pfkurtz

Is it that from where you're sitting my points 1) and 2) a) aren't true, b) are true but aren't really harmful to society, or c) aren't the particular fault of the man who sits atop the right wing media ecosystem (which creates constant cultural conflict), and the biggest funder of climate change denial (because he's an oil baron)?

Yes NIMBY is a problem and may be more about human nature.

The broken regulatory environment that exacerbates the problem is a consequence of elite competition: government not working for the public is caused by being captured by narrow interests, who work to corrupt its purpose.

The (upper) middle class homeowners who don't want apartments built nearby? They are, for various reasons, better represented by local governments than people who want to do new things. I agree that the concept of "elite" doesn't cover what's going on here, but there are echoes, because power is a spectrum.

That's the point I actually wanted to make.

I was not aware of this paper, I will read it and see what further work has said, thanks (it's from 2015 there's gotta be something).

Yes, the conservative-neoliberal alliance that has produced terrible inequality and political institutions incapable of solving problems because they aren't actually responsive to the public... succeeded everywhere.

This is a real problem, and a direct consequence of elite competition: keep other competitors out.

There should be enough places to live built as there are humans.

Here's McKinsey in 2019:

"Labor’s share of national income—that is, the amount of GDP paid out in wages, salaries, and benefits—has been declining in developed and, to a lesser extent, emerging economies since the 1980s."

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-gr...

This divergence since 1980 is the subject of Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century.

I didn't say Soros, and I didn't say "Koches". I said Charles Koch and Rupert Murdoch because they are the men destroying the fabric of our society by 1) fueling non-stop culture wars and hatred (about a trillion dollars has been spent on right wing media since it's inception as big business) and 2) destroying our environment, which is already a crisis for many people around the globe if it's not for you.

These are the real problems we face. Not "wokeness" (basically just a nouveau slur).

More educated people aren't a problem, this has driven the greatest economic boom in history. It has driven the greatest reduction in interpersonal violence in history. Education is an unalloyed good. Political, cultural and economic equality for women and however many other categories of people you want to add to that list are unalloyed goods.

The problem is that all rewards are distributed to the top, because of the dominance of a small number of evil men over our political and economic system since about 1980. That is why competition to become an elite is so intense: only elites benefit from the current system. It is why we cannot get Democrats to govern properly, and why Republicans govern only with malice.

The US jobless is at record lows. That is a bad criticism of our economic system, because it isn't true. It might be the case that some powerful economic actors work to undermine full employment some of the time (for instance). But the specifics matter. What matters is the kinds of jobs and how much of the pie is being distributed, a fact completely left out of their article.

Do conservatives care about having an economy that's actually just and equitable? That's a pretty big part of what Marx was getting at; much bigger than the one point about how it undermines traditional religious belief (a good thing). That would probably solve their concerns about not enough young people starting families.

I've heard a lot of rhetoric, and I've seen what literally every "conservative" politician actually does: enrich entrenched elites, undermine democracy, and make the violent parts of the state less accountable to the public.

Yeah I know. I wish more people noticed that the most powerful people keep being left out of diagnoses of our problems.

Yeah I know, but this seems like a throwaway line designed to add "both sides" cover, in between several paragraphs of shadowboxing the Left.

The owners of the system seem curiously left out of most analysis.

How can an article about "elite competition" not mention anything about how, during a few decades in the 20th Century, labor's share of profits increased, and since 1980 has flatlined, with all rewards accruing to capital?

What analysis of elites doesn't include reference to Rupert Murdoch and Charles Koch?

The author seems to get that the ruthless competition in our world is destroying lives, but he seems to blame the competitors and those who seek to improve things.

For. Real. What pathetic nonsense.

I want every comment about this here and on Twitter tattooed over every inch of my body and codebase. Love it.

From someone who went from Wittgenstein -> programming, I think this is a good comment.

What I really like about the Tractatus, which I've been reading on and off for 20 years and just dusted off to read in German for the first time for the 100th anniversary, is that it gives a really clear, tight metaphysical picture that in the end pretty much forces one to start asking deep questions about the nature of meaning explored in his later work.

It's a hard book but careful study really enhances not just the "main event" of Wittgenstein's mature writings, but one's ability to follow a lot of the main threads not only in analytic philosophy, but in the broader Western metaphysical-logical tradition.

That is exactly what they are, a book with original on the left, English on the right.

The publisher Dover makes a whole series across several languages, and it's not too hard to find Greek and Latin classics.

Recently I see more specialty publishers moving into the space.

There's also interlinear dual language books, with a very literal but you-do-some-grammatical work translation of each word below.

