dorchadas

100% true in Ireland. In 2020 the number of long-term lets doubled due to AirBnB people fleeing into long-term when tourism was basically non-existent. Sadly, they've all moved back to AirBnB by now, and Ireland is now facing the worst housing crisis yet.

I taught high school math, there's many who rely on calculators for even the most basic calculations because they can't do them and have no concept of what it means to, say, multiply two numbers or how to even go about doing it.

Ah - I forgot he had passed. I meant the sexual misconduct issues.

Goes to show the importance of Right View with these practices as well. They don't suddenly make you a great person on their own, etc.

> Why would you ever take sleep advice from a person who celebrates being sleep deprived and admits being addicted to video games?

Because he confirms what people want to hear about how they don't need as much sleep as is recommended.

Honestly, I've gotten that vibe from all of his writing I've read. Set ideas that he constantly tries to justify and then says others should follow. I'm glad he's doing a review, but even in that it doesn't seem there's really any real introspection going on, just more optimisation of life, as if productivity, etc. is all that matters.

> but techbros here and elsewhere don't care about you or me or people in general and they'll think up an infinite amount of ridiculous false equivalencies before admitting the risks and real harms.

I came to this realisation arguing with someone in a mutual discord server, about these very topics (the negative impacts of AI). They just couldn't see it, and refused to believe it. I was constantly met with things like "Sure, we'll have to adjust but it'll come" and "Things are no worse now than when the TV and when books were invented" (completely ignoring the many of billions companies are spending to make things more addictive ot our monkey minds, which don't change). Also lots of noble "everyone can use it and it'll benefit everyone"...when really, it only benefits those who can control it. No mention of biases in training data or anything else either. They were really completely blinded to the idea that it might not be good and we should serious admit there are huge issues looming.

I also found it telling that the multiple people like that also weren't fans of in-person interaction, outside their friend group. They saw Discord interactions as just as fine as going out and having serendipitous moments in person, with other real people, and just actually living. Something else I feel technology has stolen from us with everyone always glued to their screen. It's funny how I've become something of a Luddite, proudly, and think we need less internet and more real world, cause, well, life is real world, being human is through real world interactions. And not ones mediated by your phone.

I've been having this argument over the past few days with some friends/acquaintances in a discord server. I just keep getting told that it's all just 'sensationalist' reactions to new tech. Some of them are quite gung-ho on the 'progress' and never stop to question what it's doing to our humanity and what it means to be human.

I personally think the internet inherently devalues the humanity of interactions - even on voice chat on Discord or some other service. There's something missing from what we get in person that we're losing out on, and I think that's part of why the internet is, generally, a cesspool (doubly so with anonymity thrown in). But we can't escape -- go to a concert, for instance, and how many people are actually paying attention versus just capturing the moment to prove they were there and share it on Snap/Insta?

Like you, I fear we're going a bad way...and they're all just "I can't wait to see how this changes things!" without ever seeing to stop and seriously question things I feel. Their arguments seem to come down to "Well, it's perfect connection for me and I think it's neat"...but then they complain about being depressed and not getting out and doing anything. Discord and the internet isn't a substitution for IRL, and we're fixing to take people assuming it is to the extreme with this new tech. A reckoning is coming, I fear.

This is something I've had a desire to do for a while now (either summer or winter), thanks for sharing your writings. Going to read into that, and maybe see about planning it in the future before I'm too old to reasonably do it.

It's worse in minority languages, where the whole movement has been co-opted by well-meaning learners, who happen to share the nationality of the group who speaks the language natively and has kept it alive, calling native speakers bigots for stating their language doesn't work like English and to quit trying to translate English into it directly.

Not to mention all the other classism issues that said natives face at the hands of non-native learners/speakers, including accent discrimination when the others literally only use English phonemes.

And I'm not part of that language's native speaker group, I just recognise they should probably be included in stuff said about it, and try to respect what native speakers say, even if it's not how English works.

> I'm betting my reality is very common for people who grew on small towns and had to move, or for people who live in large countries where you often move around for jobs (like the USA).

