
Gwern answers 'Ask gwern: Who are you?' - clicks
https://pastee.org/bebat
======
eunikins
It's sad that our personal info can be used with such malice in this day and
age when we're supposed to celebrate the accessibility and transparency of
information. That people still cannot be freely outspoken under their real
identities because some spiteful person who disagrees with them might call up
their bosses to try to get them fired (or worse). When people on the Internet
cross the line and make things personal because they feel a sense of power in
hiding behind their anonymous computer screen and having someone else's
vulnerable and real identity in their hands.

Gwern, thanks for the humble reply and all your writings. Maybe one day we
will be able to celebrate your talent as part of your identity.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_“people still cannot be freely outspoken under their real identities”_

Sure they can, and millions of us are. If people couldn’t be, Facebook
wouldn’t exist.

 _”When people on the Internet cross the line”_

That’s not a given. I never hide my identity and it has only worked out
positive for me. There are assholes online and offline, I sure as hell won’t
let any of them limit what I say or do.

~~~
return0
People on facebook barely ever have interesting conversation, exactly because
of "what are your friends gonna think?".

Part of the reason HN is successful is pseudonymity.

~~~
randallsquared
Many of the most interesting HNers have accounts strongly tied to real world
identities.

~~~
kaybe
But isn't it great that we can choose?

------
gwern
The donations have kept coming in, as have Bitcoin donations. If you're one of
the ones who sent me bitcoin, why don't you ring me up at gwern@gwern.net -
what did you like so much that you were willing to donate?

~~~
tokenadult
You are asking, gwern, a question about what people like about your writings.
My answer, I hope, will be taken as a friendly suggestion about how to make
your writings even better and more likeable. One area of research interest you
and I share is the nature of human intelligence and what might be possible to
do to improve human intelligence at the individual level. Having read
extensively about this issue since 1993 (arguably since 1989, when I began
extensive research on early childhood education), I been collecting
bibliographies of the best sources on this topic for a long time.

When I started editing Wikipedia as a registered Wikipedian a few years ago, I
soon discovered that many articles there on related topics are compiled in
complete ignorance of the best sources on those topics. To do something about
that, I have been compiling a bibliography in Wikipedia user space on IQ and
human intelligence,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

and I encourage you to look there for recommendations of up-to-date reliable
secondary sources. (I am updating that bibliography as I do more research, so
there may be new entries added there fairly soon.) It would be interesting to
see what new paths your writings will take after more digestion of the
previous literature on our shared topic of interest.

Another friendly comment is that many of your readers are glad to see your
statistical approach to some of the issues you write about. I too like well
writings that apply statistical analysis to data once they are gathered. I
like even better writings that apply statistics to examine whether data are
adequate to the task of answering the question posed by a researcher, as
statistics is the science of data,

<http://statland.org/MyPapers/MAAFIXED.PDF>

and what I have found out by participating in the University of Minnesota's
journal club in behavior genetics with leading researchers on that subject is
that many findings on human behavior now need to be reexamined as
statistically astute psychology researchers reexamine the quality of data in
old studies. Being aware of issues of validity of inference

<http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz>

and how researchers can fool themselves

<http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf>

is even more important than applying statistical manipulations to a data set
after the data set is gathered. In their best use, statistics can help show
which data sets need to be reexamined to make sure that a study inference is
really warranted by data.

<http://www.p-curve.com/>

~~~
gwern
> and I encourage you to look there for recommendations of up-to-date reliable
> secondary sources. (I am updating that bibliography as I do more research,
> so there may be new entries added there fairly soon.) It would be
> interesting to see what new paths your writings will take after more
> digestion of the previous literature on our shared topic of interest.

I already know of that page, actually. I have been compiling citations for a
while on 3 topics I'd like to write more about (the relationship of IQ & Big
Five Conscientiousness, practical real-world correlates of IQ, and the net
economic value of IQ points on the margin) and found a link to it. I don't
think any of the entries proved helpful because I'm looking at such niche
topics that I generally have to go to the original papers just to start.

> I like even better writings that apply statistics to examine whether data
> are adequate to the task of answering the question posed by a researcher, as
> statistics is the science of data,

A topic of considerably interest to myself, as well: I compile my own thoughts
in [http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#flaws-in-mainstream-
science-a...](http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#flaws-in-mainstream-science-and-
psychology) but I'll take a look at your links.

> many findings on human behavior now need to be reexamined as statistically
> astute psychology researchers reexamine the quality of data in old studies.

True enough, but there's a lot of limits to this sort of thing: GIGO. For many
psych studies, I think the same thing I do in arguments about the genetics of
IQ: "why are we _still_ arguing over this? there is no more meat on these
bones. We _know_ how to resolve these questions, _we have the technology_ (to
either replicate the experiments or look directly at the genetics), so why
can't we just _do_ it‽"

------
clicks
gwern himself answered it in the original thread, but it was marked dead
(probably because of linking to certain sites set off HN's spam filters).

