Red Pill's Self Service: Conclusion

Lot of things was taken for granted in the last post.
But there is something interesting about the search for clarity and avoidance of mistakes.
Everybody wants both, but it is not the search for both of them which is bad. It is the searching process which is not good enough.
If we try to avoid mistakes in the first place, we will not learn much and consequently commit more mistakes in the long run. And if we avoid confusion, we may end up with everything clear. But we will shut down the other possibilities, that is, ignoring what is not clear and may contribute to an even bigger understanding and clarity.
A good road for the avoidance of mistakes seems rather full of mistakes.
And in the same way, a good path to clarity seems in the same way flooded in confusion.
There is no contradiction in that, but sometimes a good path is full of what we want to avoid and that is what is counterintuitive.

Red Pill's Self Service

I have to make a confession: "I love to do research!"

In my job I not only can commit mistakes, but I have to. I am very happy to say that many or most of the programs I did, just not meet my expectations.
Not that I was happy at the moment, but after sometime thinking and philosophizing about the solution I got into something that might be right.
As one of my professors said, an unexpected result is not rarely a better result. 

What then? Then it is time to make another mistake. As I said, mistakes are the rule and the more I found the better I understand it.
C'mon, I dont believe in childhood all you guys believed in your mom at the first time you saw fire. Man, after seem that huge ball of incandescence pleasure with the eyes, nothing can stop a baby from putting a hand on it. I surely did tried it once.
Well if you havent, shame on you. You will never know the feeling of burning by fire. Although you can take a more orthodox position and say that fire would only cause pain and so on, I would like to remind you that this feeling can help you understand other feelings as well. And you can even extrapolate the feeling to other occasions to a certain extent. Yes, we have a model of sensations and we do can predict feelings.

Fire may not be a good example. Anyway, someday ago I for the first time I eat beet. It was nice and I learned to appreciate it in most of my days. For me it was not a big deal, but imagine if I was a cook. That could have changed my life.

What does that have to do with research? Everything, I learn the more I try it. Every experience, even a small one. And the things I did wrong not only help me understand what I do, but help me change what I do!
I would love if more people could feel this too, but sadly we learn two bad behaviors in school:
1. One is not to do mistakes (which is a terrible mistake per se).
2. To have too much clarity.

To counter the first one, we can listen to Socrates: "the knowledge come from the inside". We have to ask ourselves questions (Socratic Method). I myself can only think of learning as an iterative process. And avoid doing mistakes means stop learning. Human beings learn to like the latter and avoid the first, while they end up losing both without noticing it. (Just some little digression, we borrowed so much from Greece, but forgotten all the principles of education throughout the process. Just to remind us, the principles of education in Ancient Greece focused on the the mind, body, and imagination. We just forgot about the last two and modified the first one to fit in our economic system)

The second one,  I do not need to say much I think. The quote of David Wolpert says it all: "To purchase insight you must pay beforehand, in confusion". He is a senior research scientist at NASA, which worked on  understanding optimization (in fact, part of his work was misunderstood, he even has an article to clarify it).

I love the idea of every step I do may prove everything I believe wrong. What then? Learn with it. More than that, learn that the process is this. And if you are doing everything right, you are just not doing anything new.
Some people told me that the majority of the people cannot bare to have every believe being rebuild from the scratch every single time. My answer is simple, we can bare it. And in fact there is a little thing that can help the process, just do the opposite. If you do not like something, get near it, do it, become a master on it. Then rethink, is it still wrong? How is it?

I do not mean for every single thing we do not like that we should become a master in it. No no. Some things may be excluded from simple logic, others are just waste of time and recreate the wheel. But there are certain problems which you do not like, but cant really prove them wrong to yourself.
I did this with so many things. So many things I hated and became good at them to prove they wrong.  At the end? Well, I just proved me wrong or I proved they are really wrong. Both changed my life, both were nice.
When I proved myself wrong, then I just forgot about everything I believed which was proved wrong and start from a new basis. I advise you, this path may seem painful, however, it is in disguise very rewarding. You not only changed for the better, but you cannot forget your experiences and you will be forever conscious of the valley were you walked. More than that, the valley may give hints of what is better now, which the other people not have a single idea. It is the red pill.

I recognize few jobs let people free to take the red pill many times. Learning to live with the mistakes is a rewarding experience I wanted to share. Right now, I have two research lines. One going against the other. One have to fail? Not at all, in the world there is still place for the red and the blue. And notice, whatever is difficult to blue may also be difficult to red. They may be different paths to the same thing, going in opposing directions. But they are just different beings living in the same world.

Quote of the Day

"Control Theory is an electric-inspired mathematical hack to apply optimization."


I did the phrase above while studying control theory. It quite helped me appreciate the diagrams and understand more than just the trivial.
It is amazing what we created to solve problems when just simple electric circuits were available.

In fact,  current research on control engineering make use of evolutionary algorithms (optimization) to control systems. To tell the truth, not only control, but design, improve, identify systems and so on.

The problem of three doors puzzle - from a confusing perspective

Hi guys,

Well, I am sure everyone knows the problem of three doors where the host of the show opens one of them after the player had already chosen one. In case you do not know the game yet, check its wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

It is an old problem I know. Chances are whoever is reading this is familiar with the answers already. But something that may go unnoticed is the fact of what causes confusion. And from where does this confusion actually comes from?

