tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14796845342933519792024-03-14T05:53:57.283-04:00zappableUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-50155494398001297122020-07-23T20:50:00.001-04:002020-07-23T20:50:16.003-04:00GPT-3There's been a lot of buzz recently about GPT-3, the "Generative Pretrained Transformer" from OpenAI. While they open-sourced the previous version, GPT-2, this version will instead be offered as a commercial API. They plan to make it easy to use so it will likely be integrated into many applications.<br />
<br />
While the API is in closed beta, you can try out a version of it on <a href="https://play.aidungeon.io/">AI Dungeon</a>. AI Dungeon is geared at text adventure games but can be used for anything. I tried it out by asking Turing-test-style questions to see how well it "understands" the world. Initially I was not so impressed as I posted to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/hukwwb/gpt3_is_not_that_impressive/">Reddit</a>. However there were a few things I missed:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>AI Dungeon uses by default a hybrid between GPT-2 and GPT-3. Once I updated it to use the "dragon" model (and reduced the randomness), it switched to full GPT-3 and the results improved.</li>
<li>For some questions, GPT-3 needs to be primed in that category before being asked a question. For example, it can solve simple math questions if it's given a few examples first. I think this is impressive since in the future it may be able to answer the questions without the priming and meanwhile specific applications can fine-tune it. </li>
<li>A commenter on Reddit reported using the actual API and getting a better result for one or two of the questions. It's possible that AI Dungeon primes GPT-3 to answer prompts in a certain style and this causes it to do more poorly on general questions. </li>
</ul>
<div>
With the right settings in place GPT-3 is able to answer a ride range of questions, including questions involving ambiguous grammar. For example here are my questions and its answers:</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Q: Arjun lived in an Indian jungle. One night he heard a noise, went outside and shot a bear in his pajamas. Where was the bear?<br />A: The bear was in the jungle.<br />Q: Arjun lived in an Indian jungle. One night he woke up and squished a spider in his pajamas. Where was the spider?<br />A: The spider was in his pajamas.</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
I can see GPT-3 being useful in many applications from search engines to online tutorials. It can also be used for less noble purposes such as advanced spamming and trolling, but OpenAI plans to control usage of it carefully.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
GPT-3 went from being basically ignored to over-the-top hype very quickly. While it's certainly impressive how much it can do, it'a quite far from a general AI that can do anything. It's still just a text predictor without a fundamental understanding of the world. For example, while it can answer comparison questions within a specific category, it struggles with cross-category comparisons, even after being primed for them. I asked it the following question after having provided it with similar questions and answers:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Q: Which of these is largest? Planet Venus or an elephant?</blockquote>
It answered:<br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A: an elephant</blockquote>
I tried a few more similar questions but it consistently got them wrong. I assume the elephant wins most size comparisons on the internet, but it's still smaller than a planet. Assuming the standard API doesn't do better, this seems to be a large blindspot with GPT-3. Text prediction can answer many questions, but sometimes better knowledge is needed. It would be interesting if they can find a way to combine GPT-3's text prediction with a structured knowledge algorithm. In the meantime, humans are still needed. ~</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-33058473473581822712020-07-09T19:28:00.000-04:002020-07-23T20:01:48.039-04:00Why do Good?<i>Summary: Why do good? In many cases it's simpler to live life that way. Humans are not robots so they need straightforward heuristics to follow.</i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Should a person steal if they can get away with it?</b><br />
Even for self-interested reasons, a person shouldn't wrong other people. There may be cases where the payoff from stealing beats the risk of getting caught, but people are not robots and it's not worth the anxiety to constantly look out for such cases or worry about getting caught afterwards. It's simpler to just be an overall good person. To quote <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epicurus">Epicurus</a>, whose ethics was self-interested, "The greatest reward of righteousness is peace of mind".<br />
<br />
<b>Why should you help other people?</b><br />
Even for self-interested reasons, it's worthwhile to help your friends, relatives, neighbors and coworkers. This builds positive relationships and people will help you back in the future. However one shouldn't just do everything in a purely tit-for-tat manner since it's hard to calculate how you'll be paid back so it's simpler to just be helpful. People can also detect if someone is genuinely helpful or just Machiavellian and they want a friend who has their back, not someone who calculates the optimal Bayesian game-theoretic expected value of a good deed.<br />
<br />
However, it's fair to avoid being taken advantage of so you don't need to treat freeloaders the same as those who contribute back. This also doesn't address whether one should help a stranger, which is discussed later.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Should you do a good job at work?</b></div>
<div>
As an employee, you can think every moment about getting a good performance evaluation and not do anything that doesn't directly help that goal. However it's simpler to focus on doing a good job and aim to be helpful to your team and company. In a healthy company, employees who do this will be recognized. You also need to keep an eye on getting a good evaluation, but it doesn't need to be your entire focus.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1cQGawKXWN27KhH1gTji6bM1So8A2_tZYLReh7Wz5CXUj6-QdFaJPr8DL0Yv26-xMf-fL05uf10VS7J48FSe6P0cfWuvFiBfa8QFcQwESTK-3VFmPCiIZt8SyynRoUJM58wwycTJec4/s1600/focus-on-good-work-vs-evaluation.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="980" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1cQGawKXWN27KhH1gTji6bM1So8A2_tZYLReh7Wz5CXUj6-QdFaJPr8DL0Yv26-xMf-fL05uf10VS7J48FSe6P0cfWuvFiBfa8QFcQwESTK-3VFmPCiIZt8SyynRoUJM58wwycTJec4/s400/focus-on-good-work-vs-evaluation.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Large companies generally require some kind of formal performance evaluation so they can maintain certain standards across the company and avoid freeloaders, but they also want a healthy culture so that employees care about doing a good job and don't just focus on the measure. With the right balance, the company can succeed and reduce the problems caused by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law">Goodhart's Law</a>.
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Should companies do good?</b></div>
<div>
A company can focus every moment on maximizing profit or it can focus on a higher goal such as providing a good product or service to its customers. In theory, focusing on profits should lead to higher overall profit than any other approach. However, profit-focused humans tend to aim for short-term profits at the expense of the longer term company value:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>A small business doesn't refund a customer and ends up losing the customer and perhaps their friends. </li>
<li>A public corporation focuses on quarterly results and ignores long-term R&D, customer satisfaction or employee retention.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
While a perfect profit-focused algorithm may be able to factor everything into the long term value, humans don't think like that. It's simpler to focus on following certain values, such as always providing good customer service, even if it's more expensive in the short-term.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwqN7zhx4egV0NX7yPRkvjX0UIiS7YpEqdwgOAHc7Ua-8r6Sb3jO79jTv2-7uewDMNYIyjhQ4xuk5-B9K76y6T1kjNnI182TiO5qWpX29DQ_6lxFy0exKxS2i2itv10bkXoTbvdMBXVjg/s1600/focus-on-good-vs-profits.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="980" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwqN7zhx4egV0NX7yPRkvjX0UIiS7YpEqdwgOAHc7Ua-8r6Sb3jO79jTv2-7uewDMNYIyjhQ4xuk5-B9K76y6T1kjNnI182TiO5qWpX29DQ_6lxFy0exKxS2i2itv10bkXoTbvdMBXVjg/s400/focus-on-good-vs-profits.png" width="400" /></a></div>
A country cannot run on companies providing products or services based on their goodwill alone. There will always be freeloaders, and ultimately people need competition and a profit motive to try their hardest. However a country cannot flourish if every company is entirely focused on maximizing profits. In a healthy economy, the companies that focus on providing a benefit to their customers (and society) are the companies that will succeed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>A culture of good</b></div>
<div>
In short, it's simplest for the employee or company to keep a daily focus on doing good, while also keeping an eye on the metrics they're measured by (whether performance evaluations or profits). The company itself certainly wants employees to focus on doing good work, and countries certainly want companies to focus on providing good products and services.<br />
<br />
How can companies and countries encourage good behavior? A large part of it comes down to cultural norms and expectations:<br />
<ul>
<li>Joe joins a company where everyone only focuses on what's explicitly measured in their performance evaluation. Joe can then turn down all work not connected to his evaluation and no one will think less of him. </li>
<li>Joe joins a company where people fix whatever needs to be fixed and help each other out. If Joe only works for his evaluation, employees may look down on him, and that can even end up harming his evaluation.</li>
</ul>
<div>
A large part of culture is self-reinforcing so it's important for a company to get this right early and hire helpful employees and encourage them to be helpful.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why is good successful?</b></div>
<div>
If doing good doesn't capture all of the ways an employee or company is evaluated, why is it the best thing to focus on? I think this also relates to culture and what people value:<br />
<ul>
<li>If an employee does good work but misses some performance technicality, a healthy company will still give a positive evaluation. </li>
<li>If a company is known to do fraud or bribery, it will be harder for them to retain employees and customers in a society that values justice.</li>
</ul>
<div>
In a country where bribery is the norm, there's much less risk from participating in it, since people expect everyone to do it anyway. This is why it's important to build good culturural norms. However it's hard for governments to control culture; unlike companies they don't even get to pick their members.</div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Not the only reason to do good</b><br />
The above all focused on achieving success, but one should do good for its own sake. By doing good one can achieve more meaning and happiness than from material success. And only doing good is fully within one's control.<br />
<br />
If people do good for its own sake, they will also do good to complete strangers, even if it can't be paid back. The doer won't get any reward from this but for their own <i>eudaimonia. </i>And the country or world with more of such people will flourish.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Ethical systems</b></div>
<div>
Now that we've come to ethics for its own sake, what ethical system should one follow? If one wants the best outcome for the world, it seems one should be consequentialist. A perfect consequentialist algorithm could calculate the optimal action in every case to bring the greatest good to the most people. However humans are not robots, and it's easy to use consequentialist thinking to justify bad behavior:<br />
<ul>
<li>It's OK to steal a little from the wealthy, I'll get more benefit from it anyways.</li>
