As one potential customer I can say it's true for me. I have an iPhone4S, could do with an upgrade, I don't want Apple anymore because for the money I have to pay for it I'm sick of not being able to download files (pics/music) to and from the phone easily (and I will *not* install iTunes on my PC, and don't want to buy any content from Apple), Android seems like an energy draining mess that doesn't just work, I feel like I'd be happy with a Win 10 phone but I expect I'll run into wanting some apps that are iOS or Android only and will then regret being stuck with a Windows phone. So at the moment I'm not buying anything.
I read that YCombinator startups that do AI do not like job candidates who have interest in machine learning -- they want good programmers interested in solving a problem, where AI happens to be a means to an end. So maybe the best thing to do would actually be to quit your day job and get a job at a place that does AI and hires regular programmers!
Even if the tech were as accurate as the traditional tech, how would you know that you are interpreting the numbers meaningfully? My understanding is that the (accurate tech's) reading is informative mostly if it's very high of very low compared to some statistical range, and only if analyzed by an expert on the lookout for other patterns -- and possibly only if the patient is feeling unwell. E.g. if your tests show that you have high cholesterol but are feeling good, is your health bad? And on the other end, if you have high cholesterol and take statin drugs so it gets lower and you "pass the test", could the drugs have affected something else not measured by the set of tests you used?
I think the Theranos device, if it worked, is a bad idea, it would get more people to become obsessed with numbers that even science, let alone lay people, don't quite understand.
No military would make a light saber -- and you'd need military grade technology for it -- since as a weapon a light saber is quite ineffective, a guy with a 19th century handgun is more dangerous than a guy with a light saber. You'd rather put the huge energy needed for it into action at a distance. Psychologically, The appeal of lightsaber is purely archetypal, it being a sword.
That said, maybe a tech like this could lead to retractable light blade that looks and glows like a light saber, without any cutting or melting power or solidity behind it. That would actually be even better since anyone could have it.
Exactly right! We as a society should only care that the weak are protected -- misfortune can happen on anyone -- and not that some people have yachts while others only have a crappy car. Or even that some people have yachts while majority have crappy cars, with few people in the middle who drive SUVs.
Protect the weak and let the rich be as rich as they can.
Good. And after they perfect it, if they horde it this way then the rest of us can steal it!
That won't be easy since the treatment will probably turn them into undying zombies like in that Will Smith movie and they will guard their territory ferociously.
If you watch the interview, you'll hear that the reporter mumbles the question (in a loud room) about "a database to track the Muslims in this country", and when he later asks "how would it work", Trump responds "it would stop people from coming to this country illegally". That doesn't sound like they are talking about the same thing.
That's a naive view. In complex systems you can't really say out of context that something just "works" -- instead, an agent sets off a nearly infinite cascade of events, some of which may be favorable to you, and others not. There are cases of ailments where "spending money on nonsense" that for some reason stimulates your body's self-repairing response ("placebo") gives you a more favorable outcomes, and there are cases where the unknown side effects potentially far outweigh the assumed benefits. It's a risk management question.
The most reasonable heuristic I've heard is that if something is potent, in that it works at a deep level, and is statistically speaking "unnatural", use it only when you judge there is more to be lost by not getting its intended effects than by allowing its unintended side effects. E.g. if an old person or some with a weak immune systems gets a flu they could die from, you give them antibiotics, if they are young and/or have a less compromised immune system, have them wait it out, monitoring the state along the way. This seems like common sense, but I've seen doctors prescribing antibiotics for flu to everyone.
There's a difference between using antibiotics when we have a bacterial infection in general and using antibiotics when we have a bacterial infection that the body likely won't handle well, from best we can tell. For a "minor" infection like with a cold or flu, depending how you define minor, if the person has a relatively good immune system and so on, waiting it out may be a better strategy than using antibiotics. As well as staying home and recovering instead of going to work, drinking lots of fluid and avoiding food that slows down recovery and so on.
That is not a credible argument to start promoting homeopathy as a treatment for anything.
I didn't say promote it, I'm saying it leave it alone and see what comes out of it, as it first, does no harm, and second, it's not a big money by any measure. Though I wouldn't support paying for it from public funds.
If some people are willing to take it for minor problems and pay for it on their own and are happy with it, I don't see what the problem is.
No, it is an argument against the position that we have a tight intellectual grip on the process of what goes on in the human body. It's also an argument against naive interventionism, eg. using antibiotics in less critical cases instead of waiting it out.
Though by that measure, it may become an argument in favor of homeopathy, for noncritical cases: homeopathy has no known (or conceivable, by the standards of the model we are using) side effects, and it appears to work as well as a "good" placebo. (I believe it essentially *is* placebo, possibly aided by the practitioner who spends more time with you than an average doctor and in a more relaxed environment -- with the caveat that we don't have a model for the placebo effect.)
