We are almost at 2022 - a virus originating in one country spread across the world within months. We are dependent on each other much more than any other generation. Unless the human race acts united, huge problems like climate change aren't going away. Instead of classifying problems based on borders, we should look at all problems as human problems, not Chinese, American, Russian or whatever.
Almost… https://youtu.be/PFFFa9M4T80
There are lots of totalitarians that believe their cause (e.g. climate change, covid) is so important that it should take precedence over market forces (i.e. what people want). Maybe you are advocating that, but its not a contrarian opinion, it's what every armchair slacktivist technocrat is pushing for, as long as it mainly applies to others.
I dunno, the recent increase in rhetoric across the world seems otherwise. Trump, Modi, right wing in Europe etc
I didn't mean anything close to centrally planned economy. Countries can certainly work together without having a rule by committee type situation.
It’s much deeper than cheering on for a national team.
Lebanon has basically eroded because you have groups who were acting in the interest of their own rather than the country as a whole.
Belief in a country is self-identification with a shared narrative. Just like with a startup, some things are impossible to achieve unless everyone (perhaps irrationally) believes they are possible.
Is Country X special? Maybe not. But if everyone there believes it's special, the country may yet become some version of its ideal self. Patriotism is vision casting. It is the story we tell ourselves that we may become the people we want to be.
As someone whose day job doesn’t involve writing UI code, web UI still ends up being the easier of the two to implement.
If we had a uniform view of what it is, we might be able to make something of it.
I agree with it, but it would disrupt a whole industry.
Where possible, the programs should be written in a more data-driven manner, where the actual classified portions are contained in data files that are separated from the program source code. This permits you to release the source code without issue (it tells you very little about the actual systems), and then you only have to keep classified the data used by the program and assembled (data + executable) system.
If the program cannot be properly separated from something warranting classification, modular programming is the solution. Divide the program into an unclassified and classified portion. Keeping the former in the public domain and visible (at least with no more than a FOIA request, ideally with less effort) and the latter properly secured.
Even the un-classified stuff is mind-blowing, including thinking about how to even begin running/building a system like that. Software code would reveal way too much of that, even after being sterilized.
Regarding running/building, sure, it's harder. But mostly because of expense, the specific examples were military and US DOD and its contractors buy compilers. So buy a license for Green Hills or similar and you can build it. Buy an ARM development board and you can run it. "ARM?!?!?" Yes, ARM. Embedded systems in the modern era (that is to say, after 2000 but starting sometime in the 1980s) use off-the-shelf chips, perhaps hardened versions for things like satellites. "Hardened" doesn't necessarily change the architecture, mostly just ties them to an old version of it. If the software is from pre-1990 there's a good chance it is running on a bespoke architecture, but after that point, and certainly after 2000, it became rarer.
Now, whether they will release the code is another matter. Doing this determination requires good upfront engineering or a lot of analysis before releasing it. But good engineering has been known to happen from time to time, even by the government. More practically, though, the software will mostly be developed by contractors who will retain the copyright and so it won't be public domain.
Even just exposing data structures will reveal capabilities by virtue of the data created by them.
If an fighter pilot's battlefield/ situational awareness software makes calls to 4 known methods of battlefield communication, and also to an additional unknown one, then that reveals info, even without knowing anything else about it.
Maybe you're intending that all of these types of inquiries, or data sharing capabilities be redacted or sanitized somehow, but that seems like a huge undertaking in itself, especially if you expect a working product.
And then what would that resulting skeleton product's remaining value be, for the extra effort put into releasing it?
Besides potentially helping other countries close the capability gap.
2. Every similar law has exceptions concerning classified information.
S-by-O got a bad reputation due to people imagining it was the last word in security, when it really is just the beginning.
Passwords are literally purified security-by-obscurity.
I can't think of any security technology or method that doesn't have a security by obscurity component. Or that isn't enhanced with an additional layer of it.
It does suggest that a common usage of the term "security by obscurity" can mean security ONLY by obscurity. Which I made clear was not my usage.
The other mis-use of the term is the opposite overreaction is to forget that obscurity does remain an indispensable component of practical security. Its most common form being as a password (or biometric) used to unlock an otherwise impenetrable (for practical purposes) system.
Without an obscured backdoor (password, biometric, ...) the an otherwise completely secure system would not even be accessible to its owner.
I know for sure this is a controversial point of view, but to me it is obvious (even if I can see the reasoning behind hard-line Free Software advocacy).
(What would probably do more good for both Open Source and Free Software in my opinion would be to get rid of CLAs as far as possible since they create a unhealthy relationship where the strong part is constantly tempted to relicense contributed code.)
No, it doesn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software.
Immigration should be massively increased in the US. The surest way for the US and west to grow its international influence, economy, and live up to its values is through immigration. It’s not a zero sum game: immigrants create jobs for everyone. They increase many forms of diversity and expose us to may PoVs. Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas. The West would increase its economic competitiveness with other powers (ie China) that are less likely to increase immigration. This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration.
Faux immigration like H1B and other guest worker visas cruelly create a second class workforce. It would be more humane to allow more actual immigration.
It’s an obvious policy win, I wish more people would vocally support radically increased immigration.
More importantly, it increases the labor pool without giving immigrants the right to vote.
>Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas.
The major cities also have significant infrastructure, crime, and affordability issues. Some of them also have major homelessness problems. I'm not saying that's because of immigrants, but saying that immigrants live in cities and those cities are "better" is kind of non-sensical. If anything, COVID showed us that people want to get away from cities.
Is the higher social capital bit really true? My own family immigrated many years ago to the US. From my parents' home country, there are millions of other people in the US. Many of them don't care to assimilate. They have a romanticized view of this home country, and have outright anti-semitic and other intolerant beliefs.
>This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration.
If you're bringing in the best and brightest minds, sure. The US, for example, is fairly bogged down with a significant, inefficient government apparatus. Taxes seem to go up without quality of life enhancements. I could see an increased labor pool increasing revenue, but how about housing affordability and healthcare? We don't have "quality" jobs for the folks who are already in this country. How do we increase immigration while lifting everyone up?
I am not necessarily disagreeing with your ideas, but I think you're simplifying some very hard problems.
That it is pointless to ask that question on HN or any social site because actual contrarian opinions will be downvoted and hidden.
The most popular "edgy" opinions will be voted as the most contrarian and be rise to the top.
