details
Not as normal as it once was
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How to look at this fact of life?
The post Two ways of looking at death appeared first on Otherwise.
I really like going in the water and this beach is a great place for
building sand castles and boogie boarding. I also like trying to
float on top of big waves. I'm not very good at it. I only float on
the flat waves.
Realizing what you don't want
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Here is my current take on decision theory: When making a decision after observing X, we should condition (or causally intervene) on statements like “My decision algorithm outputs Y after observing X.” Updating seems like a description of something you do when making good decisions in this way, not part of defining what a good … More Decision theory and dynamic inconsistency 12 people on what it was like for them
The post Parenting expectations and experiences appeared first on Otherwise.
Your actual output depends on a lot more than just how quickly you finish a given programming task. Everything besides the literal coding depends deeply on the way you interact with the organization around you. We're not all going to raise geniuses.
The post Most children of smart parents will be pretty ordinary appeared first on Otherwise.
I love England. Especially because of the big castle called Buckingham
Palace. I got to see the outside there, but my mom showed me some
pictures of the inside. I love it there. But the outside doesn't look
very fancy to me. But I never knew why those people wear big bear skin
black poofy hats.
(Subsumed by: Timeless Decision Theory, EDT=CDT) People sometimes object to evidential decision theory by saying: “It seems like the distinction between correlation and causation is really important to making good decisions in practice. So how can a theory like EDT, with no role for causality, possibly be right?” Long-time readers probably know my answer, but … More What is causality to an evidential decision theorist?
I was walking around in London when I saw this gigantic building
shaped like an egg.
Then I walked around it a little and I saw these
pillars that had glass on one side, but one side didn't have glass.
There was kind of a hole so it was kind of like a case, and I wanted
to try and climb in. So I walked over and started to climb in, but I
was having trouble. I got my ankle in, but when I tried to get it out
it didn't work; it was stuck. I needed to try something different. I
took off my sh…
There are many big buildings here. A lot of them are skyscrapers. And,
there's lots of old buildings here. Like, buildings from long
ago. Like, ones that Romans built! One of them is even a castle. It's
pretty fun here, and it barely ever snows here. So there's always
pretty flowers here. And there's even palm trees.
Wave is a $1.7B company with 70 engineers1 whose product is a CRUD app that adds and subtracts numbers. In keeping with this, our architecture is a standard CRUD app architecture, a Python monolith on top of Postgres. Starting with a simple architecture and solving problems in simple ways where possible has allowed us to scale to this size while engineers mostly focus on work that delivers value to users.
Stackoverflow scaled up a monolith to good effect (2013 architecture / 2016 architecture), … most important things are outlier-driven • draw lots of samples • filter for maybe-amazing, not probably-good • learn where your bar should be • expect to fail a lot
There's a cocktail party version of the efficient markets hypothesis I frequently hear that's basically, "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive". We've previously discussed Marc Andreessen's quote that tech hiring can't be inefficient here and here:
Let's launch right into it. I think the critique that Silicon Valley companies are deliberately, systematically discriminatory is incorrect, an…
[Click to collapse / expand section on sports]
Here are some notes from talent scouts:
Recruit A:
... will be a real specimen with chance to have a Dave Parker body. Facially looks like Leon Wagner. Good body flexibility. Very large hands.
Recruit B:
Outstanding physical specimen – big athletic frame with broad shoulders and long, solid arms and leg. Good bounce in his step and above avg body control. Good strong face.
Recruit C:
Hi butt, longish arms & legs, leanish torso, young colt
[different sc…
You don't have to be at a party to see this phenomenon in action, but there's a curious thing I regularly see at parties in social circles where people value intelligence and cleverness without similarly valuing on-the-ground knowledge or intellectual rigor. People often discuss the standard trendy topics (some recent ones I've observed at multiple parties are how to build a competitor to Google search and how to solve the problem of high transit construction costs) and explain why …
This was co-authored with Yao Yue
This is a collection of information on severe (SEV-0 or SEV-1, the most severe incident classifications) incidents at Twitter that were at least partially attributed to cache from the time Twitter started using its current incident tracking JIRA (2012) to date (2022), with one bonus incident from before 2012. Not including the bonus incident, there were 6 SEV-0s and 6 SEV-1s that were at least partially attributed to cache in the incident tracker, along with 38 …
Nora is a very cute sister. I love Nora. Sometimes I call Nora
"waffles". And sometimes I pretend that Nora is a dog. Waffles is a
very cute baby anyways.