<li>It's OK to trespass this private property, I'm not hurting anyone.</li>
</ul>
<div>
An algorithm could correctly factor in how even small actions of stealing and trespassing add up to worse consequences overall. But for humans, it's simpler to just follow ethical rules or try to live virtuously.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4zKGcdWQ1vGGsGwweXicJIeRfTw1KEKAxhXk17je8sFqpx7OTkAHM6CznSV0k1Bo6_7SJwul5LawTXSvxrD7xdk-yA1aLkL-15oZSK5p1k_ndYZIFIx3LA7DzPTyLGEydDvLTcWVX2p8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-05-24+at+7.09.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1018" data-original-width="788" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4zKGcdWQ1vGGsGwweXicJIeRfTw1KEKAxhXk17je8sFqpx7OTkAHM6CznSV0k1Bo6_7SJwul5LawTXSvxrD7xdk-yA1aLkL-15oZSK5p1k_ndYZIFIx3LA7DzPTyLGEydDvLTcWVX2p8/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-05-24+at+7.09.57+PM.png" width="247" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a href="https://existentialcomics.com/comic/253">Existentialist comics</a></i></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-68869767029538497142020-07-01T08:36:00.000-04:002020-07-01T08:36:14.167-04:00Biology to Learn<div>
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">This is the sixth posts in the <a href="https://www.zappable.com/search/label/knowledge">things to learn</a> series. See the <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/05/areas-of-knowledge-and-education.html">intro</a> or the last post about <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/06/biology-vs-physics.html">biology vs. physics</a>. This post lists interesting </span></i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">questions and</span></i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> topics in biology.</span></i></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>What is life?</b> </li>
<ul>
<li>What is the basic architecture of a sample single-celled organism?</li>
<li>How does life resist entropy internally and maintain order?</li>
<ul>
<li>Feedback systems: See <a data-mce-href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bNXdnRTpSXk9p4zmi/book-review-design-principles-of-biological-circuits" href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bNXdnRTpSXk9p4zmi/book-review-design-principles-of-biological-circuits" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Book Review: Design Principles of Biological Circuits</a></li>
</ul>
<li>How is energy passed from light to plants to animals, and how is it used by cells? (See also my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carbonator7">carbon poem</a>) </li>
</ul>
</ul>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>DNA and Genes</b></li>
<ul>
<li>Expression - How does the genetic message go from DNA to RNA to proteins?</li>
<ul>
<li>How do things like genetic dominance work at the chemical level?</li>
</ul>
<li>Reproduction - How does DNA replicate? How does it ensure variation? It's almost paradoxical how much effort life spends to preserve DNA and then also to mix it up. </li>
<ul>
<li>Multiple swaps happen during meiosis</li>
<li>How are traits inherited? (From Mendelian single-gene traits to more complex multi-gene traits)</li>
</ul>
<li>Differentiation - How do cells differentiate during fetal development?</li>
<ul>
<li>Initial impetus based on amount of fluid detected in egg/fetus, which then sets off chain reaction where genes signal to other genes. (Seems almost recursive. How did this process evolve?)</li>
</ul>
<li>A bit on modern techniques for editing DNA</li>
<ul>
<li>Old tech to transfer genes from one organism to another</li>
<li>CRISPR</li>
</ul>
<li>Bigger picture of genetic differences. What does it mean that humans share ~50% of their DNA with a banana or 99.9% of their DNA with each other? How much do people differ from each other? What does that mean? How relevant is the non-coding DNA. </li>
<ul>
<li>Seems us humans are not really <a data-mce-href="https://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news38" href="https://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news38" rel="noopener" target="_blank">99.9% the same</a>. Even just in coding DNA, letter differences change whole words and CNVs repeat words.</li>
</ul>
<li>Practical things can one learn from getting your DNA test </li>
<li>What genes led humans to be so different than e.g. chimpanzees. How a small number of genes can make a large difference in the brain's development. How non-coding DNA affects things. </li>
</ul>
</ul>
<ul><ul>
</ul>
</ul>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Evolution</b></li>
<ul>
<li>Quantitative evolution - Rates of mutations of DNA of different organisms. How long it takes for an adaptive gene to spread in a population. To what extent can the path of evolution be traced?</li>
<li>The possible origins of the first life</li>
<li>The role of epigenetics </li>
<li>Philosophy of evolution</li>
<ul>
<li>See Stanford articles on <a data-mce-href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-genetics/" href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-genetics/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">evolutionary genetics</a> and <a data-mce-href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/" href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">teleological notions in biology</a></li>
</ul>
<li>What level evolution occurs at and how animals cooperate (see <i>The Selfish Gene</i>)</li>
<li>Evolutionary psychology - how much actual evidence vs. speculation. Seems in many areas the brain is general purpose and people can adapt without genetic mutations.</li>
<ul>
<li>Related: philosophical interpretations of human nature</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>The brain</b></li>
<ul>
<li>How can thoughts and memories arise from neurons? (This is understood to a certain extent.)</li>
<li>How does consciousness work? (Difficult question!)</li>
<ul>
<li>How do Buddhist meditative views on consciousness relate to the scientific nature of the brain. (See <i>Why Buddhism is True</i>)</li>
<li>To what extent are different animals conscious? Very simple animals (e.g. hydras) are not, and mammals appear to be but what about in-between?</li>
</ul>
<li>How did and does the brain develop (evolution, culture, nature, nurture)</li>
<li>What happens to the brain during sleep?</li>
<ul>
<li>Why is it so important for health?</li>
<li>Can dreams be interpreted as random neurons firing?</li>
</ul>
<li>To what extent is the brain hardwired when born vs. a system that learns? </li>
<ul>
<li>Brain starts in very flexible state, but people eventually lose the ability to learn things like vision and speech. Some people can control extra fingers (See <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190603123545.htm#:~:text=Polydactyly%20is%20the%20extraordinary%20condition,than%20five%20fingers%20or%20toes.&text=It%20enables%20people%20with%20six,fingers%20would%20need%20two%20hands.">polydactyly</a>.) What else could be wired to brain? Brain needs to be general purpose to have evolved.</li>
</ul>
<li>Computational neuroscience - how does the brain compare to artificial neural networks? Besides direct neurons firing, what else in the brain is used for processing?</li>
<li>Behavioral neuroscience - To what extent does understanding the physical mechanisms of the brain help with understanding human psychology? In general, can the mind be viewed as a fully operating layer or are there many leaky abstractions?<br /></li>
</ul>
<li><b>The human body and practical health</b></li>
<ul>
<li>Digestion and nutrition</li>
<ul>
<li>What makes a balanced diet?</li>
<li>Metabolism rates and and people's weights. How would skinny people have fared in hungrier times? (See also <a data-mce-href="https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Brain-Outsmarting-Instincts-Overeat/dp/125008119X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1493095305&sr=8-1&keywords=the+hungry+brain&linkCode=ll1&tag=slatestarcode-20&linkId=db99450e7e72c511331802f88c34da21" href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry-brain/" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><span data-mce-style="color: #0066cc; font-style: italic;" style="color: #0066cc; font-style: italic;">The Hungry Brain</span></a>)</li>
</ul>
<li>Infection and disease</li>
<ul>
<li>how bacteria and viruses spread</li>
<li>how the layers of the immune system works</li>
<li>how allergies develop and why they're more common now</li>
</ul>
<li>Exercise</li>
<ul>
<li>Why it's beneficial</li>
<li>What practices for most benefits?</li>
<li>How muscles strengthen and weaken </li>
</ul>
<li>Answering health questions - the fundamentals to know + search skills to find answers</li>
<li>The connection between psychological wellbeing and physical health</li>
<li>Modern world - evaluating the risks that new substances (e.g. Teflon, BPA) may pose to human health</li>
<li>Teeth - how cavities develop and best practices for preventing them</li>
<ul>
<li>Besides sugar, which foods are most harmful? How long does it take for decaying processes to start occurring? </li>
<li>Can one reduce prevent the mouth from being colonized by harmful bacteria?</li>
<li>Does flossing work in practice? What are alternatives</li>
<li>What other treatments exist (e.g. Silver diammine fluoride)</li>
</ul>
<li>Sleep - what happens in the body during sleep, best practices for sleep</li>
</ul>
<li><b>Big picture topics</b> </li>
<ul>
<li>Big picture view of evolution (See <a href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/big-history#syllabus">Big History Course</a> or more poetically, <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MFNJ7kQttCuCXHp8P/the-goddess-of-everything-else">The Goddess of Everything Else</a>)</li>
<li>Numbers in biology (See <a href="http://book.bionumbers.org/">book.bionumbers.org</a>)</li>
<li>Patterns in biology (See <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582">Scale</a>)</li>
<ul>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
<ul><ul>
</ul>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-77917185907306026192020-06-28T12:28:00.003-04:002020-06-30T09:54:17.796-04:00Biology vs. Physics<em style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">This is the fifth post in the series on <a href="https://www.zappable.com/search/label/knowledge">things to learn</a>. See the <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/05/areas-of-knowledge-and-education.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration-line: none;">intro</a> or the last post on <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/06/learning-physical-sciences.html">learning physics</a>.</em><br />
<div>
<em style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></em></div>
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<em style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"></em></div>
The natural sciences are divided into two branches: the physical sciences (primarily physics and its derivatives) and the life sciences (a.k.a biology). Biology is different than physics in many ways, which affect how one learns it:<br />
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Less Math</b> - Math is fundamental to all of physics but it's more incidental in biology. This can make biology easier to learn for many people.</li>
<li><b>More complexity</b> - As challenging as physics is, it's ultimately about simple concepts. But biology is about life, which is complicated.</li>
<ul>
<li>Textbooks filled with terminology and small details can make learning biology more tedious. However I think there may be a way to focus more on the overall concepts involved than on the exact terminology and details. When learning for general curiosity, you don't need to know every exact term, you can just learn the terms that will be repeated enough to be worth learning. (See <a href="https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/">XKCD's thing explainer</a> for an exaggerated example of explaining concepts with less terminology.)</li>
</ul>
<li><b>Unknown frontier</b> - Physics has already solved most areas that a layman would be interested in. The current frontier of physics deals with problems that would be hard a non-physicist to relate to, and it would take years of learning to understand them. Meanwhile biology is filled with unsolved questions in every area from neuroscience to nutrition to genetics to diseases, and one encounters these issues right away. </li>
<ul>
