._.
fiddlemath
Karma: 1,287
Um—why not get a control group? I’d happily volunteer.
I mean, it might not be perfectly randomized, but you can at least watch for confounders from just being in this community, or introspecting for data collection, or whatnot.
Oh, agreed! Still, journaling in the morning has been rather more useful than failing to journal in the evening.
Consider modifying the habit—maybe journaling at night is harder for you to maintain than in the morning, or around lunch, or something like that? (This was my experience—I tried journaling at night for years and repeatedly failed; now I journal in the morning, and it’s been easy and pleasant. I don’t know any special reason why this would work for you, but it’s cheap to share the idea.)
How is the distinction between functional and imperative programming languages “not a real one”?
“Not a real one” is sort of glib. Still, I think Jim’s point stands.
The two words “functional” and “imperative” do mean different things. The problem is that, if you want to give a clean definition of either, you wind up talking about the “cultures” and “mindsets” of the programmers that use and design them, rather than actual features of the language. Which starts making sense, really, when you note “functional vs. imperative” is a perennial holy war, and that these terms have become the labels for sides in that war, rather than precise technical positions.
I mean, I am somewhat partisan in that war, and rather agree that, e.g., we should point new programmers to Scheme rather than Python or Java. But presenting “functional” vs. “imperative” as the major division in thinking about programming languages is epistemically dirty, when there’s so many distinctions between languages that matter just as much, and describe things more precisely.
(Jim: fair rephrasing?)
I maintain a spotify playlist, here. If you have spotify, this should be a direct link: spotify:user:fiddlemath:playlist:6Iv5fSaguXWHta0Iu80i2N
A few game and movie soundtracks. Instrumental or nearly-instrumental, some odd, kind-of-jangly loud stuff occasionally.
Probably not as good as musicForProgramming(); is, but you can pick among the tracks a lot more easily.
I try to write my journal for me, about ten years from now. So, I don’t spend much time explaining who people are that I know very well, or what my overall situation is—but I do spend quite some time trying to express mental states, because I know that how I think now differs vastly from my thinking ten years ago, and I expect similar changes into the future.
On the other hand, I’ve had lots of experience with trying and failing to understand what I’ve written in programming and mathematics, so I’ve internalized the fact that future-me might not even understand an explanation of things I think are obvious right now. ymmv.
“Influencing” is pretty neutral, if not very specific. “Exploiting the halo effect” is too long, but precise.
My reading of the given quote is the same as buybuy’s. Maybe you’re talking about a more general process? Your comment here is tantalizing, but I don’t have any particular reason to believe it; can you give examples, or explain it further, or something?
If they deserve any credibility, scientists must have some process by which they drop bad truth-finding methods instead of repeating them out of blind tradition.
Plenty of otherwise-good science is done based on poor statistics. Keep in mind, there are tons and tons of working scientists, and they’re already pretty busy just trying to understand the content of their fields. Many are likely to view improved statistical methods as an unneeded step in getting a paper published. Others are likely to view overthrowing NHST as a good idea, but not something that they themselves have the time or energy to do. Some might repeat it out of “blind tradition”—but keep in mind that the “blind tradition” is an expensive-to-move Schelling point in a very complex system.
I do expect that serious scientific fields will, eventually, throw out NHST in favor of more fundamentally-sound statistical analyses. But, like any social change, it’ll probably take decades at least.
Do you believe scientific results?
Unconditionally? No, and neither should you. Beliefs don’t work that way.
If a scientific paper gives a fundamentally-sound statistical analysis of the effect it purports to prove, I’ll give it more credence than a paper rejecting the null hypothesis at p < 0.05. On the other hand, a study rejecting the null hypothesis at p < 0.05 is going to provide far more useful information than a small collection of anecdotes, and both are probably better than my personal intuition in a field I have no experience with.
An important aspect of self-image is whether people consider themselves “successful” or “losers”, based on their previous successes and failures. But we have a bias here: the feeling from a successful or failed task is not proportionate to its difficulty. So people can manipulate their outcomes by only doing easy tasks, which have high success ratio. When used strategically, this can be helpful; but doing it automatically all the time is harmful. Learning new things requires trying new things, but that has a risk of failure, which can harm self-image with possible bad consequences such as learned helplessness. On the other hand, protecting self-image all the times means never learning anything. Updating means admitting you were (more) wrong. How to deal with this?
When you practice or learn, ensure that each session ends on a high note. Either push yourself to accomplish something for the first time and then stop immediately, or end with an exercise that you find difficult but now comfortably within your abilities. This is, apparently, commonly used in animal training—see the “laws of shaping”.
I suspect this works because of the peak-end rule—even if you’ve been working above your comfortable difficulty for most of the session, you’ll remember the session as if you did difficult things, and became more competent by the end. You won’t remember the session as frustrating or painful if the end is especially satisfying.
NHST has been taught as The Method Of Science to lots of students. I remember setting these up explicitly in science class. I expect it will remain in the fabric of any given quantitative field until removed with force.
I get all this, I think. I didn’t realize you were equating “socially useful” and “socially true.”
I guess those might feel very similar; that one’s experience of the social use of a belief could feel a lot like truth. In fact, a belief seeming socially useful, a belief seeming not to cause cognitive dissonance, and a belief seeming epistemically true might be the same experience in other people’s heads—say, a belief feeling “right.”
I’m not confident I know what you mean by “social truth”. Can you break that apart?
It wouldn’t be “barging in”, new folks are welcome!
On the other hand, if it’s uncomfortable for you to first show up when someone’s hosting it at their apartment, that’s pretty understandable. For exactly that reason, some next weeks’ meetups are at a public place—usually Michelangelo’s coffee shop on State St. Next week, for instance.
Also, go ahead and sign up for our mailing list; some local stuff is posted there that doesn’t make its way to the main LW page.
Oops, yes. Edited in original; thanks!
it has no syntax.
I’ve usually heard that as the reason to give Lisp to a new programmer. You don’t want them thinking about fine details of syntax; you want them thinking about manipulations of formal systems. Add further syntax only when syntax helps, instead of hinders.
What’s the argument for preferring a more syntax-ful language?
Certainly! As such, we should figure out how to turn geekdoms into ask cultures, when they aren’t already. Putting even marginally socially-awkward people in situations where they have to guess other people’s intentions, when everyone is intentionally avoiding making their intentions common knowledge, well, that’s sort of cruel.
So, this become a problem we can actually try to solve. In a relatively small environment, like a group of a dozen or so, what can one do to induce “ask culture”, instead of “guess culture”?
(This should probably be a discussion post of its own… hm.)
Understood—but essentially no humans consider their own status hits as of extremely low importance. this is so strong that directing other people to lower their status—even if it’s in their best long-term interest—is only rarely practical advice.
er?