So if you were to take two groups of people with cold/flu with viral and/or mild bacterial infections, it seems quite possible that those given homeopathic treatment (placebo) would fare better than those taking antibiotics (placebo plus gut flora disruption), which by the way used to be common for a number of people I know. It's possible even that gut flora disruption would impede recovery from illness.
And to make matters more complicated, by what measure would you know those people's health and how soon would you know it? Previous study of antibiotics on infections caused by flu probably didn't measure gut flora health for a year. And a person with a bad gut flora health for a year could be making other decisions in the course of the year that would affect their well-being differently than if they didn't have it. And so on. We know so little, and I don't think we can afford to be arrogant.
In most cases the antibiotics will have little to no short term negative consequences for the patient.
There was an article on Ars yesterday that a single course of antibiotics can disrupt the flora in the gut for a whole year. (Though, curiously, not in the mouth.)
No - Linus doesn't say a *person* is an idiot, but that a person's *behavior* in a particular instance or their snippet of *code* is idiotic. There's a world of difference.
I really like this explanation, as a general motivation for about learning about constraints. I think it can be applied to all of technology -- e.g. 'by realizing things are only allowed to make certain transitions under certain conditions, you can "cheat" and build up high-energy states that are far more stable than they really should be' might well be said for GMO, for example.
Set up an account that transfers to you $100K, adjusted for inflation, every year, for 40 years, and which you cannot change afterwards. That's $4M. You may live longer than that but you'll need to save. Form a research/charity/whatever organization of your liking -- say, to finance teleportation research -- where you are on the board with 25% of the vote and transfer the rest of the money to this organization. Announce that to everyone, so your life is back to normal, you'll still find incentive to work, and you may contribute to something exciting.
Medicine is more of a "fuzzy" science, where its findings, theories and models -- i.e. its "truth" -- have much lower confidence value assigned to them compared to physics, but higher than psychology/sociology. (Journalists and people who yell "the science is settled!" ignore this confidence value.)
In my view that's a natural reflection of how patterns are fewer in physical world and thus easier to repeat, compared to living organisms, especially higher orders like mammals, and compared to mind/society stuff on the other end of the scale.
Thought the same when I read "we don't see those galaxies as they are *today*." Today where? I think people fall in that trap by drawing a sketch of the entire universe on a sheet of paper, and as that sheet fits in their field of view entirely, they forget there is no universal now.
Because we are a journalist for Wired. Wired is only relevant in the area of technology, mostly when it comes to strictly news, and the opinion of a journalist with an ideological bias picking stories and sources to confirm it in a non-tech domain is only relevant nowhere.
Used to work well for me for 3-4 years and then suddenly stopped. Full name is ASUS WiCast EW2000 Wireless HD Video Transmitter and Receiver but not available on Amazon now. Pixel perfect HDMI transmission with zero latency.
I mean the ones served "in passing". It just seems so counter-intuitive that someone would open a page to read an article or see pics and then ignore that thing and go read or watch the ad and click on it and remember any of it, let alone actually buy something.
I don't have AdBlock in one of the four browsers I run (Sandboxied Chrome -- the others are Sandboxied FF with no flash, non-Sandboxied FF with Noscript, and non-Sandboxied Chrome that I only use for 3-4 sites), and don't remember seeing anything remotely relevant or interesting, except for a couple of youtube ads, or ads for goods I already found and bought on Amazon. And I have clicked on an ad and bought something a number of times when I was searching for the item on Google, in the mindset of wanting to buy. Though I often end up going to Amazon and buying the item there.
Facebook in that sense seems the worst, no one is in a mindset to buy, they are just looking to score a bit of interesting info or pic from "friends". Imagine watching porn and seeing an ad on the side for 15% off for iphone cases. Well you most likely wouldn't even see the ad.
Anyway that's one datapoint. The 1st google search on "do web ads work" gives this ("A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All?") http://www.theatlantic.com/bus.... Prob. another case where Betteridge's law holds.
Paid for the law in its current strict form by content owners and distributors. And btw if 99% were to vote for abolishing the copyright law, you can't attribute it to no one understanding the complex issue -- that's a valid argument only when the perception is split.
If people would be really as disappointed as you describe, then have another referendum in 10 years and ask them do they want the copyright law back. Given the latest formulaic crap that's been made in the last few years, I don't think we'd be at much of a loss for that decade. And artists who just had to make art would make it anyway.
Imagine a nation-wide referendum asking voters if music copyright law should be retained. What percentage would vote "yes" you think? 0.01%? 0.02%? 0.05% possibly? Whatever number you pick, there's your answer who paid for that law.
