Thank you for asking this question, it forced me to compile the sources for easy future reference, but, more importantly, also caused me to learn a new fact about the history of Hamilton's involvement in the project, which fundamentally changed, for the second time, my understanding of her role (stay tuned until the end).
In any case, I cannot answer it as stated, because there is too little easily accessible data to say accurately what was her "actual" contribution, and in any case I'm not so interested in this topic to spend months digging through primary sources. From the more easily accessible ones you can, however, glean some of her actual contribution. These were certainly not trivial, given that you can find some sources from way before the recent craze that refer to her by her name. For example this report published in 1982, on the history of AGC by David Hoag, who was the head of the entire thing, names Hamilton as the lead of "a team of specialists", which has written "much of the detailed code of these programs". This seems to imply that she did led the software team, but other evidence makes it rather clear that while it is true that she did, in fact, lead that team, she did not lead it as it was actually writing the detailed code of these programs.
In short, I thus very much stand behind the statement in my quoted comment. I think the clearest evidence is coming from the horse's mouth:
I was a young kid, and I was hired by Dan Lickly over here (pointing to Dan).
(...)
Then, because I was still a beginner, I was assigned responsibility for what was thought to be the least important software to be developed for the next mission. I was the most of the beginners; I mean, I was the first junior person, on this next unmanned mission.
(...)
And I learned an awful lot from Dan [Lickly], who was a real guru in all of these areas. I was trying very hard to learn from him all of the things that he knew that I needed to use in order to be more successful at doing my job.
(...)
We began to grow, and eventually Dan [Lickly] put me in charge of the command module software. He had the courage to put me over that whole area, and I got very interested in management of software; again, integrating all of the glue. And when Dan [Lickly] left, Fred [Martin] then even had more courage and gave me the responsibility for the LM too, in addition to the command module flight software and now I was in charge of all of the on board flight software.
She was put in charge of the command module software after Apollo 8, which flew in December 1968, just six months before the moon landing. I'm not sure exactly when she was put in charge of LM, whether it was before or after moon landing. In any case, I think it is safe to assume that between December 1968 and March 1969, which is when Hamilton submitted the final Apollo 11 software, no new software has been written for either CSM or LM.
To me, the above paints rather clear picture: the actual software lead was the aforementioned Dan Lickly, who, when the project was complete, moved on, and gave up the position to his mentee, whose growth he guided, from the most junior team member to a senior lead. Indeed, Dan Lickly is described in these proceeding of the conference on the history of the Apollo Guidance Computer exactly as someone who "was in charge of a larger group of programmers that did programming for the AGC on the CSM and LEM". The whole program was led by Frederick Martin, whom Hamilton also mentions as the person making the decision to promote her. It is he whom Hoag describes, in the article linked above, among "the notable names", as the lead of COLOSSUS (CSM) software program.
Now, here comes the best part, which I only now realized as I was redoing this research, trying to find again the sources that originally prompted my comment you linked: Hamilton married Dan Lickly in 1969 before Apollo 11 (which flew in July). Think about it: Lickly literally promoted his own fiancee to the position he was leaving behind, and half a century later, not only we never hear about Dan Lickly (say his name to not forget), but we get fed the story of the leader of the team that wrote the software that sent the man to the moon, without ever hearing that she only received this position when the whole thing was already done from the guy she was sleeping with.
wlxd
1yr ago
I have a good number of friends who had pretty good results in programming competitions like Google Code Jam (think, top 5 scorers). They come from an Eastern European country, and, most probably, they are more intelligent than basically anyone you have ever personally met. Among them, they boast dozens of IOI/IMO/ICPC medals etc. Top tiers of sheer brainpower, by quote objective standards.
Here is something to understand about them: based on their individual background, those international competitions were some of the best options to gain success and status available to them at the time. After these competitions, they went on to become grad students at Harvard, Columbia, CMU and the like, and/or got a job at top FAANGs, making $500k today (roughly a decade after their competition successes). These options simply weren’t open (or even, for that matter, conceivable) to many of them when they were honing their competition skills way back in high school, or freshmen years at university, purely because your options are much more limited in second or third tier countries.
