egjerlow

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond has its fair share of critics, but one thing I feel it does well is introduce to the general populace the ways of thinking around questions like this. In the case of migration, one of the factors that slowed it down so much is the lack of properly 'domestic' peoples that actually had a population surplus. If you're a hunter-gatherer tribe that has reached an equilibrium between children born and people dying, and your hunting grounds provide the resources you need to sustain that equilibrium, there is little reason to go looking elsewhere (migrate).

Which career did you switch to?

I think we would need more than the 'truth' dimension to make this work. Writings can have great value even if what they say is not directly 'true' - think poetry, motivational writings etc.

*Equivalence principle

A starting point (at least it was for me) might be to unfollow (not unfriend) everyone. That way, your feed is empty and you'll get bored opening facebook after a while. You'll still get event invites and direct messages, so you're missing very little of substance.

The Devil will try to exploit every human weakness.

If we have a population of people who are not aware of the intricacies involved in self driving, and the current technical state of the art, it is pretty clear there would be entities who would devilize on it, by claiming to have implemented self driving.

Now, the way they does is saying stuff that actually does not make that claim, but in effect projects it. So right now, we have Tesla people saying "We will start shipping full self driving features by august". And without no clear understanding of what comprises of "full self driving features", the stocks rise. Seriously, it is used everywhere. When a toilet cleaner that claims to kill 99.99% of bacteria, they are doing the same. They project a claim that is very hard to nullify. But that does not prevent it from boosting the sales.

Car companies are particularly at fault because what they are doing can be dangerous to the users.

.. Doesn't sound much like any sermon I've ever heard..

FWIW, here is a blog post by dstufft which might help contextualize this behaviour: https://caremad.io/posts/2013/07/packaging-signing-not-holy-...

To me, this is a feature, not a bug. In my experience, usually the questioning of motive is well-founded and the poster is really doing something that in a perfect programming world shouldn't be done. Then, if the poster is able to explain why they are forced to take this particular route, people will usually accept it and answer.

Illusion magic: Game programming

Evocation: Cracking/pentesting

Abjuration: Cybersecurity

Conjuration: UI programming

Divination: Data science/forecasting

Transmutation: Backend developer

Necromancy: Sysadmin

Enchantment: Facebook/Google/Amazon/ad industry

I did read the second one, in fact one of the most jarring passages I found (see sibling comment above) is from this book, so I don't think learning about her backstory solved this issue for me.. But I see you and several others have made this same point so maybe I'm being curmudgeonly.

I think that Shallan, as presented, is written lazily and with a way of thinking and talking that has been forcibly transplanted from our (as in, the World, 2018) current culture and into a fantasy universe, which is jarring to me.

I also tried to let go, but couldn't ;)

Being occupied with word shapes and word plays is fine! You and several other replies to that post focused on the word-play part of it, as if that was what I was reacting to, and I understand that, since I didn't really give you a lot more to work with. What I tried to bring attention to, however, was the way in which sentences like that break immersion. To me, a sentence like this takes me away from the fantasy world that I have so far been presented, and into some kind of (sorry I keep using this example, but it's really how I feel about it) Marvel movie where our heroes are engaged in friendly banter, or to some tumblr fanfic. That could of course be a problem with what I am expecting going into his universe, but I believe it is more of a problem of Sanderson not taking the time to properly refine his ideas before committing them to paper. Which, again, as many have pointed out, is due to the prolificness of his writing. That doesn't excuse it for me, though.

I am not looking for soaring prose - Mark Twain is great partly because of his ability to maintain the illusion of a rustic backwater society and the people within it. Star Wars is similar: When they stay within the expectations set up by their own universe, it's great! Trashcan robots are part of this! But as we have seen, whenever the dialogue takes you out of the universe and reminds you this is an illusion, fans do react ("I don't like sand...").

I also recognize that this has evolved way beyond where it started and this interaction on HN has influenced my thoughts about this. So I won't pretend what I'm saying now is 'what I had in mind from the beginning'.

Take this line of dialogue (don't remember whether it's from the first or second):

"Well, she wanted me to get married too", Shallan said. "So I wouldn't call her sexist. Merely... Jasnah-ist?" She paused. "Jasnagynistic? No, drat. It would have to be Misjasnahistic, and that doesn't work nearly as well, does it?"

Now, without devolving into debating the anachronicity of the terms used here in general - this is a good example of what I am talking about, and perhaps 'hip' was the wrong way to word it, but it goes beyond mere 'bad wordplay' for me. If you can read the above without cringing, all the more power to you. For me, passages like these completely break immersion and leave me wondering whether I'm reading some kind of bad fanfic. And unfortunately, yes, that does color the rest of the reading, because trusting the author to be competent is (at least to me) an important part of staying immersed. And, thusly let down by Sanderson, my mind moves onto the other things that can be seen as flaws.

