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We are all historians. We are all crafters of space. We are all psychologists. We are all nutritionist. We are all currency traders. Doing any or all of these 100% according to the defaults around us is still a decision, often a very bad one.
I live in a red state (one with no blue counties, in fact), so I have a vested interest in team red doing okay, but I don't know how much an alpha male with guns is supposed to be worth against drones and tanks, but, sure, let's make a fetish out of small arms.
DeepMind-style AI will have a much easier time mastering clickbait headlines and tweets than long-form essays, to any level of human intelligence. Perhaps it already has, and we're just not going to be told.
(Related). There won't ever be a need for AI to master the long-form essay. The blood of the immature can always be stirred short-form (ergo keep it all short form AND keep them all immature!) and the retirement-center bots will be able to make do with small-talk.
Democracy as an institution is in really bad shape. I am one of the few people who can acknowledge this without first taking glee in it, whereas those who can't are in denial. Many of those who think they believe in Democracy really only believe in protecting their own feelings, and so cannot acknowledge the situation -- which only further weakens Democracy.
Having a mind blown and a mind stretched are very similar things. A lot of it has to do with the amount of flexibility already present in the mind before going under the load.
People care so little about the truth, that any time anyone but those of the most demonstrably heroic bents says they are pursuing it, you should immediately start thinking what their real motivation is.
Great Hesse quote: "I want to point out constantly and with infectious enthusiasm how blissfully varied the world is, and with equal constancy remind people that this variety is based on an underlying unity."
Link and Research
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Remember: not politics, but meta-politics. Fascinating poll on self-censorship in U.S. and other issues meta-political.
50% of strong liberals support firing Trump donors, 36% of strong conservatives support firing Biden donors; 32% are worried about missing out on job opportunities because of their political opinions.This discussion on atomic chess -- which I thought would have been solved but isn't -- also has this link showing anti-chess (aka losing chess) is solved for an opening (e3). It would not have been intuitive to me that anti-chess was solved, but makes sense in light of the number of forced moves.
My current weird guy mathy obsession is multiples of threes that aren't multiples of nines. So, when I set the timer on the microwave, I make sure to make it one of those numbers -- 21, 42, 33, the like. 42 being a particular favorite. Anyway, this video shows why multiples of nine are still quite worthy.
Now that I know there is an ethnic group called the Karens, I can't unsee that when I see a Karen meme.
This one is more of a note to self -- you do realize this blog is more my notebook than anything else, yes? -- When Hesse was learning reading to study style, his favorite author was Vladimir Korolenko. Here is what is available on Project Gutenberg.
Here is a piece that really takes to task the current belief that destruction - carbon = sustainability.
I found some more good doomer writing. This time buried in a comment section. I'm glad other people are doing it so I don't have to. Time to cut back on the political internet again.
Better doom than me: an empire of one.
