Raw Meat

"Their introduction led to talks about starting a business together, with each expressing a desire to..."

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 09:49:24 -0500

“Their introduction led to talks about starting a business together, with each expressing a desire to enter the fast-food segment of the restaurant industry with a low-cost item tailored for customers with busy lifestyles that would be largely resistant to the capriciousness of the economy. As the vehicle to drive their entrepreneurial careers, the partners selected the bagel, which was largely unavailable outside ethnic metropolitan enclaves until the 1970s. It was a propitious decision, one that positioned Brue and Dressell to capitalize on the burgeoning demand for bagels. According to a research firm that charted food trends, per capita consumption of bagels increased 169 percent between 1984 and 1993, the formative years of Bruegger’s history.”

- Gale Directory of Corporate Histories

"And ultimately, some workers themselves resist reforms. In March, when Foxconn announced that..."

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 09:34:28 -0500

“And ultimately, some workers themselves resist reforms. In March, when Foxconn announced that workers’ hours would be reduced to China’s legal limits, employees began complaining. “Absolutely I’d like to do overtime to work more than 60 hours, but now there’s a ceiling on it,” said Ma Changqiao, a 23-year-old at Foxconn’s Chongqing factory. Change is hard, say officials at multiple companies.”

- NYT iEconomy

"The days of easy globalization are done,” said an Apple executive who, like many people interviewed..."

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 09:29:13 -0500

““The days of easy globalization are done,” said an Apple executive who, like many people interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “We know that we have to get into the muck now.””

- NYT iEconomy

"Comment from the audience: There’s the anecdote of Kasparov resigning when Deep Blue made a bizarre..."

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 22:26:41 -0500

“

Comment from the audience: There’s the anecdote of Kasparov resigning when Deep Blue made a bizarre move that he fatalistically interpreted as a sign that the computer had worked dozens of moves ahead. In reality the move was caused by a bug.

Peter Thiel: Well… I know Kasparov pretty well. There are a lot of things that he’d say happened there…

”

- Thiel on legal tech

"part of the Player Character Code is that you don’t give up when something seems impossible."

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:50:27 -0500

“part of the Player Character Code is that you don’t give up when something seems impossible.”

- EY

Y files: On The Age Of The Planet Earth

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:31:55 -0500

Y files: On The Age Of The Planet Earth:

Matt Yglesias writes:

The key thing here is that contrary to what people often say, there’s absolutely no empirical evidence that the planet earth is 4.5 billion years old rather than 4 thousand years ago. Take the standard scientific account of what the earth was like in 2000 BCE. Now imagine that God create the universe exactly like that 4,000 years ago. He put fossiles in the ground whose state of carbon decay was just so. There’s no “evidence” about this hypothesis one way or the other. Scientific materialism just incorporates as a baseline assumption that these kind of radical discontinuities in the nature of reality don’t happen. But maybe they do?

Do they? Of course not. I think that’s ridiculous. Just like it would be ridiculous to say that roasting toddlers for dinner is morally acceptable. But we can’t empirically prove that toddler-roasting is wrong, any more than we can disprove the “God is playing an elaborate joke on us with the fossils to test our faith” account of geology.

This is just wrong. There’s tons of evidence that the planet is 4.5B years old rather than 4K years. True, none of the evidence is completely conclusive — but no evidence is ever completely conclusive, we never know anything for sure. I think Matt’s just got confused epistemology here.

"Whatever you think of the Obama record, it’s worth keeping in mind that by any measure, free..."

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:59:44 -0500

“

Whatever you think of the Obama record, it’s worth keeping in mind that by any measure, free enterprise has been winning the game for a long, long time to this point.

Compare the United States of 2012 with the United States of 1962. Leave aside the obvious points about segregation and discrimination, and look only at the economy.

In 1962, the government regulated the price and route of every airplane, every freight train, every truck and every merchant ship in the United States. The government regulated the price of natural gas. It regulated the interest on every checking account and the commission on every purchase or sale of stock. Owning a gold bar was a serious crime that could be prosecuted under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The top rate of income tax was 91%.

It was illegal to own a telephone. Phones had to be rented from the giant government-regulated monopoly that controlled all telecommunications in the United States. All young men were subject to the military draft and could escape only if they entered a government-approved graduate course of study. The great concern of students of American society — of liberals such as David Riesman, of conservatives such as Russell Kirk and of radicals such as Dwight Macdonald — was the country’s stultifying, crushing conformity.

Even if you look only at the experiences of white heterosexual men, the United States of 2012 is a freer country in almost every way than the United States of 1962.

”

- David Frum

A Libertarian Puzzle

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 09:42:55 -0500

Allow me to oversimplify.

