Robin's blog

I came across the idea of memetic inoculation in the article   Every Complex Idea Has a Million Stupid Cousins . The basic gist of it (summarizing it is ironic when you understand the article) is that a complex idea is very difficult to communicate. So, those trying to communicate it, tend to simplify it. The simplified idea can seem stupid at the first glance. The listener attributes the apparent stupidity of the abstraction to the idea itself. The more "stupid" abstractions the listener comes across, the more the belief the idea itself is stupid take root in the mind of the listener. It can easily reach a point where at the mere mention of the idea, the listener dismisses it without trying to understand it. This is the concept of memetic inoculation. Multiple encounters with stupid abstractions cause the complex idea to be rejected outright.  Mark P Xu Neyer , the author of the article puts the concept in these steps (mostly taken from the article, with editorializing for m

T hree years ago, I kept running into a frustrating problem - one of those issues that people create start-ups over. The local newspaper delivery system was shady. They wouldn't give me a receipt for the monthly payment, all records were kept in a book they maintained, and cash-only payment frequently meant that they'd pocket the change, even though they pretended to write down details in their book; the details curiously missing the next time they showed up for cash. Were I more entrepreneurial, I might have created a start-up that let people buy and pay for newspapers subscriptions online and provide a professional service. I'd have failed, given my utter lack of people-skills and logistics being a nightmare to maintain. So, I did what my aversion to conflict prodded me towards. I cancelled my newspaper subscription; the first time I truly had been without a newspaper since childhood. I t was great for a while. I was able to focus more on news that I wanted to read, rathe

The screen of my OnePlus 3 is coming off, the software updates stopped in 2019 and I need to get a new phone. Right on cue, Apple releases the iPhone SE. Those who know me wouldn't be mistaken in their assumption that I'm not going to consider an iPhone. This time, however, is different. TLDR; Security updates I'm one of those, who has always recommended Android over iPhone. My reasons were simple: Android is based on Linux and is Open Source. It has more features. One can easily sideload apps. One can easily customize it. Backup to a PC is easier. I would then go futher and say that one should go for Google Pixel, OnePlus and Samsung over other Android vendors because of Software updates. It is increasingly more important to keep the OS on our phones updated. So, let's look at the reasons for my recommendations over the years and see if they still hold true. 1. Android is based on Linux and is Open Source. Technically True, but practically False Let

What is the Monty Hall problem? The Monty Hall Problem is a famous statistic brain teaser, which has a counter-intuitive solution Wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem The brain teaser is as follows: The player is in a game show and has to choose from one of three doors Two of these doors lead to a goat each Only one leads to a car The player chooses one door at random, since they have no way of knowing the correct door The host then looks behind the other two doors and reveals one of them showing a goat The player now has the opportunity to keep his original guess, or switch to the remaining door The statistics answer is: switching to the remaining door gives you a 2/3 chance of winning. It's counter-intuitive, and that's why, we need to prove it. Ok. let's simulate this by replicating the steps of the original problem In [1]: import random Check if the door picked at random is 1/3 probabil