So I gonna introduce 2 visions. First, what I call the host's vision. And later the player's perspective. But first, some definitions:

I am the player, so I decided to open door number 1. Suppose there are 3 possible hypotheses: H1, H2, H3. All of them are respective to the case where the door with the prize is number 1,2 or 3. Then let D be the data available, which is whether the host decided to open door 2 (D2) or door 3 (D3). This is pretty usual, I know =)

P(H1)=P(H2)=P(H3)=1/3

The Host

From the host's perspective, there is (probability of choosing door 2 or 3, given that some hypothesis is true):

P(D2|H1) = 1/2 P(D3|H1)= 1/2
P(D2|H2)= 0 P(D3|H2)= 1
P(D2|H3) = 1 P(D3|H3)= 0

And then, we calculate using Bayes, the generic equation:

P(Hi|Dd)= P(Dd|Hi)P(Hi) / P(Dd)

Now, just substituting the probabilities. We have the possibility of the hypotheses being correct, given that the host opens door 2 or door 3:

P(H1|D2)= 1/3
P(H2|D2)= 0
P(H3|D2)= 2/3
P(H1|D3)= 1/3
P(H2|D3)= 2/3
P(H3|D3)= 0

That is, changing from door 1 is always nice. Right?

Yes, right. But lets see from a different point of view.

The Player

If we think from the player perspective, there are only two doors left. And the chance now is 1/2 for either one. So it does not matter changing.

Actually, if we get the last answers and just pick a door at random, we get the 1/2. For example, suppose the host opens door 2:

1/2*P(H1|D2) + 1/2*P(H3|D2) = 1/2*1/3 + 1/2*2/3= 1/2

So, if we choose at random. We get in fact the 1/2. And that is exactly the same probability that we think intuitively.

This is where the confusion arises. We think that either way should be correct and the other false. But actually, both are correct in this case. The player is thinking without priors (that is, he is not giving a different weight for either door). What is very plausible in choosing things that are the same.

But... in this case there are priors! When the host opens door 2, the door 3 increases its chance of being the correct, much more than the door 1 (chosen by the player)!!!
Why this, you may ask??
The game's rules create this. The door chosen by the player is static, it will not change by the host actions. The other doors, however, will kind of evolve. They will be selected wisely to left only the "most interesting available". Because the host can not remove the prize's door!

This happens, because the remaining doors must have the prize! And simply because the player's door are not being affected by the host's tip (the door removal process). The player's door remains with its probability while the other door rise its probability.

We human beings tend to give equal possibility for everything which should be the same. But sometimes, they are more differences than we can easily perceive.
Thus, there are different dynamics between the chosen door and the rest of the doors is crucial. And this is hidden by non trivial rules, which purposely don't make this explicit.

Jork, the smoker

Jork is a boy with 20 years. His german name sounds like "York" in English and setting aside his strange accent there is one more thing which surprises people the most. The fact that he smokes since he was 3 years old.

He smokes not only cigars, but all kind of smoke. You name a plant, he smoked it. And he is early on the job, since 3 years old. Right after moving from Germany to Brazil, he started smoking everything from cars' to industries' unfiltered residues.

But let me tell you, he is not happy on the job. For most smokers in Brazil it is alright to smoke, they do not mind. Maybe cigars are the only type of thing people generally dislike. In some countries like China, people wear masks against smoke, in Europe people make protests against it, in Brazil people put fire on things.

This is our boy. Jork, the smoker. Someone tells the society he is tired of smoking.

But how to do this in a widely cultural society? Is there a unity? These are questions, however, for another post.

The Travel

Once, I met a traveler. You know the type...backpack, bike and slangs. Since he sat by my side, I was talking to him about his travels. And he in the most relaxed state was telling myself the world as it had observed.
His world was kinda interesting and I didnt fell the time pass. So he was so peaceful and relaxed I asked him if there is anywhere that he didnt like to stay. I was expecting something like "every place is ok for me, boy".
But he didnt answer for quite a while so I kept quiet in the same way. And when I decided to start a new topic, he interrupted myself in a different tone.
-Where do ya feel better? Visiting a small park, a tourist point or a beach?
I didnt know what to answer so I simply said the question seemed too personal and depending on the taste.
He then said his answer was not related to the place or scenario. He wasnt exactly admiring the nature while he was there sitting there by my side. The phenomenon he was experiencing and liking was one of the most natural and imperceptible to people, he was admiring the society.
-The way people look each other, the way people talk, the way people understand each other. That is the most interesting thing I saw in my travels. Beautiful scenes are everywhere, the culture isnt.
He continued:
-People say some cultures are colder than others, I do not see that way. There is much more to it than simply saying cold and hot. The most basic thing in culture is what people can do with simple things. Complex beings can make marvelous things with few money. We can look everywhere in nature, but we wont see anything so interesting as the interrelations between man and man. I said interesting, but often deceptive. And going back to your question. I do not like most of the places on earth, I struggle to understand how people and why people sometimes work together and sometimes not.
I was almost losing track of what he was saying, as it all "klingelt" strange to me. Since he started, the words had gotten a more intellectual style and I was almost feeling like a professor was standing before myself. He went further:
-People are not aware but they sure feel a peaceful and relaxing day going to a small park in some places. It is in how they speak and interact. We are feeling this every instant. On the other hand, people on other places are buying big houses, traveling to big parks, buying a lot of things but they cannot get away from their cultural curse. What I mean is that they are less happy than some people going to a small park.
This is starting to make sense.
-It is not about how hard things are, but how hard people see it is. There are places on earth that no matter how rich they get, they will not be as rich culturally than other places. I am talking here about things that are far beyond what humans can create. What we do not talk about everyday, but it is more intensely present in ourselves than we realize. It is not as simple as I am talking about. There are many other aspects such as national identify and sovereignty which are very tough to understand.
After that point he continued for some lines. I do not record exactly, but the talk was so dense I was not able to understand it. The talk remained for some minutes and then he took his bike and went away.
And who would thought such a immense world would inhabit this guy. Amazing talk. What a travel.