Now Defunct

I haven't posted to this blog long enough for me to officially call it defunct. Thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoy the old posts.

Take care, and best of luck in your travels, Internet Wanderer.

In Response to an HN thread: Credentials

Given that the folks at Hacker News do not like seeing comments referring to how negatively a community responds to certain points of view, I've decided instead to hack out a short draft here.

For those who wants some background, the conversation in question dealt with a response to a mathematics related article submitted on Hacker News. One of the comments voted up by Hacker News users made broad generalizations of the state of advanced mathematics.

As one who knew nothing of academic mathematics or the commenter, I asked for some kind of credentials (see this post). The response was interesting. All posts have an initial score of 1. At first the score dropped to -1 (meaning two down votes), then was voted up back to 1, and finally dropped back down to -4.

Now the question I am left asking is why this negative response? What about the users of Hacker News either makes them distrust the validity of credentials or dislike my post? For the sake of argument, I am going to ignore the second and focus on the first.

Credentials, for what it's worth, directly refers to the notion that the originator of a piece of communication can be trusted, and that his argument carries more weight than an unverified source. The purpose of credentials then is to inspire confidence in the recipient and heavily reduce the cost of communication.

Imagine, for a minute, a world without credentials of any kind. In other words, a world without trust. Any information I receive would have to be independently verified -- and not through reference against a standard but directly via experimentation. We could take another step toward ludicrous by asking if we did not even trust our sense, but our friend Descartes has already asked that question and sparked that controversy.

Now there is already a cost associated with communication. I must use irrecoverable time and expend mental effort in order to ingest the material. Further, if I wish to respond, I have to use the same two scarce resources. But without credentials, without trust, the costs grow exponentially. I cannot just read text and accept most of correct. In essence, in order to approach the relative ease of communication where credentials exist, I have to be an expert in every subject that I care to receive communications about.

That does not merely sound paradoxical -- in order to be able to learn anything in a given field, I would have to be an expert in it!

Returning to normality, credentials exist for a definite reason. They allow for a quick, cheap way for an individual to determine how much credibility to place in a piece of communication. Of course, violations of trust, false credentials, and others of that ilk exist, but more often than not the system works. And until a better system is created by someone much smarter than myself, I don't see what else we can do about removing the violations except for making standards more stringent and punishment more severe.

I have not answered the original question I posed. Why that community responded negatively, I cannot answer. Perhaps the individuals who read the post have been burned more for trusting an individual. Perhaps it's something else. I just can't say.

Posted to Hacker News at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=481272

Note 1.
Economists study trust as well! Tim Harford had a piece in Forbes that deals with similar issues. I recommend the article.

Note 2.
Of course, Wikipedia also has an article about trust in terms of this topic as well.

The Fresh Air Fund

I got an email from a wonderful lady, Ms. Sara Wilson, who works for the Fresh Air Fund. She asked me to mention that the fund is looking for summer counselors and other staff members for the 2009 Camp.

Looking through their informational website, it seems they have a variety of positions available. The camp lasts from mid-June through August, with different positions starting and ending at various times.

Looks like something fun for us college types to do for a summer, or at least part of it.

Again, here's the link to the informational website:
http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us/

Hacker News Foibles

I think it's fairly humorous that Hacker News either massively slows down or goes offline at 2PM CST. Just so happens to be "lunch time" on the West Coast.

Damn hackers need to spread out when they eat lunch so that the site isn't bombarded all at one time.

-Shamiq

EDIT:
Correlation is not causation -- seems pg's newest feature was killing the server

Bike

i miss my bike during the winter.

I train everyday at the gym, but it's not the same thing.

The feeling of wind in my face.

The rush of speeding along down a path.

The glee of flying through traffic.

i miss my bike during the winter.

Finals

I'm laying low on the blog -- as I'm sure you can tell.

Check out the tumblr in a couple days for some pics. I'll be uploading some cool stuff :)

-Shamiq

Who says the economy is in a slump?

Shoppers are as crazy as usual. From The New York Times:

A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York died after being trampled by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a frenzy.

Continue reading the article here.

Just goes to show, no matter how bad the times, people cannot be trusted to be rational.

Coffee

how to enjoy coffee.

brew it strong. drink it black. take a bit and let it sit under your tongue until it tingles. swallow. repeat while sitting in a comfortable chair. take the half-hour off.