<li>Update: this point is debatable since there are unsolved questions in physics that a layman would be interested in.</li>
</ul>
<li><b>Practical</b> - If you're not an engineer you're unlikely to use knowledge of physics for anything practical. But biology topics like nutrition and disease are relevant to living longer and healthier lives.</li>
</ul>
<div>
There are other ways that physics and biology differ:</div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Inherent or accidental?</b></div>
<div>
It seems that many parts of physics could be intuited based on other principles and couldn't be any other way:</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Falling objects - Galileo argued against the Aristotelian idea of motion (that heavier objects fall faster) not only with experiments but by pointing out the logical paradoxes that would result.</li>
<li>Inverse-square law - While one could imagine forces decreasing in other ratios, decreasing in proportion to r<sup>2</sup> seems the most logical since a force radiating out from a point will spread out according to the formula for a sphere's surface (4πr<sup>2</sup>).</li>
<li>Relativity - While most people wouldn't intuitively think of Special Relativity, it seems Einstein was able to recognize that it was the "only way" possible. He was able to derive this based on a deep understanding of the implication's of Maxwell's equations, and he may not even have been aware of the Michelson-Morley experiments.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Questions in physics are still resolved through experiments, but maybe this is to demonstrate the truth to those who don't have the right intuitions of the way nature "needs" to be. When Einstein was asked what if the experiments had disproven his theory of General Relativity, he said "then I would have felt sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct." While physics cannot just be pure deduction like mathematics, it's the closest one can get. The eventual goal of physics is to find the theory of everything from which everything else is derived.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Biology however deals with the complex messiness of life, and there's many ways to be a living thing. Scientists can may make predictions based on the data they have, but they can't derive how systems "must" be. Living things are "<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/">accidental</a>" in the Aristotelean sense of having traits that they happen to have but could lack.</div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Purpose</b> </div>
<div>
Ancient and medieval physics used teleological explanations as Aristotle emphasized the "final cause" (or purpose) as one of the "four causes" to explain the way things are, and argued <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology#Aristotelian">against</a> Democritus who rejected it. Modern physics, starting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes#Modern_science">with</a> Francis Bacon, returned to the physics of Democritus and dropped "purpose" from consideration. Since Isaac Newton, the motion of heavenly and earthly bodies is explained with simple physical laws, without reference to any goal or "natural place" of matter. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Unlike rocks or stars, living things act with purpose. Even a simple bacterium seeks food, evades predators and maintains its internal state. While scientists no longer use theological explanations to explain why organs and organelles have certain functions and designs, these elements still exist and are worthy of explanation. Some use the term <a href="https://www.philosophersmag.com/footnotes-to-plato/99-biology-vs-physics-two-ways-of-doing-science">teleonomy</a> to distinguish modern explanations of biological purpose from earlier ones.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In short physics is about mathematical explanations for "simple" things from atoms to galaxies, while biology is about the complexity of life, with all its purpose. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-69008123100291837602020-06-16T20:39:00.007-04:002020-06-28T12:30:28.200-04:00Learning the Physical Sciences<em>This is the fourth post in the series on things to learn. See the <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/05/areas-of-knowledge-and-education.html">intro</a> or the posts on <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/06/maths-to-learn.html">math</a> and <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/06/skills-to-learn-for-software-developers.html">software development</a>.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<div>
<strong>Should Studying Science be Mandated?</strong></div>
<div>
Most people won't become scientists so learning science is about satisfying curiosity about how the world works and came to be, not about learning a practical or career-oriented topic. Beyond the most essential understanding of how the word works, the physical sciences should be an optional part of the K-12 curriculum. Students who are interested in science can be encouraged to learn it since some of them may appreciate the opportunity and a fraction of them will later use it in their careers. Those who are uninterested are unlikely to become scientists themselves, but they can always catch up later if they desire to.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Once a student commits to learning a topic in high school or college, they can force themselves to continue learning it even when it's difficult, since they want to do well in the course. This is the one benefit of schools - they provide a structure or incentive system where people can learn. Once someone leaves school and is just learning on the side for enlightenment, they're less likely to "force" themselves through difficult topics. However, when you're learning on your own, you can choose to learn the most interesting topics.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<strong>Learning the Concepts in Science</strong></div>
<div>
If you're learning science just to satisfy curiosity, you don't need to learn every technical detail covered in textbooks.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<strong>Q</strong>: Can you learn physics without advanced math?</div>
<div>
<strong>A</strong>: I think so:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Many areas of physics (such as mechanics) can be understood with basic algebra and maybe a sprinkle of simple calculus.</li>
<li>Even in other areas, it seems one can get at at least a partial conceptual understanding without covering all the mathematical details.</li>
</ul>
<div>
While a researcher or engineer may need to know all the mathematical nitty gritty, someone learning physics for knowledge can likely skip over some of these details. In the past it was even possible to make significant discoveries in physics with limited knowledge of math. For example <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday">Michael Faraday</a> was "one one of the most influential scientists in history" despite the fact that "his mathematical abilities... did not extend as far as trigonometry and were limited to the simplest algebra". (Though even there, James Maxwell's equations were needed to fully understand the implications of Faraday's discoveries.) Physics became more complex over time, so later developments in physics require more math to truly understand them, but one can still learn a simpler version of any topic.<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<strong>Books that cover concepts in Physics</strong></div>
<div>
These are books that give an overview of physics and its development:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>
<div>
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Ideas-Shook-Universe-Version/dp/0471848166">Seven Ideas That Shook the Universe</a> - different paradigms in physics: Copernican astronomy, Newtonian mechanics, energy and entropy, relativity, quantum theory and conservation principles & symmetries.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
<em><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lWEmNBaHCJMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Evolution of Physics</a></em> (By Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld) - As summarized by the table of contents, it covers The Rise of The Mechanical View; The Decline of the Mechanical View; Field, Relativity; and Quanta. Slightly similar to the above book, though from Einstein's perspective.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SJNPDgAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&dq=The%20Character%20of%20Physical%20Law%20(by%20Richard%20Feynman)&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Character of Physical Law</a> (by Richard Feynman) - Instead of covering all of physics, it goes through certain ideas as examples of physics. This is the written version of <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2012/08/the_character_of_physical_law_richard_feynmans_legendary_lecture_series_at_cornell_1964.html">a series of lectures</a> by Feynman so it isn't as edited as the above books, but it contains Feynman's unique style.</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<div>
<strong>Specific Topics in Physics</strong></div>
Here are some interesting topics in physics they seem worth learning more about. <br />
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Mechanics - Force & Motion & Inertia</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
The basic formulas and their calculus.</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<small>Example question: Intuitively, why is Kinetic Energy (KE) proportional to v<sup>2</sup>when momentum is proportional to v (velocity)? <br /> Answer: Lets' say you want to stop a frictionless moving car by putting a friction block on which drags on the ground with a constant force. A car going 2x as fast will take 2x as much time to stop since, as expected since it has 2x the momentum. However it will take 4x as much distance to stop the car. All that distance involved the same rate of friction heat creation, so the car going 2x as fast must have 4x the KE. Similarly if you want to drop a block and have it go 2x as fast as another block, you'll need to raise it to 4x the height. This was also a controversy between followers of Newton and Leibniz, see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis_viva">Vis Viva</a>. </small></div>
</li>
</ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
How/why is inertia and conservation of momentum so fundamental in all of physics?</div>
</li>
</ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Gravity (Newtonian)</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
How Newton discovered the law of gravity from a better understanding of motion. <br />
<small>(I.e. how Newton built on Galileo to create his Newton's laws of motion, then connected them with Kepler's laws of planets and then connected that with the moon's motion and universal gravitation.)</small></div>
</li>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Basic math of satellites and planets in orbit</div>
</li>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Key concepts in general relativity</div>
</li>
</ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Electromagnetism</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Understanding what electric and magnetic fields are are and how they interact with charged particles.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
How special relativity resolved issues raised by Maxwell's equations. </div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<small>Interesting when reading Einstein's writings, how strong his intuition was to avoid any special frames of reference and how this took priority over other intuitive ideas such as about absolute time...</small></div>
</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Thermodynamics</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
What is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_entropy">entropy</a>? Besides the fundamental meaning for particles, how does it affect non-thermodynamic order? Whats was the entropy of the universe initially? How does gravity affect entropy? (See also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_paradox">heat death paradox</a>, as well as this <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14004/how-can-it-be-that-the-beginning-universe-had-a-high-temperature-and-a-low-entro">question</a>.)
