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pbloem

@pbloem@sigmoid.social

Assistant prof. at the Learning and Reasoning group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (searchable).

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

GottaLaff , to random
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Why yes, I just blocked the account that replied, "We'll lose."

I have no interest in seeing gratuitous doom in my feed. We need to pull together.

pbloem ,
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@GottaLaff They underestimated the Row v. Wade backlash, and it cost them the midterms. That shows it's possible at least.

pbloem , to random
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The great downside of becoming an assistant professor has been that I can no longer avoid using Microsoft products.

Since nobody is going to enjoy me complaining constantly about how every single thing they produce is unusable, unmitigated crap, I will simply post a picture of a duck to this thread, whenever I feel the inclination to do so.

pbloem OP ,
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pbloem OP ,
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pbloem OP ,
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baldur , to random
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“Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing? - Aftermath”

This x1000. Just… why? https://aftermath.site/why-would-i-buy-this-useless-evil-thing

pbloem ,
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@futurebird @dr2chase @baldur It's low as in the number of bits you use to represent the number, so it's indeed about fewer trustworthy significant digits.

The key is to use it only for parts of the network that are linear, like matrix multiplications, since the errors caused by low-precision don't blow up there.

It definitely matters after training too (during "inference"). After a network is trained, you can get down to an even lower number of bits, like 4. This helps with speed and battery.

futurebird , to random
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More seriously, can someone steel-man the case for executive power being less effective if subject to future evaluations and constraints?

I don't think I've ever looked at any singular leader of any organization and thought "the problem is they can't do what they want easily enough"

When I was younger I might have said that the director of a film or play can do better work if they are an unquestioned dictator... but I've grown to even reject that idea.

pbloem ,
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@Alon @mattmcirvin @futurebird

It's especially odd in Europe. I would love a functioning high-speed rail network spanning the continent like China has, but it's the lack of unified rules and standards that makes this difficult.

Perhaps a strong European leadership could cut through the red tape, but that's exactly what all the authoritarian parties over here abhor.

futurebird , (edited ) to random
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Listen it's very simple. The president can't be prosecuted for any official act.

Some worry warts keep asking "well what if the president tells the military to stage a coup?" Always with the "what about a coup?" questions! Listen, Cassandra, we have a safe guard: if something so bad (and unlikely pfft) as a coup happened the congress would obviously impeach the president. Happy? No?

We don't need a judicial check AND a legislative one too. That's too much! The president must be free!

pbloem ,
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@futurebird Listen, enough of what happened last year. What did people think was going to happen 300 years ago? That's what it's all about.

taylorlorenz , to random
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“These emails tell a dramatic story about how Google’s finance and advertising teams, led by Raghavan with the blessing of CEO Sundar Pichai, actively worked to make Google worse to make the company more money.” https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

pbloem ,
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@futurebird @taylorlorenz

Apparently, the index is the real bottleneck. A high quality index is hard to create.

I wonder if a decentralized, (SETI@Home style) volunteer effort could work. Everybody runs a little crawler, and the results are unified over DHT.

Then we build loads of open source search engines on top of it, filtering however we like.

pbloem ,
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@futurebird @taylorlorenz I do agree. I guess I'm just trying to fit the Wikipedia model onto search engines: it's largely driven by the power of open-source and volunteer work, with a limited funding stream spent on a few very focused parts.

I think the volunteer work could help you build the index, and then the funding would need to go into UX.

Academic research on IR is pretty active already (and a lot of it is publicly funded).

futurebird , to random
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Have you ever tried to measure a cat with a tape measure? It will make you question the solidity of dimensional space.

Pica, small cat
Height: 22 to 47cm
Girth: 33 to ??cm (ouch cm)
Length: 37cm
Length w/ tail: 66cm
Weight: 5.9 pounds/ 2.7 Kg
Max Length (Dangle): 74cm! oh no

she's getting longer.

Rate of Enlonganmentation
dML/dt: 1.2cm / second

No signs of increase stopping. Cat keeps increasing.
All clear! ALL CLEAR!
Soon she will be in all locations.

This was a bad project idea.

pbloem ,
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@futurebird The horizon is looking a little... furry today.

rbreich , to random
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Why are we talking about whether paying fast food workers a better wage will drive up the cost of a Big Mac instead of asking how much McDonald's CEO's $17.8M salary is driving up the cost?

pbloem ,
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@rbreich Because the cost is at least an order of magnitude bigger?

I mean, they should page living wages, but this argument doesn't work. Companies can give CEOs exorbitant wages without it affecting prices, because there are so few of them. The cost will always pale in comparison to paying the low-wage workers a buck an hour extra.

The should still do it...

futurebird , to random
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Legal experts tend to be lawyers and judges. These are people who have invested their life in the court system and who want to believe in it. Especially the the Supreme Court... they have this idea that irregardless of the people playing the roles there is something about the institution that is noble and ... bending the arc of history and all that.

So, when it fails them. When it's petty and driven by personal interest they keep being shocked...

IDK I want them to be right too.

pbloem ,
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@futurebird As a counterpoint I often find that experts in any field are less cynical than laypeople. Perhaps it's because they're invested in the domain, but it's also because they seen how it functions in detail.

E.g. in science, I see all the failures of the system, but I also see that most people are pretty honest and committed to the basic principles.

I imagine it's similar in the US legal system. (But it is a little hard to hold on to that belief looking at the current goings on).

futurebird , to random
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I love Ian Banks' books because he frequently takes the time to imagine a utopia, not as an allegory for why utopias are impossible (and in the extreme sense they are, we all get that, it's not interesting) but rather as an exercise in seeing how close one could get to a society with real freedom and few contradictions.

I think it's a good exercise. OK fine so how would a world without hunger or unwanted suffering work?

He took on the topic of gender in this spirit and it's glorious.

pbloem ,
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@futurebird @zjp I read them in order, which works well, I think.

"Consider Phlebas" is not the best, but it gives you an outsider's view on the Culture first, which is kind of a cool way to start. You then slowly discover the intricacies of the world in the order that Banks fleshed them out.

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