LeroyRaz

I don't think rebellion has anything to do with why kids use Tiktok. Nor do I think the US has any interest in forcing kids to use social media...

"When your market was determined by geography, you had to be neutral. But publishing online enabled — in fact probably forced — newspapers to switch to serving markets defined by ideology instead of geography" is interesting! I'd never thought of that being the cause of news polarization, but as a story it makes sense.

I think the term woke is a clear and unambiguous term. I find it surprising people consider it a slur / empty insult. I consider it a substantive characterization of people and acts that reflects a genuine disagreement.

To me, as the right uses it, the term woke refers to people or movements prioritising signalling virtue (e.g., policing the words people use) over actually improving the world. One clear instances of it was the spate of scrapping standardized testing (despite this scrapping actively harming rather than helping the disenfranchised).

Why and how is labelling unlikable behaviour as woke bad faith. As I understand the right using the term, they use it consistently to refer to a very specific type of behaviour they see as bad (one core aspect is prioritising signalling being virtuous over actually improving the world).

Is your complaint that this usage unfairly co-opts the original left usage of the word?

Could you expand on why this article makes you believe his mind has "become filled with mush."

What points is he making (if you consider him to be making clear points), how do you think those points are flawed, etc..

How is the quote false?

Providing community notes and overt information seems far far better than covert censoring.

The problem with covert censoring is twofold: a) people get an insanely distorted perception of what average people think and b) sometimes the people in power doing the censoring are wrong (e.g., the censorship of the hunter biden laptop story as fake news). Overtly correcting false narratives via community notes evades both of these issues.

Why not just wear gloves with embedded magnets? I don't understand the benefit of implanting the magnet.

Implanting seems to come with several drawbacks: infection risk, difficulty of removal if undergoing an MRI, and difficulty passing through security checkpoints.

The advantage is... Saving 5 seconds when compared to just wearing a glove with magnets in it? A glove would also likely provide far far better sensing (more and stronger magnets better placed).

It's hard to know how worrying or damning this usage pattern is.

Speaking personally, I never did any homework, as I found it incredibly dull. So I don't really find it that worrying someone shirking their homework.

The replacement of thought with using ChatGPT does seem worrying though.

Why do you prefer paper to a word processor or latex?

How is it sensitive or even reasonable that all fantasy species are equally capable? That just seems bizarre. It's core to fantasy tropes that Elves are long lived, magical and intelligent. And that Orcs are stronger than humans. Absolutely bizarre to make changing that anything to do with inclusivity...

Your claim that media outlets are no longer factual because they can't afford paying to be factual seems specious. They often make egregious errors that take a 5 minute Google to correct.

Instead of facts being unaffordable, it seems that lies and bias simply pay more (or at least the media outlets seem to think so).

Why do they not capitalize the pronoun I?

Yawn. This post is all old hat.

Richard Dawkins made the same point about humans being roughly between polyamory and monogamy 20 years ago in the Ancestors Tale (and others likely made the points before that). And the evo-psy people have been saying all these points for similarly long...

As described, the research sounds weak. They have a hypothesis: "laws are written that way due to style imitation." And their proof of that hypnosis is to weakly reject an entirely different hypothesis "the magic spell hypothesis."

Poor sloppy work. As likely to misleading as clarify.

Good article. This is the clearest explaination I've read of how and why Ada was meaningfully innovative, and worthy of her recognition.

Is there an issue with limiting use to those who are 18+?

I mean, the Royal Society has always been crazy, and full of provocative and crazy people. I'm not sure how you can have a group of geniuses without that.

Famously Newton was a complete and utter egomaniac nut job, as well as being one of the most gifted men to ever live. For example, the Leibnitz Newton debate - where surprisingly the royal society concluded in favour of Newton, while Newton was the head of the royal society.

Maybe 100 years from now, we will have letters complaining that the same illustrious society that Elon Musk (the man who revolutionised space travel) was once a member of, now houses so and such, who said x verifiably untrue statement.

