I think what that commenter meant, and I agree, is that the "savant" in this case was referring to a literal computer; the programmer as an IC is "delegating" a task by writing a program and having the computer execute it.
1,145 karma · joined January 30, 2017
You've walked past gold in search of silver. A biking competition that disallowed the use of gravity would be wild. What would that even look like? How could it be run? Compressed air jets to maneuver bikes onto friction platforms? Entire courses built into the non-rotating sections of space stations? Racers suspended on bungee cords to counteract natural forces?
But that's not the situation here anyway. Is an architect guilty of murder if a building he designs collapses? Flaws in his design may have contributed. What about the construction company that built it? Perhaps they were incompetent and sloppy in their construction. The suppliers might be at fault as well; they could have sold inferior steel or concrete. What about the politicians that passed faulty legislation for building codes? Does some of the blame not fall on them too? Or the maintenance company that skimped on their maintenance checks and could possibly have seen the cracks forming?
There is very rarely, despite the assurances of five-whys and other incident response practices, a clear-cut and obvious point of failure when complex systems break. The Boeing situation was a failure of culture, people say. Maybe. They justify criminal charges on the C-suite as a result. Maybe even that is just, for a certain definition of justice. But the buck doesn't have to stop there. Where are the criminal charges for the shareholders, who chose to keep these criminals at the head of the company? Where are the charges against the FAA, who continued to do leave Boeing to be its own regulator? Why not cast blame on the previous CEOs as well? After all, culture takes a long time to change, and the current CEO has only been in the role since 2020 - the MAX's first flight was in 2016!
It's amazing that this South Park clip just gets more and more true every year. "Canada wants more money! Other countries get lots of money, we want some of that money. How about the Internet? Internet makes lots of money!"
Is this simply an endemic issue in the software space? I can imagine a great deal of people thinking it's not worth it to financially support a project or plugin they rely on because "I could make that myself in a weekend if I wanted to" and using that rationalization to justify being rude to the project's maintainer. Or perhaps the true believers in open source think that people should feed themselves on ideology rather than bread. Is there something else going on?
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime...
[1]: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisite...
In the test, wealth is coming from outside the system to individual economic agents within it. Of course those agents become better off than others who are not granted this wealth. But a government does not create wealth by fiat; they take it through taxation to distribute and spend according to priorities (ideally) set through popular decisions. They cannot make the group as a whole objectively richer - schemes to try anyway through blanket money printing result in unwanted inflation.
What I would actually expect to happen, should UBI somehow be implemented, is an immediate capture of the extra wealth by the capital-owning class. It won't be used by the currently homeless to afford homes, because the day after it's announced, rent prices will shoot up by about 70% of the amount. You will still need a job to afford a place to live. Likewise all basic goods; food, fuel, education, all their prices will rise to consume the greater discretionary income that people have. You can't win the Red Queen's race. Speeding everyone up the same amount doesn't change their relative positioning.
True, it would make debts suddenly worth a lot less. The government could also choose to do so by fiat, but they are very unlikely to. It's not difficult to imagine why.
Worse, the expense of doing this - it would cost more than the federal budget in the USA, assuming everyone is given a modest $2,000 monthly - means that taxes would have to rise, making it harder for people to actually rise in economic status through productive labor. I can see, assuming that this state of being continues long-term (which I personally doubt it would), a permanent divide appearing in the economic strata in the population over this, between people lucky enough to own property at the time the UBI was implemented and those who weren't.
Despite the woe about wealth mobility that already exists (at the moment, people in the bottom quintile economically have a 40-60% chance to escape it[0]), it can always get worse. Ideas to fix it should not be judged based solely on their intent. UBI is a solution that is conceptually simple (there are poor people? just give them money!), politically easy (who doesn't like free money?), and absolutely rife with harmful second order effects. People change their behavior according to incentives - this is true both of the poor who historically have been the targeted beneficiaries of UBI tests, and the landlords and corporations that will change their policies to optimally harvest a new bounty if these policies were ever implemented more widely.
[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/stuck-on-the-ladder-wealt...
From https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/wh...
>Scholars don't blame the Ottoman anti-Semitism on economic malaise, but instead point to it being imported by Christian Arabs from Europe
So this was not a latent feature of Islam or Muslim culture, but an import from a more anti-Semitic culture (of course, the word Semitic here is not quite correct, given that Arabs are also Semites - I don't know why that word is preferred when the actual meaning being conveyed is anti-Jewish). The original poster I was responding to said this;
>the issue of anti-Semitism long pre-dates the establishment of Israel
Perhaps that poster only meant that anti-Jewish sentiment rose in the region a few decades previous, but the most common way I have heard of that belief, it comes from a "clash of civilizations" mindset that holds that the region has been rabidly anti-Jewish for many centuries.
Also, to your point that the Ottoman Empire only began declining in the 20th century, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/decline-of-the-Ottoman-Empi...: "But the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire did not last, and Süleyman’s rule was followed by a slow and arduous decline that spanned nearly four centuries."
