<purr>
ec: I'll be a dick in 14 hours, 7 minutes, 31 seconds, 822 milliseconds (588mſ 562µſ); please wait patiently.
<ec>
oh.
<ec>
duckinator: purr's sleeping.
<duckinator>
lol
brr has joined #elliottcable
<alexgordon>
ec!
<ja>
hi alexgordon
<ja>
and hi brr! intriguing hostname you’ve got there
<jfhbrook>
ec: what the hell is that, set theory?
<jfhbrook>
like what class are you taking
<ec>
hell no, basic logic /=
<ec>
class is basically introduction to discrete mathematics
<ec>
jfhbrook: brr is h af
<ec>
er, ja -^
<ec>
alexgordon: plz help u no math rite?
<ec>
-h
<ec>
-find h
<purr>
ec: Found: bot, nuck, clouds, test, and micahjohnston
<ec>
hm, that's super surprising lol
<jfhbrook>
yeah ec I know jack shit about discrete all my time was spent in real numbers
<ec>
-learn h = h
<purr>
ec: Learned `h`.
<ec>
jfhbrook: ‘real numbers’ lol
<alexgordon>
ec: yes
<jfhbrook>
ec: no like calculus and shit
<ec>
I think I finally understand the pred for church numerals, tw
<ec>
btw
<alexgordon>
ec: it's 4:30am though and I'm sleepy af so nothing too challenging
<ec>
if I'd spent as much time in class actually paying attention to this shit about proofs instead of trying to decipher it, I might have actually passed this class |=
<alexgordon>
what's the problem?
<ec>
λλλf (λλa (b d)) (λc) (λa) :D
<ec>
alexgordon: ugh I don't even know how to express it
<ec>
I'm just totally fucking lost.
<ec>
we were doing predicate calculus and I was fine, it's just like what I think of as ‘math’
<alexgordon>
might want to start by expressing it
<ec>
but now I'm supposed to construct proofs of things and I … can't figure out what's going on
<ec>
was about to say scroll up but I see you just logged on …
<alexgordon>
"Establish these logical equivalences, where x does not occur as a free variable in
<alexgordon>
<alexgordon>
is that the question?
<alexgordon>
or is ∀
<alexgordon>
wait it must be
<ec>
the a) and b) are the two questions, yes
<ec>
that's one problem, I have nine to do, and it's due tomorrow
<ec>
I neeeeeeed to be in bed before like 2am too, FUCK
<ec>
I've dug How 2 Prove It out of my mathematical library, because the textbook for this class is fucking incomprehensible
<alexgordon>
ec: yeah so I dunno what they're looking for in that question
<ec>
right!?
<ec>
fucking frustrated by this course
<ec>
the teacher is *both* incompetent (as a teacher, not as a scientist) *and* there's a huge language barrier;
<ec>
I mean I went to a diverse school intentionally but right now it's a fucking clusterfuck ;+;
<ec>
nuck!
<alexgordon>
ec: I don't know what you've been doing in class, so I guess it's one of those things where you have to use the right words
<alexgordon>
ec: what are the other questions like?
<alexgordon>
"formal logic is to mathematicians as mathematics is to regular people"
<ec>
alexgordon: wat
<ec>
I thought formal logic *was* mathematics
<ec>
beyond, like, boring calculus where you basically do shit a computer could do
<alexgordon>
ec: I was something I read on mathoverflow, lol
<ec>
I've definitely got the impression that ‘everything everybody calls mathematics’ is approximately equivalent to ‘everything everybody calls hacking’: shit that can basically be automated, and nobody except beginners actually *cares* about
<ec>
whereas all the important stuff is so beyond the laymen that the laymen don't realize it exists
<alexgordon>
ec: nope even pure mathematicians think pure logic is yawnworthy
<ec>
mathexchange?
<ec>
mackexchange.
<ec>
that sounds like a dating site for ‘just making out.’
<ec>
I thought mathematicians basically wrote proofs all day :P
<ec>
or rather, worked really, really hard to try to find proofs? idk.
<alexgordon>
^ not math stack exchange, mathoverflow
<ec>
did you just click the most-upvoted answer link somewhere? :P
<ec>
it's so, so fucking weird to me that I actually understand more than half the words in this
<ec>
as of, like, the last year or less
<ec>
I never realized this was what I was signing up for when I decided that computers should be doing all the hard work when people pay D&D.
<alexgordon>
ec: no I was looking for it earlier. you know about the 7 millenum prize problems right, well 6 of them are pretty straightforward like P = NP or the riemann hypothesis, but then there's the fucking hodge conjecture, and wtf did they pick that
<ec>
Did you find this question interesting? Try our newsletter!
<ec>
Sign up for our newsletter and get our top new questions delivered to your inbox (see an example).
<ec>
oh god
<alexgordon>
and of course the 8th problem is for a correct spelling of millenum
<alexgordon>
:P
<alexgordon>
milenium?
<ec>
well, if I ever experience the *opposite* of imposter syndrome, I know what to do for myself
<ec>
just sign up for that and I'll have a nice dose of ‘humble’ delivered to my inbox weekly.
<ec>
“ In the end, solving the game didn’t take four petabytes of disk space. "We learned some things along the way," Bowling says, "like you can take all the hearts and spades and swap as suits," he says, which dropped them down to 520 terabytes.”
<alexgordon>
symmetry!
<alexgordon>
ec: so are you doing real maths too?
<alexgordon>
like, with numbers
<ec>
lol yes
<ec>
alexgordon: just calc 1, for the Nth time
<ec>
but doing very well this time, so far, for goddamn once
<ec>
I'm going to drop out of this class. fuck it.
