Re: [silk] 2020 vision

[Dave Long]

> Just books.

I'll recommend "How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons".

-Dave

Re: [silk] Dream concerts

[Dave Long]

> The Finnish band Nightwish with their original singer Tarja Turunnen [4]

On the question of "best Nightwish singer?", I see Marko is definitely in the 
running...

-Dave

Re: [silk] What are the things you splurge on that are worth the money?

[Dave Long]

- electric snow "shovel"
followed by:
- winter boots / thermal underwear
- wheelbarrows (specialized, w/ no-flat tires)

-Dave

Re: [silk] Empathy

[Dave Long]

> In game theory terms, it's great if everyone cooperates, but you need a 
> strategy to cope with serial defectors, too.

Serial[0] defectors should[1] be a small (and relatively powerless) fraction of 
society.

Therefore the strategy for individual serial-D players is to be like water, and 
flow/route around[2] them?

-Dave

[0] rare strategic defections are much more dangerous; cue discussion of 
"Diplomacy" tactics
[1] maybe I got lucky; I landed in a high-C society on the first attempt at 
voting with my feet
[2] were "not play" not an option, see [1]

> Trying to find common ground ... will ... cause you to cede ground to them 
> that you ought ... to stand firm on.

I understand that feeling, but have you found anywhere I ceded ground on my 
attempts at empathy upthread?  Homo sapiens being the rationalising animal, 
it's not uncommon to find that people who start from horrid policy still manage 
to work backwards to reasonable goals.

Re: [silk] Empathy

[Dave Long]

>  I mean, the “other” is not the opposite, but the constitutive complement.

That suggests exploring the viewpoints of multiple potential others, not only:
- the traditional other
but also:
- a (hypothetical?) other which would advocate in both parties interests
- a disinterested other which cares for neither parties interests

-Dave

an interesting symmetry between dance and martial arts: traditionally both are 
movement games in pairs, but in the former one tries to communicate intent and 
stabilise one's partner, and in the latter one tries to hide intent and 
destabilise one's opponent.

Re: [silk] Empathy

[Dave Long]

OK, if I have to come up with a bête noire to see all of yours, I shall:

Advertising: can produce slick content for lifestyle spots

-Dave

(unfortunately while true for print and video, it doesn't seem to extend to web 
advertising.  Gresham's law at work?)

Re: [silk] Empathy

[Dave Long]

I try not to dwell on bêtes noires, so I hope you don't mind if I take yours 
(often based of a quick Google, because the list is pretty anglophone-centric):

Trump: the US should fix its own issues before sweeping in front of its 
neighbours' doors.
Biden: we all do *better* when we *all* do better
Facebook: Musk is being selfish with premature push to reopen
Fox News: fired a Covid-denier
Amazon: things which are more efficient to tackle at scale should be
the Democratic party establishment: politicians should pay their dues in their 
party
Republican party: every child should have an equal opportunity to get a great 
education
Sangh Parivar: it takes all kinds to make a world
Modi: locked down, preventing exponential community spread
Boris Johnson: NHS needs more funding
Brexit: Airstrip One belongs to Oceania, not Eurasia

-Dave

Re: [silk] Empathy

[Dave Long]

>  Empathy isn't easy.

OK, I'll try: "those of us who voted for Trump believe the US would be better 
served by import substitution industrialization than by attempting to extract 
Pax Americana rents"

-Dave

(I will try to dig up the reference to a book I read long ago about building 
empathy between conflicting groups — the two things I remember from it were 
that (a) legislating morality is much more effective than one would think, 
perhaps because it gives people on the fence an excuse among their in-group for 
treating out-group members reasonably, and (b) it does wonders if people from 
competing groups can undertake common projects with each other)

Re: [silk] 'herd immunity strategy'

[Dave Long]

> This also presumes that teh authorities can affect this outcome one way or
> another.

It's pretty clear that lockdowns have worked much better than we had any reason 
to hope they would have.  (our lockdown is working, and we still have 70-75% of 
our workforce active).

So the question is, can one massively reduce the physical connectivity of the 
social graph long enough to drive infection rates down to a containable level?

My hypothetical working model at this point is that polities with lower 
wealth/income ratios will be less able/willing to sustain the effort than 
polities with higher wealth/income ratios.

The US as a whole is currently the major counter-example: it, like CH, has a 
net wealth/GDP ratio of about 5.  But they seem to be much more eager to reopen 
than we are.  (then again, their unemployment has skyrocketed, while ours has 
barely budged.  So there may be structural issues at work, as well)

On the other hand, this model predicts that rich countries (CN, IN, NL, PT), 
with a net wealth/GDP ratio of 4 (the world average) will last longer than 
poorer countries, such as DK (3,6) or even TZ (1,4).  It also predicts that 
richer US states (CA) will not be as eager to reopen as poorer (GA, TN).

I hope I am wrong.

-Dave

Re: [silk] 'herd immunity strategy'

[Dave Long]

> There's some evidence for the former due to a few random population
> sampling exercise

The random population sampling exercises I've seen say that *MAYBE* there are a 
small fraction of people who have had it: say 3% of the population.  (plus 
minus, but call it more than 1% and less than 10%)

I find that most likely, but hope it isn't true, as that number would be too 
large for containment to be applicable, and too small for hopes for herd 
immunity (without a vaccination program, which would require a vaccine) to be 
anything but wishful thinking.

-Dave

In Switzerland we've actually been testing, and counting, dead (as well as 
symptomatic) people.  And we have enough of them: currently ~200/million in my 
region.

We have also had random population antibody tests ongoing (designed for six 
weeks, running for four), but as I understand it, they're waiting for the 
results of the studies on the accuracy of the antibody tests themselves before 
they're going to publish anything.

Srijith, we're planning to reopen primary schools 11 May (only if the first 
reopening step on 27 April goes well).  As I understand it, that decision was 
based on (a) looking at sweden, where they don't test enough and have a (for a 
nordic country*) lousy death curve, but have kept schools open (providing a 
useful pediatric control), and (b) our own experiences, that most children have 
been infected by their parents rather than by each other.  In any case, we'll 
have a few weeks to see what happens to *other* country's children before we 
experiment with our own.

(sorry if I'm behind; I'm on digest. do we have archives anywhere now?)

Re: [silk] Coronavirus and behaviour change

[Dave Long]

> One change I am already seeing is an increase in single use plastics, for
> health reasons. I suspect this will accelerate, reversing years of
> attempted policy change.

I've also seen the opposite; in a country with limited PPE (UK?) there was some 
discussion (I don't know how serious) of whether they should go back to 
washable PPE, as some of the older medical staff had remembered.

Anyway, I now currently suspect (with results in from the AT, DE, and IS random 
studies) that we are definitely going to have to make behavioural changes in 
order to resume normal economic activity: even after we get past this wave, the 
susceptible fraction of the population will still be huge.

Social distancing (reducing the connectivity of the physical social graph) 
appears to have been remarkably effective, but I don't know of anything else 
short of widespread vaccination that would be as effective; I don't think 
hoping for a mutation to a more benign strain is a policy; and I doubt (but 
this may just be my US upbringing speaking?) many countries are prepared to put 
enough value on human life to continue their current drastic reductions through 
2021 (which is when I understand a vaccine might be ready).

Good luck, Silklisters everywhere...
-Dave

My wife received facebook news from an old classmate in ZA that (so far) 
Coronavirus has paradoxically been a net positive for their death rate: the 
number of viral deaths having been less than the plummeting murder rate since 
lockdown.  At least a cursory double-check seems to agree:
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/coronavirus-in-south-africa-everything-we-know-about-covid-19-in-sa-2020-3

[silk] it may not be well-done; is it becoming rare?

[Dave Long]

> These days I think [email] is mostly used by us old fogies.

Fair enough, but what, pray tell, do all those non-old-fogies use to convey 
thoughts that are too long for social media comments and too short for blog 
posts?

-Dave

Re: [silk] In Defense of Puns

[Dave Long]

> Some offer deviant definitions; e.g., “earthquake (‘ərthˌkwāk), n. a 
> topographical error.”

The geological pun is both fertile and prone to imposing bluffs; in short, it's 
the loessed form of humor.

-Dave

Re: [silk] Slow thinking

[Dave Long]

"Slow" and "fast" might be better words for what we used to call "literate" and 
"oral" communication styles*.

Although written communication one thousand years ago was almost always the 
result of reflection and composition, while spoken communication was almost 
always extemporaneous if not spontaneous, we now encounter all four quadrants 
in common use:

fast spoken - oral communication
fast written - texting (conversational online comments?)
slow spoken - prepared speeches, lectures, etc.
slow written - literate communication (epistolary mailing lists?)

-Dave

What about podcasts: are they generally fast or slow?

* this would also explain why a recent BBC article claimed "we" prefer texting 
to email, when my preference is the opposite; I'm guessing their 
exclusive-rather-than-inclusive "we" (which might include ancient romans, 
tut-tutting "lucernam redolet"?) prefer fast to slow.

[silk] \m/ EBh ... 55h AAh \m/

[Dave Long]

On the off chance there are any metalheads on this list who fondly  
remember BBS'ing on a green screen, the various "Master Boot  
Record" (chiptune-operatic metal?) albums may be worth a listen.


-Dave

(Not that it's easy to figure out when I was 14 given this  
recommendation, nope...)


+++ATH0

[silk] Carbon dioxide from air [was: Fuel from air]

[Dave Long]

I'm also curious to hear what any ChemE's might have to say.  The  
process requires both lots of water and plenty of clean electricity,  
which might make it interesting[0] for my local hydro.


The Subject: line is already fairly optimistic: what I skimmed of the  
Cell paper only discusses isolating and concentrating CO2 from the  
atmosphere; generating synfuels from that no-chain-count feedstock is  
a separate[1] problem.


If I have my signs right, the calciner is the endothermic stage; I  
was amused by the introductory line:
In the 1960's, capture of CO2 from air was considered as a  
feedstock for producton of hydrocarbon fuels using mobile nuclear  
power plants



-Dave

[0] under the very large assumption that those producing the CO2  
would be both willing and able to pay those extracting it?
[1] one which was industrialised (at least for higher chain count  
precursors, eg. from coal) by the middle of last century, cf Bergius  
and Fischer-Tropsch.

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 103, Issue 1

[Dave Long]

Just came across (and ordered) 'Indica: A Deep Natural History of the
Indian Subcontinent '.


Coincidentally, the Himalaya are rising at about the same rate as  
northern Sweden.  In the latter case, it's due to rebound from the  
last glaciation, in the former, to the indian and european plates'  
continued collision.


-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 101, Issue 4

[Dave Long]

Anyway, reality :: cabbage is a nice image of the infiniteness of  
truth.

... Same circle, again and again - zooming out or
zooming in - just a matter of perspective. The repeating patterns are
fascinating.


Einstein wrote about the "mollusc of reference", but cabbage makes an  
equally physical model of spacetime.


