market.scroll
Changed around line 50: The offering I'm working on is novel, so the market hasn't quite understood what
- The scary part about muting the market is the branch you are pioneering may be a dead end. It is a lot of work to see so many branches ahead to figure out if it's a path the market should go down. You don't want to blaze a trail to a dead-end, but even worse would be to mislead passengers down a dead-end trail. But perhaps sometimes it must be done.
+ The scary part about muting the market is the branch you are pioneering may be a dead end. It is a lot of work to see so many branches ahead to figure out if it's a path the market should go down. You don't want to blaze a trail to a dead-end, but even worse would be to mislead passengers down a dead-end trail.
+
+ The other scary part about muting the market is the old aphorism from finance: "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".
+
+ But perhaps sometimes it must be done.
tsort.scroll
Changed around line 4: title Topological Sorting
- Topological sorting is something I've been thinking about lately.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting Topological sorting
+ Lately I've been thinking about topological sorting.
+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting topological sorting
- This is sorting concepts in dependency order.
+ Topological sorting is sorting concepts in dependency order.
Changed around line 27: I am unaware of an encyclopedia sorted topologically.
- Why would you want an encyclopedia sorted topologically?
+ ? Why would you want an encyclopedia sorted topologically?
- What parts of the encyclopedia should you learn first?
+ If you want to get the most bang for your bits, sort your ideas topologically.
+ intelligence.html the most bang for your bits
+
+ ? What parts of the encyclopedia should you learn first?
Changed around line 42: Popularity sorting such as by number of inbound links is an improvement over alp
- How would you create a topologically sorted encyclopedia?
+ ? How would you create a topologically sorted encyclopedia?
Changed around line 60: When dealing with larger programs it seems you can do things a lot faster if you
- Is the universe topologically sorted?
+ ? Is the universe topologically sorted?
- Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
+ ? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
scales.scroll
Changed around line 11: The word scale is an overloaded term. Usually when I use the word "scale" I am u
- English is generally scaled. A small subset of it is scaled.
+ English is generally unscaled. A small subset of it is scaled.
Changed around line 37: Scales make things comparable. Measure different concepts using the same scale a
- One of the most important scales is the computational complexity scale. Nature loves inequality, our universe has ~65 orders of magnitude buckets, and so rarely do 2 random things fall in the same bucket.
+ ***
+
+ One of the most important scales is the computational complexity scale.
- orders-of-magnitude.html orders of magnitude
- A dimension is just a set of different measurements with the same scale.
+ ***
+
+ Nature loves inequality, our universe has ~65 orders of magnitude buckets, and so rarely do 2 random things fall in the same bucket.
+ orders-of-magnitude.html orders of magnitude
+ A dimension is just a set of different measurements with the same scale.
+
Changed around line 59: You can draw a high dimensional dataset as just a lot of independent lines. Not
- Wikipedia does not make heavy use of scales. It relies more on text. I often wonder if the focus was more on adding data in typed dimensions, if it would allow it to become a more truthful symbolic model of the world.
+ Wikipedia does not make heavy use of scales. It relies more on unscaled narratives. I often wonder if the focus was more on adding data in typed dimensions, if it would allow it to become a more truthful symbolic model of the world.
- They do increasingly populate those infoboxes with scaled data. The syntax is nasty, but the scaled data is wonderfully useful.
+ To be fair, the infoboxes on Wikipedia are scaled data. The syntax is nasty, but the scaled data is wonderfully useful.
+
+ ***
Changed around line 77: I often think about complexity scales. I proposed if you think in parsers you ca
- I don't have anything too profound to say about scales. (On the profoundness scale, this post ranks low.)
+ I don't have anything too profound to say about scales. (On the impact scale, this post ranks low.)
+ hits.html impact scale
market.scroll
Changed around line 18: The no may mean the market:
- does not want your offering
- does not like the price of your offering
+ The relationship between a human and the market is like that between a dog and the farmer. The dog can roam a bit but ultimately the farmer holds the power.
+
market.scroll
Changed around line 32: I think as much as you can, you don't want to mute the market. Instead, listen t
+ ## How to Mute the Market
+
+ Despite my warnings, if you decide that a short term muting of the market is necessary, then you may have to go to extreme measures. Ideally, you've got a warchest. Perhaps savings, a good investment, investors who have bet on your vision, a grant, or something along those lines. With that capital you can mute the market for a period of time and try to invent a breakthrough new technological path. Without that capital the best advice comes from Hermann Hesse via his novel Siddhartha: "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." You will need to cut your expenses to the bone, and then use the bone for soup and cutlery. It can be done but you will have to push yourself to extreme measures you didn't know you were capable of. I'm not sure it's ever the right strategy. (But then sometimes I wonder whether it's the _only_ strategy for true breakthroughs).
