A Peer Review Benchmark

Leave a reply

While discussing different strategies for revamping peer review in order to eliminate some of its many flaws, I came up with a benchmark to test any system’s false dismissal rate against. (Many consider peer review to have failed only if it accepts a paper that should have been rejected, but I consider the opposite a much more grave mistake).

A system is sufficient if it would have permitted Evariste Galois to publish his mathematical work. That’s it. Without changing any of his circumstances, including his general rejection by elite mathematicians (or government) of the time or the poor reputation of his academic institution, I am looking for a system that would have allowed him to circulate his papers (which would later prove revolutionary, after all) uninhibited.

Any system that fails this should be burdened under the knowledge that it would have denied us most of the field of abstract algebra and all ensuing discoveries – basically all of 20th century mathematics.

Using Physical Properties and Forces to Cluster?

Leave a reply

It seems plausible to create clustering algorithms based on gravity and the Coulomb force, with masses or charges corresponding to specific point weights. A “cluster” then becomes the resulting “solar system”. For example, if we represented all objects in the solar system with their masses and distances, the theoretical model would label them as one cluster (“Sol”).

Another idea I’ve been toying with is to use the concept of physical momentum with gradient descent (I don’t believe this is the same thing as the existing technique called “gradient descent with momentum”), such that an “energy counter” is kept that increments when the gradient points downward (proportional to its magnitude) and decrements when it points upward. This will cause the optimization to “roll” down slopes, completely clearing small minima, which tend to be pathological. The result is wherever the optimization/rolling comes to a halt. (Nevermind, this is in fact the same thing, or almost so)

Of course, I still think estimating the minima of the MSE curve from what is already known of it then moving there to check would be much faster and possibly more accurate.

Finally, another idea is to deform a surface to minimize the local MSE of its k-nearest neighbors at each of several regions. I’m not sure if this replicates the behavior of an SVM with a kernel, however, but it should probably operate much more quickly than the cubic learning of an SVM hyperplane due to the local nature of the constraints.

Panidealist Subjectivity

Leave a reply

Over the vacation, I’ve had some thoughts which have just now bubbled to the surface:

When you call the Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged a great book, please remember that the former was rejected by 12 different publishers before it saw the light of day.

When you use technologies developed around neural nets, think back on how much more developed the field (and consequent applications) would be if scientists did not neglect NNs for a decade because they misunderstood something Marvin Minsky said in his book.

When you speak of elliptical planetary orbits or heliocentricism, remember that your worldview would likely have you excommunicated and/or put to death 400 years ago. In fact, you can regard all of your thoughts that conflicted with anything Aristotle said – and a lot of what Aristotle said was wrong – in the same manner.

When you use technologies derived from genetics – when you speak of heritable traits – when you breed cats – when you are screened for diseases you have a high risk of getting because of family history – recall that evolution is still a contested idea that many would like to suppress.

The computer you view this on? Perhaps five of them would exist in the whole world if pundits had their way. The Internet? It would just be for universities and governments. Jesus himself was killed for expressing an unconventional idea.

So stop for a moment and think: do you take part in this collective? How many ideas have you suppressed? How can you be sure that an idea is “bad”? If you cannot, you lack the knowledge to make a rational decision.

The Economy Worries Me Slightly…

Leave a reply

I saw the signs of the collapsing housing market, oil, and the weakening dollar back in 2006 and even predicted the month it would begin to affect the overall economy (November; some instability happened in August as well but it was quickly righted), but I had no idea it would last this long.

I wonder if we’re heading into a depression. I guess if it gets really bad I can always move somewhere else. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Futile Railing against Machiavelli

Leave a reply

I’m beginning to wonder how can I honestly continue to claim that following a moral path has its own rewards and that the ends do not justify the means when the successful almost invariably tend to succeed on their loose morals – they believe that it’s ok to deceive, cheat, subvert, or even outright steal so long as they aren’t caught. When they’re caught, they then bemoan their fate, not because they were doing something wrong, but because they believe they were not clever enough to avoid capture. To state it bluntly, they have no independent moral system in place; it is tied up completely within society’s reaction to their behavior. Because they imagine that their behavior is common and because they have not been caught for all of it, they still believe themselves good people.

