pambram · February 23, 2024 03:34
diff --git a/devowel.py b/devowel.py
 SOME_TEXT = """
 May 2021There's one kind of opinion I'd be very afraid to express publicly.
 If someone I knew to be both a domain expert and a reasonable person
 proposed an idea that sounded preposterous, I'd be very reluctant
 to say "That will never work."Anyone who has studied the history of ideas, and especially the
 history of science, knows that's how big things start. Someone
 proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then
 it gradually takes over the world.Most implausible-sounding ideas are in fact bad and could be safely
 dismissed. But not when they're proposed by reasonable domain
 experts. If the person proposing the idea is reasonable, then they
 know how implausible it sounds. And yet they're proposing it anyway.
 That suggests they know something you don't. And if they have deep
 domain expertise, that's probably the source of it.
 [1]Such ideas are not merely unsafe to dismiss, but disproportionately
 likely to be interesting. When the average person proposes an
 implausible-sounding idea, its implausibility is evidence of their
 incompetence. But when a reasonable domain expert does it, the
 situation is reversed. There's something like an efficient market
 here: on average the ideas that seem craziest will, if correct,
 have the biggest effect. So if you can eliminate the theory that
 the person proposing an implausible-sounding idea is incompetent,
 its implausibility switches from evidence that it's boring to
 evidence that it's exciting.
 [2]Such ideas are not guaranteed to work. But they don't have to be.
 They just have to be sufficiently good bets — to have sufficiently
 high expected value. And I think on average they do. I think if you
 bet on the entire set of implausible-sounding ideas proposed by
 reasonable domain experts, you'd end up net ahead.The reason is that everyone is too conservative. The word "paradigm"
 is overused, but this is a case where it's warranted. Everyone is
 too much in the grip of the current paradigm. Even the people who
 have the new ideas undervalue them initially. Which means that
 before they reach the stage of proposing them publicly, they've
 already subjected them to an excessively strict filter.
 [3]The wise response to such an idea is not to make statements, but
 to ask questions, because there's a real mystery here. Why has this
 smart and reasonable person proposed an idea that seems so wrong?
 Are they mistaken, or are you? One of you has to be. If you're the
 one who's mistaken, that would be good to know, because it means
 there's a hole in your model of the world. But even if they're
 mistaken, it should be interesting to learn why. A trap that an
 expert falls into is one you have to worry about too.This all seems pretty obvious. And yet there are clearly a lot of
 people who don't share my fear of dismissing new ideas. Why do they
 do it? Why risk looking like a jerk now and a fool later, instead
 of just reserving judgement?One reason they do it is envy. If you propose a radical new idea
 and it succeeds, your reputation (and perhaps also your wealth)
 will increase proportionally. Some people would be envious if that
 happened, and this potential envy propagates back into a conviction
 that you must be wrong.Another reason people dismiss new ideas is that it's an easy way
 to seem sophisticated. When a new idea first emerges, it usually
 seems pretty feeble. It's a mere hatchling. Received wisdom is a
 full-grown eagle by comparison. So it's easy to launch a devastating
 attack on a new idea, and anyone who does will seem clever to those
 who don't understand this asymmetry.This phenomenon is exacerbated by the difference between how those
 working on new ideas and those attacking them are rewarded. The
 rewards for working on new ideas are weighted by the value of the
 outcome. So it's worth working on something that only has a 10%
 chance of succeeding if it would make things more than 10x better.
 Whereas the rewards for attacking new ideas are roughly constant;
 such attacks seem roughly equally clever regardless of the target.People will also attack new ideas when they have a vested interest
 in the old ones. It's not surprising, for example, that some of
 Darwin's harshest critics were churchmen. People build whole careers
 on some ideas. When someone claims they're false or obsolete, they
 feel threatened.The lowest form of dismissal is mere factionalism: to automatically
 dismiss any idea associated with the opposing faction. The lowest
 form of all is to dismiss an idea because of who proposed it.But the main thing that leads reasonable people to dismiss new ideas
 is the same thing that holds people back from proposing them: the
 sheer pervasiveness of the current paradigm. It doesn't just affect
 the way we think; it is the Lego blocks we build thoughts out of.
 Popping out of the current paradigm is something only a few people
 can do. And even they usually have to suppress their intuitions at
 first, like a pilot flying through cloud who has to trust his
 instruments over his sense of balance.