<glowcoil>
your a) seems like
<glowcoil>
very sound
<glowcoil>
to me
<glowcoil>
like that is a homework i would produce and then turn in feeling like i'd satisfied the requirements
<glowcoil>
so
<glowcoil>
but that is just based on the question and not attending the class
<glowcoil>
anyway I've had classes
<glowcoil>
EXACTLY
<glowcoil>
like this
<glowcoil>
with all the boolean shit
<glowcoil>
but yeah like doing a proof by cases like that is chill
<glowcoil>
unless you are in intuitionistic/nonstandard/rejecting law of excluded middle
<glowcoil>
haha
<glowcoil>
anyway
<glowcoil>
ec: but yeah is it a prereq or just for fun
<glowcoil>
ec: because i had to do a discrete class with lots of that shit, and it was a prereq for like everything in both CS and math
<glowcoil>
ec: come back : (
<ec>
hi
<ec>
hi glowcoil
<ec>
I miss you
<ec>
I think I'm going to drop this class
<glowcoil>
ec: yeah i miss u too
<ec>
so stressed. /=
<ec>
come to cicago
<glowcoil>
ec: is it a prereq or
<ec>
when coming
<glowcoil>
a fun elective
<ec>
to cicago
<ec>
chiago
<glowcoil>
soon
<ec>
I SWEAR I CAN TYPE EACH OF HTE LETTERS IN THE NAME OF MY CITY INDIVIDUALLY
<ec>
WHY CAN I NOT TYPE THEM TOGETHER
<ec>
THIS IS THE WORST
<glowcoil>
ec: ec ec ec ec ec is it like a rpereq for everything or just for fun
<ec>
prereq for Literally Everything
<ec>
and more importantly it's information I really want to know
<ec>
I think proofs are really cool, I'm just *not learning how to write them*
<glowcoil>
ok yeah you should stay in and also i think your assignemnt is like
<glowcoil>
100% perfect
<ec>
I missed some super goddamn fundamental … chunk of brain
<glowcoil>
that like
<ec>
knowledge
<glowcoil>
is a proof
<ec>
info
<glowcoil>
you proved
<ec>
beingness
<glowcoil>
ec: one fucked thing about proofs is
<ec>
and I went from explaining everything to the students around me, to sitting there stumped with my mouth hanging open, head tilted, staring at the projector (literally.), in one class period
<glowcoil>
and i read this in some big "about mathematics" thing by some mathematician
<glowcoil>
is like, they're written backwards. they're written to lead the reader through, like the author had already known it forever and never discovered it
<ljharb>
proofs like geometry proofs?
<glowcoil>
ljharb: like predicate logic proofs in this case
<ljharb>
ah k
<ljharb>
i dropped out of college right around linear algebra time
aeva has joined #elliottcable
<aeva>
hello
<ec>
glowcoil: hrm
<glowcoil>
ec: like, if you realize you need extra machinery for your proof, you end up introducing it first in the proof even though you found out you needed it second. which is misleading and makes it seem like no real human could come up with one. does that make sense.
<ec>
glowcoil: rephrase?
<ec>
aeva: LÉ WELCOME!
<glowcoil>
like proofs are written like a sneak attack to the reader, like... here's this fun fact, here's this fun fact...BAM YOU NEVER EXPECTED THIS CONCLUSION
ec is now known as ELLIOTTCABLE
* ELLIOTTCABLE
waves
<aeva>
ec: hello!
<glowcoil>
but that's the reverse of the thought process of the person who came up with the proof
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: does that make sense
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: anyway you say you don't know how to write proofs but judging by that assignment you are doing a-okay
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: like but I *very nearly* copied that, and I don't understand how to *create that*. that's not, like, a wholesale product of my brain.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
that's like my first ever bits of code where I was moving bits around in MediaWiki PHP files, with no real idea what was going on.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
if that makes sense?
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: yeah totally
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: that is exactly how i was when i took foundations of analysis I
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: and i was also not going to class or keeping up, so i was panicking and got a B-
<glowcoil>
and now I'm taking foundations of analysis II, a year later, and like all that stuff seems easy and I have an idea of how to go about attacking a problem and writing a proof
<glowcoil>
it's totally like writing programs, where it doesn't seem like your brain could come up with them until you have enough familiarity
<glowcoil>
and then you know where to start and what kind of steps to take
<glowcoil>
but like certainly my first few homeworsk were largely copied, in terms of the shape of the proofs
<glowcoil>
I would say don't panic
<glowcoil>
that's a common thing
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I'm *also* behind in class and kinda fucked this week
* glowcoil
nods
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I had a really good explanation for another close friend a few days ago that like, once I communicated it to them, totally put me Very In Touch with the realities of my school-life right now, or at least my own feelings on them:
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hold on brb
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
actually what the shit, I can totally say this in public o_O
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
aeva: Hi, welcome, etc; you seem very personable, and I already know you're on the Good Side Of Tech, so I'm excited to have you in here
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
(this is my nominally-PLT, but sometimes-SJW, and often-just-social, vanity channel.)
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
aeva: but just as a heads-up, I have two people I *strongly* respect who refuse to have anything to do with this room, and feel unsafe here. basically: It's still IRC, sometimes. (not as an excuse, just as a shorthand.)
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
there's a CoC in the works (at least, for the projects that this room is nominally the focus of), and I believe I can honestly say I have good intentions; but … just a heads-up. (=
<alexgordon>
omg glowcoil and ELLIOTTCABLE
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: *whispers* who are the people
<alexgordon>
activity!
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil-activity has become almost as exciting as inimino-activity!
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
scarcity and demand at work.
