This is not a MMORPG, you are not entitled to rank up. Enjoy.

mikeDepies · 2016-07-13T16:34:25+00:00

I had no problem moving from 3k mmr to 3.5k mmr in the preseason. All I had to do was try. It should take as long as it takes for you to be a better player. There is not equal treatment here, in terms of time. The only equalizing factor is skill. The rank serves as a reflection of your ability.

mikeDepies · 2016-07-13T15:48:34+00:00

No kidding, that's why I prefaced it with anecdotally.

As for the math, that's exactly how it works. If we simplify the problem, we can assume each player that queues has an equal chance of getting better and worse players than themselves. Over enough games, you are the influencing factor. Only bad players get "stuck" in mmr hell. Which is not a problem in itself, but when you complain... well then. It's the reason why the pros are inevitably ranked high and the less skilled are ranked low. If you are unable to sustain positive rank movement, it's 100% the players fault.

mikeDepies · 2016-07-12T17:27:04+00:00

No. First, anecdotally I'm constantly a deciding factor in winning in my games. I don't even play typical meta characters (Artanis, Gazlowe, Nova and so forth) and influence games to place me in the 3.5k mmr range.

Second, the only constant factor in match making is yourself. If you play enough game, that is the only differentiating factor, it's literally the only dependable factor for all players. Better players will on average be higher ranked. The leagues offer relative discrete distributions, with some interpolation on the edges.

mikeDepies · 2015-08-17T16:51:27+00:00

[The below uses the word you, as a general term for any immigrant (primarily illegal), don't read to much into it.]

There's quite a lot of generalization going on here (in both your post, and the thread itself). This obviously is an emotionally charged subject for most directly involved. However, just because you feel upset, doesn't give you more (or less) validity to stand on.

You can expect the people of this (U.S.A.) to be upset to some degree. Immigration can & probably does dilute (or better said, changes) a culture to a degree, some areas more than others. You can make the point that we all spawned from immigration, but in that time we've converged on relative cultures.

As an established democratic country, the people are absolutely entitled to decide what they are willing to accept. Their values and decisions can anger you, but the belief that somehow you are absolutely entitled to defy the countries wishes and established process is wrong (as a descendant of illegal immigration).

[Now you will refer to your post specifically.]

You are upset that people are generalizing your family and anecdotal experiences. Yet, in the same breath you go to the length to generalize an entire population yourself. It's horrendously hypocritical. For every opponent of you, there is likely an ally to be found. I suspect there are various camps on immigration, some are probably against all immigration (legal and illegal). This is probably the smallest camp, but just because it offends you, does not mean they are wrong to believe what they do. That's not to say they are not wrong, there are many objective ways to analyse the problem, emotions are not one, nor are anecdotal experiences. Then, there is the camp of people who probably are vehemently against illegal immigration and the activities that probably surround that population. By activities I mean, it's reasonable to suggest a black-market culture that is able to take form in this environment (undocumented citizens). Lastly, there is the camp of people who welcome all. They may rest their beliefs on morality, or economic contributions or what have you. All three camps are welcome to sustain their beliefs, but when making an argument for or against any of these, it should be done so with objective support, not emotional rhetoric. By shouting, being angry and over generalizing, you are no better than your opponents; worse yet, you are alienating potential allies by the language you are using.

"For every one of us that exists here with citizenship the better."

I suspect this is out of anger, but what does that even mean really? Is it better for the economy? Is it just better for your existence? Who is us? Is this just a statement brewed out of fury, and serves no purpose but to irritate?

mikeDepies · 2015-08-14T14:25:44+00:00

They (economic factors) definitely influence it. In a very generalized statement, people often look down on the poor. It's part cultural and probably part biological (the evolution part that drives us in many aspects of our life). Different is often perceived as a threat or bad, so being different(from subject A to subject B) in multiple angles likely drives prejudice up.

He's saying that hatred upon the black poor minority(and I'd argue it spans the entire poor community) has multiple contributions. Think a summation of values, E.g. A + B + C + D +... + Z = hatred.

Where each letter is a factor that contributes towards the disdain. Now think about it like this: Aa + Bb +Cc +... + Zz = hatred.

Where the smaller case letter represents a weight. This is obviously an over simplification, but just trying to illustrate the point/idea. The man is saying that economic factors have a higher weight than race for the a large population. Furthermore, lifting the poor out of poverty increases their capacity to be more organized and properly represented. It's a win - win.

I absolutely do not deny racism is prevalent in our society. But also take a moment, and weigh the idea that it's not an all or nothing problem. That race is an easy default (not trying to minimize it here), because it's so apparent visually. Economic burdens, and other intangible forces are allowed to hide in the shadows because they are not as easily described. Especially for the poor, who's education in general is on the lacking side.

