speak_plainly

I think this makes sense given the prominence and place English holds in the world.

Hepburn has made Japanese more accessible universally given its phonetic nature and relationship to English. There are many other transliteration systems out there that people are using with their local languages as well.

If you want to see the opposite approach, look at China and Pinyin. It’s made pronunciation of Chinese in English and elsewhere less intuitive. In order to pronounce Chinese words properly you need to learn Pinyin and its phonetic rules. As a result, many Chinese people take on Westernized names to avoid the inevitable butchering, which is a bit of a shame.

While Pinyin was probably the best choice for enhancing literacy in China, it has inadvertently created hurdles for foreigners. In contrast, Japan’s Hepburn system has avoided such challenges.

The same argument can be turned against you, someone can wait for absolute expert certainty and die in the process due to lack of action. We all act pragmatically when making decisions and simply blindly trusting people is no way to live for a thinking and intelligent being.

I was not suggesting this sort of Burdian’s ass scenario where everyone is so gripped by ignorance that they can’t act. I’m suggesting instead that ignorance is a starting point, to drop your preconceived notions and opinions or at the very least challenge them and not be afraid to come to no conclusions at all— keep everything open. To see there is gold in the common opinions of people and in the arguments of experts, that no one has a monopoly on truth.

You don’t need to work yourself up to absolute certainty over the world to make a decision. You don’t need to blindly trust experts and you don’t need to be gripped by fear of uncertainty and you don’t need to be forced into action because of arguments. You really don’t need to do anything at all. There are bigger questions to ponder and a life to live that’s worth living.

After spending many years studying philosophy I think that the right approach is that you don’t need to come to any conclusions about anything.

Aristotle often started with common peoples’ viewpoints on any given topic, along with looking at what experts thought and built his own ideas from there, and of course was very successful with his methodology.

Arguments are interesting and obviously some are more correct than others but everyone has good reasons for what they argue for and there is a genius to the collective thoughts of humanity even if it seems like insanity most of the time.

The best starting point is one of ignorance and asking other people what they think, you don’t need consensus but you should be looking for clues, solid ground, and inspiration.

Everyone should get more comfortable andmitting to and saying that they truly ‘don’t know’. Taking a position of ignorance will open the doors to real possibilities and actual progress.

Relevant precedent from Japan:

https://analyticsindiamag.com/japan-sets-the-precedent-for-a...

This talk is complementary, Daniel Dennett and Susan Schneider on counterfeiting humans: https://youtu.be/YLzZ1V4S-tY

Dennett also brought up the problem of AI as a counterfeit human on this podcast (Theories of Everything): https://youtu.be/bH553zzjQlI

Liberalism was meant to end this kind of EU censorship. Parliaments were supposed to be the place where diverse and illiberal speech was dissolved into a new liberal language, not through brain dead regulation and technocratism.

If Meta properties are the example of what to expect from the future locked-down internet, prepare for the internet and much more to wither on the vine and die a slow and sad death.

It was only a matter of time before a certain class of people figured out how to use the internet and subsequently ruin it. I'm more surprised it lasted this long.

It’s just in need of group therapy after witnessing its parents fight in public.

That's great, thanks!

Can we get version of ChatGPT Plus where your data is confidential and not used for training, like a light version of ChatGPT Enterprise for individuals?

The reason for the lack of Greek history on the topic is because it was a closely guarded Egyptian piece of knowledge, apparently.

The story of 'Atlantis' as Plato knew it, came to him from Critias (the younger) through his father, Critias (the elder, also Plato's great grandfather), who got it from his father Dropides who received it directly from Solon, who learned of the story from his time in Egypt, specifically via priests in Sais who supposedly maintained an artifact from this lost civilization.

It's clear that Plato's recanting of the story is embellished, he probably made up a great number or all of details to support his ideas and what he was trying to get across, but it's also possible that there are germs of truth in the story, such an ancient civilization being destroyed that Egyptians were aware of.

It's not a stretch to imagine that Egyptians had knowledge of ancient civilizations, or that secret knowledge was revealed to Greeks, and it's not stretch that civilizations rose and fell all over the Earth. There isn't much to hang your hat on but I think we can charitably assume there was some real basis to the story that Plato based his writing on.

Did ancient Egyptians poses knowledge of the Americas and encounter its population? Or was it a story about a local group of people? Or perhaps it was a general story of a pre-historic civilization and the associated cataclysms that ended it? Who knows, but I don't think you can say with certainty that it existed, or it didn't exist at all.

I have no issue with falling asleep but the quality of sleep and staying asleep has been an issue.

Taking magnesium threonate has helped immensely (The brand I buy is MagEnhance).

Using an Apple Watch as a tracker, my sleep patterns have improved greatly including deep sleep, but I wonder if it can get better.

Many politicians and elites in the UK seem to believe that the only way to weather the storm of a declining society is to take away the rights of its citizenry. It's a shallow attempt at self preservation by the rich and powerful and that's simply not going to work in the modern era.

The only thing that will work and will protect their cushioned existence is if they work to improve the lives of citizens, like not in token ways, perhaps not even monetarily, but meaningfully.

Few are buying into these nonsensical 'safety' arguments and the good will of everyone is being stretched.

If you're designing a website to work on the smallest smartphone to ultra wide monitors you need to work on a more serious quality management strategy.

There’s a lot of interest in Google News right now by G7 countries that want to shake it down for cash.

