uv-depression

To believe this, you must believe that the economy can become arbitrarily decoupled from any physical good. Do you believe that food can become an arbitrarily small proportion of the economy (and so arbitrarily cheap relative to income)? Steel? Purified silicon? Infrastructure like bridges?

I don't. Perpetual growth is incompatible with finite resources. Fortunately, human flourishing does not depend on infinite economic growth; there is, for example, enough food for everyone on the planet. Capitalism is just bad at allocating resources by any metric other than its own. (Yes yes, it's better that feudalism was. I think we can hold ourselves to a higher bar than that.)

But it objectively makes cities worse. People love visiting Europe in part because they don't do this to nearly the same extent (obviously this varies by country/city). People aren't entitled to not having their opinions be proven wrong, nor are they entitled to ignore negative externalities (pollution, noise, danger, unpleasant city centres, and so on).

> are reasonably happy with the status quo.

They're not, except for the having a car part. Road maintenance, especially in the suburbs, is hideously expensive and is falling further and further behind. Cars are the least efficient mode of transit, so traffic gets worse and worse. "Just one more lane" always makes it worse (induced demand), but that's the only solution being tried. The only way to make traffic better is to get significant numbers of people to switch to other modes, and you're simply not going to do that with "incremental improvements" because the status quo is so abysmal for anything other than a car. Cars themselves are horribly expensive and yet are required in most US cities; most are in effect paying a tax to car companies to participate in society.

> being told they are wrong for liking their car.

Who said this?

Americans will vehemently deny this, but you're absolutely right. Decades of car industry propaganda has convinced people that the ability to drive anywhere is true freedom, and they can't see that the freedom not to need a car (all the time) is better for everyone; cities are quieter, more comfortable, and less polluted with fewer cars (no, electric cars don't fix this). It leads to other absurdities, like US cities frequently having parking minimums for bars. That's insane!

There's also the classic problem of people wildly misinterpreting statements and getting mad about it. You can say "we should design cities not centred around cars" and people will hear "I'm going to make it illegal for you to own a car". Or my favourite exchange, "Let's improve public transit" followed by "but public transit is bad for me, I can't take it".

> With frontier LLM agents, the digital loop is happening now to an extent

I see no evidence of this, just a lot of people claiming it (very loudly, for the most part).

> that extent probably grows larger (research automation) soon

The word probably is doing a lot of work here.

> The usual constraints of physical law still apply

There are knowledge constraints, too. I can't build a quark matter processor without understanding quark matter to a vastly higher level than we do now. I can't do that without experiments on quark matter, I can't do experiments without access to a lot of energy, material, land, &c, that need to be assembled. There are a huge number of very difficult and time-consuming instrumental goals on the path to fundamentally better compute.

> A separate point: there's also deductive exploration (pure math) as distinct from empirical exploration (physics), which is not bounded by any physical constraints except for those that bound computation itself.

Sure, but physics requires math that is definitionally applied, not pure, and engineering requires physics.

> what experiments it would do within that space are hard for us to imagine

The only thing you could do in a "digital space" (a.k.a. on a computer) is a simulation. Simulations are extremely useful and help significantly with designing and choosing experiments, but they cannot _replace_ real experiments.

> Like, the time window from the discovery of fire to the discoveries of Quantum Mechanics but in a flash.

And my point is that there's no good reason to think this is possible and many to think it isn't.

> it's more of a fun sci-fi idea

It's being presented as extremely serious possibility by people who stand to gain a _lot_ of money if other people think it's serious... that's the point of the linked post. Unfortunately, these AI boosters make it very difficult to discuss these ideas, even in a fun sci-fi way, without aggravating the social harms those people are causing.

> I think that when the singularity occurs all of the problems in physics will solve, like in a vacuum, and physics will advance centuries if not millennia in a few pico-seconds

It doesn't matter how smart you are, you still need to run experiments to do physics. Experiments take nontrivial amounts of time to both run and set up (you can't tunnel a new CERN in picoseconds, again no matter how smart you are). Similarly, the speed of light (= the speed limit of information) and thermodynamics place fundamental limits on computation; I don't think there's any reason at all to believe that intelligence is unbounded.

> My point is is that if leftists cannot talk about immigration policy in a nuanced way

Does nuance mean agreeing to your framing of a situation? If so, I guess not. That's not what it means to me.

> a naive idealist

Insults aren't helping your case.

> associate the effects of a bad policy with the policy itself.

What are the effects you're referring to here?

> Humans see patterns in everything, that's how we work.

Here's a pattern I see: American-owned propaganda networks take over Canadian news and trying to drum up racist sentiment and lots of people falling for it.

Is that what I said?

How else am I to interpret someone seeing a group of people working low wage jobs and concluding that everyone from their country is a bad influence?

> will only drive people towards right-wing extremists

The right talks a big game about personal responsibility, but somehow their worst beliefs are always someone else's fault. Funny, that.

> naturally become associated

Now see, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It's _not_ natural or inevitable.

> Questioning immigration policy is not racism. Anti-Indian sentiment [ justification for said sentiment ]

Wild sequence of sentences.

