382 karma · joined June 6, 2023
Slavery is an old thing[0]. Even assuming the death rates are correct, one can't honestly conclude that what happened in the West in the past 500 years is similar to what happened, say, in Antiquity in the West[1] - and that's what most relevant to Aristotle - or amongst ancient Jews[2].
I know that there are too many unknowns for me to even have a clear thesis to begin with.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#History
Accurately answering your question requires writing a thesis: one needs extensive access to accurate data spanning thousands of years, a solid grasp of history, psychology, ancient customs, etc. Those situations are full of subtle nuances; what historians currently understand might not even be that accurate.
OTOH, casting reasonable doubts by assuming a fair amount of people weren't too stupid is less bold of a position than "slave owners were living devil", but at least it's honest.
(Which doesn't imply that "slave owners were living devil" isn't true, merely that it's dishonest to say that it's true, because it's too difficult to know for sure).
Of course, if we define "slavery" as "harsh, senseless, cruel, violent, selfish abuse of other humans", then (I hope in the vast majority of cases), no, contemporary employment and slavery are different in kind.
But I do think there are reasons to doubt this second definition to have been systematically accurate.
For example, it makes no sense, from a cost-effectiveness point of view, for a slave owner to mistreat his slaves that much: it's in his best interest to make sure they live decently. Or, in a society where slavery is culturally acceptable, hence widespread, many slave owners must not have been this inhumane.
I'm not saying it never occurred, merely that there are good reasons to think that it wasn't as systematic as we tend to believe.
Note that I'm assuming an objective/neutral definition of "slavery", and not the usual "slavery=bad thing".
Now, we could argue that it's a matter of education, circumstances, etc. But surely you must have met people who would obstinately refuse to listen to reason, entertaining their own misery. At least IME, it's sadly a common trait.
The simplicity of his elocution, his use of systematic pauses when communicating — that's a common advice given to contemporary speakers — the relevancy of the cycle of political systems, that ancient Greeks were first taught sports and music to acquire psychological balance, a necessary prerequisite to efficient further studies, etc.
Having knowledge of Plato & other old fellows, almost feels like cheating at life: it equips ones mind with knowledge and skills that has been deemed worthy by enough humans to help it endure for millennia.
The people who don't know about them can't fathom how much they miss.
You should be able to get this to work on Unix with plan9port.
$ du -a | grep blbl> Scientism is the belief that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
While it may be true locally in time, science may transcend itself over time. Furthermore, some aspects of the scientific development are poorly studied/understood/taken into account in how we do science, such as all those discoveries stemming from dreams & cie[0]. Einstein in particular was well-known to have had many valuable insights while being in a half-asleep state.
That's to say, objectively, the evolution of science is shaped by chaotic events, which AFAIK isn't embraced by contemporary institutionalized science. Perhaps because it's too close to the content of religions of old.
[0]: someone on HN copy-pasted this a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37731752
Like, how most people actually believe in science: they're incapable of understanding, nor reproducing most results (e.g. flat earthers, reproducibility issues in research).
A half-baked religion, which doesn't even encourage morality, what could go wrong…
It's only half a joke: having to regularly dip the pen in ink, be mindful of how much ink you have, having to swiftly wipe it once in a while to avoid drying ink (& flow issues), forces to slow down & take "micro-breaks".
This benefits the handwriting, but also the quality of the study. And is surprisingly relaxing.
(so called "crow-quill" nibs are relatively cheap, available, carry a fair amount of ink)
Theories need to be considered for what they are, theories, and not dogmatically, for science to move forward. Evolution is a theory, and in its current form, already distant from Darwin's.
It's particularly amusing to have this discussion in the context of evolution, given that we have observed theories to systematically (AFAIK) evolve.
Why can't we extrapolate about the evolution of the theory of evolution then?
Again, as I've said, it's a reasonable theory. Using the word "theory" isn't about casting doubt, it's purely about intellectual honesty, at least as far as I'm concerned.
The way it's taught is often in an absolute way. The way science is taught in general is in an absolute way. That's because humans struggle immensely with nuance.
Typical traditional Eastern views transcend this creationism/evolution duality for example; one more door to explore.
Thinking about it, this recalls me of a Leonardo quote (pertaining visual memory then):
> « I myself have proved it to be of no small use, when in bed in the dark, to recall in fancy the external details of forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by subtle speculation; and this is certainly an admirable exercise, and useful for impressing things on the memory. »
I remember reading about similar observations regarding visual memory, where students trained to memorize visual information would outperform their peers (observations perhaps in the 1800s/early 1900s, IIRC a woman was in charge of this).
If we don't, then we're sowing the seeds for discord for when our theories will need to be updated. And it's reasonable to think that they will, as, so far, most (all?) scientific theories has evolved.
