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astrofinch

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There's a great recent documentary on Netflix called My Octopus Teacher about an octopus which displayed some of these behaviors (interspecies bonding, tactile drive, play). Another good Netflix documentary, on birds, is Beak & Brain: Genius Birds from Down Under.

Crypto Fund II 6 years ago

My issue with microtransactions is that the cost of making the decision seems like it outweighs the currency cost. Like, I used to buy computer games (e.g. from Steam) when they were on sale. Now I ignore any sale which has a price greater than $0.00, because if a game is free, I don't have to spend any time figuring out whether I will like it.

Where do you see microtransactions being applied in practice?

Say you flip a coin a few times and only get heads. Your maximum likelihood (frequentist) estimate is that the coin will always land heads. In a Bayesian setting, if you have a (say uniform) prior on the probability that the coin lands heads, your maximum a posteriori estimate of this probability will be non-zero, but will get continue to get smaller if you continue only seeing heads.

Not quite. If you have a uniform prior, there will be no difference between MAP and MLE.

From the vantage point of Bayesian inference, MLE is a special case of maximum a posteriori estimation (MAP) that assumes a uniform prior distribution of the parameters.

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

More discussion here:

https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/64259/how-does-a-u...

The training algorithms for deep learning are also the hottest algorithm research area in machine learning, and are certainly applicable beyond deep learning.

The lore I've heard is that most new deep learning training algorithms (optimization algorithms) only work better on particular special cases, and it is hard to do better than the established algorithms in general.

I'm also not sure why you're saying they're applicable beyond deep learning--how do you plan to train a PGM or SVM using Adam?

The way forward for us is developing and owning our own locations together with customers, neighbors, service providers etc, and that in unusual but really interesting locations (think Kigali, Bethlehem, Kathmandu), with a foundation on top developing a common infrastructure for procurement, payments, customer service etc.

Nice. I like the idea of cohousing in undiscovered interesting places.

"never choose friends for roommates" was a common saying - you spend too much time around roommates and have too many petty disagreements with them

In my experience, great conversations more than make up for petty disagreements. In any case, if you move into a house with people you aren't currently friends with, you aren't increasing your risk of losing any of your current friends. And if you make friends with your new roommates, that will help you navigate petty disagreements more easily. (Also, roommate matching software could try to identify and prevent the most common causes of petty disagreements.)

The problem is that the rich complex of relationships involved in friendship tempts the entrepreneurial minded to exploit that richness and destroy those relationships through monetization. And indeed, the last fifty or hundred and fifty years of history is that. So there's really nothing left (at least for the monetizers) and the opportunities for roommate monetization are absurd fantasies of trying to light ashes on fire again ... and so-forth.

I think the interaction between business and friendship is much too complex and heterogenous to be easily summarized as "businesses hurt friendship" or "businesses help friendship". Some businesses harm friendship (multi-level marketing schemes). Others build friendship (bars, sports leagues, adventure travel). You have to look at a particular business to determine whether it hurts or helps. You're making a very strong generalization without any supporting evidence.

I'm now in a complex where we all hang out in the parking lot most afternoons.

Sounds like you have something rare and valuable.

Anyway, you make good points. From the point of view of society's health, it's good to create connections between people of different points of view, and this project could end up being harmful if it cloisters likeminded folks together. I would guess that many of the properties listed (such as being a musician or enjoying hiking) cut across fairly wide swaths of society, however.

Also on the homepage right now: https://alistapart.com/article/nothing-fails-like-success/

It's all about how social media companies are forced to pursue profit above all else and this harms society.

Your average public corporation has a fiduciary duty to maximize profit for its shareholders. So arguably, we are lucky that Facebook is not your average public corporation. Zuck has plenty of money, and he's pledged to give almost all of it away, so he is probably motivated by more than just profit. He has been talking the talk about fixing social media, let's see if he walks the walk.

The counterargument to the dangers of social media has been “look at Arab Spring”.

My impression of the Arab Spring is that most countries emerged in worse shape than they started in.