piloto_ciego

I love lisp and think it’s amazing. One of the things that commonly throws me off when I haven’t been writing it very much day to day is sometimes it’s unclear what’s going to be returned by a function.

An explicit return 0 is a lot more obvious than just having a 0.

Also, I’ll agree that a ‘ or a , in the wrong place is very easy to visually miss, then you can read a totally different meaning out of the code.

Has t this sort of thought been the constant refrain of every generation at the advent of new technology?

I haven’t dug into the stats, but if they just stayed level while everyone else fell it would look like a rise relative to everyone else, no? This could just be them staying level while everyone else slumps - or maybe British parents just care more and started caring more.

But at least here in the states I think a lot of people dgaf. And yes, I do gaf.

What I can’t figure out is why you’re so upset about this - my intuition is that “the lady doth protest too much.” Maybe you know, deep down inside of you, that people aren’t caring as much. Maybe you feel it too - the impulse to not care. Maybe you feel attacked.

If you’re a parent, then my reply would be “good!” People should be doing a better job pushing their kids to excel to the limits of their capabilities and passions.

No, it’s not. That analogy is bonkers.

People should actually make their kids do stuff that’s intellectually challenging and push them to succeed. The test scores are in part (in my opinion) because people can’t be bothered to give a damn. Get off your collective asses and make your kids read a book, do their homework, and turn the f-ing iPad off.

Dude I was pulling dying people out of the arctic and my wife was putting patients on ventilators.

But “oh no… I was bummed because I couldn’t go to the mall!” You have no idea.

Not to mention, I literally got sick that winter with something else and had a self-imposed lockdown because I was immunocompromised for like a year. It wasn’t great but it was fine.

This heartburn about this like it was some big task to stay home while there were people out there literally in the thick of it, watching people get sick and die, or dying themselves? Miss me with that. I think my kids did zoom school for something like a year? It wasn’t great but it was fine. Grow up.

If you’re not trying to push your kids to do better and have some agency etc., you’re doing a bad job at parenting. People have a responsibility to their kids and to the future, and part of that responsibility involves trying to teach people that they can always improve that they’re not stuck being at whatever level they’re at etc. the big thing I see is teaching kids that “it’s important to give a shit.”

I’m not saying it’s the kids’ fault that they’re not doing as well, but the parents definitely have a responsibility to try harder.

Seriously. I cannot stand this revisionist history nonsense about how "terrible" the lockdowns were.

Meanwhile my wife was on the front lines watching people die on vents, and I was literally medevac-ing people out of camp in the arctic with totally inadequate PPE (but we had to do what we had to do, if it got into the camp there was no way to treat people). Seriously one of the most stressful times of my life and I see these people trying to reimagine the history of this. I remember this, I was there...

> The two categories of people I know who say this are elite-college graduates and parents of kids who crashed out of their standardized tests.

I mostly see business people who are already successful people saying this to be honest.

> We’ve tried this for decades. What are the data?

Well, the data is that if you can get a private tutor, that's what you should do, it's way more helpful than just going to school for 7 hours a day. That's why were thinking about making a more alternative education style happen. I'm definitely qualified to teach some stuff, and so is my wife, and mother. We just will need to find a way to fill in the gaps of the places where we're not qual'd. Regardless, I think personalized/individualized education is almost always better by the numbers.

That said, it really depends on what you're optimizing for.

you are correct, but budget cuts are happening nevertheless and it's being used to justify laying off teachers (while admin staff stay employed... strange?)

I feel like that really depended on where you went? But I suppose my life was different, by the time I was a junior in HS, I was mostly taking shop classes and language classes, had my own car that I had bought with a part time job, and had a color printer that convincingly forged hall passes on demand, so I pretty much did whatever I wanted the last couple years? It worked out fine, I graduated near the top of my class? But the strictures and authoritarian sense seemed to be lower?

I legit had aircraft sheet metal snips and numerous exacto knives in my locker and a leatherman on my person most of the time and it wasn't a huge deal? Hell, I needed the leatherman to open the hood of my shitbox car. In contrast today, one of my kids brought a toy knife to school a few years ago (because he thought it was cool, great learning opportunity for a young kid about "the man" I suppose) and you'd have thought they caught Bin Laden or something?