 [4]Paradigms don't just define our present thinking. They also vacuum
 up the trail of crumbs that led to them, making our standards for
 new ideas impossibly high. The current paradigm seems so perfect
 to us, its offspring, that we imagine it must have been accepted
 completely as soon as it was discovered — that whatever the church thought
 of the heliocentric model, astronomers must have been convinced as
 soon as Copernicus proposed it. Far, in fact, from it. Copernicus
 published the heliocentric model in 1532, but it wasn't till the
 mid seventeenth century that the balance of scientific opinion
 shifted in its favor.
 [5]Few understand how feeble new ideas look when they first appear.
 So if you want to have new ideas yourself, one of the most valuable
 things you can do is to learn what they look like when they're born.
 Read about how new ideas happened, and try to get yourself into the
 heads of people at the time. How did things look to them, when the
 new idea was only half-finished, and even the person who had it was
 only half-convinced it was right?But you don't have to stop at history. You can observe big new ideas
 being born all around you right now. Just look for a reasonable
 domain expert proposing something that sounds wrong.If you're nice, as well as wise, you won't merely resist attacking
 such people, but encourage them. Having new ideas is a lonely
 business. Only those who've tried it know how lonely. These people
 need your help. And if you help them, you'll probably learn something
 in the process.Notes[1]
 This domain expertise could be in another field. Indeed,
 such crossovers tend to be particularly promising.[2]
 I'm not claiming this principle extends much beyond math,
 engineering, and the hard sciences. In politics, for example,
 crazy-sounding ideas generally are as bad as they sound. Though
 arguably this is not an exception, because the people who propose
 them are not in fact domain experts; politicians are domain experts
 in political tactics, like how to get elected and how to get
 legislation passed, but not in the world that policy acts upon.
 Perhaps no one could be.[3]
 This sense of "paradigm" was defined by Thomas Kuhn in his
 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but I also recommend his
 Copernican Revolution, where you can see him at work developing the
 idea.[4]
 This is one reason people with a touch of Asperger's may have
 an advantage in discovering new ideas. They're always flying on
 instruments.[5]
 Hall, Rupert. From Galileo to Newton. Collins, 1963. This
 book is particularly good at getting into contemporaries' heads.Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Suhail Doshi, Daniel
 Gackle, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
 """

 vowels = ['aeiouAEIOU'] # you could try adding Y and y for extra compression

 DEVOWELED_TEXT = "".join([char for char in SOME_TEXT if char not in vowels])
	SOME_TEXT = """
	May 2021There's one kind of opinion I'd be very afraid to express publicly.
	If someone I knew to be both a domain expert and a reasonable person
	proposed an idea that sounded preposterous, I'd be very reluctant
	to say "That will never work."Anyone who has studied the history of ideas, and especially the
	history of science, knows that's how big things start. Someone
	proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then
	it gradually takes over the world.Most implausible-sounding ideas are in fact bad and could be safely
	dismissed. But not when they're proposed by reasonable domain
	experts. If the person proposing the idea is reasonable, then they
	know how implausible it sounds. And yet they're proposing it anyway.
	That suggests they know something you don't. And if they have deep
	domain expertise, that's probably the source of it.
	[1]Such ideas are not merely unsafe to dismiss, but disproportionately
	likely to be interesting. When the average person proposes an
	implausible-sounding idea, its implausibility is evidence of their
	incompetence. But when a reasonable domain expert does it, the
	situation is reversed. There's something like an efficient market
	here: on average the ideas that seem craziest will, if correct,
	have the biggest effect. So if you can eliminate the theory that
	the person proposing an implausible-sounding idea is incompetent,
	its implausibility switches from evidence that it's boring to
	evidence that it's exciting.
	[2]Such ideas are not guaranteed to work. But they don't have to be.
	They just have to be sufficiently good bets — to have sufficiently
	high expected value. And I think on average they do. I think if you
	bet on the entire set of implausible-sounding ideas proposed by
	reasonable domain experts, you'd end up net ahead.The reason is that everyone is too conservative. The word "paradigm"
	is overused, but this is a case where it's warranted. Everyone is
	too much in the grip of the current paradigm. Even the people who
	have the new ideas undervalue them initially. Which means that
	before they reach the stage of proposing them publicly, they've
	already subjected them to an excessively strict filter.
	[3]The wise response to such an idea is not to make statements, but
	to ask questions, because there's a real mystery here. Why has this
	smart and reasonable person proposed an idea that seems so wrong?