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As one potential customer I can say it's true for me. I have an iPhone4S, could do with an upgrade, I don't want Apple anymore because for the money I have to pay for it I'm sick of not being able to download files (pics/music) to and from the phone easily (and I will *not* install iTunes on my PC, and don't want to buy any content from Apple), Android seems like an energy draining mess that doesn't just work, I feel like I'd be happy with a Win 10 phone but I expect I'll run into wanting some apps that are iOS or Android only and will then regret being stuck with a Windows phone. So at the moment I'm not buying anything.
I read that YCombinator startups that do AI do not like job candidates who have interest in machine learning -- they want good programmers interested in solving a problem, where AI happens to be a means to an end. So maybe the best thing to do would actually be to quit your day job and get a job at a place that does AI and hires regular programmers!
Even if the tech were as accurate as the traditional tech, how would you know that you are interpreting the numbers meaningfully? My understanding is that the (accurate tech's) reading is informative mostly if it's very high of very low compared to some statistical range, and only if analyzed by an expert on the lookout for other patterns -- and possibly only if the patient is feeling unwell. E.g. if your tests show that you have high cholesterol but are feeling good, is your health bad? And on the other end, if you have high cholesterol and take statin drugs so it gets lower and you "pass the test", could the drugs have affected something else not measured by the set of tests you used?
I think the Theranos device, if it worked, is a bad idea, it would get more people to become obsessed with numbers that even science, let alone lay people, don't quite understand.
No military would make a light saber -- and you'd need military grade technology for it -- since as a weapon a light saber is quite ineffective, a guy with a 19th century handgun is more dangerous than a guy with a light saber. You'd rather put the huge energy needed for it into action at a distance. Psychologically, The appeal of lightsaber is purely archetypal, it being a sword.
That said, maybe a tech like this could lead to retractable light blade that looks and glows like a light saber, without any cutting or melting power or solidity behind it. That would actually be even better since anyone could have it.
Exactly right! We as a society should only care that the weak are protected -- misfortune can happen on anyone -- and not that some people have yachts while others only have a crappy car. Or even that some people have yachts while majority have crappy cars, with few people in the middle who drive SUVs.
Protect the weak and let the rich be as rich as they can.
Good. And after they perfect it, if they horde it this way then the rest of us can steal it!
That won't be easy since the treatment will probably turn them into undying zombies like in that Will Smith movie and they will guard their territory ferociously.
...with worrying about possibly getting someone offended. I'm totally with Dawkins on this one.
If you watch the interview, you'll hear that the reporter mumbles the question (in a loud room) about "a database to track the Muslims in this country", and when he later asks "how would it work", Trump responds "it would stop people from coming to this country illegally". That doesn't sound like they are talking about the same thing.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/poli...
That's a naive view. In complex systems you can't really say out of context that something just "works" -- instead, an agent sets off a nearly infinite cascade of events, some of which may be favorable to you, and others not. There are cases of ailments where "spending money on nonsense" that for some reason stimulates your body's self-repairing response ("placebo") gives you a more favorable outcomes, and there are cases where the unknown side effects potentially far outweigh the assumed benefits. It's a risk management question.
The most reasonable heuristic I've heard is that if something is potent, in that it works at a deep level, and is statistically speaking "unnatural", use it only when you judge there is more to be lost by not getting its intended effects than by allowing its unintended side effects. E.g. if an old person or some with a weak immune systems gets a flu they could die from, you give them antibiotics, if they are young and/or have a less compromised immune system, have them wait it out, monitoring the state along the way. This seems like common sense, but I've seen doctors prescribing antibiotics for flu to everyone.
There's a difference between using antibiotics when we have a bacterial infection in general and using antibiotics when we have a bacterial infection that the body likely won't handle well, from best we can tell. For a "minor" infection like with a cold or flu, depending how you define minor, if the person has a relatively good immune system and so on, waiting it out may be a better strategy than using antibiotics. As well as staying home and recovering instead of going to work, drinking lots of fluid and avoiding food that slows down recovery and so on.
That is not a credible argument to start promoting homeopathy as a treatment for anything.
I didn't say promote it, I'm saying it leave it alone and see what comes out of it, as it first, does no harm, and second, it's not a big money by any measure. Though I wouldn't support paying for it from public funds.
If some people are willing to take it for minor problems and pay for it on their own and are happy with it, I don't see what the problem is.
No, it is an argument against the position that we have a tight intellectual grip on the process of what goes on in the human body. It's also an argument against naive interventionism, eg. using antibiotics in less critical cases instead of waiting it out.
Though by that measure, it may become an argument in favor of homeopathy, for noncritical cases: homeopathy has no known (or conceivable, by the standards of the model we are using) side effects, and it appears to work as well as a "good" placebo. (I believe it essentially *is* placebo, possibly aided by the practitioner who spends more time with you than an average doctor and in a more relaxed environment -- with the caveat that we don't have a model for the placebo effect.)