That being said, I don't feel disinterested: He has several good qualities as a writer. But just like the Marvel movies probably won't be regarded as the masterpieces of our times, despite their popularity, Sanderson's books are not, to me, worthy of such praise either. In the words of Francis Bacon, his books are to be "swallowed", not "read wholly, and with diligence and attention".

I have heard this sentiment before, and unfortunately I am not convinced that the obnoxiousness of this character was intentional rather than accidental. I don't have much to back this up: basically my hypothesis is that Sanderson is trying to pander to a specific audience, to whom the witty banter he is attempting is appealing, and genuinely attempting to make Shallan 'cool' fits with this hypothesis. Furthermore, as others have also mentioned here, his other attempts at similarly witty characters have also been flawed, so there's that.

Thanks for the input - though I feel like Shallan is just symptomatic of a larger problem, I could also be wrong and I will give him the benefit of the doubt and keep reading SA.

Brandon Sanderson is an interesting case; I have only read the Stormlight Archive books (and his wrap-up of Wheel of Time), and though I can totally see his appeal, I would also totally disagree that he belongs up there with the true greats, at least currently.

Reading his books, I feel like I'm in some kind of Marvel universe, complete with quippy dialogue and 'coolness' that to me gives a stink of 'commercialism' that I can't get past.

In the Stormlight Archive, Shallan is the best example of this: Her dialogue is so forcedly hip and witty that cringes abound whenever I read it. To me, it ruins the whole atmosphere and I feel like I'm in a plastic universe, rather than a living breathing one.

His worldbuilding is great, but his worlds are devoid of authenticity IMO.

Agreed. Also it makes you appreciate more the good things about your home country as well!

I am talking about what is here in general referred to as 'grovbrød' as opposed to what is here in general referred to as 'loff'. Loff can be good, but to many it feels substance-less, especially for breakfast.

Meanwhile, as a Norwegian, the notion that Italians or the French make 'good' bread is hard to swallow. That's probably what most of us miss when we go further abroad than North Europe - decent non-white bread to eat for breakfast. (citation needed). However, this is probably mostly due to the differences in what we expect good bread to be..

Whoa, yeah! This is awesome! It's basically the kind of peer review I think we should be operating with in all branches of science. Good job to the creators!

Gotta respectfully disagree with you here. I sincerely regret watching the LoTR movies, as reading the books now is impossible without imagining the specific actors in the movie (Wood's whiny interpretation of Frodo is especially bad). Before I watched the movies, I had my own image of these characters and they were so much more nebulous, vivid, alive, mysterious, majestic, etc.. I mean, surfing on an oliphant? Geez. Also the way they butchered the relationship between Frodo and Sam I thought was atrocious. Not saying there were no good things about it, but again, would have elected to not see it if I had the choice again.

Not arguing against your general points here, just wanted to say that using a password manager (I use KeePassX + Dropbox) has made the 'invent password' part of the whole process that much easier for me.

From my experiences in astrophysics: Second author is supervisor, third, fourth, etc. are previous collaborators of supervisor that somehow have some 'moral' claim to supervisor's work because it remotely thematically touches upon previous work they did, and thus have provided 'inspiration' for the current work. It's a racket ;)

Wth is that? A baby wrapped in plastic?

To answer one of your questions (not a U.S. citizen but I think the FB situation is pretty much the same in my country) - yes, I did get that invite to the party which I wouldn't have gotten without FB. It's also good for chatting and staying in touch in general, there is no other platform in my sphere that comes close in terms of number of my friends available.

It's important to note that women's preferences is not the only thing affecting evolution - shorter men can be selected due to higher survival rates (for example in jungles, as another commenter pointed out).

Not sure what you mean by the last sentence here, can you elaborate? What I'm saying is that the fact that this strange mathematical result happens to give correct results in a physical experiment must be a pointer to something.

Are you saying that it's a coincidence that -1/12 ends up in both the casimir effect and in this proof? This coincidence is what I'm referring to..

I'm gonna be contrarian and say, yes it does - it's been physically proven! The casimir effect, as other people here have mentioned, depends on this being true, and it has been experimentally tested.

To me it's one of those things where you just go 'damn' because of the perplexing relations that exist between math and physics. If anything hints at what the hell goes on in this universe, to me it's stuff like this.

She wasn't a German expatriate, as far as I can tell!