I know that Machiavelli observed that this is the route to power, but one of my great quests in life has been searching for ways to obtain success without compromising moral integrity – in essence, to know what Machiavelli said, but to either reconcile his advice with my morals or distance myself from it entirely. I’ve been doing it for 11 years now and I still haven’t found a satisfactory answer.

I know for a fact that my adherence to integrity limits me, but I will not deviate from my personal values for the sake of a society that will not accept them. Regardless of the rejection I’ve found (and the inevitable future rejection I will find) because I refuse to press myself into the molds people expect me to fill, I do not regret this decision any longer. No rejection can compare to what happened to me two years ago, when I was summarily shut out from my desired field and barred from what I then saw as the meaning of my life because I was very much unlike a traditional graduate student (actually, I’d argue that the difference makes me more effective, since typical graduate students have not impressed me, though on the other hand, I’ll never have anyone to exchange complex ideas with and must consequently operate in isolation), and by this time I’ve transcended that rejection sufficiently to realize that if I discard the intrinsic suffering of rejection, no further consequent suffering will touch me. I merely grieve for society itself, that it elevates such people to power!

The First and Second Factors are not Equal

1 Reply

I’ve already summarized this point in my writing on Positive Disintegration, but I’d like to reiterate: The first and second factors are not equivalent motivators, functionally or cognitively. They should not be placed at the same level of personality development. Doing so equates pathological individuals such as psychopaths with the masses, who generally cause no problems beyond those their society compels them to. Here’s a quote I found on talentdevelop.com to illustrate the confusion that grouping these into one cognitive level produces:

“The great majority of population lives on and rarely grows beyond the level of primary integration. The most primitively integrated character structures are observed in psychopaths and psychopath-like individuals, who suffer from “emotional retardation,” characterized by inability to experience empathy and guilt.

On the level of primary integration, we can observe two forms of adjustment of an individual to society: negative adjustment – non-creative adaptation, characterized by conformity to social conventions, lack of reflection and criticism in approach to reality, adjustment to “what is;” and negative maladjustment, which is disregard for social norms and conventions stemming from extreme egocentrism and ruthless realization of one’s lower level goals (psychopaths, criminals).”

Here we have two separate processes being described as if they are common approaches, when in reality, these are intrinsic responses, the first of which the great majority of individuals will adopt. The second response is only reserved for people who really should be classed at a lower cognitive level, for they are only governed by the first factor.

Kant and the Nature of Philosophy

Leave a reply

Kant is an extremely underrated philosopher. He had some absolutely great ideas. Some of them are similar to principles of my own philosophy, such as his “categorical imperative” and stance as a nondeterminist, while others are similar to principles of Panidealism (which I guess is another facet of my own philosophy), such as the absolute inability to know what the nature of free will is and thus the lack of ability to make an objective moral judgment based on this inability. If you replace morals and free will with a general concept of an “idea”, you have a central Panidealist tenet. Actually, a quick review of his main works indicates that Kant may have hit on this in his “Critique of Pure Reason” (which, in my defense, took him 10 years to write) – the resulting philosophy is called “transcendental idealism”. However, it’s only one Panidealist principle, although an important one, and so my philosophy chugs onward.

Even where his ideas differ from mine, they remain intriguing.

So far I’ve been told my developing philosophy has similarities with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Berkeley, and Russel, and, aside from the Republic, I’ve never studied any of their philosophy. I don’t study philosophy as a subject, as I believe that it’s foolish to let your own philosophy be influenced by the thoughts of others. I simply think, and the philosophy of others just… emerges.

Even if it bears similarities with other philosophers, my philosophy remains new at least in how I combine these principles. The best way to forge ahead in philosophy is to simply ignore everything that came before and think. Maybe you’ll reinvent many things. Maybe you’ll say the same thing in different ways. But somewhere in there, there will be novelty.