Reminds me of r/unpopularopinion
Academia is the art of archiving things discovered outside of it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407598 - Recent overview of the argument against
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17441773 - I come away appropriately looking like an idiot in this one because I made many wrong assumptions about Haiku's package system, however I still maintain it was a bad decision
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17268775 - Some more argumentation about how to do things better
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776127 - Related
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937228 - Vaguely related
I know I have several more, but there doesn't seem to be a good way to search one's own post history on HN. (This statement has since been made obsolete by CRConrad)
Depends on how you define a "good" way, but surely https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... -- and the possible permutations of search terms and filtering and ordering -- isn't all that bad?
That said, I had a hunch complaining about it would bring someone out who had a better solution than I did, and it worked, so thanks.
But yeah, it is funny how it's kind invisible down there.
Also, thank you for labeling them.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=AnIdiotOnTheNet+site%3Anews.ycombi...
I also know that some of these languages have very well regarded communities - that's why this is my response to OP's question.
I’ve also used Julia, albeit less, but i don’t really see the “amazing-ness” of it. Although I come from a typed-languages background with a good IDE, so I can definitely see how it’s amazing to someone coming from Python or R.
Rust honestly is IMO a great language and a huge step from C++. But again, it’s not the end-all, I still usually pick Java / Kotlin or something else unless performance really matters.
Whereas Flux.jl is a pure Julia library and performance is comparable. There are even efforts to build a pure BLAS replacement in Julia, and performance is comparable to FORTRAN. If you are into scientific computing, this is amazing because it lets you operate at a much higher level, close to mathematics.
If a corporation is responsible for the death of a person, the CEO, CFO, COO, and members of the board should serve prison time.
If the corporation is a repeat offender, then the corporation should suffer the death penalty. The assets liquidated a public auction. Also Corp Officers and board members go to jail and are forbidden from ever holding such position again.
I look forward to your down votes.
A better idea might be tax investors at income tax levels on capital gains, regardless of holding time (adjusted for inflation indexation)
And increase corporation tax for companies above a certain profit level maybe at $1bn up.
I'm interested into CS but not that interested to devour everything on my own, so taking some courses is helpful on that perspective.
I can't say I've seen anyone straight out of a bootcamp that was a great hire. I guess these online coding schools might cater to motivated teenagers that are interesting in trying out CS before enrolling in a proper degree. The few good hires I've seen were all STEM grads that decided to take a bootcamp after graduation, or CS grads that were not confident in their ability to enter the marketplace. They could have probably achieved the same thing with a bit of self study or a few electives in college.
[0] https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/announcing-lambda-fello...
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...
There is certainly a subset of people that do like to solve these problems, and don't like to go to university, but I would assume it is rather small.
The other thing, which is probably less true in countries where you have to pay for university, is that people who join the job market very early view everything in monetary values. My university buddies would do things just because it sounds interesting or hard or could make a positive difference in the world, while my friends who joined the labor market immediately after school are much more focused on their career development and salary.
I have a BS an MSIS. Most of the information isn't used in my job.
FWIW I don’t have a degree nor do I believe the average CS program is worth the money (US context ofc)
If you had to decide between dropping $X for a computer science degree, and $X for e.g. some liberal arts degree, are you suggesting that the liberal arts degree is a better investment for a career as a developer?
I'm not sure if you're making a statement about how things should be or how they are. Because pretty sure 90%+ companies still value computer science degrees.
* All programming languages suck. We are not there yet as humanity. I can not think outside of the box enough to make the breakthrough that should be made, at least as of now. While looking at other programming languages, I see the same issue: inability to express thoughts in concise and straightforward manner. Unsolved issue.
* The only idea in programming that I consider definitely good is pattern matching. Note that I'm talking about the concept here. No particular implementation strikes me as "yep, this is it": be it limitation to strings only (regex) or syntax-only implementation (preventing composability of the patterns) or some other sh*t.
Have a nice weekend!
I'm not sure this if is a contrarian opinion, but this is one of my biggest career takeaways. Every programming language I have used for an extended period of time turned out to suck. Whenever I find a new programming language that doesn't suck, I end up using it enough to discover the specific way in which it sucks. So I've inferred that every programming language I haven't extensively used, and doesn't seem to suck, will just end up sucking in some way I will ultimately discover.
This
I don't have objective data but it seems that I'm reaching the "they did what?" pretty quickly when I read about yet another language. Don't need to start using it even.
You want me to use Java? OK, as long as we're using Java in a situation where the specific way in which Java sucks is a smaller issue than the specific way in which any alternative language would suck.
Concision by itself is not something to optimize for, since it usually leads to misunderstanding at scale.
My observation is that inexperienced programmers have this kind of mess in their head. No programming language can help with that. Hard to tell because I'm not sure what exactly you mean.
> Concision by itself is not something to optimize for,
Concision is one of the aspects. Too much and the code is unreadable. Not enough and code is too long. In both cases mental effort grows and maintainability suffers.
The other flaw: the presumption that solutions can only be linear sequential - languages are written into linear sequential files which contribute "keys under the street light". And no we haven't figure out any better way. But we don't acknowledge the problem either.
Not every OS connected to the internet can afford the risks of bad updates (which are far more common than proponents think/claim)
Since user interfaces (in particular) are not cleanly separated from the underlying system on personal devices, updates end up deploying both. I'd love for my family to get an updated browser or messaging client that only addresses issues around, say, the SSL implementation or HTTP or Unicode handling that specifically address security concerns. And then separate updates that alter the interface which become (somewhat) opt-in updates (though eventually they will be effectively mandatory). But that's not the reality of software development.
A major version change (eg UI rewrite or API breakage is an exception).
I don’t get the constant breakage the rest of HN seems to get, so there is no reason to pay the cost of manual updates.
But if your app updates with minimal inconvenience, good for you. In fact it comes in handy when the update adds new features or improves performance.
I suspect having this requirement would also greatly improve API design...
2. Government should be 100% transparent in time of peace and offset by 1 year in time of war.
3. All government content creation should be public domain.
- Alcohol does not make people more aggressive to a large extent. In the vast majority of clubs/festivals almost everybody is inebriated but violence is fairly rare (in my experience). (I'm a non-drinker btw so I have no horse in this race).
- David Bowie's music is unremarkable.
- We should keep Linux unpopular because the more users it gets, the more malware/spyware/advertising/telemetry it will attract. It is fine where it is now in terms of its userbase.
Sad but true - it seems like every technology that is made to promote free speech, anonymity, or non-centralization ultimately leads to bad actors using it and more authoritarian laws being passed. I'm not sure what the solution is.
