This reads like a personal journal entry. I can’t tell to what degree I’m missing necessary context, to what degree you’re being puckish, and to what degree this just isn’t communication.
It looks like you feel strongly about something going wrong, here; if you can, I’d appreciate you taking the time to state this comprehensibly.
I know that this is mere anecdote; and that after doesn’t strictly imply because of. But, since the mini-camp, people who know me would probably agree that:
I am more likely to try new things; in particular, I now have the habit of trying new habits to see what works and what doesn’t. This has helped in a handful of little ways:
I’ve stopped biting my nails.
I’ve stopped drinking soda
I maintain a journal to get better information about myself
I use Anki to memorize facts, instead of just thinking it’s a good idea. This has made my work rather more efficient.
I have more time and energy for both my academic work and other activities I enjoy.
I meet people more easily, and have more friends.
To emphasize the last point, uncomfortably personally: I am no longer cripplingly unable to examine my own sexuality, ask women out, or engage in relationships. (I’m still inexperienced for my age, though this improves over time.) These changes are due to techniques I learned at mini-camp: not lessons of the form “how to pick up women”, but “how to be right about yourself”.
Also, I suspect my writing has improved.
There are also internal, mental changes; and I suspect that the rate at which my agency improves has increased. But you’d get the same report in different words from someone after a Christian brainwashing retreat, so I suppose these are pretty weak evidence for you.
I’m a researcher in programming languages, and I’ve dabbled a little in discrete math and algorithms research. Though my advice may be a little slanted, “algorithmic insight” is what I’m most expert in. Perhaps, then, the following is right.
If you “blank” on programming, but already know system administration and shell scripts, then the “lack” you’re describing is probably pretty small.
I strongly believe that what might look like “algorithmic insight” is mostly the product of obsessively picking apart designs and implementations—not just computer programs, but any engineered mechanism. It’s a great habit to inculcate, and (I think) leads naturally to gradually understanding how everything works.
I bet, though, that you could massively boost your own algorithmic insight by the following program of reading and practice:
First learn (if you haven’t already) a worthwhile programming language. C has a certain simple charm, but most industry-standard languages are pretty horrible. Java is mediocre, but limiting. I suggest starting with Python, and learning C, Racket, and either Haskell or OCaml. (Again, though—I’m a PL researcher, so this is possibly biased.)
Actively, carefully read CLRS. It’s detailed, doesn’t assume much prior knowledge, and covers 98% of the algorithms any good programmer ever uses outside specialties like graphics or scientific coding. By “actively read”, I mean to actually do some of its exercises, and actually implement some of its algorithms. Rephrase its ideas in your own words; stop and review whenever any idea is unclear.
Work some of the exercises on Project Euler or SPOJ. These are excellent sources of small, algorithmically-rich problems. You can do them in essentially any language you like, and they give good feedback.
As a sysadmin, you’ve probably already learned some of the pragmatics of managing complex systems. Other than algorithms, as above, and the most core-basic ideas about computers, good programming is about managing system complexity. Thus, implement at least a full program or two that you’d like to see exist. Games and toys are nice, as they’re rich with creative opportunities, and so the work you’re duplicating isn’t so irritating. Demand of yourself the freedom to fiddle with and re-implement that program until the code feels clean—until it feels like solid mathematics, where every piece connects to every other piece for only sound, solid, logical reasons with fairly short descriptions.
I’d mix these activities all together. Learn algorithms and languages by implementing with them; learn the techniques of good implementation by implementing interesting algorithms and programs that you want to exist, and (eventually) solving problems with code.
tl;dr: If you can spot non-sequiturs in your writing, and you put a lot of weight on the conclusion it’s pointing at, it’s a really good idea to take the time to fill in all the sequiturs.
Writing an argument in detail is a good way to improve the likelihood that your argument isn’t somewhere flawed. Consider:
Writing allows reduction. By pinning the argument to paper, you can separate each logical step, and make sure that each step makes sense in isolation.
Writing gives the argument stability. For example, the argument won’t secretly change when you think about it while you’re in a different mood. This can help to prevent you from implicitly proving different points of your argument from contradictory claims.
Writing makes your argument vastly easier to share. Like in open source software, enough eyeballs makes all bugs trivial.
Further, notice that we probably underestimate the value of improving our arguments, and are overconfident in apparently-solid logical arguments. If an argument contains 20 inferences in sequence, and you’re wrong about such inferences 5% without noticing the misstep, then you have about a 64% chance of being wrong somewhere in the argument. If you can reduce your chance of a misstep in logic to 1% per inference, then you only have an 18% chance of being wrong, somewhere. Improving the reliability of the steps in your arguments, then, has a high value-of-information—even when 1% and 5% both feel like similar amounts of uncertainty. Conjunction fallacy. It is probable, then, that we underestimate the value of information attained by subjecting ourselves to processes that improve our arguments.
If being wrong about an argument is highly costly—if you would stand to lose much by believing incorrectly—then it is well worth writing these sorts of arguments formally, and ensuring that you’re getting them right.
All that said… I suspect I know exactly what you’re talking about. I haven’t performed a similar, convulsive update myself, but I can practically feel the pressure for it in my own head, growing. I fight that update longer than parts of me think I should, because I’m afraid of strong mental attractors. If you can write the sound, solid argument publicly, I will be happy to double-check your steps.
I’ve run meetups on this topic twice now. Every time I do, it’s difficult to convince people it’s a useful skill. More words about when estimation is useful would be nice.
