TaXaZ

Ha? This is even dangerous! You're basically yearning for an authoritarian regime. With simplistic argument and some false assumptions you conclude it's more efficient bcz it does not waste basically trial/error. However, this has been proven times after time that such "alternative political philosophy" will defeat its purpose and become highly corrupt. Furthermore, we're in a incomplete information game, evolution is a must, and you can not 'design' things apriori.

Western societies, at least when it comes to political philosophy, are far more efficient than their eastern counterparts if you meant it.

wholeheartedly agree, just it's not "getting better at representing what I thought". Instead, it's a tool of thought process, which is dynamic. These to interwoven in a dynamic relation and it's hard to separate them.

Many justify a long-term, sometimes subtle (even vague) concept that has been codified through years of education, culture, propaganda, and tangible massive on-the-ground benefits. That concept and the reason people on the east coast (Hans) support exploiting, manipulating, and projecting power on the west (Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, etc.) is determined by geopolitics. In one case, China's water resources and long-term economic stability depend on controlling the highlands in the west. The rest is just fabricated reasoning sugarcoating their strategy to cover this strategic vulnerability. A typical Han Chinese with roots in the developed east might not think in these terms transparently. Still, it has years of education and the harsh reality of its region to transform this into an assortment of (un)justified reasoning. They need it to control and secure their stability.

This has also been the case in many other regions, for example, the Middle East, where such harsh geopolitical realities have been codified in different nationalistic and sectarian fractions.

Even if true (which is not) this is fallacy at core. It goes like this:

A- You're doing X which is inhuman

B- Common! C is also do it, B has done in the past as well *So we can do it too* and *magically* that's get OK *as consequence*.

This is a pure fallacy.

I do care! I cheer up on any blow into an authoritarian and tyrant regime. I think it well worth it.

I just use `echo main.tex | entr -c make` and my pdf viewer updates accordingly (zathura).

Agree but I'm not sure, if my comment understood correctly.

1. I didn't talk about should, I describe the problem with parent comment i.e. immorality of normalization. I have heard such justification before which goes to similar next step. That next step was what the normalizers might say.

2. It's from the point of white washers not the moral stand point that you depicts

3. As a proof, just check the comment in this section by @dirtyid which describe the 'next' I talked about:

   > Behaving like a "savage" has very little to do with time but where countries are in their development.

~~(fun fact, I didn't saw it the first time and it was delightful seeing a proof in next step above)~~

Again, If it wasn't clear originally, What I liked to bring attention to is the white-washing (normalization) of tyrannies. It has been done for Nazis and it's currently being done in western journalists and lobbyist. Look at any sort of authoritarian atrocity and you'll see a white washer in NY or DC normalizing it.

You know what is wrong with this statement? This is normalization: "Yes, it's bad, but you've done it too". Probably, the next is "This is part of development and we go through it..., as well!". Anyway, this sort of rationalization are one of the tricks that authoritarian regimes do and interestingly often then recruit western journalist white wash them and with a diverse assortment of such rationalizations, and much more delicate and elaborate.

Bitwarden is free for individuals and couples. So, it's free user-friendly (WAF!!) wise [0] in comparison to 1pass [1]. But much more important thing is the fact that bitwarden is open source and 1pass not. Closed source is deal-breaker for me.

[0] https://bitwarden.com/pricing/ [1] https://1password.com/teams/pricing/

The current scientific publication model is only benefits the gatekeepers in publishing industry. It directly goes to the packet of publishing industry by ripping off the tax-payers twice with a steep price. Nowadays research institution pay high fees both for paywall and open-access. No matter you access or publish you some how give tax-payers money to these publishing industries. It has been shown the steep price is also un-justified as peer-review are done freely (for credit, not money) by science worker themselves and there are plenty of open-review and open-science projects which prove the price is not justified.

It might worth it to repeat part of my comment in [1]:

> The current business model as a whole is a legacy institution based on earlier monopoly by a charlatan named Maxwell [2]. He basically lured scientist by shiny hotels+extra packages to build the initial reputation and then monopolize the entire industry for decades. You can find a good review of this scheme from below YouTube video[3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29218202

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo

First thanks for this read. But yes and no.

- Yes, bcz this reptile models is not accurate. It's at best an outdated but very intriguing analogy (which I agree can be misleading) but not here.

