> I remain unconvinced that skiplists cannot be better replaced in most cases with a good hash table/dictionary implementation.
Skiplists are ordered. Perhaps without much advantage compared to, say, a balanced BST. But Hash tables aren't ordered, so they aren't as good for storing data when preserving order is important.
> Also, most linked lists should actually be deques.
Yep, for almost all purposes, so long as using the extra memory for the reverse pointers isn't an issue. Deques are more flexible and much easier to work with (and especially to debug) than singly-linked lists. Not much of a take, I think a large proportion of developers would vehemently agree with you there.
You can typically insert into a skiplist in parallel with better performance than inserting into a balanced BST in parallel. So you may prefer a skiplist for concurrent write-heavy loads.
Having implemented a SkipList and compared it to various binary tree implementations, my observation is that they're essentially equivalent in terms of performance for most operations. For insertion, my SkipList implementation was faster than most binary tree implementations but I found a Red-Black Binary Tree implementation which was faster.
Still, my SkipList was much faster with batch-deletion of contiguous records. This is because a SkipList does not require re-balancing after each individual deletion; once you've found a starting point and ending point (which has O(log n) time complexity), the deletion of an arbitrarily large chunk of a SkipList can be done in constant time.
> The “discursive hygiene” picture of fallacy theory sees fallacies as mistakes that a good arguer will avoid. Indeed, armed with a new toolbox of Latin names for fallacies, eager students all too often delight in spotting fallacies in the wild, shouting out their Latin names (ad hominem!; secundum quid!) as if they were magic spells. This is what Scott Aikin and John Casey, in their delightful book Straw Man Arguments, call the Harry Potter fallacy: the “troublesome practice of invoking fallacy names in place of substantive discussion”. However, they note another, less wholesome reason why some may be interested in fallacy theory. If one’s aim is not so much discovering the truth as winning an argument at all costs, fallacy theory can provide a training in the dark arts of closing down a discussion prematurely, leaving the impression that it has been won.
TL;DR: the Harry Potter fallacy is thinking that shouting out a named fallacy (e.g. "That's an ad hominem!") makes you instantly win a debate, as though you were casting a magic spell.
Alain de Botton's School of life is... honestly weird. It's really confident and tries to give good advice; but so much of that advice is quite bad, and the channel might overall do more harm than good (for more people than fewer).
I'm a few minutes into Big Joel's takedown and ... it's pretty unimpressive. He's moreso complaining that psychology isn't a hard science, and that it's hard to make objectively proven statements about things like attachment theory as it relates early childhood development to later relationships.
Well, yes, and this is more or less where we're at with Psychology (as I understand it, I'm definitely a lay person): it's hard to make a concrete proof with something as complex as a human.
And Alain's ideas as expressed are certainly not purely his invention - this is pretty mainstream Psychology / Therapy, and borrows a lot from ancient philosophy (with even a dash of Buddhist psychology thrown in).
Specific to this issue: Alain is saying that many times underlying frustrations are not so much about the here and now, but can be related to one's early upbringing and point to frustrations - especially attachment frustrations - from that age. I find that an interesting idea, but it's certainly not ground truth. Nor does it mean that you can't be frustrated with a partner for valid reasons in the present moment. The kind of takedown that Joel makes ("reductive nonsense") is unsophisticated and frankly immature, and certainly not worthy of any more investment of my time.
> The kind of takedown that Joel makes ("reductive nonsense") is unsophisticated and frankly immature, and certainly not worthy of any more investment of my time.
This is what immediately struck me when I started watching the video.
It could be possible that everything Joel is saying is true, and yet, his presentation style comes from a place that feels like the opposite of good faith. His attitude is not one that seems to involve seeking truth/understanding, and he comes across as snarky, bitter, and with an undercurrent of some underlying agenda.
It's a style that I dislike generally, but it seems especially problematic given the subject matter - a topic that requires at least an inkling of intellectual curiosity to explore.
> It could be possible that everything Joel is saying is true, and yet, his presentation style comes from a place that feels like the opposite of good faith. His attitude is not one that seems to involve seeking truth/understanding, and he comes across as snarky, bitter, and with an undercurrent of some underlying agenda.