<glowcoil>
hm
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: oh lord, cackling
<aeva>
cool :) I get a bit overwhelmed by keeping up with busy channels, but pleased to be here
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
aeva: ‘busy’ is … heh. occasionally, I suppose.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
so. like, a friend was ... putting up with me ranting at them for the Nth time this week alone about how stressed I am, how fucked everything is, how much shit I'm behind on or ... whatever the freak-out of the moment was
<aeva>
lol, well I just have this one data point
<aeva>
what client is that?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and they were like *jesus* how many credits are you taking, that you're *always* this swamped!?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and I'm like ... the absolute minimum for full-time :x
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: so, I studiously track my hours and productivity, have for years. I can tell you precisely how many minutes I spent on any particular task, and even more in aggregate. I think you know this?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
at least you know I've been doing it for Paws work for a long time.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
i.e. I've invested 40.98 hours into calc this week, and 29.72 into discrete
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
*
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
not week jesus
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
month*
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and basically, I've realized that motivational issues amount to a full-time job, for me.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
in terms of how much time they suck away from productive class-work.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I'm almost precisely as freaky and stressed as those of my friends who have a minimum-full-load and work full-time. /=
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: so, like, it's not so much that these things are difficult for me, as that I'm just Bad At School. Horribly-so.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
insomnia, wasted time, anxiety and ‘fuckit I give up’ moments, dedicating way too much time to social stressors (had a bad date last weekend, and despite the amount I have happening this week in particular, and how badly I needed to get ahead and *knew* I needed to get ahead, I did literally nothing Sunday except mope),
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I'm not going to succeed at school until I eliminate some of those things.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and I'm pretty sure if I'm going to succeed at *any* of my classes this semester, instead of just dropping out entirely from stress, I need to take the load down.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
since my Discrete teacher is so terrible, and the actual material is going so badly for me right now, it's the one I feel most likely to cut, I guess? especially because one of my favourite professors on the campus is teaching it next fall, *and* my advisor is very impressed with me and is waiving prereqs left and right for me, so despite this being a
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
pre-req for a lot of things, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't affect my course-schedule overall?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
idk. </rant>
<aeva>
seems like a good idea
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
aeva: oh, irccloud
<aeva>
is this a thing I can run on my own server, or do I need to trust a 3rd party? :P
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
huuuuuge fan. It's the reason I didn't leave IRC in the dust along with Linux and XMPP when I moved away from “tools that do me more harm than good”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
lol very third party :P
<aeva>
btw, missed opportunity - this channel totally could have been called elliottcabal and that would have been *awesome*
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
it's the product of group chat: get out of your way, use whatever protocol is most popular, and let you live your life while it does its job as quietly as possible.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh lord no
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
it was ##Hat for a long time
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and it originated as ##Paws
<aeva>
:)
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
if I recall correctly, the current name was a sarcastic power-trip because somebody told me I was too egotistical? :P
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: ok if there is a good prof next semester then go for it and cut it
<aeva>
(I think we've had this conversation before) I think all I really want is some kind of irc repeater I can set up myself to have a persistent presence (my connection drops a lot, and other reasons)
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: also like. i feel like that number of hours will very much go down, each semester
<glowcoil>
elliottcabal rofl
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
aeva: I mean, znc?
* aeva
looks it up
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
aeva: bouncers are rly popular; when I was more willing-to-put-up-with-technical-debt, I preferred the whole SSH/screen/irssi mess
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I found bouncers to be …
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
fragile? fragile.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
also: YOOOOO, iPHONE APP
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
can't beat irccloud. :3
<aeva>
I was doing that and then my vps rebooted because a mishap with payment, and then later because the company got hit by a nasty dos attack
<aeva>
and then all of the channels etc I had open were gone
<aeva>
and like, I just want a client that lives somewhere else that is easy to config and saves history and can easily sync devices against
<aeva>
but also I love me some Libre Software, but each to their own eh
<aeva>
znc looks nice
<aeva>
at least from its wikipedia page
<aeva>
yeah
<aeva>
this looks like exactly what I want
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
aeva: yah that's precisely what znc is for
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
yah
<aeva>
but is a project for another night
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I git-versioned my remote client's config in the same repo as all my other computer-configuration crapola
<aeva>
irssi is one of the rare programs that everyone recommends that makes me want to throw my laptop across the room
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
so if my shitty vps was down I'd just "irssi" locally and basically be in the same environment. at least, in theory.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
LOL
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
that is basically my experience with All Of Tech (Except Apple)
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hold your hand out, fingers extended ... that's zero, the initial state. Fold in your thumb, that's one.
<ja>
I can think of ways a person could count binary on their fingers, sure
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Fold out your thumb and in your pointer finger, that's two; 10
<ja>
but your ASCII art is far from obvious
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
LOL yeaaaaaaha
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
-find ascii
<purr>
ELLIOTTCABLE: Could not find `ascii`.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
-find ASCII
<purr>
ELLIOTTCABLE: Could not find `ASCII`.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
strange
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
so I can't effectively count to 2⁵, but I *can* reasonably count to 2⁴
<ja>
lol
<ja>
just practice
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and after playing around with it for a moment I genuinely think I could do this intuitively. hm.
<ja>
you'll get there! :3
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
nah, two end fingers just don't articulate well enough at all
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but if I treat them as one (basically, don't intentionally use the fifth finger at all, let it fold with the fourth if it goddamn wants to)
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
it works out
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and of course with two hands that's like 256
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
waaaay higher than I should ever need to count
<ja>
now I’m wikipediaing joints
<ja>
creeps me out
<ja>
I like the names though, like “metacarpophalangeal”
<ja>
“Flexor digitorum profundus”
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE:
<glowcoil>
back sorry
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
no sorry <3
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
ugh school ugh
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
orthographies of middle English are so fucking weird
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
EB Garamond includes an OpenType feature (wow, this is such a juxtaposition of modern and ancient) that enables automatic typesetting of u's / v's the way they were used before v was a Real Thing
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
“v and u are visual representations of the same letter dependent on initial or non initial placement: l’universe, une œuvre”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh it still copies
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
l’uniuerse, vne œuure
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
“j as a separate letter didn’t have a fixed place in renaissance orthographies, so one will find i where one expects a j. is feature replaces j with i: le iour”
<glowcoil>
neat
<glowcoil>
if only indiana jones had remembered
<glowcoil>
iehovah
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
what? was that a thing
<glowcoil>
yeah he almost died
<glowcoil>
because of it
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
whaaaaotaet
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I fucking *hate* LaTeX
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
with a furious, living passion
<glowcoil>
ive been having a nice time typing latex and using a service to typeset it inline in pages
<glowcoil>
as opposed to like
<glowcoil>
going into grapher.app and copypasting
<ja>
LOL!
<ja>
LaTeX! X'D
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh, not doing that, bit the bullet and learned LaTeX
<ja>
\love{\LaTeX{}}
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and I'm working directly in it now (sharelatex.com on my iDevices, but yeah the whole nine yards locally /=)
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
ja: no.
