philh

Karma: 7,198

philh 8 Apr 2024 13:37 UTC
2 points
2
in reply to: philh’s comment on: philh’s Shortform
(I confess I have no idea how to interpret the agree-votes on this.)

philh 7 Apr 2024 8:44 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: General Thoughts on Secular Solstice
Yeah, I was wrong to suggest/assume that the definition is original to you and not the way it’s defined in other communities that I just am not familiar with.

It still seems like you’re making the core mistake I was trying to point at, which is asserting that a word means something different than what other people mean by it; rather than acknowledging that sometimes words have different meanings in different contexts.

Like, people are talking about what sort of toppings should be on a donut and how large the hole should be, and you’re chiming in to say you came around on donuts when you realized that instead of being ring-shaped with toppings they’re ball-shaped with fillings. You didn’t come around on donuts. You just discovered that even though you don’t like ring donuts, you do like filled donuts, a related but different baked good.

philh 6 Apr 2024 22:18 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: General Thoughts on Secular Solstice
I only came around on faith once I realized it was just Latin for trust, and specifically trust in the world to be just as it is.
This really just seems to me like you’re asserting that what a word “really means” is some weird new definition that ~no one else means when they say the word.
(I don’t know Latin. Nevertheless I am extremely confident that the word “faith” in Latin does not specifically refer to the concept of “trust in the world to be just as it is”.)

philh 3 Apr 2024 21:36 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Yoav Ravid’s comment on: philh’s Shortform
Also now running as an in-progress youtube short series. (I haven’t read the original.)

philh 3 Apr 2024 15:02 UTC
53 points
9
on: philh’s Shortform
“It seems a lot of our pills cause vomiting as a side-effect?”
“Yeah, the company knows about it but it’s tricky to fix.”
“How so? Our competitors don’t have this problem, and we make basically the same products, right?”
“Right, no, it’s a corporate structure issue.”
″?”
“If a pill does too much or too little of something, we have a group of clever people whose job it is to care about that and to reformulate it slightly to improve it. If it doesn’t kill enough pain, the analgesic division will step in. If it causes clotting, the anticoagulant folks have a look. If it makes your bones brittle, it’ll be the antiosteoporosises. You see? But if it causes vomiting-”
“Right, yeah. There’s no one to take ownership of the problem, because-”
“There is no antiemetics division.”

philh 8 Mar 2024 23:41 UTC
6 points
2
on: philh’s Shortform
Oh, huh. Searle’s original Chinese room paper (first eight pages) doesn’t say machines can’t think.
“OK, but could a digital computer think?”
If by “digital computer” we mean anything at all that has a level of description where it can correctly be described as the instantiation of a computer program, then again the answer is, of course, yes, since we are the instantiations of any number of computer programs, and we can think.
“But could something think, understand, and so on solely in virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course, by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding?”
This I think is the right question to ask, though it is usually confused with one or more of the earlier questions, and the answer to it is no.
“Why not?”
Because the formal symbol manipulations by themselves don’t have any intentionality; they are quite meaningless; they aren’t even symbol manipulations, since the symbols don’t symbolize anything. In the linguistic jargon, they have only a syntax but no semantics. Such intentionality as computers appear to have is solely in the minds of those who program them and those who use them, those who send in the input and those who interpret the output.
I can’t say I really understand what he’s trying to say, but it’s different from what I thought it was.

philh 27 Feb 2024 0:33 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gerald Monroe’s comment on: Gemini Has a Problem
Yeah. It’s still possible to program in such a way that that works, and it’s always been possible to program in such a way that it doesn’t work. But prepared statements make it easier to program in such a way that it doesn’t work, by allowing the programmer to pass executable code (which is probably directly embedded as a literal in their application language) separately from the parameters (which may be user-supplied).