Yeah, just looking at the titles of his other videos it's pretty clear that's almost certainly what he's doing. It looks like he frequently makes stuff in the genre of "let's hate that otherside thing you hate, and together feel superior for hating it."
I used to watch Alain's videos for a while (back when marginalian was brain pickings).
I think his project is more or less the same Sam Harris' - to extract useful (for some definition) ideas out of traditional religious or other moral systems and to secularise them for modern consumption as part of a project to improve humanity. My background and experience with this kind of thing makes me think that it's a doomed project and slick videos on YouTube is a poor way of teaching these things.
I found the School Of Life’s videos to be compelling, thought-provoking, and insightful when I needed them the most.
I dropped in a few times at critical points in recent years. They helped me look at my current circumstances in a more objective and factual way.
I didn’t necessarily learn anything “new” from their bite-sized videos, but many of them helped me cut through the fog of stress/anxiety. I felt immense relief as they helped me recognise what was really going on behind-the-scenes in my current situation.
I’m thankful for the different perspectives they brought to me, especially when they were so easy to digest at a time when my mind was not able to think as clearly as I’d have liked.
Yes, they generally aren't great for learning new material in depth. But they are great for small refreshers, or just for some probing questions during complex times. They provoke thought and come in a short and to the point format. They aren't the end all be all of philosophy for sure, but they are a communicator of everyday concepts that you can use in your own life
Saw a bit of the first video. I really have no clue about the literature of the impact of childhood experiences in adult relationships, and for his complaint about the lack of references, he provides none either.
Then he moves to the friendship video. His complaint seems to be that the videos simplify and overstate their claims. Which is true. But he doesn't really refute the main point to the video, which is that friendships, by having lower expectations, suffer less (though definitely not always, we all know about toxic friendships) from the more complicated dynamics of romantic relationships. It sounds more like nitpicking. Then he changes from the descriptive presentation of relationships to a normative one (romantic relationships should be "nice"), which misses the point entirely. (Plus the ideia that relationships should be "fun" and "nice" and not also a space for emotional growth where shit comes to top tells me he probably didn't have really intimate relationships).
There is a lot of advice on there and it seems like Big Joel homed in on some of the more recent stuff which is more direct and preachy. For example, there is an interesting video on School of Life that goes into detail regarding the life and philosophy of Baruch Spinoza who among other things claimed it made no sense to pray to God for desirable life outcomes because life and prayer don't work that way. And now because prickly YouTube reviewers who like details more than the big picture are on the scene I should admit that understanding Baruch Spinoza claims prayer has no utility is weird and overconfident life advice that I should be suspicious of? Honestly I think you both missed the point of pondering ideas about life.
He does a lot of media analysis, especially of other YouTube channels. His views are definitely not unbiased, but in this case he provides a counterpoint that people interested in The School of Life might benefit from hearing.
If you're not interested in The School of Life, then it's not worth an hour of your time.
Your mileage may vary, it’s a bit too “contrarian to generate views” for my taste, but check out his video history and see if it might be the kind of thing you’re into.
- All parties are terrible and you're a terrible person if you like parties
- Women date abusive men because they were traumatized as a child, and they avoid nice guys, so be an asshole to women
- You can't be a good person unless you had a shitty time growing up, and people only start families to deal with their own shitty family trauma, so, good luck
- You are doomed to an unhappy marriage. Don't look for someone you like, look for someone you can endure
- People with bad taste were traumatized as children. All Russians and Saudi Arabians have bad taste
- People give self help books a lot of shit, but you should read self help books (Alain sells self help books)
- For dinner you should order children's fish sticks, cranberry juice, and the most expensive dessert, the last two because you feel awkward about ordering the first one, and this will help you on a date
You're getting downvoted, but this is barely a caricature.
Here's the man himself holding forth on interior design. Apparently people who like minimalism are compensating for their inner emotional chaos, and people who like rustic country stylings want a break from being overwhelmed by technology. People who have ornate gold everywhere are terrified of being poor.
It's silly pseudo-psychological nonsense - all opinion, with no empirical basis.
Worse, it ignores the existence of competitive status display and class identification.
Worse than that, he's clearly writing about himself and generalising to other people.