Now compare this to the options available to a highly intelligent and driven American young adult. Is try-harding at these objective merit-based competitions worth it? Not really: you will be competing against literally billions of people across the world, and your inborn advantage of being born in US, the land of many opportunities, will help you very little.
The more typical way of succeeding in current day America, which is getting to an elite college, are in fact conflicting with tryharding at competitions: practicing for those will take a lot of your time, which could be more effectively spent on honing items that will look better on your college applications. Quite simply, foundational Americans have better ways of enjoying success and status than these competition.
This is even better seen in those gaming competitions, which are dominated by lower class people from poor countries, as for them, spending 12+ hours a day playing video games have lowest opportunity cost. I would never allow my son to even try to get into that “career”.
This is also why Soviet science was such high quality: for the top people, there was little way to achieve success “in the industry”, and so the position of university professor was relatively really good compared to potential earnings and responsibilities you’d have at a high level position in some state owned enterprise. The wage and status differential was not huge. Compare this to today’s enormous differential between what you can make in US academia, vs the industry, and note also the incentives of US immigration system on foreign researchers (I can expand on this at some other occasion).
wlxd
1yr ago
Yes, that’s what I said: there are former NATO soldiers in the offensive. No, this does not make them NATO forces. Similarly, NATO has been funding Ukraine, sure, but it does not make NATO forces Ukrainian forces, any more than “moderate” Syrian rebels were actually US forces.
Let me be quite clear what I would accept as “NATO forces” participating in offensive: a unit of active duty soldiers from the same NATO army, which was put together by said NATO army and sent to join AFU. Volunteer veterans slapdashed together into a unit upon arrival by the AFU military leadership does not count as NATO force.
This is important distinction, and I hope you are not purposefully trying to confuse people.
wlxd
1yr ago
To my understanding this represents an escalation of the war, wherein NATO forces commanded by Nato leadership are directly involved in a major offensive for the first time.
Which NATO forces? What country of origin, which unit?
Among soldiers in the offensive there certainly are some who served in NATO militaries before, but this does not make the offensive force NATO. It’s makes as much sense as saying that it’s the Soviets who invaded Ukraine, because some soldiers in Russian force served in Soviet Union.
wlxd
11mo ago
You know the joke about the communist dissident arrested by secret police for handing out blank sheets of papers in public?
wlxd
1yr ago
Your understanding of Margaret Hamilton’s role in Apollo program is still closer to what activists want you to believe instead of actual truth.
She was a lead of a team that wrote the Apollo lander program, this much is true. What is less commonly known is that she joined that team as the most junior member, and only became a lead after the code had already been written, and the actual leads (whose names, ironically, basically nobody knows today) have moved on to more important projects.
wlxd
1yr ago
While I agree that there is some strangeness about the entire story, I think the “gay escort” theory is highly unlikely, for the very simple reason: people like Pelosis can afford and procure services of higher quality providers than crazy hobos.
wlxd
1yr ago
I guess bigger culture war issue is if he was just trying to get his dick sucked and the media said that was false and it was a right wing terrorist then basically confirms a lot of peoples view that they are lying to us. (Nothing wrong with trying to get your dick sucked).
The "male prostitute" hypothesis is simply ludicrous, as I've already noted the previous time, but if you want even more evidence against it, then well, they released surveillance video where the DePape uses the hammer to break into the back door of Pelosi's house. This is not how you typically invite male prostitutes into your house, I believe. At this point, the only way I can steelman this stupid theory is that Pelosi asked him to "smash up his rear entrance" and DePape took it literally.
wlxd
1yr ago
meaning simply "those the court decided were victims"
The court did not decide that any of that. This was a jury trial, so the court was not making determination here. Instead, it was the prosecution who claimed that those killed by Rittenhouse were victims. The jury unanimously rejected that.
wlxd
1yr ago
Just saying that becoming a drug dealer is not a rational economic decision.
You cannot conclude this just based on the fact that they are making less money that they could in a normal job -- unless, that is, "rational economic decision" is equated with "making the most money possible", preferences be damned.