<glowcoil>
i feel like
<ja>
ELLIOTTCABLE: \:<
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
it's such a clusterfuck of an … everything
<glowcoil>
if i am ever making big papers
<glowcoil>
i will switch to it
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hate it so much so much so much so much
<ja>
clusterfuck indeed
<ja>
its output looks neat though ʘ‿ʘ
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
“Hahaha, you didn't like significant whitespace when it was *semantic*!? Well now u wait because it's gonna be RANDOMLY SEMANTIC, AND SOMETIMES SYNTACTIC TOO! But we'll just do that when we feel like it.”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
“We'll definitely go *out of our way* to make sure you can't in any way format the source-code in a way you want … never fear!”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
“(While, of course, still making sure that that *doesn't* mean the source-code form has any relation whatsoever to the output. We're not *fools!*)”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Where I can accept formats optimized for clarity of source-form, optimized for writeability, optimized for clear semantic relationships between source-form and output-form ... or for a *dozen other things*,
* ja
loses shit
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
LaTeX seems optimized for ... features, I think. Or possibly just literally nothing because its a billion years old and is a bunch of shit tacked onto a bunch of shit that was tacked onto a previous shit (that was probably tacked onto something *else*, to be honest, but that information has been lost to the mists of Deep Time.)
* ELLIOTTCABLE
shudders
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
remember my precise timers?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
On homework that took *two hours to complete*, I spent *six* hours getting it goddamn typeset in the format that the teacher wanted.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
That's just totally fucking unacceptable. I understand it's more effort on the TA's part to grade, like, a piece of handwritten paper, but the students have a full load too; and *they're the ones goddamn paying you*. Literally. This is your *job*.
* ELLIOTTCABLE
grunts some more
<ja>
ow, yeah, I tend to forget that you Americans actually have to pay for your education… :x
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but: can anybody phrase that better than
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh wait
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
“Let C(x, y) mean that ‘student x is enrolled in class y,’ where the domain for x consists of all students in your school and the domain for y consists of all classes being given at your school.”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
so, can anybody better express that example than,
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
“There is a student who is only in classes that a particular second student is also in.”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
That phrasing is awkward but anything else I try seems to not be precisely logically equivalent
<ja>
IMPOSSIBRU
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: that seems good
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: there are two distinct students, and one of them is in every class that the other is in.
<glowcoil>
seems good
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: ugh i'm doing this matlab computer vision stuff
<glowcoil>
due tomorrow
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
o_o
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
been doing a lot of mathematica
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
am actually big fan
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
other than the fact that wolfram lang sucks, but lol whatevs
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and am weirdly using the R/Python one for a *different* class
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
wassit
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Jupyter
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hey audy
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hey<zwnj>audy
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
@heyaudy
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
get ur scientific ass in here
<glowcoil>
reconstructing stereo (3d, doesn't necessarily mean 2 eyes) image data from shading data
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
eek.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I'm not sure if there's an area of programming I care about *less* than computer vision, strangely? because everybody always seems to think it's cool
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh god eye-strain setting in ;_;
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I think it follows from my whole ‘AI is the absolute most foolish’ view of computers
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: how can i stop hating things
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: lol
<glowcoil>
that seems like a really weird point of view to have, as in computers can do many things that are not ai and we're doing those, and they're interesting, and also AI is really interesting too and also teaches us a ton about what we ourselves do in our brains?
<glowcoil>
so "ai is the absolute most foolish" seems to only be a sensible thing to say in response to like. "prolog is how 2 make intellgeint computers" 50 years old excited people
<glowcoil>
?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I may be interested in all sorts of abstract things now, but I'm just still a Product Person at heart
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
all the coolness in theory of a thing in the *world* doesn't justify it in my eyes if it doesn't lead to Happy Users /=
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
basically: AI is great, and useful, and very interesting, and exciting ...
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
... for, as far as I can see, a very tiny subset of very very peculiar uses
<glowcoil>
i mean............
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
(well, tiny in terms of number-of-uses, not *size* of application across humanity.)
<glowcoil>
computer vision is used in so many products
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
show me. a *single*. product. that makes end-user-happy-use of computer vision.
<glowcoil>
like obviously self driving cars
<glowcoil>
but also
<glowcoil>
auto tagging on facebook
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
all of them work fucking terribly and make users unhappy.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
all of them.
<glowcoil>
lmao
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
yeah. have you *seen* how terrible that is?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
wrong at least 30% of the time.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Long story short:
<glowcoil>
self driving cars are not wrong 30% of the time
<glowcoil>
i have heard all of your explanation about how computers should not try to figure out what you want and should behave in a predictable modelable way
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Elliott's View On Computers can largely boil down to “Every action *initiated by a user* should be absolutely deterministic; and more importantly, they should be able to very-nearly-trivially dive as deep as they like into the *how/why* that thing happened the way it did, down to the most minute detail, without a deep understanding of mathematics.”
<glowcoil>
and i largely agree with it
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
see, that's the thing
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I still feel like self-driving cars fall into the “non-user-initiated” category, and thus … I kind of don't even categorize them as *computers*, anymore?
<glowcoil>
anyway i think products are like
<glowcoil>
so orthogonal to what interests me
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Everything everywhere in the world has software now, ‘computer’ has a different definition for me than just ‘a thing with chips that runs software.’ y
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
yknow?
<glowcoil>
like it seems very sad to ONLY care about something if it can be made into a product and sold as such
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
when I say product I definitely don't mean in terms of profitable
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: ok but like
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: my class which is called computer vision
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but I definitely do mean end-user real-world-helping-out tool that a person *leverages*
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: is directly applicable (i mean on the baby beginner level)
<glowcoil>
TO self driving cars
<glowcoil>
so to quibble about "computer"
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
as in, the difference between a pet dog guarding the house (self-driving car) and a welding torch (computer)
<glowcoil>
and people LEVERAGE self driving cars
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
you see what I mean?
<glowcoil>
well not yet rly
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hm okay lemme reword
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh
<glowcoil>
ok so you care about welding torches but not self driving cars.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
not-yet-rly cars
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
yah! kinda basically that!
