🎓 Dr. Freemo 
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@freemo@social.cleverlibre.org
- UFoI Member
- http://UFoI.org/u/freemo/
- Website
- http://JeffreyFreeman.me
- Gitlab
- https://git.qoto.org/freemo
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Jeffrey Phillips Freeman
Innovator & Entrepreneur in Machine Learning, Evolutionary Computing & Big Data. Avid SCUBA diver, Open-source developer, HAM radio operator, astrophotographer, and anything nerdy.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, USA, currently living in Utrecht, Netherlands, USA, and Thailand. Was also living in Israel, but left.
Pronouns: Sir / Mister
(Above pronouns are not intended to mock, i will respect any persons pronouns and only wish pronouns to show respect be used with me as well. These are called neopronouns, see an example of the word "frog" used as a neopronoun here: http://tinyurl.com/44hhej89 )
A proud member of the Penobscot Native American tribe, as well as a Mayflower passenger descendant. I sometimes post about my genealogical history.
My stance on various issues:
Education: Free to PhD, tax paid
Abortion: Protected, tax paid, limited time-frame
Welfare: Yes, no one should starve
UBI: No, use welfare
Racism: is real
Guns: Shall not be infringed
LGBT+/minorities: Support
Pronouns: Will respect
Trump: Moron, evil
Biden: Senile, racist
Police: ACAB
Drugs: Fully legal, no prescriptions needed
GPG/PGP Fingerprint: 8B23 64CD 2403 6DCB 7531 01D0 052D DA8E 0506 CBCE
Joined Jul 2018
@noellabo Man sometimes my translator picks the oddest translations. The second paragraph translated to:
"Well, it's a master's commit, so at the moment it feels like it's easier to test against a follow-up mackerel."
lol what in the world is a follow-up mackerel :)
@matrix Its pretty much the only reason a woman would have to interact with a man in the first place. So pretty much the only reason the species exists :)
The picture you attached to your last post does not depict a normal distribution and the distribution depicted in the various charts have no relationship to the normal distribution. As you can see none of the following phrases appear in the image "Normal Distribution", "Bell Curve", "Gaussian Distribution".
> Willingness to work, intelligence, perceptivity, random inspiration, it all falls on a bell curve. If the only poor people were the ones who were doing it wrong, then wealth distribution would also fall on a bell curve.
Again, no, that is not at all true.. Even if we assume those qualities fall on a bell curve that does not imply wealth would fall on a bell curve, though youd have a hard time arguing if those qualities even really do fall on a bell curve at all
> Normal distributions are only valid on unbound data
>
> Normal distributions are completely valid estimations on bound data
Also not correct, and im not just talking about a matter of opinion here, it is literally incorrect by the **definition** of the normal distribution in the first place. Let me explain why, its actually fairly easy to understand.
The normal distribution is another word for "bell curve", it is also called the gaussian distribution, all these terms refer to the same thing, and its a specific equation, a function. It takes an input (x) and produces an output (y), x is the random variable you want to know about and y is the chance of x being observed when randomly selected from the group. So it is an equation f(x). while the specific shape of the normal distribution can vary depending on a few constants (variance and mean) the equation always has a few universal properties. One that is relevant to what we are discussing is that for **all** normal distributions for any input, x, the output must and always will be a positive value that is greater than 0. This is the reason why it is not valid on bounded data and why a different distribution is required to represent bounded data.
This should be obvious now why, but let me give a more concrete example to drive it home. Lets say we are talking about the age of people in a population, this is bounded data, no one can be younger than 0 years old. so it is single-sided bound random variable. If we look at the probability in the population of a randomly selected person being a particular age you will quickly see that the normal distribution fails. If I ask the normal distribution "If i select someone from the population randomly what is the change their age will be -12 years old" you will get a positive non-zero value, suggesting that there are people in the population who are younger than a 0 year old, which obviously isnt true.
Statistics is literally my expertise and I cant emphasize strongly enough that no, normal distributions make absolutely no sense when applied to bounded data, single or double bounded. It only applies to unbounded data. We have different distributions for that.
@2ck The IO aspect of haskell is a bit of a nightmare as you say. I think its the most annoying part for newcomers. It is the consequence of wanting a pure functional language and the reason why almost every functional language out there is not pure, most people feel the barrier isnt worth it.
It really just depends on what your doing if it has value or not I guess, but many would argue that the IO stuff is haskells biggest shortcoming.
Its a complex topic. As a general rule high-risk means your money will move, up or down, at a faster rate than low risk. They are neither inherently good or bad but can result in people loosing or gaining wealth int he blink of an eye if don't indiscriminately.
If someone is to become wealthy, and do so in a way that is likely to be stable and pass that wealth on for multiple generations, then it requires a lot of study and understanding of many things, one of which (and that a lot of schools teach aspiring entrepreneurs) is risk management. No one teaches you to take less risk, risk is good, but they do teach you how to manage risk to ensure that the risk works for you and not against you.
