684 karma · joined May 22, 2019
> Core Inform is written in ANSI C, properly speaking C99. That was the first decision I took, in 2001, and it was the wrong choice. I had my reasons, but C++ would have been better for the heterogenous tree structures you need inside of compilers. I feel much happier about my other early decision, which was to adopt literate programming.
> Literate programming was invented by Donald Knuth in the 1970s: he was responsible for the slightly insulting name, as if all other programmers are illiterate. The idea is to write a program like an essay, with a narrative, so that its source code can be read by humans as well as computers. This is not just about commentary: it's about making long or complex functions more comprehensible.
> Literate programming is not a popular choice today. The canonical primers on software are respectful but basically tell you not to use it: "Code Complete", for example, or "The Art of Unix Programming". It failed to catch on for several reasons: most programmers do not like to write essays. Most code has a short shelf life anyway. Commentary in code is out of fashion these days, and some coders even consider it harmful.
In the past families would look after their own disabled members. Of course this is easier in large non-nuclear families. But maybe something like more like community centers in every town rather than imposing "Insane Asylums" run by scary officials would help?
It's another thing to throw up your hands and let unstable people cause chaos in your streets. That's not good for them or you.
Note: My comment is responding to the general idea of disclaiming responsibility. I don't know enough about this company to judge.
Can an expert chime in on whether this is a false narrative produced by the media or an actual happening?
Do we want a world of people who change their ways, even if for somewhat impure reasons, or a world in which no one ever does because it's pointless?
Look at this graph, not all these countries are high-tax.
https://www.investopedia.com/thmb/Y4EFa4HoQXxh4Vbal80eq7mAd6...
> “I was on my iPhone lying there with a broken jaw, and I go on the Humana website and see the hospital listed,” Kohan says. “So I figured, okay, I should be good.”
Except he wasn’t: While the emergency room where Kohan was seen was in his insurance network, the oral surgeon who worked in that ER was not. That’s how Kohan ended up with a $7,924 bill from the oral surgeon that his health plan declined.
> Kohan called his insurance plan, which assured him that nothing was wrong — that the doctor had likely coded the visit wrong and would just need to resubmit the claim.
> Kohan’s doctor did resubmit the claim, and increased the price of the surgery by about $2,300, billing records show.
> I reached out to the doctor who saw Kohan, an oral surgeon named...
> himself did not respond to my request for an interview. But the day after Canizales and I spoke, Kohan said she called him — and let him know that the entire $7,924.13 charge was being dropped.
> I also reached out to Dell Seton hospital to ask why it contracts with an oral surgeon who does not accept any medical insurance.
> The hospital declined an interview but provided a statement noting that this is a common practice across the country.
I'm curious what makes you think this is true. Surely the evidence is on the other side of the argument?
A cynical take might be that they are two sides of the same coin. Regulation meant to protect big business and at the same time choke out any competition.
As for the hypothetical youtuber, they are always free to put product ads directly in their videos if they can/want to. However, if they can only make money via abusive 3rd party trackers, that's on them.
We asked why he chose those items. His left-hemisphere speech center replied, “Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken,” easily explaining what it knew. It had seen the chicken claw. Then, looking down at his left hand pointing to the shovel, without missing a beat, he said, “And you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” Immediately, the left brain, observing the left hand’s response without the knowledge of why it had picked that item, put it into a context that would explain it. It knew nothing about the snow scene, but it had to explain the shovel in front of his left hand. Well, chickens do make a mess, and you have to clean it up. Ah, that’s it! Makes sense.
What was interesting was that the left hemisphere did not say, “I don’t know,” which was the correct answer. It made up a post hoc answer that fit the situation. It confabulated, taking cues from what it knew and putting them together in an answer that made sense.
We called this left-hemisphere process the interpreter. It is the left hemisphere that engages in the human tendency to find order in chaos, that tries to fit everything into a story and put it into a context. It seems driven to hypothesize about the structure of the world even in the face of evidence that no pattern exists."
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
— Michael Crichton