For weird biographical reasons all of the philosopher Wittgenstein's books are published with German-English on facing pages.

https://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-languages-and...

This isn't my whole approach or anything (it builds on a really good education) but I find my continuous, lifelong learning of things I want in my soul to know about has reached a stable, always-improving habit by having a few stacks of the right books in reach in the right places.

On my toilet is a stack of dual-language books; German and Old English, Latin, French and Spanish, Ancient Greek, Japanese, as well as Shapiro's Introduction to Number Theory. Lots of Dover editions. Wittgenstein.

Next to my desk (on the second desk) there's always an open math book or two (Knuth Vol. 1 and From Frege to Gödel right now), as well as a few open notebooks.

By my bedside, a few works of great literature and philosophy (right now Rawls, Joyce, Homer).

In reach of the couch a variety of books on art history.

By the reading chair, well... lots of books.

I read, skip about, get stuck, forget things, but every day I dip into these little piles for a few minutes here, maybe an hour there if I'm lucky.

One thing I never care about anymore is finishing. My mind can grow a bit more, most of the time.

Hard for me to separate theses Thiel is partially right about from the great harm his existence has done to our species.

This whole crisis has seen constant articles that, at least on the clickbait level which actually influences our discourse, present reasoning like "we didn't notice anything bad (yet)" -> "maybe nothing's ever bad again!"

So... you just like to be disagreeable.

What's happening now in American politics (and lots of places) must be the trial run for attempting to address this problem.

For dead languages the answer is easy: a lot of the most interesting texts are in verse. Including Middle English. I have never had a conversation in any dead language. Prose literature is actually a more recent development, so if you want to read ancient stories in the original, which are awesome, you will be reading poetry.

As to poetry in general: Poetic language is challenging, diverse in vocabulary, and because of meter it is memorizable, which I find puts more of the language "in my head". Poetry is also an essential part of most national literatures, and so a big component of really learning a language beyond being conversational.

Nothing in my answer disparaged prose, or that poetry is more important than prose; any language learning consists of repeated, effortful exposure to many language sources, as well as speaking and writing the language. I'm just emphasizing that studying poems in other languages can really help learning those languages, so a savvy student should include it. The tone of your response is puzzling to me.

"I'm on a screen for 80-90% of my waking hours" — I've been there and it can be really destructive to mental health and also basic thinking.

That's a good place to be in your career. Learning complex subjects is much more about quality than quantity (there was a recent HN article about effortful repetition, rather than mere repeated exposure, being the trick). So even if you want to really learn this stuff, learning to give your brain a break might be just what you need to both process the information and find pleasure in it.

Meditation is for real. But you might also be in danger of approaching it as "a task"—I did. What I do when I sense that my body just needs to relax, now, is I lay on a yoga mat on the floor and sort of stretch without trying and gradually feel my breath and slow down. Sometimes it becomes a real work out, but I never do it with that intention. Just a suggestion.

The question that first springs to mind is, do you have a goal to learning new programming stuff (either a real intellectual goal, or something professional)? Is it helping you?

Maybe you really like learning but need to pick up something else, to give your brain a break. Maybe you need to do something with your body instead of your mind. Burnout is real, and people need to change in order to grow. (We're close in age.)

The Canterbury Tales is a great preparation for the harder stuff!

In a college language seminar we read The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe very closely in Middle English. The Canterbury Tales are a really great way to learn it, because they are so rich and varied and there are great dual language editions with copious notes. The big fat Penguin edition is fantastic.

In general, poetry is a great component to any language learning (enhanced by the fact they're often published in dual language version), but it's essential for dead languages.

Also there were many people distributing masks to the maskless, and people whose sole mission was to pump hand sanitizer onto people's hands. The people in the crowd care about the virus and for the most part when right back to social distancing after leaving the protest.

Been to a major one, and a very, very high percentage of the people there wore masks, enough that it was consistently odd to see people without them. Also people trying as much as possible to keep a little space between each other. Who wasn't wearing masks, consistently? White male police (the National Guard was all masked). Doubt me if you want. Obviously a rhetorical "all" and very easy to find photographic counterexamples. But certainly most.

There's almost certainly a lot of safe opening up we could do. What would make it dramatically safer would be pro-social behavior from people on the right. The protesters are all wearing masks and doing their best to maintain social distance outside of the actions. They calculate that it is worth the risk. Time will tell, but the calculus isn't merely do the protests increase the spread? but also will they achieve political goals that have a large bearing on public health, specifically the health of people whom the US Coronavirus response is already systematically failing (black people, whose lives matter).

This, and so much more of this.

Really, shouldn't org-mode be taught to toddlers?