(I could imagine a SQL implementation forbidding all strings directly embedded in queries, and requiring them to be passed through prepared statements or a similar mechanism. That still wouldn’t make these attacks outright impossible, but it would be an added layer of security.)

philh 27 Feb 2024 0:15 UTC
2 points
0
on: Monthly Roundup #15: February 2024

A large majority of empirical evidence reported in leading economics journals is potentially misleading. Results reported to be statistically significant are about as likely to be misleading as not (falsely positive) and statistically nonsignificant results are much more likely to be misleading (falsely negative). We also compare observational to experimental research and find that the quality of experimental economic evidence is notably higher.

I’m confused by this “falsely negative”. Like, without that, that part sounds like it’s saying something like

when a result is reported as “we observed a small effect here, but it wasn’t statistically significant”, then more often than not, there’s no real effect there

but that’s a false positive. If they’re saying it’s a false negative, it suggests something like

when a result is reported as statistically insignificant, that makes it sound like there’s no effect there, but more often than not there actually is an effect

...but that’s (a) not a natural reading of that part and (b) surely not true.

philh 26 Feb 2024 23:43 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gerald Monroe’s comment on: Gemini Has a Problem

Were SQL a better language this wouldn’t be possible, all the command strings would separated somehow

SQL does support prepared statements which forbid injection. Maybe you’re thinking of something stronger than this? I’m not sure how long they’ve been around for, but wikipedia’s list of SQL injection examples only has two since 2015 which hints that SQL injection is much less common than it used to be.

(Pedantic clarification: dunno if this is in any SQL standard, but it looks like every SQL implementation I can think of supports them.)

philh 19 Feb 2024 23:56 UTC
3 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: philh’s Shortform
Planet Money #902 (28 Mar 2019): The Phoebus Cartel

Listened to this one a few weeks ago and don’t remember most of it. But half the episode was about the phoebus cartel, a case of planned obsolesence when lightbulb manufacturers decided that no light bulb should be allowed to last more than 1000 hours.

Writing this for Gell-Mann amnesia reasons: in the episode someone says there was no benefit to consumers from this, but I’d recently seen a technology connections episode on the subject saying that longer lasting incandescent light bulbs are less energy efficient (i.e. more heat less light) for physics reasons, to the extent that they could easily be more expensive over their lifetime. Seems like an important caveat that PM missed!

The other half was about psychological obsolesence, where manufacturers make long-lasting goods like cars cosmetically different to convince you you need a new one.

philh 19 Feb 2024 23:48 UTC
2 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: philh’s Shortform
Planet Money #1717 (9 Feb 2024): A Lawsuit for your broken heart

Keith met woman, fell in love, got married, had kids. She helped with his BMX company and she’d post sickeningly cute things on facebook about how she had the best family.

Then Keith saw some very messages she was exchanging with some other guy (from him: «do you like how tall I am», «show me a bikini pic», that kind of thing). He got mad, called him, said «never fucking talk to my wife again» and thought that would be the end of it.

It was not the end of it. She had affair, they got divorced. A bit later he was catching up with an old school friend who’d been in a similar situation, and she told him she was suing the woman her husband had cheated with. You can do that?

These are heartbalm laws and they’re kind of archaic. In the past if a woman got engaged and the man broke things off, she could be ruined, so she got to sue him for breach of promise. There’s also seduction, where she could sue someone for lying her into bed. And criminal conversation, which is adultery. And the one relevant to the show, alienation of affections, where you can sue someone for damaging your marriage.

Most states have abolished these, partly because public perception moved towards women using these in ways that were unpopular, this is where the term “gold digger” took off. There were also a bunch of famous people who got sued.

But a few states still have alienation of affections, including North Carolina, which is where most of the suits are. Possibly because that’s where most of the legal experts in them are.

Keith presents evidence that his marriage would otherwise have been happy: the sickeningly cute facebook posts, messages between him and his ex, messages from her to her girlfriends saying the marriage would have been fine if not for this other guy. (She subsequently married him.)