There's an entire book of this. If you want to learn nothing about taste or architecture - but more than you want to know about Alain de Botton - you can read it.
One thing about Alain de Botton that mystifies me is that he was born into a family with 9-digit wealth, and he apparently likes piling up comparatively small sums by monetizing his philosophy habit. Successful authors of multiple books typically write some as an outlet for their genius and some because they need or cannot pass up the money. What motivates him? How much of his writing is outsourced?
According to de Botton he makes money from his work and doesn't have access to the family trust fund.
The UK has a few people - like poverty-cook Jack Monroe - who have faced real financial and emotional challenges and come through them to become inspirational people.
But without becoming Professionally Inspirational™ about it.
de Botton seems like a spoilt dilettante in comparison - an entertainer for the aspirational classes.
IMO someone who has never faced extreme poverty or unusual emotional stress has no business telling others how to live their lives.
I read one of his early books and my takeaway was that the author has lived a very privileged and sheltered life, compared to almost anyone, and so his observations and advice should be taken with a grain of salt.
Alluded in the article: his stuff is categorized as “self-help”. As a social phenomenon, “self-help” is believers-only. Since de Botton’s academically inclined, it’s probably the best of a horrid torrid bunch?
It's certainly not the worst, but I take issue with how overconfident de Botton is, and consequently, how convincing his work can seem to many viewers who take it at face-value without more critical thinking. He's academically inclined but largely self-taught, and his hypotheses are not always as well thought-out as one might expect from an "academic".
> Alluded in the article: his stuff is categorized as “self-help”. As a social phenomenon, “self-help” is believers-only.
From the article:
> De Botton is careful to acknowledge that this line of inquiry might trigger the modern intellectual allergy to the genre of learning dismissively labeled self-help. And yet he reminds us that the quest for self-refinement has always accompanied the human experience and animated each civilization’s most respected intellects — it is there at the heart of the Stoics, and in the essays of Montaigne, and at the center of Zen Buddhism, and in the literary artistry of Proust (whom De Botton has especially embraced as a fount of existential consolation). He aims a spear of simple logic to the irrational and rather hubristic disdain for self-help:
> > To dismiss the idea that underpins self-help — that one might at points stand in urgent need of solace and emotional education — seems an austerely perverse prejudice.
> “The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm.”
Is that "wise"? Who reads this and nods?
Self-help is rarely written by successful people. Napoleon Hill (a fraud) was no exception.
It focuses on superficial behavioral and cognitive changes, based on "wisdom" that half the audience will cringe at (see Twitter gurus). The more intellectual kinds of self-help (like De Botton, as opposed to Tony Robbins) essentially help people domesticate themselves, by becoming low energy, excessively self-reflective (which is what the word "neurotic" means) and permanently stuck in their head, as opposed to taking action in the real world.
The more you believe you are afflicted by various subjective, non-clinical, non-diagnosed emotional issues, the more they will consume you. You will be raising waves where there is no wind.
The most effective self-help is either the Lindy kind (reading the Bible; joining a Buddhist monastery), or just aligning your behavior with what you want out of life, without caring for the "childhood reasons" for your behavior. "Self-awareness" is a lie; you are just projecting meaning and patterns where none exists. The ultimate embodiment of this navel-gazing is Lacanian psychoanalysis, which has enormous suicide rates. Just reflect on whether your behavior is aligned with your goals, and choose to change your behavior accordingly, without imagining that you need to change an entire machinery within your mind beforehand.
If you want to be "exciting" (the opposite of boring) you'll always feel like you aren't living up to your potential; just like how power lifters always think their muscles are small and anorexic instagram models don't think they're skinny enough. Balance is much more rewarding.
Do good work, work that pays, that you're good at, that you can be proud of. Then go home. Switch off, and enjoy your hobbies. Learn an instrument, get good at cooking exotic foods, and find a workout routine you enjoy.
If you want to indulge your big ideas, read voraciously, and code up side-projects. Write a blog, or a book, or something like that. But don't try to make money from it. Betting your livelihood on your ideas puts too much pressure on, and you won't be happy. Most entrepreneurs aren't happy, not even the wealthy ones.
