cwb

Mindset by Carol Dweck (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40745.Mindset)

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-ca...)

When we ran it, the workload was mostly during weekdays in different timezones (so distributed over more than 8 hours). This was on a single c4.2xlarge AWS server, which was bigger than we needed. To be clear, I wasn't trying to make a claim about high load with that statement, just that the system has been running smoothly with steady activity for a long time.

Each week the number of individual users was in the thousands; that was usually a rolling window since people tend to not do more than a few e-learning courses per year. I'm certainly not claiming that there are no bugs -- in all likelihood there are -- only that no bugs have yet crashed the system or were obvious and serious enough for users to tell us about.

You might not find them convincing, but the reasons I believe that is the case are:

- Human hardware is fairly fixed (unless we go the cyborg route) whereas robot hardware (at least the computation part) evolves roughy exponentially and I don't see reasons for that to stop.

- As robot behaviour evolves (whether through deliberate design, genetic algorithms, or other types of learning) improvements can be replicated quickly and approximately for free. Improvements to human behaviours is notoriously hard, expensive, and time-consuming to replicate.

- We can rewrite many of our wealth creation recipes to make use of more specialised robots instead of flexible humans, which means robots won't need to get close to general AI before this has significant effects on jobs.

- We are starting to see robots perform the most sophisticated human skills: visual recognition, acting on and producing language, and decision making under uncertainty. Granted, robots don't do most of these things very well yet compared with humans, but I don't see fundamental reasons for why the development will stop short of human abilities.

- Robots can work 24/7, won't go on vacation, won't quit on you, don't play political games with the other robots, won't sue you, don't require food and bathrooms, and they'll make fewer mistakes.

- If you're mostly questioning the timing, I don't have a particularly good answer, but given how I understand the state of things I believe we're talking low single-digit decades rather than centuries for a significant proportion of people to look around and not find a job they could do better than a robot for a liveable wage (without government subsidies). If you disagree on the timescale I think we'd need to have a detailed discussion about how we understand technological developments and the jobs people do. You may well be able to convince me that I'm off on the timing.

Perhaps, I might be missing something. The way I understand it is that "the Luddite fallacy is not a fallacy" is an assertion (OED: "a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief"). The reason, I claim, is that humans will not be able to compete with robots for much longer (in large numbers) which means unemployment is likely to go up (I understand that that's not a strict implication since governments could ban robots). The reason humans won't be able to compete with robots is that technology is gaining more and more of the abilities that humans use in their jobs (like reasoning and visual recognition). Those reasons consists of (a set of) assertions that could be wrong, but they are reasons and an argument is (OED again) "a reason or set of reasons given in support of an idea, action or theory". Thus, I thought that what I did qualified as an argument, or am I mistaken?

In any case, if you agree with the assertion, what would be your argument for it?

Sorry I couldn't make it more clear. Was there anything particular that you didn't understand?

Agree on the basic income (in general, I'm not sure about the details). Jobs so far have been a convenient and pragmatic (not necessarily fair) way to both create and distribute wealth. At the same time, we should note that popular alternatives like communism or socialism have failed rather badly.

No, not for it having significant economic and social implications, that's more a corollary of employment rate decreasing -- I'll change that sentence. The argument for the Luddite fallacy not being a fallacy was that humans have so far been able to compete with technology, but that we're fast losing that edge and when that happens things really are different this time. Does that make sense?

You're right, the micro-level version isn't a fallacy (either..), though I think that's less contentious, or? Many countries already have some experience with this. For example, agriculture has gone from having 70-80% of the workers in 1870 to less than 2% in 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat...). Some countries now have welfare systems that introduce some security on an individual level, though in their current form they tend to rely on the average employment rate remaining fairly high.

Indeed, that is the question. The post tries to show that "cut your hair and get a job" will disappear as an answer to "how do I get to partake in this wealth creation" for a large number of people and we'll thus probably want to come up with an answer that scales better than today's social security for example and works for all those who live in countries without social security.

