putzdown

But surely "not really constructive" and "muddy the water" implies a judgment—a pre-judgment—that the speech itself ought to be allowed to face. If he speaks and his ideas are "not really constructive" and "muddy the water", then the listeners can decide what to do with the ideas, both within their own minds and in conversation afterward. If he's not allowed to speak, then the people preventing the speech are enforcing their own opinions by violence. This behavior actually implies that his ideas are of more merit, because if the ideas were not really constructive or entirely lacked value, then the listeners could dismiss them thoughtfully.

Or could it be that modern students don't have the ability to think carefully about or make good judgments about speech?

You must surely realize that your statement is nonsense. If it were true then there would be no rights. No right or law is ever protected with perfect consistency. The right to life, the right to make personal choices, the right to determine one's own identity—whatever right you may believe in, it is never protected consistently. All rights are "inconsistently protected." Therefore, by your statement, there are no rights.

Are you saying you disbelieve in rights altogether?

I think you're saying that because a century ago some people oppressed other people (in America?), therefore free speech was never protected.

If that's what you're saying, I don't see that the conclusion follows from the premise. It is possible for a society to protect free speech in general but to fail to protect it in specific instances. That's a deplorable inconsistency for a society to have, but it doesn't make free speech a "myth". It makes it an inconsistently protected right.

And, if that's what you're saying about 100 years ago, then what is your point about the present? If the idea of free speech is a good thing, then let's make it not "a myth" by supporting it. If the idea of free speech is a bad thing, then let's crush it and silence everyone we disagree with. But what are you saying? How is it being "a myth" relevant?

Quote: The letter notes that, while the officials cannot be “certain of any connection,” the drastic increase in complaints occurred “around the same time” as layoffs at Meta affecting roughly 11,000 employees in November 2022, around 13 percent of its staff at the time.

Interesting.

From the article: “24 million babies will someday be President.” This seems an improbable claim. Is he saying something sensible by virtue of the surrounding analysis that I’m just not following?

This would be more convincing if the table looked good on mobile. On iOS, anyway, it is too wide for the page and wants horizontal scrolling to read the full title and table.

Intriguing little bit of poetry here. But this I don’t quite understand: “It shows us a time when entering a virtual world required a gizmo. That’s the past, not the future.” In what sense is entering a virtual world without a “gizmo” a present or future reality? Are they talking about imagination, with “virtual” used in an unusual (from a tech perspective) way?

Question: what’s the financial endgame for these ventures? Is there some financial benefit (other than government spending) for going to the moon?

Yes. There’s also a temporal axis to this: maybe I’m not special in general, but this particular moment, this situation is special.

Please help me understand this. Why is deregulation causing suppliers to be unable to charge enough to cover their costs? I should think that would be the opposite. “ Ed Hirs, an energy fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, blamed the failures on the state’s deregulated power system, which doesn’t provide power generators with the returns needed to invest in maintaining and improving power plants... ‘For more than a decade, generators have not been able to charge what it costs them to produce electricity.’” How could that be correct?

A linked list approach would also be worth considering. Give each item a permanent, unique id. Make each item remember the id of the next and/or previous item in the list. Reordering touches just two or three items, and there is no problem with running out of space or needing to re-index anything, ever. Of course, basic ordered query is murder from an efficiency standpoint, and the approach might be firmly rejected on that basis. But if we’re looking at approaches with a variety of tradeoffs, the linked list is worth mentioning.

In a Facebook comment on this story, Scott Jones, a friend of Richard Garriott who was involved in delivering the ashes, gave further details. Quote:

That was a pretty amazing set of events. Really, it was a favor for a friend of mine named Dan who is a writer. He contacted me out of the blue one day, literally days before RIchard was to enter lockdown prior to his space mission, because a fellow writer's agent (who knew Dan knew someone who knew Richard) was also the agent for Wil Wheaton (who is a friend to the Doohan family), and mentioned to him that this could be a means to finally succeed in getting James Doohan's ashes into space.

Dan asked if I would first contact Richard to see if it was even possible, and if so, for me to then contact Wil Wheaton so he could arrange with the family to get some of the ashes for RIchard to carry. By the time all that got accomplished, Wil indicated that he had spoken with his friend Eric Doohan (who had been supplying some of his share of the ashes to all the various earlier attempts to get them that had failed), and indicated that Eric had been through so much of an emotional rollercoaster each time they had tried and failed previously that he didn't want to be a part of trying it anymore.

Suddenly it felt like the whole thing wouldn't happen, but after a bit more discussion Wil suggested that even though he didn't feel it would be honorable for him to push Eric any further or try to pursue it himself, if I felt strongly enough about it I could try to contact one of James Doohan's other children (who also had their share of their father's ashes) to see if any of them would still be willing to contribute to such an attempt. With time growing critically short I let Richard know what was going on and, at his behest, began designing the simplest package/memorial card I could create and get printed, while simultaneously hoping my attempts at contacting his other children would bear fruit.

