As a general rule, 90% of the execution time of your program will be spent in 10% of its code. Profilers are tools that help you identify the 10% of hot spots that constrain the speed of your program. This is a good thing for making it faster.
But in the Unix tradition, profilers have a far more important function. They enable you not to optimize the other 90%! This is good, and not just because it saves you work. The really valuable effect is that not optimizing that 90% holds down global complexity and reduces bugs.
-- Eric Raymond, The Art of Unix Programming
(Applies to optimization in general)
I am the victim of a perversely designed set of incentives
You game the system
He is a crook.
-- Daniel of CrookedTimber
The whole post from which the quote is taken is quite interesting as well.
"Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: it gives them something to do."
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, on the topic of mysterious answers to mysterious questions.
...Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.) Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point
If the BBC, the UN, and specialists cannot agree on what the word means, neither can politicians or the police. Does it make sense to soldier on fighting a semantic battle that will never be won? Why argue for a word that everyone agrees in confusing and some find loaded?
Daniel Pipes, I Give Up: There Is No Terrorism, There Are No Terrorists
(Noteworthy for changing their opinion after decades of holding the opposite view)
When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.
Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
While I’m impressed by an explanation that’s as flexible as a circus contortionist, I’d prefer something that isn’t consistent with any possible state of the universe. I’m no Popperian, but I like my theories to be at least a little bit falsifiable.
It is easier to imagine the rest of the universe being just as it is if a patient took pill A rather than pill B than it is trying to imagine what else in the universe would have had to be different if the temperature yesterday had been 30 degrees rather than 40. It may be the case that human actions, seem sufficiently free that we have an easier time imagining only one specific action being different, and nothing else.
...Perhaps the most important message to have emerged from these studies on instabilities is that we do not necessarily have a complete understanding of a system once we know the equations that govern it; what we really want to know are the particular solutions to those equations. The latter need not be obvious from the former. This cannot be emphasized too strongly in any branch of science. The American physicist Freeman Dyson has pointed out that for Albert Einstein and J.Robert Oppenheimer in their later years, 'to discover the right equations was all tha
...A single example of extravagance or greed does a lot of harm--an intimate who leads a pampered life gradually makes one soft and flabby; a wealthy neighbor provokes cravings in one; a companion with a malicious nature tends to rub off some of his rust even on someone of an innocent and open-hearted nature--what then do you imagine the effect on a person's character is when the assault comes from the world at large? You must inevitably either hate or imitate the world. But the right thing is to shun both courses: you should neither become like the bad beca
That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come: therefore they do but trifle with themselves that labour in past matters. There is no man that doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to purchase himself profit or pleasure or honour or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?
--Francis Bacon, On Revenge
SLAVER: What about the dwarf?
MALKO: Worthless. Cut his throat.
TYRION (The Dwarf): Wait, wait! Wait, wait, wait, let’s discuss this!
MALKO: And then chop off his cock. We can sell it for a fortune. A dwarf’s cock has magic powers.
TYRION: Wait, wait, wait, wait! You can’t just hand a dried cock to a merchant and expect him to pay for it. He has to know it came from a dwarf. And how could he know unless he sees the dwarf?
SLAVER: It will be a dwarf-sized cock.
TYRION: Guess again.
MALKO: The dwarf lives until we find a cock merchant.
This relat...
Before the modern triumph of the definition of "subjective probability" associated with de Finetti (c. 1937), there were a multitude of attempts to formalize this vague concept. Here's John Maynard Keynes, from A Treatise on Probability (1921):
...Probability is relative in a sense to the principles of human reason. The degree of probability, which it is rational for us to entertain, does not presume perfect logical insight, and is relative in part to the secondary propositions which we in fact know; and it is not dependent upon whether more perfec
"One of the reasons we are attracted to the Colosseum is because of the incredible violence that went on here. The question it poses is, how could such an advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles? The Colosseum is a snapshot in stone, a physical embodiment of the culture of Rome."
-- Gary Glassman (quoted in Colosseum killing machine reconstructed after more than 1,500 years
Emphasis mine: I'm not surprised. Culture is relative and I see lots of reasons this could have been beneficial to the society at that time.
