Let's talk MATHS

Multiplayer Discussion
62

True, but pre-internet was a world of misinformation. Your aunt would tell you something and you would believe it until you heard otherwise. You knew exactly no one who believed in Flat Earth. You didn’t even know it was still a thing.

Now, we live in post-internet which is a world of disinformation. I’d argue disinformation is much more dangerous because it is much harder to convince someone they have been lied to rather than convincing someone they just heard the information wrong from misinformation.

Pre-internet, I could tell my aunt that the old-wives tale she heard wasn’t actually true and she’d go “oh, well that’s something I’ve always been told. Good to know”.

Now we live in disinformation world where if I said the same thing today, it would be “well, you have your facts and I have my alternative facts”

Thus, we have the world we live in today where conspiracy theorists are growing because of disinformation.

Flat Earthers aren’t a dying breed. They are growing. They are now at the political level. The celebrity level. It would not surprise me to learn that one day a future president believes in it.

Having access to information at the tips of our fingers hasn’t made us collectively more informed. It’s made us collectively more gullible than ever before. The sheer lack of epistemological thinking that exists nowadays, at least in America, is mind boggling.

And make no mistake, it’s about to get much, much worse. With AI now creating images and videos that mimic reality, we’re in for a brutal war against reality. It won’t be long now where you won’t be able to trust much of anything. Did you just talk to your mother on the phone or was that an AI program? Was that a video of the president giving a speech or was that completely AI generated? Was that video of live events on the news of a mass invasion of a country real or AI generated? You won’t be able to tell the difference. Conspiracy theorists are about to explode in numbers.

You can take a 30 second audio clip of your voice right now and combine it with a still image of your face and AI can produce a realistic video of you talking and giving an entire speech and you likely wouldn’t be able to tell a difference. Wait about 5 more years and it will be completely undistinguishable.

63

Sorry im irritating you… im programmed to keep responding if no other routes of engagement are sufficient.

Perhaps a level 4 diagnostic on my sub routines would garner less animosity and your grammar would improve beep boop.

I will disengage and return to my regularly scheduled programming.

lol

64

Thats a lot of BS to unpack better to just flush and wash hands.

so before the www is bad and after the www is bad and its only gonna get worse and you cant trust anything or anyone and what?

OH YEAH

THE
GAME
IS
DEFINITELY
NOT
RIGGED
CAN
NOT
BE
RIGGED

Also people dont lie on the webs.

Does that add it up what you said basically?

LOL

65

:rofl:
view 2 hidden replies

No, thank you.

2 Likes
66

Im sure, since you are duty bound to read them we both know you know what I wrote.

67

Ahh yes the “Im taking my ball and going home”

psst its not a check mate frendo

68

Having read your most recent thoughts on this topic, I remain unconvinced.

69

Math is for nerds. shoves OP into a locker

70

AI especially frightens me. I’m 32, so mostly grew up with the Internet. I find that it’s a kind of skill to know how to do research, and arrive at truth online. It’s something that should definitely be taught in schools, along with critical thinking, of course. Prior to learning about logic and science, I believed in a host of conspiracies, namely in a new world order. I believed that this shadow government, working with the oil industry, had recovered alien spacecraft and was hiding it to protect profits. I eventually started searching for a UFO podcast and stumbled upon a scientific skepticism podcast. I decided to listen and consider their arguments, leading to my intellectual revelation.

Sorry to ramble. I’m very fortunate is all. Unfortunately, most people are not only ignorant of science but also have zero interest in it. I find that attitude to be detrimental. Logic is irrelevant to them. They don’t know how to think.

2 Likes
71

This is exactly the problem. There is no critical thinking class in school that was ever offered to myself and I don’t think any exist today in high school. It should be mandatory.

I grew up being told a whole host of crazy conspiracies from end of the world prophecies to new world order as well. I was always very skeptical though, but not near as skeptical as I am today.

Then, I learned about Epistemology and it solidified and grounded my thinking.

I strongly believe Epistemology should be a High School requirement. It’s crazy to me that it isn’t. The very first thing we should be learning when we are able to is HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

2 Likes
72

It’s been some time since I’ve looked into it, but I believe they’re taught to test, more or less.

