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LET'S BE FWENDS ISSUE #49:

A DATA SCIENTIST ON WHY DATA SCIENCE IS MOSTLY MARKETING

“A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results.”
~ Nikola Tesla

Here’s a hilarious, candid, funny and very enlightening interview with an anonymous data scientist that has been sitting in my “stack of interesting stuff” for over a year now.

Some of my favourites, but I encourage you to read the whole thing:

On deep learning, general AI and when we should call a robot “intelligent":

"I think it's irrelevant in our lifetimes and in our grandchildren's lifetimes. It's a very good philosophical question, but I don't think it really matters. I think that we are going to be stuck with specific AI for a very, very long time."

On the phenomenal progress AI has made and if we’re bound to see a “regression to the mean” anytime soon:

"The rate of progress in AI over the past decade has been astounding. Ten years ago, Go was something that would never be solved by anybody, and now it’s there. That required tremendous leaps forward. And so I think that although the popular imagination is always going to be leaps and bounds ahead of what’s realistic, a lot of that is a reflection of the progress that has in fact been made in the past decade. Whether that’s because the actual technology itself is in the golden age and will soon revert back is a good question."

Read the whole interview here.

Now we know why supermarket-bought tomatoes taste like nothing

I wonder: (a) If the tomatoes those two chinese villagers are wrestling in are lacking the TomLoxC gene, and (b) wether this is an illegal move on behalf of the yellow-shorted wrestler.

Image Source: ecns.cn

Breeding appears to be the mother of unintended consequences. When you’re looking to strengthen certain traits in an animal or plant, you modify its genetic markup, possibly modifying other traits as well.
That’s what happened when breeders created tomato kinds that grow faster, need less water and have a better shelf-life: They accidentally switched off over 5.000 genes, one of which is TomLoxC, the gene responsible for flavour and color.

With the gene identified and the reason for the meh-ness of typical supermarket tomatoes found, let’s hope that TomLoxC makes a comeback.

The inverted World Map

Frans Blok created a very detailed answer to the common question: “What would the world look like if it was completely inverted?”
What if the continents were oceans, the Himalayas not mountains but ocean trenches, and the Marianna trench the highest point of the earth?

Interestingly, this effect works better on some details than on the whole world map. It takes just a blink or two to see the continents on the world map, and then the color swap doesn’t really work anymore, but I am completely fooled by the Great Islands in the Canadian Ocean and the Bermuda Highlands.

Danny Macaskill is back - and babysitting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj0CmnxuTaQ

Can’t start them too early.
And in case you’re wondering - The trailer looks like a Tout Terrain Singletrailer.

Have you ever wrestled someone in a pool of tomatoes? If so: Good for you. If not: One for the bucket list. 🍅

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View this issue of Let's be Fwends in your browser

A Data Scientist on why Data Science is mostly Marketing

A DATA SCIENTIST ON WHY DATA SCIENCE IS MOSTLY MARKETING

Now we know why supermarket-bought tomatoes taste like nothing

The inverted World Map

Danny Macaskill is back - and babysitting