Holy shit that's burying the lede. Do you know what happened in Palestine, specifically Jerusalem, at the end of the 11th century?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade
"On 15 July 1099, the crusaders made their way into the city through the tower of David and began massacring large numbers of the inhabitants, Muslims and Jews alike. The Fatimid governor of the city, Iftikhar Ad-Daulah, managed to escape.[16] According to eyewitness accounts the streets of Jerusalem were filled with blood. How many people were killed is a matter of debate, with the figure of 70,000 given by the Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir (writing c.1200) considered to be a significant exaggeration; 40,000 is plausible, given the city's population had been swollen by refugees fleeing the advance of the crusading army.[17]
The aftermath of the siege led to the mass slaughter of thousands of Muslims and Jews which contemporaneous sources suggest was savage and widespread and to the conversion of Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount into Christian shrines.[18][19]
Atrocities committed against the inhabitants of cities taken by storm after a siege were normal in ancient[20] and medieval warfare by both Christians and Muslims. The crusaders had already done so at Antioch, and Fatimids had done so themselves at Taormina, at Rometta, and at Tyre. However, it is speculated that the massacre of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, both Muslims and Jews, may have exceeded even these standards."
And yes, the various Muslim powers at the time were in steep decline; if they weren't, they should easily have been able to defeat an army as poorly organized as the First Crusade was. The fact that just before the crusaders arrived, every powerful leader in the region died is basically the closest they came to actual divine intervention.
1. Jews exist in a region.
2. Muslims take over. Conditions improve for the Jews.
3. Time passes.
4. Muslim civilization declines.
5. Internal strife and conflict. Among others, Jews are blamed.
6. Commenters 1000 years later; "This was caused by incipient hatred of Jews by Muslims."
This does not explain why conditions improved when Muslims originally rose to power in various regions. Again, the persecution of minority population is an expected result of the decline of civilizations. From the Wikipedia article your Twitter source is quoting, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Moroccan_Jews: "Morocco's instability and divisions also fueled conflicts, for which Jews were frequent scapegoats. The First Franco-Moroccan War in 1844 brought new misery and ill treatment upon the Moroccan Jews, especially upon those of Mogador (known as Essaouira). When the Hispano-Moroccan War broke out on September 22, 1859, the Mellah of Tetuan was sacked, and many Jews fled to Cadiz and Gibraltar for refuge. Upon the 1860 Spanish seizure of Tetouan in the Hispano-Moroccan War, the pogrom-stricken Jewish community, who spoke archaic Spanish, welcomed the invading Spanish troops as liberators, and collaborated with the Spanish authorities as brokers and translators during the 27-month-long occupation of the city." This is a nation in decline, lashing out at every perceived cause of trouble, like plague-stricken Europeans slaying cats and dogs and flagellating themselves.
Here are some other quotes from that article;
"The golden age of the Jewish community in Fez lasted for almost three hundred years, from the 9th to 11th centuries. Its yeshivot (religious schools) attracted brilliant scholars, poets and grammarians. This period was marred by a pogrom in 1033, which is described by the Jewish Virtual Library as an isolated event primarily due to political conflict between the Maghrawa and Ifrenid tribes."
"The position of the Jews under Almoravid domination was apparently free of major abuses, though there are reports of increasing social hostility against them – particularly in Fes. Unlike the problems encountered by the Jews during the rule of the Almohads (the Almoravids' successor dynasty), there are not many factual complaints of excesses, coercion, or malice on the part of the authorities toward the Jewish communities."
"During Marinid rule, Jews were able to return to their religion and practices, once again outwardly professing their Judaism under the protection of the dhimmi status. They were able to re-establish their lives and communities, returning to some sense of normalcy and security. They also established strong vertical relations with the Marinid sultans. When the still-fanatic mobs attacked them in 1275{note; no source for this on the Wikipedia page, no link; unable to find what this is referring to}, the Merinid sultan Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Abd Al-Haqq intervened personally to save them. The sovereigns of this dynasty benevolently received the Jewish ambassadors of the Christian kings of Spain and admitted Jews among their closest courtiers."
This is not what I would expect of a civilization that is fundamentally racist towards Jews. I would not expect, for example, a Louisiana governor in the 18th century to appoint a black man to be his advisor, yet we see Jews in the position of vizier in Morocco. This does not square.
Racism is not the most useful lens to view this relationship through. The culture of the Middle East is low-trust compared to post-Enlightenment Western societies. There remain sharp social divisions based on old tribal allegiances in even developed nations there (unsurprising, perhaps; there remain living people who remember that this tribe used to be slavers and that tribe killed our uncle and so on). Lashing out at neighbors who one thinks are being treated too favorably has little to do with race or religion, in my experience, and more to do with envy. It is the narcissism of small differences writ large and exacerbated by actual stakes.