I asked myself the same question. What is the best choice depends on both stated goals, assumptions, and predictions, which means others might differ in their assessment of the right tool for the job. In this case, why was Haskell not the best choice for the project and do you think those that tried to introduce it would have agreed?

The author makes the implicit and false assumption that humans will always be able to compete with machines in something that other people are willing to pay for. That has been, and probably still is, the case. I see no reason to think that will continue indefinitely. Humans have three key properties that have kept us competitive with machines:

- "Intelligent" observation-based decision making

- Flexible manipulation of objects

- Teachability

Technology still have some way to go to match our capability here, but they're getting there. The dynamics are roughly that humans improve or change linearly through education, but technology can improve roughly exponentially.

Technology is improving at a higher rate than humans -- our wetware/body have fundamental limits than hardware/software. Hence, at some point -- sooner or later -- we start to run out of jobs that we are willing to pay humans to do instead of machines. (Lowering minimum wages could delay but not stop that.)

He does say "passage" to refer to a small part of a composition, not the whole thing. Your thinking is spot on though -- the length of the segment needs to be considered.

The teacher would need to try and make the students understand that it is all right -- scrap that, necessary -- to fail when you learn. Learning to perform surgery is not the same thing as performing it.

Out of curiosity, how do you think it would affect your motivation to practice in private if you knew you would be tested in public?

Indeed. Video lectures can be helpful -- in particular for mechanics and manipulation -- but no reason to be overly excited (there was great hope for educational use of TV in its early days, unless I'm mistaken). A good book is usually more effective/efficient if you have patience to actually study it.

What few people seem to get is that we don't need to fix education, we need to fix learning. And for that, we need exercises (as any mathematician would tell you; also see deliberate practice). It turns out digital exercises afford a range of interesting opportunities (both the video and article highlight several) for making learning more effective.

Interfaces can change relatively easily so there'll be a bunch of experiments. The exercise model is harder. And more interesting. (I've been trying to figure that out for a while now and discovered a bunch of local minima.) I'm very curious to see how this exercise model works out -- it seems promising from what I can tell.

Regardless of how this works out (not to say I think it won't), this development will raise the bar and the expectations -- both of which has been too low for too long. That is incredibly valuable.

Orszag is referring to deliberate practice (http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...) and it's not hard work, but "hard" practice that makes people better. What that practice should entail is not always obvious though and people will benefit from good tutors and starting early in life. Thus, the author is right that not everyone could become Mozart (or whatever), but that's because they weren't in the right place at the right time, not because of genetics (which I read him as implying, but I may be wrong). Genetics do of course matter (in particular in sports), but the research on deliberate practice seems to indicate they matter less than one might think.

Importantly, for things that are less competitive than world-class sports and music (most jobs say), even moderate amounts of deliberate practice are likely to have significant benefits. So, hard work may not conquer all, but deliberate practice will give things a run for their money at least.

Derek Sivers explains in a 3 min TED talk, http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you..., that by keeping your goals to yourself, you become more motivated to achieve them (because you haven't made them part of your "social reality"). In the very early stages I suspect that might be the biggest benefit of stealth mode..

Simply because I think they had the opportunity to create a great OS (whatever its relation to Unix) and chose not to. My point was that I think DOS/Windows hindered the innovation in applications -- not necessarily their complexity or size -- but their utility. I have the option to use big, feature-rich Windows applications, but mostly prefer smaller command-line based tools. I'm clearly in a minority here though, so maybe I am crazy.. :)

How come no one talks about the loss of innovation Microsoft have incurred on the world? What if Windows were NeXT or Unix? What if Bill Gates had tried really hard to create the best tools possible, rather than the most profitable software? What if the world had run on Unix in the two decades since Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT machine to create the web? Might we have had a 1% increase in annual productivity (mainly from better innovation, not only direct efficiency improvements)? We'll never know of course; but you don't have to be crazy to think so.