Here's the thing: many people will simply find a job of dealing drugs to be more preferable than, say, cutting chicken all day long. I mean, think about what a typical drug dealer is actually doing when he's performing his job. If he's a street dealer, he just hangs out at a street corner all day long, shooting shit with his friends passing by, watching youtube on his phone when bored etc. If he deals out of his home, that's even better: you just hang out at your home, can play XBox all day long, you just have to answer the door every now and then. If you're delivering, it's basically same as dealing out of home, but answering calls just takes longer. In any case, either of the above is way more preferable than having your hands elbow deep in animal guts eight hours a day, or hustling in McD kitchen. Think about it: assume that legal risk is negligible. Would you prefer to serve an occasional customer from out of your home for $7/hour, or stock shelves for $8?
Now, I assume that the studies finding that drug-dealing income is often below minimum wage actually do it after taxes and transfers: note that you don't have to pay Social Security on income made from drug dealing, and it's easier to qualify for and get higher payouts from SNAP/TANF/SSI etc if your over-the-counter income is zero. This is minimum level of competency I'd expect from researchers in academia. Now that I think of, however, I am reminded of the fact that the entire notion of growing income inequality in US in recent decades is entirely false, built upon foundation of ignoring taxes and transfers, which tremendously reduce actual consumption inequality. If they can fail (or, less charitably, lie) at something so basic, they can also be similarly full of shit here as well.
wlxd
3mo ago
What you are trying to do here is to use “racist” as a thought-terminating cliche, which eradicates the need to address the arguments being made on their merits. It is not surprising that you do it, as this strategy has worked amazingly well for last 60 years. The problem is that this only works if all sides of conversation share the same assumptions, that being racist is the worst thing ever, and it automatically entails you are wrong. Overusing this strategy has led to many people rejecting this assumption, and being much less impressed by the “racist” card.
Yes, BAP is racist, but the real question is, is he right or wrong?
That if you think they don't deserve the treatment they're receiving, your problem is with how we deal with criminal suspects in general.
I find your suggestion that they get the same treatment as common criminals to be rather ludicrous, and I do not believe that you are making it in a good faith.
The criminal justice system did not treat the George Floyd rioters in the same manner, that is, by attempting to catch every single last one of them and keeping them in pretrial detention for months or years. Instead, George Floyd rioters were allowed to run mostly scot-free, and only a handful of the absolute worst ones faced any consequences at all. In the "100 days of Portland", for example, the handful of rioters that did end up getting arrested, was immediately released and often rearrested next night, rinse and repeat.
In fact, I wouldn't have minded much how the Jan 6th rioters are treated if BLM rioters were treated the same (in fact I suggested that we do exactly that at the time, the Jan 6th treatment is another good example along the Waco one I brought up that stopping riots is definitely doable when proper methods are used). The problem here is that you are asking me to play along the rules of the game, while your side of the "criminal justice reform" argument is rigging the game to punish my side and benefit theirs. I reject that.
wlxd
10mo ago
Prison doesn't work if all that happens is you scoop someone up, dump them in there, do nothing about reform, then let them back out to resume their interrupted career once the sentence is served.
This is not so. Men achieve peak of their criminal career between 16 and 30, after that they naturally become more placid. If you keep the worst offenders in prison during that time, you physically prevent majority of the crime they’d ever commit, even if you do absolutely nothing to rehabilitate them. In short, they do not exactly resume their career.
wlxd
1yr ago
Does this course of action sound like something that happened in the real world?
I recommend watching some videos from this channel, which contain mostly body or dashcam videos of police officers interacting with criminals. You'll find that the criminals often behave completely bizarrely, making completely absurd decisions and incoherent actions, and cops just chilling, seconds before events turn violent.
For example, in this video, you get to observe an actual hammer attack. You see some people chatting with the driver, then they come up to the arriving officer, telling him that they guy is likely drunk. The cop engages the driver, cheerily asking him for papers, when the guy bizarrely, for no reason at all, pulls out a hammer and brings it to a gunfight.