The Spiders from Mars music on the Ziggy album is remarkable. The remarkable role that Bowie played was as a connector.
Some rock stars get lucky, get rich and famous, and then decide they are going to shoot up as much heroin as possible before they die. David Bowie got lucky and decided to use his fame to make the world a little bit closer to the way he wanted it to be.
I never would have heard of Mark Ronson without Bowie, never would have heard of Brian Eno, might not have heard of Iggy Pop. Probably would have heard of Lou Reed but who knows. Those people made remarkable music. Bowie helped get them in the spotlight.
But yeah, I haven't listened to "Let's Dance" in many years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566111
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28569366
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568600
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566108
All are actually pretty popular opinions, especially on HN. Personally I interpreted the original question to be asking for opinions contrary to prevailing HN sentiment.
Fight me.
Very very hard. In fact, as a teenager I tired C++( I know it's not exactly the same, but lower level languages are difficult) and found it so hard I stopped trying to learn programing for years.
JavaScript, specifically Unity's implementation was my first programing language. Even today, it's my go-to language to get something done quick. Anything larger, like a video game for example, I'll use C#.
Even of C was amazing 30 years ago, we have better tools now. You can make 200k writing C#, Python or JavaScript. Why make life hard with a low level language !
Because I'm designing an operating system. None of those languages can do that.
Also, I'm a maintainer of 2 of the top 10 packages on npm. Javascript is not a language I usually jump to when I care about performance or (extreme) portability.
Lastly, C++ != C. They're similar and somewhat compatible, but entirely different at the same time.
I acknowledge this, but they're both very difficult if you're starting with that. To reframe my argument I'd say no new programmer should use a low-level language as it's so difficult you might just give up.
The vast majority of jobs will not require you to build an operating system. I think it's a matter of what your goals are. If you want to build a website or a game, use a high level language, get it done fast and move on of your life. If you want to find a job, you're going to have much better luck using higher level languages and you'll still make just as much as an embedded C engineer ( if not more).
For your specific use case,yes you need something like C.
Your statement regarding C and C++ for beginners isn't strong enough. No new programmer should program, period. That is, they should not be set in front of a computer to type out even a single line of code that is meant to be executed.
They should be taught to think algorithmically, to express their intent in clear and precise language without the aid of a computer to evaluate what they've written and verify it for them, instead relying on their own mind.
This doesn't need to last for long, perhaps just the first few weeks of instruction, but it should be present. The alternative is what I've seen throughout my career of people coding first and thinking later. They become dependent on the compiler, the type system, the test suite to do even the basic thinking for them. Those are useful tools (and essential once your programs start to take on any significant scale), but if they're what you reach for first, you're not thinking.
And new people to programming should spend more time thinking and less time typing. In a college or high school course, this means assignments that require actual coding should be every 1-2 weeks, at best, and the rest of the assignments should be written. Again, having them express their understanding of the program's algorithms and data structures in clear and precise language first, before they ever type anything up.
This assumes you're learning in an academic environment. I taught myself programming just because I wanted to make some video games. I've done very very well career wise. I will admit I do lack some fundamentals, but I can still get things done.
I'm absolutely unashamed to rely upon modern conveniences. Yes I need the strong type system C# provides for any bigger project. I practically need autocomplete, particularly with C# to get anything done.
If it's small I can hack it out in JavaScript. I still remember the three lines of code you need to stand up with NodeJS.
One of my friends needed a small app done last year, I was able to build it for him and flutter in about a month. In fact modern programming languages are so much easier, I reckon this friend if he put the time into it could have built his own application in a few months. The old guard of Computer Science tendsl to have a very strange gatekeeping to them.
Overall, I'd like programming to be less of a foreign thing to the general public. If you learn a little bit of python to reformat some old phone contacts you have, you're very much a programmer. Like not every single person with a driver's license can drive a big rig, not every programmer will be able to build their own operating system from scratch.
And I did say this was a contrarian view. Georgia Tech's CS 1301 (when I took it, numbers varied) was taught this way through Spring 2001 or 2002, and then they switched to Scheme (SICP) and then Python (not sure what, if any, textbook).
I do definitely see your point, I've had times where I'll write so much code and then later I'll realize it would have made much more sense to carefully plan out what I actually wanted to accomplish.
Then again for my personal projects I find it the most fun to dive in head first, and fix whatever issues I run into later.
Occasionally I'll take a hybrid approach, where I'll immediately jump in and try to hack together a really bad prototype. Figure out what worked and what didn't, and then rewrite the code from scratch later. I sincerely enjoy programming so this has been very fun for me. And there's nothing like turning a hobby into a career!
Some schools still teach C and C++ as intro languages. I would not recommend it for a self-learner but in an academic setting it works.
Idk, I like being closer to the metal I guess? It is comforting somehow. Not comforting like machine code ( which I love but hate to use ) but still, not having a clue what I am actually asking to have happen is very anxiety producing.
I like Dumb languages. Next.
[1]: https://groups.google.com/g/boring-crypto/c/48qa1kWignU/m/o8...
Since you are writing OS (which Go is not designed for), what's your thought on Pascal or Ada?
Sinularly, many people are mad about countries doing "unethical" things, but countries do not have ethical norms, they merely have interests, and that's what they'll advance towards. To think that countries for example shouldn't spy on each other or assassinate their enemy leaders is also a misunderstanding of human nature, and more largely of geopolitics.
When you point out to them that political systems fight for their own survival, just like organisms and memes do they call that "whataboutism". But fundamentally we are all humans and we function about the same way the world over.
In times of stress we humans put a ruthless dictator in charge as a last-ditch Hail Mary. Once conditions improve we replace them with something more suitable. Trying to "enlighten" an impoverished place like Afghanistan is misguided and just keeps their society stuck. But most people think dictators are mysterious aliens that arrive out of nowhere and start oppressing the poor masses.
Before you click that downvote button, think for a second. Imagine that America was a place of poverty and desperation. Whom would Americans elect? Oh wait, we already know who middle America made president back in 2016. The way to get people to elect friendlier governments is to make their environment better, not moralize.
We are pushed thru the ed system as future labor, but lack the tools to coexist in a very large and complex society.
I'm well aware that I'm simply not owed anything. However the worst human beings I've ever met are the 20 to 30 year olds who are still being taken care of by their parents, but don't appreciate it. They relentlessly complain about how poorly their being treated. A free place to live at 25 is great treatment as far as I'm concerned.
I learned the hard way these folks just think everyone in the world owes them. They treat having a job as optional. They create endless amounts of unneeded chaos.