Well, I'm not sure if these classify as lesser known, but Cocoa (that is most) text fields in Mac OS X support basic emacs bindings which I use all the time (native vim support would be even better of course, but hey..): http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/System%20Bindings.html (look at the ctrl (^) bindings).

Sorry, won't be in London, but would have liked to come.

A bit wordy I think. Summary: Run (with low-padding shoes). Eat better.

I agree, though I would be even more prescriptive: when people hear of a new idea they should first try to understand the upside (the value created if the idea takes off). Then, think through obstacles/problems and put them in perspective with the upside. If the upside is deemed minor, it could be better to see if the core idea can be mutated into something more valuable before looking at obstacles/problems with the current idea.

(The split between "idea upside" and "obstacles/problems" that I've made is somewhat artificial -- you can say that a small upside is a problem -- but I think it's helpful.)

(EDIT: "idea" -> "idea upside")

I don't. It's an excellent question though.

There may be literature out there on this -- please tell me if you know of any.

You probably want to look at examples where this has been done and try to abstract a method out of those. Neil Strauss's The Game (about pick-up artists) is a marvellous example. And Colvin explains in Talent is Overrated how Abraham Lincoln deliberately practiced writing by analysing, simplifying, and trying to reproduce others' writing.

If I were to attempt an answer, I'd try something along these lines:

1. Figure out what an excellent outcome is.

For writing, this might be a collection of articles/books. Tricker for entrepreneurship. Are Page and Brin examples of excellence for entrepreneurship? Could you model them and be successful without being in the specific situation they were in? Is Branson a better example? Is it likelihood of success, imapct, or profit that you want to optimise? It's worth noting that many things that have a tradition of deliberate practice -- chess, music, and sports -- have simple measures of excellence (win, make it sound nice, win).

2. Break out the outcome aspects that matter.

Good writing not only has clear and lucid prose, but a storytelling structure that engages and entertains the reader. Entrepreneurship involves, amongst other things, identifying a solution, producing the solution, marketing to customers and investors, inspiring employees.

3. Compile specific examples of the aspects.

Get articles with excellent prose and books with excellent stories. This is harder for entrepreneurship, but probably doable.

4. Modify the specific examples into exercises.

Rewrite the article into bullet points so that you can later write the prose from those. Split the story into pieces and write on cards so you can later practice arranging the story. Specify the requirements for a web-app that's a solution to a problem so that you can practice implementing it from that.

5. Perform the exercises and evaluate your performance. Repeat.

This is where the deliberate practice takes place (though performing these steps can also be a form of deliberate practice -- for meta-understanding of performance improvement in the field). The time-span of each exercise can vary enormously -- from seconds to months (for some things that can't be easily simulated).

Of course, this process should be iterated and refined. I think it would be much easier to do this with a partner that have similar goals.

What are your thoughts on this?

It seems that's what Blippy, the company Paul mentions at the beginning, does: http://blippy.com/

I'd be up for that (in the first half of December).

The strict answer to your question has to do with humans being social, motivation, and strong AI, I think.

However, if we allow teachers to stay in the picture, software could (and should I think) be used more to support learning. It could improve students' abilities significantly if done sensibly.

Data-mining would probably be useful to tune such a program, but I wouldn't expect it to outcompete teachers on the structuring of materials and answering students' questions any time soon.

The question on how to grade students is fascinating. There's an argument for one long exam at the end of your studies: you get the grade corresponding to your performance at the end of your studies. If you "get it" late in the course you're not penalised for earlier performance and, more importantly, it encourages you to take a long-term perspective on what you learn. I've experienced both teacher + frequent non-standard test assessment in school and one shot at two weeks of exams after 3 years at university. The former is problematic because grades become uncalibrated (thus losing much of their intended usefulness). My main concern with the latter is that you can end up testing things you don't intend.

Calculating the grade from appropriate data captured over a long time would be great -- comparisons and profiles could be both more detailed and more stable than what a teacher could provide. (There are some things it couldn't test, like handling the pressure of final exams.)

