cheatsheet

You don't have to become a woman unless you want to become a woman. I don't have to work for idiots, and neither do you.

I think any form of prejudice hinders your ability to think regardless. They can't see existence the same because they've already molded a language, a way of reasoning, and a way of thinking around an axiom of absolute certainty (that they pretend doesn't exist, because it's a bias they do not consciously act on, but it exists as an invariant in the mind regardless). It is ridiculous, counter intuitive, cognitively dissonant logic.

> in this industry, if you're not born in the right geographical location is a complete impossibility unless you are an autodidact.

Most of what is fundamentally mentally shaping and necessarily important for your ability to think as a human being is not dependent on education, but on everything, and I don't know whether I have control over it or not, but I don't begin with the premise assuming that I already know everything I am going to know.

It is sexism, and it's unfortunate. I'm a woman, and I pretend to be a man online so my comments and understandings of computer science, code, programming, and mathematics are treated with the same respect, and given the same kind of responses and feedback.

I've tried numerous times to out myself as female and it's clear that there is consistently a difference in the way I'm spoken to as a woman and as a man.

I will probably move onto another alias as I typically do, but I think it is necessary to point out that both genders suffer due to any kind of discrimination. I feel like people hold me back by judging my abilities by my gender. I get angry thinking about how much more I might have been able to learn if I was a man, and I resolve that with studying independently, and fighting in whatever way I can to make sure I can gain the same knowledge base as anyone else should be able to.

One of the few things I am proud of is that I have managed to cultivate an online personality image that is often mistaken for an older man. I don't know when I will stop believing that I am inferior at the things I've spent my entire life studying, but I hope I will soon, because it is extremely depressing. I don't know what my experiences are the definition of, because I know they are biased by an extremely limited set of data.

The point is, I guess - keep your eyes on what really matters to you, and always keep that goal in sight. It's very easy to turn a superficial cultural assumption that actually doesn't happen that often, into a self defeatist attitude, and all that attitude does is get in your way of achieving.

> “It goes beyond image classification — the most popular task in computer vision — and tries to answer one of the most fundamental questions in computer vision: What is the right representation of visual scenes?

Can someone knowledgeable in graphics research explain the context that this question comes from?

If I am reading the question correctly, I infer that the question suggests that there exists a right way to reproduce the visual experience of reality. To me, this sounds like a question that is equally valid to have no answer (or many answers) in aesthetics, art, and philosophy, etc.

Yes, I agree with you so much.

I used to beg my parents to order me various forms of an encyclopaedia, I used to devour bookshelves. I remember reading every breakfast food box and piece of junkmail, just because it was something new.

I remember my mom telling me how shocked she was when I was like 6 or something - she didn't believe me that I read one of these young adult books in a day, and so I then rambled the entire story out, and she was proud of that for a while. I told my mom recently that I was watching an anime, and she was surprised and happy that "I watch TV again", because I've pretty much stopped watching TV for the past 10 years or so. The contrast of these worlds is stark.

I remember this stuff and I feel like I've become dumber, because I feel like I can't hold as much information. What is really happening, is I can't hold as much information as a computer can. But then there's some kind of process that seems to run on top of the memorization, that feels more like it's something I'd call a sense of self. Sometimes it is tiny iterations of a swift selection mechanic operating on information that has already been indexed, sorted, qualified, quantified, translated and weighted countless times, other times, it is a way of being intelligent that I don't ever think I could ever program. It is the kind of thing that makes the comparison of AI to actual intelligence laughable and ridiculous to even begin to pose the question.

To me, it's more about being able to find a real signal in a world that is constantly producing enough noise to consume us all.

Also, people do use this stuff to think about their computer systems, so I'm a little confused at the author's point of instinct and intuition. Most engineers are trained in analysis of the infinite (calculus), which also includes rigorous analysis of 0 and 1.

Epistomology, psychology, and information theory tend to reflect them in an almost mirror way.

Then again, is it just me who sees the patterns in the words, or are the patterns actually there? I think it probably depends on how you mind constructs analogies and relations between it's map of cultural topics and dialogue, etc. It just bother me when I see flashes of pictures that I normally equate with programming and math, that model the relational structure of what I'm reading. The two have nothing to do with one another, and yet they persist in flashing across the visual processing part of my mind without me doing anything. I am occasionally fascinated by determining whether they mean anything, or where they come from.

People use terms though - black and white thinking, etc. Lots of analogies and metaphors have very simple abstract forms. It's memes, deeply validated patterns. They don't have to be true in reality as long as people keep talking about them and agreeing they exist.

I feel as though I have become a scientist scientist. Thanks for the kind words, but I'm just trying to get through a rough mental space. I prefer maintaining a zen beginner mind, because it is fairly easy to silence doubt.

Then read it like a 12 year old girl would read the statement.

1. When you are poor, school feels like you are trading pleasing an adult for the slim chance of getting out of poverty. It feels less like you are working in a real system with an honest chance and more like you are playing in someone's half psychotic maze. The adult world seems like a careless game where no one cares about anyone besides themselves once they've made it.

2. Many of those kids in poor schools are smarter than you think, and have a more realistic understanding of the real world than their wealthy counterparts. It's just the side no one likes talking about, because honestly, it's something society in general is ashamed of. We can build all this great stuff but we can't scale equality.

Look at the lives the parents have. Who do you think the kid is going to listen to and learn from the most? What someone says, or how reality is?

This is the most ironically stupid thing about hacker culture. It's just as 'follow the leader' as directly following the leader, and it makes the culture and the people in it definably predictable.

Actually reasoning about stuff when stuff can be reasoned about, and considering most opinions to be superfluous nonsense is the right direction. Opinions follow abstract models. You can pretty much find a computational or mathematical model, throw some nouns and verbs on it, and bam, you've got an opinion that has nothing to do with reality.

I understand your perspective and in the rational, everyday setting I agree with you. Thank you for your considerate reply.

But how do I know that I want my mind to be the way X wants my mind to be, without shaping it like that and biasing my assessment afterwards? How do I know whether I wanted my mind to be this way? How did my mind get this way?

I know it's paranoia but sometimes I think ideas are more like viruses in more than the colloquial internet memetic sense. Like the brain literally has difficulty letting go of ideas because of the ways various ideas may alter brain structure and consequently influence perception.