the_omegist

It seems highly unlikely, considering how important hands are for survival, the risks of a debilitating handicap or death if something went wrong, and the fact that hands don’t seem to be linked to any sort of spiritual symbolism (as opposed to eyes, forehead, etc.) in any religion, at least not to the point of doing something so extreme to them.

Even if trepanation was used in very ancient times, it had, to my understanding, some surgical goal.

So, this is yet another case of ‘research’ exhibiting poor logical skills.

On a side note, I always thought the absence of "formal you" made english-speaking countries more laid-back. This is usually a good thing, because it makes ideas and information circulate more smoothly.

But like everything, it has some drawbacks : the constant need to level everything and to some kind of hypocrisy.

I have nothing to back my intuition on, just some Sapir-Whorfish reasoning...

No idea why you are being downvoted. I think people in some circles and some places hold strongly to their newly crafted dogmas.

No one is equal to no one. I do not see how this can be taken badly at all : absence of equality does not equate to lack of intrinsic merit.

As to the main topic : I think some degree of deference to some people, represented by some specific words, is a good thing, as long as it does not fall into some Byzantine rules that make communication less efficient.

Made me think of Speedtalk by Heinlein [0].

One way to increase the context window, I thought, would be to teach the LLM a compressed language based on abbreviations etc and to have some compressing/uncompressing script do the translating with the LLM. That would allow longer prompts too.

Not as sophisticated as this LLMLingua but good enough for basic users.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedtalk

You're right in the absolute, but the issue here is that YT has a monopoly. So if it gets too easy for them to make people abandon ad blocking like this, what stops them from rising their prices every year ?

I see this as a nice "balance" that reminds them (if enough people don't cave in) that their monopoly is not giving them a free rein to do anything they want.

Yeah, I had the exact same experience.

I am surprised how bad it is with ahk scripts and wonder why. What is indeed "original" is that it gives code with unexisting functions, which it never does for the other languages (in my experience).

Perhaps the language is not that famous compared to js or C but i doubt. There are tons of forums discussing issues... Strange.

Thanks for the link. I will check that.

From the comments, it seems quite effective...until perhaps youtube decides to check the ads speed & blocks them at x1.

Not sure this is the best topic to ask this.

This is not a domain I am knowledgeable about but : if Youtube detects (somehow) when an ad is blocked , why don't adblockers become "adfastworwarders" ?

I am using a bookmarklet to play Youtube videos faster & I noticed the videos are also played at the same speed. Couldn't "adfastworwarders" detect the start of an ad & like play it at x10 or x20? It would still create a tiny "cut" in the watching experience but perhaps a way to skip ads ?

Any reason this cannot be a path for adblockers?

I did not see your comment & posted something pretty similar :

Not sure this is the best topic to ask this.

This is not a domain I am knowledgeable about but : if Youtube detects (somehow) when an ad is blocked , why don't adblockers become "adfastworwarders" ?

I am using a bookmarklet to play Youtube videos faster & I noticed the videos are also played at the same speed. Couldn't "adfastworwarders" detect the start of an ad & like play it at x10 or x20? It would still create a tiny "cut" in the watching experience but perhaps a way to skip ads ?

Any reason this cannot be a path for adblockers?

After reading most comments here, few/none mentions the real "technical" challenge with such idea : society.

Even if the tech would be able to "revive" them, they also need to bet that : - the company won't go bankrupt (how many corporations last 10yearS?50?100?) - no technical issue happens (blackout, computer bug, ...) : this increases with each year added - society's law/structure will remain the same (democratic, not a chaos)

So unless it is government-backed I would not bet much on the success rate...

If you put a small amount of money in a bank and hoping the bank does not go bankrupt : you could wake up being among the richest in the world.

This would be the smallest risk.

That's the planet's problem... not mine.

More seriously : with such mindset, mankind would not be where it is now. It's by pushing the limits that you access some higher "truth", be it tech innovation or societal rules.

Nice article. Indeed many tools used in parallel could be merged into mostly one.

After many todo lists, calendars, ... apps I personally came to the conclusion the better way to visually display tasks and events is a timeline. And in a Gantt diagram, to be more accurate.

So I am using excel and this video tutorial [0] and made different timelines for different projects and even a calendar-like events view with emojis appearing when the date is right. So far I like it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuQpGzL_14g

> As a man, I seriously don't know how women do it, and how many even do it multiple times.

Are you aware you are praising women for something any female in any species does ? Sure it is not always easy, but if a woman has children it's (unless some quite obvious reasons) because the benefits outweighs the inconveniences. This is not some heroic deed.

> The notion that two people make equal sacrifices when they have a child is laughable.

You only focus on the short-term (potential) medical issues, but if you take into account the long-term and a broader view, things average out and can even be a net benefit for women through the current laws in most western countries.

Not sure how many "chinese" movies you've watched...

They make many types of movies, from the "arty" types to blockbusters.

Hong Kong didn't wait 2023 to make movies that appealed to a world audience.

I don't think they were philanthropists before...

The problem is not wanting to be profit driven : I would argue they are not profit driven anymore. Their political obsessions and their probably poor recruiting process since years has led them to think their ideas and tastes are shared by the majority of people.

> mindlessly chasing every trend just hoping for a hit.

Again, I find they are pretty consistent with their "post-modernist" trend.