> is now widely agreed has contributed to a noticeable decline in the quality of life for all.

Citation very much needed.

> A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.

So we just let racists determine national policy now? I wonder how that's working out in the US.

Leaving aside the fact that this is a single picture of a chart with no source provided (or sample size, or methodology)... that's eighth on that chart, not fifth, and just says "immigration" with no further detail.

> collectively our greatest fear

Citation very much needed. This sounds like _your_ concern that you're trying to launder through projecting onto the rest of the country.

Yeah, and all of that's already true right now because messages are stored on those users' devices already. You'll be heartbroken to hear that those users can also take a screenshot of your disappearing messages and send it to anyone. There are fundamental limitations to what a messaging app can protect you from.

Do you also think it's "strange" that they're introducing that (optional!) feature while also storing all the messages on your device? The cloud backup is strictly more secure than that on-device database. Their blog post on the subject also explicitly says it won't include disappearing messages that disappear within 24 hours.

That backup system presumably uses symmetric encryption, which is not nearly as vulnerable to quantum-accelerated attacks.

That character is actually the en dash (properly used in ranges, e.g. 5–10). The em dash is [shift][option][-]. I would also include triple hyphen in that list; for those of us used to TeX a double hyphen (--) is an en dash and a triple (---) is an em dash.

GP was incorrect that it doesn't increase supply, but correct on pricing. Besides, if I can't afford $3000/mo rent, it doesn't matter to me how many rental units are available at $4000/mo. With massive pricing collusion having been the standard for the last few years (RealPage) and the demand for housing always being extremely inelastic, the supply/demand curve is extremely complex.

> the cat is out of the bag

Someone, if we stretch that metaphor, intentionally opened the bag for profit. We can and should hold them accountable.

> the people involved with that have to deal with that

Yep, and they should hold the people who caused this accountable.

> is maybe worth trying (good luck) but I don't give it a very high chance of success

You may be correct that it has a low chance of success. However, people who think like you are exactly the cause. People who value Musk's net worth more than science, people who fetishise "progress at all costs," regardless of whether or not the progress actually helps people or is what makes sense (municipal internet, folks!). Understanding physics is also critically important progress, but it doesn't make money next quarter so you don't care.

So you'll forgive me if I don't take your advice on the situation.

Launching tens of thousands of satellites is better than municipal internet, which would serve the same purpose, be cheaper, and not interfere with critical scientific research? This solution is better only for the private internet oligopolies. I would say astronomical research is orders of magnitude more important than that.

Ah, the techbro defence. "We already started doing it, so I guess you're just going to have to let us".

> Whether they like it or not,

A swarm of LEO satellites because in the current political climate it's easier to massively pollute orbits and prevent astronomy than do municipal internet is not, in fact, a law of nature; nor is it inevitable.

> But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.

Ah, a challenge! Let's all give up immediately; this could make some rich people a lot of money, after all!

> Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware.

Would you like to pay for launching Vera C. Rubin (8.4m, nearly 20,000kg for just the camera and mirrors) into space? How about the TMT (30m, expected ~2.6 million kg)? Truly spoken like someone who knows nothing about astronomy.

> And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth.

Apparently fundamental physics is not very relevant to us here on Earth! This is one of the most small-minded statements I've ever read.

Did you read the link? That idea is covered there.

Not the person you were replying to, but the Cass review was quite clearly bunk. Its main thrust is essentially: "there are no double blind studies on the effects of affirming care for minors, so we should stop prescribing it immediately". Aside from the fact that the conclusion does not follow from the premise, how exactly could one do a double blind study on puberty blockers? So the report throws out essentially the entire body of research for failing to meet an impossible to meet standard.

Here's more information: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12874-025-02581-7

That's very funny, because I think it's the opposite. There's a ton of interactions, but those (in my view) are to encourage group tactics. Individual characters can definitely be built wrong, but so long as you have at least a +3 in your class's key attribute the difference in power between a vibes-based player and a hyperoptimizer isn't all that large. Feats in Pf2e mainly add versatility instead of power. Lots of first edition players hate it for that reason (first edition seems to be the hyperoptimizer's dream game).

> [If you] prefer to lean into the storytelling and roleplaying, there are significantly better options than Pathfinder.

That's true in the sense that Pathfinder has far less support for the more modern style narrative-first play and most of its rules focus on tactics. I dislike the premise that story and tactics are opposing goals, though; in my view they're two separate goals a game may or may not have. Pathfinder 2e has both, though its story-support is very traditional. If you enjoy in-depth stories with lots of intrigue &c, Pathfinder can totally deliver, and it also features significant amounts of tactical combat. If you're just not into the combat, then there are totally far better games. If you like the modern narrative-first game approach to story, then it's also not the best. But I absolutely like storytelling and roleplaying, and I enjoy Pf2e quite a lot.

But you absolutely are implying that, because you're implying that you're acting without ideological commitment. You're obviously not saying it, but the implication is that I'm ideologically committed (and therefore myopic, foolish, not intellectually curious) and you're either not or able to act as though you're not.