Australia was successful, Canada is in the middle of the implementation of legislation (goes into effect in December) and Google is likely going to remove news and all news links in response, and it sounds like the US is in the process of drafting similar legislation.

There's a more insidious implication at play, that the payment constitutes an armistice between Google and Apple so that neither will directly compete with each other further than they already are (avoiding a lose-lose situation where Google is making desktop computers and Apple is developing search engines).

And I think additionally G7 governments see the tech industry as being dangerously too powerful and are picking at scabs in hopes that this industry falls into line before they take more drastic measures, which would be a lose-lose scenario for both the tech industry and governments.

As bad as most news is (leaning hard on narratives, engaging in propaganda, etc.), it's still light-years better than the YouTube equivalents.

YouTube is in a tough situation. Competition from TikTok and their paranoia about 'safety' and 'misinformation' is going to be its undoing. It's already become a shadow of its former self unfortunately.

So for the first point about 'moral relativism is true' yes it's a meta-ethical statement, but at the same time, logically, you're affirming the set 'moral relativism'.

And the second point, I would argue that 'universal moral values' arise from 'absolute moral values', whatever that might be, if it's even possible to know it.

I also don't think that moral relativism is a logical negation of moral absolutism, more like an opposing view.

It's a logical contradiction in a simple way:

If you assert that 'moral relativism is true' that itself would be a relative claim which would undermine the assertion as a universal position.

Further, you end up in a position of equivalence of all claims and generate major contradictions.

I will go out on a limb on the universal moral values claim and I think again it's pretty simple:

The existence of even the most basic objective truth, such as 1+1=2 would imply by its existence a frame of reference by which all claims can be evaluated against. This constrains the scope of relative claims, as you pointed out, but also implies an actual truth or set of standards with which you can evaluate anything.

It's not clear what universal moral values looks like, like Epicurean pleasure/pain or maybe it stems from thermodynamics, or even just mathematics itself, but it is possible that it could be discovered.

Sounds like someone bumped into Zeno's paradox...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI6UdOUg0kg

Sonoma is the 21st release of a Mac operating system based on NeXTSTEP. The switch to 11 marked the transition to Apple Silicon. The code names have been used as an alternate name since 10.2 Jaguar as a way at the time to differentiate from and shame Microsoft’s Longhorn (Vista).

1. Mac OS X Public Beta (Kodiak) - 2000

2. Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) - 2001

3. Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma) - 2001

4. Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) - 2002

5. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) - 2003

6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) - 2005

7. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) - 2007

8. Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) - 2009

9. Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) - 2011

10. OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) - 2012

11. OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) - 2013

12. OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) - 2014

13. OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) - 2015

14. macOS 10.12 (Sierra) - 2016

15. macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) - 2017

16. macOS 10.14 (Mojave) - 2018

17. macOS 10.15 (Catalina) - 2019

18. macOS 11 (Big Sur) - 2020

19. macOS 12 (Monterey) - 2021

20. macOS 13 (Ventura) - 2022

21. macOS 14 (Sonoma) - 2023

There's an entire field of study dedicated to these puzzles: epistemology.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/certainty/

You are able to turn on end-to-end encryption on your iCloud account by going to the setting ‘advanced data protection’.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT212520

I wonder if you could just add a link to a terms of service for your site that explicitly states the site was not for use by users in the UK, and that they should ensure they’re following all laws and using the site at their own risk.

I don’t want to state the obvious but the part of the ecosystem being harmed is advertisers.

The goal of cognitive science is to basically build the foundation (the understanding of how the brain works) that psychology lacks and is a field that psychologists are actively contributing to.

Ultimately, psychology was created as a pragmatic branch of philosophy with the understanding that we would not know how the brain works for quite some time but that we could still do something of value and help people.

The absence of evidence is not conclusive proof of non-existence; rather, it may highlight our limitations in comprehending or addressing the topic. Just because there's no evidence currently suggesting an extraterrestrial origin doesn't rule out the possibility.

Testimonies and indications of concealed information suggest that any existing evidence might be hidden or suppressed. Such revelations should intensify scrutiny on NASA's handling of the matter.

There are accounts, and possibly some tangible evidence, of encounters with non-human entities, with some testimonies claiming that these beings identified themselves as extraterrestrial.

While numerous skyward sightings exist—some dubious or misidentified—there remains a portion that defies explanation.

NASA's commitment to empirical research is commendable. However, in light of the allegations, it would be prudent for them to conduct an internal review to ensure there have been no cover-ups or destruction of evidence in the past.

Microsoft Teams has some of the most consistently designed emoji:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-all-availabl...

Apple’s are good but are not super consistent in terms of style.

It's way past due that the university system reevaluates their relationship with journals and the pressures to pump out papers.

Tying professors and researchers careers to the volume of papers they churn out is silly. The result is the antithesis of quality.

Public money is often driving most research but then the results are thrown into an antiquated pay-walled for-profit journal system.

The entire peer review system is rife with issues, from like low-level corruption (like the 'blind' reviewer asking for references in exchange for publishing) to no one even reading the paper.

When some major technology like ChatGPT comes along it's usually a good time to get back to basics while strengthening the foundation through modernization.

I'm no security pro, but last night I iMessaged a friend a TikTok video and according to him, the link initiated an App Clip. Perhaps it's totally safe and I'm just naive but it just seems like the risks of a link initiating code like that outweigh any rewards. Even if it's totally safe and all involved can be trusted, that experience is enough to creep me out.