People disagree about ends: Some people want to promote broader human flourishing, others want to preserve the status quo. People disagree about means: Some people think unfettered markets will best promote broader human flourishing, others think unfettered markets will best preserve the status quo.

We have a nice two-by-two: people who want to promote human flourishing and think that unfettered markets are the best way to get there (libertarians), people who want to promote human flourishing and think that unfettered markets are an impediment (socialists), people who want to preserve the status quo and think unfettered markets are the best way to get there (capitalists), people who want to preserve the status quo and think unfettered markets are an impediment (statists).

Both libertarians and capitalists will go around saying that unfettered markets are great. And both of them will try to persuade their audience by telling their audience that unfettered markets will lead to the thing their audience wants. If the audience wants to preserve the status quo, they will emphasize how unfettered markets properly reward the dynamic innovators who create greatness in the world. If the audience wants to promote human flourishing, they will emphasize how unfettered markets give everyone the opportunity to succeed without the inhibiting force of government regulation.

The trouble is, as an audience member, you can’t really tell whether the speaker is actually a capitalist or a libertarian (or a libertarian who has been duped by a capitalist, or a capitalist who has been duped by a libertarian). Like any salesman, they’ll tell you that their product is the perfect thing to accomplish your needs.

Which leaves just one puzzle: why are there so few statists?

A Possible Explanation for the State-National Poll Divergence

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:27:00 -0400

As Nate Silver observes today, there’s been a significant divergence between the national and state polls. In the national polls, Romney is ahead. But if you poll each state individually and then weight the results by state turnout, Obama is ahead. What explains the discrepancy?

Here’s one idea: Let’s say you’re doing a poll of New York, so you call a bunch of random 212 numbers. Some of those people have moved their numbers to California — either because they’ve taken their 212 cell phone to California or they’ve used the new number-porting feature of the phone system to redirect a 212 number to a California phone. When the pollster calls them and asks them if they’re registered to vote in New York, they say “No, I’m registered to vote in California.” The pollster hangs up. Meanwhile, the California pollster never calls them, since they don’t have a California area code. The only time they appear in a poll is if a national pollster calls them and asks if they’re registered to vote in the United States (they say yes).

In other words, there’s a group of people who show up only in national polls and not state polls. You’d expect this group to be much bigger than it was four years ago, since cell phones and local-number portability have gotten dramatically more popular. If these people were primarily for Romney, this would explain the discrepancy. (On the other hand, I’d intuitively expect mobile and mobile-using people to skew Obama.)

You could test this by looking at whether there’s a systematic difference between random-digit dialing (RDD) polls and alternative methods of sampling that would be immune from this problem.

"A few days before Halloween I was in upstate New York with three other people, and we somehow ended..."

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:09:18 -0400

“A few days before Halloween I was in upstate New York with three other people, and we somehow ended up at the Barn of Terror, outside a town call Lake Katrine. Entering the barn was mildly disturbing, although probably not as scary as going into an actual abandoned barn that didn’t charge $20 and doesn’t own its own domain name.”

- Chuck Klosterman

Originalist Indexicals

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:40:00 -0400

From the Scalia-Posner fight:

As an example of originalism, Scalia said the death penalty was not covered by the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. At the time that clause was adopted, he said, the death penalty was a standard punishment for a felony. If people want to ban it, they must amend the Constitution or vote to abolish it at the state level, he said.

This doesn’t seem to be a claim about originalism, but a claim about indexicals. The Bill of Rights also says “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner”. Imagine, after the Constitution was ratified, I purchased an old Revolutionary War barracks and made it into my house. Does Scalia believe that the government can quarter soldiers there because at the time the third amendment was adopted that was a standard place to quarter soldiers? Is the only way to fix this to amend the Constitution?

This seems ridiculous. Clearly by “any house”, the Constitution does not mean “any house existing at the time this Constitution is ratified”. So why does Scalia think “cruel and unusual punishment” means “what’s considered to be cruel and unusual punishment at the time this Constitution is ratified”? What matters is that it’s a house now and that it’s cruel and unusual now, since now is when the law is being enforced.

Updates: Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that “unusual” means “not habitually done” and house means “building inhabited by a family” both then and now. Then the meaning has not changed, there is no issue of original meaning to be recovered here. What has changed is the extension: there are different places in the world that meet the description “building inhabited by a family” and different acts that meet the description “not habitually done”. Both my imaginary house and the death penalty weren’t in the extension when the Constitution was ratified, but they clearly are now.

(Of course, it’s also possible that the ratifiers were mistaken: the death penalty was equally “cruel and unusual” then as it is now and they just didn’t realize it. It’s also possible they were weak: it was cruel and unusual then but they kept doing it because the laws weren’t properly enforced.)