+
+ ## Enabling others to Mute the Market
+
+ Along these lines, as an angel investor one thing I've learned is that you may be _hurting_ a startup by investing, as you are enabling them to mute the market for a prolonged period of time. The pressure of the market is uncomfortable but honest and necessary. It's more relaxing to mute the market but you'll never find out if your ship floats nor carry passengers across the sea.
+
- The offering I'm working on is novel, so the market hasn't quite understood what I'm offering yet. I think I'm getting better at explaining it, and I think once the market understands it, the market will want it. I think soon many people will not be able to get enough of it.
+ The offering I'm working on is novel, so the market hasn't quite understood what I'm offering yet. It's a challenge because the path is so different than what's popular in the market that I have to see many branches ahead on my own and then communicate what I see and why it's a path worth traveling. I think I'm getting better at explaining it, and I think once the market understands it, the market will want it. I think soon many people will not be able to get enough of it.
+ The scary part about muting the market is the branch you are pioneering may be a dead end. It is a lot of work to see so many branches ahead to figure out if it's a path the market should go down. You don't want to blaze a trail to a dead-end, but even worse would be to mislead passengers down a dead-end trail. But perhaps sometimes it must be done.
+
+ You learn to be deeply grateful and appreciative of the early adopters who break from the mainstream and come check out your fledgling path.
+
market.scroll
Changed around line 30: To mute the market is to understand something about the world the market current
+ The selection pressure the market provides can be very helpful. You are getting the wisdom of the crowds to rank your ideas. I can definitely imagine that sometimes the market is too short-term focused and muting it is potentially the right way, but when you do that you also mute a great source of free feedback.
+
scales.scroll
Changed around line 37: Scales make things comparable. Measure different concepts using the same scale a
+ One of the most important scales is the computational complexity scale. Nature loves inequality, our universe has ~65 orders of magnitude buckets, and so rarely do 2 random things fall in the same bucket.
+ bigOsKitchen.html computational complexity scale
+ orders-of-magnitude.html orders of magnitude
+
tsort.scroll
Changed around line 25: Encyclopedias are sorted alphabetically.
- How would you do it?
+ ***
+
+ Why would you want an encyclopedia sorted topologically?
+
+ Well, topological sorting tells you the logical importance of things. Things further down are built on things at the top (or vice versa, if you prepend new things to your files rather than append).
+
+ What parts of the encyclopedia should you learn first?
+
+ It makes more sense to learn the things with a high topological ranking, rather than a high alphabetical ranking. A lot of things turn out to be fads.
+
+ Popularity sorting such as by number of inbound links is an improvement over alphabetical sorting, but seems very susceptible to bias and fads.
+
+ ***
+
+ How would you create a topologically sorted encyclopedia?
+ I think using parsers all the way down might work, though I could be wrong. The nice thing about this strategy is that you can build stuff that is useful along the way even if the vision of the topological encyclopedia doesn't materialize.
+ thinkingInParsers.html parsers all the way down
+ https://pldb.io stuff that is useful
+
scales.scroll
Changed around line 11: The word scale is an overloaded term. Usually when I use the word "scale" I am u
- Blog posts are mostly "unscaled". It is hard to compare this line with the line below it.
+ English is generally scaled. A small subset of it is scaled.
+ // All human languages are, really
+
+ So blog posts are mostly "unscaled". It is hard to compare this line with the line below it.
tsort.scroll
Changed around line 1
+ date 2025-3-5
+ tags All Science
+ title Topological Sorting
+ container 500px
+ standardPost.scroll
+
+ Topological sorting is something I've been thinking about lately.
+ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting Topological sorting
+
+ This is sorting concepts in dependency order.
+
+ For example, if you wanted to sort "fire" and "internal combustion engine", fire would come first. To explain ICEs, you need fire, but to explain fire you don't need ICEs.
+
+ ***
+
+ Sorting concepts topologically versus chronologically can create different rankings.
+
+ Sorting numbers topologically puts binary (0 and 1) before the Hindu-Arabic numerals (0 - 9), even though humans used 0-9 way before using 0 and 1.
+
+ Our topological knowledge base often has missing or incorrect concepts that may not be fixed for centuries.
+
+ ***
+
+ Encyclopedias are sorted alphabetically.
+
+ I am unaware of an encyclopedia sorted topologically.
+
+ How would you do it?
+
+ I have been attempting to build a topologically sorted encyclopedia for a long time, though I had never described it like that. It's only recently when I realized I wanted to change Scroll to be topologically-sorted by default that I went looking for the definitive term to describe the concept.
+ iThoughtWeCouldBuildAIExpertsByHand.html attempting to build
+ https://scroll.pub Scroll
+
+ ***
+
+ Today I started looking at older programming languages that have lasted like C, Fortran, Ada, et cetera, and realized that topological sorting used to be the default. Newer languages aren't as strict, and that's the pattern I copied. But I wonder whether it's a better design to make the rule topologically sorted, and the looser version the exception.
+
+ When dealing with larger programs it seems you can do things a lot faster if you know things are sorted topologically.
