blakestacey @ blakestacey @awful.systems

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2 yr. ago

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Suppose you say that you’re 99.99% confident that 2 + 2 = 4.

Then you're a dillbrain.

Then you have just asserted that you could make 10,000 independent statements, in which you repose equal confidence, and be wrong, on average, around once. Maybe for 2 + 2 = 4 this extraordinary degree of confidence would be possible

Yes, how extraordinary that I can say every day that the guy in front of me at the bodega won't win the Powerball. Or that [SystemRandom().random() >= 0.9999 for i in range(10000)] makes a list that is False in all but one spot.

P(x|y) is defined as P(x,y)/P(y). P(A|A) is defined as P(A,A)/P(A) = P(A)/P(A) = 1. The ratio of these two probabilities may be 1, but I deny that there's any actual probability that's equal to 1. P(|) is a mere notational convenience, nothing more.

No, you kneebiter.

I think this belongs over in TechTakes rather than SneerClub; it doesn't seem TREACLES-focused.

I didn't expect that the repetition of a banal yet occasionally useful saying like "the map is not the territory" could make a person deserve being shoved into a locker, but life will surprise us all.

Mixed in with the rank, fetid ego are amusing indications that Yud gave very little thought to what Bayesian probability actually means. I find that entertaining.

Wood sorrel is nice. It's like lemon but in leaf form.

A joke I heard in the last century: Give a professor a nickel and they'll talk for an hour. Give 'em a quarter and you'll be in real trouble.

This is why it's better just to say mind blown guy having his mind blown.gif

I looked in the telescope and just saw a cow.

Enclosed please find one (1) Internet, awarded in recognition of the best/worst mental image I've had all week

Here's Arthur Chu's story from the time.

My experiences with cops have ranged from the comically absurd to the "I just have to close my eyes and I can still taste the pepper spray", so hey, I'm plenty prepared to be sympathetic with Scott Aa here. But boy did he ever step on that hard.

I got as far as this blog post that I shared in the first days of new!SneerClub, but that was only a first stab.

Likewise, Arthur Chu recently tweeted that he’s “unhappy about [my] continued existence”–i.e., on a straightforward reading, that he wants me to die.

The tweet was a reply to Aaronson saying (in part),

Far be it from me to psychoanalyze him, as he constantly does to me, but Chu's unremitting viciousness doesn't strike me as coming from a place of any great happiness with his life. So I say: may even Mr. Chu find whatever he's looking for.

To which Chu replied,

I am unhappy about many things, including the continued existence, wealth and social status afforded to men like you, and the cheesy sentimentality is not reciprocated

I.e., on a straightforward reading, he was talking about "existence" in the sense of lifestyle, not life. (The OED gives "sheltered existence" as an example of this meaning, which I find apt.)

We're a point-and-laugh-at-TESCREAL-people group.

I've more than once been tempted to write Everything the Sequences Get Wrong about Quantum Mechanics, but the challenge is doing so in a way that doesn't just amount to teaching a whole course in quantum mechanics. The short-short version is that it's lazy, superficial takes on top of cult shit — Yud trying to convince the reader that the physics profession is broken and his way is superior.

I would also tell them that it’s possible to actually understand things.

The most perfect set-up to date for a joke about how the Thing Understander has logged on

It's an old creationist ploy. DNA is like a computer program, which implies there must have been a programmer, yadda yadda, just asking questions, wharblgarbl, brave scientists are speaking up and challenging the Darwinist regime.

Found here:

This is the secret. George opened the debate by acknowledging Yud's intellectual gigantism, comparing him to Sartre and Neechay (have not heard of this one before). "I'm sitting in front of an intellectual giant now" Game recognize game.

And here, bringing the Alabama-school-board energy:

Evolution is observable, we know species change. Evolution by natural selection is marginally observable. We can run experiments in test tubes with bacteria or whatever. Yet we confidently extrapolate these extremely limited observations to the vastly bigger phenomenon 🤔🤔

Calling your own mewling drivel "Programmer Theory" is an A+ dipshit move.

Artificial Intelligence, noun: a technology which, at great expense, finally allows computers to be bad at math

lol at "forged"

while you were studying continental philosophy, I studied the blade