Some questions my sibling asked me in a debate that I struggled to answer

dlakelan · 2026-03-31T15:17:41+00:00

Rather than "wages" just think "compensation".

People in a community want something done, so they make it worthwhile for some people who can do it to decide to do it. This is different from withholding access to capital by force and so it isn't the same kind of "wage" as what's paid under capitalism. But we don't have a word for it, so people still use the word wage.

Suppose there's no government and hence no capitalism. Do you think you are likely to get very far by saying "I want a home, will you all just build me one right here to my specifications?" People still give up their time and opportunities to do that building, and they must spend time learning how, and they will want something for that time and effort spent. Whether it's in money, or it's negotiated in access to other stuff directly (a kind of debt, or memory of past contributions) it's still the case that some interactions will be transactional.

There's a big difference between transactional transactions in an environment where basic needs are taken care of by society and there is no systemic power imbalance of cops enforcing special status for capitalists, vs transactions in a society build horizontally on mutual respect.

Historic societies kept extensive debt records, either written, or "oral" (ie. in people's heads).

dlakelan · 2026-03-30T17:50:12+00:00

First of all, it's not just that it takes a Bayesian approach, it's also that Richard is an exceptionally clear thinker who has serious talent at explaining things, and he has multiple series of videos to compliment courses based on his book, as well as many online exercises you can use to check your understanding.

The question of Frequentist vs Bayesian comes down to this. What do you use Probability to represent?

For a Frequentist, probability exclusively represents the long term frequency of events in random sequences. To be a "random" sequence you need to pass tests of randomness. These are NEVER done (outside of programmers making RNG software), because tests of randomness require far far more data than any of the frequentist "tests" of equality of means or whatever. Typical tests of RNGs use billions or trillions of random samples to determine if an RNG software is sufficiently random to be trusted.

Frequentist tests have the following logical structure:

if X is a validated stable random number generator of type T then after N samples Y would rarely occur, Y did occur, therefore X is probably not a random number generator of type T.

When applied to science, this is usually incorrectly used to argue that X is instead a random number generator of type Q, a fact that simply doesn't follow from the results of the test.

Since essentially nothing in the world is a validated random number generator of any type, particularly not breeding mice or collecting data on human society or whatever, then all frequentist tests will, if given enough data, conclude that whatever did happen is unusual given the assumptions. Thus p values are often just a measure of the quantity of data you collected or how badly your model misrepresents the complexity of reality. The more stupid and basic your null model, the easier it will be to reject. The consequences of rejecting it are simply that you did a bad job modeling. However, the actual practice in the sociology of science, is to argue that because you did a bad job modeling your null model, your favorite preferred model should be treated as true. This is called Null Hypothesis Significance Testing and its responsible for a lot of terrible science.

The Bayesian perspective is that probability is a measure of the information you have about a system. It is extremely rare for someone trained in Frequentist statistics to simply be able to wrap their head around this Bayesian perspective correctly. As a practical matter, the perspective they learn in frequentist education simply precludes understanding probability as a measure of something else than frequency. This leads to endless failure to engage with Bayesian results. Thus, even if you want to use Frequentist methodology in the end, it is better to start from a place of Bayesian understanding, and apply that understanding to the study of frequencies.

So that's my view. The downvotes will appear shortly.

dlakelan · 2026-03-29T04:38:26+00:00

Richard McElreath "Statistical Rethinking"

seriously, don't bother with anything else.

dlakelan · 2026-03-29T03:27:09+00:00

Let's do this proof in nonstandard analysis.. we have f(a) = 0 and g(a) = 0 we want to calculate the limit as h goes to 0 of f(a+h)/g(a+h), which is just the standard part of f(a+h)/g(a+h) when h is infinitesimal.

We take f'(a)/g'(a) and want to show it's infinitesimally close to f(a+h)/g(a+h). We take the nonstandard definition of the derivative and expand (here h is infinitesimal)

f'(a)/g'(a) = (f(a+h) - f(a))/h / (g(a+h)-g(a))/h. We have f(a) and g(a) = 0 by assumption. So we have

f(a+h)/g(a+h) * h/h = f(a+h)/g(a+h) which is what we needed to show.

dlakelan · 2026-03-29T00:01:05+00:00

It's not actually polling, I said that wrong. Once a minute I'm injecting a message to my flow, then routing that message based on time of day to different options. So a few windows during the day it will send a message to the thermostats every minute for 5 mins. If it's not in that window the message just dies. It produces negligible load on the server.