Enter Chris Doohan. Chris was the only son of James Doohan who was able to accept my Friend Request on Facebook, which allowed me to contact him in greater detail about the possibility of getting his dad's ashes finally into space. He was luckily still willing to face the emotional risk of trusting others to help with this process, and as a result of Chris' willingness, Richard's quick thinking, and our friend (and also Richard's personal assistant at the time) Michelle's savvy at getting things done, we were able to arrange to get those ashes to Richard JUST in time (before he entered into quarantine before the mission) and get them concealed and sandwiched between the memorial cards I made so that they could finally find their way into space... Richard's idea to take several of them up (one to let burn up in the atmosphere, one to hide aboard the ISS, and one to bring back to the family), was brilliant as far as I'm concerned, and finally seeing this video of Richard in space talking about it is totally heartwarming for me...

There was a lot of personal feelings and emotional context I left out of the story above. As you can imagine it was incredibly stressful feeling so strongly about wanting to get this done, while also desperately trying to establish the right kind of communication in time to make it all happen. All this while dealing with a postal service being ravaged by a very active hurricane at the time that was threatening to make the attempts at delivering the ashes to Michelle fall apart. It was SO rewarding for everyone involved when it finally all came together, and Richard went and returned from space successfully and safely, secret mission accomplished... It was all a very thrilling ride, and so emotionally fulfilling to finally know that James Doohan's wishes had been fulfilled, and that his family could know that to be true, though we all had to be quiet about it for the last 15 years.... ^_^

Super cool. The problem, of course, is that this technique presumes that the eye remains fixed in the center of the screen. It doesn’t. But combine this with an eye tracking system that can adjust the screen space fovea center in real time, and you’re laughing.

Books work fine, but reading comprehension is a real skill and very few master it by adulthood, or even by the end of a higher degree. I’ll suggest a simple solution to try. After you read a chapter (or whatever suitable section), spend 10 minutes re-explaining it to yourself. Begin by merely regurgitating: argue what the author argued, but in your own words. If you find gaps or contradictions, go back to the source and correct them. (With time your need to do so will diminish: your brain will learn to pick up more the first time.) After regurgitating, a larger inner discussion is both helpful and fun: what did you agree with? Disagree with? What questions are you left with?

This brief rehearsal and analysis of the contents will greatly aid comprehension and recall, and the value of the time spent.

You could try it on this very post.

This technique works also with video and audio content, conversations, or any other form of information exchange. Early rehearsal and analysis increases comprehension.

And that’s significant because if you think books don’t create lasting comprehension, try measuring the effectiveness of video, audio, lectures, etc. I’m not aware of a medium that outperforms text, properly read.

It’s possible Epic are baiting the app stores, betting that the current anti-trust questions around Apple and Google support a change. Either Apple and Google capitulate to this move by Epic, and Epic wins. Or Google and/or Apple come after Epic, creating a public scene that emphasizes their monopoly-like behavior, and failed lawsuits or government action mean a win for Epic. The third option—the big guys come after Epic, Epic enjoys no support and simply lose—is relatively unlikely right now. So perhaps Epic is forcing the issue, seeing an opportunity for their own gain in the midst of societal gain.

“The chess community is probably right in criticising the recent study, as it suffers from several methodological shortcomings that probably invalidate the results.” A remarkably self-undermining statement, and at odds with the tone of finality in the rest of the article.

This is as well-argued a case for illusionism as I can imagine. And it shows how hopeless the case is. The argument is, in a nutshell, “Consciousness seems to imply a soul, but there’s really nothing but brain; therefore consciousness is nothing but brain.” It attempts to resolve the hard problem by ignoring the elements that make it hard. Something inside each of us is experiencing our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories. Nothing suggests that matter produces experience. Therefore the ability to experience truly is mysterious. If some part of consciousness is illusion, who or what is being duped by the illusion?

The article argues that because each little computer is a little “sentient”, and because machine learning builds algorithms that are intractable to the people who nurture them, and because in a house there will be lots of these sentient and intractable “learning” machines, that therefore the house (and car and office...) is full of consciousness, much like primitive ancients would have imagined a forest to be. This is simply terrible logic. It certainly resembles the logic of those primitive ancients. It does not follow that just because you don’t understand something or find it awe-inspiring, that it is therefore conscious, or a spirit, or a god. This is a dangerous error, because to worship, or merely believe in, the consciousness of one’s house is to cling to a fantasy and to place personality where there is no personality. Why don’t you continue to attribute consciousness to the human beings around you who actually have it, rather than wasting regard on soulless man-made calculators? Is humanity doomed to always revert to creating their own gods and worshipping them? What is it in us that longs to do that?

I must have missed a memo. Why are men being allowed to compete in women’s sports just because they claim to be women? Why would anyone think this was a good idea?

I gave up, and boy am I glad I did.

This argument always leaves me scratching my head. I can’t see a difference between arguments for our living in a simulator and arguments for George Berkeley’s Idealism. It really seems as if the simulator theory is an atheistic rediscovery of theism, with the word “God” scratched out and the word “aliens” or “future us” written in. And if so, there’s a very long history of philosophy and theology—Descartes’s Meditations come to mind—that can help inform our questioning and experimentation, not to mention ease (or redirect) our fears.