Except that doesn't seem to the be the case in the context of the time for specifically the Jewish communities living in Muslim-controlled regions? Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi - "Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws and scriptures of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they were subject were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character. That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two communities, and not to oppress the Jewish population." There's a section on Jews on that page that seems unanimous in the view that while dhimmi status was not as good as being a muslim citizen, it was a better than what they had either before the Muslims took over or what they had available elsewhere. It's weird to label what is generally an improvement in living conditions/social regard as stemming from deep-seated discrimination.
Per atrocities - of course there were atrocities committed against Jews. Just as there were atrocities committed by basically every long-lived group against every long-lived group in their territories. No one is stupid enough to say that Muslims have never persecuted Jews, just as they wouldn't say that Christians have never persecuted Jews, or that Muslims never persecuted Christians, or that Christians never persecuted Muslims, or that those groups never persecuted themselves in schisms and internicine warfare. But the impression that Islam is fundamentally and necessarily opposed to the practice of the Jewish faith is fairly contradicted by even the history of dhimma. As the first paragraph of that Wikipedia page states; 'Dhimmī... is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. The word literally means "protected person", referring to the state's obligation under sharia to protect the individual's life, property, as well as freedom of religion, in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax, in contrast to the zakat, or obligatory alms, paid by the Muslim subjects. Dhimmi were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation.'
On the other hand, look at how the Jews were treated during the Islamic Golden Age in Spain; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_i... ("The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished."). It's hard to square that with the idea that there is this deep-seated hatred among Muslims towards Jews as the GP stated.
My point is that conflict between the two sides is not inevitable, nor is this idea of extreme latent anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world really true. Purges and persecution that people bring up are probably not caused by ancestral hatred, but rather the same thing that causes every society to suddenly fall into itself in violence and accusation; uncertain economic conditions, unstable political environments, natural disaster, epidemics, war, idiotic rulership, etc.
From your second source that seems to not be the case, at least not in serious degree. "Traditionally, Jews in the Muslim world were considered to be People of the Book and were subjected to dhimmi status. They were afforded relative security against persecution, provided they did not contest the varying inferior social and legal status imposed on them under Islamic rule. While there were antisemitic incidents before the 20th century, during this time antisemitism in the Arab world increased greatly." And later, "The situation of Jews was comparatively better than their European counterparts, though they still suffered persecution." There is more detail at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...
Anecdotally, I've heard that before the establishment of Israel, relations between the two groups were much less hostile. Muslims and Jews would, for example, have their Jewish or Muslim neighbors watch over their kids during holy days when they'd have to go to mosque/temple. There is also a long history of Jews being treated fairly well in the Arab/Muslim world - better indeed than they were in Christian lands where pogroms were much more common (it's astonishing how many times Germany, in a state of high fervor, decided that the most appropriate thing to do would be to massacre the Jews again). Again, anecdotally, the "depth of hatred against Jews" in the Arabs I've spoken with has little to do with Jews and much to do with the actions of the state of Israel and what it does in the name of Jews.
That seems to be a true sentiment, though[0][1][2]. Deviating significantly from the speed of actual traffic will likely lead to more accidents. Insisting stubbornly on following the letter of the law when it is actually detrimental to safety is not moral; it is merely pedantic. Fiat justitia ruat caelum is not a particularly healthy view of the relationship between the legal system and society.
[0]: https://trid.trb.org/view/306976 (From the abstract: "A major influence on speed variance is the difference between the design speed and the posted speed limit. It was determined that speed variance will approach minimum values if the posted speed limit is between 5 and 10 mph lower than the design speed. Outside this range, speed variance increases with an increasing difference between the design speed and the posted speed limit. It was also found that drivers tend to drive at increasing speeds as the roadway geometric characteristics improve, regardless of the posted speed limit, and that accident rates do not necessarily increase with an increase in average speed but do increase with an increase in speed variance.")
[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1904038 ("A model of the optimal speed limit is developed which explicitly recognizes the role of average speed, speed variance, and the level of enforcement. An unusual result emerges, namely that a higher speed limit may be optimal when reducing the variance in highway speeds reduces accident externalities.")
[2]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/17098/... ("Separate studies by Solomon (1964) and Cirillo (1968) concluded that, as vehicle speeds deviated from the average speed of the traffic stream, crash involvement rates increased... Studies throughout the 1970s produced findings consistent with the research... For crash severity, higher vehicle operating speeds are associated with more severe crash outcomes. However, the relationship between crash frequency and speed is not as clear. There is some indication that increasing posted speed limits is associated with an increase in expected crash frequency; however, the relationship between operating speed and crash frequency has yet to be well established.")
I can get it to about 60%. Given the algorithm used, it seems like it should be trivial to "trick" it by just cycling through novel 5-grams over and over, but to be honest I can't be bothered to check. And that would be rather contrary to the point of the exercise, if somewhat undercutting of the premise that free will is equivalent or comparable to randomness.
The person who "sponsored" Brunel on that list was Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame, who was given an hour on the BBC to argue his case (other persons of note were given time to argue in favor of their own choices). You can find his video here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwHnVH9jWmU