Moonchild's recent activity

  1. Comment on AI and ethics - CP in ~talk

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    extrapolation and generalisation were always the point of ai

    extrapolation and generalisation were always the point of ai

    3 votes

  2. Comment on One state tried eighth grade algebra for all. It hasn’t gone well. in ~society

    Moonchild
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    i think the problem is that you are trying to take an average of a continuous quantity, but you can't really reason about that without calculus (and then measure theory i don't understand yet...

    Maybe it has to do with mph being a rate and adding and averaging rates is less intuitive?

    i think the problem is that you are trying to take an average of a continuous quantity, but you can't really reason about that without calculus (and then measure theory i don't understand yet ;-;), so if you don't know calculus, you're sol. you can sort of handwave that away for problems that look specifically like this (where speed is a piecewise constant function), but the whole question falls apart if you allow speed to vary continuously at all. you have a symbol-pushing intuition that 'average' means a+b+c/3—of course that leads you astray, because that formula only means anything for a discrete problem

    that makes me question whether it's even a good question. if we don't actually understand what a continuous average is, what are we to do? sibling says 'average speed is total distance over total time', but why is that and what does it mean? follows is my attempt at a better intuition (i don't know how good it is):

    what do we want an average (mean) to be? in general: an expected value. suppose a bag has a bunch of lottery tickets in it, each worth a different amount of money; if you take out a lottery ticket, you get the corresponding amount of money, and replace the ticket. the average (lottery tickets are discrete, so we know how to do this) of the ticket values is also the amount we expect to make when we draw out one ticket. it won't be perfect, but it will be a good estimate. now suppose we draw a lot of lottery tickets; the more we take, the better an estimate it will give of how much money we've made

    we'd like an average speed (whatever that means) to have a similar property. take any leg of the trip; it will cover some distance over some time, but suppose we only know one of those two. if we know only the distance of that leg, then the average speed should give us an estimate of the time it took us; and if we know only how long it took, then the average speed should give us an estimate of the distance. like with the lottery example, as we consider larger and larger legs (more time or distance), we should expect the estimate from the average speed to get better and better

    but with the lottery example, we can just keep on taking more and more lottery tickets forever, and expect the estimate to keep getting better and better (it's perfect 'at infinity'). in this case, the trip has a natural starting and stopping point; there's no leg of the trip that takes longer than 'the whole trip' or goes farther than 'the entire distance of the trip'. so we should expect the average speed to become perfect not at infinity, but at the whole trip—given the average speed, the overall time should give us a perfect estimate of the overall distance, and vice versa. but that also means the average speed is determined exactly by the overall time and the overall distance

    after that it's straightforward algebra (back to symbolpushing😔) to show that you'd have to make the trip back from B to A in no time at all to get your desired average, so it's impossible

    5 votes

  3. Comment on One state tried eighth grade algebra for all. It hasn’t gone well. in ~society

  4. Comment on $1.22 billion Mega Millions jackpot won in California in ~finance

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    the annuity is better for people who are not financially educated or responsible; such people are likely to be very well represented among lottery winners i think it makes intuitive sense that you...

    the annuity is better for people who are not financially educated or responsible; such people are likely to be very well represented among lottery winners

    i think it makes intuitive sense that you could make more money from the lump sum; the annuity essentially relies on the government to manage your money for you, and even something like the s&p500 seems to be too risky for the government (but it's almost certainly not too risky for you)

    2 votes

  5. Comment on Canada Post strike update: Postal employees back to work in ~life

    Moonchild
    Link
    the postal union says:

    the postal union says:

    CUPW will still challenge the constitutionality and the current application of section 107 by the Minister of Labour. Our challenges will be heard by the CIRB on January 13 and 14, 2025.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    to clarify—by continuous/discontinuous i mean the distributions, not the actual ranges. so it's not relevant that a length measurement could be any real number (if we assume that's actually true)

    to clarify—by continuous/discontinuous i mean the distributions, not the actual ranges. so it's not relevant that a length measurement could be any real number (if we assume that's actually true)

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    there is uncertainty to spatial measurements though. and supposing there weren't, there would be particular lengths with a nonzero probability of being measured, indicating discontinuity. (time...

    there is uncertainty to spatial measurements though. and supposing there weren't, there would be particular lengths with a nonzero probability of being measured, indicating discontinuity. (time measurements/distributions tend to be discretised but with uncertainty too; that also suffices)

    4 votes

  8. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    banker's rounding means round to nearest, and if you have a tie, then you round to the nearest even number. so 1.49 -> 1; 1.5 -> 2; 2.5 -> 2; 3.5 -> 4. so the difference between round to nearest...

    banker's rounding means round to nearest, and if you have a tie, then you round to the nearest even number. so 1.49 -> 1; 1.5 -> 2; 2.5 -> 2; 3.5 -> 4. so the difference between round to nearest (with unspecified tiebreaker) and banker's rounding only matters if you've been on tildes for exactly x.5 years, but it is impossible for anything in the real world to be exactly x.5 years, so there's no need to specify how ties should be broken, so specifying it is redundant

    5 votes

  9. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link
    buh—time is continuous so the tie cases have zero measure! i protest this redundancy!

