A good example of this is the phenomenon of prodigies. We know there are some people in society who are exceptionally talented in certain areas, and we call these people prodigies. We then have certain schemas that we apply to these prodigies in our quest for wisdom.

But even though prodigies clearly exist, our schemas often seem to not hold up so well. For example, studies have shown that child prodigies are often not significantly more successful than the rest of us when they grow up. And similarly, many prodigious adults were completely unremarkable as children. Why is this? How is it possible for such exceptional children not to make anything of themselves, and for such exceptional adults to have been completely average as children?

Malcolm Gladwell observes that the reason for this is because when we describe child prodigies, we are describing people who are gifted at learning. Whereas when we describe adult prodigies, we are actually describing people are gifted at doing.

Because we are applying one set of sensemaking tools to both groups, our schemas tend to not hold up so well even though they are based on an underlying truth. The solution to this is to create one set of schemas for understanding and dealing with child prodigies, and another set of schemas for understanding and dealing with adult prodigies.

There are often areas where we engage in fuzzy thinking, and apply one toolset to multiple distinct phenomena. Philosophers and thinkers can create enormous value by identifying distinct phenomena, and giving suggestions for how to think about each one.

PG actually does this in his essay How to Make Wealth. He observes that money and wealth are not the same thing so we should think about them differently. Specifically, that money is sort of an abstraction of wealth, but for various reasons we can benefit from thinking about wealth on a lower level. Providing the sort of disambiguation that this essay does is really valuable, which is why this is arguably the most useful of all the PG essays.

It seems like with math we start with something we know is true but not necessarily useful (like just the concept of a line) and then we abstract our way to usefulness. This is opposed to philosophy, which generally takes the stance that all models are false but some models are useful. In philosophy we usually start with something that is useful in certain situations but not necessarily universally true, and then we disambiguate our way down toward truthfulness. I don't really see a problem with philosophy as long as it is empirically useful under at least in certain conditions.

I feel there are two major issues with philosophy today:

1. No "philosophical method" the same way there is a scientific method, which means philosophy doesn't really build on each other from one philosopher to the next.

2. No real way to categorize ideas the same way you can categorize physics research, which makes it hard to find prior art. So even though Malcolm Gladwell and PG make really good arguments, there is no guarantee that people in the future will use these arguments. As opposed to science where is something is proven true it becomes the basis for future works.

That wins for world's dorkiest tattoo. Dorkier than the golden ratio. Dorkier than e^{i\pi} \eq -1, and maybe dorkier than using latex notation in a web forum :)

And the reason he wanted to remove them is not because he wants to 'dumb down' the language, but rather because list comprehensions do what filter/map/reduce can do 9 times out of 10 but end up a lot more legible. He says as much in that post. But again, if you really want those functions, they still exist in Python and will exist in the future.

I think this is the original article, no broken text and Bjarne Stroustrup's answers as a bonus.

news.YC has editors, right?

As for Rand's limited influence on subsequent development in philosophy, that's an interesting point. Why is this the case? Even if you disagree with Rand's philosophy, I think it's pretty outrageous that her work isn't even mentioned in more university philosophy programs. There are only a few other philosophers whose work provides as complete a system for understanding reality, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of ethics (I'd include Aristotle, Plato, and Hegel as others that are similarly complete, but there aren't too many after that).

So why is Rand's work not taught more often? I'd say that is mostly the result of the biases and predilections of the typical university philosophy department.

I think that's the point. Classes are as great as teachers make them! So find a great teacher and you'll have your best class ever.

And if you have a chance to TA, do it. You learn a lot more by teaching than you do by being taught.

Don't worry about sort algorithms when your n is small.

A real example: with social networks, you can make some reasonable assumptions that people will have hundreds, perhaps thousands of 'friends'.

For many activities (not DB selects), that's a small value.

loll: To hang extended from the mouth, as the tongue of an ox or a dog when heated with labor or exertion.