As a related point, you need to set extremely high standards for anyone you enter into a relationship. You can't think oh it's okay, I really like this person, it's fine that they don't want to work. Nothing good comes from associating with people like this.
With that said I've been exceptionally lucky in the last few years. Almost everyone I've dated recently has been independent and career driven. The girl I'm currently dating is easily everything I've ever wanted in a partner, she has a master's, knows 3 languages, and has a great job.
If you at 24 decide you don't want to finish college and you don't want to work, that's your right. I definitely would blame parents who enable this behavior and don't just kick the kids out.
As far as I'm concerned, if I meet someone in their late 20s or early 30s who still doesn't want to work, I don't really care what their problem is. I don't need to hear a backstory about how their bosses mean to them when they were 19 and they swore off working forever.
I simply know people like that can cause very real damage to my life and I see to avoid them. I have found insurgent cities there's a far higher concentration of these folks, which led to me moving a few years ago. Again, I don't care why Billy or Mindy doesn't want to work. I just know I'm not letting them in my life.
I think there are better ways. We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. Democratic schools like Summerhill, Sudbury or unschooling are good starts. Kids at those schools have control over their schedule: if they want to keep a more structured schedule, they can, if they want a more relaxed schedule, sure. Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline.
At the very minimum, ending age segregation policies at schools would be a good start for more dynamic learning.
> Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline.
That's admirable.
I have no problem censoring blatant misinformation, but i’d rather be more tolerant than censor something that might be true or modest.
It didn't help that they changed stories multiple times for dubious reasons.
If I could redesign popular OSes in god mode, blocking the UI thread for more than a few 100s of ms would crash the app with no workarounds.
I have to admit GC is a grey area...
Others that would cause some heated debates.
- All transportation should have a weight multiplier to the base price since every kg adds to the fuel usage. Nobody should have to pay out of their own pockets for you.
- Social welfare should not be free. There are low skilled jobs that can be done by most. Missing both arms and other serious things are valid reasons not to do anything. Arachnophobia is not- I can vouch for this one personally. Panic attacks and all.
- Immigrants (like me in UK) should not have a right to vote until they get citizenship. This is the proof that you actually understand the country you live in.
- Election campain "propaganda" should be legally binding
- Voting should be done with "personal" digital security certificate. Anyone involved in electrion fraud should have all assets confiscated and put in prison
- Prisons should not be "free meals". You either work or study for a qualification in a field where there is a skill shortage.
- Internet should be declared public utility and nobody should have the right to kick anyone off it. In most civilized countries you're as good as dead without it.
- All platforms that reach the level of google search in peoples life should be declared public utility and punished for biases and manipulation of any kind.
- All big + small taxes should be merged into one (for example 50%)
So all poor people will have to be as skinny as possible with consequences for their health.
I don't think it would amount to much. A lot of the cost is per seat, no matter the weight.
> Immigrants (like me in UK) should not have a right to vote until they get citizenship. This is the proof that you actually understand the country you live in.
Isn't that already the case?
I'm on the fence for allowing non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. After all, it's mostly local policy that's debated and, by living there, they are directly impacted by it.
- that would a pain to charge and enforce.
- if someone has the means to pay for their own welfare, why would they be eligible in the first place? Isn't providing for those without means like the whole point of social welfare?
- many citizens have no understanding whatsoever of how their country work.
- you can only bind reality through law to some very limited extent. Suppose Winston Churchill had promised "four years of peace"...
- that seems harsh...
- internet is most certainly a public utility.You can, however, live without it.
- I think that's a good idea.
- That too.
That is indeed the point of it and should be applied to disabled/sick, etc like it already does. That doesn't prevent them from doing various jobs that the government needs to give a paycheck for and are either low skilled or can be part time. For example answering calls in a reception, or even doing first line support over the phone.
> Social welfare should not be free. There are low skilled jobs that can be done by most. ...
Most people are not able to do anything productive for the society, expect for in a limited number of positions. It would be more expensive to provide a job for everybody (training, commute, supervision). Many jobs are cheaper to automate than have a human to do it without paying salary. Many others are simply not worth doing at all.
> Election campain "propaganda" should be legally binding
"When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?"
> All platforms that reach the level of google search in peoples life should be declared public utility and punished for biases and manipulation of any kind.
Why would anybody build a platform like that, then? Punishing for any biases sounds like a hard task as well, as the main use of a platform like google search is the "bias" to include more useful results. Moreover, this kind of thing would become a political too rather quickly. I agree on the idea level, but I don't see any way to do this well.
This is 100% true but the point was that you're spending the money anyway. There are always roles that are too expensive to automate and where a human mind is worth 10 machines(ex:for converting archives to digital, translating older texts).
> "When the Facts Change..." that is what courts are for. Good are bad they are the only system we have for sorting out problems like this
At the end of the day it's about having workforce available when needed that you're already paying for and not having to pay someone else. Whether you have to use it or not is a different matter.
To avoid accidentally encouraging healthy-weight people to become underweight, I'd suggest one change to this: make it only apply to the amount that people are overweight by. For example, a 5'6" person who weighs 155lb or less wouldn't pay any surcharge, one who weighs 160lb would pay a surcharge on 5lb, one who weighs 200lb would pay a surcharge on 45lb, etc.
This is how it is in the US. As a non-citizen immigrant I can understand this point of view. On the other hand, it's taxation without representation which is what Americans originally fought for.
Pretty much that, or as the first place to go every time, for every card, by everyone. I agree with you: it's a useful tool, but it should be natural and any policy around it should be mutable.
Psychological therapy is the snake oil of the 21st century. See an actual doctor instead.
I say this having recovered from a suicide attempt.
- we don't want flying cars, it was a brainfart of sci-fi of the 60s, a linear combination of what was cool at the time, planes and cars. we dont want faster planes either - people happily spend the majority of their trip in airport waiting lines and getting to/from the airport
- we instead want our 140 characters because we are informational creatures. We are basically an entity living inside a brain with extra legs. it doesn't matter if we can't travel across the world if we can 'travel' instead. The real world doesn't matter much when our basic needs are covered, instead we get our rewards swimming in the sea of information and ideas. Therefore there are 2 worthy goals for humanity now: longevity or brain computer interfaces. either fullfills the ultimate desire of a conscious mind: to 'live' forever.
as you can't differentiate between 12 + 3 and 1 + 23, but the compiler won't tell you this.
Finally, although not particularly important, all this string formatting parsing is far less efficient than just simple bean classes.
