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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      pic.twitter.com/loJZE0Jgzv

      13 replies 27 retweets 177 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      Both trumpies and wokies are in the lower left quadrant

      1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      A lot of otherwise really smart people don’t believe that humans can be endlessly surprising. They leap from the (valid) observation that most humans are mostly predictable most of the time, especially in groups, to conclusion that human behavior is fundamentally unsurprising.

      4 replies 2 retweets 33 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      All it takes is 1% of humans bding 1% surprising 1% of the time to make human behavior endlessly surprising at all scales. Imitation and entailment do the rest. Great Man Straussianism is a degenerate version of this. It conflates ability to surprise with intrinsic greatness.

      1 reply 1 retweet 23 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      It doesn’t matter what scheme you use to pretend humans are unsurprising — race, class, whatever. Your theories might even be right most of the time if you look for the right kinds of confirmation. But it’s irrelevant because surprise shapes history, not predictability.

      1 reply 1 retweet 22 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      The point of expansive theories of human predictability isn’t to render the future predictable, but to notice the surprising bits more easily. Just like point of the sieve of Eratosthenes is not to prove all numbers are composite but to find the primes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes …

      3 replies 2 retweets 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      There’s a Lump of Complexity fallacy underlying this failed frame. “There’s a fixed amount of complexity in the universe.” So if X turns out to be surprisingly complex you conclude not-X is simple.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1302666282047696896 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      I haven’t done this much hands-on crap since freshman engineering in 93, and I noticed it makes you kinda stupid at higher levels of abstraction. The wealth of phenomenology at the log level tempts you into simplistic abstractions. I caught myself making up a manifesto earlier.
      Show this thread
      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      Like Lump of Labor = “there’s a fixed amount of work in the economy” So if robots take some jobs there are fewer jobs for humans. Short-term half-true, long-term bullshit.

      2 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted aphid NO CARRIER RING RING RING CONNECT 1200

      Why liberal arts and not the narrower class of humanities? Because in practice in the US, “liberal arts” means one easy-A stats 101 class for “math” and a menu of easy no/low-math courses to meet science credit minimum. Serious math/science majors tend to identify as STEM.https://twitter.com/aphid23/status/1302691221643485185 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      aphid NO CARRIER RING RING RING CONNECT 1200 @aphid23
      Replying to @vgr
      why are stem and the liberal arts in opposite quadrants when math and science are integral to the liberal arts? trivium, quadrivium, etc.
      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Relevanthttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1051570340705460229 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Poll: STEM people, how many humanities and social science courses were you *required* to take in undergrad (HSS people, please answer next poll)
      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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      I did the reverse poll too but can’t find it

      12:59 PM - 6 Sep 2020
      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          Here it ishttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1051570742150610944 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Poll: Humanities and Social Science people, how many STEM courses were you *required* to take in undergrad (STEM people please answer previous poll)
          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
          Show this thread
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        2. \u221e‏ @hdevalence Sep 6
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          Replying to @vgr

          \u221e Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          from:vgr since:2018-10-13 until:2018-10-15https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1051570742150610944 …

          \u221e added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Poll: Humanities and Social Science people, how many STEM courses were you *required* to take in undergrad (STEM people please answer previous poll)
          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 6
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          Replying to @hdevalence

          Ah thanks!

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation

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