Yes, 100%. I met with my (high school) friends weekly when I lived at home. And I met with my brother's friends, who were entirely on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me. We partied together, swam together, went out together, no issues. We'd sometimes get drunk political discussions, but usually we just didn't go there because it really never came up or mattered. And, if it did, we'd usually do it jokingly and never really fight about it.

Now I'm half a world away and any time any of them are anywhere near where I'm at on traveling, I go visit. I've planned to fly to Scotland to visit some of them before Christmas but it fell through on their end. They're planning a Euro trip this autumn; I'll meet them wherever they're at.

Not a tech worker, but i'm lucky in that I can afford it thanks to cheap European flights.

Absolutely loved this book. Had a class on it in my applied maths and theoretical physics masters and it was hands-down my favourite.

> * Geometric Algebra for Physicists, by Doran and Lasenby. I found the power and elegance of geometric algebra mesmerizing, and even if this book is also about physics and there may be more appropriate math-only books about geometric algebra, this is the one that made it for me.

I've tried to read several of them, and, sadly, I feel most geometric algebra books fail at explaining it. It's a shame as it's part of what kindled my interest in pure mathematics and I still feel I'm nowhere nearer understanding it despite working through several other mathematics textbooks, including just plain algebra. But, it did spark my interest and now I've moved on to other interesting topics, though Geometric Algebra is still my white whale.

This is my issue. I wish I had a dumber phone. Like, one that allowed only certain things by default - messaging apps, gps trackers, Spotify being the big ones. If there was one like that, I'd buy it almost immediately.

There's also bias in the data itself. That's the difficult thing to avoid. Even down to how we phrase a question, who we collect the data from, it all introduces a bias unless we're literally harvesting all data from every human being and using that for our models. There's no way to get rid of the bias, even if we take out the nudges.

I've found this too, even at 30. Walking on a treadmill (or using a stationary bike) while reading makes it so much easier, though I am starting to find it easy enough to read in bed without moving again. It took some time to build back up to it though.

I want to say I completely agree with this. I think, even more, we've lost sight of what is real. People think that the internet is real, and we're losing sight that life is something in the physical world. Heads are being stuck more and more into phones, and nobody is just out there talking and interacting in the physical world. It's a huge problem, not to mention the screen addiction I saw among teens when I was teaching.

I'd be much happier if I could have an internet free room or two near my family. In fact, if I ever move back, I might seriously work on that. Bedroom and a study/library if I can afford the place, no internet.

I hope so, as I prefer what Pathfinder is doing a lot more. I first started getting interested in TTRPGs with 3.5e, and, to me, 5e has completely lost the feel of customisation that it had. They have finally released new races, but for the most part it's just sub-classes and "change the flavour text". PF 2e already has more ancestries and classes than 5e, and more fun ways of putting them together, and I absolutely love that. It makes the world feel more diverse, and really makes you feel like you can be what you want to be and find any class/race combo to fit your character idea as opposed to the opposite.

That said, I think PF will still have to reword quite a few spells, and possibly rename more than a few creatures and spells as well. Probably enough for a 2.5e, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they're working on it especially after this leak dropped.

I don't think they're confident at all. The opposite, in fact. They're trying to kill off Pathfinder because, anecdotally, it seems like they're hemorrhaging players to 2e. They're trying to stop that, then I can guarantee they'll incorporate everything they think made 2e good into D&D 6.0. Basically this is just them trying to extract more profit and screw over their biggest competitor.

Yep. The only big takeaway I've had about Guezy, from various things posted on here, is that the person feels he doesn't need to sleep as much as Walker claims and sets out to prove every little tidbit wrong that Walker ever said. And perform experiments on himself (there was one where he intentionally sleep-deprived himself then tested his reaction time on a video game, if I recall correctly) to say "Look, we don't need to sleep that much!" Honestly, it seems he more has an issue with sleep and is looking to optimise for time awake, thus he basically hates Walker telling us we probably need more sleep.

I've also found a lot of these points to be quite finnicky too, as [1] discusses

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34166889

> If they leave this world today, I will be devastated, but happy that my present self is doing the best it can to be with them.

Yeah, this is what's bothering me, just turning 30. Even moreso in that if something were to happen where they were to leave the world tomorrow, I don't know if I'd be able to make it because of the way flights work overseas. It's a lot to think about, honestly, though I feel it'll at least be 2024 before I come back as there's a masters programme I want to do I think I'll always regret if I don't. Then maybe a PhD. Maybe getting a remote job would be the best, or just returning to teaching here. Thanks for your input!