I recommend watching more videos from this channel. Behaviors of the criminal underclass are often completely bizarre and strategically idiotic. You are assuming much more rationality than the drunks, crazies and morons actually can scrape together in the moment. The argument that "it doesn't make sense to do it" simply does not carry much weight.
wlxd
11mo ago
Sorry, the comment search functions both here and on Reddit are terrible, such that it would be too much work for me to track down that comment thread.
A few weeks ago, in order to get some hands on experience with this whole AI thing, I build a search engine that finds Motte comments by content. It works moderately well, e.g. for the above one, I put your name and "being assaulted on subway" as search query, and it was the top result (neither "assault" nor "subway" actually occur in this comment). When I put the same query and my name, it finds this one. I really need to polish it and publish, it's pretty useful.
wlxd
1yr ago
Funny how everyone here was very much aware that Twitter was ran by leftist activists, but the CEO was not.
Being aware of what happens in your company is the single most important job of a CEO.
wlxd
1yr ago
Well, yes, indeed I believe that upstanding citizens shouldn’t suffer the same condition as criminals, who should experience bad conditions in order to deter them from doing crime. Not sure what your point is, that I should lobby for improved conditions in jails so that political prisoners of my side have better time there? No, I’d rather the other side stop taking political prisoners.
wlxd
8mo ago
As much as I sympathize with your individual plight, I don’t think it counts into the “homeless problem” in the society’s view. Shelters or non-profits or churches might be interested in helping you, but people like me (normal, well-off, employed people with families and mortgages) do not care about you much. Indeed, there are a lot of poor and struggling people on this planet, and I can’t spare too much energy or emotion on you.
Instead, what I see as an actual problem is crazy, unpredictable, aggressive hobos taking over the commons, and making the city dangerous and unlivable for normal people, while collectively consuming more government resources per capita than the poorest working people actually subsist on. This is the problem for me, because it actually affects me in a substantial and negative way.
My point here is that you are or were not like them, and it is unlikely that any solution that applies to one group will also apply to the other. The hidden homeless are overlooked on purpose, because they are only a problem to themselves, not to anyone else.
wlxd
1yr ago
You are missing the point. Sure, you can certainly make the case that Jacob Chansley’s actions were criminal if you look only at the bare letter of the law, and ignore context. The argument is, however, that there have been thousands of other people, hundreds in the specific example of Kavanaugh hearings, that also broke the bare letter of the law in roughly the same degree of egregiousness as Chansley, but none of whom even faced anything close to criminal trial, much less years in prison. The argument here is about malicious prosecution which is completely outside historical norms for the behavior.
Imagine, for example, that federal government found that some of these protesters are not US citizens, but permanent residents, and found that they are not carrying their green card, as required by law, and charged them with misdemeanor and put them for 30 days in jail. The letter of the law clearly allows that, but it would be completely outrageous, as this law is never enforced in any other circumstance, so it would be hard to see it as anything other than malicious political targeting.
wlxd
1yr ago
I have another explicit example of the same. A public restroom on Alki Beach in Seattle was recently rebuilt. This is a three stall restroom, entire building is something like 250-300 square feet. Cost? $638,000. Look at the photo. For this price, in the private world, you can buy a quarter of acre, hire a contractor to build a high quality 2000 sq ft 3 bed/3 bath house with great finish, and sell it with a good profit. The restroom took an entire year of construction time, not even counting planning.
wlxd
1yr ago
I’m pretty conflicted here. On the one hand, I think people should have right to commit suicide: prohibiting people from doing that, keeping them prisoner in this world, is rather ghastly. At the same time, I don’t think that anyone should actively assist in the process, except in cases where the person is literally unable to actually proceed at the task, and only to the extent of their actual physical inability. For example, quadriplegics who can still move their heads get a setup where they get a button that they can press that will inject them with lethal drugs, people who have enough motor control to inject themselves could have the drug delivered to their beds, so that they can pull it into syringe and inject themselves, and people who are “just” depressed, but otherwise physically fine, get no help whatsoever.