- No bcz a bit irrelevant to the our argument above. You may refer to [this paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234157/) quoting:

> "The preponderance of the cerebral cortex (which, with its supporting structures, makes up approximately 80 percent of the brain's total volume) is actually a recent development in the course of evolution. The cortex contains the physical structures responsible for most of what we call ''brainwork": cognition, mental imagery, the highly sophisticated processing of visual information, and the ability to produce and understand language. But underneath this layer reside many other specialized structures that are essential for movement, consciousness, sexuality, the action of our five senses, and more—all equally valuable to human existence. Indeed, in strictly biological terms, these structures can claim priority over the cerebral cortex. In the growth of the individual embryo, as well as in evolutionary history, the brain develops roughly from the base of the skull up and outward. The human brain actually has its beginnings, in the four-week-old embryo, as a simple series of bulges at one end of the neural tube."

Despite what that paper says, the lizard analogy goes to this, and I agree it's loose, outdated and misleading one but doesn't change the argument we're discussing here.

I think it BCZ actually doesn't stem from happiness or even lack of it (say hello to functioning unhappy parents). Children give strong "purpose" and hijack the dopamine circuitry which is the real driver behind human drive, evolutionary speaking (yes they also hijack some other circuitry as well, but the real drive is the dopamine system). TLDR, you're right, it works on another dimension which is even more fundamental than happiness dimension. The dopamine circuitry stems from lizard brain and quite old, evolutionary speaking.

The funny thing is taxpayers ripped twice, on publishing and on access to the science and the profit goes to publication industry (not universities, research institution).

If you summarize the cash flow, the publishing industry charges twice the taxpayers in addition to the science worker and research institutions costs. If you want to make your article open access, then you pay extra fees and nowadays, the university funds ripped off twice: they still bear the cost of pay-wall publishers and open access. Long story short, the whole system is rigged in favor of gatekeepers. You may check this video[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo

I think open science movement slowly erode their grip on the industry. It's perpetual theoretically, but not in practice. Though, It needs a collaborative effort and the main factor is awareness.

The devils are in the details. This does not still justify current model and the steep price they are paid (by taxpayers, FYI a typical university pay millions of dollar to these institutions). Consider openreview by ICLR[1] as an counter example for your claim. The maintenance, quality control, software development is not as steep as current gatekeepers advertise yet their review quality is much higher (network/transparency effect). Not to mention the profit margin of scientific publication is 3x of the Apple (38% for Elsevier) and it should be because the science workers, works free for these institutions (fighting for credit).

The current business model as a whole is a legacy institution based on earlier monopoly by a charlatan named Maxwell [2]. He basically lured scientist by shiny hotels+extra packages to build the initial reputation and then monopolize the entire industry for decades. It's interesting how the model works by rip off the taxpayers twice (by publishing and access) while still peer-review process is free (from money, not credit).

You can find a good review of this scheme from below YouTube video[3].

[1] https://openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.cc/2022/Conference

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo

Text is mightiest; but you should use "video" instead of "image". Video is the natural visual medium to convey an essay, not a still image.

Let's consider a philosophical essay as something highly abstract, then its video counterpart would be mostly audio (transcript of the essay). In other cases, e.g. a scientific report, video might be easier content to consume but producing a proper video for that take much more time than writing a 6-page text. The video as the visual medium counterpart has lot more complexity and not always worth it.

Consider a presentation: text+visual+audio, it's more capable to convey the essence of the material. So all these boils down to what is the perfect combination for a particular use case. From short to long image/video, from Instagram, TikTok to YouTube, each multimedia choice lead to different use cases.

And text is the mightiest not because that it necessarily convey better, but because it can:

1. produced/maintained/transferred with the least complexity than others, it's much more efficient representation in this regard.

2. It can represent with most rigorous detail (e.g. consider a math paper)

3. It has the easiest retrieval and mining

4. BUT It usually needs more effort to consume

It's always nice to choose the proper combination of text+visual+audio+interaction. AR/VR only add one ingredient (if you consider it a new one) to this whole toolbox we as humankind are building. It makes our communication much more complex, and much more powerful. However, at the end, the most basic one which is text will remain the mightiest. We may need to wait for some bizarre telepathy technology between brains to change the status quo.

The nerd move on to nerd out the next big things. Nerds by definition find a niche to stand out and life goes on...

And also have they taken out the effect of parasite in their population (quantity), which implying "social distancing"?