-Dave

for repeating patterns (if more in IS Rombauer's domain than HA  
Lorentz') my favorite Brassica is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 101, Issue 2

[Dave Long]

Asuras and Devas are both part of the grand cosmic truth. There's  
no cosmic

dance of life without light and darkness.



Along those lines, there's "The Master and Margarita"[0], in which  
one of the few Asuras to have his own Rolling Stones song says:
What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the  
earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows  
are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But  
shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to  
strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your  
fantasy of enjoying naked light?


Outside of 1-bit graphics[1], however, there's much more range among  
shadows than undifferentiated "good" or "evil".


-Dave

(Off the top of my head, I'd say we could do with a bit of gamma  
compression.  On the other hand, if, like Bulgakov's Woland —a "force  
forever intending evil, yet ever doing good"— the current gamma  
expansion is like a fever, a defensive anti-infectious pyretic  
response, once it breaks the world will turn out all right.)


[0] the novel has an unusual structure, in that scenes in the  
biblical period are treated realistically (like a police procedural)  
while scenes in the XX are treated fantastically (even those  
reflecting historical events).

[1] these were amazing on the Mac 128K, but we're in the XXI now.

Re: [silk] ‘Kind’ technology?

[Dave Long]

"We are human beings, not human doings".


Thinking along these lines, and taking kindness to involve a  
recognition of the human- (or living-)beingness of another, I might  
attempt to argue that technology can be supple[0], but only  
individuals[1] could be kind to each other ... or is this just a  
luddite position?


-Dave

[0] often preferable to its default of being more rigid than the  
systems it replaces
[1] as opposed to technologies (not to groups): it may well be that  
uncanny valley thing, but in fact, I prefer dealing with technologies  
that make little to no attempt to model me

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 94, Issue 24

[Dave Long]

... and sometimes for emulating certain old soviet calculator, ...


The sort which say «ЕГГОГ»*?

-Dave

* if this word fails to render with your fonts, see:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Еггог.svg
but, oddly enough, of all places this .svg is used most often on the  
chechen-language wikipedia: "Errorsya, ti errorsya"?

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 94, Issue 12

[Dave Long]

... where they make popcorn by putting four phones together and  
calling them at the same time, and bingo, pops the corn ...


Have you ever tried to reproduce this stunt?

-Dave

(The IR on my wife's phone is sensitive enough to spot relatively  
small differences in temperature, such as those indicating where  
people have been sitting, or which books they have handled recently.   
If one of you all attempts some corn popping [6-phone corn popping  
even], I'll see if it can resolve any temperature difference between  
a phone which has or has not been called)

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 91, Issue 9

[Dave Long]

Who wants to draw a Venn diagram of all of this? Heh.

Depends on Venn you want it.


Currently, the conjunction is not favorable for getting around to it...

-Dave

Re: [silk] Introducing myself

[Dave Long]

The less said about Bollywood's (and its South Indian cousins')   
depiction

of courtship, finding a partner, consent, ... etc., the better.


As a not-so-adjacent alternative, how about a russian take on the  
problems and joys* of complementary constructions?

"you're my everything"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDcixye_0Jo
(very much less than frank, so maybe I'm putting myself firmly in the  
middle-aged contingent by admiring their use [in leading up to the  
climax] of similar angles and parallels?)


-Dave

* more algebraic than geometric, but what was once just a throwaway  
footnote in "The Pleasures of Counting" is now a published title:  
"The Joy of X"

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 89, Issue 1

[Dave Long]

... motivate more people to pick up an instrument. There's very  
little that brings as much satisfaction.



Guitar is an especially good instrument, because of things that bring  
satisfaction, many:

- cost money,
- involve groups of people,
- need advance arrangement, or
some combination of all three.

On the other hand, deriving satisfaction by playing a guitar requires  
no more ongoing costs than the occasional string, requires neither  
ensemble nor audience, and requires no more than a brief retuning  
before starting.


-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 85, Issue 16

[Dave Long]

Any stories the list can share about similar things happening during
enforced downtime?


Besides long-duration history (Oflag XII-B) and sheaf cohomology  
(Oflag XVII-A) already mentioned, I'd forgotten about the Curta*  
calculator (KZ Buchenwald).

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

-Dave

* somewhat ironically, Herr Herzstark was imprisoned in July of 1943,  
5 months after what in hindsight was the turning point of the war: no  
oil, no Blitz.

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 85, Issue 16

[Dave Long]

Any stories the list can share about similar things happening during
enforced downtime?



Not personal stories, but definitely cases of "enforced downtime":

Braudel's thesis*, which inspired the "long duration" school, was  
composed in POW camp Oflag XII-B

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel#Biography

while sheaf cohomology was developed in Oflag XVII-A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheaf_cohomology

-Dave

* "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip  
II"


(sheaf cohomology "describes the obstructions to solving a geometric  
problem globally when it can be solved locally", which in hindsight  
is a somewhat ironic mathematical gadget to develop in a POW camp  
during a World War.  It is doubly ironic that the original french  
term for sheaf, « faisceau », is cognate to the roman "fasces", which  
were much admired by the people running said camps.


The general idea of a sheaf [on the off chance that silk-listers  
might be more familiar with the late-XX Amber books by Zelazny than  
with mid-XX books by french algebraic topologists] is that instead of  
finding a single global solution [as in school mathematics, where,  
say, x=42], the best one can do is to stitch together a series of  
local solutions, which smoothly but steadily differ from each other  
as one's reference point changes, so travelling between local  
solutions is similar to travelling between the Shadows in Amber)

Re: [silk] Things that are worth the money

[Dave Long]

My partner Debbie and I have 30kg of stuff.



That's a handy constraint, in that you both can acquire arbitrary  
amounts of knowledge and skills without any impact on the scales.


Riffing off of Aristippus' advice to give one's children the sort of  
assets which would swim out of a shipwreck with them, and the  
original blog post's mention of books, I'd say (having learned the  
hard way myself) that for disciplines which are difficult to learn  
from books, it's worth paying more for better teachers.


-Dave

Re: [silk] revolutions: industrial, atomic, etc.

[Dave Long]

compared with, say, 1914-1989?


Oops! I was too optimistic (parochial?) with that end date; in  
thinking of the 90's as a rare decade of peace, I had completely  
forgotten the Yugoslav Wars.


-Dave

... still hoping Sir Edward Grey's lamps may be re-lit in our lifetimes.

[silk] ... Chennai, Silk, Satin, Top Posting

[Dave Long]

Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Silk, Satin, Top Posting.


(with apologies to Stan Kelly-Bootle)
Should posted replies be "above" or "below"?  My compromise of  
"intercalated" was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.



This is like a bad cover version of We Didn't Start The Fire.

[silk] revolutions: industrial, atomic, etc.

[Dave Long]

2) Fewer people will need to work to do the "important stuff" ...
3) This will cause a change in ideology. Until now, we've had a  
dominant

notion that we need people to work. ...


When we humans developed tools to help with housework, our  
standards for cleanliness rose. As automation takes over more  
tasks, human attention will turn to all the things we currently  
neglect in order to take care of our basic needs. Lather, rinse,  
repeat.



Does anyone have over/under odds on the expected level of inter- 
ideological violence this century, compared with, say, 1914-1989?


-Dave

Re: [silk] The IYIs, according to Taleb

[Dave Long]

... that class of paternalistic
semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or
similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1)  
what to
do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to  
vote

for.


If the alternative is to live among people who not only know how, but  
actively prefer, to mind their own business[0]; I could understand  
the quoted part of this rant better.


My experience in my native anglophone country[1] is that semi- 
intellectual experts at least attempt to justify their advice; by  
examining their assumptions and arguments, one can decide for oneself  
whether to ignore, follow, or even do the opposite.  However, the  
alternative is a class of anti-intellectuals who make very little  
attempt (at best, on ahistorical "traditional" grounds; at worst, by  
threat of unpleasantry or violence) to advance valid arguments for  
why *they* are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat,  
3) how to speak, 4) how to think... and 5) who to vote for[2].


Given that choice, others obviously have different preferences, but I  
prefer getting my unsolicited advice from the boffins.


-Dave

[0] the flag is not the only big plus of CH.
[1] in which anti-intellectual demagoguery has a long history of  
political (how many practical?) successes.
I would also interested in hearing abut the Indian experience by way  
of contrast.

[2] for whom to vote?

Re: [silk] To retire or not - that is the Q.

[Dave Long]

Shyam (and others), would be interested in your thoughts on this  
approach.


http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-get-more-pleasure-out-of- 
retirement-spending-1473645961



Ideally, money is not the only scare resource one has to allocate in  
retirement: there's also time.


There are many pursuits where willingness to be awful for a short  
while at first eventually pays back with an upward slope (granted,  
likely with several plateaus) of mastery.


Some of these pursuits even allow one to apply that mastery to  
increase derived pleasure without increasing spending.


-Dave

Le Guin, "The Dispossessed":
And then there is challenge. Here you think that the incentive to  
work is finances, need for money or desire for profit, but where  
there’s no money the real motives are clearer, maybe. People like  
to do things. They like to do them well. People take the dangerous,  
hard jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can — egoize,  
we call it — show off? — to the weaker ones. Hey, look, little  
boys, see how strong I am! You know? A person likes to do what he  
is good at doing…

Re: [silk] Maacher Jhol

[Dave Long]

Oh that thing.  Steam it and then fry it up with a salt + chilly  
powder rub sounds just as nice an idea to me.


Something to keep in mind is that many "revolutionary" histories are  
overblown[0].  The "traditional" cuisine of the area where I now live  
is potato-heavy, but there's still a layer of turnip/parsnip/radish  
recipes[1] which presumably conserves the uses of locally-available  
tubers in the pre-potato period.


-Dave

[0] eg. recording numbers in roman format but having one's slaves  
calculate with pebbles on a decimal place-value counting board is not  
*that* different from recording numbers in arabic format, but having  
one's phone calculate with electrical charges in a binary place-value  
format.
[1] I was amused to encounter these in restaurants, as I'd first read  
of them in ancient roman texts.

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 81, Issue 6

[Dave Long]

... but Twitter and FB have mostly made blogging redundant anyway.



Cool.  Where should I be looking for 1'000+ word articles on either  
Twitter or FB?


-Dave

(or was that the point of "mostly"?)

[silk] Rép : On Silk, by Silk

[Dave Long]

The challenge is to find ways to translate this talent for civil  
discourse into civil society.


I was a little reassured by http://olduse.net/ to discover that no,  
it isn't just that my memories have potemkined up a golden age, but  
online discourse (although one can see some early starts to some of  
our current endless flamewars) was indeed more civilized 30 years ago.



This is a non-trivial task in this uncivil age we live in.



A question I have: is electronic discourse in this age so uncivil in  
general, or is it largely an anglophone occurrence?  I can't tell: I  
can say that the non-anglophone communities I've interacted with  
online have seemed more civil in general, but a confounding factor is  
that they've been both few in number and relatively  
"closed" (communities in a non-oxymoronic sense); I could easily just  
be seeing the toxicity of huge nearly-anonymous open-to-drive-by  
"online communities" and ascribing that to anglophony because the  
only examples I have of the latter are anglophone.  (and, of course  
silk fills in yet another quadrant, being anglophone yet civilized)


Or another (possibly less flamebaity?) hypothesis: 30 years ago,  
online discourse was (due to both technical and social factors) a  
largely literary activity; these days (due to both technical and  
social factors) it is (and hence its least civil exemplars are)  
overwhelmingly oral?


