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Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

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Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#271

Post by anonymouskimmer »

tripleSex wrote: post #227
waveBidder wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's another reason for some optimism about a voting-truth connection: wisdom of the crowds. As long as there isn't a strong bias to people's estimate, the average will converge on the truth.

I am quite unsure as to the veracity of the claim that "the average will converge [upon] the truth". I recall cases being made (as asides) for the opposite conclusion. Intuitively even, this idea of equating truth with convergance towards the average opinion appears contradictory, counterfactual, and ahistorical. Excuse my being brass, but a "wisdom of crowds" seems to me oxymoronic on its face. I'd love to be persua…

> I can't imagine any scenario in which a mixed population of laypeople and academics/experts would converge towards the same (vote average) findings as a sample of a handful of experts/academics.

Then you get crap where the experts, even when they agree, "dumb it down" for the crowds. This leads the masses who actually do pay attention to experts to think the wrong ideas are truth.

> After all, what has been more important to a human — evolutionarily: the truth or social access?

I don't think this is required for people to be very wrong. Caring about the truth can easily lead to assuming other people who speak authoritatively know what they're talking about, or to speaking authoritatively yourself when you think you're right.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#272

Post by yieldcrv »

speff wrote: post #123
Stratoscope wrote: post #44

It's a bit scary to see that one of the highest-voted answers to this question (188 points) is completely wrong. It says that the (0,0) hotspot simplified the calculations for a cursor position update, because you didn't have to add any (X,Y) offset. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/52349/43259 The problem with this idea is that the arrow pointer was never the only cursor. On the first Macintosh, there were many others…

It's only scary at the beginning. Then you get used to it. Every single social media site - including HN - has uninformed people agreeing that a correct-sounding answer must be right. My friend the tax accountant gets downvoted for clarifying how taxes actually work. My wife the linguist gets downvotes for explaining no that's not how language works. It's not scary - it's typical.

truth is stranger than fiction

in my experience thats true, its less familiar

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#273

Post by yieldcrv »

okamiueru wrote: post #259
nsagent wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this also partly explains the LLM hype — people can be as confidently incorrect as LLMs, or maybe LLMs are as confidently incorrect as humans since they are trained on text from social media.

I hope we reach a collective maturity on this. LLMs have so far I've noticed, left a trail of mediocrity. I'll of course not notice the parts that are good, so there is some confirmation bias here. And, I hate it. If not used appropriately, it's an automated output from left side on the Dunning-Kruger. Bullshit asymmetry has gotten more skewed, and it's tiresome.

Thats just not my experience

I’m using Miqu 70B Q4 and it immediately replaced Mixstral 8x7B Q5 for me

I screen almost all of my responses in relationships through it, with deep context on why its modifying things, total paradigm shifts like a therapist is showing me more effective conversation styles. I wasn't seen as having low emotional intelligence to begin with and the results have been great.

Translations

Coding syntax

Entire code bases

Nuanced legal aspects of industries (deep conversations about obscure drug and treatment pricing by region and billing method, which matched reality)

More stuff about different kinds of insurance and how to navigate insurance brokers, to great effect

Whenever a contractor or professional outside of my knowledge domain gives me a word salad, I make a note of what they said verbatim and have the LLM translate that for me. Then I come back to them with informed responses they cant bullshit around. I got my HVAC fixed by pointing out what they are probably missing, and they were previously too prideful to notice or consider or admit. Got a payment coming from my landlord for this because they caused my energy bill to be higher.

Large document analyses, which I thought was the final boss. I’m only giving these things an 8,000 token context window and things have been great and coherent

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#274

Post by anonymouskimmer »

sgerenser wrote: post #149
PopAlongKid wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the basic thing about taxes that is least understood is the difference between gross income and taxable income (the latter is the amount that tax brackets apply to). A close second is the difference between tax liability, and refund/balance due on the tax return.

Just try to convince the average person that “getting a big refund” is a bad thing, since it means you gave the U.S. government an interest free loan.

I never understood why people think that giving an interest free loan to our government is a bad thing.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#275

Post by kps »

TOGoS wrote: post #207
raffraffraff wrote: post #39

Without reading everything there is on the subject, I'd guess it's tilted for the same reason it's tilted to the left . Humans are tool makers and tool users. After enough time the tool becomes an extension of the body, even if the tip of the tool is mechanically or virtually detached from the hand that is controlling it. The tool maker designed this as a right-handed tool, coming into the frame in the right hand. If…

Dear OS makers: Please make it easier to swap the mouse buttons and also flip the cursor at the same time. I say this because I use multiple computers and depending on when and where I am using them, sometimes want the mouse on the left. In addition to it "feeling wrong" to use a right handed cursor with my left hand (I swear it physically gives me cramps), having the cursor not match the buttons is super frustrating…

X11 on Linux at least is perfectly happy to let you have multiple pointer. Last time I tried, most programs handled it reasonably, a few (*cough* Chrome *cough*) went nuts.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#276

Post by wolverine876 »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #264
wolverine876 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's another reason for some optimism about a voting-truth connection: wisdom of the crowds. As long as there isn't a strong bias to people's estimate, the average will converge on the truth. Hmmm ... that doesn't seem to match what actually happens. After false beliefs holding back humanity for its entire history, science came along and produced actual, working, truth. And science is the opposite of what you sa…

I thought Newton was a mathematician, not a scientist. > the intuition of the crowds sucks. If it was any good, we'd have had the right physics in 5,000 BCE not starting in the 17th century. Eh. People used to stay in their lane. Only these days can you get a city person voting on proper farming techniques.

Newton was a mathematician and arguably the most important scientist in history. I recommend his biography - it's amazing reading.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#277

Post by xw30992 »

Tagbert wrote: post #238
handsclean wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I internalize it: public voting selects for layman plausibility, not correctness. Because laymen massively outnumber experts, the layman vote always overwhelms the informed one, so the reaction of people who don’t know the subject is the only thing that matters. Truth only seems to matter because most subjects either can be somewhat intuited by non-experts, or are in a niche that you’re not, so “layman plausi…

In that way, it’s a bit like an LLM choosing the most likely answer based on the mass of training material.

And, it would seem, that training material is mostly wrong...

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#279

Post by anonymouskimmer »

wolverine876 wrote: post #276
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Newton was a mathematician, not a scientist. > the intuition of the crowds sucks. If it was any good, we'd have had the right physics in 5,000 BCE not starting in the 17th century. Eh. People used to stay in their lane. Only these days can you get a city person voting on proper farming techniques.

Newton was a mathematician and arguably the most important scientist in history. I recommend his biography - it's amazing reading.

I'm the kind of person who is completely disinterested in biographies.

Re: Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

#280

Post by ant6n »

kevindamm wrote: post #189
xattt wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was indeed referring to Windows 3/3.1/3.11/NT 3.5. Wasn’t sure of another term that would capture that era in one word. Decimalized? Rational number Windows?

early 90s Windows?

Pre 95? 16-bit?
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