SuperBoB » philosophy

I wish I had it as bad as these workers

bob — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:31:04 +0000

Apparently workers at Carlsberg could drink beer throughout the day at work previously. The company has tightened up though by removing company provided beer coolers and limiting beer drinking to breaks and lunch. Although I understand that it would be super cool to be able to drink all day, they were working in what you could call a light manufacturing environment. You don’t necessarily want tipsy forklift drivers or machine operators. I would be pretty excited to go on break and have the company provide me with a beer. I guess it’s all in setting expectations. Apparently, if you had previously been able to drink all day, then now only being able to drink three or four times during the workday is so bad that you have to strike. Oh well.

Hierarchical Temporal Memory

bob — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:04:06 +0000

Jeff Hawkins can do more than revolutionary PDA’s. He has published a paper on a model of memory built up from very small pieces. I read a blog article on how this can relate to current systems such as a Bayesian network. The talk from TED is very interesting, and after hearing it I happened across a couple different articles that talk about the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon. They situations make a lot of sense when considered in light of this memory model. I read Marvin Minsky’s Society of Mind many years ago, and I think Hawkins has gone more in depth on one specific piece of this. The two works are self-reinforcing, in my opinion.

Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented

bob — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:26:52 +0000

I read an interesting article on Daily Galaxy about the nature of Math. Does Math exist without our interpretation. This seems like one of those Quantum Observer phenomena. I also read an article in the Telegraph about how babies seem to inherently know some Math. Do they “invent” Math in the womb or in there early months? Is there some basic notions passed down through genetics? This second question is not science fiction. Instinct could be considered knowledge that is passed down genetically. So is there some evolutionary benefit to incredibly fast learning of mathematical principles? Is there some benefit to “instinctively” knowing some of these principles? I think that the actual answer to these questions will shed more insight on how we are put together.

Maybe Gattaca will pass us by

bob — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:57:28 +0000

I don’t remember when I first saw the movie Gattaca, but it was well after the Human Genome Project had started its work. It seemed then, and still does, that somebody would discriminate based on what your genes contain. Reading this recent article on Ars Technica reminded me of this great movie. I think I have some conspiracy theorist traits. Maybe it’s genetic. In any case, I could always see the argument being made as possible though not necessarily probable. Where before, I thought NASA could do something similar, it is much easier to see how insurance companies would try to skirt any such law if passed. In a rational world, an insurance company would try to keep costs down by factoring in additional “risks”. That doesn’t necessarily mean they would deny coverage for a condition, but certainly raise premiums. I think John Timmer makes some good points on why this is a slippery slope, which usually means it is a bad idea. The problem is that even if every individual at an insurance company realized that it was a bad idea to discriminate, which wouldn’t happen, it is too easy to deny that the problem would affect them personally and thus the biases would still creep in to underwriting and policies. Without the personal connection to customers, the customers are just numbers in a database, and thus it is more difficult for a sense of ethics to enter in. Of course it is wrong to treat a person with less than the best I can offer, but is it wrong to treat a number this way? In any case, I have read the earlier version of the bill that was passed by the Senate and hope that it does become law. As usual though, I expect this to be the beginning of a conversation, not the end.

How do you define ironic?

bob — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:25:51 +0000

What about a PETA group killing 97% of the animals it took in? I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just ironic.

Attitude is important

bob — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:21:12 +0000

I read this article today about having a positive attitude. I have been talking with people a lot lately about good attitudes, and I think many people don’t believe that attitude helps. I’ve also gone through a period of depression and understand that sometimes you don’t want to feel better, but overall a good attitude is a good thing.

Didn’t get enough fun with housing finances, try cars

bob — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:01:07 +0000

The LA Times has an interesting article on car financing. It seems like CDO’s part two, but obviously has been going on long enough that it preceded what we have learned about ARM loans, namely don’t give someone a loan that they can’t afford. What I will be curious to see is if the securities industry and the financial offices tied to the auto makers do the same deny, deny, throw themselves at the mercy of the government dance that went on/is going on in the housing market. In any event, this seems likely that it will suck for all of those in underwater loans, and probably the tax payers. Even if it sucks for the banks, it won’t be in proportion to their share of the responsibility.

Quantity over quality

bob — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:27:57 +0000

I don’t think I have seen a manager who could handle the concept of an efficient worker. This isn’t an anomaly, it’s the way the world works. If we are to treat everybody equally, than it’s obvious that someone cannot work half as much. If a company actually wanted results, they would be looking to hire someone like Albert for 25 to 30 hours a week, but most companies today (unless they are under 50 employees) could not understand the concept of “don’t waste my time”. Too bad.

Remind me again how we win this war

bob — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:32:48 +0000

I ran across an interesting article today from The Huffington Post titled “I’m Plotting to blow up LAX”. The content is OK, I guess, but what struck me as odd was my own reaction. Just going by the title, I wasn’t going to click on the link to read the article, because I didn’t want to be associated with any such idea. It occurs to me that this is how the brainwashing of normal people starts. “Someone” wants you to start thinking a certain way, and manipulates or manages your environment until you start thinking that way. I don’t know who that someone is, or even if they exist, but I do think it’s a shame that I would be afraid to click on a link on the Internet because of what it said. There are cases where I would be better off not clicking on a link, but certainly one mouse-click does not prove my ringing endorsement of any content that it points to. It’s important to remember this sometimes.

Where I work

bob — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 01:10:47 +0000

I love almost all the people I work with, so I have to question what went wrong. When I started with my current employer, I was young and eager, but lately work is best summed up by this post. It’s not so much that my job sucks, but that the overall atmosphere is mediocre. I could be mediocre anywhere, but I would rather excel at a job that I like. I want to challenge and be challenged, not flattened out into some compromised shapeless mass of a “resource”. I want to work at the equivalent of a hometown grocer and cater to the customer, not become a faceless chain, which it feels like my employer is becoming.