~~~
arundelo
Someone fixed that; here it is:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659278>

------
endtime
I met Gwern once or twice at a Less Wrong meetup. I don't think he
particularly stood out from the other folks there.

~~~
gwern
To be fair, the one OB-NYC meetup I attended wasn't that great so I didn't
have much to say. (Being hearing-impaired hardly helps either.)

~~~
endtime
It wasn't supposed to be a negative statement. ;) Though I see how it could be
taken that way.

FWIW you did seem to have it a bit more together than some of the folks there.
And you are clearly more productive than a lot of Less Wrongers. All I meant
in my last comment was that you didn't seem like an international figure of
mystery or anything.

~~~
StavrosK
Good thing you clarified that, because the only way I could see to take the
previous comment was negative (just a heads up).

------
Kiro
Can someone explain what this is about?

------
runjake
For those not in the know & looking for context:

Gwern is a popular analyst of the Silk Road, the infamous anonymous
marketplace on the Tor network.

<http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)>

------
nookiemonster
who is gwern?

~~~
ShardPhoenix
Someone who writes interesting things (often with a lot of statistical
analysis) on <http://www.gwern.net> and Less Wrong.

~~~
EdSharkey
I have visited Gwern's site a number of times, mainly regarding the anime
"Death Note" discussions. I wish I was a few more years further along in my
business plan and had the means to offer a consulting gig to him or her. Gwern
would keep us honest and weird and brilliant.

------
bdcs
A DNS WHOIS lookup reports who registered gwern.net. Isn't that who he is?

~~~
nwh
I would be shocked if most WHOIS data was legitimate. I myself have made up
various people to play host to my domains.

~~~
haakon
For most popular TLDs, that is a breach of terms and may get your domain name
terminated at any point. It seems like it would be better to just use the
registrar's privacy service for this.

~~~
nwh
I realise, but the "privacy" services tend give up people's details upon
casual request. It makes them absolutely worthless.

------
DanBC
I really really hope that discussion about revenue is not seen as grounds to
cancel those accounts.

I understand that Google is very touchy about people talking about ad revenue.

~~~
gwern
I originally provided a CSV export of my AdSense history but then it was
pointed out to me by an acquaintance that the ToS strictly forbids it; it does
permit talking about 'aggregates', IIRC, so hopefully there won't be any
problems.

(Another acquaintance then pointed out to me that I am apparently a Famous
Person now and lots of Googlers read Hacker News, so I always have the option
of getting real customer service that way... which doesn't make me too happy -
you shouldn't have to be that rare geek who frequents one particular niche
site to get problems with Google fixed!)

------
eric_cc
How did gwern gain fame around here?

~~~
bmmayer1
He (or she?) has had a couple essays rise to the top of HN. In my memory, one
this week about predicting Google product shutdowns, and one a while back
about determining whether a leaked film script was legitimate.

~~~
gwern
I believe besides those two, my Silk Road essay (
<http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road> ) hit the front page sometime in the past
year.

------
keefe
you are... a person somehow associated with singinst that I met with Jasen a
while back? Your writing was interesting enough that I noticed your SN after,
which is something like a compliment... otherwise, this pastee is 404ing for
me so...

------
baby
pastee doesn't work here (hk), I guess time out?

------
cupcake-unicorn
I'm such a Gwern fangirl. Pics or it didn't happen!