	Are they mistaken, or are you? One of you has to be. If you're the
	one who's mistaken, that would be good to know, because it means
	there's a hole in your model of the world. But even if they're
	mistaken, it should be interesting to learn why. A trap that an
	expert falls into is one you have to worry about too.This all seems pretty obvious. And yet there are clearly a lot of
	people who don't share my fear of dismissing new ideas. Why do they
	do it? Why risk looking like a jerk now and a fool later, instead
	of just reserving judgement?One reason they do it is envy. If you propose a radical new idea
	and it succeeds, your reputation (and perhaps also your wealth)
	will increase proportionally. Some people would be envious if that
	happened, and this potential envy propagates back into a conviction
	that you must be wrong.Another reason people dismiss new ideas is that it's an easy way
	to seem sophisticated. When a new idea first emerges, it usually
	seems pretty feeble. It's a mere hatchling. Received wisdom is a
	full-grown eagle by comparison. So it's easy to launch a devastating
	attack on a new idea, and anyone who does will seem clever to those
	who don't understand this asymmetry.This phenomenon is exacerbated by the difference between how those
	working on new ideas and those attacking them are rewarded. The
	rewards for working on new ideas are weighted by the value of the
	outcome. So it's worth working on something that only has a 10%
	chance of succeeding if it would make things more than 10x better.
	Whereas the rewards for attacking new ideas are roughly constant;
	such attacks seem roughly equally clever regardless of the target.People will also attack new ideas when they have a vested interest
	in the old ones. It's not surprising, for example, that some of
	Darwin's harshest critics were churchmen. People build whole careers
	on some ideas. When someone claims they're false or obsolete, they
	feel threatened.The lowest form of dismissal is mere factionalism: to automatically
	dismiss any idea associated with the opposing faction. The lowest
	form of all is to dismiss an idea because of who proposed it.But the main thing that leads reasonable people to dismiss new ideas
	is the same thing that holds people back from proposing them: the
	sheer pervasiveness of the current paradigm. It doesn't just affect
	the way we think; it is the Lego blocks we build thoughts out of.
	Popping out of the current paradigm is something only a few people
	can do. And even they usually have to suppress their intuitions at
	first, like a pilot flying through cloud who has to trust his
	instruments over his sense of balance.
	[4]Paradigms don't just define our present thinking. They also vacuum
	up the trail of crumbs that led to them, making our standards for
	new ideas impossibly high. The current paradigm seems so perfect
	to us, its offspring, that we imagine it must have been accepted
	completely as soon as it was discovered — that whatever the church thought
	of the heliocentric model, astronomers must have been convinced as
	soon as Copernicus proposed it. Far, in fact, from it. Copernicus
	published the heliocentric model in 1532, but it wasn't till the
	mid seventeenth century that the balance of scientific opinion
	shifted in its favor.
	[5]Few understand how feeble new ideas look when they first appear.
	So if you want to have new ideas yourself, one of the most valuable
	things you can do is to learn what they look like when they're born.
	Read about how new ideas happened, and try to get yourself into the
	heads of people at the time. How did things look to them, when the
	new idea was only half-finished, and even the person who had it was
	only half-convinced it was right?But you don't have to stop at history. You can observe big new ideas
	being born all around you right now. Just look for a reasonable
	domain expert proposing something that sounds wrong.If you're nice, as well as wise, you won't merely resist attacking
	such people, but encourage them. Having new ideas is a lonely
	business. Only those who've tried it know how lonely. These people
	need your help. And if you help them, you'll probably learn something
	in the process.Notes[1]
	This domain expertise could be in another field. Indeed,
	such crossovers tend to be particularly promising.[2]
	I'm not claiming this principle extends much beyond math,
	engineering, and the hard sciences. In politics, for example,
	crazy-sounding ideas generally are as bad as they sound. Though
	arguably this is not an exception, because the people who propose
	them are not in fact domain experts; politicians are domain experts
	in political tactics, like how to get elected and how to get
	legislation passed, but not in the world that policy acts upon.
	Perhaps no one could be.[3]
	This sense of "paradigm" was defined by Thomas Kuhn in his
	Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but I also recommend his
	Copernican Revolution, where you can see him at work developing the
	idea.[4]
	This is one reason people with a touch of Asperger's may have
	an advantage in discovering new ideas. They're always flying on
	instruments.[5]
	Hall, Rupert. From Galileo to Newton. Collins, 1963. This
	book is particularly good at getting into contemporaries' heads.Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Suhail Doshi, Daniel
	Gackle, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
	"""

	vowels = ['aeiouAEIOU'] # you could try adding Y and y for extra compression

	DEVOWELED_TEXT = "".join([char for char in SOME_TEXT if char not in vowels])
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