<br />
<div>
<small><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Physics-Magnetism-Electricity-Electron/dp/0880292512">Understanding Physics</a> (by Isaac Asimov) gives basic explanation the laws of thermodynamics. First law is about the "absolute" store of energy. But energy can only be used when it flows from "high" to "low". And over time differences even out so entropy increases. Book has this more philosophical observation:</small>
<br />
<blockquote>
<small><small>We thus find there is an odd and rather paradoxical symmetry to this book. We began with the Greek philosophers making the first systematic’ attempt to establish the generalizations underlying the order of the universe. They were sure that such an order, basically simple and comprehensible, existed. As a result of the continuing line of thought to which they gave rise, such generalizations were indeed discovered. And of these, the most powerful of all the generalizations yet discovered — the first two laws of thermodynamics — succeed in demonstrating that the order of the universe is, first and foremost, a perpetually increasing disorder.</small></small></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<div>
How does "information" as a physical concept connect to this? (see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory">wikipedia</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-entropy/">stanford article</a>.)</div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Is the second law of thermodynamics more "proven" than other natural laws?</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">How the theoretical science developed from the technological development of steam engines (and compare with how computers developed) </span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Practical applications in everyday life (e.g opening fridge won't cool room)</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
Nuclear physics</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
The nuclear bonds (and how E=MC<sup>2</sup> not that relevant). <br />
Compare nuclear bonds with chemical energy. <br />
(Bonus: the weak force and how it relates to electromagnetic force) </div>
</li>
</ul>
<li>
<div>
Quantum mechanics - to what extent can it be understood by a layman?</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div>
Consider reading parts of Scott Aaranson's <em>Quantum computing since Democritus</em> (or the <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/">lecture notes</a>)</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
Interpretations of quantum indeterminacy</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div>
See <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html">lecture notes</a></div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
<a href="http://inference-review.com/article/on-bohmian-mechanics">Bohemian mechanics</a> (pilot wave theory)</div>
</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
<div>
<strong>Other topics in the physical sciences</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>
<div>
Astronomy & astrophysics - How the universe developed<br />
The formation of all elements (Stellar nucleosynthesis). The cycle of stars. How matter regrouped after stars exploded.. (See Wikipedia on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_population">Stellar population</a>.)</div>
</li>
<li>Chemistry</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
how does the number of protons/electrons determine the properties of elements?</div>
</li>
<ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Much of this is more basic chemistry, as seen in repetition in the periodic table</span></div>
</li>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Sometimes the specifics of how properties like color are determined can involve more complex areas, e.g. need relativistic quantum mechanics to explain why gold is gold-colored instead of silver. </span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<li>
<div role="presentation">
How does the structure of electrons in chemical compounds determine their properties? </div>
</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Earth science</li>
<ul>
<li>Development of earth</li>
<li>Earth's magnetism</li>
<li>Global warming</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-58782147018251071792020-06-11T23:23:00.001-04:002020-06-11T23:24:11.986-04:00Skills to Learn for Software Developers and Others<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/06/maths-to-learn.html">previous post</a> discussed math topics I'm interested in learning, this will discuss programming-related skills that are important and I'd like to improve at.</i></span><br />
<div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
While there are many technical skills important for software developers, this post will cover general (non-programming) skills, and programming skills that are useful for other careers.</div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>General skills</b></div>
<div>
These are general skills that are important in software development and in many other office jobs as well:</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Focus</b> - Often one encounters difficulties and it's easy to get frustrated and distracted. The test is still failing? Might as well browse emails or the web. But switching tasks breaks up the train of thought you had so you'll take even longer to solve the problem. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(One second, just going to check my emails. Now where was I..? )</span> Often one needs relentless focus on an issue in order to make progress quickly. And not just "guess and check" thinking where you randomly try different things hoping you'll find a solution, but "binary search" thinking where you hone in on the issue until it's solved. There are times when it can be helpful to take a break and return to the problem later, but that should be done after you've given the problem solid focus and hit a wall. </li>
<li><b>Typing</b> </li>
<ul>
<li>While raw typing speed should never be a significant bottleneck when programming, any effort on typing or fixing typos can take your focus off the main issue at hand.</li>
<li>Programmers type far more chats and emails than actual code; it's best to do this as quickly as possible.</li>
<li>Besides basic typing skills, one should also be comfortable with the relevant keyboard shortcuts for their OS, terminal and IDE. Moving to the mouse is another micro distraction that is best avoided. </li>
</ul>
<li><b>Memory / note system</b> - When learning programming one struggles with remembering all sorts of details about language and syntax, but eventually you get the overall hang of how things work, and can easily look up syntax as needed. But there will still be many issues that you solve (or get help with) where you'll want to remember the solution for the future, and your memory isn't always enough. It's useful to have a note or bookmark system to quickly lookup how to do things.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<b>General programming skills </b></div>
<div>
These are programming skills that are useful for many jobs, not just for professional software developers: </div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>SQL</b> - The world is built on SQL, often with a few other layers stacked on top of it. Besides writing SQL when developing an actual application, it's essential in many other cases such as:</li>
<ul>
<li>analyzing experiments or general usage of a product</li>
<li>finding sample data to test something out</li>
<li>querying logs to debug an issue in production</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<div>
Many alternatives to SQL have been developed, but there's often no avoiding SQL itself. It helps to become proficient with it so one can quickly find the data they need and avoid common bugs such as accidentally duplicating rows. Many other professions, such as analysts or product managers, will also find it useful.</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Regex</b> - Programming is often about finding the right example to base your code on, or about quickly finding and replacing text. Regex makes this faster. Anyone who deals with large data or texts will find it helpful as well. </li>
<li><b>Scripting</b> - Sometimes it's useful to write a quick script to help generate code or analyze data. Non-professional programmers may want to write a script to help with their science research or with their spreadsheets.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<b>Worth learning</b></div>
<div>
While one can learn many skills on the job, often it's helpful to take a step back and learn the subject in-depth. This way you can learn how to do something properly instead of just finding the easiest solution at the time. This would be an area where schools could help, but as expected, they don't give these subjects their proper due.</div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-90617297862397487502020-06-02T21:00:00.002-04:002020-06-02T21:00:40.121-04:00Maths to Learn<div><div><font face="arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the </span><a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/05/areas-of-knowledge-and-education.html" style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">previous post</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I discussed the five categories of knowledge. These posts will go through different subjects that I'm interested in, starting with <b>Mathematics</b>.</span></font></div><div><font face="arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></font></div><div><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Theory of computation </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- key ideas of computation. It's interesting how a mathematical idea about computation grew into physical computers. </span></li><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turing and Godel's theorems and how they relate to each other. Is there a way one can exclude the halting problem and build a machine that can determine if almost everything will halt?</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How high level code actually executes on a machine. </span></li></ul><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Review of <b>basic</b> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">calculus</span></li><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Intuitive understanding of derivatives and integrals.</span></li><li><span id="docs-internal-guid-c8865d0c-7fff-0411-63f4-4486d0859957"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="arial">O</font></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ptimization and related-rates problems</span></span></li><li><span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Applications to physics</span></span></li></ul><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Probability & statistics</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Ultimately all knowledge comes down to probabilities. Statistics are useful for interpreting studies and experiments and everything else.</span></li><ul><li><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Review f</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">undamentals</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of probability</span></font></li><li><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bayesian </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">probability</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and statistics</span></font></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pascal's triangle, the normal distribution, t</span><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">he central limit theorem</span></font></li><li><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Applying statistics to real-world examples</span></font></li><li><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tools for stats (e.g Google sheets, R, Python)</span></font></li><li><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stats for machine learning</span></font></li></ul><li dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Using <b>M</b></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">athematica </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for real world math problems</span></p></li></ul><div><font face="arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></font></div></div></div><div><font face="arial"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Besides for calculus, it's interesting how little these topics are taught in schools. Many students don't know basic topics like fractions well and schools should focus on teaching them better. Other students can learn more advanced topics but it does not need to be limited to a narrow curriculum of trigonometry and geometry and specific parts of algebra. (See also <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2011/07/math-education.html">my post</a> from 2011.)</span></font></div><div><font face="arial"><span style="font-size: 8px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></font></div><div><font color="#eeeeee" face="arial" size="1"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Carthago delenda est </i></span></font></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-3270043161020109522020-06-01T08:41:00.000-04:002020-06-01T08:41:44.395-04:00The Case for The Case against EducationIn <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652">The Case against Education</a></i> Bryan Caplan argues that education is primarily about signaling certain traits as opposed to learning useful skills, and that much of it is a waste for society. Here are some of my thoughts on the book:<div><br /></div><div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px;"><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Agree with much of the book. It shouldn't surprise most people to hear that schools teach a lot of useless stuff.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Caplan focuses on the US but it would be interesting to look at other countries. For example, Caplan dismisses online education as unlikely to become accepted by employers, but Open University is a remote learning option founded in 1969 that is a respectable option in many countries.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Caplan's big claim is that schools mainly signal certain traits (such as intelligence and conscientiousness), and he particularly emphasizes that schools signal "conformity" and that employers care strongly about it. I think this depends a lot on industry and the culture of the companies. For example, tech companies seem less concerned about conformity, though perhaps that's why many of them don't require college degrees. Other companies may still require degrees but they may just be conformist themselves without actually requiring conformists for the job. If it became more accepted to not go to college and to hire without degrees, how many companies would still insist on it?