It is all done for the laziness of the writer.
So you’re right, nearly all misery is caused by agriculture.
Except, not everything. We still deal with inferiority, finding mates, unwanted sexual advances. Pride is an issue today and it has been an issue before we were even humans.
And for the record: I don’t believe it’s possible, or desirable, to go back to the hunter-gatherer era.
As Trevor Horn would have it:
“We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far”
- Patriot Act after 9/11 (defense industry, metal scanners, TSA)
- Covid response (big pharma, hospitals, protective equipment, etc.
Right now the most conventional/pedestrian opinion you could possibly imagine is listed first.
* Small UI changes (eg moving a button) don’t make me have to relearn the UI from scratch.
* If an app developer has a way were I can get my work done faster, I want to know about it. Getting shit done is more sacred to me than the workflow I built myself.
* Related: devs do achieve the above.
* Most documentation doesn’t explain anything that can’t be learned from a code completion engine. When I do have questions, Stack Overflow is more likely to have a concise explanation that the official docs.
* Native apps are something only us devs give a shit about.
* Functional programming isn’t catching on for two reasons: the on boarding experience is missing things (mostly the big picture aspects of structuring an app) and b) Haskell is the post child of functional Languages.
The thing with the laws of physics is they they appear to predict 100% of what happens in nature. No one has ever seen something in nature, or in the lab, that either couldn't have been predicted by the physics of the day, or later after new laws theories were created.
So.. either your muscle fibers are controlled by your neurons, acting according to their understood biochemical operations, i.e. the laws of physics/chemistry, or they are not...
Free will says that your actions are not proscribed by the wiring of your brain and laws of physics - that you have a choice in what you do. Until someone observes a neuron not acting according to the laws of chemistry, that seems like an awfully long-shot belief, even if nothing can be ruled out. Perhaps someone in the future will discover the human spirit is controlling quantum behavior ?!
“ No one has ever seen something in nature, or in the lab, that either couldn't have been predicted by the physics of the day, or later after new laws theories were created.” The list of contradictions to this statement is massive, unless you’re just asserting your faith that all questions will be answered.
Given the current state of synaptic strengths in your brain, its actions in response to any input are proscribed. You may be able to report on the evolving neural activity up until the point that some specific action threshold is reached (and your muscles start twitching), but the outcome in reality was never in doubt despite alternatives having been "considered" beforehand.
Don't get hung up on the laws of physics being mathematical constructs... To make specific predictions you need an appropriately accurate language, and math does the job. Do I think that nature has a copy of Schrodringer's wave equation stashed away somewhere ? ... No, but the behavior of the system can still be accurately predicted by it. Maybe in the future the laws we've deduced will be described in a different fashion, but the underlying behavior and predictability will not have changed.
“I'm just saying that if the actions our brain and body (and the rest of nature) are 100% predictable per the laws of physics, chemistry, etc, then there's no room for them to be controlled by something else.”” True, but why do you think “what’s really happening” is reducible to any kind of precise theory?
“ Given the current state of synaptic strengths in your brain, its actions in response to any input are proscribed. You may be able to report on the evolving neural activity up until the point that some specific action threshold is reached (and your muscles start twitching), but the outcome in reality was never in doubt despite alternatives having been "considered" beforehand.” Can you share the studies that show this? I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to convey here. Is it that some study shows certain actions can be predicted by brain activity before they are made?
Sure, and also experiments where people report making conscious decisions for actions who's speed precludes a path through the cortex.
What I meant by "... evolving neural activity .." was to explain how we feel as if we have a choice, and are making decisions, because before any action "decision" is made (motor control initiated) there will likely be a period beforehand where whatever triggered the action is being processed and the outcome is not yet clear. Eventually there'll be some sort of winner-takes-all collapse of the alternatives and one will dominate. In the prelude to final response, we have access to our "inner thoughts" and can see the indecision and process, and we attribute that to some theorized actor "my self".
Anyways, I'm not here to convince you about this. As sure as I am about this, I do realize it's a "contrarian" view, and that the feeling of self-determination sure seems convincing, even if rationally a scientist may realize it is not true.
What those brain/psychological studies do prove is that our subjective experience is misleading. Our experience and internal narrative of what we're doing, and why, are really just after-the-fact rationalizations of what our brain+body are doing.
Don't confuse complexity and practical inability to predict with fundamental lack of predictability.
At it's base nature appears to act according to the laws of quantum physics + general relativity. On top of the quantum level, we stack a hierarchy of more abstract laws of how things behave at larger scale, so we have the standard particle model, chemistry, classical physics, etc, stacked upon that.
Due to current limits of computing, as well as the (mathematically) chaotic behavior of larger scale systems, we may not - as a matter of practicality - be able to predict their behavior, at least not based on a quantum level description, but that doesn't mean the laws of predictability ave abandoned us and the larger scale system has a mind of its own!
Nothing is being confused. The list of contradictions to the statement is not limited in only this way, and I haven’t suggested it is. It seems like you’re saying, “what really happens” is reducible to the physical theories we have today, and if not then it will be reducible to the physical theories we’ll eventually have, or would have if we were smart enough. It seems like a matter of faith to think everything is reducible to precise theory. My personal belief is that “what really happens” is not entirely reducible to any kind of humanly expressible logic.
To throw out some brand name contradictions to the original statement: What is dark matter? Is there a theory of quantum gravity? What is consciousness? How does the universe exist? Is there any kind of fundamental randomness? What about the fact that every theory studied involves idealizations like the real numbers? Are any two atomic particles of the same mathematical type actually the same?
How about the known existence of unprovable mathematical statements (Godel’s first theorem)? (Also insert here every great unsolved math problem.)
Dunno. Does it even exist? Is there any inkling of this proposed stuff NOT acting according to some deducible laws. Seems pretty boring stuff - interacts with regular matter just via gravity. Do we have it in our head ? :-)
> is there a theory of quantum gravity
Is that a practical issue for predicting behavior of physical systems at any given scale? I'm pretty sure we don't need quantum gravity to adequately understand the chemistry of our brains.
> what is consciousness
Self-introspection via feedback paths in the brain. Damage those feedback paths and you'll get a condition such as "blind sight" where you can provably see, but not be aware of your ability to see.
> how does the universe exist
Dunno, but we're in it, and governed by how things behave in it. That question seems a bit off-topic regarding free will within our universe!
> is there any kind of fundamental randomness
Dunno. I'd bet not. Does it matter at the level of classical physics and above?