Julian Sanchez (via Twitter) argues I’m making a type/token confusion. So instead of talking about that particular barracks-turned-house, let’s talk about a class of houses. Imagine when the Constitution was ratified nobody lived in caves and now a lot of people do (it’s a hipster thing). Obviously the entire type of “caves” was not considered to be in the extension of “house” when the Constitution was written, but it clearly is now. I think it’s clear the third amendment would apply to people who live in caves, even though it obviously wouldn’t apply to your cave when the Constitution was ratified.

"Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:44:00 -0400

“Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure. If you ask your boss for leave of absence from the office on some legitimate occasion, his love of power will derive more satisfaction from a refusal than from a consent. If you require a building permit, the petty official concerned will obviously get more pleasure from saying «No» than from saying «Yes». It is this sort of thing which makes the love of power such a dangerous motive.”

- Bertrand Russell

"The devil has many forms, some designed to deceive the young, some designed to deceive the old and..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:44:00 -0400

“The devil has many forms, some designed to deceive the young, some designed to deceive the old and serious. If it is the devil that tempts the young to enjoy themselves, is it not, perhaps, the same personage that persuades the old to condemn their enjoyment? And is not condemnation perhaps merely a form of excitement appropriate to old age? And is it not, perhaps, a drug which - like opium - has to be taken in continually stronger doses to produce the desired effect? Is it not to be feared that, beginning with the wickedness of the cinema, we should be led step by step to condemn the opposite political party, dagoes, wops, Asiatics, and, in short, everybody except the fellow members of our club? And it is from just such condemnations, when widespread, that wars proceed. I have never heard of a war that proceeded from dance halls.”

- Bertrand Russell

"When white men first effect contact with some unspoilt race of savages, they offer them all kinds of..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:44:00 -0400

“When white men first effect contact with some unspoilt race of savages, they offer them all kinds of benefits, from the light of the gospel to pumpkin pie. These, however, much as we may regret it, most savages receive with indifference. What they really value among the gifts that we bring to them is intoxicating liquor which enables them, for the first time in their lives, to have the illusion for a few brief moments that it is better to be alive than dead.”

- Bertrand Russell

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power."

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 20:20:04 -0400

“Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.”

- Bertrand Russell

"Though the reader may not agree with all of Mr. Max’s assessments of Wallace’s novels and short..."

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 20:24:00 -0400

“Though the reader may not agree with all of Mr. Max’s assessments of Wallace’s novels and short stories”

- Michiko Kakutani, by which she means Mr. Max specifically disagrees with her assessments of Wallace’s novels and short stories.

The simple function call

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 22:41:00 -0400

In his post, “The Plain Old Function Call,” Vinicius Gomes compares these two lines of code:

# version 1
choose('color', ['red', 'black', 'green'], 'ie7')

# version 2
choose('color').from('red', 'black', 'green').ignore('ie7').any

In Python, at least, you can always provide names for your parameters, so we can rewrite his first idea:

# version 1b
choose('color', from=['red', 'black', 'green'], ignore='ie7')

Gomes’ argument is that version 2 reads better, but I don’t see it. Version 1b has the square brackets, but version 2 has extra parentheses. Version 2 also has the weird .any at the end (I’m actually not sure what it’s supposed to do or indicate).

So I dispute Gomes’ first premise: I find it hard to believe version 2 is significantly more readable than version 1b.

But this just avoids his larger point: that we shouldn’t sacrifice readability for ease-of-implementation. Anyone who’s familiar with my work knows I heartily agree — this is the slogan of my own web framework, web.py. But I think Gomes (and the larger tradition in which he writes) has a problematically narrow view of readability.

Take this bit of Perl poetry:

my $dear = "friends" .  
while (<i am gone>) {}  
do { $give_me_a_call=  
"on";  
my $cell = "+00 0000000000";

The poem is perfectly intelligible as English; it’s just some standard English phrases with some very weird punctuation. Reading it as an English document reveals:

my dear friends  
while i am gone  
do give me a call  
on  
my cell +00 0000000000

But it’s not English; it’s Perl. And reading it as Perl reveals utter nonsense. Take just the first line:

set the variable "dear" to the string "friends"

This doesn’t mean anything (the variable isn’t used elsewhere in the program); it’s purely there because it looks good to English speakers. But this isn’t English; it’s Perl.

A good programmer does not simply read the code as English. They build a model of it in their head and try to figure out what it’s doing. That’s impossible to do with this bit of Perl, because what it’s doing is not at all the same as what it’s saying.

And the same is true of Gomes’ version 2: What is the object choose is returning? And from? To understand the code, you need to know the implementation details of choose — and, as Gomes admits, the implentation details of choose in version 2 are unusual and difficult. How does forcing someone reading the code to understand unusual and difficult things make the code easier to maintain?