In most exercises that you can find on Fermi calculations, you can also actually find the right answer, written down somewhere online. And, well, being able to quickly find information is probably a more useful skill to practice than estimation; because it works for non-quantified information too. I understand why this is; you want to be able to show that these estimates aren’t very far off, and for that you need to be able to find the actual numbers somehow. But that means that your examples don’t actually motivate the effort of practicing, they only demonstrate how.
I suspect the following kinds of situations are fruitful for estimation:
Deciding in unfamiliar situations, because you don’t know how things will turn out for you. If you’re in a really novel situation, you can’t even find out how the same decision has worked for other people before, and so you have to guess at expected value using the best information that you can find.
Value of information calculations, like here and here, where you cannot possibly know the expected value of things, because you’re trying to decide if you should pay for information about their value.
Deciding when you’re not online, because this makes accessing information more expensive than computation.
Decisions where you have unusual information for a particular situation—the internet might have excellent base-rate information about your general situation, but it’s unlikely to give you the precise odds so that you can incorporate the extra information that you have in this specific situation.
Looking smart. It’s nice to look smart sometimes.
Others? Does anyone have examples of when Fermi calculations helped them make a decision?
It struck me last night that, if you really wanted to get good predictions on what will happen in the rest of the story, you can just reread the whole thing, look for any potential plot devices that haven’t already been triggered in some central way, and figure out how those things might be used. There’s not a lot of story left; Eliezer said this arc, a couple of intermediate chapters, and one final plot arc.
I haven’t got the time to do this myself, but it seems doable. If you want to really solve everything, set up a collaborative spreadsheet or something, and start hacking away. :)
Ah, there it is!
Harry time-turned to just before the troll attack. (In the one-and-a-half minutes when he went into Hermione’s room.) This is probably pretty clear—he’s been keeping everyone else out of that room, and the centrality of the time-turner in this story more or less demands that Harry do so. Harry would have done this even if he couldn’t come up with a plan in his previous six hours, just so he’d have another six hours to think, or do what he deemed needful to preserve Hermione’s body.
Somewhere in there, he talked to the twins, and poorly obliviated them. Evidence:
Why does Harry know about the Marauder’s Map? When else has Harry learned plot-significant information off-camera?
Obliviation, and Memory Charms in general, and Harry’s horror of them, are repeatedly mentioned in the story, and haven’t really been used that much yet.
Harry has just learned that he has access to learn obliviation.
Quirrell suggests that obliviation is within his abilities, but barely—and so Harry is likely to botch it if he attempts it.
Who else in the story is likely to have performed a botched obliviation on the Weasley twins—such that they have vague memories of having the map, but no complete ones? Every potential foe is powerful enough to perform obliviation properly.
Besides, it’ll be a narratively nice, dark moment when Harry uses a spell whose existence he abhors on two of his best remaining friends and allies...
For external, didactic purposes:
I can’t jump high enough to reach those grapes.
I should stop trying.
Those grapes are sour, anyway.
Thanks, but I don’t need your ladder. Why would I bother?
Census’d! And upvoted! But an upvote isn’t really quite strong enough to demonstrate my appreciation for this work. Thank you.
Once a year, an acquaintance of mine gets his first-year programming class to tell him how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Even more knobs. :)
I’m in favor, fwiw.
Is there any particular reason not to make this limit even lower? I bet that even a 1 or 2 karma lower bound would suffice for the spam we’re seeing. If we get visited by spambots that can garner even a couple of upvotes here, then we’ve found something interesting anyway.
The Durmstrang houseboat from Goblet of Fire, must be the unconventional ship.
*ducks*
But a paper with well-developed links—especially a recent review article—can be the best place to start learning a new topic or to build a citation list from.
This is actually a pretty frustrating place to start from. Often, the so-built “frame” is setting out to flatter the authors mentioned therein, instead of pointing out what’s useful or informative. Moreover, since these sections are more about giving credit and inflating egos than about informing the reader, you’re much more likely to see the paper in which an idea was introduced, rather than a more-informative survey paper, written 10 years later, after the important aspects of the concept are really understood.
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.)
Via David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
To explain—I’m finding lately that the occurrence of irony is a useful warning that something is wrong; some current, important contradiction is being papered over. Sometimes the contradiction is obvious, yes, but among people with the habit of irony, sometimes that contradiction is buried deep enough that the ironist doesn’t know where the contradiction lies.
If it is a dig, it ought not be. Doing useful drudgery despite bystander effects is remarkable and surprising, and should be applauded!
Oh, right! I actually did the comute time vs. rent computation when I moved four months ago! And wound up with a surprising enough number that I thought about it very closely, and decided that number was about right, and changed how I was looking for apartments. How did I forget that?
Thanks!
I agree, this class of problems is enormous, and has a hand in practically all mismanagement and misdirection of human effort. The problem is so aggravating, though, because humans seem not to expect it to happen. Why do these feel like “problems”, when the underlying behavior is exactly what we’d expect given our knowledge of stable strategy?
In the case of human endeavor, I suspect this is a problem because we do not try hard enough to defend against it. We seem surprised and indignant when systems that purport to do good are “gamed.” If more people were more aware that this was the consequence of strategic agents, they might watch harder for signs of destructive strategy, and more carefully design the systems that they build and manage against such strategy.
(Hmm. I notice that I’m posing a purportedly-fully-general strategy to a fully-general problem, without evidence or examples. And I’m claiming that better global understanding is a solution, when it is probably just applause lights to my imagined audience. And I still think that what I’m saying is right! Wow. You should probably ignore this comment’s content, but I’ll still leave it here, as a counterexample.)
Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.
Lewis Hyde, Alcohol and Poetry.
That link asks me to “download attachment.” In this context, that’s a beautiful idea.