Fallible Ideas Unstructured Discussion (late 2016)
If you want a quick discussion without worrying about how to format self-contained emails with quotes, post here. You can ask about or debate anything because my philosophy is helpful for understanding all topics.
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just ignore her. i've deleted some of her comments now and i'm adding some new security measures.
> just ignore her. i've deleted some of her comments now and i'm adding some new security measures.
Will the security measures restrict the freedom for the rest of us?
no.
Rami said that I am causing more problems by commenting here about the incident and that I should have emailed you. I told him I am not allowed to email you.
What should I do?
you can email me.
I was reading Principles.com a lot yesterday.. I wanted you to commment about it.
Strange co-incidence that you read it at the same time.
i haven't read much of it. he says some good things. i guess he does them within some small, parochial limits, which sucks but beats competitors who don't do them at all.
also Dalio is a lot less ambitious than me. he works on easier and less important problems. so much lower standards can be somewhat effective for him and unappealing to me.
https://www.principles.com/#Introduction
> Until recently, I didn’t write out these principles because I felt that it was presumptuous for me to tell others what would work best for them.
jeez, so bad.
> I also believe that those principles that are most valuable to each of us come from our own encounters with reality and our reflections on these encounters not from being taught and simply accepting someone else’s principles.
this is bad writing. wordy, hard-to-read, long sentence.
he must have hired an editor. so i guess his editor is bad. some easy improvements:
1) break into 2 sentences
2) fix awful, confusing structure in first half
3) fix awful, confusing structure in second half
4) replace some fancy, prestige phrases
quick result:
> I also believe each person's most valuable principles come from his own life experience combined with thinking about his experiences. Being taught principles, or accepting someone else's principles, is much less effective.
the content is still false, and there's room for improvement (esp getting rid of the repetition of "experience[s]"), but it's significantly more readable now.
What do you think of the youtube comments below his video?
I found them to be too toxic. They will burn civilization down if they get a chance..
> What do you think of the youtube comments below his video?
didn't read. i have read some youtube comments in the past. i know it's not the place to get quality economics comments and didn't have some other reason to read them. i am unsurprised by your negative experience with the comments.
https://www.principles.com/#Part-2
> At that time the Beatles had made a trip to India to learn how to meditate, which triggered my interest, so I learned how to meditate. It helped me think more clearly and creatively, so I’m sure that enhanced my enjoyment of, and success at, learning. Unlike in high school, in college I did very well.
Dalio advocates college and *meditation*. ewww
skimmed some more. lots of bad things. some good and ok things too.
maybe the most interesting thing about it is this:
i think most friendly, positive readers i have basically can't tell the difference between it and my essays. they read superficially and lots of my principles look similar to Dalio's when you gloss over the details.
and when i get hostile reactions, it's often cuz they noticed one particular unconventional idea which i said clearly, not because they understand much, they just see i said a big picture conclusion they disagree with, e.g. that marriage is majorly flawed. Dalio, on the other hand, pretty much only says bland, inoffensive things (nothing that clashes with our culture like "marriage is majorly flawed" does).
W. Edwards Deming quote
In The New Economics: For Industry, Government, Education, W. Edwards Deming wrote (https://goo.gl/Ne23RT):
> Suppose that you tell me that my job is to wash this table. You show to me soap, water, and a brush. I still have no idea what the job is. I must know what the table will be used for after I wash it. Why wash it? Will the table be used to set food on? If so, it is clean enough now. If it is to be used for an operating table, I must wash the table several times with scalding water, top, bottom, and legs; also the floor below it and around it.
@TEDTalks wrote on Twitter:
> Is it better to take one long vacation or a few short ones? Let's check the research: http://ideas.ted.com/the-secrets-to-a-truly-restorative-vacation/
Translation:
"Are you are super conventional and super bad at introspection? Now let's look at broad demographic data to make your life decisions!"
This is supposed to be a thread where anyone can just start discussion about anything?
It's not accessible and that defeats the purpose.
The only people who would post here are people who already know about it isn't on recent posts anymore.