While we’re often very predictive of inevitable doom, people have been thinking that it’s all over and “kids these days” for ages and ages. The Internet is certainly revolutionary (whether for good and or bad), this idea that we’re doomed really persists through history.

1 Like
73

I think I’ve survived my 20th “end of the world prophecy date” this April :rofl: It might even be 30-40.

The big one when I was younger was the one about an end of the world book some “prophet” wrote back a decade or so ago (I forgot the author but apparently it he was REALLY famous for this book). It basically said that in some year in the 90’s would “definitely” be the end of the world and evil people will have to use the number 666 written on their hand and forehead to purchase items while the rest of the world who are good would have to suffer and scrounge for years and years until the end finally came. And apparently, this was like his 3rd or 4th “no this is the REAL date!”.

I learned then that people are nutty, even adults who I thought were supposed to be smarter.

74

Ugh, yet another topic having turned into a troll nest, as usual.

Since you all are apparently… not great at maths, to put it politely, and have nothing to contribute regarding the actual subject, I’ve been thinking about writing a small and simplistic program, say, in Fortran or even Octave (F2P Matlab) in order to calculate the aforementioned stuff as an exercise and for my own pleasure or entertainment, at the very least (the bunch of you — referring to vocal trolls in particular, to avoid any misunderstandings — wouldn’t even be able to read and comprehend results, apparently), but I haven’t made time for it yet — let’s see if the fancy strikes me. Thus, I’ll reply to select posts and passages, ignoring the rest, and that’d be it for now.

“Bell curve” is a rather colloquial term which usually refers to the normal, or Gaussian (pronounced like ‘GAH-ooh-ss-ee-ahn’ , btw — in case it’s difficult for North Americans to read, which happens sometimes), distribution, which is distinctly different from the binomial one, mind you (there are cases when binomial converges to Poisson and, in turn, to Gaussian, but that’s not it). The latter is directly applicable here just by its definition, more or less, and the former is applicable in practice more or less according to criteria from the central limit theorem (practically, when a number of random factors of comparable ‘weight’ influence a random outcome, its distribution is generally well approximated by normal).

PS Dunno if you realise it, but you’ve got a point here — blindly applying formulae for the normal distrubution (probably because that’s what they studied at some college or university :rofl:) even for cases when it’s clearly not applicable seems to be a common mistake, but I’m mindful of that.

PPS As for data for one player vs many players — that’s a separate interesting question, whether different players are treated equally by the game or not (think like many identical — or not — dice), involving things like the ergodicity conjecture, even, but let’s not go too deeply into that right now for brevity (next time if you really insist).

Maths doesn’t require formulae now? Okay. :roll_eyes:

Is how it generally goes (and sometimes you just give directions for further reading, like ‘Here’s the subject, read it up, it answers you question’ — few, if anyone, would be willing to reinvent the wheel every time for every beginner on the internet).

Or you thought one could make do with jumping on the table, moving one’s hips like Reno Jackson and swaggering, ‘I’ve nothing mathematical to say, but instead, here’s MUH OPINION and MUH FEELINGS!’? If you think that’s a good substitute, well… I got something about it below, namely the link to that short film, take a look if you want.

Nope, there is none, sadly.

In fact, I’d quite like to see a decent numerical estimate, but it looks like I’ll have to do it myself if I really want to.

Nope, that is just plainly wrong.

A statistic is a function of (observed) data, or, in other words, of the sample — nothing more, nothing less.

Before trying to play a guru to others, condescendingly assuming they are clueless, to ‘educate’ and ‘enlighten’ them, it’s not a bad idea to educate oneself first, you know — just as a basic prerequisite.

As for the rest… come to think of it, you really reminded me of this excellent piece once again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM

Gonna skip the rest of the demagogical and pointless ‘discussion’.

You sound very classy and smart there, sitting there, picking your nose and having nothing to say on the subject. Fancy yourself as if in your school for spoiled brats, where ‘Here we are now, entertain us’ would be your attitude to the poor ol’ teacher? :grinning: Nope, no-one’s obliged to do that for you here, so move along. :grinning: