domain:greyenlightenment.com
yofuckreddit
22hr ago
Did you exclusively go to the cheapest hole-in-the-wall farmer's pubs?
Yes, the vast majority of my route passed exclusively through these and mountaintop restaurants. I saw zero risotto for 8 days, and was unbelievably happy with one of the higher-end meals I had that incorporated pasta. I passed through larger towns like Grindewald and things expanded dramatically for the back quarter of the route.
I did not visit a butcher shop either. My cooking utensils were limited to a camping stove. To put it bluntly: I know this method of travel did not give Switzerland the chance to flex its culinary muscles for me, and that I missed out on a lot.
yofuckreddit
22hr ago
You can't realistically tackle this route any time other than the dead of summer; the official race is in June. The weather was fantastic and analogous to an American spring. I had rain for the first few days, and then afterwards I was able to set up the tent without the rainfly almost every night.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
22hr ago
Well, duh. SSRIs work even if the original hypothesis was proven flawed. Hand washing worked, even before we had the germ theory of disease.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9632745/
If it works, it works, and knowing why it works is always nice.
I recall that you, in your Deiseach avatar, were noted to be the most prolific commenter of all time on both of Scott's blogs (in that recent guest post). In that case, you shouldn't be surprised at all to learn that Scott has written multiple posts about the topic:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/05/chemical-imbalance/
To this day, I don't know why people float it as such a gotcha. Psychiatrists have known better for a long time now, and the critique makes us groan in the same manner that economists are tired of claims that they only study perfectly spherical/rational humans in a vacuum.
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
22hr ago
Yes exactly! “Autonomy” for Kant just means… the ability to autonomously come to the exact same ethical conclusions that Kant did. Which is pretty hilarious.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
22hr ago
https://people.seas.harvard.edu/~salil/am106/fall18/A Mathematician%27s Apology - selections.pdf
It will probably be plain by now to what conclusions I am coming; so I will state them at once dogmatically and then elaborate them a little. It is undeniable that a good deal of elementary mathematics—and I use the word ‘elementary’ in the sense in which professional mathematicians use it, in which it includes, for example, a fair working knowledge of the differential and integral calculus—has considerable practical utility. These parts of mathematics are, on the whole, rather dull; they are just the parts which have the least aesthetic value. The ‘real’ mathematics of the ‘real’ mathematicians, the mathematics of Fermat and Euler and Gauss and Abel and Riemann, is almost wholly ‘useless’ (and this is as true of ‘applied’ as of ‘pure’ mathematics). It is not possible to justify the life of any genuine professional mathematician on the ground of the ‘utility’ of his work
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/116627/useless-math-that-became-useful
Number theory, in particular investigations related to prime numbers, was famously considered useless (e.g., by Hardy) for practical matters. Now, since "everybody" needs some cryptography it is quite useful to know how to generate primes (e.g., for an RSA key) and alike, sometimes involving prior 'useless' number theory results
That thread, in general, seems to have a great many examples. Other quotes from it:
The Radon transform, when introduced by Johann Radon in 1917, was useless, until Cormack and Hounsfield developed Tomography in the 60's (Nobel prize for Medicine 1979).
The most famous example is conic sections. Conic sections were of great interest to Greek mathematicians, and their theory was highly developed in the 2-nd century BC.
However I don't know of any application until Kepler's discovery that celestial bodies move on conic sections. Thus 18 centuries passed between math research and the first application!
Number theory, in particular investigations related to prime numbers, was famously considered useless (e.g., by Hardy) for practical matters. Now, since "everybody" needs some cryptography it is quite useful to know how to generate primes (e.g., for an RSA key) and alike, sometimes involving prior 'useless' number theory results.
I hope this shores up my claim that even branches of maths that their creators (!) or famous contemporary mathematicians called useless have a annoying tendency to end up with practical applications. It's not just in the natural sciences, I've certainly never heard cryptography called a "natural science".
Also, see walruz's claim below , that even what you personally think is useless maths is already paying dividends!
Maths is quite cheap, has enormous positive externalities, and thus deserves investment even if no particular branch can be reliably predicted to be profitable. It just seems to happen nonetheless.
Corvos
22hr ago
Fair points, but verification is usually way cheaper than generation. If one actual human PhD can monitor a dozen AI agents, it is plausible that the value prop makes sense.
Not necessarily! It's an adage among programmers that reviewing somebody else's code is often harder than making your own, because you have to figure it all out and then try to create some ideal version in your head and mesh the two together.
It's actually a big issue with vibe-coding - I end up with a codebase I don't understand and then have to do the work of figuring out the framework for myself anyway.
