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Programmer tries to explain binary search to the police (startrek.website)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] starman2112 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'm describing the vast majority of fights that happen in the public.

But the comment you replied to already addressed those fights, and bike thefts, and the vast majority of cases that you're talking about, by saying

If there is a long-lasting visual cue that the event has or has not happened yet (e.g. a window is either broken or not), then a binary search is very useful.

No one is moving goalposts. The parent comment said that binary search is useful in situations like bike thefts where visual cues are present, and not useful in situations where visual cues are not present.

In your hypothetical situation involving AI, the AI would use visual cues that are present, and so the situation is covered by the parent comment's second paragraph. In a situation where there are no visual cues for the AI to use, it would be covered by the third paragraph. They still aren't wrong about anything.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The parent comment said that binary search is useful in situations like bike thefts where visual cues are present, and not useful in situations where visual cues are not present.

Just repeating myself at this point, but I was responding to this (the bolded part) …

Part of my job is to review security footage for reported incidents.

If there is a long-lasting visual cue that the event has or has not happened yet (e.g. a window is either broken or not), then a binary search is very useful.

If the event lasts only a moment and leaves no visual cue (e.g. an assault), then binary search is practically useless.

I disagree with the “leaves no visual cue” part, as I’ve commented on. There’s ALWAYS something caught on the video to help determine things. Maybe not enough, but never nothing.

[–] starman2112 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I disagree with the “leaves no visual cue” part, as I’ve commented on. There’s ALWAYS something caught on the video to help determine things. Maybe not enough, but never nothing.

Then you should be responding to the "leaves no visual cues" part, not the "binary search is useless" part. If there WERE a situation that left no visual cues, THEN binary search WOULD be useless. It does not matter whether there ARE such situations.