"Programmer" is an Overgeneralization (and that's terrible)

blackhole12 · 2012-02-06T18:40:26.800669+00:00

The stories about university grads in a computer field not being able to write a fizzbuzz program freak me out. I thought I was missing something subtle about the task when I heard about it, so I challenged myself to wrote one up in 30 minutes... ugh, it took less than 5 with pretty formatting. I wasn't missing anything subtle about the task. Now I simply can't believe the anecdotes about job applicants not being able to do this. Disbelief or freak-out, one of those two, my brain simply can't comprehend such stories being true in anything but a vanishingly small number of cases.

footballa · 2 days

I just finished the first one... I um,... it gets worse? I mean it was amazing how gripping it was and all, but I mean, worse in terms of the bleak and such?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much farther down is the bottom?

Kangus07 · 3 days

Yeah, trying to model that thought process makes me feel like I've had my daily practice of believing a few impossible things.

arex1337 · 4 days

Ugh, this is long and ugly, "more time... written less" etc. Sorry.

I'll take the second point first. The point of the virtue "vaccination" program, as I see it, includes this making of antisocial behavior more expensive (a laudable goal I agree). By introducing more virtuous people who follow some nice version of tit-for-tat, agents with the antisocial tendencies would stand out and hopefully be isolated. I agree that promotion-toward-power strategies currently in place all over our world seem to be directed in quite the opposite direction from that, giving the ruthless more than a toehold and leg up.

As for the first point I'm going to have my cake and eat it (at least in the privacy of my mind). The comparison with arithmetic is something of a metaphor, but I think it could be fleshed out to me something more. Unless the incentive system is to be worked like a court system, with each application being presided over by someone able to bend the rules and always hope to Jerry-rig them toward justice (an unworkable, unwieldy system I should think), then most such proposals are going to end up being a formal system involving conditions to meet and positive or negative things to be meted out upon the meeting of the condition(s). The conditions of such a rule system when they come up against the complex world of human behavior is quite like the axioms and grammar of arithmetic as they expand out into the world of mathematical statements. Thus the same issue arises, I think, namely that of "can a subtle predicate like 'is true' or 'good-behavior-inducing' be properly captured by such a rule system being put into such a domain." I actually think something analogous to Tarski's truth theorem is the real worry I have, that such a rule system can't capture all and only the things we want in such a predicate. But I tend to put things in terms of Gödel first, since he is more well-known.

I'm happily admit I have no proof of the incompleteness-of or undefinability-within incentive systems, and certainly not in general. But I think there are ample reasons to be skeptical. Surely we are both aware of cases in which well intentioned incentives backfired in surprising ways. My weak meat-memory tells me that were one to go through the Planet Money archives, several would be forthcoming. I guess my point is that it didn't look like arithmetic was so crazy a domain but it was provable that it is. The domain of an rule based incentive system for humans must include as a subset lots of mathematical language and conditional logic... so I take it as an open question whether one can be devised for toward most arbitrary intents.

Building a "well-designed" predicate to include all that "a set of incentives such that it would be irrational for the agents operating in the system to behave contrary to the intent of the system" sort of stuff set off my skepticism. With that strong a definition, there simply may be no well-designed systems. There might always be a residue of possible rational behaviors that amount to defection against the intent of an system. Thus my thinking that the members be vaccinated to deal with them using a different domain of predicates as well.

arex1337 · 5 days

But aren't we in danger then of an error similar to that of a mathematician a hundred years ago defining a well functioning axiomatized system of mathematics as one that would be able to prove all the true statements in itself. Such a mathematician could easily run afoul of later incompleteness proofs. Similarly I don't see any reason to assume such incentive systems as those you call "well-designed" are possible for all classes of systems we might want/need to instantiate with people.

This is, I think, a reason for turning to the utility of culturally instilling virtue in a significant fraction of the participants in a system. Having such virtue above some threshold level in such participants would act as a bulwark against the pressure of corruption upon the incentive walls defending the intent of the system... or perhaps more like a vaccine preventing a catastrophic spread of counter-to-system-goals behavior through the participant population.

ALIENSMACK · 5 days

Ah, so you weren't necessarily thinking of the loose class of psychological types we can for the sake of simplicity lump together and pejoratively refer to as the "crazy cat ladies (people)".