</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Instead of just theorizing about what employers are looking for, it would be interesting to actually check. Big companies have specific criteria they look for when hiring applicants, and they also study the traits of their successful employees. For example, see <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-google/" style="color: #0079d3; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">this article</a> on Google's hiring practices.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Not sure if Caplan gets this critique too often but in certain cases I think he gives school too much credit. For example, he says practical majors like engineering primarily involve learning useful skills. In my experience with Computer Science, much of the major consisted of theoretical math instead of practical topics. (That's why there's a practical-focused programming course called <a href="https://missing.csail.mit.edu/" style="color: #0079d3; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">The Missing Semester of Your CS Education</a>).</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Caplan says some pretty extreme things, such as saying there should be zero government funding of education, or that it would be better if education was more expensive. As if the cost of education in America isn't high enough! There are better ways to beat credential inflation than making education more expensive, and ways that would be less unfair to lower-income people. For example, one could encourage companies to do more interviewing or hiring on a college-blind basis (I think the hiring platform <a href="https://triplebyte.com/" style="color: #0079d3; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">triplebyte</a> tried this to some extent.)</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This may be an issue in general with books, but I'm not sure how much I remember from the middle of the book. I think people can just read the beginning and end of the book to get the gist of it.</li></ul><div><font color="#222222" face="verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></font></div><div><font color="#222222" face="verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">(Review originally posted to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/f1i038/thoughts_on_bryan_caplans_case_against_education/">Reddit</a>.)</font></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-68898049181338801272020-05-31T23:08:00.001-04:002020-05-31T23:08:47.889-04:00Areas of Knowledge and Education<div><div>There are many topics I'm interested in learning about but they fall into five categories:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><div><b>Theoretical topics</b> (e.g science) - It's interesting to learn about the world even if I probably won't make new scientific discoveries myself. This category is the main focus of schools, but usually without checking whether the students are interested in learning them.</div></li><li><b>Practical relevance to world </b>(e.g politics) - learning these topics isn't something I can practically use, but it can affect how I vote, and one individual can influence other people. Even one blog post can have an impact!</li><li><b>Practical skills</b> - These can be a specific skill relevant to one's career (e.g software development) or generally useful skills (e.g. typing). This could also include general-purpose abilities such as thinking rationally. </li><li><b>Interpersonal skills</b> (e.g public speaking) - these are also the subject of many self-help books</li><li><b>'Intrapersonal' skills</b> - this includes practical areas like time management and learning techniques, as well as skills for living a happier or more meaningful life, such as Stoicism or meditation. This could potentially include being a good person more generally.</li></ul></div><div>Schools focus on theoretical topics but have very few classes dedicated to Interpersonal and Intrapersonal skills. Most people don't manages to pick up all these skills on their own so it's something a good education system could potentially help with.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Note that many subjects can contain topics in multiple categories. For example you can learn algorithms to practically apply them and also learn the mathematical theory behind them. While some theory may be always be required, a good education system would let people choose to focus on more practical areas if they prefer.</div><div><br /></div><div><span id="docs-internal-guid-f1fdee7e-7fff-780e-1fb9-71613d409784"><div>In future posts I'll outline actual topics in more detail and what I'd like to learn more about them. While it will be a personal list, these outlines could also serve as a potential topics that educational systems could offer.</div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-16638714975402424782020-05-27T09:52:00.003-04:002020-05-27T18:37:49.961-04:00Silver Bullets in Software Development<div>
<b>No Silver Bullet</b></div>
In the 1986 Essay <i><a href="http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~xswang/Research/Papers/SERelated/no-silver-bullet.pdf">No Silver Bullet</a>,</i> Fred Brooks argued that nothing would provide a tenfold improvement in software development within a decade:<br />
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But, as we look to the horizon of a decade hence, we see no silver bullet. There is no single development, in either technology or in management technique, that by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity. </blockquote>
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He divided software development into <i>essential</i> and <i>accidental</i> difficulties:</div>
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<li>essential ones are required due to the complexity of the problem itself - the software needs to satisfy a "conceptual construct" in a precise manner</li>
<li>accidental ones (like determining the correct syntax) are incidental to the problem and can become simpler with better hardware and software techniques.</li>
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Accidental difficulties had been reduced to such an an extent by 1986 that Brooks argued most software development dealt with essential complexities that could not be removed. While incremental progress would be possible, revolutionary "silver bullets" were impossible. Brooks reiterated his claims in 1995, but it's worth revisiting again. Have there been any silver bullets since then? How much of software development today deals with essential vs. accidental problems?<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Silver Bullets. Photo Credit: Money Metals, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/moneymetals/31403416393">Flickr</a></i></span></div>
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<b>Software Development Today</b></div>
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On one hand there has been a tremendous amount of progress in speeding up development and in focusing on the essential problems:</div>
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<li>Google and StackOverflow let one quickly find answers to questions</li>
<li>Open source libraries allow for broad code re-use</li>
<li>Cloud services like AWS make it easier to launch in production</li>
<li>Frameworks like Ruby on Rails provide default assumptions so the engineer can focus on defining the product</li>
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On the other hand it seems like much of engineering work today, particularly at large companies, deals with complex issues not connected directly to defining a product:</div>
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<li>As products grow to encompass multiple teams, applications may be split into sub-applications for each team, but integrating them together adds additional layers of complexity</li>
<li>Integration tests involve so many systems that they're a constant point of failure, and often adding or updating a feature can require more time dealing with tests than with the actual code</li>
<li>As products grow larger and scale to more users, engineers spend more time on smaller optimizations</li>
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The move from desktop applications to the web also added new layers of complexity:</div>
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<li>Application logic needs to be replicated on both the server and client side </li>
<li>Every language and framework needs to be converted to Javascript, an unusual choice for an "assembly" language</li>
<li>Since application data isn't generally stored on the client, latency becomes a constant issue</li>
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Depending on where one draws the dividing line, these problems can be considered either essential or accidental. While they do not deal with specifying the product itself, they arise from the size of the teams or from the technologies involved. Software development still deals with both the essential aspects of specifying a product and the many nuts and bolts of making it work correctly in the real world. </div>
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<b>A Silver Bullet </b></div>
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There is a silver bullet that has completely revolutionized development - machine learning. Brooks had specifically dismissed AI as a silver bullet since back then AI meant "heuristic" or rule-based programming, where each product would still need all its details specified:</div>
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The techniques used for speech recognition seem to have little in common with those used for image recognition, and both are different from those used in expert systems. I have a hard time seeing how image recognition, for example, will make any appreciable difference in programming practice. The same problem is true of speech recognition. The hard thing about building software is deciding what one wants to say, not saying it. No facilitation of expression can give more than marginal gains.</blockquote>
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Enter machine learning (ML), particularly deep learning with neural networks. Now the same overall techniques can be used for both speech recognition and image recognition. One no longer needs to decide precisely what "one wants to say", one just specifies a goal and given enough data, the neural networks will figure out the details. Systems that involved years of coding before can be replaced with a machine that learns on its own. For example, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero">AlphaZero</a> was able to learn chess by playing itself for a few hours and then it beat the best existing chess software. Programmers had spent decades improving chess software with hand-written heuristics, but machine learning outplayed them all. </div>
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<b>What's next</b></div>
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Despite the amazing progress of ML, most areas of software development do not have enough data to truly benefit from it, so they still have the same overall structure and process as years ago. What then are the next areas of progress?</div>
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<li>Assisted programming - generating a program from a product definition has always been a dream (even mentioned by Brooks), and there's been <a href="https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1OyKAYWPRrWKb">recent progress</a>. For the near future, humans are still needed to specify the nitty gritty details in code. But online resources like StackOverflow and Github (besides company's internal codebases) contain enough data that search and ML algorithms will be able to assist in this process. A significant part of programming can be finding an example and modifying it for one's purpose, so even a better search alone will speed up overall development.</li>
<li>Much of programming consists of plumbing - connecting databases to an application, determining how to summarize the data, deciding how to display it in a UI. Since some of this is very standardized, companies can choose to use "low code" tools to build them, using products built for that purpose (e.g. from Salesforce) or even just advanced spreadsheets (Airtable). While visual programing does not contain the power and flexibility for building large applications, some products have much smaller scopes.</li>
<li>Some application plumbing will no longer be necessary for other reasons - ML will take over optimizing certain goals from humans, so a user interface will no longer be needed. For example, when an ad campaign runs on ML, much less knobs and dials need to be created for users. The system just takes in a budget and perhaps a goal to optimize for. In some cases, developers may still create tools for users to interface with the ML system, but in other cases the system will be a fully automated blackbox. Developing user interfaces might remain the same, but what interfaces are needed will change.</li>
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In short, software development will continue to make incremental progress in some areas and add accidental complexity in other areas, while some areas will be completely revolutionized by ML.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-52337405409191866262020-05-24T21:43:00.003-04:002020-05-24T23:59:24.987-04:00Bryan Caplan on Who to Blame for PovertyBryan Caplan spoke today at an online SlateStarCodex / LessWrong meetup about his upcoming book<i> Poverty: Who To Blame.</i> Here's a brief summary of his talk and book, with my comments in italics. (Note: I think this summary is mostly accurate but I missed some of the Q&A and may have missed or misunderstood other parts.)<br />
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He first discussed consequentialism:<br />
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<li>He recognized that his rationalist audience is mostly consequentialist / utilitarian, but he doesn't think anyone actually lives like that; in practice people care about what others deserve. If your friend needs help, you'll help them more if they didn't bring the bad circumstances on themself, people care about "just deserts".</li>
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<li><i>It seems this could be factored in to a consequentialist framework as a way to encourage better behavior from your friends.</i></li>
