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Underrated reasons to be thankful V

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Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#91

Post by _sr6i »

phito wrote: post #80
ozzyphantom wrote: post #51

This is a great post. I’m thankful that many of the comments here reminded me why this website’s comments section is not worth reading, ceaseless negativity. Not wasting any more time reading them!

This was the only comment I disliked reading here...

No, they're correct. I was downvoted for a reply to a comment further down. I appreciate it. I visit the site mostly for the comments as well.

Some of the things the post mentions are possible to do and good and some are not. There's much to be grateful for yet there are still many problems to solve if we could focus as a society...

Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#92

Post by anthk »

>That every symbolic expression recursively built from differentiable elementary functions has a derivative that can also be written as a recursive combination of elementary functions, although the latter expression may require vastly more terms.

Lisp programmers disagree from the first lesson at learning Lisp.

Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#93

Post by Anamon »

kakacik wrote: post #90
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak Whig History. You may want to consider whether you're mistaking temporary anomalies for permanent truths. A review of history illustrates that democracy is simply the mechanism by which the merchant class destroys the traditional aristocracy. It is a transitionary phase, not a permanent state. It will inevitably transition to mob rule or oligarchy -- and you can see this all around you! Answer me this: If "democ…

Your whole post is literally false with single word - Switzerland. As for the suffering - I grew up in communism, or socialism, or whatever you want to label it, behind iron curtain. There was some child-like naivety in population, you can personally call it something positive but I do not. The rest - oppression from all angles, erasure of individualism, sometimes outright murder by system. This is reality of alterna…

As a lifelong Swiss, I also wanted to post that :)

Direct democracy has been working out pretty darn well for us, for a pretty long time now. The system may seem slow and tedious sometimes, but it's probably mainly responsible for why it seems much less susceptible to the polarisation, demagoguery and authoritarianism we see rising all around us. It's not perfect and a constant work in progress, but I don't know of any other system that has a better track record of ensuring long-term social cohesion and stability.

As for medieval life, I keep remembering an interview with a medical historian. They said that you could imagine it a bit as the reverse of today's mode where most people are usually fine, but occasionally get sick. Back in those days, having some sort of ailment was pretty much the default, and people felt exceedingly lucky to be genuinely healthy for a few weeks.

Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#94

Post by fluoridation »

kragen wrote: post #16
s1mplicissimus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 2-dimensional life is impossible because physical things exist in all dimensions. As spacetime is already 4 dimensions, no physical thing at all exists in 2 dimensions, thus no life either

Oh, that's just trivia about the contingent universe. You wouldn't say it was impossible for Carthage to have conquered Rome, would you? It just didn't, by chance, happen.

>You wouldn't say it was impossible for Carthage to have conquered Rome, would you?

Okay, but is space having 3 dimensions instead of 2 also an accident of history, or part of the fundamental structure of the universe?

For that matter, it's not obvious to me that history as it actually unfolded is not also part of the fundamental structure of the universe.

Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#95

Post by Izikiel43 »

sleeplessworld wrote: post #78
Izikiel43 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is a sin, don’t sin, that’s the gist of it. He lived around the year 400, so pretty progressive for his time.

How did you reach the conclusion that the author specifically meant this part of Gregory of Nyssa's religious thinking? It could just as likely be that the author has come to realise that Gregory of Nyssa was correct in his arguments for the Christian Trinity...? I am just wondering. The author's statements are very entertaining, but they do not seem to be articulated as objects for detailed scrutiny...

Read the Wikipedia entry, it was the other notable thing besides theology, and something I think everyone, no matter the creed, agrees with today

Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#96

Post by kazinator »

anthk wrote: post #92

>That every symbolic expression recursively built from differentiable elementary functions has a derivative that can also be written as a recursive combination of elementary functions, although the latter expression may require vastly more terms. Lisp programmers disagree from the first lesson at learning Lisp.

I'm a quarter century into Lisp and don't see what to disagree with.

E.g. look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_rule

Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#98

Post by anthk »

kazinator wrote: post #96
anthk wrote: post #92

>That every symbolic expression recursively built from differentiable elementary functions has a derivative that can also be written as a recursive combination of elementary functions, although the latter expression may require vastly more terms. Lisp programmers disagree from the first lesson at learning Lisp.

I'm a quarter century into Lisp and don't see what to disagree with. E.g. look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_rule

It was about requiring vastly more terms.

Re: Underrated reasons to be thankful V

#100

Post by mountainreason »

kragen wrote: post #62
stevenhuang wrote: post #29

> 21. That every expression graph built from differentiable elementary functions and producing a scalar output has a gradient that can itself be written as an expression graph, and furthermore that the latter expression graph is always the same size as the first one and is easy to find, and thus that it’s possible to fit very large expression graphs to data. > 22. That, eerily, biological life and biological intellig…

We haven't found anything in nature that resembles reverse-mode automatic differentiation, either in evolution or in neuroscience.

What would that look like. Is there an implementation of the finite difference method in biology somehow?
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