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Deep-Fried Data

idlewords.com

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Re: Deep-Fried Data

#91

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #41
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, as would I, on further reflection. I wrote a postscript at the bottom to this effect, more or less. I write most of my HN comments in the spur of the moment. As a result, they're often inaccurate, idiosyncratic, poorly explained, or just weird. If anybody asks, I ususally try to clear up any confusion. This isn't necessarily a good idea, but if I thought too much before I spoke, beyond a cursory look to see i…

Maciej/IdleWords is a bit of a sacred monster around here. He loves to hate on the HN crowd, and he definitely has a dim opinion of the VC/get-rich-quick internet schemes that one could characterize the Valley for. He provides a great reality check for the kind of internet bullshit that flies around a lot. He's featured here frequently: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=idlewords.com On a lighter tone, I highly…

Ah. That explains a lot. He's definitely well-spoken. And I don't mind people criticizing the VC crowd. I don't people criticizing stuff in general, so long as it's well done.

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#92

Post by dvdplm »

Idelwords is one of those blogs worth dropping everything you do and just take a deep breath and dive in and revel in the joy of clear thought expressed through clear prose. Love it. Thanks.

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#93

Post by vijayr »

keyle wrote: post #44
pimlottc wrote: post #19

> Many [programmers] work jobs that are intellectually stimulating, but ultimately leave nothing behind. There is a large population of technical people who would enjoy contributing to something lasting. This hits pretty close to home.

Same here. I'm battling with this thought a lot. Beyond jobs, I think there should be communities of developers, designers, producers, writers, getting together and figuring out this stuff. And I don't mean open source projects. Let's group together smart people wanting to make a difference and have a hit list of things we (people) actually need. A group that would organise people into mission driven development. I'm…

instead of being focused on escaping the rat race

This resonates. How would it work in practice though? Many people want to contribute, but they are stuck as they have to provide for their family.

Also, how do we know what to work on? Someone linked to FSF projects - are there other lists, places we can go to, to find actual tasks/projects to work on? Unless there are incentives (not money/fame, but seeing our efforts put to good use/getting feedback etc) people would lose interest. It would be awesome if we can curate such a list - pharma, food/agriculture, mental health etc. And break down this list into smaller, manageable tasks. I guess many people can find 5-10 hours a week to contribute.

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#94

Post by omginternets »

1024core wrote: post #3

"The names keep changing—it used to be unsupervised learning, now it’s called big data or deep learning or AI" Um, I'm sorry, but unsupervised learning and deep learning are not the same.

The point is that these phrases become buzzwords, at which point deep-learning vs AI becomes a distinction without a difference. In the mainstream media you can safely replace both of these terms with "statistics" and not alter the meaning of the sentence.

In other words, terminology can be used to make precise, meaningful distinctions, or it can be used to embellish.

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#95

Post by keyle »

vijayr wrote: post #93
keyle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I'm battling with this thought a lot. Beyond jobs, I think there should be communities of developers, designers, producers, writers, getting together and figuring out this stuff. And I don't mean open source projects. Let's group together smart people wanting to make a difference and have a hit list of things we (people) actually need. A group that would organise people into mission driven development. I'm…

instead of being focused on escaping the rat race This resonates. How would it work in practice though? Many people want to contribute, but they are stuck as they have to provide for their family. Also, how do we know what to work on? Someone linked to FSF projects - are there other lists, places we can go to, to find actual tasks/projects to work on? Unless there are incentives (not money/fame, but seeing our effort…

Yeah you get what I meant. There is a disconnect with what we should be doing and the current state of having to provide for our families.

That said, I'm no communist and I'm not advocating that. I just find it sad that we're more rewarding people working on farming other people's holidays photos rather than pushing humanity forward (and no I don't meant going to Mars, although that gave me a kick!).

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#96

Post by keyle »

wtracy wrote: post #51
keyle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I'm battling with this thought a lot. Beyond jobs, I think there should be communities of developers, designers, producers, writers, getting together and figuring out this stuff. And I don't mean open source projects. Let's group together smart people wanting to make a difference and have a hit list of things we (people) actually need. A group that would organise people into mission driven development. I'm…

> And I don't mean open source projects. Then what do you mean? You described exactly what some of the largest, most successful FOSS projects (Firefox, KDE, Gnome, Libre Office, FreeBSD) are already doing. > Let's group together smart people wanting to make a difference and have a hit list of things we (people) actually need. Well, the FSF maintains a list of "high priority Free Software projects" that need help, but…

Thanks that FSF list is great actually.