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<li>In discussions of policy, consequentialists often just focus on the [short-term] outcomes and don't care about the value of letting people help themselves. While consequentialists could in theory care about this, in practice they don't.</li>
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<li><i>Why are people being too consequentialist in practice now when they weren't in the last bullet? I think Caplan thinks people are too short-termed consequentialist when it comes to public policy, but not in their own lives. If this short-term thinking is a real issue, maybe consequentialists should adopt virtue ethics for its <a href="https://existentialcomics.com/comic/253">better consequential outcomes</a>. ~</i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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He then discussed the topics from his upcoming book.</div>
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<li><b>Corporations</b> - People think that third-world countries suffer from the exploitation of international corporations, but in practice there isn't that much formal employment in poorer countries overall, and even less from the large companies. Instead, most employment is "incompetent self-employment" where people run their own business even though they don't have the skills to do so. (<i>Interesting data, though maybe it could be called "sub-optimal self-employment"</i>.) In reality, large companies help a country since they pay more wages than people would otherwise earn and provide better job security. Most of the progress in the last 50 years is from normal economic development, not philanthropy. </li>
<li><b>Housing regulation</b> - people know how much regulation affects costs in the Bay area, but there's similar issues throughout the world. Even India (which has high rates of homelessness) over-regulates housing. The iron-fisted governments prevents people from helping themselves. There should not be zoning laws that prevent tall buildings or multifamily homes. Some cities are getting so expensive that people are moving to cheaper less productive cities.</li>
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<li><i>Caplan thinks that neither cities nor countries should restrict who can move in. It seems reasonable to reduce many zoning restrictions in cities, though there can be collective risks from concentrating so many people in one area. For example, New York has not fared well in this pandemic, imagine if they were even more crowded.</i></li>
<li><i>Expensive cities aren't necessarily more productive, they often pay higher wages for the same output due to higher cost of living and market conditions. If remote work continues to grow, it's possible that cities (and even countries) may not continue to have as disparate wages in the future.</i></li>
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<li><b>World poverty</b> - As discussed in his book "Open Borders", the first world makes poverty worse in the third world by not letting people immigrate freely to the first world. When someone moves to the US they can make 10x more and be 10x as productive. If you focus on why a person is poor, you'll often find it's laws that caused it. If a father favored his son in a competition, people think it's unfair, why do they allow countries to favor their own citizens. Kuwait is better than the West in this matter, they let people immigrate, they just don't give them benefits.</li>
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<li><i>A father can favor his son for his own company, so it seems reasonable that a country can favor their own citizens for the country's own resources. While a pure effective altruist would treat everyone in the world the same, people generally favor their own citizens over citizens of other countries (just like people generally care about "just deserts"). One could even argue that if countries weren't responsible for their own citizens, it would create the wrong national incentives since governments could offload their troubles elsewhere (though this would depend on what benefits the other countries provide to immigrants.)</i></li>
<li><i>Liberal democracies would feel uncomfortable not giving benefits like welfare to legal immigrants, but Caplan the libertarian has less qualms about it, and here it seems his position would help the poor more. But realistically Western countries are unlikely to create separate classes like Kuwait, and otherwise the math of paying for all the benefits can't work out.</i></li>
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He then discussed the most controversial part of his book, the responsibility the poor themselves have.</div>
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<li>When you bring up blame, people say you're blaming the victim, you're blaming the poor. But much of his book blames government regulations, not the poor.</li>
<li>However, one reason for poverty is irresponsible behavior from the poor themselves: The poor have the highest percentage who are out of the workforce, i.e. not even looking for a job. They have more irresponsible sexual behavior and more dangerous alcohol and substance abuse.</li>
<li>What should you do about people causing their own poverty? At minimum you should prioritize other people who are not causing own problems. But also you don't need to feel guilty for people who are messing up own lives.</li>
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<i>He didn't discuss that many in the audience might not believe in free will so they would still think that you should help people who made poor choices. Regardless of one's views on free will, certainly individuals have different natures and nutures and some might struggle to succeed when other people find it easy. While it's fair to factor in how things like welfare can distort incentives to work, it seems extreme to not actively help the poor. </i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-27155494761097304852020-05-22T17:53:00.001-04:002020-05-22T17:57:30.647-04:00Coronavirus - Evidence and Restrictions<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>When learning topics of theoretical interest, one should <a href="https://www.zappable.com/2020/05/science-new-or-true.html">learn from established science</a>. There's enough established science that's interesting, why bother with the speculative stuff? However, when something is practically relevant but the facts are not known, you can't just wait for things to be proven. You need to use the best info and probabilities you have and act accordingly. This is something many people fail to realize.</li>
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<li>For example, the WHO initially <a href="https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152">said</a> there was "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus". Even if there had been no solid evidence, it would still make sense to <i>suspect </i>human-to-human transmission and take proper precautions instead of "not recommend[ing] any specific health measures for travellers" and being "against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China" (<a href="https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronavirus-china/en">link</a>).</li>
<li>The WHO recommendations about masks was even more "radically conservative". They continued to insist for months that there was no evidence that wearing masks would help prevent the spread of the virus. But one can't wait for a double-blind study to test whether masks work. One needs to look at the empirical data available, such as the reduced spread of the virus in mask-wearing countries, or the best arguments available, such as the plausible reduction in the spread of droplets when people wear masks.</li>
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<li>If people had acted earlier in those cases, many lives could have been saved. But it doesn't mean we should now go the opposite extreme and recommend everyone remain in total isolation for months.</li>
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<li>There is reasonable evidence that the virus primarily spreads from being indoors with someone for a while or from things like shouting and singing (besides coughing and sneezing of course). People who are careful could still meet outside in certain cases.</li>
<li>Many people who live alone are both very unlikely to have the virus and very unlikely to spread it to the elderly or other high-risk people. Such individuals shouldn't feel like they're in solitary confinement but should be able to meet with specific individuals in a careful manner. </li>
<li>Governments should not just add every restriction possible and think this will keep people safe. There's a Talmudic statement "כל המוסיף גורע" - "whoever adds [restrictions], detracts" since people will treat all restrictions in the same manner and not be careful even for the important ones. Government policies need to focus on strongly enforcing important restrictions while allowing other low-risk activity to resume.</li>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-4512177178068415192020-05-18T20:45:00.000-04:002020-05-18T20:45:31.854-04:00Science - New or True?<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>People often quote news articles about recent developments in science as if a new Truth was discovered. Health studies are a particularly popular topic.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxZ9h04A0I_-mZrRkRVjFtyazyP-oToo9K_U6bqJyYR3ZZREHnlKbw-Bai6pt8F_59L_HM4LJfBU2oL1IejeZJMm24RFe5fJj3achFnzaEEy9KdEaWjSXWIiQMU-pU_pSBNIADAp-sAo/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Studies show ad lib" border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="607" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxZ9h04A0I_-mZrRkRVjFtyazyP-oToo9K_U6bqJyYR3ZZREHnlKbw-Bai6pt8F_59L_HM4LJfBU2oL1IejeZJMm24RFe5fJj3achFnzaEEy9KdEaWjSXWIiQMU-pU_pSBNIADAp-sAo/w320-h263/studiesshow.png" width="320" /></a></div></li><li>However, most studies are false, and most news articles (particularly headlines) misquote or exaggerate them, and most people misquote or exaggerate the news article or headline. The probability the person is saying something true is low, say 40% * 40% * 40% = 6% (± 5%). <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-zLA-PTP1nLZio9F4ZAmuLbn-qYj3EJU4p_MMLZxWInvWpUmBoOOWsvK-BT0sFgx5V6Wk-YqjAecXRNFEi_63JXXKCZNMROs1AG8RKepBcMVMMBJaCI1AxopgafB_GNRM0WxMW1FHPV8/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="542" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-zLA-PTP1nLZio9F4ZAmuLbn-qYj3EJU4p_MMLZxWInvWpUmBoOOWsvK-BT0sFgx5V6Wk-YqjAecXRNFEi_63JXXKCZNMROs1AG8RKepBcMVMMBJaCI1AxopgafB_GNRM0WxMW1FHPV8/s320/true.png" width="320" /></a></div></li><li>If one wanted to learn about the world, it would be better to learn more established science that is very likely to be True.</li><li>While books and courses are a good way to learn knowledge, people are often interested in short tidbits instead. For example, see all the blogs and magazines that just publish the same thing about cleaning your house or being productive.</li><li>It's less common that media or people discuss established facts in science. But people should feel free to publish, share and discuss interesting things they've found out about nature. While it may not be new it's more likely to be true.</li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-24286043117307394092020-05-17T22:35:00.002-04:002020-05-18T20:46:06.407-04:00Book Review: Meditations<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140449337">Meditations</a> </i>by Marcus Aurelius (Penguin Edition) is the personal diary of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 CE. It's interesting how an emperor from over 18 centuries ago could still be considered relevant today. He was a follower of the Stoic philosophy of life and much of the book consist of his exhortations to himself.</li>
<li>I wouldn't recommend this book as a practical guide to Stoicism however. While the Penguin translation is OK, translations can sound stilted especially when the original text is from 1800 years ago. Some of the book's examples can be hard to relate to today, and other times there are no examples at all. Since the book was just written as notes to himself, it's often disorganized and repetitive.</li>
<li>To get a gist of the work, you can just read excerpts from it, such as Chapter 2 or 9. If you don't care about using a more modern translation or footnotes, you can get free translations online (such as the <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html">MIT version</a>). To get a modern take on Stoicism, I recommend <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic-ebook/dp/B0040JHNQG">A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy</a>.</li>
<li><b style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Themes</b></li>
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<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">Marcus had some doubts about his religious beliefs but argues that his principles are true either way. For example, he often mentions the question of whether nature is unified/intelligent (as the Stoics argued), or random atoms (as per the Epicureans).</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">The key principle of Stoicism is that external circumstances cannot determine how you feel, your own mind is in charge:<br /><i>> Today I escaped from all bothering circumstances - or rather I threw them out. They were nothing external, but inside me, my own judgements.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">Another related principle is that nature is good and there's no reason to be upset about what happens, that's just the way things are. Marcus mentions this often about death, and the final chapter focuses on this topic.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">He often mentions how you shouldn't get too upset about things since in the grand scheme does it really matter? Zoom out and see how small everything is. Also, everyone will be dead soon anyways, and forgotten. But don't worry about that since that's just the course of nature.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">
In man's life his time is a mere instant, his existence a flux, his perception fogged, his whole bodily decomposition rotting, his mind a whirling, his fortune unpredictable, his fame unclear. To put it shortly: all things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit in a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.<br />