-Dave

Other tangents:
an early XXI Shirky piece on common patterns in digital incivility  
over the ages:

http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html
and the excellent (ahem) "On Trolling":
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext? 
type=6=10413858=APA=2=02=10413837= 
embershipNumber===RA=S20534477160 
00099
(which suggests: can we just "flip the sign bit", and say that if we  
understand what a troll is, and in what way trolling is accomplished,  
then an easy way to promote civil society is to endeavor to undertake  
the opposite?)


... ἐν τούτῳ μετὰ τῶν φίλων βούλονται  
διάγειν: διόπερ οἳ μὲν συμπίνουσιν,  
οἳ δὲ συγκυβεύουσιν, ἄλλοι δὲ  
συγγυμνάζονται καὶ συγκυνηγοῦσινἢ  
συμφιλοσοφοῦσιν ...

[silk] kai dys- kai eu- topias

[Dave Long]

There have been shall we say – and this is surely an overbroad  
generalization – two distinct sorts of schools in any sort of  
futuristic writing.



Something which has been bugging me lately is that the schools do  
overlap.


For instance, "Brave New World" was sold in (Cold War US) schools as  
dystopian, but comparing the opening years of this century with the  
decade closing the last one, and reflecting upon Mustapha Mond's  
argument —that when the anthrax bombs start popping, centrifugal  
bumble puppy starts looking like a pretty good alternative—, I'm  
finding it pretty utopian* in comparison to reality.


-Dave

* my personal politics being along the lines of an otherwise  
forgettable (and perhaps even regrettable?) late Cold War US film  
whose motto was "be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes".
One might think that easy enough to do, and indeed we (for some  
values of we?) seemed to be making a start on it in the following  
decade, but both:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/06/23/the-principia-misanthropica/
and Jane Jacobs' "Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral  
Foundations of Commerce and Politics" suggest it is somehow difficult  
for homo sapiens to combine excellence and partying without winding  
up with the worst of both worlds.

[silk] Tempora mutantur

[Dave Long]

 the risk of leaving great numbers of people behind when change is  
imposed



I'd guess it's that "change is imposed" part that made people laugh  
at, eg, the ad for the dead-tree IKEA catalog spoofing Apple hyperbole.


My wife and I are fortunate in having enough capital that we may pick  
and choose, attempting to sift through this vast flow of change for  
the few flakes of novelty which actually improve our life.


Judging from what I read on the Internet (with whatever relation that  
may have to reality), there are many people who do not have that  
choice; this situation would be less disconcerting if my university  
economics courses hadn't clearly stated that markets are only  
efficient insofar as all parties are allocating (with perfect  
information!) between real alternatives.


-Dave

(as to the original article: my father had horror stories of his  
neighbor's Prius, which must be driven every couple of weeks lest the  
auxiliary battery run down ... at which point it can be emergency  
unlocked, but somehow not relocked, and in this particular case a 5- 
year old had to be sent to squirm over the back seat to do whatever  
Dr. Strangelove-esque manipulations were necessary to then get the  
hatchback open so as to have sufficient access to recharge the  
auxiliary.  I had been thinking of kvetching to him that our latest  
Landy is too fancy, and doesn't start as nicely after a night at -20  
as earlier models did, but after hearing his story, I realized ours  
was only a third world problem.)

[silk] Go Corporate or Go Home

[Dave Long]

from a site which also had the "40->immortality" essay*, one which I  
find has more predictive power:


David Manheim, "Go Corporate or Go Home"
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/03/17/go-corporate-or-go-home/

or, "is there more than tradition to why org charts are hierarchical?".

-Dave

* but which I found via the excellent:
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/05/12/artem-vs-predator/

Re: [silk] Cable Cars - A viable urban rapid transport system?

[Dave Long]

The Mumbai local train system, for example, carries 7.5 million  
people daily.


One possible major issue: maintenance.

I get the impression the local ski resorts spend a good deal of time  
and materials on gondola maintenance, and it stands to reason that  
(a) inspection, before anything happens, is much more difficult than  
a terrestrial (or even subterranean) rail system, and (b) one doesn't  
have the option of just shunting traffic to neighboring tracks, or  
even reasonably providing alternate transportation for the current  
pax, when something does happen.


-Dave

Re: [silk] Immortality Begins at Forty

[Dave Long]

Me?  I'm too busy altering the position of meaning at or near the  
earth's surface relatively to other such meaning to read anything...


But I do watch music videos, and it strikes me that Sergey Shnurov  
also had commentary, from 4:20-5:35, on the value of post-40 meaning  
redistribution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ugivNRYfjc#t=260

-Dave

Re: [silk] The Need for Guaranteed Basic Income or why Kiran is worried sick

[Dave Long]

You're welcome.



Mahalo.
-Dave

(my thanks weren't late; I just "tried wait")

Re: [silk] The Need for Guaranteed Basic Income or why Kiran is worried sick

[Dave Long]

http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/the-history-of-mana-how-an- 
austronesian-concept-became-a-video-game-mechanic


Nice.  I must admit my knowledge is also based more on Michener (and  
travel) than much research, but...


Mana: we can't point to it, or measure it, or count it[0], but  
believe us, if you have it, you'll succeed, and if you fail,  
obviously you either never had it or failed to use it properly[1]...


-Dave

[0] unless, that is, we're charging you per seat ...
[1] what?  didn't you remember to sacrifice a maka`ainana under the  
corner office?

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 77, Issue 6

[Dave Long]

There is no Hari to achieve things


Is Deepatience dee mother of virtue?

-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 77, Issue 2

[Dave Long]

"Sleeping policemen" is idiomatic in the UK, too - sufficiently to  
have

been used as the basis of a TV advert, I recall!

The ones in India are deep deep undercover I suppose, because they are
almost never painted or marked.



Lately I've been seeing how much russian I pick up by osmosis, using  
pop music and internet memes as primary sources.


Today I saw an image labelled « лежачий  
полицейский »; sounding it out, that's /lezhachiy  
politseiskiy/.  Sure enough; even though the picture was of a  
policeman asleep, the usual connotation of that phrase is exactly  
what we've been talking about.


-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 77, Issue 2

[Dave Long]

the hijacker ran away after making the plane land on a road


Once when I was in Jamaica, I thought it odd that there would be  
(what I thought of as) snowplow poles lining the sides of the roads.


Upon asking  a local, I was informed that the poles weren't for  
snowplows, they were to keep anyone from landing small planes on the  
road.


-Dave

(the Jamaicans referred to speed bumps as "sleeping policemen"; I  
didn't have the presence of mind to ask what the poles were called...)

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 76, Issue 9

[Dave Long]

Shalizi
More serious is the problem that people will straight-up lie to  
the planners about resources and technical capacities, for reasons  
which Spufford dramatizes nicely. There is no good mathematical  
way of dealing with this.
(a point which is echoed in heartfelt manner by Gray and Reuter in  
their book on "Transaction Processing)


Come to think of it, _Animal Farm_* was composed in the early 1940's,  
based upon the author's experiences in the late 1930's.  My guess as  
to why mathematicians would continue to follow the dream well after  
writers have been disillusioned is that mathematicians tend to only  
have to deal with other people in theory, and writers (well, at least  
those who've slept rough) have dealt with them in practice.


-Dave

maybe one of these days I'll know enough russian to know what the  
dialog in this scene (set in 1969) means:

Старые песни о главном - 2 (1997) @8:29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq28m1ndA1E#t=503
at the moment, in my ignorance, I can't help but think of "... but  
some are more equal than others".


* the genius of Orwell being that his book applies equally well to  
other (perhaps all, except for any frankly inegalitarian?) societies,  
but the correspondence with Stalinism is so strong that at least some  
of these other countries, rather than worrying about being tarred  
with the same brush, made it required reading for impressionable youth.



I'm reminded after long, of this - now old -
initially dystopian, and then hopeful story from Marshall Brain.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm



I'm afraid I only skimmed the story, but I didn't see that Brain ever  
engaged with what I would think a key hypothesis for his thesis: how  
should the "Australia Project" protect itself against a hostile  
takeover by the "US Oligarchy"?  Maybe singularity-fiction doesn't  
bother with such mundanities, but in the recent globalized centuries  
it's stayed true across a wide spectrum of technological change that  
he who rules the waves may be tempted to waive the rules.

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 76, Issue 9

[Dave Long]

Speaking of the Soviets and Cybernetics... I highly recommend  
Spufford's Red

Plenty . A beautiful mixture of
 fact, imagination and fiction set in the Khruschev era.


Guess that has to go on the heap, given that that book has inspired a  
great blog post:
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization- 
problem-solves-you/

(which seems to be just the tip of the iceberg discussing the book)

Apparently even if you manage to figure out how to get people to tell  
you the truth, rather than what they believe you ought to hear, and  
even if you manage to know precisely what you're going to want,  
rather than what you currently think you'll want, and even if goods  
are nearly perfectly substitutable, the mathematics of even the  
simplified problem is much more intractable than I had supposed.   
(which, would, however, explain nicely why we don't all take these  
techniques for granted after more than a half-century)


The Gibbs phenomenon is a nice example of how taking the first few  
low-order terms from something which is an approximating series in a  
mathematical sense may not lead to desired behaviors in the practical  
sense; it was noticed and analyzed in the XIX, back when computing  
was done with brass, not with bits, using machines like the following:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dW6VYXp9HM

-Dave

Shalizi
More serious is the problem that people will straight-up lie to the  
planners about resources and technical capacities, for reasons  
which Spufford dramatizes nicely. There is no good mathematical way  
of dealing with this.


(a point which is echoed in heartfelt manner by Gray and Reuter in  
their book on "Transaction Processing)

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 76, Issue 8

[Dave Long]

Assuming there is a straightforward way of figuring out the number of
humans needed to perform the same work at comparable quality and  
speed,

taxing your way out of this is an obvious solution.


I was slightly amused to see that an example in a mid-XX paper on  
linear programming (might even have been one of Dantzig's) had an  
industrialist on one side and a government minister on the other,  
attempting to calculate the factors/prices involved to determine  
where their negotiation should end up.  Now that we have several more  
decades of experience, and at least million-fold cheaper  
computation*, one might think this process would be even simpler.  On  
the other hand, GIGO, and maybe people have mostly used the interim  
to learn to better fudge the factors...



Might work for large
developed economies, but developing economies like India would find it
difficult to counter more advanced high quality products from  
developed

nations.