I think you should put a link to this page on your side bar so it's accessible to new visitors.
it's linked at http://fallibleideas.com/discussion-info
guess sidebar is a good idea tho. i'll make a new empty one first.
eeeee senpai said it was a good idea ^.^
(brought to you from watching tons of anime lately, and still trying to work out how to think about someone who I respect)
hai
Philip E. Gibbs on "crackpots who were right"
Philip E. Gibbs has a neat collection of blog posts on the subject of "Crackpots who were right"
> The most thought-provoking aspect of the case of J Harlen Bretz is the extent to which geologists ganged up against him and tried to publically humiliate him. They used heavy tactics to ensure that anyone who might have supported him was silenced. When we look back today we see this as shameful behaviour.
Philip E. Gibbs on "crackpots who were right"
Updated (non-archive.org) link: https://vixra.wordpress.com/category/crackpots-who-were-right/
“crackpots” who were right 16: Barbara McClintock
"“crackpots” who were right 16: Barbara McClintock"
Barbara McClintock apparently discovered something fundamental in genetics and yet the reception to her work was "puzzlement and hostility".
She wrote:
> Over the years I have found that it is difficult if not impossible to bring to consciousness of another person the nature of his tacit assumptions when, by some special experiences, I have been made aware of them. This became painfully evident to me in my attempts during the 1950s to convince geneticists that the action of genes had to be and was controlled...
Wikipedia says:
> McClintock had thrown Lederberg and his colleagues out [of her lab] after half an hour 'because of their arrogance. She was intolerant of arrogance ... She felt she had crossed a desert alone and no one had followed her.'"
Nice metaphor about crossing a desert alone.
Philip E. Gibbs on "crackpots who were right"
https://vixra.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/%e2%80%9ccrackpots%e2%80%9d-who-were-right-15-galileo-galilei/
> In 1600 Giordano Bruno was burnt at the state for his heretical view that the stars are distant suns with other Earth’s in orbit.
https://vixra.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/%e2%80%9ccrackpots%e2%80%9d-who-were-right-14-carl-woese/
> Other[ scientists] followed with a hostility that shocked Woese. Because they saw [Woese] as a physicist rather than a microbiologist they did not hesitate to call him a crank. They did not believe that the RNA studies he had carried out could be used to classify bacteria. They did not even bother to look at the data.
vixra.org
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-serious-papers-on-viXra
Philip Gibbs made his own version of arxiv.org called vixra.org. arXiv apparently has some authority-based conditions for publishing:
> Independent researchers are asked to find a trusted endorser to allow their work to be submitted, but endorsers are threatened that if they allow inapropriate papers to be submitted they will lose privelidges.
viXra, on the other hand, includes papers that arXiv rejects. Gibbs continues (bold mine):
> Some people [say that] viXra should filter out the most obviously crazy submissions. There are good reasons why we dont see it that way. *There is no sharp line between work that is crazy and work that is revolutionary that can be easily determined...*
True.
> At viXra we recognise that even papers which do not seem to be serious can in fact be very valuable. The case of Georg Ohm shows how easy it can be to lose a good idea if research that seems crazy is rejected. Ohm was criticised because he introduced theoretical ideas into his research that more experienced scientists of his time could see were wrong. Luckily it was eventaully recognised that he had nevertheless performed some remarkable experiments that established the relationship between voltage and current in resistive materials. Now we call this Ohm's law and name the unit of resistance in his honour. *It can only be wondered how much scientific progress has been delayed when many other good ideas were lost in this way especially in recent times as resistance to independent research has grown.*
Good point.
Calculate the square root with arithmetic and harmonic means
Here's a neat way to calculate the square root of a number, explained by Philip Gibbs
Basically you start with two numbers close together whose product equals the number you want the square root of, then
> keep replacing the two numbers with their arithmetic and harmonic means. This will converge rapidly to the square root of s
I tried it with 40 and it did converge pretty rapidly.
I started with 5 * 8 = 40.
Then I replaced 5 with the average (arithmetic mean) of 5 & 8 (13/2) and 8 with the harmonic mean of 5 and 8 (explained on the link above). The two numbers are now:
13/2, 80/13
I repeated the process and got 329/52, 2080/329 (~6.327 and ~6.322). The true answer is between them and starts with 6.3245...
