On Bayesianism, the Many Worlds Interpretation, and personal identity.
Some thoughts worked out in a letter to a friend, which is the kind of thing you do when off Twitter for a glorious week. (🧵)
https://t.co/DhHmN0ndjx
Is there a fact of the matter as to whether the cat is alive before you open the box?
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
I would say not, and all your references to how the world "is" are similarly incoherent.
Wait so you disagree with 'quantum splitting means that that there are futures where you become the next US president and futures where you murder your family and futures where you spontaneously combust' takes?
— Peli Grietzer (@peligrietzer) November 8, 2020
Can you defend this distinction between past and future splits?
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
You mentioned personal identity, are you going to argue that personal identity splits even if we're unaware of any differences?
My issue is what forks \u201cspace\u201d itself? Obv we need a QG theory, but MWI assumes some background independence or metaphysical substrate in which alternative quantum states can resolve.
— U.S.O.U.S. (@hyperauxetic) November 8, 2020
You think there's a fact of the matter about whether you are Classical Simon1 or Classical Simon2? My instinct is that there isn't, if they are qualitatively identical to each other
— Peli Grietzer (@peligrietzer) November 8, 2020
If both have the exact same memories and you can't tell which one "you" are, then from your perspective there shouldn't be a fact of the matter as to which one you are. At least, that's my view on personal identity. What's the argument against?
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
Not sure how that's relevant to personal identity.
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
Simon, I don't mean to distract you from your brilliant thread, here, but what would you say to a Meillassouxian-type committed to an arche-fossil as the basis of absolute contingency?
— NAF Loves Meillassoux (@LovesNaf) November 8, 2020
Not sure this is what you\u2019re looking for, but Tegmark uses cosmic rays causing cancerous mutations as one example of quantum splitting have observable macro effects.
— Matt Clancy (@mattsclancy) November 8, 2020
More from Simon DeDeo
Imagine for a moment the most obscurantist, jargon-filled, po-mo article the politically correct academy might produce. Pure SJW nonsense. Got it? Chances are you're imagining something like the infamous "Feminist Glaciology" article from a few years back.https://t.co/NRaWNREBvR pic.twitter.com/qtSFBYY80S
— Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) October 13, 2018
The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.
Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)
There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.
At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
More from Data science
When are you doing pie charts?
— #BlackLivesMatter (@surt_lab) October 13, 2020
Here's the code to generate the data frame. You can get the "raw" data from https://t.co/jcTE5t0uBT
Obligatory stacked bar chart that hides any sense of variation in the data
Obligatory stacked bar chart that shows all the things and yet shows absolutely nothing at the same time
STACKED Donut plot. Who doesn't want a donut? Who wouldn't want a stack of them!?! This took forever to render and looked worse than it should because coord_polar doesn't do scales="free_x".
https://t.co/EwwOzgfDca : Deep Learning framework in Java that supports the whole cycle: from data loading and preprocessing to building and tuning a variety deep learning networks.
https://t.co/J4qMzPAZ6u Framework for defining machine learning models, including feature generation and transformations, as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs).
https://t.co/9IgKkSxPCq a machine learning library in Java that provides multi-class classification, regression, clustering, anomaly detection and multi-label classification.
https://t.co/EAqn2YngIE : TensorFlow Java API (experimental)
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Some random interesting tidbits:
1) Zuck approves shutting down platform API access for Twitter's when Vine is released #competition
2) Facebook engineered ways to access user's call history w/o alerting users:
Team considered access to call history considered 'high PR risk' but 'growth team will charge ahead'. @Facebook created upgrade path to access data w/o subjecting users to Android permissions dialogue.
3) The above also confirms @kashhill and other's suspicion that call history was used to improve PYMK (People You May Know) suggestions and newsfeed rankings.
4) Docs also shed more light into @dseetharaman's story on @Facebook monitoring users' @Onavo VPN activity to determine what competitors to mimic or acquire in 2013.
https://t.co/PwiRIL3v9x
Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
I'm increasingly interested in the idea of "personal moats" in the context of careers.
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
Moats should be:
- Hard to learn and hard to do (but perhaps easier for you)
- Skills that are rare and valuable
- Legible
- Compounding over time
- Unique to your own talents & interests https://t.co/bB3k1YcH5b
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
People talk about \u201cpassive income\u201d a lot but not about \u201cpassive social capital\u201d or \u201cpassive networking\u201d or \u201cpassive knowledge gaining\u201d but that\u2019s what you can architect if you have a thing and it grows over time without intensive constant effort to sustain it
— Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) November 22, 2018
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
Things that look like moats but likely aren\u2019t or may fade:
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
- Proprietary networks
- Being something other than one of the best at any tournament style-game
- Many "awards"
- Twitter followers or general reach without "respect"
- Anything that depends on information asymmetry https://t.co/abjxesVIh9
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.