> are two particles of same type actually the same
Not sure what you're referring to. The Pauli exclusion principle?
> how about Godel's incompleteness theorems, etc
What's the relevance to the discussion? I can't prove what the stock market is going to do tomorrow either.
The first sentence is fine - it's how we all speak - as long as you understand the conventions you are using - what the words "I", "chose" and "wanted" really mean.
The second sentence seems intended to be the more technically accurate one, but IMO it's really worse since it's a mish-mash of levels of abstraction. It would be better expressed as "I did that because my brain was wired to do that" (or better yet "because my brain was wired to predict that", but that's a whole other story). Your brain doesn't have "wants" (that's a pyschological concept), and it seems odd to characterize your actions as a "choice" while in the same sentence(!) accepting that your actions are controlled by your brains wiring, and therefore there was no choice!
- The narrative that the US and other Western nations' participation in white supremacy and slavery/colonialism is the main societal influence today is overblown and is likely leading to unnecessary political violence and turmoil.
- I don't think abortions should be banned, but generally speaking, it is incredibly easy to not get pregnant. Don't have sex. Unless you were raped, no one is 'forcing' anything on you, those were your decisions. It is baffling to me that no one says this out loud.
- There are only two genders.
- Kyle Rittenhouse acted in legitimate self-defense. The popular understanding of the case is beset with misinformation about what happened.
From watching all the video closely, and checking google maps drive time (about 35 minutes) it looks more like a kid who has firearm training and went to the community he works in to help clean up graffiti, etc. after a riot. Once there, someone armed him. In the first video he's being pursued and someone throws something at him and he fires when cornered. He called the police to report himself. Then the crowd pursued him and two people who attempted to attack him with deadly weapons (skateboard, pistol) wound up getting shot, surprise. He heads to the police to turn himself in.
i'm skeptical that you would lose your job for expressing these out loud, but perhaps you're right that you would. i don't know because i don't know where you work. pretty sure that firing somebody over an opinion is illegal but i'm no lawyer? seems the line would be crossed if it interfered with work or harmed somebody, not by simply expressing them online. but i don't want to get into an argument with you about this, because i can already tell you're gonna try and pick it apart with exceptions...maybe even share a news article where this happened.
if anything, to me, these opinions indicate that you're probably toxic, not a contrarian. generally toxic people think they're contrarian and pride themselves over that.
Lol, you've got me dead to rights. That's exactly what I was going to do. I'm glad you made this call because my toxicity extends to myself. I'm procrastinating on some work I told myself I'd finish hours ago.
Anyway, I live in a northeastern liberal city, and I grew up in one too. I'm aware that my opinions are popular in some cohorts, but my experience day-to-day and of the internet, all my life, has been such that I've never really thought of that cohort as being in the mainstream; more like 'those crazy idiots who believe the things they see on fox news'.
my main point is: contrarian ideas are relative and subjective to whatever circles you're in. i might be considered as somebody with contrarian ideas relative to my surroundings in the american south, but i don't think of my ideas as contrarian. i think self-proclaimed contrarians suffer from something sort of dunning-kruger like condition, where they take the seemingly contrarian stance just to be different. it's similar to the idea that there are no original or novel ideas, and those who think they have an original idea are wrong.
of course, there is always an exception!
and to your points:
- "Contemporary feminism hurts most women and encourages relationship-sabotaging behavior." sounds like you've been hurt in a relationship and blame it on feminism. if that's the case, i'm genuinely sorry it turned out that way for you.
- "The narrative that the US and other Western nations' participation in white supremacy and slavery/colonialism is the main societal influence today is overblown and is likely leading to unnecessary political violence and turmoil." as a student of southern history and politics, i have to respectfully disagree. you should read the book "forever free" by eric foner to understand how reconstruction after the civil war shapes our world today. or at least seek out some understanding of the history of reconstruction in america, to see how white supremacy has been used as a source of power.
- "I don't think abortions should be banned, but generally speaking, it is incredibly easy to not get pregnant. Don't have sex. Unless you were raped, no one is 'forcing' anything on you, those were your decisions. It is baffling to me that no one says this out loud." - that's just ignorant. sex is a natural thing that everybody does, especially when they're bored.
- "There are only two genders." meh. heard this one a lot. not contrarian at all. you're getting "contrarian" mixed up with "controversial".
- "Kyle Rittenhouse acted in legitimate self-defense. The popular understanding of the case is beset with misinformation about what happened." i had to google "kyle rittenhouse" because i forgot who he is. i'd argue that you're just as influenced by media as anybody else, and your opinion on this is probably influenced by the media you consume. i don't know enough about the incident to have an informed opinion, but if i remember correctly, the dude drove out of state to be in the middle of the drama (masquerading as a vigilante), and then walked up on some protestors with an assault weapon. that screams "i'm ready to fight".
my email is in my bio if you wish to talk more. i love a healthy debate but also need to work too. i won't snitch on you with your employer!
Always, but alas, I'm already behind on keeping up with people I know irl. I do have some debate left in me on those points* but you can probably imagine it, you seem like a good chum. Maybe pay close attention to the defendant's case as it develops. Anyway, good luck in your endeavors!
*except where you said I mixed up contrarian and controversial. That's an accurate call-out.
EDIT: I had to wait two hours to post this because apparently I was posting too much. What's the rate limit on HN? I've only got 5 posts on my account prior to this one.
There is no one definitive "contemporary feminism", and most people who consider themselves feminists almost certainly don't hold the beliefs that you probably attribute to this mystical creed.
> Don't have sex
First of all, there are people saying this out loud... and soon thereafter they want to outlaw abortions even in case of rape, so it would seem to be just empty rhetoric. Secondly even those who most loudly state this opinion can't seem to follow it and get unplanned pregnancies just as much as those who don't.
> There are only two genders
Factually incorrect, even if you limit yourself to humans. There are people with XXY and XYY chromosomes. And they are not even all that rare. If you look at biology beyond humans it becomes even more incorrect.
XXY and XYY aren't genders, gender is a social construct. And society has constructed two genders, male and female. I know that some tries to construct more genders, but it doesn't seem to work, we still just have two socially accepted genders. Male - Female has so extremely strong cultural roots and everyone have very strong associations to those, trying to create something new that doesn't have the same backing and calling that new thing a new gender isn't the same thing, it isn't a gender without all that cultural baggage.
Go is a good language for many uses (contra junon). C++ is also a good language for at least some uses, but requires more care to use well.
Cheap food is killing us.
AGI is a mirage, and the singularity is a fantasy.