I find the idea of euthanizing a healthy young person rather morally revolting. If they want to kill themselves, they should just do it, and if they can’t bring themselves to do it, this strongly suggests that the person is not actually fully into this. The person in question has, allegedly, two prior suicide attempts. Normally, most suicide attempts from young women are just performative attempts at getting attention, so they are not meant to succeed, but here it is more likely to have just been ineptness at getting things done, given that you do not sign on a professional to do the job done if it’s just performative. Still, I would be more fine with the setup of 1) getting a professional advice on an appropriate method, 2) creating some kind of DNR statement, so that if you fail at killing yourself quickly, nobody will try to rescue you, and 3) doing it in some place and time where and when you are unlikely to be get interrupted in the process, so that nobody is actually put into position of having to decide what to do about your not quite yet dead body.
This way, while healthy young people killing themselves will still be a tragedy, at least nobody will be complicit in this. Euthanizing healthy young people due to “mental health trauma” seems akin to me to deciding that giving heroin addicts as much heroin as they want is actually a perfectly good solution to the problem of heroin addiction, or, at even more basic level, giving a child a candy any time they ask for one. Indulging someone else’s wishes is not always good for them, and killing a healthy young person is definitely a central example. We should inculcate virtues, instead of maximizing expressed utility functions.
wlxd
1yr ago
You didn’t pay attention to this stuff back in 2020? We discussed it extensively at the motte.
Pfizer execs didn’t have to “acknowledge” that they didn’t test for transmission reduction, it was quite obvious from the get go, based on the actual design of the clinical studies. This was never seen as a requirement for approval.
It sure would have been nice if vaccines stopped transmission, and many (including me) believed at the time that the vaccines will in fact do so. This turning out not to be the case was initially a big disappointment, and then, when they started doing forceful vaccination mandates when we already knew they don’t do shit for stopping transmission, was pushing me into white rage every time I thought about it. Nevertheless, the actual studies never tested that.
The reason was twofold: first, the higher priority was to figure out if there actually is reduction in symptoms and negative outcomes — this is what was meant by “efficacy”. Initial studies used for approval showed pretty huge risk reductions, on the order of 90% reduction in having observable Covid symptoms with positive tests. I don’t believe that anyone believes that the vaccines have this good efficacy at blocking symptoms today. I am not sure what is the reason for this discrepancy. Maybe it’s because the vaccines were targeting original variant, and the virus evolved to be much better at spreading. Maybe the elevated response from vaccine lasts for very short time, couple of months at most. I don’t know, stopped paying attention at Covid science altogether somewhere in the middle of 2021, when I realized that the science and the truth were mostly irrelevant for the policies and narratives.
Second, it is actually pretty hard to design a study that measures efficacy at stopping transmission with any good degree of confidence that would be approved by IRB, a notoriously NIMLY (Not In My LaboratorY) bodies. Useful studies are “””unethical””” to run, so we’ll let the virus spread to billions and kill millions without trying to understand how it does so through direct experiment, instead we collectively decided to just watch its shadows on the cave’s wall.
Yes, I agree with you that most of the covid restriction have made very little sense at best, and starting from somewhere in 2021, they were basically a lunacy. But, dude, Covid is so last year, we already litigated this here to death, there is probably nothing new you can say here on this topic that hasn’t been already said last year by others. At this point, I’m so over it that I’m actually puzzled when someone around me even brings up Covid unironically. I will never trust the “””experts””” on this, or any other topic that actually matters to the society ever again, but, again, I already said it last year as well. It’s over, current thing is different now.
wlxd
1yr ago
I would like to register a prediction that absolutely nothing will come out of any of these suits. At best, they will all be dismissed due to qualified immunity. But, more likely, today is the last time we are hearing about them.
wlxd
5mo ago
Do you imagine that a lasting peace is going to be achieved by killing thousands of innocents to get rid of Hamas?
It’s pretty easy to imagine when you look at some historical examples, eg. pacification of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in WWII, which in fact resulted in not only lasting peace, but in fact strong alliance with the former adversary who killed hundreds of thousands of innocents using the same tactics used by Israel today.
The Spider-Man one is particularly egregious, because the modder just combined the textures from the Saudi Arabian release of the game with English text. As it turns out, the game makers are totally happy to make and profit from LGBT-free version of the game, as long as it’s not Americans who enjoy it.
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