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#97

Post by yummyfajitas »

pcmaffey wrote: post #59

Machine learning does not have less bias than human researchers. It is simply magnified at scale. And that scale is exactly the state of the internet. There is so much data available to study and understand, that we absolutely need better tools, like machine learning or whatever we want to call it, to help us keep up. Shit's moving faster than our human perception can handle, especially for those who didn't grow up w…

This is simply not true. Most algorithms can and will correct for biases in their inputs.

See this (somewhat technical) article where I go into explicit (simulations in numpy) levels of detail:

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/alien_intelligences_...

The best analogy I've come up with for the non-technical is that algorithms are like humans trying to draw inferences on octopus society. Some octopi might have bias against some other octopi, but it's the height of octopusthromorphism to to expect a human to reproduce that bias.

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#98

Post by rubidium »

iyn wrote: post #77
idlewords wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a capsule summary of what I'm pushing for: http://idlewords.com/six_fixes.htm

I agree with that, but I have a small suggestion until these points are reality: you can consider adding/enabling SSL/TLS for your blog. Thanks! P.S. I really like your posts and your tweets are hilarious, please don't ever stop.

Ok, this tweaks my curiosity. Why would one put SSL on a static personal/blog type website (assuming one doesn't care about the google penalty)?

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#99

Post by sangnoir »

coldtea wrote: post #86
wtracy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By providing quality software that lets me and thousands of others get useful work done, and not forcing us to accept onerous licensing terms in the process? But hey, none of those can cure cancer, so what's the point, right?

> By providing quality software that lets me and thousands of others get useful work done, and not forcing us to accept onerous licensing terms in the process? That software (desktop Linux/UNIX) comes for free, and yet, only 1% or less (from browser stats of major traffic points) seem to opt to use it as their desktop. Is this the kind of difference the parent was describing? Letting a small minority of people avoid…

> That software (desktop Linux/UNIX) comes for free, and yet, only 1% or less (from browser stats of major traffic points) seem to opt to use it as their desktop.

>Is this the kind of difference the parent was describing?

Cancer kills 171.2 per 100,000[1]. So by your metrics, the Linux desktop folks make a bigger difference than curing cancer as 1% > 0.1712%

1. Cancer mortility. see https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics

Re: Deep-Fried Data

#100

Post by ohthehugemanate »

pcmaffey wrote: post #59

Machine learning does not have less bias than human researchers. It is simply magnified at scale. And that scale is exactly the state of the internet. There is so much data available to study and understand, that we absolutely need better tools, like machine learning or whatever we want to call it, to help us keep up. Shit's moving faster than our human perception can handle, especially for those who didn't grow up w…

Bias is a pattern-generation process. Machine learning is a pattern-recognition process. Any bias on the part of the (human) data collection, or the (human) training program author, gets spit out as a "pattern", because it is one. The problem is that it gives the illusion of a bias in reality.

My go-to example is machine learning police enforcement direction, often used as a counter to racially biased policing. This works in any city with a historical problem of racial bias in policework. We give the algorithm all the data we have from the last 60 years of policing this city. Patrol schedules, incident records, arrest records... everything. The computer magically tells us where we should focus our efforts. To the police chief who paid for the system, and especially to the media reporting on it, it looks like a computer is making the decisions without bias. Hooray!

Of course, anyone who's ever worked with machine learning can spot the problem. The data set was generated by racially biased policing. That bias will be reflected in all the records: more arrests for race X, more patrols scheduled through their neighborhoods, more incident reports from those areas. So when the algorithm says "increase patrols in this neighborhood," or "look for people who fit this profile," it is simply synthesizing the patterns from 60 years of racial bias. So the police in LA have a real problem: their "unbiased" computer program is telling them that their criminals look like black people, and they should increase patrols in Compton. So they do, and that data only takes the data further from "un-biased" reality. In fact, the police "black box" is only pointing out a history of racially biased policing. We're relabeling it as recommendations for future behavior.

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