marchdown's comments

Unethical Thought Experiments: what if Twitter shrank the retweet button or hid it under the fold to but the brakes on the viral spread?

Put amplification behind a trivial inconvenience that would make knee-jerk retweets less frequent and allow the whole chain reaction to cool down.

Since no one has presented a version of the dotsies bookmarklet, which is actually necessary to use them in practice, I'll go and make one with the proper mapping for v3.

If there is one already, let me know.

Actually, looks like all the permutations in the bookmarklet only allow you to use glyphs in Dotsies.tff, and there are some possible glyphs missing. I'll have to edit the font file.

This sounds interesting. Do you remember the essay or more details so that I could google it?

I'd be interested in seeing your list.

I might offer some insight here. I’m slightly obsessive about not inconveniencing other people. I try hard to put things in their proper places, not to eat the last bite of anything without asking or being offered, not making noise, not leaving electronics in misconfigured states, not leaving my own stuff lying around, I could go on.

It’s worse than the few obsession I’ve had around my own preferences, because I lack the introspection when it comes to people other than myself. I don’t know if they are sensitive to this or that particular nuisance and my priors seem to be dialed up to eleven.

I end up trying not to be around other people do that I won’t fall into these obsessive patterns as often.

What are some research areas complementary to the quantum computing/computational complexity where additional effort would remove roadblocks in QC research?

Oh no! I was following his work closely and had high hopes for him delivering on his vision: type theory and constructive notion of equality not getting in the way of doing mathematics with computer, but helping us along. It will hopefully will be picked up by his collaborators.

This does ring true, but I can't think of any reliable sources backing that up. I'd appreciate it if you mentioned some.

Thank you!

I've just send a note of appreciation to the Centre for Effective Altruism. Let's hope that's a first step. I'll try keeping track of them @ https://mastodon.xyz/web/accounts/75086

Use the positive feeling to propel myself forward, you say? I'll go help my housemates with the chores and do a writeup on formal correctness proofs.

Sure beats feeling bad about not applying for jobs here more aggressively.

I'll keep in mind your suggestion of starting tiny, starting over instead of staying stuck, and not overemphasizing the big picture. I'm grateful you took the time to answer.

I could use some encouragement and life advice. I apologize if this ends up being long and whiny.

I feel like I'm stuck on the outside of the part of society where all the meaningful intellectual work happens.

Since I was a child I have always aspired to learn from the scientists and engineers and humanitarians so that I could be like them one day. I've read Hamming, Feynman, Norvig, Herbert Alexander Simon, and felt that those were the people who have gotten it right, that that's what life should be about. Explore the world, do hard, honest work of figuring things out and building something new that helps people realize their potential and live better. Find the math behind the mundane and harness it to improve the human condition.

But I've been struggling with depression for years and I'm ashamed of how I spent my time in university. I feel that I haven't found a mentor or path of my own. I've constantly felt overwhelmed and let down by myself and by the system. I feel that I don't have the skills or the resolve to just plow ahead and do things. I feel that whenever I try to do research, or write, or even think out loud it ends up with a mockery of the real thing.

Right now I've graduated from a five-year course in computational linguistics, did half a year of antidepressants, half a year of advanced math seminars and moved to Israel for a change of scenery. I would really like to find a collective here where I could learn and solve real problems. Join a startup or do a PhD.

I still have a crippling case of impostor syndrome and occasional panic attacks. If any of you here have suggestions — however specific or general, — I would really appreciate it.

I want to get involved with an open source project, I am familiar with Haskell and enthusiastic about making it more accessible. I've just completed an educational project where I've used iPython with my students and I would have used Haskell if the tooling were a bit smoother.

So far the entry barrier was too high for me but I want to reach out and ask if anyone is willing to hold my hand a little so that I might get over the initial hurdles. Could you suggest some entry points for me? A bug tracker, an IRC channel, a github issues page? Should I just hack on it on my own until I have a specific unit of work to contribute, or is there someone who could use my help with the coding and provide guidance as to the organizational side of things?

> The vast majority of people wish to belong to the tribe of “The vast majority of people.”

This is not obvious to me at all. Would someone please explain?

ARM has notoriously low energy dissipation due to low voltage.

What are some examples of good pedagogy in programming?

I would point to pretty much anything by Norvig, Knuth, Sedgewick, and maybe to Zed Shaw's agressive tutorials.

Consistency is shooting yourself in an even number of feet. How is it ethical to dox people that are being made into villains?

Thank you for that. That's the stance that I naturally gravitate to, but one I have been doubting lately. Your comment is encouraging.

This might not be the most effective way to steer your resources towards common good, but there's this persnickety failure scenario where a man in need may receive material support but still lack a human connection and a sense of belonging.

Of course, you're still literally trading off human lives for a warm fuzzy feeling of personal involvement.

I'm looking forward to Peter Singer's upcoming Coursera lectures on effective altruism, I want to see him develop this position with rigor. Meanwhile http://www.givewell.org/ has a good analysis.

What is notable here is the low approval rate.

It is meant for those who are already familiar with LaTeX but do not have a handy unicode input method. Emacs has a feature that allows you to literally type \alpha or \in or any of hundreds of other LaTeX commands and have it substituted with the appropriate unicode character right in the plain text buffer you're editing.

Now, replace "Alexa" with "Hey Siri" and you don't need another device.

Take a look at http://marvinapp.com. It has some fancy typographic and organizing features. I found it not to my taste, but YMMV.