Perhaps I was just lucky, but it feels way different now, though there seems to be a lot less bullying.

You guys have no idea of just how bad it was here. No idea. A million people died. That did not happen in say, Spain. But the kids missing school for a little bit was not as big of a deal as people are trying to retcon now.

I really have found college valuable, but I also self-funded and have no debt. This is pretty much the arrangement I'm trying to set up for my kids too - when I had a blue-ish collar job (bush pilot is a blue collar job no?) I didn't think school had a lot of value, but then again, looking in hindsight, I'd unironically say that the most "valuable" (scare quotes intentional here) course I took was art history. Not because I learned anything that was economically useful, but it gave me a new way to view the world and literally changed some of the decisions I made with my life?

I agree with the idea of giving opportunities to smart kids from good families who work hard and are ethical. But I also think it's pretty damn hard to get good at certain things outside of a classroom? I don't know, I have mixed emotions.

Still, despite my misgivings with traditional education, I think there remains some good that comes from going to a place where your only job is to learn.

I live in Alaska, there were only like 3 months were things were actually curtailed in any meaningful way. We didn't really "lock down" here really. Again, the socialization thing? Not a problem from COVID, now, maybe the skinner box I see kids carrying around in their pockets? Yeah, probably not great? But they didn't lose their socialization here despite whatever right-wing grifters say.

I think the only thing that was really curtailed was my sons took a few months off of karate? A lot more traumatic was probably mom having to sleep in a hotel for a few nights because she got inadvertently exposed to COVID as nurse (when we really didn't know how dangerous things were), or me having to camp out in my folks' motorhome for a week because I was at the tip of the spear medevac-ing people out of camps in the arctic. I know that was scary for my kids because they told me it was.

Them not being able to have playdates being some generational trauma is nonsense. What wasn't nonsense was watching aunts and uncles die from a pandemic that we did next to nothing to fix in America until the vax came out. Also, I would not be surprised if there aren't some cognitive effects to COVID. Despite being very careful, we got it too. Everyone had it here. That probably ain't good for kids' development.

But mostly, I think it's the phones that are having the biggest impact on social development and probably on learning too. Read this paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w35310

If people like doom scrolling more than they like screwing, it's probably not unlikely that they like doom scrolling better than studying.

You're right, but with the rhetoric I see espoused about "don't go to college" by most really rich people (who all went to the best schools themselves) the more I think "don't fall for it kids!"

And there may be some social-engineering intent there, or at least something approximating it? Like, I don't think the elites are all smoking cigars after their Bohemian grove owl orgy (or whatever Alex Jones coded nonsense) and saying "muah hahahaha, we can really make these kids dumber!" But I definitely think that "it sure would be nice if the workers didn't want raises" certainly comes up. No child left behind has certainly had an effect too... Then there's the shootings, the bullying (which appears much much better than when I was a kid at least), and the jingoism/patriotic nonsense.

My wife and I have actually been considering taking the kids out of "traditional school" and doing something more bespoke. Here in Alaska that's a lot more practical than in say, Washington? We have great home school programs here, and with our family members we have the education and qualifications to teach most of the core subjects (lots of retired teachers in our extended family). But, even with my kids in a fantastic school, it is a weird and almost carceral experience for the kids. They're constantly waiting around for stuff, constantly being tested with tests that don't seem to make a huge difference in what's taught, and they aren't really reading literature or doing much in math beyond simple rote work except for one of my sons who is 2 years ahead in math but is still bored.

I'm not saying it was all roses when I was in school 20-30 years ago, but, it feels qualitatively different? Also... even in the nice school they're in, the environment is just... I don't know, oppressive, crowded, and restrained. I'm sorry, it's messed up to make kids ask to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. I'm sorry, it's weird how authoritarian most of the classes are - I understand why, shrinking budgets mean bigger classes, but at least personally, I feel that there's a lot of merit to the idea that this thing that used to be about learning has become daycare so the parents can stay grinding away while their kids are safely sequestered. We will see if we can do it, but we're thinking pretty hard about just travelling in the winter while they do home school online or take college classes.