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What then can escort us on our way? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. This consists in keeping the divinity within us inviolate and free from harm, master of pleasure and pain, doing nothing without aim, truth, or integrity, and independent of others' action or failure to act. Further, accepting all that happens and is allotted to it as coming from that source which is its own origin: and at all times awaiting death with the glad confidence that it is nothing more than the dissolution of the elements of which ever living creature is composed. Now if there is nothing fearful for the elements themselves in their constant changing of each into another, why should one look anxiously in prospect at the change and dissolution of them all? This is in accordance with nature: and nothing harmful is in accordance with nature. (End of Ch. 2)</blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (Review also posted on Goodreads)</span></i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-23980844011767091262020-05-14T22:38:00.003-04:002020-05-18T20:46:27.329-04:00Google picking<ul><li><i>P-hacking</i> is fishing around in data until you find a "significant" p-value so you can find an exciting claim, publish your paper and get tenure</li><li>Let's define<i> Google-picking</i> as trying out different Google searches until you find a result that says what you want it to say</li><li>To deal with issues like P-hacking, some institutions now require publication of all experiments and analysis performed or pre-registration of the proposed studies</li><li>If someone cites an obscure internet result to support their claim, they could be suspected of <i>Google picking</i> and should be required to "publish" what searches they performed</li><li>In all cases, the claim needs to be evaluated on it's own merit (and one's own searches) regardless of how the data backing it was discovered</li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-3773358560855566912020-05-13T20:23:00.001-04:002020-05-18T20:49:49.437-04:00Studies on Studies on Slack<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>SlateStarCodex published a new essay on <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/12/studies-on-slack/">Studies on Slack</a>, here's a summary with some examples highlighted:</li><ul><li>He discusses how competitive pressure can make things improve, but if there's some "slack" from this pressure, an organism or organization can pursue longer-term goals.</li><li>Starts by discussing evolution, but then gives examples in Capitalism, history, Civilization (the game), civilization (itself), the spread of ideas, etc. </li><li>Gives example of Italy vs. Switzerland to suggest that maybe a little warfare can help with ideas.</li><li>Gives example of Sears where apparently the CEO thought there should be more internal competition, but it didn't work out.<br /><br /></li></ul><li>I don't think the Italy vs. Switzerland example demonstrates much</li><ul><li>it's not a large sample, there were many other differences between them, and the Swiss produced stuff too</li><li>It would always have been better and led to more progress if countries didn't kill each other and looked for other ways to compete, like the modern Western world does (or like Isaiah envisioned)</li></ul><li>Trade is great but it also has many inefficiencies since it requires negotiations to get the right price and diligence to evaluate the service done, so adding too much intra-company competition sounds like a bad idea.</li><ul><li>A company succeeds in part because people work together for a certain goal without trying to cut corners at every opportunity.</li><li>If everything is entirely based on getting a good performance evaluation, there will be too many attempts to game it. </li><li>On the other hand, if there's no evaluations and the company just relies on selfless dedication, free-riders will bring the company down in the long term.</li><li>An economy overall requires even more "evaluation" (i.e negotiated prices) since it's an even larger group where people feel even less commitment to the collective and where there's less implicit evaluation of one's performance. This is why communism failed, but a small startup can succeed</li></ul></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-5588674886096547812020-05-12T22:17:00.001-04:002020-05-22T17:56:05.180-04:00Write something each day<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>I should try to post something short and quick each day</li>
<li>It can be a random thought or something interesting I've read</li>
<li>To make it easy, I'll just aim for 3-4 bullet points in each post and 3-4 posts a week</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-18130683449708037362017-07-05T23:23:00.000-04:002017-09-10T09:51:31.417-04:00Why Do Things Cost So Much?<em>A few months ago Slate Star codex wrote a post about <a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/">cost disease</a>. I figured I'd publish some notes about it in a couple of posts.</em><br/><br/><strong>Why do the following cost so much today in the US?</strong><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Education</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Healthcare</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Public infrastructure</span></li><br/></ul><br/>(Housing - not included since growth in prices seem more reasonable and easier to explain.)<br/><br/><strong>Compare current US costs with:</strong><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cost in other countries - US may have slightly higher GDP per capita, but not enough to justify spending 2x - 5x more than other developed countries. </span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cost in the past.</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bonus - compare with cost of goods and services in other sectors (where the markets appear to work better).</span></li><br/></ul><br/><strong>Two questions:</strong><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Where is the increased spending going?</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Why is this happening (especially compared to other countries)</span></li><br/></ul><br/><strong>Where is the money going?</strong><br/><br/><span style="font-weight: 400;">In general, the US doesn't appear to be getting higher quality results than other countries. So where is the extra spending going?</span><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Administrator bloat</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">More people employed to do the same things (c</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ompliance, redundancy, etc.)</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Increased salaries and benefits</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">More "features" offered, even if overall outcomes aren't improved</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">More people getting services</span></li><br/></ul><br/><strong>Why is this happening?</strong><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Powerful public sector unions cause increased costs:</span><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Higher salaries and benefits</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Extra employees</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Enforce extra requirements, restrictions on automation, etc.</span></li><br/> <li>Leaves the question - how did they get more powerful in the US of all places?</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Government system </span><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">More divided</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Common law? (See UK which also has increased expenses)</span></li><br/> <li>Politics is influenced more by money and special interests?</li><br/> <li>(See <a href="https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/02/10/why-we-cant-have-nice-things-2/">The American Interest</a>)</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Increased regulations - </span>This can explain some of the changes over time, but is the US more extreme than other countries?</li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lawsuits - In the US, people sue more often and for money, which raises costs:</span><br/><ul><br/> <li>Increased fees to balance risks of lawsuits</li><br/> <li>Expensive "defensive" actions to prevent lawsuits</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Salaries increased to compete with other higher paying jobs.</span><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">This increase in salaries is greater than the GDP per capita difference between the US and Europe.</span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">See post on higher </span><a href="https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/high-us-health-care-spending-is-quite-well-explained-by-its-high-material-standard-of-living/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Actual Individual Consumption</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in the US. </span></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Changed values </span><br/><ul><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Have more money to spend so spend a greater proportion of it on health and education since they're important, and other things are cheap anyways. </span></li><br/> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Believe more in helping everyone achieve the same goals. Overall results may not show great improvement, but spend a lot on people who would have received less in the past.</span></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/>The US is supposed to be more capitalist than European countries so one would expect it to have greater competition and reduced union power. However public sector unions appear to have greater power in the US than they do in other countries. This seems to be partially connected to the US political system and perhaps also connected to certain aspects of US culture.<br/><br/>In a future post, I plan to look into the specific areas in more detail.<br/><br/><strong>Todo</strong><br/><br/>If anyone has the time, it would be nice to examine the evidence more carefully:<br/><ul><br/> <li>Find existing research on this topic.</li><br/> <li>Compare different countries and US states to see how spending changes based on specific factors.</li><br/> <li>Find people with personal experience who can explain some the differences between the US and elsewhere, or between today and the past.</li><br/></ul><br/> <br/><br/> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-27055434516455792382014-01-08T22:40:00.000-05:002017-09-10T09:51:31.387-04:00The Learneroo Blog<p>I haven’t been posting much here lately, but check out the Learneroo blog for posts on Education:<br/><strong><a href="http://www.learneroo.com/blog">learneroo.com/blog</a></strong></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-77581727432730902812013-09-23T23:39:00.000-04:002017-09-10T09:51:31.373-04:00Requirements and Product Planning<p>I found a college paper of mine on Requirements and Product Planning, so I figured I’d publish it online. You can view it on Scribd <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/170729666/Requirements-and-Product-Planning">here</a> or embedded at the bottom. Here’s a full outline (lightly edited) that I wrote before writing the paper:</p><br/><h2>Requirements and Product Planning Outline</h2><br/><p><em>Short product design plans combined with prototypes and diagrams are usually more effective means for finding and communicating the plan of a product than detailed written requirements. </em></p><br/><ul><br/><li>Finding and communicating the right requirements are the most important part of a project. It is therefore crucial to find the right approach.</li><br/><li>The earlier you mess up, the worse is it is. The early decisions decide the direction of everything. So if you make wrong choice and only discover later, you will have to throw away a large amount of work. Studies showing how crucial the requirements stage is.</li><br/><li>Definition of requirement – what the product must do to solve a user’s need.<br/>A full requirement answers these questions (Motorola):<p></p><br/><ul><br/><li>Who it is for (E.g. The world, doctors, 54-year olds)</li><br/><li>What it will do (E.g. Actions, results..)</li><br/><li>Describe the full user experience and accurately represent the behavior of the software</li><br/><li>Additional questions – Where, When and How well.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>The purpose of requirements:<br/><ul><br/><li>To accurately describe user experience and software behavior so all parties can understand it.<br/><ul><br/><li>The requirements should be able to be communicated to customers, engineers, marketing and any other parties so they all know what the product will be.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>To aid in finding the right product and refine until satisfactory<br/><ul><br/><li>Sometimes will want to adjust the product, so need to specify first and then refine the requirements before building the actual product.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>Ways to find ideas and determine the requirements<br/><ul><br/><li>Market research tools and their limitations<br/><ul><br/><li>Customer surveys and interviews</li><br/><li>Analytics, data mining and social analysis</li><br/><li>Site visits and focus groups</li><br/><li>Usability testing.</li><br/><li>Competitive analysis</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/><p>This research may help gather data, but it will not determine what features or product to build. To determine what to build need to go beyond that.</p><br/><ul><br/><li>Ideas and testing them with users<br/><ul><br/><li>Need to determine how technology will be used to solve certain problems and what the user experience will be.</li><br/><li>To do this, need to recognize the problem and understand what potential technology can be used to solve it.</li><br/><li>This is how practically all successful tech companies built their products, not with market research. For example:<br/><ul><br/><li>The Google founders invented a new algorithm to ranks search results which made them more relevant and higher-quality than what existed before.</li><br/><li>Facebook developed a successful social network by figuring out what people would want most long-term in such a site. For example, they placed certain restrictions on users (like a real-name policy or set profile page) that helped them become successful.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/><p>They didn’t use market research, they were able to figure out what people would want and how to do it with technology.</p><br/><ul><br/><li>Ideas are nice, but need to verify if they will work, since gain nothing from products that people do not want (at least in capitalist countries!)</li><br/></ul><br/><p>As mentioned above, a primary purpose of requirements is to be able to refine product early in game to avoid large costs later.</p><br/><ul><br/><li>Approaches to formulating and communicating requirements:<br/><ul><br/><li>Full, formal text requirements (Motorola book)<br/><ul><br/><li>This used to be the standard corporate practice in big companies.