ngriffiths

> at least be constructive about it

I think the proposed solution here is pretty clear. Patch the bug.

> We too often assume that visualization is transparent, a method that lets us see through to the significance of the data underneath. But the reality is that the choices made when visualizing data are nearly as significant as the data itself.

This idea seems inconsistent with the idea that no map can be objective. The examples given have to do with an unfamiliar audience (the Spanish) misinterpreting the map. There is an explicit acknowledgement that a correct interpretation does exist! There is objective info in there if you know how to read it.

I think there is a hidden assumption that objective means "every single person who sees this will understand it." This is of course impossible but it's important to emphasize that the majority of people, in almost all cases, will mess something up. So I dislike the framing of data visualization is not neutral, the analyst is imposing their view on the world and exercising lots of power, etc and prefer "it's just stupidly hard and you gotta pick a few people you are actually talking too."

> only adding new things once you’ve discovered a need for them.

Agree! imo this is the guiding principle that makes great tutorials great.

> We might say that generating ideas is the real intellectual work of mathematics.

The article talks about how many new ideas are relatively worthless and the real goal is to find the "concepts that 'carve nature at its joints.'" I think this is the crux of the whole thing and I haven't seen a satisfying discussion of it anywhere.

I mean, FLT is mentioned. Is that an accessible proof to humans? Is it full of these high value, refined concepts or is it more like a bunch of little hacks that at least dozens if not hundreds of people randomly stumbled upon, in an all out attempt to solve one of the most famous math problems?

I'm not totally convinced what value math concepts have beyond "you can use them to solve even more math problems." I really want to believe there is. But if not, it's just a pure benefit to have faster ways to solve them, no?

Completely agree. It's a choice not to observe and understand what's going on, at least a very risky one if not actively evil.

There's a tradeoff though... isn't it already super hard to understand what they're doing with these math proofs for example? Clearly there's a tradeoff between deeply understanding the behavior vs. quickly solving the concrete problem, hence the big controversy in math now. From one perspective, letting stuff run ~autonomously in a mad dash to solve your problem is a really bad idea, threatens to destroy the whole field etc. From another perspective, solving lots of problems fast is extremely enticing and worth some risks.

Update for one other thought:

> And if it's scary, we turn it off.

Agreed, that's why I think the bad scenarios are some form of "it does some weird stuff ostensibly while helping us solve some problem" followed by "oops, we miscalculated that threat level."

Apocalyptic predictions normally get everyone into gear to prevent the threat. Not a great argument for "let's see what happens if we just sit around this time"

The mental model here is that AI is a powerful tool whose main purpose is to outcompete others, increase power or provide a defense. This is not the right model!

The biggest risk is not that someone discovered a big new weapon, which by the way

> No one person, or one company, knows the answer and history is no guide

are you kidding me? It's a problem as old as time.

This is not nuclear power though. The bigger problem is a scenario where AI increasingly acts like bacteria, doing things autonomously, things no one really understands, things we think are confusing and weird. And then just by chance, some bacteria end up in some human lung cells and they turn out to be an excellent place to grow and multiply. Why is this worse? Because weird shit does not seem threatening, and it almost always isn't, so nobody tries to stop it.

Also, the argument in the article seems to be "obviously AI development is not a particularly urgent global threat," and therefore these downsides (risk of collusion, misuse of state power, etc) are the most critical factors? I guess, uh, yeah, if there's no benefit to taking these actions we shouldn't take them.

Oh no

The neural net engineering challenge was so awesome, I got really into it, spent way too much time and then was shocked when I actually managed to solve it. Since then I've gotten interested in... hardware. God help me

The post says "it might sound a bit extreme," and it does!

In Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, the main character George is famously frustrating because he doesn't do much. Bad things happen to him and he basically just lets them. He thinks his psychiatrist is totally evil yet keeps going back. He has a pitiful lack of control over his life. He doesn't seem to want control, which is the worst part. He isn't super happy, and you could take that as the main point, but I don't.

even George, perhaps the most boring and least reactive person you've ever read about or met, would just laugh at the goal of being "entirely unfazed by everything happening around you." Even he falls in love, experiences great joy and brutal heartbreak, finds his own small ways of making an impact, makes peace with difficult things. For a character who supposedly does nothing important, he does a hell of a lot.

Good luck, I guess!

I'm talking about "Interchange income - rewards expenses," where the difference is 6x higher at the highest FICO scores. And of course interchange income is not the same as cost to the cardholder but they are linked

To be clear though, the higher FICO scores get hosed the most, see the graph earlier on. Your quotes are conditional on FICO so they don't take that into account.

The only way I can put these things together is that at the high FICO end, both wealthier and poorer consumers get hosed a lot but wealthier consumers not quite as much. On the other hand, lower FICO band doesn't get as bad of a deal overall but it is worse for wealther people (plausibly because they have high interchange fees and don't use their rewards).

It's complicated, but... this is not a wealth transfer right? It is a transfer mostly just from consumers to credit card companies that provide them a service.

> Over the last generation, we have solved tons of well-defined problems. We eradicated smallpox and polio. We landed on the moon. We built better cars, refrigerators, and televisions. We even got ~15 IQ points smarter! And how did our incredible success make us feel?

One big outcome of this is being alive more, that doesn't really make you any happier. Also consider stuff like a growing global economy that helps with things like, well, not starting as many global-scale wars that decimate whole cities.

I also think there is a word for someone who is good at poorly defined problems. "Artist." If you define that very broadly and maybe throw in some religious type roles, community leaders, etc in there too, you have a whole group of people who are dedicating their whole life to this problem. But these are super ancient professions and it's not really surprising that we haven't got amazingly better at them recently. I mean, art from centuries ago is still incredible!

Agreed, I loved my biology courses and lab work and had always had a similar sense of wonder about it all. It's interesting, I'm not sure that came from any teacher in particular and I bet there are plenty of people who just never feel it no matter how you teach the subject. That said, those are beautiful illustrations referenced in the article and they have a ton of teaching value, and I think a lot of core concepts that went over my head would have been way more accessible using tools like that.