I wasn't aware of this other subclass of hoarders, the animal rescue workers. Apart from a knee-jerk, argumentative, reaction of wondering how well the meaning of "hoarder" adheres to them as a group, which I'll pass over as just immaturity in myself and perhaps not productive... I can't think of a useful direction to continue in. But thanks for bringing them to my awareness. I would have never guessed they could account for such a large fraction of the outside-the-norm animal-accumulating people.

ALIENSMACK · 5 days

Also, some people, don't know the ratio, have impostor syndrome. Their fear would be all the more acute.

ALIENSMACK · 5 days

Is that actually how cat hoarders think about other people having cats? I've never seen a psychological investigation of their belief systems. Do tell.

cavedave · 6 days

More likely some few people would make it their weekends, most other people would pay those car assemblers for the aforementioned weekends of labor.

I'm not really knocking that outcome. More decentralized and thus democratized manufacture would be cool in some ways I value. But lets not be naïve about the possibilities of everyone picking up rather difficult hobbies. As an example, the general public could be writing their own software right now, but for most people who want to use computers, even learning some simple scripting is beyond the effort they are willing to consider spending to get useful results.

benfbat · 6 days

Why not put them in order?

peecee1978 · 7 days

Well that one had a rocking soundtrack, but I liked it better when Joel Schumacher directed it.

peecee1978 · 7 days

As I interpret it, this movie suggests that since your moral sensibilities are offended, you should shoot someone connected with making the trailer.

Birdoftruth · 7 days

When thinking economically about this, also consider the opportunity costs. All the money spent on equipment and the time used in the task could be put toward some other task that nets enough money to buy the desired meat at a store or from someone else who hunts.

b3n · 10 days

Yeah, but you need to print each karma out on a separate sheet of paper, and they are currently worth only 0.001% of the price of a sheet of paper.

airwalker12 · 11 days

But that was to derail a train headed for 10 orphans tied to the track.

airwalker12 · 12 days

Easter Bunny... he just hides stuff around your yard. Santa can and does trespass into your house anytime he wants.

shanshan412 · 13 days

I'll just leave this here... Why I am no longer a Christian

oehmer08 · 14 days

"Music making app" is a bit ambiguous though. The touch-to-audio-out lag precludes digital instruments, but other tools like sequencers are still quite possible.

J0ed1rt · 15 days

That is the Weather Bug widget, right? You can set the background and text colors on it. Try tapping that little gear in the lower left (is hard to hit, so might take a couple of tries). You can also have it not use a background color at all.

feverdream · 15 days

What I love is that moment in the middle of doing something on my transformer, when I think of something about what I am doing that I need to ask someone... that is when I get to "tear" the top off the thing that has come to feel like a laptop as I get up to go find them.

I didn't realize until I could do it, that I have been wanting to do that for years. :-)

textuber · 16 days

Wow, that is quite a coincidence.

nova1386 · 16 days

Philosoraptor may have been reading some Kai Nielson. His Ethics Without God goes through this argument pretty thoroughly.

Feels_Goodman · 17 days

Ah, now your point about splitting the 4.8% makes sense me. But I wasn't a gal trying to make us equal. I was a guy pointing out that you would most likely care if you lost equivalent money that should have been yours. The sending it to me was just to have you loosing it, not to balance us. Making the recipient of a gain from your loss personal shows the harm in starker contrast, typically. I'm not above using such helpful polemics.

And I still think you would care. Naturally, more so if the absolute amount was larger, but $475.20 is useful money for most everyone.

Calling out other problems as bigger is unhelpful thinking, imho. Lots of problems can be addressed at once, society is large. So their greater size doesn't entail smaller ones should be ignored. Though, of course, your own personal attention is yours to spend as you will.

Feels_Goodman · 17 days

I apparently need to try my rhetoric on someone with a better paying job. :-)

And I do have to register for the draft. I'm not sure why you assume I'm a female. Guys can be against sexist pay inequalities too.

Feels_Goodman · 17 days

So you are cool with agreeing to send me 4.8% of your annual income then? If someone took it, say they silently funneled a bit of what was meant for your paychecks last year to theirs and you just now noticed, that wouldn't be a cause for concern? Bullshit.

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