<glowcoil>
because one is being held in a hand
<glowcoil>
that is
<glowcoil>
weird
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
nonono
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
nononon.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
because a dog is a *way more specialized*, and therefore *way less powerful*, tool than a welding torch!
<glowcoil>
people step into a self driving car, and say "take me to my grandma's house.""
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
yes yes ugh hold on
<glowcoil>
just as much as when they say to their self operated welding torch
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
got a handle on how to explain that
<glowcoil>
also idk the technological state of computer matching fingerprints
<glowcoil>
but like
<glowcoil>
there's an example
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
a self-driving car, or a sheepdog, feels like a *procedure*
<glowcoil>
brb buying a shitty pizza and crying
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but a welding torch is a *higher-order function*.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
does that explain at all?
* ELLIOTTCABLE
hugs glowcoil
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
go homework, get it done
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
this convo isn't important lawl
<glowcoil>
ok so
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
igobednow
<glowcoil>
i see what yoer' saying but like
<glowcoil>
i could aggressively reframe this in 100 different ways
<glowcoil>
where welding torches are 1st order
<glowcoil>
and cars are 2nd order
<glowcoil>
like
<glowcoil>
it's sooo fucking contingent
<glowcoil>
welding torches
<glowcoil>
melt metal.
<glowcoil>
that's literally all the fuck theydo
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
yesssssssssssss
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
that
<glowcoil>
way fewer user controlled variables
<glowcoil>
than
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
that is 100% my point
<glowcoil>
car
<glowcoil>
MOVES YOU
<glowcoil>
TO THE LAB
<glowcoil>
TO MELT METAL
<glowcoil>
THEN TO THE OFFICE TO GET A PATENT FOR IT.
<glowcoil>
exactly as higher order.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but *super fucking basic tool*, that is completely understandable in-and-out, without any black magic, or as little black magic as possible, *that can be composed*,
<glowcoil>
like this is not a sound categorization
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
is going to end up doing more for Humanity, than a specialized but super-magical tool
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
because the *human mind* can leverage it exponentially
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
that's like 100% my point
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
in a nutshell
<glowcoil>
ok i would very strongly disagree that self driving cars, and other things that self-drive
<glowcoil>
ARE going to do a shit fucking ton for humanity
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
also: I'm halfay to the point of devil's-advocating at this point, because I *do* think self-driving cars are the first *fucking remotely* generally-applicable use of AI
<glowcoil>
i am just not buying this distinction whatsofuckingever
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but I still have aaaaaaaaaaaall sorts of issues with them
<glowcoil>
like there are definitely tons of microcontrollers all up in a modern
<glowcoil>
idk what it woudl be called
<glowcoil>
place that you weld
<glowcoil>
i mean FUCKING
<glowcoil>
CARS ARE MADE BY COMPUTESR.
<glowcoil>
by robots.
<glowcoil>
so
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but re: this argument, they *are* generalizable in a way that all the other silly-feeling AI shit hasn't been (in that you can AI a truck and have it participate in a production system and blahblahblah)
<glowcoil>
computers control the welding torch.
<glowcoil>
in an ironic twist to this conversation
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but they do it deterministically! I toooootally don't believe for a second that there's much in the way of heuristic routines in that entire damn factory, except maybe for error-tolerance / failure-mode-activation shit (security, safety)
<glowcoil>
i guess i've just distanced my identity from being a "software developer" so far that like, i don't care whether the software i write *is a product* in itself or *is researchey* in itself
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
ugh yeah I have zero interest in being a software developer
<glowcoil>
sure but i bet you woudl dig into the code and it woudl be
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
was tweeting about this today
<glowcoil>
not how you expect
<glowcoil>
like i'm certain
<glowcoil>
that it is not like
<glowcoil>
"always go 5 inches to the left. then turn on fire"
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh def
<glowcoil>
ok guess what
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
okay so like
<glowcoil>
my old roommate
<glowcoil>
works at the post office
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
let me back up and just point out my actual overall point.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
the *reason* all of this matters to me:
<glowcoil>
whenever the handwriting recognition fails, her job is to hand read it and enter it
<glowcoil>
so, that's a huge scale application of AI
<glowcoil>
ok i'll listen
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Above, I'm trying to prove that ‘human with a panel full of buttons’ is always going to be better than ‘computer with 10,0000 sensors and a bunch of heuristic routines’, at least in our lifetimes / short of artificial-sentience
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
ignore that, don't argue with it for a sec
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
just take it as a given and let me explain the point I was originally trying to make *on top of* that
<glowcoil>
k
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
AI is basically … Service by Computer, and a lot of non-AI-y stuff computers do for us, or more accurately, that we do *with* computers (what I was describing as leveraging), is *Interface*.
<glowcoil>
keep typing brb
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and I think the *good* that we can do by improving the *interface* even a tiny bit, is waaaaaaaaaaaay more goodness-for-humanity-per-unit-of-work, than AI. At this point.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
That's largely my thesis.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
When I'm speaking of shit like this, I'm talking about all sorts of high-minded unlikely shit, but I hope you can synthesize how *chunks* of this are possible in the real world, or steps *towards* a world like this,
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but in a totally deterministic system (like we mostly have now, obviously caveat'd by all sorts of hoooorrrrrible bugs because Software Development is Terrible) with an improved *interface*, and more importantly, one broken down into *levels of abstraction* … every single tiny aspect of that can interact with human ability, human skill, to become
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
super-powered in how it affects Humanity as a whole
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
god that was an awkward exposition
<glowcoil>
right that's a similar argument to
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Ugh. Long story short: You could build a robotic room that Builds Cars entirely automatically … or you could build a bunch of deterministic robotic actuators, plugged into this Super Interface™ that lets the *human* still do the building, just more and more and more and more effectively the more that human uses the interface
<glowcoil>
when designing apartment complex, 1 extra meter of space in the living room adds up over the whole building until you could have made a bunch more apartments
<glowcoil>
ignoring how that one's kind of fucked
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
in Elliottmind that's obvious Paws-y system where it's basically all abstracted programming that unfolds the more the human operator looks into it,.
<glowcoil>
ANYWAY in my mind,
<glowcoil>
understanding the human mind
<glowcoil>
is like
<glowcoil>
#1 noble pursuit
* ELLIOTTCABLE
nods
<glowcoil>
and AI is an extension of that
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Tooooootally agree with that.
<glowcoil>
and fucking
<glowcoil>
better install wizard buttons
<glowcoil>
is boring shit
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I don't feel like it's *applicable*, I guess? Like, while I regard as Noble Pursuit … I want to build software that makes people I care about less unhappy, y'know?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I feel like I can make an impact on the latter in my lifetime. I feel like the former is centuries away.
<glowcoil>
I mean
<glowcoil>
brushing eyelashes off of people's faces
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hence: ‘Product Person.’ In the end, how cool/fun/amazing the science doesn't actually excite me, deep down in my soul, if I can't Build a Better Thing using it.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and I don't mean sit down and use code.
<glowcoil>
vs improving the political system
<glowcoil>
is the same contrast
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I don't see how so?
<glowcoil>
also there is a very regular pattern of people doing "centuries off" work that improves everyday lives by orders of magnitude more than incremental stuff
<glowcoil>
such as maxwells equations and mri machine
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I'm not saying like, some web-widget is important to me. We're both talking about Big, Important things. You're just aspiring to contributing a small amount to something that'll show change on the scale of a century; and I'm aspiring to contributing a big amount to something that'll show change in a couple decades.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I don't think they're of different universal importance. :P
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
interesting return to the self-driving cars, by the way:
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I've been advocating for them to be driver-*assisting* cars since day one. I'm totally, 100% against ‘self-driving cars’ in any fashion directly described by that name. /=
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Like, nearly to a moral level.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Had *this* conversation on Twitter recently, too
<glowcoil>
yeah I mean
<glowcoil>
stats kind of are required
<glowcoil>
like
<glowcoil>
human drivers fucking suck
<glowcoil>
cars are a large cause of death
<glowcoil>
so it's not like things are currently peachy
<glowcoil>
maybe the types of crashes caused by self driving cars are not predictable at first since we've been used to human crashes for 100 years, but if they are of a lower quantity then self driving cars are morally imperative
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Like, no.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but that's going to stop being and interesting conversation and just become philosophical.
<glowcoil>
"like, no" what?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
/=
<glowcoil>
as in what do you mean
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
As in I strongly disagree.
<glowcoil>
what if it were an order of magnitude fewer crashes
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
As in you can't do comparative math over numbers individuals' lives.
<glowcoil>
what if we saved 90% of crash victims next year by adopting self driving cars
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
1,000 humans individually each making a decision that results in the death of another human, totally at 1,000 deaths, is strongly preferrable to a computer-system being responsible to 10.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
s/to/for
<glowcoil>
are you for real
<glowcoil>
saving 990 lives
<glowcoil>
you would rather 1,000 people individually feel guilty and potentially go to prison
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Or, to put this in much more important *relative* terms, because I don't have the *say* over 1,000 peoples' lives; as very much a normal person, I'd rather risk 10 of my closest friends' lives to other humans' mistakes, than risk a single one of my closest friends to death-by-algorithm.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
It's not about what I'd *rather*. This is a basic human-nature thing: there's literally studies.
<glowcoil>
neither is more predictable than the other
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Have you not been following the smart-car morality debates?
<glowcoil>
i mean
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
It's *not about statistics*, man
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
stop acting as if this is math
<glowcoil>
@smart_car_morality_debate
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
this is all about humans and feelings:
<glowcoil>
not following
<glowcoil>
nope
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
lolol
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
okay you know what I meant :P
<glowcoil>
like yes i read articles about it from time to time. your point?
<glowcoil>
it's not all about humans and feelings because people felt warm and fuzzy about entering iraq after 9/11, and people felt warm and fuzzy about national socialism
<glowcoil>
lol i just godwind
<glowcoil>
but
<glowcoil>
feelings are a poor way of deciding policy on the scale of millions and billions of people
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
so the way it's been cast every time I see it come up is basically this: “The market won't swallow a car that might *kill you* after you buy it, based on some obscure algorithmic decision that killing you would save 5 arbitrary passerby.”
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but there's *something really important* inside there as well:
<glowcoil>
right i've heard that shit
<glowcoil>
and
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Morality basically *is* feelings: If you *average* it, if you take from crowds, then morality disappears; but in the individual, morality *exists*; and there's a reason people feel like this.
<glowcoil>
i mean in that case it's not morality it's a sense of self preservation
<glowcoil>
no one will buy a car that might decide to kill them
<glowcoil>
that's not like
<glowcoil>
morals
<glowcoil>
that's self-preservation
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
It's not like you can just look at something like that and go ‘well people are horrible and selfish.’ Excuse me? We're *all* people. What is moral, is what is acceptable, is what is liked.
<glowcoil>
and yes, i agree that morals stem from nothing other than human feelings
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
And in this case, self-preservation is moral.
<glowcoil>
ok you've made a big error here
<glowcoil>
in stepping from
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
okay, well, that got too philosophic.
<glowcoil>
"what *i* think is moral, is what *i* feel"
<glowcoil>
to
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
bring it back to something a little more concrete:
<glowcoil>
"what *i* think is moral is what *everyone else* individually feels, summed and averaged"
<glowcoil>
because that's a ridiculous and nonsensical way to make decisions about the world
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
not at all, my point is you *can't* sum and average, because morality disappears:
<glowcoil>
and, in nazi germany, would have you making poor decisions
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
you get things like the Third Reich.
<glowcoil>
lool
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
:P
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I don't disagree about that.
<glowcoil>
What is moral, is what is acceptable, is what is liked.
<glowcoil>
that is what you said
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Yes. There's no quantifier applied to that statement.
<glowcoil>
no, what is moral is what people feel is moral
<glowcoil>
you're not going to like
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
*The point* of that aside was that *there is literally no such thing* as universal morals across an arbitrary group; like, the concept is meaningless. It's like, idk, dividing by zero.
<glowcoil>
define some pagerank eigenmorality
<glowcoil>
here
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Breaking the domain of discourse.