> Same again here: your (or whoever's) definitions of 'disinformation' and 'hate' are functions of your/their ideological view, so this amounts to the complaint that the mods aren't following your/their ideology. It's just a more aggressive way of saying it.

This sounds to me like a slippery slope argument (or perhaps an argument for a strong form of moral relativism): because someone, somewhere might disagree that something is misinformation, it's actually impossible (or maybe just undesirable) to definitively say something is or isn't that. There are certainly gray areas and practical limits (I'd be totally incapable of judging whether any article on chemistry contains disinformation, for example). That's not a reason not to try.

Optimizing the site for "intellectual curiosity", narrowly defined as a _free marketplace of ideas_, is itself a strong ideological commitment. Intellectual curiosity is absolutely good, but restricting misinformation and hate significantly improves the signal to noise ratio of that discussion. I understand the fear that fringe points of view with merit might be drowned out, since historically some things we now broadly regard as true were fringe positions.

But at the same time the quality of discussion here is through the floor when certain topics come up because large volumes of people who know nothing on the subject are simply regurgitating culture war nonsense and abusing the voting system to prevent actual knowledge on the subject from spreading. This site ends up just being another avenue for bad-faith argumentation and outright lies to drown out the truth. This is especially obvious when discussions on some minorities happen: because the people spreading outright lies or repeating culture war talking points are numerous, loud, and _polite_, actual discussion is utterly impossible. The moderation policy serves to provide a shield to bad-faith actors (for example, through "just asking questions"[1]) while silencing those who are actually intellectually curious through inaction.

For a concrete example, some of the most curious and intelligent people I know happen to be transgender. The subject of transgender people is one of the worst topics on this site right now because that group is the scapegoat du jour for the far right. When those people try to argue against commonplace lies and share actual information, they're shut down through the voting system and are outnumbered. They're subject to being called all sorts of horrible, false things... politely and indirectly. As such, they've left. The quality of discussion everywhere goes down, anyone _actually_ curious about the subject only has the loudest but wrong opinions available, and my friends end up feeling isolated and hated. Who benefits from that? Not those of us interested in good discussion. Only the people spreading misinformation for their own political purposes and people who have more emotionally invested in the idea of a free marketplace of ideas than in the truth.

Anyways, I realize your opinion on the matter is unchangeable. I just wish that the site were more honest about its own strong ideological commitments.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions

This is a very late reply, but I think it's quite revealing that you seem to be implying that having an ideological stance is (a) optional, and (b) value-neutral. Why yes, people who are opposed politically don't think the other is right, and hope for their views to be promoted at the cost of the other's. That's as trite an observation as I can think of. It's like pointing out that every political ideology supports some violence but disavows violence from others; it's the political analysis of a child, or someone who thinks they are above ideology because their ideology is the dominant worldview of their culture. Ideology has substance and verifiable consequences that can be judged.

But I think you've read into what I'm saying too much in order to defend yourself and the terrible job you do moderating this website; my position isn't that those people should be banned for their political views. They should be banned if and when their speech has negative real-world consequences. Speech does have consequences, even if it's polite. But you would rather have liars spreading disinformation and bigots spreading hate than be seen as taking a side, so here we are. That's the charitable interpretation, anyways.

You're surprised? In any vaguely political thread HN is pretty much just a more well-spoken 4chan. Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content, which along with its techno-libertarian origins makes it the perfect breeding ground for fascists and pseudo-intellectualism.

It really does seem like there's some old-guard who are utterly determined to now allow this to happen. That's not to say that Rust is inevitable in the kernel, but they're refusing to even allow the attempt. The amount of bad-faith argumentation happening is really discouraging about the state of Linux development.

In addition, the changes needed on the C side for RiL are needed anyways! Lifetimes aren't just a Rust thing, it just makes them forefront. You still need to keep track of them in C, and so they need to be documented since the language sure isn't going to help you. Refusing to document them isn't just harming Rust in Linux, it's harming the long-term viability of Linux in general. When the current maintainers quit, who's going to be able to untangle all that? Bug fixes still need to happen if they're only discovered because someone tried to formalize your interface!

Starting with my undergrad but fully committing to it by grad school, I (and several of my friends who went through similar programs in math/cs) have a strategy that uses this. If, for example, I had a new problem set in a math course, I would bash my head against it in the evening for an hour or two. I'd make an honest attempt but move on from problems quickly if I got stuck. I'd rarely get much done. Then, I'd do my best to get a good night's sleep (at least 7.5 hours quality sleep). In the morning I'd try the problems again first thing after coffee, and frequently found that I could do a significant portion of the problems, or at least make headway. This might be biased by the fact that I'm really much more of a morning person to begin with, but I know several people who use this strategy.

Symmetric algorithms are largely safe-ish; the best known attack is Grover's algorithm, which reduces the effective bits by half (runs in O(sqrt(N)) evaluations). Shor's algorithm is a polynomial-time solution to the discrete logarithm problem, which has traditionally been the basis for asymmetric cryptography.