The people you describe sound like people who most of the elements to make it plus some really good luck that turned on them later... They did the hard work to invest in themselves, to move up, to grow their company. But by the sound of it they never did the hard work around study and knowledge needed to be proficient at keeping it or how to handle risk. Basically they had just enough of the equation to be dangerous, enough to make it when the stars align, but not enough knowledge to know to secure, keep or manage that wealth once they grew large enough to have wealth at all.
Sadly this is common, self-made millionaires often loose their money because they skipped a few essential skills and got there more by determination, hard work, and risk taking, with little study and expertise, you really need both.
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I haven't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to reply to:
> Yes, almost everyone has some influence over their financial situation, and that influence is tiny
I don't know about the "tiny" part. I have some anecdotal experience with seeing two different people become millionaires independently (one relative, one friend), and taking up their whole family up with them, after being extremely poor people literally selling cheap clothes on the sidewalk to afford food at one point (both of them did that for some weird cosmic coincidental reason).
Both people had starkly different behavior from anyone around them; mainly extreme risk taking, and very strong workaholism. And I mean that in a very pronounced way, like, take for example the relative, whom I know more about. While other poor family members were trying to "find a job" or "wait for the next paycheck", or whatever, that guy was literally sneaking up to war-torn countries to organize shipments of goods and drive them under direct artillery fire. Every venture that person organized was totally funded by someone else, he would talk to many people, and convince them to fund the craziest of ideas, and on many occasions traveled to other countries without having the money to come back. He got shot at least one time. He was attacked with bats by some Ukrainian mafias at some other point. At his height he owned a manufacturing company of a few thousand employees in China, which he founded himself to produce goods which he sold to his home country, and its neighbors. He had many branches around the world, a handful of villas, and a bunch of land here and there.
I don't know how much of that is inherent personal traits, how much of it conscious change. I know, from older relatives, that this person was never like that initially, and his personality was very different up to some point where he kinda changed. I don't know how he changed though.
Personally, I've also seen huge changes in my material condition directly tied to changes in mindset and "hard-work" (I kinda hate the term). And I was sure to note that the mindset changes came first (often introduced by meeting people who became "my role model", but mostly through the internet and books tbh), and it caused me to initiate the exploration in search of chances, and the exploitation of chances found.
Well, but here's the kicker, both of those people are no longer millionaires, both of them lost most of their wealth. One to the financial crisis of 2008, and one to the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Such anecdotes seem to me to show that "everyone has HUGE influence over their financial situation", but also "The world can Completely Destroy You, in a blink of an eye". It seems to be possible to explain this overall with the "the higher the risk, the higher the reward" kinda thing. And don't just skim over the "risk" part. The other family members who remained relatively poor never took such massive risks, but they never faced "millions of dollars in debt and shot in the chest by some random mafia" either. Low risk, low reward.
Of course this is all anecdotal evidence, and it's not enough for ultimate conclusions. So take of it what you will. I think that there are tons of outside factors, but it's one's own choice whether to optimize for safety and stability, or to optimize for risk taking and opportunity. Choose the wrong thing to optimize for, at the wrong time, and you're dead. And you can't know for certain what the wrong time is.
Ain't life so much fun /s
I haven't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to reply to:
> Yes, almost everyone has some influence over their financial situation, and that influence is tiny
I don't know about the "tiny" part. I have some anecdotal experience with seeing two different people become millionaires independently (one relative, one friend), and taking up their whole family up with them, after being extremely poor people literally selling cheap clothes on the sidewalk to afford food at one point (both of them did that for some weird cosmic coincidental reason).
Both people had starkly different behavior from anyone around them; mainly extreme risk taking, and very strong workaholism. And I mean that in a very pronounced way, like, take for example the relative, whom I know more about. While other poor family members were trying to "find a job" or "wait for the next paycheck", or whatever, that guy was literally sneaking up to war-torn countries to organize shipments of goods and drive them under direct artillery fire. Every venture that person organized was totally funded by someone else, he would talk to many people, and convince them to fund the craziest of ideas, and on many occasions traveled to other countries without having the money to come back. He got shot at least one time. He was attacked with bats by some Ukrainian mafias at some other point. At his height he owned a manufacturing company of a few thousand employees in China, which he founded himself to produce goods which he sold to his home country, and its neighbors. He had many branches around the world, a handful of villas, and a bunch of land here and there.
I don't know how much of that is inherent personal traits, how much of it conscious change. I know, from older relatives, that this person was never like that initially, and his personality was very different up to some point where he kinda changed. I don't know how he changed though.