Strikes me that this scenario has played out in India before, when  
woven fabric went from something (with modest capital investment in a  
loom) that could be a substantial factor in household production, and  
one signalled one's social capital by being able to wrap a non- 
rectangular human body in different ways with large rectangles of  
highly valuable cloth, to woven fabric as something flooding the  
market from british factories (requiring much-more-than-modest  
investment), after which one had to signal one's pecuniary capital by  
chopping up and throwing away large amounts of cheap cloth, then  
paying a tailor or seamstress wages to re-sew the pieces back  
together in order to fit.  Did we learn anything from that last  
experience that might well be applied should we encounter similar  
scenarios in the future?


-Dave

* oddly enough, the soviets, who should have been really into pushing  
computer technology to aid in central planning, seem to have been  
drastically behind ARPA in this department.  Predictions are  
difficult, especially about the future.

[silk] Rép : moskywood?

[Dave Long]

At this rate, I expect to find russians shooting on location in  
Kerala any day now...


I might've had the wrong direction; am I correct in guessing that the  
following is set in Telangana?

http://fancyshot.com/leningrad-ueban/

-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 74, Issue 10

[Dave Long]

Telepathy, unfortunately,
turns out to not be all about elevated Apollonian abstract  
intellectualism:
it's an emotion amplifier and taps into the most toxic wellsprings  
of the

subconscious.



The XX equivalent of telepathy was loudspeakers and radio (not that  
that was a century which we should have much wish to repeat).  I have  
a few references from American (but Goebbels is said to have given at  
least one of their books a prominent place in his library as well)  
propaganda men from the period if you all are interested, but be  
warned that I've left off reading this stuff because (even though at  
least two of the three are firmly convinced they are on the side of  
tru... well, at least goodness and progress) I found it toxic in  
large doses.


-Dave

(the classical greek distinction between logic and rhetoric seems to  
have been drawn largely upon the distinction between truth and  
truthiness; the latter word may be new but the concept it denotes is  
ancient)

Re: [silk] intro

[Dave Long]

Nothing's off topic here,


although the ratio of posts about Jayamalini or (the not-so- 
eponymous?) Silk Smitha to posts about hotter subjects, such as  
negative temperatures, might suggest some things are more topical  
than others.


-Dave

[silk] Rép : moskywood?

[Dave Long]

(no points for guessing who is the item girl and who the heroine)
Let me guess. Olga is the item girl and Julia is the bride to bring  
home to

mama?



Correct.  (double points for transliteration out of imperfectly- 
encoded hindi?)


-Dave


... in popular cinema the flow has been from India to Russia.

No kidding!
http://vk.com/video-81397228_171426445
At this rate, I expect to find russians shooting on location in  
Kerala any day now...

[silk] moskywood?

[Dave Long]

A while ago, I ran into a russian flick (billing itself as the first  
"karaoke comedy") which was being advertised by gathering villagers  
to sing the hit songs included in the production:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raE2iLMPbaQ
Judging from the following poster, they're clearly paying homage to  
Bollywood:

http://cs7011.vk.me/v7011244/13612/Uc31a97yuxk.jpg
(no points for guessing who is the item girl and who the heroine)

Any silklisters know if there has actually been a .in release, or was  
this meant as a fun poster for .ru?

(I'm guessing the latter, as the main text is still cyrillic)

-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 70, Issue 24

[Dave Long]

Mozart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difficile_lectu
or, closer to our times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mots_d%27Heures

-Dave

[silk] Rép : The Name of the Road

[Dave Long]

Surely one of these places can be called The Island of the Day Before?


Si ... Eco fatto!

-Dave

the early days (Eliza is nearing 50) of cheap amusement online:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc439

[silk] The Name of the Road

[Dave Long]

I once lived in a town where referring to landmarks by what had been  
there before was a matter of "ancient" usage and custom.


Unfortunately, the modern property lines had only begun to be  
established in the late XVIII, so everyone quickly realizes that  
anyone (even an anonymous peasant girl?) with half a brain could  
consult the original land grants and have an unbeatable appellation  
("good old 'rock', nothing beats that!").  The sporting thing, then,  
consists in attempting to gauge how long your interlocutor's people  
have been around, and then using the name from just before the one  
they would have used themselves ... go too far back, and you should  
consider yourself beaten.


Now I live someplace where this game is played by designating regions  
by their names from a few thousand years ago; the scope is grander  
but the tactics remain the same.


-Dave

stat via pristina silex, ultra nomina nuda tenemus

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 69, Issue 6

[Dave Long]

What's *your* definition of success?


success: (n) a signal indicating it's time to tackle a new problem.

-Dave

cf http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html
101. Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is  
also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to  
improve.

Re: [silk] Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational

[Dave Long]

disengage your pattern recognition habits and pay attention



I admire Dijkstra's english, and assume he probably took greater care  
with it than with his mother tongue, dutch.


On the other hand, he also says he was brought up to never start  
speaking until you know how your sentence will end, so it may well be  
that he was equally precise in both.


-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 66, Issue 12

[Dave Long]

If you select the bit of text that you want to reply to and then  
click

'reply', Gmail will format it as a bottom-post. Try it! :)


OK, here goes. But why is not default?


The just-so story is so that one can show respect for a cultivated  
audience (or at least distinguish oneself from the uneducated) by  
making a little effort to bottom post, in the same way that one might  
make a little effort to use standard grammar and orthography, instead  
of typing whatever comes at hazard to the fingertips.


The real story is probably that when we brought the net to the world,  
the world changed the culture of the net far, far, more than the net  
changed the culture of the world.


cf Pandora's Planet  (Anvil, not Cameron)

-Dave

(If I were to successfully claim bottom posting is the sanskrit of  
online discourse, would the BJP try to promote it?)

[silk] a simple matter of programming

[Dave Long]

It's not suitable for our aspiring beginners[0], but my recent  
article suggests a programming exercise, not only easy (and  
enjoyable), but also of historical interest:


http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2724586

The basic problem is to write a compiler-compiler (the square root  
of a compiler?).  I provide some historical context and translations  
to modern vocabulary, in an effort to make it easier to approach the  
over 50-year-old original paper, but in a modern environment the task  
should be well within the grasp of anyone who calls themselves a  
programmer.


-Dave

(the former and current compiler writers among us should find the  
task itself trivial, but —being less distracted by mechanics— are  
more likely to appreciate the subtler pleasures of recreating[1] self- 
reproducing systems)


[0] for beginners, I woud instead recommend the classic chestnut:  
write a program which prints its own source.  (and absolute beginners  
are allowed and encouraged to find the trivial solutions, before  
doing it properly)
[1] as per Schrödinger's aperiodic crystals: Val Schorre's program  
concretely reproduced itself on IBM 1401s, but his paper allowed me  
to transpose it (via a language invented roughly halfway between then  
and now) to a program concretely reproducing itself on modern  
machines — so, in my view, the paper is an abstract self-reproducer.

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 62, Issue 13

[Dave Long]

I've recently been trying to learn a foreign language using Duo Lingo.
Based on mg experience there, I would also propose an algorithmic  
'fill in
the blank' kind of format for absolute beginners. ... I think this  
kind of exercise

would be attractive to me as a casual novice learner.


In that case (and under the assumption that you are interested in  
theory*) you might be interested in Friedman  Felleisen's _The  
Little Schemer_, which is laid out very much in a question/response  
fill in the blank style, from simple syntax up through metacircular  
evaluation.


The authors claim it was originally developed from a 2 week course  
aimed at people with neither experience in programming nor interest  
in it as a career; by analogy with SICP (which the ~240 hours of the  
typical 6.001 course should have, in theory if not in practice,  
covered) it would probably take on the order of 30 hours to work  
through, say half a year at 1-2 hours/week.


Judging from online commentary, it shares with Lawvere  Schanuel's  
_Conceptual Mathematics_ the property of seeming to suddenly go from  
way too easy to way too difficult; in both cases the page where  
this happens has less to do with the text and more to do with where a  
particular reader (at a particular time in their life) has stopped  
coasting on prior experience and has started learning new things.


-Dave

*  the authors warn:
_The Little Schemer_ ... will not introduce you to the practical  
world of programming, but a mastery of the concepts ... provides a  
start towards understanding the nature of computation.


by which they mean to say, they would not be surprised to get many  
negative reviews along the lines of This book is horrible: were I  
ever to need rarefied abstractions like indirect discourse or the  
subjunctive mood, it would have been helpful to have been exposed to  
them, but really, all I wanted to do was to ask how to get to the  
train station!

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 62, Issue 11

[Dave Long]

It could be the way I do things, but competitions or victory  
against others
had never interested me in any sphere of life, including  
programming. I

definitely like the act of creation. Creating something that can be a
complete application that someone could potentially use in real  
life is

important even when I'm learning a language.

I also know several excellent programmers who enjoy awards and the  
thrill

of success from being the best even if it means working on artificial
problems.



Thanks, Cheeni ... I think you've illuminated the concept I had been  
trying to find: creation under constraints[0].


I'm probably more like you than like the HackerRank core market:  
although I enjoy competitive contact sports away from the keyboard,  
at the keyboard the only competitions I engage in are informal and  
among friends, in which (often over periods of months to years) we  
explore variations on a problem, slowly converging on extremes[*] of  
time or space or expression.  (if they involved more improvisation  
than composition, jams would be a better word)


Not being a boxer, I don't know if the recent popularity of non- 
contact boxing (perhaps a fad, but currently much larger than the  
traditional market) is due to a dislike of antagonistic competition  
or to a simple dislike of getting hit.


If we view creativity as finding solutions where constraints mean  
they are rare, antagonistic competition provides some very strong  
constraints: the simplest things become difficult, when if one is  
attempting to do them at the same that someone else is attempting to  
do exactly the opposite.  These kinds of constraints privilege  
improvisation: the successful player can execute a small number of  
known good actions in any situation (the equilibrium is a small  
number because multiplying the choices increases decision latency,  
but having only one choice allows the opponent to anticipate[1]).   
However, the emphasis on improvisation also tends to an emphasis on  
artificial problems: programming competitions seem to me to have  
the same relation to industrial programming that bouldering does to  
big wall climbs, and police officers studying martial arts have  
remarked that would be difficult to create a more artificial scenario  
than the typical sparring format: one-on-one starting with both  
participants alert and facing each other.


Creating useful applications is a different form of imposing  
constraints.  And programmers, like the mathematician Piet Hein, who  
said problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back,  
enjoy the advantage over boxers that they can easily pressure  
themselves without any antagonistic interaction.  Someone once said  
if you fail, the remedy is easy: try to improve; if you succeed, the  
remedy is easy ... you solved the wrong problem: try to improve, and  
for engineers (here: anyone who believes they are someone who can do  
for a dime what any fool can do for a dollar) there is a strong  
temptation to redefine every problem until it is difficult enough to  
become interesting.  These constraints are more compositional than  
improvisational: one goes back to the drawing board time after time,  
and often finds a simple, elegant solution, only after improving a  
large variety[2] of complex, crufty ones.


I currently believe the sort of people who shun competition, but who  
don't mind getting hit, are the autodidacts who will seek out such  
problems on their own, which leaves people who don't want to get hit  
as the volume market for programming clinics.  (The boxers are  
addressing their equivalent market, and I know several people with  
HEMA clubs who have also noticed that their sparring members are, in  
effect, subsidized by the larger numbers of people who like to swing  
swords around in a large group once a week, but for whom the idea of  
testing how well they can execute, under pressure, the skills they  
are supposedly learning, has absolutely no attraction.)