What's better: to have my kids sit in a box for 7 hours a day (but really only work for like 2-3 hours) and respond to bells on command or to do online school for 3 hours a day, have mom, dad, and grandma lecture on our specialties and guide them through projects that really push them all from another country in the winter where they can learn a second language, see a different world, etc? I understand that this is a privileged position for us - like, I work from my laptop and my wife has a commutable job, but each day I pick up the kids from their school it feels a little more like picking up a parolee.

They're not wrong though, like, it is a creation of the industrial era, and honestly, the "elites vs all of us" isn't exactly crazy. Mcgraw Hill is literally owned by Apollo Global Management, don't just take my word for it, look up the relationship the management there had with Epstein.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy even, it could just be that terrible incentives across the board result in terrible outcomes lol

The "trauma" from staying at home? Please. If the parents let them watch youtube for 2 years then the parents were stupid. I have 3 kids in school, all but one of them were in school at the time. Staying at home with Grandma and Papa while they did zoom school didn't break their brains. You know what my kids don't have? My kids don't have a smart phone. You know what my kids don't have? Unlimited access to devices.

Now, I will say that the Pandemic was pretty traumatic here in the US, at least a million people died last time I looked at it. Those people were somebody's neighbors, grandparents, uncles, etc. So maybe the realization that "nobody gives a shit about you except for your productivity" was a lesson they internalized?

Largely, I think it is the parents though. Like I said, I have kids, and when their grades slump, I get on them to fix it. A lot of people are really unwilling to do that.

You really believe that?

Sometimes it is wild to me how two people can look at the same information and come to completely different conclusions.

As best as I can tell, the only constraint the really matters right now is availability of compute, or as a buddy of mine put it "GPU GO BRRRRRRRRRRR!"

Man, you seem like you're thinking linearly... the capability growth does not look to be linear... 3 years tops IMO

"doomed industry?"

Please.

To any of the people unsure (because like so many people in tech they've probably never worked with or around an excavator) the answer is, "they do not."

One point of unsolicited advice:

Making yourself feel better about giving up does not constitute actually doing anything.

I think that's exactly what it reads as... I'm not trying to be a dick but, "I'll remember this and <authority-figure> will get his or her just rewards" is... I don't know, like I said, it reads like "well I ran up against a wall so I decided to give up and wait for a different wall."

Uncharitable, maybe. But, yeah, you should definitely stand up for yourself more.

So you gave up when it got hard? That’s kind of what I read out of that.

Then I think you probably learned the wrong lessons.

The lesson you should have learned would be that we should tear down the "brutal reality of binary-minded Authority figures and hierarchical social constructs." We only tolerate these things as "normal" because people go through their lives not actively trying to tear them down and break them.

Interesting how little interaction there is with these....

I mean, I ain't saying you're wrong. I don't like it, but the idea of non-transactional international relations is probably over...

That's what I'm trying to build, at least my Alaskan version of it. Off grid cabin, robots zipping around, and solar lol. We'll see how it works out? I don't know, also, building stuff is tough, but I'm learning.

I'll try the game out, thanks for the rec.

> It always put military basses in Greenland

I don't think this is unilaterally true, from the first glance at this, it appears to be significantly more capability...

I think (perhaps naively) that we do have a plan? Regardless, I have been trying to tell people in my life that the "really truly scary outcome" is not "what if everything falls apart" but "what if this works?"

I was thinking about this last night. I think the goal is "spheres of influence and Monroe doctrine stuff" and troublingly i think we might end up with more annexations in the next little bit.

So, a lot of people are basically saying, "well, this is the same deal as before" and the more I hear about this the more I think, "actually, this looks like quite a bit of Greenlandic autonomy and self-governance has to be rolled through American approval channels first."

This looks like we basically annexed Greenland but don't have to spend tax dollars there except for defense, also, I'd bet American companies can do more business there... This is bananas...