Personally, I've also seen huge changes in my material condition directly tied to changes in mindset and "hard-work" (I kinda hate the term). And I was sure to note that the mindset changes came first (often introduced by meeting people who became "my role model", but mostly through the internet and books tbh), and it caused me to initiate the exploration in search of chances, and the exploitation of chances found.
Well, but here's the kicker, both of those people are no longer millionaires, both of them lost most of their wealth. One to the financial crisis of 2008, and one to the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Such anecdotes seem to me to show that "everyone has HUGE influence over their financial situation", but also "The world can Completely Destroy You, in a blink of an eye". It seems to be possible to explain this overall with the "the higher the risk, the higher the reward" kinda thing. And don't just skim over the "risk" part. The other family members who remained relatively poor never took such massive risks, but they never faced "millions of dollars in debt and shot in the chest by some random mafia" either. Low risk, low reward.
Of course this is all anecdotal evidence, and it's not enough for ultimate conclusions. So take of it what you will. I think that there are tons of outside factors, but it's one's own choice whether to optimize for safety and stability, or to optimize for risk taking and opportunity. Choose the wrong thing to optimize for, at the wrong time, and you're dead. And you can't know for certain what the wrong time is.
Ain't life so much fun /s
> Yes that would be the “wheel of fortune” I mentioned.
Yes I realize that is what you were thinking of. But as I said this isnt an isolated incident, virtually every one of my past students, of which there are many dozens, almost every single one who made it past a year of tutoring had similar success. This shows me my situation was not just some luck on a wheel of fortune but rather a consistent and predictable result that the vast majority of people can achieve.
> There are billions of people working their ass off in near-starving conditions, many from a young age, many using the library, all trying to figure out how to make 6 figures, and only a handful of them have succeeded.
I think this statement right here is where the error in your logic takes place. It assumes that my argument is basically "anyone who works hard will become rich", however that is not at all what I am trying to say. Hard work in and of itself is not enough to ensure financial success. I could work really really hard trying to learn how to fit 6 billard balls in my mouth and even if I make the world record in that category after a life time of hard work I wouldnt expect you to walk away a millionaire from such a venture. In other words, hard work in and of itself, does not guarantee you financial security (nor should it). Much like a person running around in a circle will do all the same work as someone running in a straight line, but wont get anywhere.
What DOES matter is if you do the hard work that is needed, over an extended period of time, and it is invested explicitly into marketable skills or marketable investments, then, and only then, will you have a very good chance of being financially stable. So while I agree there are a great many people working hard and never becoming particularly well off financially, that really isnt saying much, what matters is how many of those people are 1) in the USA or a country of comparable opportunity and 2) are working hard and investing in their own marketable skills and resources. For most people in poverty in the USA who do in fact work hard, and there are many, are almost always the people who are not investing that hard work in themselves but rather in short term gains. If you invest 5 hours a day working a register at mcdonalds you are working hard but you wont get very far. If you invest 8 hours a day, 5 working a register at mcdonalds and 3 at a library hard in study of marketable skills or working in starting your own company with those 3 hours, then there stands a good chance of your success.
> Most who try to “work hard” though only end up perpetuating their own suffering.
I agree with this too by the way. Hard Work isnt enough and if all you do is put in hard work but dont invest it in the right places it will eventually break you and likely make you not want to try at all, that is unfortunate. Which is why it is important for people to understand that hardwork without the proper direction isnt enough. I dont like to see hard work wasted because as you say, that can really bring a person down.
> Forgive me for being skeptical about the efficacy of your method, because if what you say is true, then wealth would be evenly distributed over a bell curve, where the few who were most able and willing to do the hard work made the most money
I wouldnt say this statement is true either.. As we already covered it isnt just about hard work, so that already invalidates the assertion here. But even if it was the assumption would be that hard work follows a normal distribution as well, and thats an assumption which im not sure is true. Fair systems (and im not saying the system **is** fair) does not imply that it will follow a normal distribution.
In fact everything else aside we know that even if the underlying properties that determine wealth were themselves normally distributed we can in fact conclude that wealth in a society would not, in that case, be normally distributed. Normal distributions are only valid on unbound data. That is, where the x axis goes infinitely in both directions. Wealth however is single-sided bound in any practical sense, as such it would be literally impossible for wealth distribution to ever follow a normal distribution (bell curve), it would have to follow a one-sided bound distribution at a minimum, which looks nothing like a bell curve.
@blinkwarp A lot of people here like to avoid any conversations about politics. so its hardly limited to just you :) Its why i am always careful to hashtag the conversation so it can be easily filtered out.
@blinkwarp understandable it can be a difficult topic to avoid this time of the year.
@slb See this post where I list my main concerns with Biden: https://qoto.org/@freemo/105124109736416282
@blinkwarp How so, whats the concern? I have seen a few mentions and discussions around it but nothing that would "screw up" the whole timeline. Just dont like seeing it at all? You can filter out by hashtag if that is the case.