Sorry it's taken me this long to set up, but these models suggest a  
few ways one might attempt to make casual programming more  
attractive, by relaxing the normal constraints:
	- give people a surplus of resources, so just about anything they  
create works[3]  (the flower arranging/spirograph approach)
	- give people resources that don't combine well, so they can build a  
few pretty things but not much else (the modern lego kit approach)
	- in normal programming, choice is demonic: one's program needs to  
avoid messing up for any situation the environment can throw at it;  
if one offered an angelic environment, which only offered  
situations in which the program as written could possibly succeed,  
the job is made much easier.  (the slow pitch softball approach)
	- a judicious selection of exercises and incremental test cases  
would aid the beginner by strongly hinting at the best next step (the  
paint by numbers approach)
	- alternatively, 

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 62, Issue 10

[Dave Long]

Dave, that's reasonably accurate data. May I ask you where you got  
it from?


As I mentioned, straight from the HackerRank leaderboard and FAQ.

Fixing these figures in some way is why we have hired dedicated  
product

managers on the community side. I manage the enterprise side of the
business.


It's generally a good choice to be on the revenue side :-)


I totally agree with your point that it is important to understand
objectives of the users. At HackerRank we have our roots in the  
competitive
programming world of IOI and ACM ICPC and the like. The demographic  
and
retention characteristics are very different for that base. But the  
real

volume opportunity is elsewhere - in the self learning crowd.


I'll probably be able to gel some thoughts that are actually more  
useful than cynical on this front later.


For now, something to consider is the cyclical nature of tech  
hiring.  You'll probably always going to be able to place the  
competitive programmers, although it may be easier or more difficult  
depending upon the state of the global economy.  Expect variance at  
the volume end to be much higher: during boom times, I've heard jokes  
about the mirror test — bring someone in for the interview, put a  
mirror under their nose, and if it fogs up, hire them.  Obviously  
this swings in the opposite direction during busts.


-Dave

(OK, another general observation: for your roots, there is a simple  
value proposition: community members get a chance to sharpen skills  
(and advertise themselves if they are outsiders to the traditional  
tech networks), and enterprises get much more information about their  
prospects, information for which people used to be, and no doubt  
still are, willing to pay substantial commissions.  The volume is  
probably not so interested in the direct economic value, but more in  
a service: do they feel better about themselves after doing exercises  
on HackerRank than after whatever their alternatives (yoga, etc.) may  
be for limited leisure time.  If one made an analogy of HackerRank as  
a boxing gym, the former would self-identify as boxing for  
competition and the latter as boxing for fitness.  I'd think it  
would be difficult to cater to both groups with the same  
organization, but according to recreation metrics, the boxing people  
manage it.  Somehow they are able to offer the seemingly self- 
contradictory concept of non-contact boxing; so to go for volume  
all you need to do is figure out what the equivalent might be ...  
frustration-free programming?)


Of course I could be completely wrong ... what do our self learning  
silk-listers think of all this?  How long do you feel would be too  
long to work on an exercise or a puzzle?

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 62, Issue 8

[Dave Long]

You can signup for an account on www.hackerrank.com and ease your  
way back

into programming.


there's this too

http://mashable.com/2015/01/11/teach-yourself-programming/? 
utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link


FWIW, the stats on hackerrank agree with the lead in the mashable story.

People who actually managed to do anything at all are already at the  
88th percentile of the hackerrank general leaderboard; and if I  
understand the scoring system properly, doing a gimme exercise in  
each of the domains would suffice to put one at the 95th percentile  
(40th percentile of actives).  There's a short tail at the high end  
(6% of actives, 1% overall, with 200-100 points), about half the  
actives are between 100-50 points, and a long tail dribbling off  
towards the great sea of 0's.


There's obviously something about programming that discourages most  
people from sticking with it.  (on the other hand, most of the coders  
I respect for their chops are (a) largely autodidacts, and (b) even  
had to learn, at some point in their careers, usually the hard way,  
that the solution which doesn't involve any programming at all is  
often better in the long run than the immediately seemingly  
attractive one which does.  (cf nerd sniping http://xkcd.com/ 
356/ )  Leave this sort of  person alone with a CDC 3600, and when  
you come back it will be dedicating a large number of actuators to  
playing Stars and Stripes Forever in multipart harmony)


Now, the middle of the mashable story mentions someone who claims his  
instruction program runs about 200 hours.  This might seem difficult  
to reconcile with the order 1'000 hour estimates earlier in the  
article, or the 800-1'000 hour commitment of the typical boot camp.   
However, a quick visit to the site reveals the slogan Learn HTML CSS  
iPhone apps  more (sorry for the shop talk; if I need to be  
explicit: at most one of these three things involves any  
programming), along with full-screen pictures of people who give one  
the strong impression that they are consumers, not developers.


This is why it is good to know what one's goals are.  Apparently  
industrial webdev is teachable in a few hundred hours, but on average  
one must budget about 4-5 times more for actual programming (again,  
entry-level industrial).


Your mileage will almost certainly vary, and I'd like to believe that  
at a hobby level, programming can be accessible and enjoyable without  
the commitment, at something closer to 50-100 hours/year.  But I have  
to admit that success on this level seems much more likely among  
people who have the resources to teach themselves than among the  
target audience for formal curricula.


-Dave

for a different, more visual, take on what I'm trying to say,  
juxtapose these two images:
http://wac.A8B5.edgecastcdn.net/80A8B5/static-assets/assets/new- 
marketing/ipad-img-c88a73377fbf541da42829f5e247ec13.jpg
http://rack.0.mshcdn.com/media/ 
ZgkyMDE1LzAxLzEyL2U2L1Byb2dyYW1taW5nLmU4MGExLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTk1MHg1MzQj 
CmUJanBn/1948c996/b7d/Programming.jpg

with this one:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ce/9c/21/ 
ce9c21e22b37c8677f77fcdb0d819a41.jpg

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 62, Issue 5

[Dave Long]

As a hobby coder, you have the luxury of looking for environments  
where almost all the stuff you don't like doing is provided, and  
almost all of what you'd like to do is feasible.


In these days, a little over 128 years since Sir William Thomson (as  
he was then) wrote:
The object of this machine is to substitute brass for brain in the  
great mechanical labour of calculating ...


if you are more interested in Augmenting Your Intellect than in code  
for code's sake,

we have made notable progress when substituting silicon for synapses:

https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/A-gallery-of-interesting- 
IPython-Notebooks


-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 62, Issue 5

[Dave Long]

Udupa, people have suggested Python as a flexible language that  
will help


Try it. Try the various other recommendations as well, as long as  
they aren't say C or perl you should be able to coast along in them  
for long enough to decide whether you like the language or not.


I'll second both of these:

for the latter, it helps to understand that programming is full of  
holy wars on the my brother and I against my cousin principle.   
(this is not unique to technology fields: I note that among riders,  
there is often strong antipathy between those who wear cowboy hats  
and those who don't, and among those who don't those whose tack is  
brown vs those whose tack is black, etc. etc., when to the remaining  
98% of the population they are all lumped together as doing  
something with horses).  Taking the 98% view, programming in any  
language involves working at a level of precision which is unfamiliar  
to nearly all neophytes, and unpalatable to most.


I really hate this dd machine
I think I'm going to sell it
it never does what I want
but only what I tell it

once you've written a few programs, and have decided that you do, in  
fact, enjoy this variety of riddle (doing something with  
programming) enough to actually spend large amounts of time doing it  
yourself, then it's worth looking around for languages which suit  
your tastes, inclinations, and aspirations.


for the former, I have found Python to be very flexible: on the  
conceptual side, one can model most, if not all, of the ideas  
presented in http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html  
in Python, on the shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-several-million-times- 
per-second side, there are modules which allow you to JIT raw machine  
code to your heart's content, and on the a-quick-kludge-to-do-X side,  
Python has a large user base and a wide variety of packages for the  
times when one has no aspirations beyond being a glorified plumber.  
(see also http://yosefk.com/blog/the-cardinal-programming-jokes.html  
for more literal takes on this last metaphor)


That last point is why tastes, inclinations, and aspirations are so  
important.  Someone who is paid to code will choose environments  
which minimize time to market (or, even worse, process variation!) in  
their line of business.  As a hobby coder, you have the luxury of  
looking for environments where almost all the stuff you don't like  
doing is provided, and almost all of what you'd like to do is  
feasible.  After all, the revealed preferences of most visitors to  
alpine resorts is that they take lifts to the tops of the runs, but  
descend themselves.


-Dave

(as for those people who ski one or two runs, and sit around in the  
restaurant the rest of the day: their programming equivalents are  
found online, providing most of the heat in our holy wars)

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 61, Issue 15

[Dave Long]

​Enjoying this, but can't get beyond Bobcat.  If I'm alive at 70,  
and in a
rational frame of find, I'll compare my performance then...but I  
suspect

that in the last 10 years, my performance, too, has not worsened.​


I can't get beyond Bobcat by looking intently for the sheep, but do  
make it to Rabbit when I'm just listening for them.  (and on my  
system, the timing seems to be rather coarse anyway: cum grano salis)


This is in keeping with common wisdom that visual stimuli can be run  
at low refresh rates, audio requires higher, and force feedback yet  
higher frequencies.


They say that Attentional Blink (AB) means we often miss visual  
features that occur 180-450 ms after our attention has been caught by  
a different salient feature in the same area; in Sheep Dash terms,  
this period of time corresponds to the entire right-hand side of the  
playfield, which seems like a major lacuna!


(AB can be reduced through training, which is presumably what Mochida  
was referring to in not letting his mind get stuck, but weakening in  
cross-modal AB might also explain the former popularity of developing  
sentiment du fer)


Some day, and not too far in the future, I’ll be unfit for this  
kind of activity. My goal is to make it to 65 and still be able to  
put on the pack.


Good luck; my guess is that 65 traditionally works a a fairly  
conservative cutoff, so your chances ought to be high.  My wife is a  
big fan of Pulse/Respiration*/Temperature as a quick check battery,  
and my experience has been that they've been fairly accurate  
indicators for us, so I'd think good values here also give you a good  
prognosis.


-Dave

* for what it's worth: I've been working with cheap units which give  
pulse as well as  accelerometer telemetry which can be used to  
determine man down situations.  never took the contract, but I was  
once asked to study regularity in the heartbeat interval to determine  
the effect in recovery situations, and these units also provide all  
the necessary raw data for that.  do you all use similar systems, or  
would they be technological overkill?

Re: [silk] An age old problem

[Dave Long]

I recommend you read the entire thing. And I am eager for your  
thoughts on this.


http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/11/symptoms-of- 
ageing.html


On the thesis that deliberate forgetting may be desirable to preserve  
reaction time:


For humans as individuals, I don't buy it.  (Can anyone here closer  
to, or on the far side of, 50 back Stross up?)