</li><br/><li>These formal requirements are similar to an engineering process of e.g. a bridge or building.</li><br/><li>In full, it can include five steps of engineering:<br/><ul><br/><li>Elicitation – Discover requirements by consulting stakeholders.</li><br/><li>Analysis and Negotiation – checks if requirements meet certain criteria, such as consistency, completeness and feasibility.</li><br/><li>Documentation – for communicating them.</li><br/><li>Validation – Check if it describes the system well and if there are problems.</li><br/><li>Management – Manage the requirements. To track and develop complex requirements, can use a Database Requirements Management Tool, which provides various benefits. (Motorola)</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>Full prototype (Inspired book)<br/><ul><br/><li>Create a throwaway prototype (using tools that make it fast) to show the various activities that will be possible. Parts that cannot be built into prototype should be simulated.<br/><ul><br/><li>“Realistic representation of the proposed user experience”</li><br/><li>Comprehensive coverage of the site – Prototype “should represent the functional requirements, the information architecture, the interaction design, and the visual design of the user experience.”</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>Another possibility is to use an evolutionary approach. Develop a very simple version of the site and then use that as basis for the actual site. However, if the foundations of the site are not well-designed, the site will always have problems.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>Proposed middle approach<br/><ul><br/><li>Short product design description, combined with wireframe/prototype to show overall idea and diagrams or visual representations (such as UML). Instead of full text requirements, can just use “Use Cases”.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>Comparing the effectiveness of different approaches:<br/><ul><br/><li>For discovering the right features and product, and testing them</li><br/><li>For communicating to relevant parties (so they know what to do)</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li><b>Each approach analyzed:</b><br/><ul><br/><li>Full text requirements<br/><ul><br/><li>Pros – Everything is spelled out. People should know what specifically needs to be done and when meet the criteria.<br/>Sometimes it is necessary to have very specific requirements – for example, if very specific critical criteria need to be met, such as software for a bank or nuclear plant.</li><br/><li><a name="_GoBack"></a>Cons – Takes time to create, complex, but may be difficult to understand. Cannot test with users.<br/>The fundamental issue with full requirements is that they assume “It is possible to determine a stable set of requirements before system design and implementation starts.” With many web products nowadays, that is not exactly true.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>Full prototype<br/><ul><br/><li>Pros – Clearly shows how it works and this can be used to communicate well with all parties. Can also test product on actual users before building the real thing.</li><br/><li>Cons – Can take a while to make and is redundant with later efforts. Additional problem is if it does too many details such as the UI, it will be describing “How” to do it before the “What” that requirements are supposed to be focused on.<a href="http://www.zappable.com/#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup><br/></sup></a></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>Proposed best way – Compromise, but focused on the lean way – Minimum prototype, minimum product design plan (focused on use cases), clear diagrams, etc. to show all aspects of product.<br/><ul><br/><li>Pros – Can efficiently create it, it can communicate effectively, can help find the right ideas, more flexible, allows for some testing before create product.</li><br/><li>Why this approach is better than long detailed text requirements:<br/><ul><br/><li>This approach fits better in web age as opposed to box shipped stuff. Since can iterate and develop new features quickly, do not have time for long requirement process.</li><br/><li>Use cases and prototypes (and software tests) combined can meet the needs of requirements. The use cases describe the overall needs and the prototype can show the different parties what the product will do to meet them. Additional details can be shown with basic charts, but extensive detail is not necessary.</li><br/><li>Outlines and visual charts are better since they communicate the ideas more quicker than long text. They can also be made more quickly, since one does not need to “textualize” the ideas by turning them into paragraphs.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>However, this approach has some of the cons of each approach above, so need to find right balance. For example, can make sure prototype is built quickly with a focus on just communicating what the product will do.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/><li>While standard practice may have been to follow more formal and longer requirements system, this is becoming less common. Part of the reason for this is the overall differences between agile and traditional development methods:<br/><ul><br/><li>Agile methods are adaptive rather than predictive.</li><br/><li>Agile methods are people-oriented rather than process-oriented.</li><br/></ul><br/></li><br/></ul><br/><p>As mentioned, this is partially due to changing nature of web products where everything must move much faster. There is much less reason to use a complex formal process for developing products (especially consumer ones) on the web. Some companies may be used to older methods, or they may be developing products where it is important to get everything right. But this approach is no longer needed for most consumer software products.</p><br/><br/><b><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/170729666/Requirements-and-Product-Planning">View the full paper on Scribd</a></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-57953002861760299192013-09-21T23:38:00.000-04:002017-09-10T09:51:31.344-04:00JOBS Act and the Crowd-Sourced Startup<p>In April 2012, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpstart_Our_Business_Startups_Act">JOBS Act</a> was signed into law, but the SEC has been slow to implement it. The first part of the act will finally become active tomorrow, which will allow startups to publicly announce that they’re fundraising. However, they will still only be able to raise money from accredited investors, i.e. <abbr title="people earning more than $200k a year, or with a net worth over $1 million besides their house">rich people</abbr>.</p><br/><p>Phase III of the JOBS Act will allow crowdfunding – ordinary people will be able to invest small amounts of their income in startups (see <a href="http://www.zappable.com/2012/03/crowdfunding-passes-in-the-senate/">Crowdfunding passes in the Senate</a>). This will help many small companies and startups raise money from a large number of people. Currently, a person or company can raise money on a site like Kickstarter, but can only offer backers rewards (like their product or tshirts), but not equity in the startup. Imagine how many more people will be interested in backing startups if they can hope to get rich from doing so! This will raise the risk of scams though, which is why there will be various regulations on crowdfunding once it is (eventually) implemented.</p><br/><p>Startups will be able to raise money from the public, and could also use their “crowd” of investors to help to <em>do</em> things for their company. For example, a company could perform market research with their crowd investors, or ask them to help promote the company’s product on social media. <a href="http://www.quirky.com/">Quirky</a> uses its crowd to help decide what physical products to create, so tech companies could consult with their crowd to help decide on new features for an app.</p><br/><p>Perhaps a company’s crowd could be consulted with to work on a specific task, such as creating some icons for a site or improving its SEO. Crowd investors will want to be compensated for large tasks that they do, but it could still be easier to hire someone already invested in the company than an external consultant. In fact, maybe this work could be an alternative form of crowdfunding – instead of investing in a company, people could contribute work and get a share of equity. This would differ from standard employment for equity since it the work would be distributed to a large number of people. While this could make collaboration more difficult, many open-source projects have been successful with a large number of contributors, so perhaps startups can do the same thing.</p><br/><p>Paul Graham once <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3893783">said</a>:</p><br/><blockquote><p>I don’t think crowdfunding is good for startups. For startups, having large numbers of investors is bad, and having inexperienced investors is bad. So having a very large number of inexperienced investors is the worst scenario possible.</p></blockquote><br/><p> </p><br/><p>While too many ordinary investors could be a nuisance, a large group could by filtered through a crowdfunding site and can offer more value than standard rich investors. This may be why Paul Graham <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4412027">accepted</a> the crowd-sourced startup <a href="https://fundersclub.com/">FundersClub</a> into Ycombiantor. Startups may even start crowdfunding because of the product and marketing opportunities it will provide.</p><br/><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-79860175638239282562013-09-21T23:37:00.000-04:002017-09-10T09:51:31.331-04:00Guide to Learning Programming<p>I’ve written about learning programming before and created a module on it <a href="http://www.learneroo.com/courses/12">on Learneroo.com</a>, but its also useful to have one post that helps you get started programming. I wrote such a post recently on Lifehack:<br/><strong><a href="http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/your-guide-learning-programming.html">Guide to Learning Programming</a></strong></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-56023502743623862622013-06-18T23:36:00.000-04:002017-09-10T09:51:31.321-04:00Announcing Learneroo.com<div class="entry-content"><br/><p>I’ve written many posts on Zappable about education and technology, but I was always interested in doing more than just writing. I recently began working on such a project, one that will let people learn in a more interactive manner:</p><br/><h2><a href="http://learneroo.com/">Learneroo.com – Learn by Doing</a></h2><br/><p>It’s still a very early version, but hopefully it will improve quickly! Since I’m now trying to practice much of what I preached, I copied some posts from here to the <a href="http://www.learneroo.com/blog">Learneroo blog</a>.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-74501800668317412152013-02-20T22:35:00.000-05:002017-09-10T09:55:10.726-04:00The Automated Store – Chart<strong>Update: See the <a href="http://automatedstore.learneroo.com/">AutomatedStore</a></strong><br />
<br />
In <a href="http://www.zappable.com/2013/01/the-automated-store-the-plan/">previous</a> <a href="http://www.zappable.com/2013/01/the-automated-store-basic-crud/" title="The Automated Store – Accessing Data">posts</a>, I wrote about the creation of an automated store machine in the 1900′s. In the chart below, I have jumped ahead to when the actual machine is first installed. I think this chart can help people get an overview of certain concepts by seeing them in physical form. I created the rough sketch below with a pencil, but when I get better drawing software I will be able to create a digital version, which will be updated with color and more.<br />
<strong>Machine Overview</strong><br />
While initially the main purpose of the machine was so the store owner could track inventory, many new features were added. This picture focuses on customers who which to view the inventory/catalog information themselves.<br />
The customers enter their information by punching holes into a “HTTP” card they are viewing. This card then goes into the Router which cuts it up and sends it to the appropriate controller. For example, if a user asked to views product #43, the router will pass “43″ to the Product Controller’s viewing arm.<br />
The controller will then send this information to the Active Record Player, which will send back the relevant data, as seen in the previous post. In this case, it would send back a copy of product card #43. The controller’s Action View will then take over and combine the data with the relevant templates to create a page. This will involve cutting up the data-card and inserting the information into the correct location on the “view product” catalog page. The page will then be combined with some general headers and some styling layers from the assets box, and then the whole thing will be pressed into a single page and sent back to the customer.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1479684534293351979.post-43249403958444621982013-01-13T22:33:00.001-05:002017-09-10T09:58:08.189-04:00The Automated Store - Accessing Data<strong>Update: See <a href="https://www.learneroo.com/modules/3/nodes/87">this page on Learneroo</a>, and see the full tutorial on the <a href="https://www.learneroo.com/modules/130">Rails Model and Data</a>. </strong><br />
<br />
<em>This is part two in a series about a mad engineer and the machine-framework he created in the early 1900′s. Any resemblance to modern frameworks, living or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Server_Pages">dead</a>, is purely coincidental. </em><br />
<br />
In the <a href="http://www.zappable.com/2013/01/the-automated-store-the-plan/">first post </a>of this series, the store owner, Jim Blackford, outlined the basic requirement he would need for Version 1 of the Automated Store Machine. We’ll quickly review his requirements:<br />
<blockquote>
<strong>Blackford: </strong>Well, I want to keep track of my inventory. So I guess it should let me create inventory records and store them well. The I should be able to access them at any time to read them, update them, or delete them. And it should keep track of how much inventory I have, and let me modify that when I get a new delivery or sell an item.<br />
<br />
<strong>Dr. Hanson: </strong>Crud, that’s a lot of work. But me and my assistant can get started on building that machine. We’ll keep you posted on our progress…</blockquote>
Update: See <a href="https://www.learneroo.com/modules/3/nodes/87">this page on Learneroo</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0