> AGI is a mirage
This is a contradiction. If God exists and He created us, then we are AGI.
By the way, if the "universe is a simulation" people are correct, then we are also AGI (in your sense).
It's the same thing. AGI is possible to create in this Universe, if we were created.
But I'm also guessing OP's meaning probably invokes a non-material source of intelligence, i.e. a soul, and that by "intelligence" they mean something more like "consciousness", something that experiences the world as opposed to an action-reaction construct like an algorithm or machine.
This is only one possible understanding of what God may be. The OP did not say this was their understanding. But you make a good point anyway.
Yes, this is true, I'm making some assumptions based on their declaration of belief in a personal God.
I believe this universe is a quantized simulation. The evidence for various forms of Planck quanta make this abundantly clear.
Simulation implies a simulator.
Therefore, God exists, in some form or another.
Software, like every other area of endeavor, contains no inherent barriers to major advances relative to regular advances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet
Many laws of "can't" are just dressed up pessimism. Many things never happened before they did.
I am not saying such an advance will happen. Just that it could.
It is just measurement, not pessimism or optimism. The fact that "No Silver Bullet" is still true 35 years later show just how hard progress can be.
He was making a case that there was no room for such significant jumps in software efficiency because most software development was now focused on essential complexity, not accidental complexity.
http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf
That argument does not hold water to me for two reasons:
1. I think a lot of programming, from glue code to optimization to bug fixing, is still accidental complexity.
2. The level of reuse is still nowhere near reflective of the fact that the majority of code is recoding of already well known algorithms, patterns, and methods with only slightly differences for the current problem context. This happens for business, technical and social reasons.
So I see huge potential for progress. Whether that progress will ever involve a 10x improvement due to a single major insight I don't know. But there is room for it to happen.
Just as an example, a lot of developer time is spent trying to understand some legacy code in order to apply a fix. No single programming technique or tool will make that go away.
No doubt there are many small problems that solved one by one would product incremental improvements.
But there is at lease the POTENTIAL for a 10x improvement if code reuse in the presence of varying conditions was made more practical, given the radical savings massive reuse would enable.
Another single massive problem is glue code between code bases dealing with similar or relatable functionality, but using very different API's or data formats. Again, maybe that can only be addressed with numerous small incremental advances.
Glue code being a common cross-industry problem, there is at least a possibility that a widely applicable glue code generating system would replace huge amounts of manually written glue code, creating a 10x increase in productivity by both eliminating the work of writing lots of glue code, and allowing different code bases to be used together that were not economically feasible to combine before.
I am not arguing that a 10x advance is inevitable. That would make my arguments as weak as the arguments that a 10x advance is impossible. I am just point out there are large widespread inefficiencies today that could make a 10x improvement possible.
The argument that there are no single massive inefficiencies left to solve, only many small inefficiencies, because most coding is now dealing with inherent complexity instead of accidental complexity falls on its face. Both the difficulty of reuse and the difficulty of integration are huge problems of accidental complexity.
We've got about 5 more years before everyone catches on to that fact, and things start to get better.
The insecurity of general purpose computing has been a major factor in the walled gardens that most people stick to when using the internet.
People don't realize the freedom we had back in the MS-DOS days when you could write protect your OS and try ANYTHING in almost perfect safety.
In this scenario, the most Ariel can lose is that $10, no matter how evil Beth is. If Eva manages to impersonate Beth, still the maximum loss is $10. In no manner can the balance of Ariel's wallet be lost.
If you have an operating system that never hands over the wallet to an application, but instead uses capabilities, in a clear and transparent manner, then the user is quite capable of doing the right thing, as millennia of experience have shown.
Our current crop of OS choices don't even make it possible to select and built a capability on behalf of the user. There is no "wallet" analogy without capabilities. We're living in a world where you must hand over your wallet to anyone to complete a transaction... which is nuts.
As long as there will be people that want to hack a system, that system will never be secured 100%.
Here is one example: There is such a thing as hacking air gapped systems. So there is no amount of containers that you can add to protect you from bad actors.
Revenge of the Sith was good though.
The core problem here is that it’s hard to test if you don’t know what is the expected outcome (we don’t know how much the temperature is supposed to increase - we expect the model to tell us that…). In such cases, you don’t do black-box testing (i.e. just writing a bunch of test-cases), but rather have to resort to doing a painstaking and rigorous analysis of the code itself. We’ve done it in the past (e.g. on early space flight code), but the scope of the codebase was way smaller.
Also, I suspect that, a lot of the time, people work on the model (tweak parameters, find and fix numerical problems etc) until it starts giving responses which match their apriori expectations. That’s pure scientism (bs masquerading as science).
A - The majority of data science insights is kinda useless for guiding software product direction. Much better to have a well defined strategy and just execute on that, tradeoffs and all. I have to engage in the game because that’s what my boss expects.
B - In 100 years we are going to look back at pet ownership with disdain, especially cats, because how could we keep these animals in an environment that’s so restrictive if they are indoors, and how could we unleash them on the ecology if they are outdoors?
C - If you want to help the poor, and save money on prison expenses, then funding public defenders is really the way to go.
D - I love the US and what it stands for, but if there hadn’t been a revolution then no big deal, we’d probably be in the same place more or less.
E - Govermentment intervention didn’t solve the great depression, it made it worse.
I hold these all equally strongly.
You could say this about most revolutions, and wars too for that matter. They accomplish little in the long run.
- The idea of "limits to growth" (as promoted by the Club of Rome) is a fallacy that - although since the time of Thomas Malthus it has been proven wrong time and again - remains bewilderingly popular.
- The EU is a cold war relic that's ridiculously ill-equipped for the challenges of the 21st century. Though motivated by misguided ideas, petty nationalism, and selfishness, given time Brexit might prove to not have been such a bad idea after all.
- Nuclear power at least in the short term should be considered a vital component of combatting climate change.
Regarding software:
- Web standards are actually quite decent. The web and web technologies are great way of providing and distributing applications.
As for more some recent events:
- Lockdowns and civil rights restrictions in general are neither an effective, nor a reasonable or sustainable approach for dealing with a pandemic.
- Zero Covid / No Covid / a Covid elimination strategy is an unsustainable dead end.
- Negative COVID-19 test results, not vaccination passports, should be relied on as an access requirement.
Has it been proven? I'm not a malthusian at all and that argument drives me up the wall. However the best answer I can come up with is "capitalism is a brass-balled bet that we'll figure our problems out, and so far we have."