I'm 7 or 8 years closer to 50 than when I first discovered Sheep Dash:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf
yet my performance is not any worse.  (despite having learned many  
things, and having a richer set of associations to draw upon ... in  
the appropriate circumstances)


Ian Millar picked up an Olympic medal at 61, and is still  
competitive.  Mariano Aguerre is still this side of 50, but he's near  
the top of a contact sport which is normally a much younger man's  
game.  Admittedly, they're both using someone else's lungs and knees,  
but they still rely on their own reflexes and responsiveness*.


Of course, anticipation is a confounding variable: I don't mind being  
theoretically 40ms slower than a 20-year old on raw twitch when the  
extra experience practically yields a 250-500 ms lead in reading the  
game.  The best advice for sport, if not for life, I've ever  
received: if you know where to be, you can let the young guys run.


For humans as social animals, it's a true, but not necessarily novel,  
observation about culture.  (which raises a question: is a short-term  
culture essential, or an accident of limited transmission bandwidth?)


Look at computers: software trends are largely hemlines, which mostly  
follow a brownian progress (and tend to make qualitative jumps only  
insofar as the underlying quantitative hardware progress permits),  
changing vocabulary (both spoken and visual) every few years so we  
have plenty of work to do, filling up the equilibria between jumps.


Someone with less parochial interests than mine might even go so far  
as to apply this observation to societies as a whole:


GK Chesterton, early XX
... what really happens in history is this: the old man is always  
wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong  
with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old  
man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks  
it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.



(although having more of a progessive than a conservative  
disposition, I would globally insert almosts before his always)


-Dave

* I haven't been in the salle in ages, but in our fencing club we  
have an octogenarian beginner.  Legwise, he has no mobility, but he's  
still pretty sharp with the hand -- and more importantly, he has an  
analytic mind, and hence fixes holes in his game much more readily  
than some of our teenagers and young adults do.


Some support for 50 as a cutoff age comes from Mochida Moriji, but he  
talks about using increased responsiveness to compensate for  
declining physical ability:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XHSZ-sLG3I

Re: [silk] We Are All Confident Idiots

[Dave Long]

While I agree that we're fortunate that society is set up so that  
things more or less work despite widespread ignorance and  
overconfidence (I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art,  
Peter Principle, etc.) there's a different issue which (at least my  
skimming of) the article didn't bring up:


There are two differing forms of communication: phatic and  
deliberative; these forms have opposite tendencies, and it is very  
rare for any given conversation to explicitly state to which it belongs.


In deliberative communication, we are attempting to examine an issue,  
and so it is more helpful than not to say I have no idea (or even  
better, hold one's tongue), or, if pressed, even ask what the hell  
are you talking about?.


In phatic communication, tone (Nation's Dog Owners Demand To Know  
Who's a Good Boy) and turn-taking are more important than  
information, and so saying I have no idea (or even worse, holding  
one's tongue), or asking what the hell are you talking about? are  
all considered unhelpful compared with blathering on with, if not a  
meaningful connection, at least a tone which more or less matches the  
previous speaker.


Some of the examples cited in the article seemed to me to be less an  
example of we're all bozos (News at 11!), than that the researchers  
(or at least the writers) were somehow surprised to not find  
deliberative communication in situations where the interviewees had  
been (consciously or unconsciously) intending phatic communication.


-Dave

(is there anywhere, outside the Onion, where one might expect man-in- 
the-street interviews to be coherent?)

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 58, Issue 4

[Dave Long]

There is no field that I know of that tells us what societies  
should be like.


philosophy and religion offer numerous utopias...

-Dave

(to what degree do the philosophers and the priests differ from the  
fiction writers?)

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 57, Issue 23

[Dave Long]

It really does seem to me that ALS will be curable soon.  
Scientists are making really exciting progress on many fronts.

On that note:
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2014-August/ 
082585.html



They say Francis Bacon came to an untimely end due to an ill-planned  
early experiment in cryopreservation (admittedly, of the nutritional  
variety).  I'm sure Hal was playing the cards he'd been dealt as best  
he could; guess we'll find out at the showdown how much progress  
we've made in this area over the last 4+ centuries...


-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 54, Issue 12

[Dave Long]

In my 50s I realized that people have to discover some things on their
own and that unless something really needs to be said to achieve
something that I consider important, it is OK to say nothing and let
people blunder through life.


I've been too busy blundering through life to read The View from 80  
but my father told me (if memory still serves) that Cowley says that,  
at 80, one is comfortable watching all the younger people earnestly  
striving and letting them do so.


Somewhere in Marcus Aurelius, he points out that even when you're the  
emperor of Rome, you are still surrounded by the barely competent and  
barely -ept, so it's better to work with the grain of human nature,  
and learn how to accomplish things anyway, with grace and good cheer,  
despite the eternal imperfection of the substrate.


-Dave

Re: [silk] Living Well to the Age of 150 and Beyond

[Dave Long]

If it doesn't, then the social implications of men having to live  
more than

half their lives without a sexual partner would be interesting.


Hmmm.  Although a (grand-)mother's age is generally (although not  
absolutely) a reliable guide to generational status, it was not  
*that* uncommon, back in the late XX, to run into male acquaintances  
(of a certain age) with small children in tow, and then have to  
manage the odd circumlocution due to ignorance as to whether the  
rugrats happened to be grandchildren or children.


-Dave

(luckily, a proud (grand-)parent often rapidly volunteers the  
required information, unlike the heroine of the Is she 18 or 20?  
story in Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad)

Re: [silk] On alumni networks

[Dave Long]

Firstly, I am interested in alumni networks in general: In Silicon
Valley, ex-employees of Netscape, Yahoo and google control many of the
decisions behind what happens. Here in Bangalore, the ex-Wipro  
mafia is
well known. I am interested in people's thoughts on alumni  
networks, and

how to do them well



It could just be an artifact of being more interested these days in  
the development of lines of thought than in product lines, but I see  
the network relationship flipping over longer timescales: people who  
do interesting work in a field tend to wind up working together  
sooner or later, and over a lifetime, or even over a career, their  
companies become a side note: the ex-affiliations of this group or  
that; a quaint record of variation by recombination.


-Dave

(PS: for an example of the connectedness of Silicon Valley before N,Y,g,
cf http://www.startup-book.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/svg-full.jpg
of course, other industries in other times and places had similar  
diagrams)

Re: [silk] Probability for kids

[Dave Long]

Apropos the old Probability for kids thread:
https://www.mail-archive.com/silklist@lists.hserus.net/msg24527.html

Michael Walker has been running a 4-token Markov chain between the  
KJV and SICP, yielding many amusing statements as well as the  
occasional truths:

http://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com/
The integral procedure at the end of the garbage-collection phase  
the useful data will have been moved and scanned, at which point we  
start over from the root of the trees: every tree therefore which  
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down



In this way he is doing his part to advance the work of Swift's  
anonymous professor at the academy of Lagado (XVIII), whose elevator  
pitch went as follows:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm
Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to  
arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant  
person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour,  
might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws,  
mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius  
or study.



and who, in turn, seems to have been a parody of Llull, (a pre-ARPA  
(XIII) net.kook?).

http://cs.ttu.ee/kursused/itv0010/maxmon/1274ad.htm

who was apparently inspired by an arabic i-ching-like device:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zairja

-Dave

(to be fair: the modern discipline of Compressive Sensing  
demonstrates that one can derive useful information in a sub-Nyquist  
regime by illuminating a target with noise; in fact, the noisier the  
illumination the better!)

http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2012-February/010672.html

Re: [silk] and your bird can sing

[Dave Long]

Call me a crank if you like. Not an issue.


Neither is it a likelihood; very persuasively put.


PPS: This song was composed in 1966, while the Beatles met Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi in 1967 so it's unlikely that there are any inputs from  
the

Maharishi.


Erwin Schrödinger's 1944 What is Life? ( http:// 
whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf ), in which he  
successfully predicted than an 'aperiodic crystal' would carry  
genetic information, was based on lectures delivered in Dublin in  
1943, and he expounded something very similar to your prefatory  
explanation in his epilogue: which is a rather long-winded way to say  
that, just as one might say that at least one sheep in scotland is  
black on at least one side, it's plausible --even in the UK and even  
well before the end of the Chatterley ban-- that people other than  
the Maharishi might have some influence...


-Dave

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 51, Issue 18

[Dave Long]

, im not Newton, im Pascal



Serendipitously*, I recently found the following:

http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Cornelius_Scipio_Nasica
Idem Scipio Nasica cum Ennio poëta vivebat coniunctissime. Cum ad  
eum venisset, eique ab ostio quaerenti ancilla dixisset Ennium domi  
non esse, Nasica sensit illam domini iussu dixisse, et illum intus  
esse. Paucis post diebus cum ad Nasicam venisset Ennius, et eum ab  
ianua quaereret, exclamavit ipse Nasica se domi non esse. Tum  
Ennius: Quid! ego non cognosco, inquit, vocem tuam? Hic Nasica:  
Homo es impudens: ego cum te quaererem, ancillae tuae credidi te  
domi non esse; tu non mihi credis ipsi.


Scipio Nasica lived near the poet Ennius.  One day when Nasica went  
to visit Ennius, Ennius' maid told Nasica that Ennius was not at  
home, but Nasica was sure she had just been instructed to say so.  So  
a few days later, when Ennius came to visit Nasica, Nasica called  
out: He's not home.  When Ennius asked, Wait, what? Don't I  
recognize your voice?, Nasica responded: How shameless! I believed  
your maid when she said you weren't home, but you don't even believe  
me myself!


-Dave

* I was trying to track down the source for a story that during peace  
talks, the Romans multiplexed a single set of silverware among all  
the hosts to the Carthiginian delegation.  Any of you happen to know  
from where I might have this anecdote?

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 51, Issue 6

[Dave Long]

Or you could hypothesize that farming became popular for some  
reason other

than the happiness of the farmers.


Having only encountered agricultural enterprises relatively late in  
life, I found Orwell's choice of metaphor in Animal Farm very  
precise; it goes well beyond talking animals.


Consider the problem of induction faced by a pig[0].  Every day the  
farmer comes to feed and take care of the pig ... up until the day  
when the farmer comes, and the pig is slaughtered instead[1][2].


This outcome is certainly surprising based on the pig's experience up  
until that point, but not surprising to anyone who considers that the  
livestock on a farm serve (the farmer in particular, humans in  
general) to convert things that people cannot eat into things they can.


Moving up a level, the farmer, for much of human history, served to  
convert things that warlords cannot directly use, such as land and  
livestock, into things they can, such as rations for armies and gold  
for mercenaries.


-Dave

[0] we will leave aside the question of whether it is better to be a  
pig satisfied than socrates dissatisifed...
[1] it has been suggested that one should avoid crossing pig farmers;  
they are apparently have many ways to make bodies disappear!
[2] for much of human history, the warlords themselves faced a  
similar problem: for most of their life, their society was set up to  
serve them, up until the day when (preferably due to external enemies  
than internal) they were slaughtered instead.  modern warlords,  
however, seem to have ditched the mores of the Iliad (or of the  
Gita?) and prefer to let others do their dying.