Recently a security hole in a certain open source Java library resulted in a worldwide emergency kerfuffle as, say, 40% of the possibly hundreds of millions of worldwide deployments of this library needed to be updated in a hurry. (The other 60% also needed to be updated in a hurry, but won't be until they facilitate some ransomware, which is pretty normal for these situations.)
I have a 20+ year history of poking fun at Java in this space, and it pains me to stop now. But the truth is: …
What if all these weird tech trends actually add up to something?
Last time, we explored why various bits of trendy technology are, in my opinion, simply never going to be able to achieve their goals. But we ended on a hopeful(?) note: maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe the fact that people really, really, really want it, is enough.
Since writing that, I've been thinking about it more.
I think we are all gradually becoming more aware of patterns, of major things wrong with our society. T…
Let's talk about bug/feature tradeoffs.
Anyone who knows me has probably already heard me rant about Crossing the
Chasm, my most favourite
business book of all time. I love its simple explanation of market
segmentation and why the life cycle of a tech startup so often goes the way
it does. Reading that book is what taught me that business success is not
just a result of luck or hard work. Strategy matters too.
As our company prepares for our chasm-crossing
phase, I've been thinking about th…
I guess I know something about train wrecks.
One night when I was 10 years old, me and my mom were driving home. We came
to a train crossing outside of town. There was another car stopped right on
the tracks, stalled. A lady was inside, trying to get her car to start. It
didn’t.
Train crossings are bumpy, cars were worse then, it was a long time ago, I
don’t know, I don’t remember clearly. Anyway, it was cold out and most
people didn’t have cell phones yet, so when the car wouldn’t start and it
was… I recently got confused thinking about the following case: Calculator bet: I am offered the opportunity to bet on a mathematical statement X to which I initially assign 50% probability (perhaps X = 139926 is a quadratic residue modulo 314159). I have access to a calculator that is 99% reliable, i.e. it corrupts the answer … More EDT with updating double counts Being a “digital person” could be scary—if I don’t have control over the hardware I’m running on, then someone else could get my code and run tons of copies in horrible conditions. (See also: qntm’s Lena.) It would be great to guarantee digital people some control over their situation: 1. to control their local environment … More Secure homes for digital people
I really really like my sister. My sister plays with me every day. I
also really like my baby sister Nora. My sister is really fun.
I’ve been too busy with work to write much recently, but in lieu of that, here’s a batch of links to other stuff I’ve been doing elsewhere.
The thing I’m most excited about:
Wave raises $200m from Sequoia, Stripe, Founders Fund and Ribbit at a $1.7b valuation. It’ll fund faster expansion across Africa. I’m pumped for us to save tons of money + time for even more people! As I’ve mentioned, I think the tax code could be improved. In a departure from my usual style, this post fleshes out some fairness-based arguments for one of my favorite changes. (I think that this proposal, and many of the arguments in favor, is old. Wikipedia quotes Joseph Stieglitz making the basic point in Economics … More Improving capital gains taxes
I love Nora. She is a really fun sister. I give her a hug and a kiss
each night. Nora is pretty much always nearby so I can go and cuddle
her. Unless she's nursing. Or sleeping. Or having her diaper
changed. Which is a lot of the time. But, overall, Nora is a really
really fun sister. She's also very silly, and she makes silly faces.
Music
Dagny, Love You Like That (2017)
Willow, Wait a Minute!, ARDIPITHECUS (2015)
Blue Kid, The Dismemberment Song, Upright, Love (2012)
Gregory and the Hawk, The Bolder Thing To Do (Demo Version), Self-Titled Demo (2007)
Frances Forever, treehouse, pockets (2018)
Cavetown, Boys Will Be Bugs, Animal Kingdom: Comet (2018)
UPSAHL, Drugs (2019)
Destructo Disk, I Wish I Was A Riot Grrrl, Punk Rocks For Kids Who Can't Skate (2018)
Sidney Gish, Impostor Syndrome, No Dogs Allowed (2017)
The Derevolutions, … (Translated from a transcript of an ancient Sumerian speech by Uruk's most well-respected Scriptological Ethicist)
Writing is a profoundly dangerous technology:
Access to writing was initially, and still remains, uneven. What's worse, the rich are more likely to be literate, so it not only creates inequalities but exacerbates existing ones.