Hamilton (the founding father) considered political science a science, and explicitly argues in the federalist papers how it has the equivalent of axioms that one can build and reason from

How is a starship in anyway like an ICBM?

ICBMs are weapons, and are dangerous because you target them at specific targets and they explode.

How is starship coming down significantly more dangerous than a plane? If they can demonstrate similar levels or reliability (a huge ask), then I don't see a problem.

Subsidy does not solely refer to direct payment. It can also refer to not taxing certain goods. By that standard definition, it is literally a subsidy to not tax carbon (as in a just market it would be taxed).

Quoting Wikipedia "Subsidies take various forms— such as direct government expenditures, tax incentives, soft loans, price support, and government provision of goods and services."

I think the author has a narrower definition of what subsidy means. They seem to think direct payment is a subsidy and other forms are "effective" subsidies. But this is a false distinction, and the fact that they project that narrow definition onto a standard economic term, does not make the initial communication false, which by the way, is from the international monitary fund, and likely directed towards an audience of the economically literate. In such a context, using the word subsidy is far from misleading.

But the international monitary fund is talking to economists who will understand how not having a carbon tax meets the definition of being a subsidy.

There is no misuse or twisting of definition. It is an economic term being accurately used in communication with an audience of the economically literate.

It's not redefining the word. It literally is a subsidy to not tax carbon, according to core mainstream accepted economic principles.

Whether you agree or disagree with carbon taxes, it is simply true that not having them is a subsidy.

A small niggle: I think the author misses the point on carbon tax. Not having a carbon tax literally acts as subsidy. It is not a metaphor. In polluting, you are exploiting a resource you do not own, and not paying for that exploitation is quite literally a subsidy under a just and fair economic system. It is an intervention from the baseline of a properly functioning market (one that stops people selling things they do not own).

They also seem confused, each country should pay roughly for its own global emissions impact. The coordination problem is that if one country pays but the others don't, then the paying country's industry might be outcompeted by other counties industries (who don't pay this just tax).

To those talking about the gun:

The gun is almost completely irrelevant, because if you are intent on killing yourself there are many accessible options. For example, almost anyone can kill themselves (including gun-less 14 year olds) by jumping off a tall building.

I understand that people care about gun violence, and that this detail seems highly salient to them, but to focus on it here, completely misses the point (and distracts from more pertinent issues - e.g., loneliness, social isolation, lack of parental oversight)

In a nutshell, guns are massive force multipliers when it comes to violence against others. They are negligible force multiplier when it comes to violence against yourself. People are connecting guns to violence, but in this case (because it is an actual of self harm) that is a spurious connection.

I don't know what your source for "by most metrics" is?

As I understand it, the US is abysmal by many metrics (and also exceptional by others). E.g., murder rated and prison rates are exceptionally high in the US compared to Europe. Homelessness rates are exceptionally high in the US compared to Europe. Startup rates are (I believe) exceptionally high in the US compared to Europe.

The state has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the whole country (28%). To me, that implies they have some issue of governance.

Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy...

To be fair in the comparison, the literacy statistics for the whole of the US are pretty shocking from a European perspective.

To everyone saying "oh, the astronauts like having to be up there. It is an opportunity."

You get that they have no choice, right? And that for multiple reasons they are going to put the best spin on the event. For one, for their own sanity, they are going to be as positive and optimistic as possible. For two, there is likely a huge PR pressure to be as positive and optimistic as possible.

Being in space is a pretty big deal. It comes with lots of health risks, and they are isolated from their loved ones. For example, they might be missing funerals for friends or family members, they might be missing milestones of their children, etc... etc...

You make a good point (imo) but you end on such a grim mixed metaphor!

I mean if AI output exceeds human quality then all humans will be redundant. So it would then be quite a brave new world!

My point is that I do not agree that LMM output will degrade all media (as there is always a demand for top quality content). So we either have bad LLM output and then people who care about quality avoiding such works. Or good LLM output and hopefully some form of post scarcity society (e.g., Iain Bank's Culture Novels).