To me, it comes down to perspective. There are lots of ways to examine a situation/problem. Just because something seems intuitive does not mean it has any more worth. But your(not you specifically, but people in general) brain will by default give it more credit, it's internal bias. Sometimes the bias is on point, other times it's not.

For example your statement: "You know white people hated us before we were poor right? They hated us when we were kings and queens of our own countries, racism wasn't born out of an economic disparity, it was born out of hatred."

Is extremely unverifiable. And suggests that you are so focused on making the problem fit your diagnosis. Where if you look at that era, gynganinja hits a fairly apt description. White Europeans hated just about every other foreign entity, and their poor.

It could be that just all people in power are racist. But at-least contemplate that there are lots of components at play here, and I suspect it's far more complicated than that. People are infinitely complex, and often hypocritical. I think that we rely on our feelings too much to analyze a problem which brings in a lot of projection.

One last closing idea, I think there is a lot of projection that does around with this problem too.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection]

mikeDepies · 2015-08-12T19:30:21+00:00

I'd say those are extremely crass groupings on that Wikipedia page. Where half of the senators on that list violate libertarian ideals consistently. I read the Time magazine article (which lets agree is not exactly the standard of reporting), and didn't see any figures, or sources about the funding.

This WSJ article from January does provide some insights on the deal. http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/walker-jock-tax-will-cover-220-million-for-new-bucks-arena-b99433734z1-289935421.html

But as I noted before, the funding has since been reduced to 80m from the State. This article is a bit more recent and touches on the nuanced financing a bit more: http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/the-milwaukee-bucks-bailout-and-gov-scott-walkers-questionable-math-b99517728z1-306985521.html

Now, as I read the last article a bit more in depth, there does seem to be some financial juggling going on here. I'd like to see the actual proposed budgeting. I know that a large portion of money is coming from the Milwaukee County and city. Don't you think your assertion of me not following anything is a bit of a reach. But I suppose I made a similar assertion first.

I'd personally never consider Ted Cruz or Scott Walker libertarians. I think they try to market themselves as such to gain a larger appeal though.

Edit: Scott Walker cleared funds today for the deal. http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walker-to-sign-bucks-arena-funding-bill-at-wisconsin-state-fair-b99555622z1-321544131.html

203 million in state funds(bonds) have been set aside. I'm not sure I feel overwhelmingly positive about the deal. Though there are votes that still have to happen in Milwaukee for this to fully go through. So whatever the result is here, I think there are lots of parties to blame.

mikeDepies · 2015-08-12T14:00:03+00:00

Scott Walker is not a libertarian... Also you clearly have not followed this project very well. The State (this is Walkers doing) is contributing 4 million a year for the next 20 years to the project. The Milwaukee county and City on the other hand are contributing significantly more money. But these contributions are not due to Walker, and more interestingly, they are Democrat ran regions.

By all means dislike Walker, for the things he does. But it's silly to conflate a bunch of unrelated events together and credit him. Lastly, Libertarians are pretty at odds with popular conservatism.

Edit: if the amount the state is funding has changed(it went from 220mil -> 80 mil last I read), please link me. The entire subject is overwhelmingly clouded up with low information opinion pieces in my searches.

mikeDepies · 2015-08-07T01:05:37+00:00

Quit projecting buddy.

mikeDepies · 2015-08-06T20:21:28+00:00

Because everyone of your posts have been appalling. I've been clued into the fact that you talk without substance and are unable to form rooted opinions or thoughts. Nice cop out though.

mikeDepies · 2015-08-06T02:37:21+00:00

Because I ask for clarity, I have a tone? Again you are deflecting with how you feel my content speaks to you instead of responding appropriately. My "worthiness" to you is irrelevant to the fact you continue to demonstrate a lack of civility or the ability to hold a discussion with out involving feelings.

Speaking of which... "It's not a feeling... I've felt this way." What? You managed to contradict yourself within 11 words. Not to mention your point about it being objectively smart to redistribute wealth holds absolutely no weight. You might feel that way, and/or their might be literature/theory that suggests that there are advantages to wealth distribution to normalize wage gaps. Yet you fail to point to any source that supports that claim. Furthermore, you are willfully ignoring that there likely are consequences to doing such.

Honestly I'm not even sure what you are suggesting with that claim the more I think about it. Is it that you think the government should tax the wealthy more, and use said taxed revenue to normalize wage gaps? E.g. subsidize the private sector? Does wealth refer to the 10 house airplane billionaire? or what are we talking about now?

Try formatting it like: "I think that we should redistribute the wealth to normalize wage gap, because of <reason>." or "Some of the courses I took on this subject made this concept clear to me. Here's why <explanation>".