...When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power of a particular individual’s context as determined by chance. But they miss the even bigger social context for their own preferred explanations: a whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning. Gladwell at first appears to be making a contrarian critique of the myth of the self-made businessman, but actually his own account encapsulates the conventional view of a genera
“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”
And just to be clear, the narrative being put forth above -- that everyone claiming to be poor is secretly rich -- is once more not something that anyone actually believes. Offer anyone saying it the chance to live in the public housing projects or trailer parks where these secretly rich welfare queens dwell and all you'll see is a cloud of dust and a tiny silhouette sprinting off into the horizon. But you don't need the majority to actually believe it, only to "believe" it.
Cracked pointing out the danger of belief in belief.
I don't think that people believe that everyone claiming to be poor is actually rich. They might, however, believe that many people (not everyone) claiming to be poor are secretly richer than they appear (which is probably not "rich" most of the time).
I am skeptical about attempts to analyze why one's political opponents believe things, because it's easy to strawman in this manner and generally use it as an excuse to treat one's opponents' claims as not worth addressing.
...Perhaps the most important message to have emerged from these studies on instabilities is that we do not necessarily have a complete understanding of a system once we know the equations that govern it; what we really want to know are the particular solutions to those equations. The latter need not be obvious from the former. This cannot be emphasized too strongly in any branch of science. The American physicist Freeman Dyson has pointed out that for Albert Einstein and J.Robert Oppenheimer in their later years, 'to discover the right equations was all tha
...Perhaps the most important message to have emerged from these studies on instabilities is that we do not necessarily have a complete understanding of a system once we know the equations that govern it; what we really want to know are the particular solutions to those equations. The latter need not be obvious from the former. This cannot be emphasized too strongly in any branch of science. The American physicist Freeman Dyson has pointed out that for Albert Einstein and J.Robert Oppenheimer in their later years, 'to discover the right equations was all tha
In science, "scientific consensus" works for rejection not acceptance. Otherwise we'd be in middle ages.
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Now, hold that thought, and consider that the most likely explanation is that you are wrong.
Donald Rumsfeld, from http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2636 "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
So you want to live forever? You might - even in a finite universe:
...As Dyson imagined, a sense of purpose would motivate cognizant life to try to maintain itself as long as humanly — and then transhumanly — possible. [...] As the universe continued to cool, our AI descendants would need to take action. [...] [Dyson] imagines a gradual slowing down of thinking processes. Only necessary thoughts would transpire and these would happen at an increasingly snail-like pace. Between thoughts, the AI devices would hibernate to conserve vital, usable energy. By spa
this was an unhelpful comment, removed and replaced by this comment
Every government dollar wasted on a poor programme is a dollar that a working person doesn’t have to spend on groceries, health care and education. It is also a dollar that the Government does not have available to spend on its policy priorities.
Making a few substitutions:
Every personal dollar wasted on poor choices is a dollar that the government doesn’t have to spend on the economy, health care and education. It is also a dollar that the person does not have available to spend on their own priorities.
Both of these are pretty much tautologies, advice that it would be better to do things better.
Besides that, the original quote does not occur in the document cited. Google turns up two hits for "Every government dollar wasted on a poor programme", here and here. The former cites the latter and the latter presents it as an isolated quote from some Australian politician. The general context of all three documents is evidence-based policy-making. While a fine thing (or at least a fine-sounding thing), the quote could be said by any politician, at any time, anywhere.
Searching for the shorter phrase "Every government dollar wasted" turns up a large number of u...
We need to ask, what is it about our society where those of us who do not suffer from Asperger’s are at some massive disadvantage because we will be talked out of our interesting, original, creative ideas before they are even fully formed?
(In a supervillain prison, new inmate Sonic (not that one) has just announced he'll kill the others for fun.)
Martial artist inmate: "You seem pretty !@#$ing confident. If you wanna rise up in rank in this prison full of monsters, you'll have to beat me first."
Martial artist inmate: "Let me tell you this in advance. I'm a kenpo practitioner. I'm probably the first and last guy to ever rob a bank unarmed."
Sonic: "Doesn't mean $#!@ if you got caught though."
--One-Punch man Vol 4 extra
Some of the same people who say "scientific consensus" on cholesterol was wrong, invoke today's "consensus" on GMO risks?
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: