an obscure but very powerful matrix-centered programming language usually considered to be "write only", as in impossible to read what someone else wrote.
Find the "write only" comments you commonly see online to be untrue. I have been writing a voxel game in majority APL code for the past 6 months. I have been able to read my own code and refactor stuff I've written months ago fine while also integrating code from other APL codebases and suggestions from other people. It just has a higher learning curve to understand.
Yes, perl is considered write-only because it is a mess of features that allow unhygienic programming habits to flourish - it is full of hard-to-trace magical behavior. Completely different than APL, which has had perl's write-only label applied to it by programmers not used to reading terse mathematical notation.
40 years ago (at school) I generally wrote in ink - edged and straight nibs, blue and black ink because I liked it. I learned several formal styles as well as my idiosyncratic efforts. I did have biros and fibre tips etc available. I had loads of choice. My parent's generation was probably the last of the ink and nib first users.
Unless you are a scientist directly engaging with the literature, you and your relative are both doing the same thing: trusting the opinion of peers and high-status people in your political clan about what is happening in the world. It just happens that people in your clan are telling the truth while the other one is lying.
Neither side’s behavior can be considered “more intelligent” when you consider the vast majority of people on both sides are “opinion-takers” simply conforming to received social norms about what to believe about the world. The “opinion-makers” on both sides are undoubtedly intelligent, although you might prefer to call one side “cunning” instead.
I think choosing reliable authority requires a little intelligence. I don’t know how to build a robust house, but I can understand that should be on the solid base (scientific method) upon stable field, instead of mysterious objects from thousand years ago.
I really love the way you communicated this and wish HN posters could more routinely invite curious conversations like this. Which isn't to say I'm perfect at it either
you don't have to be a scientist to directly engage with the literature. from mathematical proofs to directly observed phenomena to statistical certainties - it's all out there for you to engage with and feel secure in your findings just by having an internet connection. there's a qualitative difference in that evidence from the "sides" and therefore there is a qualitative and practical difference in the "more intelligent" side. "truth" is not incidental to the situation, it's the entire point of making claims at all. So a side that is making claims that turn out to not be true - whether you personally verify that or not - is a worse side, intellectually, than another.
If the side you follow says the science community is political and biased, then "just look at the literature" isn't going to help. It's like telling an atheist they'd believe in Jesus if they'd just read the bible.
We are lied to constantly by people who influence our lives. You can't even go to the grocery store without being lied to - being told breakfast cereals are healthy, that low fat options will make you less fat, shrinkflation, misleading unit pricing. It's no wonder people are so distrusting
Even if you're a democrat you still have to admit that democrats lie, a ton, and it's super obvious. Maybe if our leadership in general, on both sides, was capable of being decent humans then we'd be able to build trust and stop doing dumb shit as a civilization
Unfortunately at some level, as usual, it comes down to game theory
If you tell the nuanced truth and lose, and your opponent tells simplified untruths and wins, where does that leave you?
As I understand it (obviously a gross simplification), Jimmy Carter attempted to treat Americans like adults, but Americans did not want to inconvenience themselves by wearing sweaters
please engage in good faith. if you think mathematical proofs will be an issue when I tell someone to "look at the literature", you either don't know what a mathematical proof is, or are too far abstracted from reality to influence any practical action. yes, we're being lied to. no, they don't fuck up the science in order to lie to you. they just expect you not to read the science. because, truthfully, it's rare that the people who are lying to you would even know how to fuck up the science in their favor. so they bet on your ignorance, based on their ignorance, and they usually win the bet. but not if you just go look it up and engage with it. it's not about reading a single paper; it's about always reading every paper (on topics you have decided you are going to have an opinion about) with a keen and unshakeable focus on practical effect. anything else is an academic boondoggle.
That’s a pretty weak argument. What percentage of people actually have the qualifications to understand and verify a research paper? And how much can you even trust the raw data? At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of faith—whether you choose to believe the guy in the church or the guy at the university.
You don't need any advanced science to understand climate change. The basic chemistry and physics of it are readily accessible at a high school level.
Current research papers are far more advanced, but they're about the details of climate change. The basic facts of it were established two centuries ago.
We know that we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere. We know that CO2 absorbs heat. That's not a matter of believing an expert. At this point, anybody still denying it is deliberately choosing what somebody else tells them.
The economic effects of that are harder to model, but denialism is still stuck on whether the effect is real. There is no way to include them in any coherent discussion of what to do about it.
1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
If a user can do a thing, then an app can ask the user to delegate those permissions to it. And since 99% of users don’t read permission dialogs, the two ideas are completely equivalent. The only way to prevent an app from doing a thing is to make it impossible.
Even if users do read permission dialogues, how many Adobe users out there actually understand what modifying the hosts file means? There can be no informed consent if the person who's meant to consent doesn't have the tools to understand the information.
I think there’s room for nuance but I don’t see how this could possibly be construed to be in the public interest.
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