I recently bought a used bike for an abnormally low price. Why? Because the previous owner did not understand that one of the pedals unscrews in the opposite direction to the other (look it up). The previous owner was, however, strong enough to strip the threads of one crank arm trying to remove the pedal. In the end, I had to replace the crankset. Let this be a tale of caution to those who want to remove pedals.
I too wonder if the writing-is-thinking thesis holds. Does Han Kang (Nobel Prize in Literature, 2024) think through writing? Have I read something thrilling, funny, mysterious, spiritual, or revealing of human nature written by PG? No. He may well be correct about a particular subset of writing, but I do not take his views as authoritative about writing in general (nor am I convinced that hackers are just like painters).
Couple years ago there was some news item about "peak gold", implying reasonable probability that the rate of new gold being mined will decline annually in future. On the other hand, if the price increases continue and space technology cost falls, mining from asteroids will become feasible. If that happens, humanity can extract lots of Au from extraterrestrial locations, refine into bullion and coins, then to be buried in vaults back on Earth.
So back in the 1970s I had a job working on an IBM mainframe computer. Not multicore, no cache or instruction pipeline that I was aware of. A coworker had the idea of writing a timer interrupt to see what kind of instruction was executing at the instance of the interrupt; eventually it accumulated tens of thousand of samples. What kind of instruction was most frequent, was it addition, multiplication, bit-logic, or what? If I remember correctly, at least 90% of the samples were moving data from one place to another (memory-to-memory, register to memory, memory to register, register to register). Computers don't "calculate" most of the time the way I had previously thought. They mostly just rearrange bits, copying this to that.
Long ago (too long for a search to dig it up) there was an article in the Wall Street Journal comparing litigation for wrongful death in different circumstances. If I remember correctly, two determinants were location (major urban center vs rural) and profession/status of the victim. The variance was considerable. An aggregate statistical value for something like a QALY is a pretty rough measure.
My personal bias: the golden age of graphic novels was in the late 1900s, in Europe, with sublime artistry and some excellent production. At one time "bande dessinée" was considered one of the Beaux Arts in France. Then Manga came and the cheaper, high-volume flood of material, with a similar Anime presence, killed off the previous generation.
Now that we have generative AI, isn't it time to reconsider things?
I mainly use Python to work with typical shell functions and external programs. I contend that Python and other similar languages are superior to PowerShell.
Not being a user of Spotify nor other services, I can only say that I continue to find new music in each decade. And I like much of newer music better than the old classics (which is saying something because I started listening in the 1960s). Thus what Parris says doesn't speak to me.
I first became aware of a type of "slow thinking" through the book "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less", by Guy Claxton, published 1999. Does anyone have a comparison of the types of slow thinking?
Some questions along these lines are not so easy. For example, iterated versions that take bankruptcy into account (game over) by using geometric mean instead of arithmetic mean; but that might not always be the optimal strategy [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.68.10.2493].
I once hosted a European researcher in my home (which is in flyover country America). He saw the utility poles and wiring stretching to houses in the neighborhood and remarked that his father had said a hallmark of undeveloped countries is that power lines are above ground. This was 20 years ago. Now, I do see that new neighborhoods have buried power and fiber. But that quality of fiber wasn't affordable decades ago. In retrospect, it might have been wise to delay putting infrastructure underground in urban settings because of high cost.
Who knows what advances in material science, computing, energy and transport will bring in coming generations? Not to mention climate changes. Therefore it can be presumptuous to think that sticking to a long term plan is the best course. To the extent that a long term plan depends on the supporting environment of the plan staying the same, a plan might be judged foolish in retrospect.
The main objection I have to this essay is the running metaphor of religion. Cult maybe, but is it a religion? You need to study the history of religions and their hallmarks to establish the metaphor.
Some thoughts from a mineral collector. There is considerable variety in naturally occurring diamonds. Colors, such as yellow, green, brown, black and famously a few blue and pink ones. Plus many crystal forms (Cubic, Octahedral, Dodecahedral, Tetrahedral, Trapezohedral, Tetrahexahedral,Trisoctahedral, Hexoctahedral, and some triangular Macle forms). An appeal of natural diamonds to some mineral collectors is the interest their unique crystal forms. These are expensive and tiny: a niche that I don't have in my collection. However, I did purchase a large cluster of what I think consists Moissanite crystals, not transparent; it looks like some failed industrial experiment.
Allow me to explain why at least one of them is so annoying. The roundabout is atop a hill; there is little visibility of what traffic is approaching from other directions because the hill is steep. Motorists don't bother signaling how far around they will go. I, riding a bicycle on a sidewalk, wish to go straight across the road. However I can't always see that someone is entering the circle. And even if I do see someone is entering, I don't know when they will exit. Compare this to an ordinary stop-signed intersection, where it is clear when vehicles are not turning and I can directly cross.