And because marriage is in part an economic arrangement, his lawyer also talks about the work that the ex had been doing for the company, and all the unpaid labor she was doing like childcare and washing dishes. The hosts point out it’s kinda weird that Keith is suing some other guy for the unpaid labor his ex wife used to do. But that’s what’s happening, and Keith wins the suit and is awarded $8 million.

Other guy files for bankruptcy. Keith probably won’t get anything from him, and still owes his lawyers thousands of dollars in fees. But he says it was worth it.

philh 13 Feb 2024 0:23 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: datawitch’s comment on: Epistemic Hell
Nice!
Wikipedia says his mission began on 08/29/1498 and ended on 01/07/1499 (so about 3 months).
It looks like this is just one leg of the return journey. In total the outward journey was about 10 months and the return was about 11, and both spent 3+ months without landing.

philh 9 Feb 2024 23:44 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Tetraspace’s comment on: Conditional prediction markets are evidential, not causal
Hm, do you want to go into more depth? Intuitively I agree this is obviously distortionary, but I’m finding it awkward to think through the details of the distortion.
One thing that comes to mind is “if the market is at 10% but you think 5% is “correct” according to what seems like the spirit of the question, you’re going to expect that the market just doesn’t get resolved, so why bother betting it down”. But I feel like there’s probably more than that. (E: oh, the dynomight essay linked above mentions this one as well.)

philh 7 Feb 2024 23:48 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: niplav’s comment on: Conditional prediction markets are evidential, not causal
Thanks! Yeah, I think that’s making the same basic point with a different focus.
And that makes me more confident in changing the title, so doing that now. (Original title: “Conditional prediction markets are, specifically, conditioned on the thing happening”.)

philh 7 Feb 2024 22:13 UTC
6 points
0
on: Conditional prediction markets are evidential, not causal
Maybe a pithier title would be “Conditional prediction markets are evidential, not causal”?

philh 5 Feb 2024 18:50 UTC
10 points
4
on: Epistemic Hell
The problem was so common that shipowners and governments assumed a 50% death rate from scurvy for their sailors on any major voyage.

Sticking my neck out: roll to disbelieve that 50% of sailors on major voyages died in general, let alone specifically of scurvy.

Ways to change the claim that I’d find much more believable:
- 50% of those who got scurvy died of it
- A 50% death rate was considered plausible, and the possibility was planned for, but it wasn’t common
- “Major voyage” here is a much smaller category than I expect; think Magellan rather than Columbus.

philh 26 Jan 2024 1:34 UTC
6 points
2
in reply to: mesaoptimizer’s comment on: Gender Exploration
Note that in general there’s no contradiction between

“X is a very not-Y trait, in fact just about the least Y trait there is”

And

“Nevertheless, one can be X and also overall very Y”

philh 21 Jan 2024 20:01 UTC
2 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: philh’s Shortform
Planet Money: The Maine Potato War

The standard potato today is the russet, mostly associated with Idaho and Washington, but in the… 70s? 80s?… it was some other kind from Maine.

These potatos were sold on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and in particular you could buy and sell futures there. Futures are good for hedging, farmers could lock in the price early to avoid risk of a crash, and buyers could lock it in early to avoid risk of a rise. You could also just speculate, with no intention of ever seeing a potato. Speculators are generally good for markets because they put a bunch of money in there which helps them flow better.

The big Western potato farmers didn’t like that Maine potatos were on the exchange, because it gave them an advantage. So one year they entered the market with like a million dollars worth of contracts. (I vaguely recall that these were buy contracts, but I think it fits better with the rest of the story if they were sell.) Trading is weird for the year, and when things finally play out after close date, the Western farmers collectively owe the market millions of pounds of Maine potatoes, possibly more than existed in the entire state of Maine.

They try to get around it by offering russet potatoes instead, but buyers say no dice. So in the end they just default. They have to pay back the buyers plus pay heavy fines. I think banned from the exchange for a bit? Short term expensive for them.

But long term very good for them! Markets don’t like defaults, so the Maine potatoes are removed from the exchange a bit later.

philh 19 Jan 2024 22:30 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Martin Randall’s comment on: If Clarity Seems Like Death to Them

I think he is using the argument as a soldier.