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 49, Issue 5

[Dave Long]

Of course, you don't need ultra high end gear to enjoy your music, or
ultra high end wine to enjoy your evening, just as you shouldn't  
solely
use acupuncture to treat your cancer. It might be as effective to  
learn
how to meditate. But maybe we all just need to meditate in  
different ways.



One useful exercise which I still recall from an otherwise  
unmemorable corporate training:


List all the ways you, personally, get your dopamine kicks, answering  
the following questions for each:

can it be enjoyed whenever you want, or only at scheduled times?
can it be enjoyed alone, or only with other people?
can it be enjoyed for free (eg you already have the gear), or only  
with some cost each time?


From the executive side, of course we were supposed to be learning  
to evaluate projects, and qualitative project bottlenecks, in terms  
of time, staff, and budget.


I prefer to view this exercise from the finance side, however, and  
periodically ask myself: do I have a portfolio of dopamine-generating  
activities that is well-balanced?  In other words, have I learned  
enough that I can enjoy both things which have no temporal, social,  
or financial requirements (eg philosophy) as well as things which  
have all three (eg sport)?  Furthermore, are the rewards from the  
activities with higher commitments sufficiently greater than from  
those with lesser?


-Dave

Re: [silk] MOOCs, Thrun, Udacity

[Dave Long]

The internet for me is a large library, and that's really all I  
need. So
the idea of a digital classroom doesn't excite me as much as most  
people.


I also fail to see how the stated problem is more than a strawman.   
If education were really the goal, given the stated 7% completion  
rate average, classes with more than 2'900 starts should already be  
beating the meatspace numbers. (cf grocery stores: pitiful profit  
margins, but they're in the turnover business, and so as a class  
their bottom line looks like everyone else's)


Education is really pull from the student instead of push from the  
instructor, anyway.  Back when my wife still taught children, she  
often had to tell parents she wasn't dropping their kids permanently,  
but that they should try something else for a year, and only come  
back if the kids really missed it and were sufficiently prepared to  
be engaged.


Maybe the critical meta-skill is learning to ask interesting  
questions, but again one is probably better off here learning by  
doing, as that's not exactly the sort of thing that either  
governments or employers are enthused about paying for.


-Dave

Re: [silk] Collateral damage

[Dave Long]

... accept surveillance, embrace it, and set up the
mechanism for subterfuge. Only that route can allow creative ways of
spooking the system to emerge.


cf Russell, Eric Frank, ... And Then There Were None, 1951

In practice, after a certain scale on this planet one is far more  
likely to wind up with Somalia or a Manor Farm than with a Gand, but  
maybe that was part of Russell's point: Gand was not only originally  
settled with a small, fairly homogenous, population, but also had  
superficial as well as deeper means of discouraging Antigands:  
ghosting* (nb. 3 decades before tit for tat) only came into play  
after the hippy-dippy appearances failed to scare off the squares.


-Dave

* what goes clip clop clip clop ... silence ... clip clop clip  
clop?  An Amish drive-by shunning.

Re: [silk] Collateral damage

[Dave Long]

Save your dial-up modems. We can restart the internet right under  
their feet.


A fine sentiment, but it's trivial to distinguish modem traffic from  
voice.


Steganets (none of you has ever seen a dead donkey) might be a  
little less obvious than darknets (and the normally abysmal S/N ratio  
of social networks may actually provide decent channel bandwidth?).


Personally, I'm living in a country where I still have faith in the  
civility of the goons.


-Dave

Re: [silk] Any pet-hate subjects? ...why is Mathematics so frequently hated?

[Dave Long]

What makes us detest certain subjects at school, and why
is Maths (or Math) frequently at the top of the list?


cf http://www.maa.org/devlin/lockhartslament.pdf

Re: [silk] Old book smell

[Dave Long]

   A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of
vanilla over an underlying mustiness, this unmistakable smell is  
as much

a part of the book as its contents.


Someone should combine wine tasting with smelling of old books , to
determine which wine goes best with a Don Quixote publication from  
1922 ...


Among my wife's secret mutant powers: determining a book's (general)  
genre by the smell of its pages.


-Dave

(She, by the way, maintains that bone glue breaking down forms a  
major note in old book smell)

Re: [silk] Fwd: Wine tasting is bullshit. Here's why.

[Dave Long]

... Probably the first time a thread has drifted back...


This observation allows us to make some statements about the  
dimensionality of silk thread-drift space, under the assumption it  
can be modeled by brownian motion.


We know the dimensionality is strictly greater than 0 (in trivial  
spaces, no one can drift your thread)
If the dimension is 1 or 2, a thread will return to its origin*  
infinitely often as time goes to infinity.
If the dimension is greater than or equal to 3, the distance of a  
thread from its origin tends to infinity as time goes to infinity.


Having observed a single return, we can guess that either:
D_delta_thread is high for silk, and we have witnessed an extreme  
outlier, or
D_delta_thread is small but positive, but most threads have thus far  
not lasted sufficiently long to witness a return.


In order to resolve this issue, I suggest we start an infinite  
thread; upon its conclusion we'll have more information to  
discriminate between the two cases.


-Dave

* If I wanted to gamble, I would buy a casino - JP Getty

Re: [silk] Probability for kids

[Dave Long]

at the risk of beating an exquisite corpse:
http://bit-player.org/2013/driveling
http://bit-player.org/2013/recursive-driveling

-Dave

[silk] temperature as forex

[Dave Long]

Another metaphor for temperature: there are two basic currencies in  
physics, entropy and energy.  If you have an ordered state, you can  
usually easily trade it for a less-ordered state, and if you have an  
energetic state, you can usually easily trade it for a less-energetic  
state.  Temperature is the exchange rate between these two  
currencies.  At low temperatures, energy is dear and order cheap, so  
we wind up with systems whose parts are predictably in one of their  
lowest energy states.  At high temperatures, order is dear and energy  
is cheap, so we wind up with systems whose parts are unpredictable,  
as likely to be in arbitrarily high-energy states as lower ones.


A negative temperature is then the equivalent of a negative exchange  
rate -- which is why it takes some effort to set up*, as the universe  
usually conspires to quickly arbitrage such situations away.


-Dave

* if you find localized negative energy states, there's probably some  
biology somewhere meddling with your physics; a related slogan is  
that life is fire, slowed down, with an attitude.

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 38, Issue 9

[Dave Long]

Encrusted, port-swilling diehards


dluohs lla uoy kniht I dna ,seY
be grateful that some of our
retfa neve tcatni niamer srennam
having swilled too much port ...
I taht stseggus netfo noercanA
respond to something on silk-list
ni ylikcul tub ,nodehportsuob ni
almost all these instances, the
etilop fo snoitatsurcni gniniamer
behavior *usually* restrain.
   evaD-

Re: [silk] lower than absolute zero?

[Dave Long]

I read recently about new theories of infinitely or nearly  
infinitely hot plasma existing in the picoseconds after the big  
bang. I have a hard time understanding what temperature even means  
in this context, since I've always thought of temperature as a  
measure of the wiggling around of atoms  molecules ... But in the  
primordial plasma, there were no atoms or molecules.


As you suspected, this is covered by what I wrote.  Note that I was  
careful to say Temperature ... measures how the total energy in a  
system is divided up among its parts[-1].  Concretely, atoms and  
molecules are typical parts of typical systems, and they store energy  
in their wiggling around[0].  Abstractly, however, all that matters  
is defining the whole system and how it is divided into parts[1,2].


temperature...to me, it is ... the level of mercury in a nice old- 
fashioned thermometer!


The catch is, as soon as you try to calculate with it, you'll  
discover this view is not so useful.  Take two disparate objects with  
nice old-fashioned thermometers on them, and then put them together.   
Knowing just the level of the mercury on each part beforehand isn't  
enough to tell us at what level the two thermometers will eventually  
come to agreement[3,4].  Keeping track of energy, one can do the  
bookkeeping, and furthermore, with a bit more information about the  
composition of these parts, one could then calculate either the  
resulting temperature or the level of mercury.


In the case of a thermometer at an everyday temperature, John's  
wiggling of atoms and molecules is a decent picture.  The wiggling  
means that they're constantly bumping into each other, and with the  
atoms and molecules neighboring the thermometer, exchanging energy.   
So if it's hotter outside, more energetic outside atoms are more  
likely, and the thermometer gains energy; if it's colder outside, the  
opposite occurs; and in between (at equilibrium), it's pretty much  
a wash.


This wiggling has two effects.  Remember how we said that they're  
bumping into each other as well as the neighbors?  The energy  
statistically overwhelmingly spreads out within the thermometer so  
that the observed ratio of probabilities of higher- vs. lower- energy  
subsystems (faster/bigger vs. slower/smaller wiggles) is constant,  
which means a physical chemist would be able to tell you what the  
temperature is[5].  However, the energy spreading out means that the  
wiggling has spread out as well, and as mercury with bigger wiggles  
takes more space than mercury with smaller wiggles, its volume  
increases.  Because the diameter of the thermometer is constant, we  
see this volume increase as a level increase, which means (if the  
scale is still legible) any mother of a child can tell you what the  
temperature is.


-Dave

[-1] somewhat like the Gini coefficient, except that temperature has  
useful equations.
[0] and, in fact, the wiggling of atoms within molecules shows up on  
a spectroscope at wavelengths which in everyday experience we would  
associate with heat lamps.  Go a little further, and you get microwaves.
[1] in effect, when abstracting, we treat the 10'000 things as straw  
dogs.
[2] hence, I maintain that any mill with a mill-pond can claim to be  
an structure engineered to create and exploit a negative-temperature  
situation.
[3] anyone who says here that they will come to agreement at the  
ambient temperature will be sent home with Diogenes' plucked chicken
[4] Kipling can tell you fire will burn; he can't tell you how much  
firewood you'd need to produce 1 kg of fertilizer via Haber-Bosch.  
(cf the Sons of Martha)
[5] if this ratio were 1 (the reverse of the normal situation), the  
p-chemist would, making the same calculation, tell you the  
temperature was negative (the reverse of the normal situation)

Re: [silk] lower than absolute zero?

[Dave Long]

I don't understand this, at least as it is explained here. Somebody  
care

to explain?


Temperature is not (as we tend to think of it) a level, like the  
level of water in a lake.


Instead, it measures how the total energy in a system is divided up  
among its parts.


Statistically speaking, it's overwhelmingly likely that there's a  
self-similar distribution of energies, with the ratio of higher  
energy subsystems to lower constant.


This constant[0] is related to the temperature[1], and in normal  
experience, it goes between absolute zero, where there is no energy  
in the system and hence all subsystems are in their lowest energy  
state, so there is no chance to find any higher states; and an  
infinite temperature, where the energy in the system is evenly  
divided between all possibilities and so it's equally likely to find  
a higher energy subsystem as a lower.


If, however, one locally prepares a system so that there are more  
higher energy subsystems than lower ones, the probability of getting  
a higher-energy subsystem is higher than that of a lower, and,  
because of the way we've defined temperature[1] the math works out  
such that we see a *negative* temperature.


