I'm a psychologist whose research is close to this area. (Maybe in this area?)
The Quora post is kind of a trifecta of topics that tend to elicit very internet-y types of controversies for lack of a better way of putting it.
I can't speak for Peterson, to provide some context, I can understand where he's coming from. There are researchers of all sorts of backgrounds who spend a fair amount of time studying empirically the contours of human behavioral and psychological individual differences, and there are certain ideas that come up in the popular discourse, and persist despite their being a scientific literature that speaks against them in one way or another. They resonate with people because they do have variously sized kernels of truth to them, but somehow the scientific literature never gets injected into public discourse. This eventually feeds back, though, in textbooks and standardized exams, and it's like you're constantly fighting a battle for precision of terms.
Here's a small sampling of things that will trigger a response like that of Peterson on Quora: EQ, grit, Myers-Briggs.
The new MCAT is an example of this--the behavioral sciences section is horribly outdated in certain sections. I'm not sure how it got the way it is. But it's a major test, so now you have to teach to it, which then leads to a distorted perception of psychology and behavioral sciences by who are interested in the biomedical sciences, which then leads to all sorts of strawman arguments, and so forth and so on. It's like if the biology section included a section on intelligent design or something.
Anyway, the problem with something like EQ is that yes, there are non-cognitive determinants of success: empathy, social perceptual skills, perseveration, conscientiousness, socioeconomic background, and so forth and so on. So EQ captures this vague idea that IQ isn't everything.
The problem is that saying "IQ isn't everything" doesn't mean that a construct like EQ, which basically means "non-cognitive traits", is empirically precise and contributes something meaningful above and beyond other constructs mentioned by Peterson. These kinds of discussions create problems, because they create this false sense that if you argue against EQ, you're arguing against the idea of non-cognitive determinants of functioning, or arguing that IQ tests can't be improved, which is a false argument. Rather, what Peterson is saying is that there are well-characterized constructs like Big Five Agreeableness, or Conscientiousness, which have demonstrated predictive validity, and that are empirically coherent and precise enough to be more-or-less workable for lots of theories. That doesn't mean you can't be more precise; it just means that they represent a certain baseline of precision.
Contributing to this a certain confusion about what's meant by "thingness" in these literatures. Behavioral scientists are often studying actions, states, experiences, which are not physical in the sense of being objects (even though supervenience holds, so physical things underlie them), which is a little more abstract than what people are used to thinking about. So there's predictably some offshoot discussion about that issue. It's a bit like arguing that DL nets aren't things because they aren't instantiated directly in neuromorphic chips.
You're right to be critical of the idea that IQ is everything. But I can see where Peterson is coming from in certain respects.
If you look at them, you'll see that Julia is indeed crazy fast in some cases. But in other cases, the performance is kind of middling. The native threads implementation of matmul is obscenely fast, but the "pure Julia" implementation is pretty slow--faster than R or Python for sure, but not in the same ballpark as C.
You could argue "well, why would you not use the native threads implementation in that case?" However, for someone implementing a routine in Julia, the implementation would be the pure one. That's the point.
With something like Rust, or Crystal, or Nim, what is promised is basically what you get: something in the ballpark of C. But with Julia, I feel like it's kind of unpredictable.
The problem is that the slow parts end up being a bottleneck that slows down the rest of the code, and that slow code is slow enough that it's not worth it relative to C or Python/R. That is, if you're writing heavy numerics, when you get to 20x slower than C, you might as well write it in C (or Rust or Crystal or Nim), and wrap Python or R around it, because that 20x is enough to kill it. At that point you might as well go with the established language even though it's 100x slower as an interface, and use something fast for the heavy lifting.
Crystal I can't say much about. It seems great, but the "everything is an object" makes me nervous--I tend to get anxious about inheritance because it drives me nuts. Nim seems more attractive to me. But who knows--it's also not like you can't have more than one language out there.
I see, thanks for that info on Julia's performance.
As for OOP, I feel like that's more a matter of preference. I don't buy the functional is better (generally speaking not specific situations where it might be). But I could be wrong, I just don't see evidence, only anecdotal claims by fans of functional programming (which doesn't mean they're wrong only that I'm not convinced). To be fair, they have arguments against OOP in favor of functional, but I'm not personally sold. Or maybe I just like Ruby and it's approach to OOP.
Ruby did/does have a nice OOP approach. I remember when Python and Ruby were first kind of being touted as alternatives to Perl, and Ruby always seemed more well-thought out to me--the Python 2-3 split was something I sort of saw coming.
I wouldn't say I'm a functional purist (at least so far), but inheritance in particular has caused me some headaches in the past. I like Rust's approach to all of that, but it's much lower level.
Honestly, if Crystal ended up taking over the programming world, I wouldn't mind. Its a very nice language with a lot of advantages over what people are using now.
I actually agree in general with his perspective on the cartoon, but found his behavior unacceptable. The other side of the argument isn't unreasonable, even if you conclude it's maybe not the best side of the argument.
In some ways it doesn't matter, but I'm getting tired of the right setting up this dynamic where they engage in ad hominem bullshit, and then act offended when other side responds. I say this as someone who often identifies with the right--it's alienating and pushes reasonable people away. Rather than apologizing about not being respectful of Professor Beard, he becomes defensive and somehow tries to rationalize it.
