I'm so out of the loop. What is the new, special sense of Rationalist over what it might have meant to e.g. Descarte?
Readit Newsjrd259 commented on Guess I'm a rationalist now scottaaronson.blog/?p=890... · Posted by u/nsoonhui
jrd259 commented on The Origin of the Pork Taboo archaeology.org/issues/ma... · Posted by u/diodorus
In his book Cows, Pugs, Wars and Witches the anthropologist Marvin Harris tries to ground the pig taboo as a protection against the tragedy of the commons. As per Harris, pigs require excessive water, a scarce resource in the region. A flat ban on consuming pigs reduces the chance that people will divert water to pigs. The article hints at this where it calls the pig "an animal unfit for the harsh terrain and dry climate".
jrd259 commented on Xkcd 1425 (Tasks) turns ten years old today simonwillison.net/2024/Se... · Posted by u/ulrischa
It's also a bad example because most doctors people encounter are overworked, on a budget, and not very smart,* which means they're very frequently wrong.
Assuming the patient is as intelligent as the average on HN, and motivated about their health, they may well be able to learn more about what's going on with their health in the month it takes to get an appointment than the doctor will in the ten minutes they spend with you.
(* Because most people who live in cities, and most people who go into primary care in cities do so because they weren't competitive enough for one of the more interesting and lucrative specialties. It's a similar dynamic as to why most people in the tech industry that people encounter—IT help desk reps—are not usually the cream of the crop.)
This is an insult to the doctors I know who deliberately chose to do primary care because they were more motivated by service than money or prestige. For that matter, I know a developer who chose to work in IT support for a cancer research center because he put more value on helping to cure cancer than making more money. There actually are people out there who value service to the community more than fame or fortune. They deserve praise, not scorn.
jrd259 commented on Greppability is an underrated code metric morizbuesing.com/blog/gre... · Posted by u/thunderbong
The ability to search the code base is one reason I insist on correct spelling even in comments when doing code reviews, and also keep adding to my IDE's dictionary so it will catch my spelling errors.
jrd259 commented on What UI density means and how to design for it matthewstrom.com/writing/... · Posted by u/delaugust
The example of low and high data-ink (from Tufte) is switched. I wrote the author to suggest it be fixed
jrd259 commented on What UI density means and how to design for it matthewstrom.com/writing/... · Posted by u/delaugust
You might also want to discuss Fitt’s law. Difference between a diagram (Tufte) and a GUI is that we only look at a diagram, but a GUI we interact with, which means we need to ensure people can actually click/tap/select the element of interest. Higher density makes that harder.
jrd259 commented on The case against dual axis charts (and what to use instead) (2018) blog.datawrapper.de/duala... · Posted by u/Leftium
Because starting at zero can cause scaling issues that mask meaningful trends and variation. That can also be abused to mislead, but a simple rule like “always include zero” ain’t the solution to that.
All fair points about zero. Sorry, I acknowledge now I was overly influenced my metrics dashboards I use for alerting. I've seen people panic at a seeming steep rise in error rate or increase in latency because the chart was not showing the full range (0 to 1 for rates, or 0 to 2x SLA for latency). I was only thinking of operational alerting dashboards.
jrd259 commented on The case against dual axis charts (and what to use instead) (2018) blog.datawrapper.de/duala... · Posted by u/Leftium
I'd argue that the zero value should always be shown. Otherwise you get different impressions of the rate depending how you scale and subset the Y axis.
jrd259 commented on Reasons not to take Lumina's anticavity probiotic trevorklee.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/gdudeman
I'm disappointed by the somewhat ad-hominem attack on Silverbook for being a porn producer: "Aaron, based on his previous work as guy at a rationalist nonprofit, videogame producer, and porn producer, decided to recreate Hillman’s work." Previous work experience is irrelevant, and besides, don't at least some of aspire to being polymaths?
jrd259 commented on A curious phenomenon called 'Etak' maphappenings.com/2024/04... · Posted by u/MBCook
One the one hand this is a cool story about real technology pioneers. On the other hand, this is a story about people building technology that was so ahead of its time that it had no chance of turning into a good product. Too expensive, too unreliable, too complicated.
I think there are some obvious parallels here to General Magic and the Apple Newton. Very cool technology. Impressive demos. But ultimately the products didn't deliver on the vision. It wasn't until the iPod and capacitive touch screens and tiny hard drives came to the market that the iPhone became possible. Being 20 years early doesn't help.
Similar catastrophically flawed research projects get started today. In the past couple of days the Humane AI pin has been in the news. It's a wearable AI gadget that seems cool but it doesn't work. The tech has to catch up to the vision. It's at least a decade ahead of its time.
The other issue is that it requires the driver to read a screen while driving. in 1988 at the MIT Media Lab I built a system called Back Seat Driver that provides spoken driving directions, allowing the driver to keep their visual attention on the road. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C0V6lDKQ0Y&t=21s. It ran on a Lisp Machine, not in the vehicle. A later version ran on a Sun computer in the trunk.
The in-car nav system was also augmented dead-reckoning, like Etak. GPS was still denied to civilians at the time.