IIRC, Darwin's views on evolution require patching e.g. to take into consideration chaotic incidents affecting mortality/genes propagation (e.g. asteroids, epidemics).
Maybe if that theory keeps accumulating patches, it'll end up very different from where it started!
Strictly speaking, this is a theory, however reasonable.
We know from history that life can be surprising, hence, from a truth point of view, it's better to be careful, avoid rushing to conclusions, especially if this implies closing all other doors.
That's to say, the task may feel insurmontable at first, but if you give time to your body to adjust, it should become easier.
If it has, then it's most likely available on https://cat-v.org/. Even if it hasn't, cat-v.org is a great starting point.
Besides, close to your line of thought, and assuming you didn't knew about this already, Pike & al previously worked on Limbo[0], a "predecessor" of Go, used to wrote Inferno[1], a Plan9-like OS, which could be hosted on arbitrary OSes via a bespoke virtual machine called "Dis".
So there were indeed a few previous "drafts" for Go. I'd doubt that Go has been designed "for" Plan9 though.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(programming_language)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)
As far as Europe is concerned, there seems to have been various political move and lobbying to affect energy independence (e.g. France): economy is transformed energy, so by nuking (…) energy independence, you're suffocating countries. The military role of nuclear is furthermore crucial; civil & nuclear must be correlated.
That's to say, giving up nuclear is not something a sane, well-driven country should do lightly, regardless of ideologies.
It's a tricky topic; what I regularly hear from economists is that wind & solar are still far from being able to compete with nuclear. And because of the previous two points, people can't but frown upon "green" arguments, even if the underlying intentions are honest and well-intended.
(China may not have misguided greenies, but it has a strong incentive to sell whatever it's offering).
What do you mean exactly? Say, the notion of karma in Eastern religions is a way to explain at least some amount of what is commonly dubbed "luck".
But from the perspective of someone ignorant of karmic ties, can't it only be considered luck/random? Furthermore, isn't more genuine luck/randomness (free-will?) causing such initial ties?
To take the time to study the root causes of obesity more closely, and treat the genuine causes, instead of slapping medicine on top of it, for an undetermined period of time to millions of people. It's insane.
Obesity at that scale is a recent issue[0], I'm sure we're clever enough to figure it out.
Think about it: as far as we know, the human body has evolved slowly over many thousands of years; how can drafty-patching it at scale over a few decades works? When something as inconspicuous as switching from stale bread to softer bread has had a drastic impact on dental issues[1]?
It's like a junior dev undertaking a major rewrite on his first day of work.
I'm reluctant to argue much further, I doubt it'll change much for either of us.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44656/
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wWg9Jx-Byw (French, English papers in the description if you want to dig)
I remember reading — but can't find a source at the moment — that TeX originally didn't had counters; people came to rely on Church numerals[1] instead, before Knuth finally implemented them.
EDIT: found out where I've read about it: [2]
[0]: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/A_six-part_series%3A_Ho...
The immediacy of the danger makes things incomparable.
> "Too good to be true" is also just an aphorism, not a law of nature.
It's not "too good to be true". It's "no free lunch" (unfortunate pun), or "conservation of energy": the more one wins without apparent loss, the more one should be suspicious.
There are furthermore great reasons to be highly skeptical of pharmaceutical compagnies: consider the ongoing opioid crisis in the US, in great part caused by the sale of opioid-based medication (OxyContin) whose addictiveness was purposefully downplayed. Not to say that things will be as scandalous, merely that pharmaceutical compagnies cannot be trusted.
> We're not talking about acne or hair loss here,
Yes, and the people suffering from eating disorders are often psychologically weakened as a result (and/or cause), thus vulnerable to further abuse. Of course such people want to hear about a miracle way to solve this pesky, long-standing issue, of course.
And that's exactly what they're being sold; it's disheartening.
(That's why the parent think they could be ads, unless he's deeply cross-referencing South Park…).
The loudness of that lie ITT might also drag people down an unhealthy path: it's irresponsible not to speak up about it.
A less emotionally grounded, more balanced and nuanced description would be more accurate, honest. But it'd sell way less.
> Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)
> Rule 4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.
It's a bit ironic then for this post to rely on such a convoluted interpretation instead of the simple, dumb one.
Not all mathematical functions can be expressed/represented by λ-terms; a famous example would be the halting problem[2]. Generally, keep in mind that the λ-calculus — as Turing machines — can only express computable functions[3].
You could also try to think about how to perform usual mathematical function operations on λ-terms: limits, differentiation, integration, etc.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_(mathematics)
Or, as a base to build a distribution: you can automatize some of the process, slap a pkgsrc on top, etc.
For budding programmers, it's a great exercise: discover software, appreciate dependencies, understand components of a Linux distribution, learn how to build things from source, configure a kernel, etc.