devilsavocado

Napkin math: For just 1 person to intersect: Each of those 10000 people have a (10000/30000000)/100 % chance to get selected, or .00000033%. Multiply that by a thousand selections = 0.00033% chance. Those selections are refreshed maybe 100 times a year so 0.033% chance per year.

There are billions of facebook users, so this should be happening all the time by pure chance. But of course it's not pure chance. Facebook will be selecting from a pool much much smaller than 300 million, and the selections won't be random.

Those terms are used all the time on hn but not usually italicized, but that's fair, I get your point.

When you respond twice in a row in a comment chain saying that they are using a logical fallacy, and nothing else, you've done nothing to add to the conversation, but are playing the role of Logic Studies 101 Professor. That's probably what they meant by the looking back on on your writing comment.

I have no idea why you are italicizing types of logical fallacies. I can't think of a good reason to do that.

And just pointing out that you believe they are committing a logical fallacy without any explanation is a very lazy discussion technique.

Try out your thought experiment again with a machine that can predict markets with 55% reliability, or 50.1% reliability . This more likely reflects reality.

If someone had a machine that could predict the stock markets with 100% reliability, or even 55% reliability, do you think they would make those predictions known to the public? Or would they start a hedge fund and become one of the wealthiest individuals of all time?

This is a great resource. I'd add Practical Deep Learning for Coders [0] to the video series list.

[0] http://course.fast.ai/index.html

Thank you, that is a very intuitive explanation.

You've probably read Scott Aaronson's Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity? [0]. This seems like the perfect area to apply a lot of the questions he brings up. That's what I was looking for as I skimmed through the paper. Maybe that's what idlewords was talking about as well.

[0] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf

I haven't had time to read the entire thing, so I've skimmed over lots, but there doesn't seem to be much mention of complexity theory in the way I believe idlewords is talking about.

I'm very curious: What happens if the algorithms for general artificial intelligence, and the ability for an AI to improve itself are all NP-Hard problems? Is that covered?

It might be similar to the "intelligence combustion" scenario outlined. But that appears to be a scenario where do not need to be fearing superintelligence.

There are still a few countries with wealth taxes[0]. I'm not sure if they work well or not for these countries. Picketty doesn't spend to much time on the subject of existing wealth taxes. He is more focused on a global wealth tax, which is much more ambitious. Something that would need to be designed for the digital era indeed.

Amusing find from the linked article: Back in 1999 Trump proposed a one time wealth tax of 14.25% for individuals worth more than 10 million.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax

Picketty's book does at least attempt to address this. He proposes a switch from income tax to wealth tax. He shows that most inequality is a result of the growth of existing wealth (most of which was inherited). Taxing wealth instead of income can help reverse, or at least stop the increasing levels of inequality. A very small percentage of wealth would need to be taxed to accomplish this.

Picketty definitely does not ignore wealth inequality. Most of his book is devoted to explaining why the return on existing wealth is the most important factor in inequality. He proposes a global tax on wealth, not income, to help combat inequality.

For a more in-depth, but still funny and entertaining, explanation of quantum computing check out 'Quantum Computing Since Democritus' by Scott Aaronson, the co-author of this comic.

I'm curious if the effects on the brain from running are the same as from meditation [0]. Any long distance runner will tell you that you can definitely get into a meditative-like state. Personally, I've noticed similarities in my mental state from meditation and running for 30+ minutes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05...

What counts as 'proven skill in communication' to you? Other than how they communicate throughout the interview process, I'm not sure how else to test for this.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's one of the best selling books of all time for good reason. It's much more than tips and tricks for getting work done.

I really wasn't a fan either. I found that the first two sections contained very little useful information/ideas/instructions, and then the third section started talking about muses and angels and it totally lost me. But it's talked about a lot here so maybe I'm missing something too.

I was only thinking about keeping communication private. I didn't think about uses like signing libraries. Great example, thanks.

People who use PGP keys, can you give examples of your use? I'm genuinely curious. Who are you contacting, or who is contacting you? The author says he only receives 2 encrypted emails a year. Not only do I not have a PGP key, I don't think I've ever found myself in a situation where it was even an option to use one.

In what way is Canada homogeneous? I've never heard anyone say that before. I would think it was much less homogeneous than much of the western world, especially the US. I know Toronto is usually called the most diverse city in the world.

I wish it was easier to correct mistakes. Most of the time the voice recognition will only get a single word wrong, yet you need to repeat the entire question or instruction. If Siri interprets "how many pounds is 70 kilograms?" As "how many pounds is 17 kilograms?" Then I should just be able to say "no, 70" and have it corrected.

You've described the basic merger arbitrage strategy. There are many hedge funds that exclusively do this type of stuff.

It's risky though. When a deal doesn't go through you can lose a lot more than 12%

I don't see any statistics in his comment. I actually don't see any supporting info at all. All I see is wild conjecture.