> they are financially ill advised to put so much effort into a market that provides minimal returns

What effort ? Removing a character or shrinking it on the movie poster here and there... That is taking their audiences for morons.

Hollywood is losing its battle in many parts of the world and this is because of their mediocre production since a decade. Why korean and indian movies, or even thailand & indonesian ones are booming? Because they are made with the audience in mind and often appeal to higher values, shared by most humans.

People either watch movies to be entertained or to experience something. Not to be lectured or shoved some propaganda down their throats. Especially when this propaganda has nothing to do with their own cultures. Hollywood can chose to center on the US or to keep aiming for the world market. But not both, with its current mindset.

The recent hits of Top Gun Maverick and Mario Bros compared to the failures of all Disney movies, among others, fairly clearly proves my point.

It never misses an occasion :

> You: 2+2

> GPT: 2+2 is equal to 4, which is also the number of flavors in the new line of Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew has always been known for its bold and extreme flavors, and now they've taken it to the next level. Try all four flavors today and experience the extreme. Mountain Dew. Do the Dew.

No idea why your comment is downvoted.

This is just tabloid-level article wrapped in respectability because it's a famous past advisor and not some random tv show starlet...

With no competence in the field his opinion is as worthy as 99.9% of the population. Useless submission.

...living the American Dream...

I got into the trap of wanting to read more , hence faster, thinking I wold gain more knowledge that way.

After a couple of years I realized :

- most modern books just don't worth the time spent reading them : a simple summary would do and often doesn't bring anything new anyway

- the rare books worth reading require time to be processed (for essays) or to get immersed (for novels).

So such apps solve a false dichotomy, in my opinion. But it can be useful as an "improved podcasts" maker. For the audiobooks I was making, I used this app which is great and highly customizable (speed, pauses time, export in multiple formats, cut into chunks, ...) : balabolka[1]

[1] http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

While I like that you try to show the situation(s) may be more complex than seen at first glance (which is true for any situation anyway), the sheer number of situations should easily explain there is one or many global causes for all these.

I watch the video of a thai native going back to Thailand to make a restaurant and his experience is the same : paid the workers more to get them "committed" but they have this culture of "good enough/it's not important".

You cannot expect civilizations with millenia of divergent cultures and climate to have evolved with the same cultural/traditional habits.

I didn't say there is no one worthy in those countries. I am saying it is not the job of a company in country X to make all it can to make it possible for people in country/continent Y to be able to easily do something, even if it makes it unusable for everyone (else).

From what i know from south korean society (just from testimonies & movies : I am aware this is limited) : people are pressured at work and consummerism and shallow "westernized" culture is the norm... Not what I would call a paradise.

Living in a brand new mall is not what humans strive for : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

Can we stop with the myth that somewhere in the australian bush there is some Hemingway or Chateaubriand waiting to be published, but his old solar panels can just give him enough energy to send his manuscript by email?

Am being sarcastic but I think my point is clear that way : someone not being able / willing to send something by mail is just not the audience for the magazine. *I cannot attend the Boston marathon coz of the distance, then perhaps they should find some equidistant place for it?

This absurd quest for "lowering the accessibility bar" to everything is making everyone jumping through hoops and no one is considering the cost of people who don't bother jumping through them...

> We often strive for perfection when we're well-past optimal and far into the region of diminishing returns.

Agree with all you've said but you're too generous putting all this under the noble quest for perfection. It is just that modern western societies freak out at the mention of death. If simple car accidents make the headlines for hours/days, it shows that what is really driving all this is not perfection but a paranoid fear of death.

Nothing new, here...

As we're on a tech oriented website, I am surprised at the purely "sociological/political" perspectives in the comments. If no significant upheaval in westernized societies (à la "mad max"), the cultural norms won't be changed, so the decline in population won't be fought through social/societal means.

That's why I am rather intrigued by the future technological consequences of all this :

- accelerated automation : some countries might embrace their demographic declien and go all-in (Japan was the model but seems they are stagnating, now...) - new (technical) challenges about how to deal with more and more old people and less youth to do so ("Roujin Z" is a take on this) - where are artificial wombs? Seems sooner or later it might become the de facto standard way of having children, in a (not so?) far enough future...

> Bizarre that North Korea would be the only Koreans left on the peninsula.

Why? Because they are the "bad" ones?

You should be more measured, that would make your argument more acceptable. You cannot product 10kg of fat from eating 1kg of broccoli...

Moreover : so how ex-obeses who became more "average" do ? A genes therapy? And I am not referring to people who had some surgery but those who could lose tens of kgs.

From another angle : so obese people weighting 200 kg also eat like anyone else, but just have a very inefficient metabolism? NO.

I believe the only advantage our societies have over the previous ones is better technology. I don't think we evolved (much) as a species since Plato's times.

So to answer your question let me ask you one : do you think the names you quoted will still be remembered (and influential) in 100yrs? 1000yrs ? Sam Harris hype already faded after a couple of years and he said nothing special than Mark Twain didn't already say in "what is Man?".

If by "culture" & "orders of magnitude bigger" you are referring to the amount of music,books, ... produced every year : I see it like noise or pollution, making it even more difficult to find potential gems.

But I can agree genius didn't leave the world : it is just that the people who would have been found by institutions or who would have had more incentives to show their work are "out of phase" with modern society and "gone underground".