According to an answer on math.stackexchange.com:
> This is essentially the same as the Babylonian method for computing square roots, which is itself the same as Newton's method using the function f(t)=t^2−x.
According to Wikipedia:
> The number of correct digits of the approximation roughly doubles with each iteration.
Philip Gibbs on the lack of a foundation of mathematics
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-foundation-of-mathematics-1/answer/Philip-Gibbs-1 (bold mine)
> I dont think there is such a think as a fundamental base on which mathematics is built...
> What makes concepts interesting and useful in mathematics is not how good their base definition is, but rather their universality. You may think the best definition of PI is in terms of a circle, but it could also be defined in terms of infinite series or the period of functions obeying simple differential equations. What makes PI so interesting is that it comes up all over mathematics, not just in geometry. This is what we mean by universality. A mathematical concept is judged on how universally useful it is, not on how basic and simple its definition is.
> **So mathematics itself also has many different starting points but they all lead to the same thing.** Some starting points or axioms may be more convenient given our current preferred mathematical interests, but they are not really more fundamental than any other starting point that lead to the same body of mathematical ideas.
#8174 right. philosophy is similar.
How do you distinguish a good scientific hypothesis from a crack-pot theory?
https://www.quora.com/What-distinguishes-Chariots-of-the-Gods-from-Nemesis-as-hypotheses/answer/Philip-Gibbs-1 (bold mine)
> "How do you distinguish a good scientific hypothesis from a crack-pot theory?"
> I don't particularly like the derogatory term "crackpot" but it usually refers to someone whose theory is clearly wrong, but who refuses to accept the evidence. The first thing that people need to appreciate is that scientific ideas do not fall neatly into two piles; one of crackpot theories and one of good science. There is a continuous spectrum of possibilities that lie in between.
> You can't distinguish a crackpot by the fact that they compare themselves to Einstein, or because they claim the establishment is against them. You can't score points against them because they use Word to write their papers instead of TeX (yes people do seriously claim that this is significant) or anything else of that sort. You can't say that someone is a crackpot because their theory does not make a testable prediction either. Scientific papers that make predictions are classified as phenomenology and the rest are either experimental or pure theory.
(Tangent: I thought phenomenology was about philosophy and consciousness, and not about making predictions.)
> There are plenty of theory papers that remain very remote from observation at the present time, especially in high energy physics and cosmology. That does not make them pseudoscience.
> **The only way to identify a crackpot is to demonstrate that they are definitely wrong and that they disregard valid criticisms.**
Nice criteria.
#8166
> eeeee senpai said it was a good idea ^.^
> (brought to you from watching tons of anime lately, and still trying to work out how to think about someone who I respect)
I want to add to this, since it could mean some bad stuff on the face of it
like "senpai" could imply thinking of a teacher/master position, where I'm taking the role of obedient student, some anime do use it like that and I didn't say what I had been watching
I have this more in mind:
From The Fountainhead
> But when Roark looked at him with approval, when Roark smiled, when Roark praised one of his articles, Heller felt the strangely clean joy of a sanction that was neither a bribe nor alms.
I also went with the anime reference in part because I want to be more light-hearted about philosophy, I want to learn it in a way that's fun, and anime is fun :3
I think this is an important goal people miss, I get the impression that a number of people who post here or on FI find the experience stressful rather than joyful
Trello is for processes that you're not sure yet about the right way to manage.
I've never used Trello but here's an HN commenter on why he likes it:
> [What] makes [Trello] so amazing is how domain-agnostic it is. They refuse at all costs to add any feature that helps use Trello in one specific way over others (e.g. lists = stages in task lifetime, cards = tasks; lists = assigned people, cards = tasks; lists = dates, cards = events, ...), and that made Trello equally useful as a Kanban board, a CRM, or for a beer microbrewery tracking its different barrels and the stages of brewing they are at. The best thing about Trello is when you start organizing your board one way, then organically drift towards a more natural way to organize them, sometimes without noticing as you do. Trello is for processes that you're not sure yet about the right way to manage.
The CEO of Trello replied:
> You described Trello's core strength perfectly