In fact, this is not colder than zero, it's hotter[2].

But it's not that unusual: the lasers in CD-players or laser pointers  
(we are all old enough to remember these, right?) work because of a  
population inversion[3], and anyone with a hydroelectric plant, or  
for that matter a traditional dam-powered sawmill[4], also created  
negative temperature situations.


-Dave

[0] it's possible to prepare systems that, strictly speaking, don't  
have a temperature in this sense, because they have unusual  
distributions; but one can usually come up with a closest  
temperature to a given distribution.

[1] the inverse of the logarithm of the constant, more or less
[2] a very rough rule of thumb is that chemical reactions double  
their speed with each 10 degree (C or K) increase in temperature,  
because it's increasingly likely to find molecules with sufficient  
activation energy (think of this as an up-front cost or barrier to  
entry) as temperature increases, and is why chemists are commonly  
pictured with hot plates and bunsen burners.
[3] working lasers have a negative temperature component all the  
frickin' time
[4] where locally there is more water above the turbine or grindstone  
than below it, even though globally more water is in the oceans than  
above...

Re: [silk] Probability for kids

[Dave Long]

[sorry, resending because I hadn't realized this also went to the list]


I suck at explaining basic probability to a 7 year old. You want me to
try *Markov Chains*?



While I agree that the Galton Board is much more transparent (which  
is why it was the first suggestion) keep in mind that you don't have  
to explain the theory behind them or actually calculate any  
properties, just stick with simple observations.  [Those, like Deepa,  
who wish to see the concrete observations first please skip to the  
bottom of this post]


I was thinking they might be nice because you have a choice of source  
text (her favorite stories or poems, something with which she's  
familiar), they sometimes produce entertaining output, and it's  
possible to observe that:


- one never observes probability 0 transitions
- one always observes deterministic (probability 1) transitions
	- and otherwise, high probability transitions are generally more  
common than low ...


If those concepts stick, then you might eventually move to more  
advanced stuff:


	- having a probability 0 event AND any other event, even probability  
1, still never happens
	- having a probability 1 event OR any other event, even probability  
0, always happens (when the antecedent to the transition occurs)

- the conjunction of several high probability events is not as likely
- the disjunction of several low probability events is more likely

Or possibly even (after several years?):

	- for suitable inputs (those with deterministic tails) there is  
absorption: the output is non-deterministic only until encountering  
the tail, at which point it becomes deterministic.
	- as a long output text gets longer, although transition ratios tend  
towards the basic probability ratios, transition differences usually  
increase.


And even more subtly:

	- if a transition occurs in the output, you know it definitely  
occurred in the input (but not vice versa)
	- if a transition doesn't occur in the input, you know it definitely  
won't occur in the output (but not vice versa)


this kind of lossy inverse (where an equality is replaced by a pair  
of inequalities) occurs frequently in mathematics and often signals  
there's an abstraction to be found (like a pair of data structures  
that don't quite round-trip; the values where they *do* round-trip  
are the fixed points so beloved of computer science)


-Dave

:: :: ::

Now for a concrete example.  I've given the last Silk Digest to Mark  
V. Shaney, who, after some reflection, has responded:
Obviously, if the event in question happened, or else is included  
in the lottery, and that probability is always calculated by the  
total number of possible outcomes, this contradiction is explained,  
and empirically valid with your perceived paradox with conventional  
frequency based probability.
Given one desired outcome (rolling a 1) and two potential outcomes  
(rolling or not rolling a one is important as well.
The probability that the roll will result in a system where  
probability is always calculated by the total number of possible  
outcomes, this contradiction is explained, and empirically valid  
with your perceived paradox with conventional frequency based  
probability.

Given one desired outcome (rolling a 1) the expression becomes 1 in 2.
Charles' example though derives from rolling a red? Your view would  
have either red, or not rolling a 2 must also be .5, according to  
your interpretation.
But since all possible probabilities must sum to 1, .5(6)=3 (or .5  
added for each of the probability of rolling a 1) and two potential  
outcomes is the probability of coming up with a 1, and the concept  
of probability.

That is the primitive of probability.
To be honest I don't see a simpler way to break it down, maybe  
someone else on the list has a better method.
However, I am interested in how you ameliorate the paradox between  
the probability is accurately reflected as 1/0.
landon I can TELL myself all this: The probability of rolling a  
red, thus 50-50.



and we can see that:
- the transition thus bottom has probability 0, and we in fact  
never encounter it
- the transition perceived paradox has probability 1 (is  
deterministic, like thus 50-50); whenever we see perceived it is  
always followed by paradox.
- the transition a 1 has higher probability than a 2, and here  
it's true (although not necessarily) that it occurs more often.

- the combination thus bottom AND perceived paradox doesn't occur
- the combination perceived paradox OR thus bottom does occur
- fewer sentences have probability is AND of probability than  
either one alone
- more sentences have probability is OR of probability than  
either one alone
- (because this Mark is sentence-structured) as soon as we see  
conventional we know the sentence must end frequency based  
probability.  (thus 50-50 is a more general absorption, but a  
poorer example)
- exercise for the reader: what 

Re: [silk] Probability for kids

[Dave Long]

Currently trying without much success to explain the notion of
probability to my 7 year old daughter. Any pointers or resources on  
this

that folks can share?


Galton Board?  (or somewhat more indirectly, Mark V. Shaney?)

-Dave

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong —  
but that's the way to bet.

Re: [silk] quiz help

[Dave Long]

 ... it would only inflame passions to point out that it should be  
a chukkah, played for 7 1/2 minutes, on old regimental polo  
grounds ...


In the spirit of distinguishing chassepôt rifles from javelins, a bit  
of pedantry:


7 1/2, unless it's the last chukka (and unless a penalty has been  
awarded within the last 5 seconds of the last chukka)


Polo?  inflame passions?  Never.  (what, never?)  Well, hardly ever...

-Dave

cf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlHb3NOhEE8 (but only if you wish  
to wait almost 3 minutes to actually see some polo, compared to the  
argies
http://espndeportes.espn.go.com/videohub/video/clipDeportes? 
id=1434118cc=7586 who manage to get the action going in about 45  
seconds)

Re: [silk] Lytro

[Dave Long]

I have a friend who has one. I've played with it. As I said when it  
first came out there's no magic, it has to sacrifice resolution to  
get variable focus.


The 2005 paper[0] mentions this issue; their bet is that VLSI  
progress should eventually yield far more resolution than anyone  
knows what to do with, so (just like software people continually  
attempt to make computers slower even faster than the hardware people  
make them faster) in principle they're hoping to soak up that excess...


And a majority of journalism photos are shot at f/8 or f/11 - the  
goal being showing what the scene looked like than to make the  
scene artsy or nice looking. I don't know if the Lytro shoots at f/ 
8 (or even allows setting the aperture).


IMO, the long term future of journalism photos lies in mobile  
phones. As demonstrated during the Arab Spring and as currently  
being demonstrated in Syria.



My impression is that mobile phones are essentially set up under the  
philosophy of f/8 and be there; the CCD helps with DOF and the  
modal use case being here are my smiling friends in front of X  
practically demands that focus be wide.


Apart from the focus-pull gimmick, I'm drawing a blank on consumer  
uses for light field cameras.  It could be very useful in microscopy  
(in mineralogy and petrology it would already be interesting to  
recover 3D-structure by sweeping a narrow synthetic focus plane, even  
more so when the synthesized plane can be tilted; I have to imagine  
that for biologists, whose subjets move, this might be even more  
interesting), but in most consumer photography, the objects are  
opaque at the wavelengths of interest.  Surveillance is another  
obvious use[1]; synthetic aperture techniques were developed because  
when the subjects are not particularly keen on being observed they  
have a great relative motion to the camera, and often a separation  
well outside of spitting distance, but consumer photography normally  
has willing (if not posed), close, relatively stationary[2] subjects.


OK, not completely a blank: possibly useful for small children and  
animals[3].


-Dave

[0] http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/
[1] would synthetic focus be useful for isolating faces in crowd  
cameras? for range estimation?
[2] hmm... sports?  are there any sporting events which are not  
already well illuminated enough for a fast telephoto?
[3] OTOH, I'm fairly happy with a steinbock we got using binoculars  
in front of a mobile phone; didn't even have to 'shop in the lens flare

cf http://bit-player.org/2012/light-field-photography

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 31, Issue 8

[Dave Long]

His point (not his main one) was that success was largely based on  
luck.


Success also depends upon what game you are playing.

For instance, take card games: many people might define success as  
winning the most hands, whereas a poker player would prefer  
maximizing his stake over winning hands, and from what I've observed  
of bridge players, they seem to define success as being able to know  
how the remainder of the hand will play out having only seen a  
minimum of cards...


-Dave

[silk] Rép : Sociolinguistic query

[Dave Long]

Le 14 avr. 12 à 15:33, silklist-requ...@lists.hserus.net a écrit :
The canonical three categories of swearing are blasphemous,  
scatalogical, and obscene


For an example of the first, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Quebec_French_profanity


-Dave

(mieux de regarder http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacre_québécois , nom  
de bleu !)

Re: [silk] silklist Digest, Vol 28, Issue 22

[Dave Long]

New Plastic Bleeds Red When Scratched, Then Heals Itself Like Skin
Sounds promising, but I distrust these might be inventions...

Anyone here has special knowledge about this material?


If it's what was in Nature 5-10 years ago, then it's entirely  
plausible that it would be further developed by now.


They didn't have any red coloring (if it bleeds, it leads?) but the  
basic idea was to encapsulate uncured monomer components in a  
normally cured part so that when microcracks started to develop and  
propagate, they'd release the monomers, which would then set up,  
healing the fractures.


-Dave

Re: [silk] Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn

[Dave Long]

We consider whether, and how, the way in which the information is  
phrased --- the choice of words and sentence structure --- can  
affect [public awareness].


As prior work one would hope they reference that rather trivial  
subject: rhetoric.


-Dave

(je t'aime ... moi non plus)

Re: [silk] Diversity and trust

[Dave Long]

May I also use this opportunity to link on here a Nursery rhyme  
that was
available in shops in India in the early 1960s. I have the original  
45 RPM
record of about 20 rhymes, but this one is about the Ten Little  
Nigger Boys


cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None

One can find perhaps both some musical and some moral* progress in  
DTH's interpretation:


Zehn kleine Jägermeister
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1KEAw9ovN8

Einer für alle, alle für einen
Wenn einer fort ist, wer wird denn gleich weinen
Einmal triffts jeden, ärger dich nicht
So gehts im Leben, du oder ich

Einmal muss jeder gehn
Und wenn dein Herz zerbricht
Davon wird die Welt nicht untergehen
Mensch ärger dich nicht!



-Dave

* One for all and all for one
Who's going to cry if someone is done?
It happens to us all, don't get upset
To you and to me, on that you can bet

It's an exit that we all will make
Even if your heart may break
The world doesn't stop for it
Dude -- don't get upset!