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John7878781

200 karma · joined January 29, 2025

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John7878781··on Nuclear Explosion for Carbon Sequestration
What if exploding nukes on the seafloor has the opposite effect and actually _releases_ already sequestered carbon?

IMO, this idea is very poorly thought out.

John7878781··on Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning
I respectfully disagree :)

Not only do my peers and I find many of these courses challenging, but AP classes are widely recognized as college-level coursework taken in high school. I will have completed 17 of them by the time I graduate.

That said, my argument doesn't depend at all on whether these classes meet your standards for being "hard." Even if you believe you'd ace them with flying colors, they're still time-consuming and rigorous for most high school students. Focusing on semantics about the word "hard" instead of the point I'm making suggests there's little substance to your rebuttal.

Finally, if no course is hard, as you claim, why is note-taking even necessary?

John7878781··on Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning
> How is your learning harmed?

One's goal when studying is to optimize learning as a function of time. When note-taking is forced, this goal becomes impossible for me. I spend time taking notes when I could be spending time on more impactful study techniques (videos, practice sets, etc). To be clear, I think the notion that "notes are useless" only applies to specific groups of people. The bottom line is that everyone learns differently, and forcing a certain approach is an awful idea.

> How have you been disallowed from discovering what works best for you?

I would not say that I have been directly "disallowed," but undeniably, there are bandwidth constraints for students. If I'm taking multiple hard courses, I only have so much time to spend. If I am spending my time note-taking, which my teacher requires to turn in to him/her, then I have less time to do other, more productive things with my time. I think naturally, freedom spurs efficiency. Free and competitive markets are more efficient than command economies. Arguably, this same principle holds true on an individual level.

John7878781··on Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning
I'm huge on videos + practice sets.

Khan Academy has been such a lifesaver. They not only have in-depth videos, but also have practice sets after every lesson.

AP Classroom (a platform made by College Board) is also amazing. They have videos and progress checks.

John7878781··on Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning
Generally, it is true that writing by hand is better for recall and memory. However, teachers often use this as a justification to force students to handwrite everything, which can be very counterproductive for a subset of students.

I am currently in high school and have taken 17 AP classes. I have tried taking notes time and time again and have consistently found that they do not help me at all. I have a 3.99 GPA, 1570/1600 SAT, and have received 5s on all of my AP Exams. I know how to study and know what works best for me. I am not a notes person, and when teachers force their "scientific" teaching methods upon me, it does nothing but harm my learning and waste time.

I love the idea of science being incorporated into learning but we need to make sure students are allowed to discover what works best for them.

John7878781··on The Speed of VITs and CNNs
In the Twitter thread the article mentions, LeCun makes his claim only for "high-resolution" images and the article assumes 1024x1024 to fall under this category. To me, 1024x1024 is not "high-resolution." This assumption is flawed imo

I currently use convnext for image classification at a size of 4096x2048 (definitely counts as "high-resolution"). For my use case, it would never be practical to use VITs for this. I can't downscale the resolution because extremely fine details need to be preserved.

I don't think LeCun's comment was a "knee-jerk reaction" as the article claims.

John7878781··on Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet
The article isn't overly excited imo. It clearly states nothing has been proven for certainty, which is in alignment with what you're saying.

> Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet

> Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.

It's not fair to call it "trash"

John7878781··on Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet
This is unsettling. If we are not the only intelligent beings in the universe, it adds credence to the idea of a "great filter."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

John7878781··on AI diagnoses major cancer with near perfect accuracy
Exactly. "Accuracy" tells us nothing.
John7878781··on US bill allowing AIs to prescribe FDA-approved drugs
This is a terrible idea.
John7878781··on Antidepressant use among teen girls and young women has skyrocketed (2024)
> Im so done with this idea that getting medication through doctors is somehow superfluous.

Not trying to be a conspiracy theorist here but we don't always get it right. The opioid crisis in the US was started by "getting medication through doctors." Research changes over time and current research does suggest that antidepressants are often over-perscribed.

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