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Maybe the default settings are too high

raptitude.com

301–310 of 332 posts

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#301
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really a resort person. But I do subscribe to some travel feeds mostly in the vein of maybe finding some places/attractions/restaurants/etc. that I'm not familiar with. The number of hyper-scheduled spreadsheets I see is amazing. Doesn't mean I don't often have some itinerary and even book some particular, popular attractions/venues. But the 30-minute block scheduling is something I do for work (if that). ADD…

one of the funniest things about going to NYC with a toddler was how very chill it was to go with a toddler there are parks everywhere!

There are! Central Park of course. But also pocket parks all over the place.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#302
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other situations are you concerned with that your solution doesn’t handle?

The best solution I could think of on the spot was this: First write down every license place until it fills up. Then for each time a car drives by, give it a 1/2 chance to write it down. Moving down the list regardless of the outcome. Then once the bottom is reached, do it again but with 1/3 a chance. Over and over again, decreasing the chance each time. I checked for which situations it is valid, and it surprisingl…

Mine was to roll a number between 1 and N once N is greater than M (N being cars seen so far, M your slots available). If you get a number that is less than or equal to M, replace that slot. If it is greater than M, that sample is dropped.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#303
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I said about camping. Someone else suggested that "campsite" just means the area covered by a tent and its groundcover, which is closer to the "mental image" of the other person who wrongly believes that tents got waterlogged, but is the arch opposite of yours. I've camped in the woods, on open steppes, and in designated camping areas in French and English towns. In each of thos…

I’m not trying to dispute your version of events. I’m just offering a suggestion of what teekert had in their mind when they thought of a campsite, to better help you see where the misunderstanding comes from. Given they replied with agreement, I hope I captured it accurately. I also feel it was unnecessary to dismiss their experience as “not camping,” just because it was different to yours. It turns a learning oppor…

None of this is responsive to my comment that you are responding to ... I find that quite toxic. And I will note that you wrote this toxic criticism:

> I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?)

Again, your notion of my experience of camping does not come from anything I actually wrote ... that's quite toxic.

And recognizing the mere possibility of camping solo in the woods (which has nothing to do with anything in this thread--the OP was in a group on a lakeshore) has nothing to do with a "cultural lens".

That's the last I will say about this trivial matter.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although people think LoTR as a novel meant for younger people, it certainly is not an Tolkien never meant it that way and it certainly is not an easy text. It is far more complex than any fantasy I have ever come across. Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring. One would be mad to simply skim…

I've read that Tolkien wrote There and Back Again / The Hobbit as a book for his children. Then he started writing what would become The Fellowship of The Ring for his kids, but he quickly realized that the story was taking many dark turns and that he was best served by moving away from writing it as a book for his kids.

I read that he partly wrote LOTR to have a "source" for the new languages made up!

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The densest way to communicate "Sam and Frodo walk across the plain towards Mt. Doom. They're both really tired" is exactly that Uh, yes. This is press-release speak, optimised for a fourth grader’s reading comprehension. If, on the other hand, you want to develop the motif of the Unseen—central to Tolkien’s work—the type of tired the characters are and how they’re detecting and addressing it is incredibly germane,…

The type of tired is "really". What happens is not that there's some additional information that I'm not communicating in that one sentence, but rather that the time it takes you to read "they're both really tired" is not enough for your mind to dwell on the idea and empathize with the characters. Now, if I instead were to write "They're both really tired. They're super tired. Oh man, they're so tired. They're so tir…

Extended time is your own proposal, and one you successfully defeated. This is generally called a strawman.

Instead, I propose that the type of tied is informationally and qualitatively distinct. The exhaustion of the weight of the world, internal struggle, amidst a dismal hellscape is different than "really tired".

Great writing can build depth of quality and understanding with the authors intent.

LOTR could be summarized with a sentence. The content is in the detail.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#306
post #175

By coincidence I also finished The Fellowship of the Ring about two weeks ago. I have always had the intuition about reading speed that it is very easy to be a speed reader if you skim over things. I've always questioned how much of speed reading is just skipping stuff and filtering for the most important word tokens. You could skip all of Tolkien's scenery descriptions, you could skip Tom Bombadil and Lothlorien and…

I've been reading "Terminal Alliance", a light, humorous s.f. novel. After reading tfa I've slowed down and after all it's Christmas holidays, what's the rush? Even reading this inconsequential novel more slowly has allowed me to enjoy the details more. The metric in online discussions is always how many books you read, but this is a reminder that that's not the point.

The title, about "default settings" being "too high" makes me want an example from a technical domain, though.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#307

We read LOTR to our sons when they were little. It was likely the 6th time for me,and 3rd in English. Stupendous experience. The command of the English Tolkien had is sublime. Wish the movies didn't take so much liberty with Faramir.!!!

Yep, read LoTR to my daughters before the film came out. (Thankfully.) As promising as Fellowship was, the films just kept going down hill—one after the other. As the girls were growing up we worked through all the Harry Potter books, a half-dozen of the "colored Fairy" books (edited by Andrew Lang), plenty of Uncle Remus tales, the "Little House" books and a number of Sid Fleischman books… Those were magical years.…

How old were they when you started?

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#308
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not trying to dispute your version of events. I’m just offering a suggestion of what teekert had in their mind when they thought of a campsite, to better help you see where the misunderstanding comes from. Given they replied with agreement, I hope I captured it accurately. I also feel it was unnecessary to dismiss their experience as “not camping,” just because it was different to yours. It turns a learning oppor…

None of this is responsive to my comment that you are responding to ... I find that quite toxic. And I will note that you wrote this toxic criticism: > I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?) Again, your notion of my experience of camping does not come from anything I actually wrote ... that's quite toxic. And recognizing the mere possibility of cam…

> I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?)

Allow me to correct myself: I meant to say I believed you were referring wild camping, away from a commercial site (either alone or part of a group).

> None of this is responsive to my comment that you are responding to ... I find that quite toxic.

You find it toxic that I won’t join you in an argument that only you want to have?

> Again, your notion of my experience of camping does not come from anything I actually wrote ... that's quite toxic.

I just woke up an hour ago. Did you find that toxic, too?

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#310
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "mood" is the information too.

That's not really "information" in the information-theoretic sense that the other person was using, when it can be rewritten in all manner of different ways while conveying the same overall mood. The densest way to communicate "Sam and Frodo walk across the plain towards Mt. Doom. They're both really tired" is exactly that. All the other words one would write around that core idea would not provide any more specifici…

> Sam and Frodo walk across the plain towards Mt. Doom. They're both really tired.

This does not set a mood and thus does not convey the same information. This removes the information about mood and setting away while keeping only rough plot point in.

The outcome in terms of how reader interpret the situation is massively different. The thing you wrote implies that all they need is to go to sleep an hour sooner and rest, all will be fine.

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