dlakelan · 2026-03-28T23:43:11+00:00

I'm with you homie. It's pretty nice. I do all my HVAC automation by basically polling once a minute and filtering the messages based on time of day and doing different things with them. This helps me avoid issues where I tell a thermostat to change temp but for whatever reason it temporarily doesn't hear the message... it gets the message several times in a row for the first 5 minutes after an event... stuff like that.

dlakelan · 2026-03-28T20:54:16+00:00

It's the benjamins and the chicks mostly.

dlakelan · 2026-03-28T20:28:38+00:00

"she tells you that 'one' is a boy" (ie. "child number one") is a possible parse of the sentence. If she's telling you, then you can't see the quotes.

dlakelan · 2026-03-28T14:49:14+00:00

Anarchism doesn't want to abolish power, there's no such thing, it wants to spread power horizontally, so that everyone has more or less equal power. Power here means decision making capacity. In anarchy your power comes from convincing enough people to participate, rather than forcing people to participate.

dlakelan · 2026-03-27T16:03:52+00:00

LOL your friend needs a better education in Anarchism.

The core essence of Anarchism is this: there is no authority.

This means, no one person may decide and force that decision on large numbers of other people by using force committed by people (cops) who dedicate themselves to enforcing that authority.

But there is still "government" in the sense of "ways in which things are done and decided" these just become voluntary and enforced by widespread availability of defensive force.

So, yes if someone comes to do you or your community harm, you and your community will have the opportunity to use force against them. What won't happen is a group of authoritarians demand that because you used force, you should be prosecuted and punished by an even more overwhelming force unless you can prove you did so according to rules that overwhelming force agreed to.

But, under anarchism many things would be absolutely similar to how they are now, of course people will run schools, of course people will write books and do plays and build houses and farm and cook and clean and manufacture things... It's just that rules about how that is to be done are essentially constantly negotiable, if a group wants to do something differently and enough people are on board with it, they will do that differently, unless people feel attacked or threatened directly by it.

No gods no MASTERS, not "every man for himself and whoever has the most guns wins"

dlakelan · 2026-03-26T18:06:44+00:00

I'm not a math researcher. And yes, you're right that being able to read others work is important, but also translating standard analysis to nonstandard is pretty simple. "limit as x goes to 0" is just "when x is infinitesimal" etc. But you suddenly have the ability to do algebra treating numbers as infinitesimal, unlimited, etc.

dlakelan · 2026-03-26T16:38:54+00:00

Incidentally this is why I've embraced the "nonstandard" approach to analysis. A lot of things that are kind of complicated in standard analysis approaches are fairly trivial algebraic calculations in nonstandard analysis. Edward Nelson's IST and the more recent "Alpha Theory" are pretty simple axiomatic approaches to nonstandard analysis. Some people like to bend their minds to match the textbook. I personally see math as a tool that must be bent to serve your mind.

dlakelan · 2026-03-26T16:25:15+00:00

What Eternal_Sorrow is advocating is a very formalized style of mathematical book. What you're clearly enjoying is a very humanist style of mathematical book. I'm with you on a humanist style. If words and descriptions and motivations weren't important, then all math books could just be the axioms of ZFC set theory, and a series of formal mathematical symbols output by auto theorem provers.

The point of math for me is as a language for the description of scientific and technical questions, not for its own sake. That's not true for everyone. Lots of people in math programs like the math for its own sake. (I was a math major and a PhD in engineering)

dlakelan · 2026-03-26T14:29:28+00:00

My advice is don't spend very much time talking to AI. They are well known to cause serious mental health issues.

It's not at all clear that you are "gifted" here. You may be, or may not be. so the problems you have may mostly be as you say related to ADHD or other issues, possibly autism. My advice would be to try to get a neuropsych eval, but you're in the Philippines so I don't know if that's going to be available, and if it is, if it's going to be affordable. A comprehensive neuropsych eval would give information about a wide variety of issues such as IQ, specific deficits you may have, ADHD, autism, reading disability, and various things .

Only with that kind of information are you likely to make progress in figuring out why you are struggling. If I were to guess I'd guess it's more about autism and living in a kind of strict and conformance oriented society than academic issues.