<glowcoil>
lol but it's not like dividing by zero, it's like
<glowcoil>
lots of compromise
<glowcoil>
and not lying to yourself
<glowcoil>
the fact is
<glowcoil>
at some point
<glowcoil>
policy is established for the entier united states.
<glowcoil>
for 300 milliion people.
<glowcoil>
ther esponse is not BEEP ERROR DIVIDE BY ZERO
<glowcoil>
the point is
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
wait, so where'd we come to policy?
<glowcoil>
as in
<glowcoil>
we MAKE DECISIONs
<glowcoil>
regarding the fates of 300 million people.
<glowcoil>
and the answer is not to NOT make the decisions, since i'ts ERROR DIVIDE BY ZERO to do so
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Since the fuck when?
<glowcoil>
you have to fucking
<glowcoil>
since there is federal law
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I'm not building self-driving cars, nor am I a legislator writing regulations for them.
<glowcoil>
in the united states
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Are you?
<glowcoil>
ohh my god.
<glowcoil>
someone does
<glowcoil>
collectively
<glowcoil>
a group of people's actions indirectly result in those deicisons
<glowcoil>
and you and i have a very small influence on it
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
of course someone does, but that's completely irrelevant to *this discussion*
<glowcoil>
and we have a MORAL obligation regarding that influence
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
yeah, we're on like, we're literally talking about two completely different things.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
(omg I want so badly to leverage the things I've been learning in this logic class here, lol.)
<glowcoil>
walks into voting booth BEEP BEEP DIVIDE BY ZERO
<glowcoil>
*designs a product that could potentially injure 3 million users* BEEP BEEP DIVIDE BY ZERO
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Somehow, this dragged out to forty minutes. I *have* to go to bed, because I have to be up in 4 hours.
<glowcoil>
ok
<glowcoil>
sleep well
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I didn't even finish the assignment I stayed up late to finish /=
<glowcoil>
aw
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
fucked up yesterday *hard*.
<glowcoil>
sorry
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
just like I fucked up sunday *hard*, and saturday *pretty* hard, and thursday *hard*, and last tuesday *hard*
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
fuck.
<glowcoil>
:(
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Again, long story short, on all of the above,
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I feel a certain way (bad. uncompfortable. immoral. unable-to-conscience. whichever you want to explain it); personally. I *also* feel strongly, via my intuition, that a Very Large Number of people feel similarly / will feel similarly when it comes down to it.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
(Not speaking as a developer of products that can kill people, here; you know I have no interest in AI, I will never end up working on self-driving cars. I am *purely* an end-user speaking philosophically, and projecting my expectations of the market.)
<glowcoil>
*my* expectations of the market are that self driving cars will be so wonderful to own that they will be in wide use before we've really had time to talk about them
<glowcoil>
sorry to continue arguing lol
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
When it comes to my influence, and the influence of <arbitrary number of people who think like me> (where I suspect <arbitrary number> to be very large), I don't wish to monetarily or legislatively support Deadly Algorithms. /=
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: u gotta sleep so do i but i'm not done with hw yet
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
that's, like, all I'm saying. /=
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Like I totally agree with that
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I reallllllly think we'll see them succeed; but I think it's going to be a FUUUUUUUUCKING SHITSTORM.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
basically, what you said, *coupled* with what I said (and I think both are very likely), could result in some very *bad* shit. Like universally bad for everybody.
<glowcoil>
it's basically the train decision problem writ large.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Negative legislation against designs and algorithms, perhaps if we're speaking in the extremes, some freaky dystopian reactionary ban on AI development. /=
<glowcoil>
ACTION that saves lives but not all of them vs INACTION that doesn't save lives but doesn't "actively" lose them either
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I feel like AI could be the next stem-cells in the U.S. if this develops at the breakneck pace it already is. /=
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I think the train-problem is only *one* of the concerns. It's one being talked about a lot, but it's so much more than that.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
The train-problem is the hill that the war of Algorithms ‘Running’ Our Lives will be decided on, y'know?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and I don't mean that in a freaky-deaky way lol, as much as I'm generally against interfaces being ‘too smart’, I really don't expect them to be running anybody's lives :P
<glowcoil>
my Point of View has come to a point
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but do you get the point I'm trying to draw out of that statement?
<glowcoil>
where
<glowcoil>
yes.
<glowcoil>
my point of view is one of
<glowcoil>
deliberately being ready to be adrift
<glowcoil>
on some things that will fundamentally change the way we decide moral questions
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
adrift in supportive tech, you mean?
<glowcoil>
i mean in everything
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
what
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
lost you
<glowcoil>
like, lots of ways we decide moral and social questions
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
make a single sentence, the fragments didn't assemble
<glowcoil>
have been upturned by the internet
<glowcoil>
not fully utnil fucking
<glowcoil>
instagram and facebook have more users than non-users
<glowcoil>
and texting is like done more than speaking
* ELLIOTTCABLE
nods
<glowcoil>
anyway my point of view regarding algorithms deciding our lives (as they already do in a lot of cases)
<glowcoil>
is the same
<glowcoil>
i don't fucking care to argue on principle
<glowcoil>
because
<glowcoil>
principle will change within one generation
<glowcoil>
like it has before
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I mean. Of course?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
that's like, contradictory to your *own* third-reich point earlier, though:
<glowcoil>
like are you saying "people are going to riot" vs "i am taking a moral stand"
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: it's not contradictory
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
just because it can change easily so that the majority believes any given thing is okay, doesn't mean it *is* okay for the majority of people
<glowcoil>
obviously i'm going to be swimming in a certain direction
<glowcoil>
that may sometimes run counter to popular opinion and may sometimes run with it
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Both! My moral stand *is* ‘people are going to riot and that is going to hurt people, so it is morally inadvisable.’
<glowcoil>
but i want to take a distanced view so i can see
<glowcoil>
when that is
<glowcoil>
and whether it's worth it or not
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
does that make sense?
