The "singularity is going to be exponential" fantasy is based on assuming change simply becoming proportional to recent advances. Hence the exponential shape. Even conceding "chartism" one would need to at least propose some imaginary mechanism that goes reciprocal to pretend that sort of curve is coming.
I wonder off and on if in good fiction of "when we meet aliens and start communicating using math"- should the aliens be okay with complex residue theorems? I used to feel the same about "would they have analytic functions as a separate class" until I realized how many properties of polynomials analytic functions imitate (such as no nontrivial bounded ones).
I just updated the article. I did use Python's insufficient material detection, in addition to the ability to call for a draw (3-fold repetition, and 50 move rule). I think the "75 move rule" that doesn't require a player to call is one of the more recent rule changes.
I remember from a lot of combinatorial problems (like cutting up space with hyper-planes or calculating VC dimension) that one sees what looks like exponential growth until you have a number of items equal to the effective dimension of the system and then things start to look polynomial.
BTW: I was going through some of your lambda calculus write-ups a while ago. Really great stuff that I very much enjoyed.
Hate is a strong word, and it wasn’t categorical. He was just very wary and suspicious of it. This is one example of where Aristotle differed from his teacher quite sharply.
We must distinguish between rhetoric and sophistry. In our sloppy speech today, we have taken on the bad habit of calling vapid or dishonest or rabble-rousing political speech “rhetoric”…which it isn’t. Sophistry is a much better term, as the sophists were master bullshitters. Their aim was the same as that of our politicians and ad men: to say things that produce desired effects with total indifference to the truth of what’s being said. Language as an instrument of domination and manipulation rather than communication.
Rhetoric is not like that, strictly speaking. Rhetoric is the skillful use of language to communicate and persuade someone of the truth, at least as the speaker sees it. The presupposition is that what you wish to communicate is true, hence the emphasis on logos, ethos, and pathos. Sophists don’t care about logos. True rhetoricians do.
John Locke called rhetoric “that powerful instrument of error and deceit.” I agree.
Rhetoric is to persuasion what the greasy used car salesman is to advertising. The rhetoricians only care enough about logos to use it as a cudgel against their foes.
The folks that portray it in a positive light overlook the fact that it is ALWAYS used to persuade, by definition.
They convince themselves that this manipulation is a noble thing to do because THEIR truth is the ONE truth and that by manipulating others they serve some higher ideal. Meanwhile their opponents attempts at manipulation are still held in disdain. Humbug.
Again, you're failing to distinguish between rhetoric and sophistry. If someone is doing what you describe, it's by definition not rhetoric, no matter what someone calls it.
Rhetoric in modernity is literally defined as persuasive speech. A nodern rhetorician does not give up when they are wrong, they think of clever new ways to persuade.
Plato and Aristotle argued they were different things in antiquity, but even then some/most of their peers disagreed.
OED literally defines it as "the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques."
Figures of speech and compositional techniques do NOT bring one closer to truth, they obscure it.
That said, I appreciate that when YOU use the term it's not what you mean. I would be careful with that though. Your definition is not what it means to anyone else now outside of academia.
You would need a mechanism to extract that value- i.e. the ability to strip the company apart for parts. Buying a non-controlling portion of shares doesn't give you that ability.
Indeed. The decision-making apparatus is sometimes so starkly separated from the stakeholders that there's no reason to believe that the balance sheet and the stock price are likely to be correlated at all in the future. If the company doesn't pay dividends, and can't be sold off for its assets, then what is the function of equity?
I find Wall St. baffling for all the usual reasons, but this one is too rarely discussed.
The "singularity is going to be exponential" fantasy is based on assuming change simply becoming proportional to recent advances. Hence the exponential shape. Even conceding "chartism" one would need to at least propose some imaginary mechanism that goes reciprocal to pretend that sort of curve is coming.
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