So if you were to take two groups of people with cold/flu with viral and/or mild bacterial infections, it seems quite possible that those given homeopathic treatment (placebo) would fare better than those taking antibiotics (placebo plus gut flora disruption), which by the way used to be common for a number of people I know. It's possible even that gut flora disruption would impede recovery from illness.
And to make matters more complicated, by what measure would you know those people's health and how soon would you know it? Previous study of antibiotics on infections caused by flu probably didn't measure gut flora health for a year. And a person with a bad gut flora health for a year could be making other decisions in the course of the year that would affect their well-being differently than if they didn't have it. And so on. We know so little, and I don't think we can afford to be arrogant.
In most cases the antibiotics will have little to no short term negative consequences for the patient.
There was an article on Ars yesterday that a single course of antibiotics can disrupt the flora in the gut for a whole year. (Though, curiously, not in the mouth.)
No - Linus doesn't say a *person* is an idiot, but that a person's *behavior* in a particular instance or their snippet of *code* is idiotic. There's a world of difference.
I really like this explanation, as a general motivation for about learning about constraints. I think it can be applied to all of technology -- e.g. 'by realizing things are only allowed to make certain transitions under certain conditions, you can "cheat" and build up high-energy states that are far more stable than they really should be' might well be said for GMO, for example.
Set up an account that transfers to you $100K, adjusted for inflation, every year, for 40 years, and which you cannot change afterwards. That's $4M. You may live longer than that but you'll need to save. Form a research/charity/whatever organization of your liking -- say, to finance teleportation research -- where you are on the board with 25% of the vote and transfer the rest of the money to this organization. Announce that to everyone, so your life is back to normal, you'll still find incentive to work, and you may contribute to something exciting.
Medicine is more of a "fuzzy" science, where its findings, theories and models -- i.e. its "truth" -- have much lower confidence value assigned to them compared to physics, but higher than psychology/sociology. (Journalists and people who yell "the science is settled!" ignore this confidence value.)
In my view that's a natural reflection of how patterns are fewer in physical world and thus easier to repeat, compared to living organisms, especially higher orders like mammals, and compared to mind/society stuff on the other end of the scale.
Thought the same when I read "we don't see those galaxies as they are *today*." Today where? I think people fall in that trap by drawing a sketch of the entire universe on a sheet of paper, and as that sheet fits in their field of view entirely, they forget there is no universal now.
Also every single name on the retracted list sounds Chinese.
Because we are a journalist for Wired. Wired is only relevant in the area of technology, mostly when it comes to strictly news, and the opinion of a journalist with an ideological bias picking stories and sources to confirm it in a non-tech domain is only relevant nowhere.
Used to work well for me for 3-4 years and then suddenly stopped. Full name is ASUS WiCast EW2000 Wireless HD Video Transmitter and Receiver but not available on Amazon now. Pixel perfect HDMI transmission with zero latency.
I mean the ones served "in passing". It just seems so counter-intuitive that someone would open a page to read an article or see pics and then ignore that thing and go read or watch the ad and click on it and remember any of it, let alone actually buy something.
I don't have AdBlock in one of the four browsers I run (Sandboxied Chrome -- the others are Sandboxied FF with no flash, non-Sandboxied FF with Noscript, and non-Sandboxied Chrome that I only use for 3-4 sites), and don't remember seeing anything remotely relevant or interesting, except for a couple of youtube ads, or ads for goods I already found and bought on Amazon. And I have clicked on an ad and bought something a number of times when I was searching for the item on Google, in the mindset of wanting to buy. Though I often end up going to Amazon and buying the item there.
Facebook in that sense seems the worst, no one is in a mindset to buy, they are just looking to score a bit of interesting info or pic from "friends". Imagine watching porn and seeing an ad on the side for 15% off for iphone cases. Well you most likely wouldn't even see the ad.
Anyway that's one datapoint. The 1st google search on "do web ads work" gives this ("A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All?") http://www.theatlantic.com/bus.... Prob. another case where Betteridge's law holds.
Paid for the law in its current strict form by content owners and distributors. And btw if 99% were to vote for abolishing the copyright law, you can't attribute it to no one understanding the complex issue -- that's a valid argument only when the perception is split.
If people would be really as disappointed as you describe, then have another referendum in 10 years and ask them do they want the copyright law back. Given the latest formulaic crap that's been made in the last few years, I don't think we'd be at much of a loss for that decade. And artists who just had to make art would make it anyway.
Imagine a nation-wide referendum asking voters if music copyright law should be retained. What percentage would vote "yes" you think? 0.01%? 0.02%? 0.05% possibly? Whatever number you pick, there's your answer who paid for that law.
Difference between x-rays and GMOs is x-rays don't self propagate. Maybe a better analogy would be... Stuxnet?