> -Spend different seasons in different places. I'm moving to Tokyo for 3 months next year as a breather.

As I was a teacher, this is what I did before I moved countries. I'd spend a month or two of the summer holiday in a different country doing language courses (I love languages and linguistics as well). It was a great way to have structure in a place as well as stuff to do, plus I've found they often arranged guided tours cheaply, so it always worked out well.

Might consider doing that again, but I'd likely need some extra income streams, which could be doable.

This is actually something that's been weighing on my mind heavily this holiday season, as I'm home in the first time for a year. It's...difficult for me. I love seeing my good friends and family, but there's also nothing in this town for me (apart from a job); it's in rural Kentucky, and there's nothing there to promote my interests (mainly academic) and good luck finding any long-term partners (I'm about as far from a Trump supporter as you can get). But, I truly miss seeing my family and friends regularly, more than I realised. It's a tough decision, and one I'll probably actually discuss with my friends on our annual New Years trip.

I think you're right, but it goes a step father. They then associate that with reading in general, and liking books. Then they start to believe that self-insert dystopian YA is just as literary as, say, actual dense literature that explores the human condition. Or they make books their personality, without ever reading them. r/books is full of examples like this, where it almost seems they talk more about the idea of reading than they do the books, while also constantly seeking validation for not even attempting something challenging.

From my experience as a secondary school teacher, it's the latter which then leads to the former. Kids can't read. I'd say in my last year teaching I probably only had three kids who I would consider literate, able to read and make inferences, think about the material they're reading, etc. There's several reasons for this (and not just social media -- they're often taught to regurgitate for the state exams), but it's a real issue.

> There’s something about having to pour over paper bibliographies to identify first editions by spelling mistakes and print errors that really separates the wheat from the chaff.

It truly is fun. In my case, it's trolling through old biographies of a minority language, hunting down authors names and then the names of their books. But it's great fun as often there's never been a complete list of these works compiled, so I'm sorta now the go-to person for a specific dialect region with regards to books by authors of the region.

My particular specialty is pre-Standard books written by authors from Conamara, in Ireland. I'm at the point where I have most of the first editions I know about from before the standard, with only three, at most (I need to get to a library to compare editions of one, as I think I have the school edition but am not sure if the school was the first edition published), eluding me. Then I'll branch out into other, similar dialectal regions.

It's so fun hitting up used bookshops for books in another language, and types of books like that. I'm kinda looking forward to expanding my dialectal region as it'll allow me to basically start the hunt all over again.

I'm in pretty much this exact situation right now (we actually all left then returned in early/mid 20s after university), and, well, it's still lonely. WhatsApp (or, in our case, Discord) is no substitution for physically being able to meet up. I have friends where I live now, but it's not the same level of depth in the friendship, where we'd just go to each other's houses and shoot the shit for hours about everything and nothing (as we've done since high school) and I feel that is something I didn't realise I wanted and was missing until I moved. It's actually got me seriously reconsidering returning. Gonna be hard leaving after Christmas this year.

Can I ask what prompted this? I've tried to change my life to fit this in the past few years, since reading Carl Honore's In Praise of Slow (released in 2005! I can only imagine what he thinks now), even down to shifting away from speeding on the highway and just going the speed limit. I've found that one simple act gave me a better mindset, same with trying to do other things slowly as well (including just meandering the city I now live in).

> I think you can make a philosophical argument that a fully formal proof, where every claim is traced all the way back to the axioms, is not a social construct.

I don't think you can make this claim really, precisely because the logic we accept as, well, logical, is a social construct. Different cultures across different places have had different ways of accepting what is valid in an argument. The methods of logic we consider valid are themselves social constructs, basically.

But what this doesn't get at is that the very system of logic we use to make proofs is a social construct. Other cultures have had other systems of logic, and called valid arguments that we wouldn't today precisely because they were using a different system of logic.

So the very foundations of mathematics, the logic we use behind our proofs, is inherently a social construct that arose out of Greek philosophy as it was adapted in the west.