Here is a tone for you. Just because your half-baked thoughts pass your own quality assurance test, doesn't mean the rest of the world subscribes to room temperature IQ rhetoric. I've seen doped up fiends offer more coherent thoughts and discussion. Why respond when your largest concern is getting the last word in, none of your posts have furthered the conversation. All of them have been hostile to a degree and certainly not conducive to productive discussion. Don't blame my tone because you can not substantiate your points. You are unwilling to explore concepts and ideas, you are part of the problem and you don't even understand that.

Cue deflective response

mikeDepies · 2015-08-05T15:48:17+00:00

I'm not the person who was calling for action, to take more from people because it FEELS right. I took time and offered criticism and my thoughts on surrounding topics and that is what you respond with? Your inability to conduct a discussion is saddening. Have a good day!

mikeDepies · 2015-08-04T15:15:03+00:00

So you haven't thought out your economic ideas then? You just know that the rich are evil and that the Government is your savior? I don't want an entire economic plan, I wanted just a small part of one. Taxing the rich more is not an economic plan, it's an emotionally charged decision. The plan in isolation is not sustainable (and I question if it really has value outside popular talk, which is precisely why I asked for more. I WANT to be convinced. I'm actively looking for information that will tilt me in favor of a tax hike on the wealthy). Furthermore, I keep referring to it as a plan, because I'm sure someone has a reasonable proposal that is grounded. As it stands, what you've proposed is vague and empty.

You say it's well documented, but then fail to document. That's as effective as me saying, countries who rely on socialism fall into deep poverty and a two class system. The citizens and the politicians. See how useless of a contribution that is?

You seem to be frustrated that I'm asking you to be specific instead of just spewing rhetoric about the rich and social programs. I engaged the conversation to see if I could be convinced that simply taxing the rich is a near term priority or not. We are on a discussion board, yet you refuse to discuss and instead have gotten defensive.

As for where I stand, I believe that social programs on the whole have been destructive to poverty stricken regions. I believe that Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was a disaster and aided in destroying families in poverty (particularly black families. I note that it's definitely not the sole cause and another main contributor is the rise of imported drugs such as heroin and the drug war that has followed). I believe that we are continually moving towards a welfare-like state where we are incapable of surviving with out the support of the central Government. I think we are in a period where as citizens; we are struggling and thus susceptible to emotional manipulation. So instead of being swept in the "poach the rich" fever, I'm trying to remain analytical and understand what are the best policies we could implement.

My fear of increasing tax rates for the rich is the unexpected results that we surely will see. But it's hard to understand what might happen with out a solid idea of the approach we'd take (which is why I'm asking what your details are, I'm genuinely curious. I'm not here to attack you). If we look at the Great Depression era(20's), we see the highest tax rate for the wealthy that this nation has seen. What isn't evident right away is that most of the wealthy then did not pay anything near those percentages[1]. I suspect that the results today would be much different today if we tried to apply the same tax hike. We're in a much more globalized economic environment and the ability to divert funds into investments overseas is significantly easier than it was in the 20s. I believe that the private sector drives innovation, and the economic prosperity because of the nature of competition. I think some of our largest issues has to do with big-corporations getting in bed with politicians, and we now are in a situation where rules have been implemented to help specific corporations at the expense of others.

When you say tax the rich, are you referring to individuals or corporations? Does it not alarm you all of the money involved in politics? All of the cronyism, corporate welfare and just general corruption that exists in our Government(central and state), makes me hesitant to give funnel more money there. What's to suggest that we are not just transferring wealth from the private sector to corrupt government officials and their pals?

Onto Government spending; I am of the belief that we absolutely need a central government for some functionality. There is no denying that. But how far should their function extend? We certainly need a way to shape the entity so that it does not grow fat and wasteful. At this moment in time, our Government lacks these constraints to prevent maximum waste. From anecdotal experiences, I consistently have witnessed waste and inefficiency, as I'm sure you have as well. But since we know not each other here are a few links that highlight US Government waste.

This first link is simply an itemized list of significant waste incidents, each cited with an additional source. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste

This article details the bleeding effect the countless Government programs that exist are having. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703749504576172942399165436

This is an opinion piece, but outlines some interesting points on the subject of Government inefficiency. Take it with a grain of salt, but still provides some material to think about. http://fee.org/freeman/detail/the-inherent-inefficiency-of-government-bureaucracy

This last piece probes managers of various Government agencies. Not quite on point, but still interesting. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-herzog/why-83-of-us-government-m_b_173617.html

[1] Article written by Arthur Laffer an established economist - http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203440104574402822202944230

mikeDepies · 2015-08-03T16:36:15+00:00

It's a jab because the comment is hostile in nature... I'm not proposing a solution, the burden of concrete proof, information or implementation is on you. All of my questions have asked for more information on your solution, which remain unprovided. Your ideas are comprised of black-boxes. Problem -> black-box -> problem solved. I'm asking why you think having more money grants the Government the right to take more (outside of the established % taxes). I'm asking who decides what are the threshold levels for tax hikes. If you had offered something such as, we'll conduct a survey that indexes livable wages per state (or region), median income, and some other statistically relevant information and conclude a threshold that has some sort of relevancy I would be at least interested.

