All Biological life on earth is possible because of a discrete digital mechanism of preservation and replication.
More from Carlos E. Perez
Nice to discover Judea Pearl ask a fundamental question. What's an 'inductive bias'?
I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.
explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?
An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.
The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.
Help! What precisely is "inductive bias"? Some ML researchers are in the opinion that the machine learning category of \u2018inductive biases\u2019 can allow us to build a causal understanding of the world. My Ladder of Causation says: "This is mathematically impossible". Who is right? 1/
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) February 14, 2021
I crucial step on the road towards AGI is a richer vocabulary for reasoning about inductive biases.
explores the apparent impedance mismatch between inductive biases and causal reasoning. But isn't the logical thinking required for good causal reasoning also not an inductive bias?
An inductive bias is what C.S. Peirce would call a habit. It is a habit of reasoning. Logical thinking is like a Platonic solid of the many kinds of heuristics that are discovered.
The kind of black and white logic that is found in digital computers is critical to the emergence of today's information economy. This of course is not the same logic that drives the general intelligence that lives in the same economy.
Programming in abstractions is very different from a system that is capable of its own 'abstracting'. But what does abstracting mean? We only know of its inputs and outputs, but we fail to describe its inner workings.
I like this short video about living in space. This is because it makes you realize the gaps in your knowledge when you turn off something (i.e. gravity) that you have always assumed to be present.
Perhaps we can understand 'abstracting' better if we turn of many assumptions that we unconsciously carry around. Perhaps we need to get rid of the excess baggage that is confusing our thinking about abstraction.
Turning off gravity and living in space is a perfect analogy. We somehow have to turn off a cognitive process to understand the meaning of abstraction.
The first step to divorce ourselves from our habitual cognitive processes is to realize the pervasiveness of 'noun-thinking' .
I like this short video about living in space. This is because it makes you realize the gaps in your knowledge when you turn off something (i.e. gravity) that you have always assumed to be present.
What does living in space do to the human body? pic.twitter.com/kzIlEEr7pp
— Tech Insider (@techinsider) December 20, 2020
Perhaps we can understand 'abstracting' better if we turn of many assumptions that we unconsciously carry around. Perhaps we need to get rid of the excess baggage that is confusing our thinking about abstraction.
Turning off gravity and living in space is a perfect analogy. We somehow have to turn off a cognitive process to understand the meaning of abstraction.
The first step to divorce ourselves from our habitual cognitive processes is to realize the pervasiveness of 'noun-thinking' .
More from Science
1. I find it remarkable that some medics and scientists aren’t raising their voices to make children as safe as possible. The comment about children being less infectious than adults is unsupported by evidence.
2. @c_drosten has talked about this extensively and @dgurdasani1 and @DrZoeHyde have repeatedly pointed out flaws in the studies which have purported to show this. Now for the other assertion: children are very rarely ill with COVID19.
3. Children seem to suffer less with acute illness, but we have no idea of the long-term impact of infection. We do know #LongCovid affects some children. @LongCovidKids now speaks for 1,500 children struggling with a wide range of long-term symptoms.
4. 1,500 children whose parents found a small campaign group. How many more are out there? We don’t know. ONS data suggests there might be many, but the issue hasn’t been studied sufficiently well or long enough for a definitive answer.
5. Some people have talked about #COVID19 being this generation’s Polio. According to US CDC, Polio resulted in inapparent infection in more than 99% of people. Severe disease occurred in a tiny fraction of those infected. Source:
I find it remarkable that a section of society not rejoicing that children very rarely ill with COVID compared to other viruses and much less infectious than adults
— Michael Absoud \U0001f499 (@MAbsoud) February 12, 2021
Instead trying prove the opposite!
Why??
2. @c_drosten has talked about this extensively and @dgurdasani1 and @DrZoeHyde have repeatedly pointed out flaws in the studies which have purported to show this. Now for the other assertion: children are very rarely ill with COVID19.
3. Children seem to suffer less with acute illness, but we have no idea of the long-term impact of infection. We do know #LongCovid affects some children. @LongCovidKids now speaks for 1,500 children struggling with a wide range of long-term symptoms.
4. 1,500 children whose parents found a small campaign group. How many more are out there? We don’t know. ONS data suggests there might be many, but the issue hasn’t been studied sufficiently well or long enough for a definitive answer.
5. Some people have talked about #COVID19 being this generation’s Polio. According to US CDC, Polio resulted in inapparent infection in more than 99% of people. Severe disease occurred in a tiny fraction of those infected. Source:
All modern research questions frame your mindset and self-frame research paradigm. Broad thinking: how little of everything can a citizen survive on; how cheap can your upkeep be? /1
When an American patient lands in an Austrian hospital for a back problem, a doctor tells him to perform a set of exercises.
- How many?
- Do you have anything else to do? /2
This interchange illustrates two mindsets colliding at bedside. How little can I get away with vs there is no limit to effort when it comes to your wellness. /3
When you were robbed of movement, somebody started selling you exercise. To understand that digging a ditch, to build a house, or to carry a child around, or waking to your grandparents for an hour is not the same as jogging on a treadmill... will reveal what research hides.
/4
When I talk about doing a purposeful activity outdoors, I look at complexity of movement, purpose, meaning, sun, and air, even an opportunity to meet a neighbor... that is now reduced to a calcium pill, vitamin D, an antidepressant, an osteoporosis shot, and an oxygen tank. /5
Is moderate exercise enough to live as long as possible, or should you be doing vigorous exercise? And what proportion is best? This article has the answers. https://t.co/YJqpaaI0UR
— Sebastian Rushworth M.D. (@sebrushworth) January 24, 2021
When an American patient lands in an Austrian hospital for a back problem, a doctor tells him to perform a set of exercises.
- How many?
- Do you have anything else to do? /2
This interchange illustrates two mindsets colliding at bedside. How little can I get away with vs there is no limit to effort when it comes to your wellness. /3
When you were robbed of movement, somebody started selling you exercise. To understand that digging a ditch, to build a house, or to carry a child around, or waking to your grandparents for an hour is not the same as jogging on a treadmill... will reveal what research hides.
/4
When I talk about doing a purposeful activity outdoors, I look at complexity of movement, purpose, meaning, sun, and air, even an opportunity to meet a neighbor... that is now reduced to a calcium pill, vitamin D, an antidepressant, an osteoporosis shot, and an oxygen tank. /5
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10 competitive advantages that you can start developing today:
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I\u2019ve gotten a lot of bad advice in my career and I see even more of it here on Twitter.
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Time for a stiff drink and some truth you probably dont want to hear.
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THREAD: 10 significant lies you're told about the world.
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