Next time Taleb, could you please just take the high road in your behavior? Even if the other side is totally full of shit, and acting inappropriately, you'll look better and everyone will win by being the better one. I even agree with you and you've turned me off of your own damn arguments.
Taleb is correct to call out this cartoon as the politically correct nonsense that it is. A saner society might agree with him and ask itself why, in the current day, history needs to be rewritten to be completely fictitious.
Taleb's persona, however, does not lend itself well to open debate over such issues, as he champions himself as being a lone iconoclast against the "IYIs". All we can do is enjoy the show, I guess.
I'm not taking any sides here on the main debate! Quite the minefield!
But I did want to point out that a lot of The Black Swan - was about berating "other economists and their flawed theories". I feel he tries a lot to make it clear that he isn't an economist...
But I haven't read enough books on economics to know if this is what all economists like doing to each other.
PS: I really enjoyed that book and tried to absorb many lessons from it, but I gotta say "pop-risk" is a funny nickname for it.
> I'm getting tired of the right setting up this dynamic where they engage in ad hominem bullshit
its not different than the way the left attacks people as: racist, homophobe, mysangist, uneducated, hillbilly, etc.
the last one i find quite interesting, a party that is supposed to stand against stereotypes, labeling, and skin color references uses hillbilly / red neck a lot.
Calling someone out for being racist or bigoted in some other should be acceptable, because that behavior is not acceptable. Preventing people from being called out on their bigotry is tolerating intolerance, and we shouldn't have any of that.
I do agree it is not a real rebuttal if the other side has a point unrelated to their bigotry.
There are two types of people who are racists. Those who are racists, who already think you're an idiot, and those who are not who will then think you are an idiot.
As ever, calling people names just gets you universally thought of as an idiot.
Well not only that, but it's also like saying that an officer using force should be acceptable. It's true, but it doesn't mean that it's the only way to handle a situation, and often, claims of racism and bigotry are used to end an argument as if it were an argument itself.
I'm not saying that "the left always does that", but each side had their share of desperate ad hominem attacks, and racism accusations is one often used by those on the left (though on the right it's used, just either reworded, or subtly redefined).
I agree with this. We also need to understand that some people are too easy to offend and not worry about offending them while keeping in mind some people are legitimately the victims of racism.
It should not be something we make a knee-jerk reaction on. Real racism should be opposed and we should find a way to persuade people that playing the delicate snowflake victim card is also not appropriate.
While bigotry is generally a bad thing, the calling out has long since past any usefulness. The terms have been weaponized beyond any usefulness, and will probably lose their sting.
I don't think anyone would disagree with what you just said, but given the way prosecutors deal with "intent" sometimes, I think it would be easy for them to cross a line.
As I understand it this is the crux of the case - that the creation of such software isn't illegal, but sale with the intent to be used in the commission of a crime is. I understand the indictment is pretty barebones, so I wonder what exactly they are basing their allegations of intent on.
The Quora post is kind of a trifecta of topics that tend to elicit very internet-y types of controversies for lack of a better way of putting it.
I can't speak for Peterson, to provide some context, I can understand where he's coming from. There are researchers of all sorts of backgrounds who spend a fair amount of time studying empirically the contours of human behavioral and psychological individual differences, and there are certain ideas that come up in the popular discourse, and persist despite their being a scientific literature that speaks against them in one way or another. They resonate with people because they do have variously sized kernels of truth to them, but somehow the scientific literature never gets injected into public discourse. This eventually feeds back, though, in textbooks and standardized exams, and it's like you're constantly fighting a battle for precision of terms.
Here's a small sampling of things that will trigger a response like that of Peterson on Quora: EQ, grit, Myers-Briggs.
The new MCAT is an example of this--the behavioral sciences section is horribly outdated in certain sections. I'm not sure how it got the way it is. But it's a major test, so now you have to teach to it, which then leads to a distorted perception of psychology and behavioral sciences by who are interested in the biomedical sciences, which then leads to all sorts of strawman arguments, and so forth and so on. It's like if the biology section included a section on intelligent design or something.
Anyway, the problem with something like EQ is that yes, there are non-cognitive determinants of success: empathy, social perceptual skills, perseveration, conscientiousness, socioeconomic background, and so forth and so on. So EQ captures this vague idea that IQ isn't everything.
The problem is that saying "IQ isn't everything" doesn't mean that a construct like EQ, which basically means "non-cognitive traits", is empirically precise and contributes something meaningful above and beyond other constructs mentioned by Peterson. These kinds of discussions create problems, because they create this false sense that if you argue against EQ, you're arguing against the idea of non-cognitive determinants of functioning, or arguing that IQ tests can't be improved, which is a false argument. Rather, what Peterson is saying is that there are well-characterized constructs like Big Five Agreeableness, or Conscientiousness, which have demonstrated predictive validity, and that are empirically coherent and precise enough to be more-or-less workable for lots of theories. That doesn't mean you can't be more precise; it just means that they represent a certain baseline of precision.
Contributing to this a certain confusion about what's meant by "thingness" in these literatures. Behavioral scientists are often studying actions, states, experiences, which are not physical in the sense of being objects (even though supervenience holds, so physical things underlie them), which is a little more abstract than what people are used to thinking about. So there's predictably some offshoot discussion about that issue. It's a bit like arguing that DL nets aren't things because they aren't instantiated directly in neuromorphic chips.
You're right to be critical of the idea that IQ is everything. But I can see where Peterson is coming from in certain respects.