Messages

Why would we make the forum read only? 

Just renew this shit and don't change anything. I can probably find the money on my floor.

I like how responding three years later isn't really a bump.

"Do you love working collaboratively with intelligent, energetic, no-nonsense colleagues?"

I like nonsense.

So, you're in the big data machine learning business... I'm guessing you're training deep networks. ;)

What's it like?

Living in the Bay, working at the Google.

how is that techoligarchy life? do the regular folks hate you?

I keep reading articles in NYT, LATimes, CNN, etc that all explain how tech employees are ruining everything for the normal folks.

Explain?

Living in the Bay, working at the Google.

Wow, I'm surprised!  I didn't think you would leave Canada, or work at a huge monopoly corporation. It's probably a nice place to work though.

How could I forget, Ramanujan is also a good example of a genius with little university experience. He also possessed abilities that almost no person has.  His abilities and use of these make him a genius (he's one of the handful per century).

Yes, I think we have similar intuitive definitions of 'genius'.  I think the word 'genius' is probably thrown around a bit too loosely.  To me it means someone with exceptional (e.g. 1 in 10 million) cognitive abilities.  Of course, the specific cognitive abilities in question could vary.  It would be hard to have more than an intuitive definition of the word 'genius'. 

But I don't think Bill Gates would qualify by my definition.  He is talented, and smart, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were loads of people with similar abilities in silicon valley.

I remember an 11th grade English teacher who would always talk about the "human condition".  His philosophical asides were interesting, but it seemed like to get a good grade you would have to apply his own, rather unusual, filter to literature.

In 12th grade English I had a teacher who was obsessed with connectives and flow in writing.  At first it did seem rather contrived: brilliant, stimulating, creative writing that was not full of explicit connectives would get a B, whereas rather contrived boiler-plate writing would at least get an A-, as long as it was very obvious about linking sentences and paragraphs together with explicit connectives.  At first I found this really annoying, because it didn't seem like the grading correlated well with some overall 'objective' quality in the work.  In retrospect, though, I have to say it was probably the most useful English class I ever had.  Even though the grading was a bit unfair, it was a good pedagogical exercise that made me think more formally about writing structure, which ultimately gave me more control over the quality of my writing.  I found before I would sometimes produce great writing and other times poor writing, and it felt like I had little control over the quality.  There was nothing reproducible about what I was doing.  I now look for things that I wasn't explicitly looking for before.  Now, even if I'm not feeling inspired, I can at least craft something that will be half decent, if I put enough effort into it.

In first year university I had the same English prof for two semesters.  With her it was all about the appearance of effort to adjust to her requirements.  At first you would, at best, get an A-.  If you visited her at office hours, and placed importance on her wishes, and appeared to progressively adapt your writing style to suit her priorities, you would get an A or an A+.

I'd still bet money on the C students being mostly just lackluster students.

Yes, I'd agree.  But on the other hand, it might also be a reasonable bet that most geniuses receive poor grades.   Certainly a surprising number do.

The system hugely values conformity.  I remember in high school, I figured out I could get good grades in a given class by playing to the teacher's own idiosyncrasies, especially in humanities subjects.  I remember English teachers in particular would always have their own special pet peeves and likes,
and as long as you took note of these, and basically agreed with them, then you would probably do well.  Sometimes I thought the teacher's priorities were stupid, but if I didn't pretend like they were important, I would be penalized.

Although it seems like this wouldn't apply to the maths and sciences, it was also true in these classes, to a lesser extent.   It just wasn't something you had as much control over.  For example, one math teacher might hugely penalize careless mistakes, but not give out very difficult problems.  So you had to be really meticulous with trivial arithmetic, etc.  Another math teacher might challenge students more , but would not severely penalize trivial mechanical errors.   You can get used to the priorities of the teacher, and then adapt.

But I find that often people who are really creative and passionate are less likely to submit to a teacher's wishes, and are more likely to be 'in their own world'.  Of course, I'm just talking about probabilities.  Creative people could still, on the whole, be willing to please authority.

What makes it necessary?

To me, when I think of necessary surgery for a lifer, I'm thinkin stab wound, cancer, etc. When I think of necessary surgery for a death row I think well, just give him the shot now. Going-to-be-released prisoners should get the best treatment, but I'm not so sure about surgery for nonlifethreatening things.

I think it'd take a lot of convincing to get me/most US citizens to believe that hormones + genital surgey = absolutely necessary for Manning to stay alive.

We're not just talking about prisoners.  We're talking about whether sex changes should be covered in general. 

Moreover, I don't know why you keep going back to death row.  Manning is not facing the death penalty.  I don't believe in the death penalty, and of course prisoners should receive necessary medical procedures prior to the penalty -- anything else would be equivalent to torture.   

Indeed. One my school's biggest grads usually opens presentations (to us) with "I was a straight C student." Now, he is worth a few hundred million

In my own life I've often noticed a pattern of poor students, mostly drop-outs actually, sometimes even run-aways, later becoming wealthy business owners.  I've recently heard people say that this is an old model though -- part of an "American dream" that is not achievable like it used to be.  I'm not sure... I don't really have any reason to believe things have changed in this way.

Money and 'success' aside, I do think it's true that those who can make the greatest intellectual contributions will not always perform well in a conventional system.  Often they're too passionate and driven to form their own direction to care about what other people tell them is important.  And indeed many geniuses did not get particularly good grades.    But I wonder if there are many unrecognized geniuses for this very reason -- they aren't impressive by conventional standards -- and the geniuses we do know about (who did poorly in school, etc.) were just exceptionally lucky to be supported by some influential people.

Not sure if sex changes should be covered in general.  I suppose sex changes could, in exceptional cases, be argued absolutely critical to mental well-being, in which case I would tentatively be in favour of having the operation covered in those cases only.  In general, I think elective procedures should not be covered in a social healthcare system.

Last I remember you were talking about Hampden Sydney and your frat there, and you were a staunch Republican with political ambitions.  Has much changed?

Yes, I read Atlas Shrugged.

Working in Atlanta for a couple eCommerce companies now. Working on some side projects of my own - always interested in networking with developers.

I was in Atlanta a few weeks ago.  In my spare time I visited the "World of Coca Cola".  Was a 1984-esque experience, with the "great happifycation" etc.

I enjoyed going to Sweet Georgia's Juke Joint

Last I remember you were talking about Hampden Sydney and your frat there, and you were a staunch Republican with political ambitions.  Has much changed?

Unread posts since last visit is still bookmark #1 for me.  I check it every morning because it's in the list.  After that is vL :P

I check x86 about once a week.  I agree with nslay; I'd guess a lot of formerly active posters are still checking the forum regularly.  Why is hardly anyone posting?  I'd be up for some debates, etc., if anyone showed an interest in expressing their opinions, or even just talking about something they find interesting.   Have we all gotten boring?

PS.  I check vL less regularly -- more like once every couple months.  I checked just now because of rabbit's post.

I've just finished school ...

10 years of school ...

Congratulations.  You beat me to it!

Here's a well-written well-sourced article weighing in on the general "is it worth getting a PhD?" discussion.