it (or pay to have it done)...

Wrong.

In order to be in a position to do it, you need to start with a sample of many thousands of people being hired into a specific kind of job, all of whom have been given the test in question, and all of whom are then judged by standardized metrics. ONLY THEN can you collect enough data to make strong statistical inferences on this issue.

The military can meet this threshold. Very, very few private employers can. And claiming otherwise is wrong.

...the expected utility of general intelligence testing, even where any such benefit is rationally expected to be born out, is pretty low compared to more specific job-focused alternatives that are also easier to demonstrate are job related if they have a disparate impact.

I do not believe this to be the case for most entry-level jobs. Can you cite specific research indicating otherwise?

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#326

Post by kordless »

anigbrowl wrote: post #187
fuligo wrote: post #129

I wonder if he would get this much positive attention if he wasn't a Christian extremist. Would the article have conveniently left out his racism if he was, say, a militant antisemite instead of being focused on black people as he is? Would people admire his worship of a random number generator if he used it to spit out slogans of a religious text that isn't as revered as the Bible? While his schizophrenia probably c…

He's 'high functioning' in the sense that he can produce elaborate computer software that runs fast, in other words he has impressive engineering skills. Socially he's pretty incapable. I think his offensive racist, homophobic and other offensive remarks are part and parcel of his condition because I've spent quite a lot of time reading his rants, and disagree with your claim that his use of slurs is not random and g…

It would seem confirmation bias plays a part in those 'conversations'.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#327

Post by btilly »

bmelton wrote: post #311
achompas wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[per PG's essay] it is clear that our current hypersensitivity to racism is a current moral fashion Is it, actually? Or is it a stance acquired after centuries of marginalization? Consider PG's examination of social issues: Changes between the past and the present sometimes do represent progress. ... But this becomes rapidly less true as you move away from the certainty of the hard sciences. By the time you get to so…

> I don't expect that marginalization of entire groups of people will be in vogue again any time soon. While we've definitely made progress towards racial, gender and sexual equality, this still happens every day, and may not be a fixable problem. Democrats routinely marginalize Republicans, and vice versa. Even those who benefit from the recent shifts in favor of gay marriage equality routinely marginalize bigamists…

Instead, we should do a better job of understanding what rights entitle us to, and then simply afford those rights to all people, whether or not they belong to a majority class, a protected class, or an unpopular minority.

This is just a first step. We also need to understand what the actual barriers are to progress, and address them.

Let me give a good example. A few years ago there was a fascinating longitudinal study that started with an equivalent group of blacks and whites. All educated, young, middle class professionals in similar jobs. Following them forward 15 years, the whites by and large were still middle class professionals, but a large portion of the blacks were living in poverty. Proof of racism, right?

Not at all! Their data had more detail in it. One of the factors that they were able to control for was fiscal planning. One was whether people understood the value of creating savings for themselves so that they could handle short-term challenges like a layoff. When they controlled for this factor, blacks and whites were identical. But more whites knew to do this, so they did better.

The solution to this particular problem is NOT to give blacks more opportunities and preferences. It is to make an effort to educate the black community the importance of always living within your means.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#328

Post by dragonwriter »

bmelton wrote: post #311
achompas wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[per PG's essay] it is clear that our current hypersensitivity to racism is a current moral fashion Is it, actually? Or is it a stance acquired after centuries of marginalization? Consider PG's examination of social issues: Changes between the past and the present sometimes do represent progress. ... But this becomes rapidly less true as you move away from the certainty of the hard sciences. By the time you get to so…

> I don't expect that marginalization of entire groups of people will be in vogue again any time soon. While we've definitely made progress towards racial, gender and sexual equality, this still happens every day, and may not be a fixable problem. Democrats routinely marginalize Republicans, and vice versa. Even those who benefit from the recent shifts in favor of gay marriage equality routinely marginalize bigamists…

> The current de rigueur is for society to realize that our unjust treatment of a special group is unfair. In the 60s, it was our unfair treatment of blacks. In the 90s, it was our unfair treatment of gays. Then we work to get them declared as a protected class, and then we fight for their rights using that protected status as leverage.

> Instead, we should do a better job of understanding what rights entitle us to, and then simply afford those rights to all people

Yeah, I don't think you understand the process you refer to in the preceding paragraph represents -- it represents an evolving understanding of what rights people should have (note that this is an evolving social consensus, not an evolving understanding of something which exists as an external material fact), followed by corrective efforts to address manners in which the status quo situation differs from the evolving social consensus of the desired situation. The entire idea of a "protected class" is that it is one which has in recent history been actively discrimated against in a manner which violates the current social norm, such that there is a heightened presumption that acts which have a disparate impact on that class are invalid as discrimination on that basis rather than simply incidental impacts of some permissible distinction. It is part of a process aimed at realizing and securing the new understanding of "what rights entitle us to" by eradicating residual practices that were accepted under a previous, more limited understanding.

Particularly, its important to understand that one issue is that our general understanding of what our rights entitle us to include that they generally do entitle us to discriminate according to our own personal biases, where that doesn't cause unwarranted social harm -- but the understanding of what causes unwarranted social harm is evolving.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#329

Post by vidarh »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #286
vidarh wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the best demonstration of continued racism, is that there's no way Obama - being half-black, half-white - would have been able to get away with self-identifying as white.

That's not really an aspect of racism. It's the way races are (poorly) defined. He qualifies as black unless we can kill the meme of races entirely, even in a world that had no prejudice.

The way races are defined is racist to begin with - that is the point - and the way it is being used to label people is explicitly used to put people down. Obama is "black" and not "white" solely because for a lot of people it is very important to label him black to be able to dismiss him. If people were not racist, nobody would e.g. care if people referred to him as white. Try referring to him even as mixed race, or half-white, and see the racists quickly come crawling out of the woodwork to make sure it is made clear how black he is.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#330

Post by MrBra »

a_c_s wrote: post #200
MrBra wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stupid hypercritical judgmental people downvoting did not understand the sympathetic reference.. and are probably the ones to know less here about this guy, oh well..

FYI: Your comment is being downvoted because, well-intentioned though it may be, it doesn't contribute to the discussion.

Also because they don't know what I am referring to.
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