felippee

Hilbert spaces with infinite dimension you mean?

I feel _exactly_ the same. And I know many, many other people who feel the same thing too. Apple will eventually run into a wall, like it did before in the 90's. They don't have a clear vision or connection to the actual user. They just milk the cow that Steve Jobs left them.

Oh, somebody got triggered here! Yes, there is sarcasm in this post! And if you don't like it, fine. But please, don't give me bullshit about being a jerk. I think you probably have not seen a real jerk in your life yet.

This may indeed be interesting, but that is not what this paper focuses on.

I'm not sure how to interpret these pictures. They don't suggest anything to me. And certainly don't suggest anything about the quality of representations. And BTW how do you measure quality of representations?

Yes it is certainly not fair that the network they spend one page explaining and probably weeks training and researching can be hardwired in 30 lines of python. This is very unfair. But this is the reality, and so the post states.

Also the idea to add coordinate as a feature has been used in the past without giving even much thought.

Toy examples are great. As long as they are not trivial. Some guy, presumably smart, once said that "things should be as simple as possible but not simpler". The toy example they play with is just too simple.

Author of the post here: I think their paper would have been much better if they included the piece of code which I wrote in python to explain that the transformation they are learning is obviously trivial and the fact that it works is not in question. This would leave them a lot more space to focus on something interesting, perhaps explore the GAN's a little further, cause what they did is somewhat rudimentary. But that omission (and lack of context for previous use of such features in the literature) left a vulnerability which I have the full right to exploit in a blog post.

Author of the post here. I totally agree that negative stuff should be published. But without the fanfares. I think they could have changed the tone of that paper and I would not have an issue with it. It is likely that if they did that they'd never go through some idiot reviewer who expects "a positive result" or some similar silliness. This is not a perfect world. The paper as is makes strong claims about the novelty and usefulness of their gimmick. If it turns out your stuff is at least partially hollow and you take on the pompous tone, you have to be ready to take some heat. Science is not about tapping friends on the back (which BTW is what is happening a lot with the so called "deep learning community"). Science is about fighting to get to some truth, even if that takes some heat. People so fragile that they cannot take criticism should just not do it.

The post mocks them primarily for learning the trivial coordinate transform. That is the core of the paper and ridiculing this piece leaves very little left on the table. The ImageNet test is just an appendix, a cherry on the cake, a curiosity one should say.

Author here (of the post, not the paper). I think you don't understand how science works. The whole point of the exercise (which indeed may have been forgotten these days) is to attack ideas/papers. The first line of attack should be your friends to make sure you don't put anything out there that is silly. The second line of attack are the reviewers, who may or may not be idiots themselves, but in the perfect world should serve the same purpose. The third line attack are independent readers, people like me. I found it to be trivial, took my liberty to attack it. It is not personal and should not be taken so. These guys may in the future publish the most amazing piece of research ever. But this one is not it. They should realize this and my blog post serves this purpose. If somebody gets offended and takes it personally, so be it. I think people should have a bit thicker skin, especially in science. I took quite a bit of bullshit myself (and I'm sure I will have to take more) and never complained. So relax, read the paper, read the post, learn something from both and go on.