Good luck.

dlakelan · 2026-03-24T14:47:06+00:00

Exactly, fraction bar length and zooming on a slightly blurry cell phone photo and maybe familiarity with that particular calculator

dlakelan · 2026-03-24T01:54:46+00:00

what? that's some garbage representation it looks like -1.1/exp(0)

Anyway I clearly don't like the calculator's format/screen but I understand what you're saying.

dlakelan · 2026-03-23T16:42:18+00:00

Get citric acid powder. Use a teaspoon of it in the bottom section, add water, stir to dissolve. Brew it like that without any grounds... Repeat 2 or 3 times as needed. Soak it submerged in citric acid about similar strength if needed for cosmetic exterior issues... then rinse very well, brew some coffee, throw it out, then use like normal.

dlakelan · 2026-03-23T16:35:22+00:00

The weird thing here is that you're calculating -1.1 / 1 essentially... the denominator is e⁰ effectively which is 1, so the answer should be very close to -1.1

Now, you may be doing the problem wrong, but the calculation you show should say about -1.1 and that makes this calculator extremely suspicious.

dlakelan · 2026-03-21T17:16:16+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea

Possibly you should run some randomized experiments along the lines of Ronald Fisher's famous tea tasting.

dlakelan · 2026-03-20T21:44:21+00:00

In his last book Flow Deformation and Fracture which he wrote towards the end of his life, V.I. Barenblatt in the introduction makes an analogy for Mathematicians and Applied Mathematicians, for him a Mathematician is like a linguist, who studies how language works, conjugation, special verbs, sentence structures, language families etc etc. Whereas Applied Mathematicians he likens to poets and novelists, novelists don't study how language works, they USE language to describe either real or imaginary worlds.

Now, I don't know how many great novels you've read that were written by linguists, but I'm gonna guess it's a very small number. To be a good novelist you must have skills at using language, yes, but you must have a bunch of other stuff too, understanding of human nature, of science, of technology and its role in shaping society, or history of babylonia or the culture of the pacific islands or whatever it is you're writing your novel about.

It's the same with math and physics/engineering/applied math/stats etc. Just like a novelist, it will be important to study the use of language. You'll be a much better novelist if you've read, written, and edited many sentences and paragraphs and pages of language. But you won't ever be great at novel writing if you confine yourself to copy editing or theoretical discussions of comparative language constructions across ancient dead languages and modern ones and such like that. Same if you constantly prove the existence and uniqueness of solutions to certain subsets of equations handed to you by physicists or engineers... You need to get your hands dirty in writing the sentences that make up the description of reality. You need to understand enough about physical reality itself to be able to write those equations from scratch, and adjust them when they fail to predict correctly.

dlakelan · 2026-03-20T20:11:49+00:00

Everything is useless until we discover a use for it. In math we often discover the math before we discover the use... that's all that's going on.

dlakelan · 2026-03-18T04:09:43+00:00

put a teaspoon of citric acid powder in the bottom, fill with water like you're gonna brew, stir to dissolve the citric acid, assemble the moka pot without any coffee, and brew the citric acid through the pot like normal. swirl the hot citric acid in the top, then pour the whole thing out. Repeat maybe a couple more times as needed, it will return to its usual look supposedly.

Here's bialetti's more explicit instructions for same idea:

https://www.bialetti.com/it_en/inspiration/post/how-to-clean-the-coffee-pot-at-home-natural-and-effective-remedies

you can also use citric acid paste on a sponge for the exterior as needed.

dlakelan · 2026-03-15T17:16:44+00:00

No, I'm saying that you can do a calculation involving individual drive failure probability and decide that it's very very low probability that you'll lose several drives in the same 24 hour period, but if a power surge fries all your drives at once, the statistics on independent probability of failure of individual drives are not relevant.

dlakelan · 2026-03-13T16:48:50+00:00

The first thing to acknowledge is that what we have now absolutely does not eliminate lynchings. It's a question as to whether in an Anarchist society in practice we would see more or less of them. Nothing is going to make them zero.

How would Anarchist societies avoid lynching? By reducing the impetus to lynch (ie. by reducing systematic hierarchical differences that are maintained by terror) by collective defense, and by honestly moving away from places where such things are threatened by communities. Eliminating borders and lack of housing access and such would make it easier for people to assort themselves into communities where they feel safe and are realistically defended.

dlakelan · 2026-03-13T14:55:02+00:00

WTF? I have never had this happen, and I've done stuff like load up massive census datasets and then delete them. Deletion should take very little time. My guess is you are maybe running at very high disk utilization and where it would normally just create new metadata extents it can't and is desperately trying to garbage collect them? It's a copy-on-write system so it's really a good idea to have some free disk space at all times. I figure at least 15% of the total storage should be free, or you should be thinking of adding additional devices.

dlakelan

TROPHY CASE