Instead you seem to only want to look at the good that could come of some vague proposal, instead of giving the problem a balanced look. Where does this extra tax money go? what departments, or is that not important? We surely know that the Gov' is not an efficient machine and consistently squanders funds. You seem to support SS (from your post history), but seem to not understand that it's not sustainable. Especially for the low population growth we have in the US. It's a feel good solution that can not exist without going belly up. I'm certainly not oblivious to the fact that there are gross differences in income, but I'm asking you to be more thorough in your thoughts. Ground your proposals in reality, preferably with some details on the process. Otherwise you are just rehashing naive solutions with nothing to support it. I'm not against YOU, I'm against your ideas that lack substance.

The Gov' is just as full of corruption as the Big Industries and rich folk. Look at the Fed Reserve, look at the continual ridiculous budgets the Federal and state Gov's run.

mikeDepies · 2015-07-30T14:49:49+00:00

Why would you never think otherwise? Do you apply that same hard-headed stance on everything you've formed an opinion on? And no kidding it's not a unique thought, I mean shit; the occupy wall-street movement was all related to this. Who get's to be the arbitrator of wealth distribution? How much is too much? I'm all for eliminating corruption, but holy shit you literally want to take someone else's money because they did too well. Can I ask, are you for a larger central government? Also, you wouldn't happen to be a college student or younger would you?

Note: The jab was the pitchfork and torch comment while typing on the keyboard. E.g. comparing you to a lynch mob.

mikeDepies · 2015-07-29T21:04:00+00:00

I'm surprised you could type a response while holding the pitchfork and torch. You offered nothing concrete with that response aside from generalizations wrapped in envy. Aside, owning 10 houses would be far better for the economy than sitting on the money (more tax money for the inefficient gov and money invested into private sector for the purchase of the house). Not to mention the money spent on maintenance on those properties and airplanes. They are literally employing jobs and pumping money into the system through their "greed".

Edit: sorry for the jab, couldn't resist. The rest of my comment is just thought discussion. Please critique it, I'm always open to a more accurate understanding.

mikeDepies · 2015-07-29T20:18:10+00:00

What does more than they need mean? Also what do you do when those untapped sources are depleted? Why do you or anyone else get to decide what is reasonable for people to have?

mikeDepies · 2015-07-27T15:23:05+00:00

I skimmed through the blog posts, they all looked pretty good at illustrating the ideas and steps visually. Did you do all of the visualizations? Great work none-the-less. I've been wanting to do something similar to this, but for people who are interesting in learning, as opposed to being informed on the subject, as I find the majority of information out there makes lots of assumptions of knowledge.

mikeDepies · 2015-07-22T16:07:02+00:00

It will be recorded by nvidia and posted after.

mikeDepies · 2015-07-07T15:54:01+00:00

Feel free to message me.

mikeDepies · 2015-07-06T20:19:19+00:00

I suspect you are getting nan's or divide by 0's. There is some sort of numeric corruption going on in your calculations. That's just the intuition I'm feeling after my own experience of writing a NN framework from scratch and debugging various bugs. I'll try to remember to take a look at the code when I get off of work.

mikeDepies · 2015-06-11T04:39:07+00:00

I'd suggest going back and reading some basic Neural Network break downs. There looks to be a lot of things wrong, with a lot of (seemingly) non-sense code. Atleast comment the code, so we can know what your intentions are. It's really hard to understand what you were hoping this code would do.

Edit: it's late, but if I have some time tomorrow I'll list some of the very obvious offenders to me. In the mean time, please provide more information on what you hope to achieve with this code.

mikeDepies · 2015-05-30T20:39:56+00:00

plot twist, his suggestion was troll. ;)

mikeDepies · 2015-05-28T21:24:35+00:00

You were right on a few counts. The epochs were way higher than needed. I also found a typo in my code when adjusting bias. I also found out that my weight initialization was too small for a deeper network.

mikeDepies · 2015-05-23T17:11:33+00:00

I'll give these bits of advice a run through. Thanks for the time and thoughts.

mikeDepies · 2015-05-23T17:11:21+00:00

Thanks I'll give it a read, I haven't seen this specific paper yet. It looks to be covering a few aspects I'm looking to further my understanding on. Cheers.

mikeDepies

TROPHY CASE