tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7345275.post112728871428070328..comments2023-10-30T11:13:44.310-04:00Comments on The Ethical Werewolf ‡ by Neil Sinhababu : Kevin's weird graphUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7345275.post-1127445382847651122005-09-22T23:16:00.000-04:002005-09-22T23:16:00.000-04:00Yeah. Well, I guess I should say that what weirde...Yeah. Well, I guess I should say that what weirded me out about the y-axis wasn't that it was logarithmic -- hell, I've invested for long enough that most of the graphs I've looked at in my life are probably logarithmic. It was the "Time until next event." I was wondering what of significance could possibly depend on the time until the next plotted event, especially given the arbitrariness of the point selection.Neil Sinhababuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15672033745772751532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7345275.post-1127405782869462732005-09-22T12:16:00.000-04:002005-09-22T12:16:00.000-04:00Dennis, I bow to your actual advanced math skills....Dennis, I bow to your actual advanced math skills. I jammed one too many "logs" into my definition: it's log-linear. (of course you have to log both sides of an equation, else it's not an equation anymore!) And I said "discontinuity" because I thought that a point at which the slope of a line changes was by definition a discontinuity. But the curve still only has one value at that point. Thanks for refining my initial pass at this.<BR/><BR/>Neil, you satisfied yet?<BR/><BR/>PS -- if you ever want to see the relationship between a log graph and a linear graph, go to finance.yahoo.com and grab a chart for your favorite stock or mutual fund. For some reason the default chart display is logarithmic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7345275.post-1127367875008479962005-09-22T01:44:00.000-04:002005-09-22T01:44:00.000-04:00linear-graphs are common when charting population...linear-graphs are common when charting population growth and other things that have exponential growth/decay characteristics.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7345275.post-1127333633146957702005-09-21T16:13:00.000-04:002005-09-21T16:13:00.000-04:00The x-axis, or independent variable, is time, in p...The x-axis, or independent variable, is time, in powers of 10. The dependent (y) variable is time from advancement_sub_(x-1) to advancement_sub_x. In other words, at time 10^10 years ago, it would take 10^9 years to see the next significant human invention. At time 10^9 years ago, it would take 10^8 years. That's one f'ed up graph to look at, but if you simply log the X values and log the Y values, it's a line. Hence, it's a log-log linear relationship.<BR/><BR/>Now, it's NOT linear with respect to time, and that's the mistake I think most people are making when they read this. They think that Kurzweil just arbitrarily stuck his pin pricks at the moments that best supported his theory. That's far from true, and the discontinuities in the graph are proof enough of that.<BR/><BR/>It's good to remember that 10^10 minus 10^9 equals 9 * 10^9. That's why you can have these events spaced out in a manner that suggests question-begging; the first actual ordered pair is something like (5*10^9, 2*10^9). That is, life began 5 billion years ago, and the next groovy invention of multicellular life came down 2 billion years later. Leaves an awful lot of time for the next one, and doesn't even knock off an order of magnitude in the process.<BR/><BR/>Pretty cool graph. Too bad bloggers suck at math.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com