Really? Most of the entrepreneurs I've met have had to do a lot of work, but none of them (this is my personal experience) regret striking out on their own.
Advocating for a resigned alienation from one's work is advocating for living one's life for other people.
>but none of them (this is my personal experience) regret striking out on their own.
This is like having children: nobody would say they regret it even if they do and when pressed they will rationalize with a mental gymnastic the flexibility of which would be a yogi to shame.
Also, "Advocating for a resigned alienation from one's work is advocating for living one's life for other people." I agree with that. I'm not advocating for resigned alienation. That's a very extreme interpretation of what I wrote.
I recommend finding a good work-life balance. Good work is a part of that. Working hard a good job with good coworkers is very rewarding. But putting all your eggs in the basket of your job is not.
It's not that they regret starting their businesses, it's that it consumes them and their life outside of work. They have no work-life balance. Their work may be rewarding and satisfying, but they aren't living happy lives.
agree, never seen entrepreneurs regret getting into business. If not entrepreneurs, at least what is called a businessman in India, are fine at the end of the day. They get a decent amount of support from family to run their business. They achieve a decent lifestyle despite working 12+ hours. Many times, businesses are taken over by the next generation also.
> Do good work, work that pays, that you're good at, that you can be proud of. Then go home. Switch off...
Do good work. But if not switch off, and if you are young, it might be better to get another boring job. There is so much distraction, huge marketing machines pumping out ads manipulating our psyche and FOMO inducing content on Instagram. People could easily focus on a second job and be forced to avoid all this.
I wonder if there are software engineers doing 2 boring jobs.
I don't get it. This post appears to be an intro to lambda calculus, but renamed to birds, and without enough detail to do anything interesting or worthwhile. Can someone enlighten me about what's interesting enough about this post to make it to the front page?
(I think) this is a modern rendition of David Keenan's To Dissect a Mockingbird: A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus with Animated Reduction [1], also linked in the OP. Perhaps you might appreciate the original better.
Longer and more familiar tokens that don't all just look like piles of meaningless letters make it so a non-math person can follow it right up until they start taking about booleans. They totally lost me there. But I'm impressed that they explained it in a way that let me even get that far.
After that it starts not making sense without prior knowledge.
I vaguely remember something about there being no data other than functions, so I assume the values of true and false are represented by functions represented by birds?
What does a doubling one of the words have to do with an OR? I'm assuming that when you pass one of these birds to another bird, there's something special happening, and the mockingbird is no longer just repeating a value, and there's some kind of function composition happening?
Its like a version of math where you're representation of "2" is "++" so the expression 2 + 2 becomes "++" + "++".
"It is a wonderfully bizarre fact that each song of a combinatory bird is not merely the name of another bird but is actually a complete description of the internal plumbing of that other bird. That is, each song is actually a brain map of some bird. Since a song is a complete description of how some bird will respond when it hears another bird, and the only important thing about a combinatory bird is how it responds when it hears another bird, we see that songs and singers are interchangeable. So we can say that the birds sing birds to each other, or we can equally say that what we have is a bunch of songs that sing songs to each other! Combinatory birds exist at an almost mystical level. Their language has no distinction between verbs and nouns. A description of action can equally well be a name."
The bird K was defined as True, and KI as False (try not to think about the fact True(x) / False(x) evaluates to something).
The claim is that the bird M is logical OR. We can test this exhaustively. M repeats the first word twice, K omits the 2nd word, and I is just there. Leftmost bird is always the next in line for evaluation.
Definitely not great... I bet that in a few years I bet it will be shockingly good. Experts have probably been working on it for years, and now that they've chosen a sufficient model structure with effective convolutions and whatnot, it's just a matter of tweaking the parameters and feeding it more and more data (3D scanning tools are making this easier as time goes on too).
Skiplists are ordered. Perhaps without much advantage compared to, say, a balanced BST. But Hash tables aren't ordered, so they aren't as good for storing data when preserving order is important.
> Also, most linked lists should actually be deques.
Yep, for almost all purposes, so long as using the extra memory for the reverse pointers isn't an issue. Deques are more flexible and much easier to work with (and especially to debug) than singly-linked lists. Not much of a take, I think a large proportion of developers would vehemently agree with you there.