<glowcoil>
you're skipping steps
<glowcoil>
define riot
<glowcoil>
define how it hurts people
<glowcoil>
people rioted over txt spk and facebook
<glowcoil>
didnt hurt anyone
<glowcoil>
i'm having a good time communicating via txt
<glowcoil>
to my friends
<glowcoil>
so
<glowcoil>
yknow
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I don't disagree
<glowcoil>
the rioting isn't what's going to hurt people
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I just used *your* terms, sorry I didn't define? :P
<glowcoil>
but if that's your regular mechanism of making moral choices
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
definitely can't >:
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
have to go, really have to, fuck.
<glowcoil>
"many people are going to disagree with this morally. so i also do"
<glowcoil>
all right
<glowcoil>
sleep
<glowcoil>
pls
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
Oh, not at all
<glowcoil>
love ya
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I never really touched on my personal feelings, other than to state them
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but *I really do* feel that way, I just don't feel like it's worth discussing beyond stating them.
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
in proof terms :P — I was demonstrating the existence of at least one of this set, that one being myself. I never attempted to define *how* I arrived at that conclusion / how that minimum-one extant unit came to exist
danpalmer has quit [Quit: Connection closed for inactivity]
Rurik has joined #elliottcable
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: so what do you mean by shapes
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
in classes and stuff and so don't be too heavy, but, get me excited about advanced math *other* than proofs
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
:3
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: ok!
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: so far we've learned a bunch of classifications for sets, and only learned them in R^n but they apply to all kinds of topological spaces
<glowcoil>
such as compact and connected sets
<glowcoil>
open and closed
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
hm
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
shapes
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I think of those things as terminology. pedantry, I guess. so I kind of dismiss the coolness when I feel it.
Rurik has quit [Ping timeout: 250 seconds]
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
it seems like the meaningful stuff is still the proofs, like the *translations* between those spaces, yano?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
but I also see what you mean by shapes
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
so that's an interesting point of view: math stuff being exciting to learn, because it gives names to the intuitive correlations you make in your head between similar Classes of Things
Rurik has joined #elliottcable
meowrobot has quit [Read error: Connection reset by peer]
meowrobot has joined #elliottcable
<purr>
<gqbrielle> anything that makes elliottcable mad is funny.
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: like for instance that calculus thing you posted on twitter
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: because we had been doing proofs using open balls
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
omg purr's going again
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: it was like "oh. continuity is actually easy"
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
srgjparpwoaep
<glowcoil>
it lets you chunk set shapes at higher levels
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
what is ‘open balls’
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
I could nooooot grok that
<glowcoil>
to think in words
<glowcoil>
it's literally just
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
also thx alexgordon
<glowcoil>
set of points within a certain distnace of a point
<glowcoil>
not including the points AT that distance
<glowcoil>
in R1, i'ts just an open interval
<glowcoil>
open ball B(p, r) in R1 is just (p-r, p+r)
<glowcoil>
closed would be [p-r, p+r]
<glowcoil>
but it works in any number of dimensions
<glowcoil>
but yeah. neighborhoods, balls, open/closed, compact/connected
<glowcoil>
it seems weird to me that you just say that it's pedantry
<glowcoil>
like it's terminology for categories you literally did not have in your brain
<glowcoil>
until you learned about it
<pikajude>
sup fam
<pikajude>
i'm in the middle of a two week long anxiety attack
<glowcoil>
pikajude: :(
<pikajude>
hi glowcoil
<glowcoil>
hi pikajude
<glowcoil>
i am about to
<glowcoil>
not turn in assignmen #2 in this class
<glowcoil>
literally all day every day of the past week ive spent doing homework and i'm still behind in 2 of 4 classes
<glowcoil>
pikajude: hope you feel better
<pikajude>
thanks man
<pikajude>
you in university now?
<glowcoil>
yeah, 3rd year
<glowcoil>
lol let's see if i have the executive functinoing skills to get myself to therapy today
<purr>
lolicode
<glowcoil>
purr:
<pikajude>
executive function
<pikajude>
the ONE thing that would be really helpful not to betray you
<pikajude>
weird code snippet of the day
<pikajude>
putting the string "pure []" at the top-level of a haskell file will allow certain code to compile that wouldn't before
<pikajude>
sorry, not the string....the expression
<pikajude>
whatever
<pikajude>
wish alexgordon was here so i could talk about that w him
gq975987 has joined #elliottcable
gq has quit [Ping timeout: 250 seconds]
<glowcoil>
pikajude: wait htf does that work
<pikajude>
glowcoil: short answer: it changes the internal ordering of declarations in the compiler
<pikajude>
data Foo = ...; myFunction = $(someSplice ''Foo) ...; this will fail to compile
<pikajude>
if you put a top-level splice between the data declaration and the splice
<pikajude>
the compiler will be forced to resolve the data declaration before it starts on myFunction
<glowcoil>
ELLIOTTCABLE: lmao I just realized how much computer vision is used by real people for photo+video editing daily
<glowcoil>
pikajude: wait is this TH
<pikajude>
yes
<glowcoil>
ah I've never touched it
gq975987 has quit [Ping timeout: 248 seconds]
<purr>
<ELLIOTTCABLE> dataflow targaryens?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
oh lord purr
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: er, how? like, the terrible face-detection?
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
12:27 PM <+glowcoil> literally all day every day of the past week ive spent doing homework and i'm still behind in 2 of 4 classes
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
life ;_;
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
glowcoil: I almost gave up on last week's #1 assignment in a class, same reasons
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
and turned it in rly late instead and just discovered *today* that he actually gave me credit
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
(and I got 100%)
<ELLIOTTCABLE>
100% where I expected 0%, was very nice
eligrey has joined #elliottcable
<pikajude>
so everyone started telling me to use npm 3
<pikajude>
and i'm using npm 3 now
<pikajude>
so one immediate difference i've noticed is that it doesn't just fail after transient network failures
<pikajude>
and all that
<pikajude>
in fact, this npm install has been running for 4 hours
<pikajude>
improvement!
<pikajude>
ok, it finally finished
<pikajude>
unfortunately when I tried to run the testsuite it failed
<pikajude>
because three dependencies that were marked as "extraneous" were missing
<pikajude>
so idk what extraneous means as far as npm is concerned
<pikajude>
you know, normally, you wouldn't expect that changing the version of your package manager would break your code