An abundance of resources leads to slower population growth instead of a continued geometric growth. Paradigm shifts such as the industrial, green, and digital revolutions allow us to ever more efficiently extract resources from a (somewhat) closed system instead of the availability of resources remaining constant.
Apart from the data alone, which pretty much speaks for itself, from Steven Pinker to Ray Kurzweil, from economics to ecological and cognitive sciences there are numerous arguments against the Malthusian model and a Malthusian world:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-st...
http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publication...
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-earths-carrying-capacity-for-human...
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/weekinreview/15mcneil.htm...
As a corollary, western society peaked in the 80s
I propose a grace period of maybe 250 ms after a visible change.
Let's say I click a button but the window poof! disappeared just exactly then and revealed a different button beneath the closed window. Aargh! Now I caused something else!
My contrarian opinion is that we should try out this: if a button disappeared visually it is still there for 250 ms more. So we aren't caught by the GUI change.
After 250 ms we can react and cancel the intention to click.
I am sure we need to experiment with the time needed and make it configurable.
To be honest though, it is thought provoking to skim though all of these out of the ordinary ideas and responses.
The US would be much better off today although that would have come at the expense of the new country.
Humans are an apex invasive species at this point. We are all plugged into a *-industrial complex. We sell dissatisfaction to each other to promote consumption to keep the whole thing going.
There is no nobility in bearing children or even in continuing living.
Because evolutionary pressures on governments produce stability and power instead of 'goodness of people', I suspect any random system that sounds remotely sensible would probably be superior to anything we have now. If we actually designed something that took into account new knowledge and technology, we could do much better.
Expectation of future profits is equivalent to belief that markets are inefficient. (Which of course they often are.) Open source economic planning could yield massive economic gains and doesn't require centralized power or use of force. (Pacifist governance is one of those unexplored spaces) An open public ledger would allow for resource allocation and incentivizing work without needing a monetization strategy.
If we track and account for externalities doing a good thing funds itself. You don't need a way to take money from the people you're helping. This also disincentivizes negative externalities.
As an example of how bad things are: We still debate on natural language forums instead of using structured arguments that link to common datasets and simulations. These comments get 'points' instead of bayesian probabilities, and there's no way to filter or rescore anything based on it's epistemological support or new data.
See that 12-year-old kid killing it in the NFTs? See that AI startup IPO'ing?
Just offer the market what it wants.
Relatives should be somewhat culpable for the repeat violent crimes of their parents/children/siblings, anyone who shares at least 50% of their genes. With, of course, escape clauses if they're distant, estranged, or never heard of them.
Religion should be as personal as sexual behaviour.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/series/40828-neanderthal-parallax
Such lovely and fun ideas in that trilogy! Second IMHO only to the Culture novels in terms of semi-realistic deep social world building.
Human beings were fine with internet access before that point, except for September... September used to be the time all the new students got their first internet accounts.
and september would normally end because some of the idiot freshmen would get their access yanked by whoever ran the NNTP servers at the school.
Case in point, look at this thread - "what grinds your gears?" is the theme, and while some come through with what one might expect from HN (programming hot takes, critiques of entrenched systems), we're also getting quick responses espousing castration, the death penalty, imperialism, Trumpism, etc.
We, my friends, are a cluster.
Ooh I’ll agree on this one. And since I’ve seen a a number of people effectively advocate for nuclear war as a solution to economic problems, I’ll give my equally unrealistic and destructive solution to our cultural issues:
Split up the US. It’s apparent that many people even within the same states and cities live in wildly different worlds. No way in hell they can all manage to have functional representation in government.
Donald Trump, raging narcissist, charlatan and fascistic bigot that he was, was also the most authentically American President America has ever had. He embodied the American spirit - it's true spirit - unmasked and exposed in its full lunatic glory, and it should surprise no one that some Americans loved him enough to form an actual cult around him.
I think part of it is because the language that those ideas are built on is intentionally very slippery. If you aren't extremely careful with how you word things, you wind up sounding like you're denying factual historical events.
John McWhorter is the only voice I've heard so far who can reveal the swiss-cheese nature of the set of beliefs contained by the term 'CRT', and do so in the very language of the educated class that espouses CRT.
The narrow legal sense which is all about bias built into the system by layers of subversively racist laws?
The Left political grift version which encourages performative virtue signaling instead of enacting actual change.
The traditional grift version used to sell trainings where white people are told all evil is the fault of their whiteness?
The Right political grift version which uses the worse excess of the above grift version to quietly silence pr forestall actual change.
The social movement that acknowledges with (purposely?) bad language that the system is rigged, and needs to be fixed.
I guess I'm more sympathetic because it seemed that his actions were a result of general distrust of experts and the status quo, not of malice. That should be something that a thread filled with contrarians should be able to appreciate at some level.
Don't know why, can be some kind of study, or a drill for a biological war
edit: yes, I'm talking about climate change.
I agree that the current consumption culture us bad, but socialism isn't the answer to that problem. All you need to do is to properly regulate capitalism, like some countries in Europe do. The only reason that doesn't happen in USA is that such regulations aren't politically popular. Socialism wouldn't help push through unpopular regulations, instead people would just vote to keep using oil anyway.
1a) There never should have been a Covid lock-down, nor should there have ever been a vaccine created.
1b) People's income tax rates should be based on how healthy they keep themselves and how healthy they eat, their lack of smoking and drinking and if they are parents, how healthy their children eat and how much exercise all of them get.
1b) I'm going to guess you're from a country with a socialized health care system?
https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/andrew-l-croxford-lo...
And its a myth that the virus only affects some neat tidy subpopulation like those over 70.
Places like Idaho are rationing care in their hospitals where the ICUs are full of unvaccinated younger COVID cases. Care for COVID patients is also resource intensive and requires weeks in the ICU which makes its impact on the hospital system disproportionately high for every single case.
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/1038180254/all-the-hospitals-...
Doctors are now deciding who is going to die by denying people medical care because there isn't enough to go around and practice the kind of triage that that we haven't even practiced in war zones for a long time.
Doing so through income tax rates is muddling the issues. The rich would hire dieticians and trainers just to save money. If public health is actually a priority, those kinds of services would be subsidized.
On HN, downvotes serve little purpose, assuming that the user base actually believes the notions of superiority and quality of discussion here compared to other sites on the internet.
For explicitly off-topic or guideline violating comments, flags exist. Downvotes seem to serve no other purpose than as a low effort “I disagree” or “I don’t like this” which wouldn’t be an acceptable reply if it were a comment.