This site undermines its own intent of providing a friendly and accessible introduction to calculus through poor and erroneous grammar. An editor could make it very useful. Some examples:

“OK, but how does calculus models change?” error: subject-verb number agreement. Try “model”.

“The fundamental idea of calculus is to study change by studying ‘instantaneous’ change, by which we mean changes over tiny intervals of time.”

So, a change is a changes? Stay with the singular: “by which we mean a change over a tiny interval of time.”

“It turns out that such [tiny] changes tend to be lots simpler than changes over finite intervals of time.”

Now we have a logical problem. Isn’t the set of tiny intervals of time a subset of finite intervals of time? In ordinary usage, “tiny” is finite, surely; a tiny thing is not infinite. So how can a tiny-time change be simpler than a finite-time change, when it is itself a finite-time change?

Errors of this sort lost my faith early on. I hope they’re corrected, because the promise of the article is appealing.

Yes. The article purports to discuss equine language. The real title should be, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” with the tag line, “How a total disdain for logic brings physical danger and emotional agony to a family.”

Spoiler alert: After all the consultations and deep insights they just sell the horse. Pure failure.

This article is a great example of fun and engaging presentation, but alas spoiled by poor writing. The top 3/4 of the article, which explains the question and makes you care about it, is clear and exciting. It's the sort of page you want to show your friends and your kids. But the ending—the explanation of the solution—falls flat. I challenge anyone to reach the end of this article with a clear understanding of what the scientists mentioned in the article actually concluded.

The problem begins with the paragraph, "What’s the link between flying and egg shape? Birds have a streamlined body plan, and—especially in stronger fliers—their organs are squashed and minimized." The paragraphs that follow this one do a poor job of explaining the model. What the author is trying to say, I think, is that the females of strong fliers, because they have narrow bodies, have narrow oviducts and therefore narrow (and pointy) eggs. That hardly seems an earth (or egg) shattering conclusion. But then we have this: "But it also turns out that egg shape is a balance between two pressures..." a sentence I can't find the significance of. And this fun fact: "If you carefully remove the shell from the membrane, an egg will still retain its shape." Does "egg" there refer to the shell, the membrane, or something else? Clearer, I think, would have been: "If you carefully remove the shell from the membrane, the remaining egg even without the shell will still retain its shape." By the end, I'm left with a cracked and mushy solution to a beautiful and pristine problem.

Maybe trite, but the Bible. For a mind-blowing experience, read Matthew chapters 5–7, and have in mind that the topic is: “what it means for a person to be righteous, or good.” The analysis of the role of moral rules, the place of worry and anxiety in driving us to short-sighted compromise, the tension between “secret” good-doing versus good-doing for public recognition, are all potent, helpful, and life-changing.

This is what monopolization looks and feels like. Google Play is less of a monopoly within its ecosystem than Apple’s App Store is, but in both cases you have a monopoly that brooks no competition and is consequently unaccountable and, well, evil. The only way to fix this is to force Google and Apple to allow alternative markets/stores on their platforms.

Compelling though the cartoon is, I question the premise that people read the news because we evolved to do so as an extension of scuttlebutt about attacks, predators, and disease. Surely where there is communication, there are both intelligent minds and "news" (i.e. some kind of prioritization of information to be communicated). I don't know: this seems an overuse of evolutionary "just so" storytelling that far oversimplifies—and just isn't useful to explain—the nature of intelligence and information. Why not a cartoon explaining how people are intelligent and gain a sense of stimulation and control from information about the world around them, and yet this can result in a lot of negative news etc...? What does running from bears have to do with it?

"Broken" is the wrong word. The argument is actually, "it's slow." Broken would imply logically flawed, impossible to make work consistently, something along those lines. The title to "Select(2) is fundamentally slow" would be more accurate (but less interesting).

Yes, though there is an important difference between the multiverse approach and the multi-star/multi-year approach. When we imagine the state of affairs in which many universes are created with random parameters, we tend to give those many universes great variety, and we require each one of them (in our imaginations) to be "fruitful" at least in producing a universe. But it's not clear that the mere presence of lots of years (as many as you like) or stars (as many as you like) are fruitful in the same way. To put it back in terms of Joe the die roller, it's as if Joe wakes up most mornings and just lies in bed all day, not rolling the die. Occasionally—one day in a billion—he rolls the die, and it's a trillion-sided die, say. But I suppose the point is the same: the Anthropic principle says that however unlikely conscious minds are, if they do appear (at whatever odds), then... well I'm not sure where to go from there. Then these minds will ask questions about their existence? But that doesn't seem a very remarkable insight.

Well, but there is something fundamentally and essentially special about conscious minds. A universe that is complete unperceived is, first of all, harder to even imagine than it first appears and, second, would be neither boring nor interesting, since both of those words, and all other assessments, only have meaning within the context of conscious perception. So I would affirm the presumption that "life", in the sense of the existence of conscious minds, is non-boring and universes devoid of life are either boring, or inconceivable.