If he did go looking for statistics, he would find that the effect he describes is better explained by the expanding lower class in america, regardless of race.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/10/07/sat-scores-and-inc...

This is a somewhat worrisome comment. It reaches for a lot of conclusions with zero supporting evidence.

There is no need to bring up race or ethnicity to describe this effect of scores getting worse. Everything you attribute to being Black or Hispanic can more simply and more accurately be described by being poor. SAT score is most directly tied to family income, not race. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/10/07/sat-scores-and-inc...

Instead of worse scores being the result of changing ethnic composition, they are the result of changing income distribution, and the expansion of the lower class.

Does only one company need to win? I don't think so. 91% of smartphone profits go to Apple! I had no idea it was that high. http://fortune.com/2016/02/14/apple-mobile-profit-2015/ Of course that doesn't account for profits from web activity, which is dominated by Google.

Apple will continue to make incredible profits on hardware, while google will do the same with advertising on the mobile platform.

This is my takeaway from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers 2016 internet trends presentation. http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends Some I agree with, some I think is hyperbole.

Snapchat's Ads are effective. More effective than anything else on the internet or other apps. They are authentic, entertaining, in-context and brief. They follow the 3Vs: Vertical (Made for Mobiles) / Video (Great Way to Tell Story) / Viewing (Always Full Screen).

Snapchat's average monthly use per visitor is way above other social networks for the younger generation. And it is growing incredibly fast.

Advertisers are able to integrate deeply into the app in various unique and interesting ways.

Snap chat is the leader a new wave of advertising, in the way Facebook did a few years ago, and google before that.

Some thoughts from someone who knows music at a pretty high level and can play multiple instruments well. Hopefully these will help you avoid the very common scenario of buying an instrument, picking up a beginners book, playing for a month and then becoming bored of it and never touching it again:

1) Think about the music you enjoy listening to the most and what instruments are most prominent in it. That's the instrument you should choose. Like getting good at anything else, practicing music is hard and can be chore at times. You won't always have the inspiration to play. The best way to consistently practice and improve is to be learning song that you really want to be able to play.

2) Playing with others is absolutely essential. You will improve more jamming with others for an hour than you will in ten hours of practice on your own. You do need some amount of skill to do this, but not an awful lot. Once you have a little bit of confidence built up, look for others at a similar skill level to meet once a week or so and play together. You don't need to form a band or anything, but you just might find that you want to.

3) Music theory is nice to know, but not essential at first. It is very useful when writing music of your own and improvising with others, but there's a bunch to nail down first before not knowing it will hurt you at all. Learn basic notes and chords, then focus on picking songs you want to know and learn to play them well. While learning songs, think about what music theory you have learned and how it works within the song.

4) The truth is that becoming "good" will take a decade of dedicated work. But if it is something you truly enjoy then after a year or so you will be able to get to the point where it is both fun and very rewarding. So really do focus on your enjoyment of it. You don't have a parent requiring you to practice for an hour a day anymore, and you won't find immediate benefit from it at the start. Anything you can do to make it an enjoyable routine is very very important. I won't recommend specific books or methods because you fall into the same problem as telling someone how to learn programming. There are so many different options, but what's important is to find what you like the best.

I don't mean this as criticism, only observation. Maybe you haven't been expressing yourself accurately, but based on what you've written in this thread, it appears you have very, very little empathy.

You are trying to give logical explanations of how other people are living their lives wrong. It seems like you think it would be easy to be in their shoes. You've listed some benefits given to them and asked what more could you possibly do.

The fact that you think $1000/yr is almost free is just so wrong for many families. I am glad you didn't have to grow up in a situation where $1000 wan't an incredible amount of money.

Everything you've written still contains an Us Vs. Them vibe. Please try to be aware of this. It can really improve you're life and relationships with others.

Can you expand on how having better-than-average knowledge about some crypto currencies allows you to make money investing in them?

I doubt you mean that you actually have knowledge of when and how the price is going to change. Are you just betting on a general increase in value, or doing some form of pairs trading or arbitrage? How comfortable are you with rapid 30% price swings?

Yeah, you're correct there. I'm not sure if that makes it much better though. He was even warned by the interviewee that Bill would not like what he was doing.

I've always loved how Bill Murray toys with, and flat out ignores the media. It's funny how the reporter seems to feel entitled to be able to speak with Bill Murray. He makes it out to be a big deal, almost a personal insult and disservice, when he doesn't get to. It's simply foreign to him why someone who doesn't know him doesn't want to speak to him. The only reason he can come up with is that Bill Murray must be mad at him!

To hear these stories is refreshing, and it really flips the common narrative of movie stars looking for all the attention they can get on it's head.

The fact that you can just sell patents always seemed a little bit off to me. Does that really further the purpose of a patent? I understand that we can't just ban the selling of patents, but there must be a better way to avoid situations like these where the patent is not used to reward the innovator.