I see. That’s not a sense I pick up on myself, but I suppose it’s not worth litigating.

To be clear, skimming my previous posts, I don’t see anything that I don’t endorse when it comes to literary criticism. Like, if I’ve said something that you agree with most of the time, but disagree with for literary criticism, then we likely disagree. (Though of course there may be subtleties e.g. in the way that I think something applies when the topic is literary criticism.)

You mention that “awesome” and “terrible” are very subjective words, unlike “blue”, and this is relevant. I agree. Similarly, media criticism is very subjective, unlike dress colors.

Media criticism can be very subjective, but it doesn’t have to be. “I love Star Wars” is more subjective than “Star Wars is great” is more subjective than “Star Wars is a technical masterpiece of the art of filmmaking” is more subjective than “Star Wars is a book about a young boy who goes to wizard school”. And as I said above:

I’m comfortable with “Luke is a Jedi”, and I think it’s importantly different from, say, “Yoda is wise” or “the Death Star is indestructible” or “the Emperor has been defeated once and for all”.

And I think the ways it’s different are similar to the differences between claims about base-level reality like “Tim Cook is a CEO” versus “the Dalai Lama is wise” or “the Titanic is unsinkable” or “Napoleon has been defeated once and for all”.

philh 18 Jan 2024 18:07 UTC
2 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: philh’s Shortform
Planet money #904 (6 Apr 2019): Joke Theft

Meg is an Internet comedian. After a picture of Kanye kissing Kim at some ceremony, she photoshopped it to be a pic of Kanye kissing Kanye. It went viral. But her own tweet only got a couple hundred likes. Most of the viral came from an Instagram account called Fuck Jerry which has 14 million followers and reposted it without credit.

And Fuck Jerry does that a lot, and gets a lot of ad money, including from Comedy Central who should know better than to support someone who keeps stealing from comedians. So that made Meg kinda mad.

Stand up comedy started after the death of vaudeville. At first it was just throwing out one-liner after one-liner, the jokes didn’t have much effort put into them so no one really cared if you stole them. Later the acts and the jokes got more sophisticated and comedians did care.

You can copyright a joke, but it costs $35 to register, it can’t be too short, and just changing the wording gets around it. This is partly to stop stuff like “don’t you hate it when...” from being taken out of the commons. A comedy lawyer couldn’t find any case of one stand up comedian suing another for joke theft.

What do they do instead? A comedian gives three strategies.
- Violence: every time you steal one of my jokes, I’ll damage your car.
- Warnings: if you as a friend of the comic see a known joke thief in the audience, write a message on a napkin and have the waitress deliver it to the comic who can then finish early or avoid using their more precious material. (Robin Williams was a known joke thief. He said he just absorbed stuff and couldn’t remember where it was from. Comedian says Robin once stole one from him, but at least when he called him out he cut him a cheque. It said “sorry for the inconvenience”, not “sorry for stealing”. But it was $200 which was a lot of money in the mid 80s.)
- Organizing: get venues to blacklist them.
Meg makes a campaign “fuck Fuck Jerry” trying to get people to unfollow. A bunch of famous comedians join in (I think Amy Schumer was mentioned). It works at least a bit, they lose 300,000 followers. That doesn’t sound like much, maybe there was more?

PM speaks to Elliot who is behind Fuck Jerry. He considers himself a curator, not thief. He wishes people would know he’s not a bad person. PM is not very sympathetic. He says he now asks for permission; Meg says that’s not enough. He says he’s thinking of starting to pay; PM says it’s unclear how that would work but it’s a bold thing to put on the air.

philh

Planet Money #902 (28 Mar 2019): The Phoebus Cartel

Planet Money #1717 (9 Feb 2024): A Lawsuit for your broken heart

Planet Money: The Maine Potato War

Planet money #904 (6 Apr 2019): Joke Theft