+
+ ***
+
+ Is the universe topologically sorted?
+
+ It seems to be. The present depends upon the past, and so comes after the past.
+
+ ***
+
+ Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
+
+ If we are talking about the words, that might be easy to determine with a good etymology reference.
+
+ If we are talking about the patterns represented by the words, then it's a bit more interesting. We know the bacteria came before either. But my guess is we had objects closer in appearance to chicken eggs before we had objects resembling chickens. So I would say the egg came first, topologically.
+
+ ****
+
boxMethod.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Data Thinking
+ tags All Data Thinking Science
countingComplexity.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Scroll ScrollPapers AllPapers
+ tags All Scroll ScrollPapers AllPapers Science
iThoughtWeCouldBuildAIExpertsByHand.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Scroll Programming Startups
+ tags All Scroll Programming Startups Science
intelligence.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Programming Scroll ScrollPapers AllPapers
+ tags All Programming Scroll ScrollPapers AllPapers Science
lab.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Science Startups Programming Writing
+ tags All Startups Programming Writing
scales.scroll
Changed around line 1
+ date 2025-3-5
+ tags All Science
+ title Scales
+ container 500px
+ standardPost.scroll
+ keywords scales measurements metrics dimensions comparibility
+
+ A scale is an ordering of numbers. Objects map to a scale to allow comparibility in that dimension.
+
+ The word scale is an overloaded term. Usually when I use the word "scale" I am using a different version of it, such as "scale it up" or "economies of scale". In this post I'm using it in the sense of a measurement or yardstick or number-line or type.
+
+ ***
+
+ Blog posts are mostly "unscaled". It is hard to compare this line with the line below it.
+
+ But this post does contain some lines that are scaled. For example, it has a date line, which maps this post to a date scale. So you can compare this post to others, and say which came before, and _how much_ they came before.
+
+ Scroll, the language and software that powers this blog, does compute some scaled metrics on each post. The number of words, for example. You can see the number of words for this post and all others on the search page.
+ https://scroll.pub Scroll
+ search.html search page
+
+ ***
+
+ I like the definition of scales in the d3 data visualization library:
+ https://d3js.org/d3-scale definition of scales
+
+ > Scales are a convenient abstraction for a fundamental task in visualization: mapping a dimension of abstract data to a visual representation. Although most often used for position-encoding quantitative data, such as mapping a measurement in meters to a position in pixels for dots in a scatterplot, scales can represent virtually any visual encoding, such as diverging colors, stroke widths, or symbol size. Scales can also be used with virtually any type of data, such as named categorical data or discrete data that requires sensible breaks.
+
+ I remember when I was struggling to use d3 and then finally their definition of scales clicked in my head and I realized what a simple, beautiful and widely applicable concept it was.
+
+ ***
+
+ Scales make things comparable. Measure different concepts using the same scale and now you can compare those things symbolically.
+
+ The more scales you use, the more sophisticated your symbolic models become. You can measure two buildings with a height scale to create some comparisons, but you can greatly increase those comparisons if you also measure them with a "year built" scale.
+
+ A dimension is just a set of different measurements with the same scale.
+
+ ***
+
+ You can think of any scale as just a line.
+
+ Measure objects and draw a point on the line for where each measurement falls.
+
+ You can draw a high dimensional dataset as just a lot of independent lines. Not the most useful visualization, but can be helpful sometimes to break things down into really simply pieces.
+
+ ***
+
+ Wikipedia does not make heavy use of scales. It relies more on text. I often wonder if the focus was more on adding data in typed dimensions, if it would allow it to become a more truthful symbolic model of the world.
+
+ They do increasingly populate those infoboxes with scaled data. The syntax is nasty, but the scaled data is wonderfully useful.
+
+ The more scales you have, the more trustworthy a model is.
+ trust.html trustworthy
+
+ ***
+
+ I often think about complexity scales. I proposed if you think in parsers you can measure the complexity of any idea. Perhaps the "parser" is a good unit for complexity. If two models of the world are equally intelligent, pick the less complex one - the one with fewer parsers.
+ thinkingInParsers.html think in parsers
+ countingComplexity.html measure the complexity of any idea
+ intelligence.html intelligent
+
+ ***
+
+ I don't have anything too profound to say about scales. (On the profoundness scale, this post ranks low.)
+
+ I just want to make sure I am deliberately thinking enough about them. If you measure concepts on an importance scale, they are high on the list.
+
+ ***
+
+ # Related Posts
+ printRelated Science
+
+ ****
+
scrollsets.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Scroll Programming Data Life ScrollSets ScrollPapers AllPapers
+ tags All Scroll Programming Data Life ScrollSets ScrollPapers AllPapers Science
thinkingInParsers.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Scroll
+ tags All Scroll Science
type-the-world.scroll
Changed around line 1
- tags All Programming Thinking Scroll
+ tags All Programming Thinking Scroll Science