    Use banker’s rounding to the nearest whole number

    buh—time is continuous so the tie cases have zero measure! i protest this redundancy!

    5 votes

  10. Comment on What’s your “I didn’t know I needed that” item? in ~life

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    i would have assumed that if you didn't have a kettle you'd just use a pot?

    i would have assumed that if you didn't have a kettle you'd just use a pot?

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Canadian minister says Donald Trump was joking when he said Canada could become the 51st state in ~society

    Moonchild
    Link
    the framing here is kinda icky but mostly whatever—the basic facts about the canada-us vs mexico-us border are true, and i can't really imagine a different tack that would produce a globally...

    the framing here is kinda icky but mostly whatever—the basic facts about the canada-us vs mexico-us border are true, and i can't really imagine a different tack that would produce a globally better outcome; this has a moderate chance of improving things moderately for canadians. but then ...

    Canadian officials have said there are plans to put more helicopters, drones and law enforcement officers at the border.

    why... i do hope this is just bluster

    2 votes

  12. Comment on What really happened after California raised its minimum wage to $20 for fast food workers in ~society

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    queueing theory strikes again!

    queueing theory strikes again!

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Civil cases against Donald Trump for trying to interfere with the 2020 US election can continue while he is president - analysis in ~society

    Moonchild
    Link
    i thought this might perhaps have been an analysis written by 161 authors and was excited to see that, but no; only two—scraper bug. (such high author counts are common in like physics and ai, and...

    i thought this might perhaps have been an analysis written by 161 authors and was excited to see that, but no; only two—scraper bug. (such high author counts are common in like physics and ai, and prospectively in mathematics, but i have no idea how that would work in law)

    2 votes

  14. Comment on The sham legacy of Richard Feynman in ~science

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    it's not just an argument. it's a story—all arguments are stories; and some stories take 3 hours to tell

    it's not just an argument. it's a story—all arguments are stories; and some stories take 3 hours to tell

    8 votes

  15. Comment on Looking to hear experiences about Laser Facial Hair Removal in ~lgbt

    Moonchild
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    this typically happens because the technician is not competent. either they have poor needle technique, or they remove hairs in a cluster, which focuses the trauma rather than spreading it out....

    I also know someone who got scarred from it (electrolysis)

    this typically happens because the technician is not competent. either they have poor needle technique, or they remove hairs in a cluster, which focuses the trauma rather than spreading it out. permanent cosmetic procedures are not something to cheap out on!

    touch-ups ... electrolysis ... permanent

    electrolytic hair removal is no more permanent than laser; its effects are just differently distributed. optimum (cost, time, pain, results) in most cases is to do laser hair removal till diminishing returns and then switch to electrolysis

    11 votes

  16. Comment on Are we all capable of being slaveowners or nazis? in ~humanities

  17. Comment on Slop economics in ~finance

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    i promise i don't mean this in a rude way but i really want to understand...what would possess you to do that?

    I had watched a summary of it on one of those YouTube channels where a text to speech voice explains the plots of movies to you

    i promise i don't mean this in a rude way but i really want to understand...what would possess you to do that?

    8 votes

  18. Comment on "Americans get screwed because they can’t read" in ~society

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    can you elaborate? i did not notice this in my agemates then

    can you elaborate? i did not notice this in my agemates then

    4 votes

  19. Comment on The resistance is not coming to save you. It’s tuning out. in ~society

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    wha? nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people. it is a convenient rhetorical target. more prominence is if anything good for them; you need a problem to be (seen as) solving

    The reason the Republican party wants to make trans people miserable is to eradicate them from public life and ideally get them to kill themselves

    wha? nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people. it is a convenient rhetorical target. more prominence is if anything good for them; you need a problem to be (seen as) solving

    3 votes

  20. Comment on As 4B takes the world by storm, South Korea is grappling with a backlash against feminism in ~life.women

    Moonchild
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    for clarity: i didn't mean to make any value judgments in either of my comments, and i don't think anything particular about the thing i linked; i just think it's interesting some value judgments...

    for clarity: i didn't mean to make any value judgments in either of my comments, and i don't think anything particular about the thing i linked; i just think it's interesting

    some value judgments now. i think separatism is always bad. i think whether something is 'transphobic' or not is usually beside the point (i find words like this are frequently used as thick ethical concepts when they should be only ontological). more to the point: insofar as it is not separatist, i'm comparatively sympathetic to political lesbianism. why do you object to it? i guess—i am identifying political lesbianism as a particular woman's choice to avoid engaging in romance or sex with men as a political statement. it could also be a prescription that all women should engage in political lesbianism, which i do agree is bad, but that is just because it is unreasonably authoritarian. but either way, i don't see how political lesbianism can be more gender-essentialist than lesbianism or feminism

    why do you think radical feminism is incompatible with trans people? when trans people do it, are they alienating themselves, or other trans people, or something else? (i recently had the displeasure of reading a trans woman who was spouting off mackinnon—gauche; unbearable!—but i didn't really get that from it.)

    unless—are you equating sexism with transphobia? (valid imo but unusual)

    5 votes