Compare this to a sample of web.py code:

class hello:
    def GET(self, name="world"):
        return 'Hello, ' + name + '!'

This code here is perfectly easy to read — but as Python, not as English. We’re creating a class with a method (GET) with an optional argument (name). What it says in English is exactly the same as what it says in Python. Gomes claims his version 2 “requires less mental mapping between the computational representation and the real world thing.” I don’t think that’s true there, but it’s certainly true here.

Rob Pike tells a story from when pairing with Ken Thompson. When they hit a bug, Rob would dig into the code, “examining stack traces, sticking in print statements, invoking a debugger, and so on. But Ken would just stand and think” for a bit, before announcing “I know what’s wrong.”

Ken was building a mental model of the code and when something broke it was an error in the model. By thinking about how that problem could happen, he’d intuit where the model was wrong or where our code must not be satisfying the model.

I’m with Ken — I don’t think you can be a great programmer unless you can build a model of the software in your head. But this is precisely what today’s magical frameworks make it so hard to do. It’s next to impossible to build a model in your head of how a Rails program works — Rails calls random pieces of code at random times while doing all sorts of different things behind the scenes. The result is code that reads very well — but as English, not as code. If you try to understand what it’s doing, rather than just what it says, it’s next to impossible without some very deep engagement with the Rails internals. Under those conditions, you’re not a programmer — you’re a prisoner.

How the NYC Subway Should Work

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:15:00 -0400

I wrote a little bit about this after visiting San Francisco but spending time in New York has made it even clearer.

Right now the New York City Subway has a series of train lines (named A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, and so on) which each make a different combination of stops.

Sometimes construction or accidents or other things require trains on one line to make an abnormal series of stops. This leads to philosophical paradoxes like “This is an F train running on the N line and making all N stops.” (If it’s on the N line making N stops then how is it an F train?)

Some lines are express versions of other lines (e.g. the 2 makes a strict subset of 1 stops for most of Manhattan) but during peak times some lines also “go express”, skipping stops they would otherwise make. During late nights, sometimes the reverse happens.

All of this is very confusing to the novice traveller. But it could all be made very simple with just one change: name groups of stops, not groups of trains.

Right now you take a 2 train to Chambers St. The train only has one affiliation (to the 2 line) but the stop is affiliated with many lines (it is served by the 1, 2, and 3).

I would reverse this. The stop now just has one affiliation (let’s call it X), while the train can have many (it might be making X, Y, and K stops).

Now if I want to go to Chambers St., I just look at the map and note it is an X stop and then get on any X-stop-making train. If the train is only making X stops, it’s obviously going to be faster than one making X, Y, and K stops. If it is no longer making X stops due to construction, I know I need to adjust. If I’m telling a friend to meet me, I just say “find an X train” instead of “take a 1, 2, or 3 train”.

Further, right now situations like “this train makes 4 stops in the Bronx but 5 stops in Brooklyn” are very confusing (the 4 and 5 make the same stops in Manhattan) but often happen due to vagaries of traffic, etc. Under this system they wouldn’t even be an issue: normally you’d run X-Y-K trains but today you’d be running X-Y-P trains as well.

I can’t see any disadvantages to the system, so I think naming the lines this way was simply a mistake, caused by the fact that the MTA must dig physical tunnels between stops (and thus it seems plausible to name the trains after them) even though passengers only care about the stations.

"From the outside, you may not see how a $5000 donation to SI changes the world, but I sure as hell..."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:44:39 -0400

“From the outside, you may not see how a $5000 donation to SI changes the world, but I sure as hell do. An extra $5000 means I can print 600 copies of a paperback of the first 17 chapters of HPMoR and ship one copy each to the top 600 most promising young math students (on observable indicators, like USAMO score) in the U.S. (after making contact with them whenever possible). An extra $5000 means I can produce nicely-formatted Kindle and PDF versions of The Sequences, 2006-2009 and Facing the Singularity. An extra $5000 means I can run a nationwide essay contest for the best high school essay on the importance of AI safety (to bring the topic to the minds of AI-interested high schoolers, and to find some good writers who care about AI safety). An extra $5000 means I can afford a bit more than a month of work from a new staff researcher (including salary, health coverage, and taxes).”

- lukeprog

"A shift of 10 per cent of national income away from working households might seem inconceivable, but..."

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 09:26:21 -0400

“A shift of 10 per cent of national income away from working households might seem inconceivable, but of course that’s precisely what’s happened in the US over the last twenty or thirty years, except that the beneficiaries have not been the poor but the top 1 per cent. So, if that money were clawed back by the state, it could fund a UBI at no additional cost to the 99 per cent.”

- Universal basic income: how much would it cost? — Crooked Timber