@valleyforge I felt like they laid into it way too thick from the very first episode. I could only get through a few episodes before i couldnt stand it and had to stop.
@slb Im not a trump supporter, but I do think Biden is one of the most dangerous politicians weve seen in a while. I wouldnt go so far as to say he would end the world, but he is very very scary.
I blocked him a long time ago.. he usually just trolls and mentioned random nonsense.
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Does anyone consider #haskell to be their most productive language? Tracing and debugging other people's code happens to be the most common thing I do (because writing expressive, stable, non-leaky abstractions is hard), but it's like pulling teeth in Haskell. If I understand correctly, I need to map into an IO monad (or whatever the hell you call it) just to print out some value in a function: how do you get anything done this way?
@2ck I find haskell to be the funnest language to work in.. I do not find it to be particularly productive, however, since it has far fewer libraries and support than other languages. So that means any projects i do in it get limited contributors and have a limited collection of libraries. Ultimately this makes it a less productive language for me and often rules it out as an option for new projects even when I would love to use it.
There is so much to unload in that statement.
For starters lets be clear I do recognize and agree that there are plenty of examples of governments where the laws are designed in such a way that is unfair for those in poverty and makes it harder to get out of poverty than I'd like.
With that said, I certainly wouldnt adopt the idea from this statement you made:
> Yes, almost everyone has some influence over their financial situation, and that influence is tiny, doesn’t matter.
As someone who grew up in absolute poverty, on welfare, had to grow up in a home with 4 generations under the same small roof and never even had a room of my own until much later in life, someone who later made my own success and am now financially successful, I can say first hand, at least in the USA, that nothing can be farther from the truth.
My success didnt come at the whim of some rich person, no one gave me a chance, I worked my ass off in near-starving conditions to get there on my own. I spent my free time at the library, I studied at a very young age, and by the time I was 15 years old I figured out how to make 6 figures from a house hold that otherwise could barely feed me.
I've been through the process, I've seen it first hand, and I can say without a doubt int he USA we have a great deal of power to define our own financial freedom. While that doesnt mean the system is fair, and it doesnt mean you have the same advantage as someone born rich, it is clear the notion of ones control over their own financial health as being insignificant is simply not the reality.
I should also point out I spend a good deal of my free time tutoring young adults in subjects that they cant afford to go to college to learn, in the hopes they can use that knowledge to get out of poverty on their own. I never give these people dumps of money or give them favors to start them out in life, the only thing I do is spend a year or more helping them study and learn marketable skills. Virtually everyone I ever taught who lasted a year without quiting went on to make very good money and be successful despite having a start in life of poverty...
So I also know im not the exception, I've seen dozens of people go from rags to riches due to their own hard work and study and little more. So even if we agree that the cards may be stacked against them it is also clear that most people have a great deal of influence on their financial standing, the system may not be fair, but you do have a lot of the power to change your situation despite this.
Thats just pure hyperbole and not really what was said at all. Obviously simply having a thought will not fix the problem. However patterns of thinking reflect patterns of action. How you plan to spend money you don't yet have is an indication of how you will spend that money when the time comes that you do have it. Thoughts alone may not get you from rags to riches, but when those thoughts represent your financial plans for the future or in general then absolutely and of course it will be an indicator of financial success to some degree.
With that said there needs to be more than just positive thoughts and there are absolutely external factors that may work for or against you as well.
- UFoI Member
- http://UFoI.org/u/freemo/
- Website
- http://JeffreyFreeman.me
- Gitlab
- https://git.qoto.org/freemo
Admin
Jeffrey Phillips Freeman
Innovator & Entrepreneur in Machine Learning, Evolutionary Computing & Big Data. Avid SCUBA diver, Open-source developer, HAM radio operator, astrophotographer, and anything nerdy.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, USA, currently living in Utrecht, Netherlands, USA, and Thailand. Was also living in Israel, but left.
Pronouns: Sir / Mister
(Above pronouns are not intended to mock, i will respect any persons pronouns and only wish pronouns to show respect be used with me as well. These are called neopronouns, see an example of the word "frog" used as a neopronoun here: http://tinyurl.com/44hhej89 )
A proud member of the Penobscot Native American tribe, as well as a Mayflower passenger descendant. I sometimes post about my genealogical history.
My stance on various issues:
Education: Free to PhD, tax paid
Abortion: Protected, tax paid, limited time-frame
Welfare: Yes, no one should starve
UBI: No, use welfare
Racism: is real
Guns: Shall not be infringed
LGBT+/minorities: Support
Pronouns: Will respect
Trump: Moron, evil
Biden: Senile, racist
Police: ACAB
Drugs: Fully legal, no prescriptions needed
GPG/PGP Fingerprint: 8B23 64CD 2403 6DCB 7531 01D0 052D DA8E 0506 CBCE
Joined Jul 2018