Do you think computers should have replaced teachers? Why do you think that hasn't happend?

Why is the focus on money here? The impact of the technologies they create dwarfs any monetary contributions. What's the value of their technology on top of what the obvious sellable product is? That is, how much more valuable is their product to the user on top of what the obvious product would have been?

It affects some products more than others. Productivity tools have high leverage, as do protocols and standards, because they are means to ends. End-user products like food, music, sex (for fun, not reproduction), and housing tend to have little leverage because they are closer to the ends. That is, more of them increases wealth.

iPods are good because they let lots of people enjoy more music than before. However, it is probably on slightly better than the obvious product and in any case, the possible impact of a media player is limited.

UNIX (or HTTP or C) on the other hand is non-obvious and a fundamental tool impacting work higher up the value chain. These things have enormous impact on wealth because of the knock-on effects of the tools and they afford. Innovation and development is approximately exponential and, rarely mentioned, prone to get stuck in local maxima. Here be dragons. Would we have as powerful an Internet if it weren't for a few key UNIX design decisions? What would a Microsoft designed world-wide computer network look like?

Try this: how much time do you think people spend trying to align things in PowerPoint that could be made a snap with better tools (maybe 2007 fixes this)? Let's say 2 min per presentation. With an estimated (by Microsoft) 30 million presentations a day, of which say a tenth are newly created, that means 6 million minutes, or about 11.5 man years, are wasted. Every day. Because PowerPoint doesn't make alignment easy. Not to mention that it may limit people's ideas. What if other Microsoft products have shortcomings more severe than those in PowerPoint?

Microsoft products often strike me as worse than the obvious product, prospering because of lock-in/short-sightedness.

By giving his money away, I doubt Gates could ever make up for the value creation Microsoft has blocked. He would have to find something with enormous leverage that would otherwise not happen -- don't get your hopes up. Thus, though I hope he proves us wrong, Gates is down in my book as one of the bad guys. Things are looking better now, but we've lost years of exponential innovation. I bet Kurzweil is annoyed.

Sorry. I submitted it because of the tutorial, not the (patently) weak Emacs bashing... Maybe I should have changed the title. Also, it's by the same guy who wrote the excellent "Understanding Git" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=531517) tutorial.

Distinction understood. Many think that the risk of misuse * potential cost is unacceptably high however. Misuse is also relative to current political fashions and those tend to change over time.

If you want, surveillance on that scale makes the system unstable.

Sweden has a history of a government that registers details about those with views not aligned with the sitting government without legal or, I would claim, moral right to do so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IB_affair. More recently, there was a potential leak from FRA http://www.thelocal.se/12778/20080702/ - as in the recently passed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law. Of course, illegality does not imply immorality/misuse, but it might explain why Swedes are weary of what lines their government might cross.

The activities have not verifiably, as far as I know, been seriously misused in Sweden (in the sense that people have been killed, tortured, or wrongfully imprisoned), though one other European country comes to mind where that did happen, most seem to agree, in the 20th century.

Thus, my guess is that many people assume logging/monitoring personal information implies misuse of that information because they consider the risk*potential cost of the latter unacceptably high, even though it's not strictly an implication. The assumption should be explicit though, so I agree on the importance of making the distinction.

The Swedish word for integrity (integritet) can be used in two senses: the property of having a consistent value system or a right to privacy. tjogin most likely intended the latter meaning.

I'm curious about the distinction between Big Brother and large-scale logging/filtering/monitoring in electronic systems without court orders by the government. Maybe I've misunderstood the term "Big Brother"?

Whether you think the result is "the greatest thing to happen in European politics in a long time" clearly depends on your political views. It could be seen as an indication that a number of people make at least some effort to stand up for civil liberties (an issue I hear some consider more than "important"). Also, "long time" is not particularly well defined.. ;) I'm just guessing here of course, joel_feather didn't say much about why he thought this was such a great thing.