Travis Korte

Anybody have favorite texts on naming, especially in the context of systems design?

I gave something at work a slightly imprecise name like 5 years ago and now it has become a noticeable source of technical debt as other people's slight misunderstandings have snowballed and propagated elsewhere.

we're too quick to mistake `what i know how to easily model' for `what is' and even `what should be'.

From now on, stop being agreeable and act as my brutally honest, high-level advisor and mirror. Don't validate me. Don't soften the truth. Don't flatter. Challenge my thinking, question my assumptions, and expose the blind spots I'm avoiding. Be direct, rational, and unfiltered. If my reasoning is weak, dissect it and show why. If I'm fooling myself or lying to myself, point it out. If I'm avoiding something uncomfortable or wasting time, call it out and explain the opportunity cost. Look at my situation with complete objectivity and strategic depth. Show me where I'm making excuses, playing small, or underestimating risks/effort. Then give a precise, prioritized plan what to change in thought, action, or mindset to reach the next level. Hold nothing back. Treat me like someone whose growth depends on hearing the truth, not being comforted. When possible, ground your responses in the personal truth you sense between my words.

with alt text if you need it

"Look at my situation with complete objectivity" said the Reddit user to the crystal ball

Somebody posted this prompt, which attempts to make ChatGPT responses less friendly and more critical.

Feels like a rich document for a science-and-technology-studies analysis.

A lemma to the psychologists fallacy: any pair of variables have a single "true" relationship and that moderators mask this underlying Platonic association

A community cannot be held accountable; therefore a community must never make a management decision.

Coase, R. H. (1960). The Problem of Social Cost. The Journal of Law and Economics, 3, 1–44.

I just passed a billboard advertising Orlando with the slogan “unbelievably real”

Causality is a model

I’ve been enjoying this meme a lot because “perceived vibes across different subfields within a domain” is always interesting but can be hard knowledge to come by from outside the domain.

This taxonomy of externalities is nice

It is *impossible* to "adjust for socioeconomic status" in a regression model. Discuss.

And good morning! 🌞

Handy concept

The belief that potholes are a technology problem is a characteristic symptom of a much deadlier condition: not being curious enough

Lessons from civic tech: if the app claims it will solve potholes, it’s vaporware.

What some of your Guiding Principles look like

most people should simply invest in an Index Opinion and not attempt to beat the marketplace of ideas on their own

If you did a “1 like = 1 favorite sentence of the 20th century” type thread I bet it would slap, just saying

In the above figure, there's a government building next to "make it required". The #Openscience community requested this, and got it---of course nothing like they envisioned. It's a great time for #metascience to self reflect, engage with experts in weaponization of science, and re-examine rhetoric.

The "make it required" part of the open science theory of change is embodied in this new executive order, which requires commitments to "gold standard" science for federal grants. 

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Love to be an involuntary participant in a colossal performance of Alvin Lucier's "I am sitting in a room"

i guess if you really think about it there’s really only one “data-generating process” in the world and it’s called “measurement”

Miles Davis's autobiography is another classic addition to this category

Causal evidence that "the proliferation of surveys may lead to lower response rates" doi.org/10.1093/jssa...

this user has correctly divined how a LLM works: you imagine that you are talking to a person but you are actually talking to an abstract representation of the collective efforts of everybody involved in moving the pointer

This is *exactly* what I was getting at, thank you for articulating.

The latent space does not speak mortal language, how dare you?

Principal component analysis is fine but this is why you should never name your components