771400+ entries in 0.517s
mircea_popescu: the original argument against moving away from latin service in church. "what and lose all
that abstraction power ?!?!"
benkay: hah i get it fills
their brains with ideas
they can't handle
mircea_popescu: benkay
the original argument against
teaching
the plebs
to write.
benkay: some optimization point on
the curve, etc
benkay: there being a relationship between abstraction power of words and
the number of maintained in brain on mental horsepower.
greenspan_fan: why would you need so many words? because
these are
the features
that you use
to interpret your environment, and sometimes survival means knowing light, wet snow from permafrost
mircea_popescu: that's why
the scapegoat is NOT a "horrible crime" in a 1700s culture, but quite fucking required, sane and reasonable.
greenspan_fan: what is cool is
that
there's all
these (possibly apocryphal) stories about how, say,
the inuit have 47 different words for snow
mircea_popescu: all flow from
trying
to keep
the machine as sharp as possible.
mircea_popescu: and a whole slew of
things such as group selection, and marginalisation, etc
greenspan_fan: additionally, people reinforce
their belief on correct predictions and
the people who are bad at
thinking in
terms of a-->b
tend
to starve vs. write almanacks
mircea_popescu: that's why it
takles 197 fucking years
to even compute anything usable.
benkay: which is
that most people have just
totally fucked substrates for running
these operations
greenspan_fan: hence abstractly;
then you can form causal relationships between your observations
benkay: oh man but
this system has a horrible problem
mircea_popescu: greenspan_fan
that's
the beauty of natural language vs math.
mircea_popescu: but it IS a better fit
than
the modern climate science.
mircea_popescu: so a bunch of derps cca 1700 who are desperately aware of farming, cause
their life depends on it
mircea_popescu: let's say
that we are chemical machines which fit a very primitive lua.
greenspan_fan: additionally, all
the fancy numerical methods we use are older
than
the farmer's almanac, or close
to
benkay: i operate from
the basis
that we're just chemical machines.
mircea_popescu: you perhaps imagine mankind hasn't been using computers before
the numeric machines.
this would be false.
mircea_popescu: i
think you underestimate
the majorly powerful computer natural language is.
benkay: okay out of curiosity, on what bases were
the authors of
this almanac predicting?
mircea_popescu: not knowing you can do complex poly fitting means you'll just draw a line
through
the datapoints
greenspan_fan: I'm doing some modelling
too, but it's mostly catalogue work for sears
Vexual: overfitting is imaining where
the diamonds are without sighting
them?
mircea_popescu: greenspan_fan nah,
they simply don't know math.
that's
their saving grace.
greenspan_fan: well,
the book looks at far less data, and perhaps
those parameters are better selected
mircea_popescu: benkay
the book is better, strictly because it doesn't have
the
tools
to overfit with.
benkay: i don't really expect accuracy on predictions of
the behavior of a really complex multidimensional set of oscillators and dampers (see: planetary processes of weather etc) with
totally unknown coupling from a set of modelers whose heads gotta be up
they asses much less a book from a ways back
mircea_popescu: it'll drain somewhere. you don't really want
to buy
the riverbed, i guess, but if you disperse your ownership you gotta average out ok.
mircea_popescu: obviously some places will be better and others worse, but we're discussing
the birdseye view here
mircea_popescu: im not a geologist employed by a venture fund
trying
to buy siberian lands, so what do i care about
the water
table et all.
benkay: mircea_popescu i was going
to bring up water
table problems but just freeze a berm around your mining works el oh el oh el
Vexual: china is buying our arable land like
theres no
tommorrow
greenspan_fan: Vexual: ozone depletion, so you get (more) cancer w/ your
tan? I haven't looked at it in years
though
benkay: gotta drain
the
tundra, greenspan_fan.
benkay: eh not
terribly worried about
the downside. i know it's pretty bad.
greenspan_fan: I'd
take it more seriously if all
the people involved were buying up russian and canadian farmland
greenspan_fan: if climate change worries you, looking at
the reports
they don't really publicize
that some places stand
to benefit
benkay: not really buying
that an almanac is more accurate
mircea_popescu: they overfit
to all hell, which is
the bane of noobs and politicos in science.
greenspan_fan: "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his
trunk" -- Abraham Lincoln
greenspan_fan: stochastically? climate science makes bad predictions due
to overfitting
benkay: i'm going
to go ahead and guess
they're both kinda just stochastically wrong
mircea_popescu: This exceptionally cold and snowy winter has shown
that government climate scientists were dead wrong when it came
to predicting just how cold
this winter would be, while
the 197-year old Farmers’ Almanac predicted
this winter would be “bitterly cold”.
kakobrekla: raw potato will make my
time even shorter
kakobrekla: i would drink some voda and instant coffee
to
toast if i had some
BingoBoingo: kakobrekla: Congratulations on defending
the slander of your soul from
the indignity of being allowed on Bitcointalk
Vexual: derpage be in
the feed
kakobrekla: anyone with half a brain is not
there.
Vexual: i lik ethis gox,bum, just
trading
mircea_popescu: greenspan_fan nope, you can't "analyze"
the blockchain,
greenspan_fan: like I mean, once you have a certain amount of information about
the users inferences between
two addresses becomes much more accurate
kakobrekla: yeah well ill ban
them back if
they come here!!11
kakobrekla: Sorry kakobrekla, you are banned from posting or sending personal messages on
this forum.
greenspan_fan: idk if it's completely fungible; you can analyze
the blockchain, right? and idk if
there's a mixer
that you can
trust.
greenspan_fan: or, if you prefer,
technical people looking
to profit off of
technical incompetence
Vexual: im just
talking
to myself
Duffer1: i keep checking log
to see if you're
talking
to someone i have on ignore..
Luke-Jr: >_<
that SubsidyAlgo patch broke it
Vexual: can we get
these guys on chan?
Vexual: did
they move
to shibuya?
Vexual: KRS-One
that stream would be a lot more interesting with godzilla
Vexual: its all good in
the neighbourhood mano
decimation: I sold my house and gave
the proceeds
to Karapales why oh why
decimation: lol all
the sad sacks whining on
the ustream
AusBitBank: lol nah I cut
ties with
that
trainwreck long ago
Vexual: unless you're affiliated with gox
these dyas? :)
decimation: the irony of
this whole affair is
that while various us states are contemplating idiotic bitcoin regulation, actual bitcoin villians are scamming funds from us citizens
Vexual: roastu ducku
tabemashteka?
cazalla: even if
they had my coins, i wouldn't sit out
there all day
decimation: needs more bums
too. I bet most bums in Japan are
too polite
to be much use here
though
Vexual: can we get btc girls in
tokyo?
kakobrekla: then why
the fuck did you have money
there
kakobrekla: lol
that guy "we knew mtgox is idiots"