Written language embodies the biases and prejudices of the people responsible for writing. Writing makes those prejudices more permanent and influentia… When a harm is created as a result of both external actions and a
psychological reaction, how should we apportion blame?
Today I made valentines. I made fruit valentines. There were orange
fruit valentines, and grape fruit valentines, watermelon fruit
valentines, and pineapple too. I made them for my classmates and
teacher. They had a little jokes or puns on the back. The jokes or
puns were on a sticker that we could stick on the back. I stuck on
googly eyes, and I drew a mouth. I added hearts and a sticker.
That's how I made the valentines. Here is a picture so you can see
some of my valentines:
2020 Giving in ContextIn 2020, I donated $ 24,918.01. By organization, these were:Legal Priorities Project: $ 10,005.50Long-Term Future EA Fund: $ 8,036.00Joe Biden for President: $ 2,800GiveWell (regrant): $ 1,551Center for Election Science: $ 1,000Charter Cities Institute: $ 1,000EA Cameroon: $ 250Against Malaria Foundation: $ 120GiveDirectly: $ 83.51Malaria Consortium: $ 30Nuclear Threat Initiative: $ 22Wild Animal Initiative: $ 10MIRI: $ 10This does not include donations made on my behalf a…
"Systems design" is a branch of study that tries to find universal
architectural patterns that are valid across disciplines.
You might think that's not a possibility. Back in university,
students used to tease the Systems Design Engineers, calling it "boxes and
arrows" engineering. Not real engineering, you see, since it didn't touch
anything tangible, like buildings, motors, hydrochloric acid, or, uh,
electrons.
I don't think the Systems Design people took this critici…
I mixed milk with some colored pigment. First, the color spread a
little tiny bit. And then when we added we added some dish soap the
colors spread and a big colorful wave.
Inspired by Luke Muehlhauser, I'm going to try to start using my blog to highlight some media I've enjoyed over the past ~quarter. Since this is my first post, this contains some stuff especially I liked in Q3 as well.
Music
Will Wood, The Normal Album (2020)
ミラクルミュージカル, Hawaii: Part II (2012)
Lots of stuff by Billy Cobb, especially:
Zerwee (2020)
Zerwee, Pt. 2 (2020)
Rocky Horror, on Strokes of Incarceration (2018)
Lots of stuff by Beach Bunny, especially:
Prom Queen, on Prom Queen (2… Life is short • There is no speed limit • How to Be Successful • You and your research • Becoming a Magician • 95th percentile isn’t that good When I’ve listened the most effectively to people, it’s because I was intensely curious—I was trying to build a detailed, precise understanding of what was going on in their head.
I came up with this game. In the game one person thinks of something
and then gives the other person a clue. And the other person writes a
guess down on a blackboard or a piece of paper. Or really anything
you have that's laying around that's available for writing on. The
other person says whether it's right or wrong. And then when they get
it right the other person takes a turn. When they get it wrong the
other person gives them another clue and they guess again. It has to
be clos…
History of group sleeping
Two ways of looking at death
On the Beach
Interview with Kat Woods: decision-making about having kids
Decision theory and dynamic inconsistency
Parenting expectations and experiences
10x (engineer, context) pairs
Most children of smart parents will be pretty ordinary
Buckingham Palace
What is causality to an evidential decision theorist?
How I Lost My Shoe
I Love England
In defense of simple architectures
Searching for outliers
Why is it so hard to buy things that work well?
Misidentifying talent
Cocktail party ideas
A decade of major cache incidents at Twitter
Waffles is a Baby
The Gift of It's Your Problem Now
100 years of whatever this will be
SimSWE 4: Wants, needs, and chasm-crossing
10 years of... whatever this has been
EDT with updating double counts
Secure homes for digital people
Lily
What I've been doing instead of writing
Improving capital gains taxes
Nora
Media I Liked: Q1 2021
The Troubling Ethics of Writing (A Speech from Ancient Sumer)
Blameworthiness for Avoidable Psychological Harms
Valentines
My 2020 Giving
Systems design explains the world: volume 1
Milk Experiments
Media I Liked: Q4 2020
My favorite essays of life advice
To listen well, get curious
Learning Game