HereAndGone
22hr ago
Because it's the adult kids end up with "hi, here's your mother's ashes in a parcel, oh you say nobody notified you? not our problem anymore!"
HereAndGone
22hr ago
Most humanities programs are, to put it bluntly, huffing their own farts.
...Psychiatry is hardly perfect in that regard, but we care more about RCTs than debating Freudian vs Lacanian nonsense. Does the intervention improve outcomes in a measurable way? If not, it is of limited use, no matter how elegant the theory behind it.
In other words, "our farts are different"? 😀
There would be the view out there that "okay, so you are trying to distinguish yourself, as a psychiatrist, from those squishy psychotherapists, but dude, the main difference is that you guys are legal drug pushers and now there's some doubt that the drugs even work".
Depression caused by lack of serotonin? Yeah, we don't think that anymore, but we still prescribe drugs to bump up serotonin levels.
Many such instances!
RenOS
something is wrong
22hr ago
Starmer did a lot of work in, and seems to respect a great deal, international law in particular. The thing about international law is that it often has virtually no enforcement mechanism. The kind of lawyer who looks for technicalities to let their client get off scot-free does not go into international law, since their clients are already usually getting off scot-free if you do nothing at all. You need to have some moral belief in the righteousness of international law and need to use the weapons of activism as well to get anything done.
So the technically correct terminus for Starmer is international-law-brained.
5434a
23hr ago
What was the climate and weather like? Was it a factor in your timing? Obviously winter is out.
Yeah I'd want to complete a full circuit. Cannes, Nice, Turin, Lake Como, Milan, Verona, Graz, Vienna, Salzburg, maybe Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Grenoble, Aix. Peak Europe, minus the peaks.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
23hr ago
I hate to do this, but last time we did this, you were unable to even explain what it is that those terms meant. Would you like to take another go at it?
Thank you for reminding me of that rather unpleasant experience. I would actually not like to take another go at it. Anyone wanting elaboration is welcome to read the thread.
JTarrou
23hr ago
I saw no mention of any cutting of the slide in the FBI report, any the modifications were done to spare parts and the process confirmed by putting those parts in a new gun as well.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
23hr ago
Exactly. I expect his comment to be deleted or edited with random words after a period of time.
SnapDragon
23hr ago
Hehe, I stand corrected!
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
23hr ago
pbmonster
23hr ago
I took a total of 14 days to complete the route, with 12 being “par”. Per day, I averaged:
72 kilometers 2050 meters of elevation gain 5,000 calories of energy expenditure
Hardo. Congratulations!
Beef is my favorite protein – the Eastern Swiss essentially don’t eat it because their income is tied to the cows staying alive. [...] The main dish is pork schnitzel. Maybe chicken nuggets if you’re lucky?
Did you exclusively go to the cheapest hole-in-the-wall farmer's pubs? Entrecote (beef) and cordon blue (veal) are absolute staples in traditional Swiss restaurants, and the restaurants like selling those because the margins are much better than the pork schnitzels.
Even the grocery stores are the size of a small American apartment and almost exclusively stock pork and dairy as calorie sources.
Grocery stores will have lots of pork, but again, the higher quality cuts of beef will always be available. Yes, the deli meat section will have not much other sources, and small stores might not have ground beef (only ground pork), but there's always a random cut of beef steak. Did you get the chance to visit a butcher shop?
There’s no side dish at any restaurant that’s not a potato.
Come on, the Swiss love their risotto rice and their Italian pasta.
walruz
1d ago
The twin primes conjecture actually has some applications: https://old.reddit.com/r/BadMtgCombos/comments/1feps3y/deal_infinite_damage_for_4gru_as_long_as_the_twin/
Tree
1d ago
When you tell them to be more empathetic, they don’t take their ‘true opinion’, then ‘make it’ more empathetic and wrap it in warm language, like an alien intelligence(or a human) would. There's fundamentally nothing there. So instead, they go back to the human opinion repository where they get all their opinions from, find a warm empathic one, and give that opinion as their own, no matter how wrong it is.
FWIW I agree with you that certain arguments get much more downvoted than others. The commenters below aren't wrong, but they are applying very different standards to those for the pro-gun arguments. "Are the children wrong?" is not on par with "Listen up, you dumb motherfucker" in terms of rudeness. It can't be helped, people are just like that, including me. Minor imperfections or rhetorical flourishes in an argument disagreeing with you are much clearer than those from people on your side.
Broadly, I think we just have to accept that the bar is different for different posts. I'm reasonably proud (not that I care about dumb internet points hem hem) that my comment in that thread stayed above 0.
Broadly I would say:
-
Popular opinion, well written: 30-40
-
Popular opinion, badly written: 10-20
-
Unpopular opinion, well written: 0
-
Unpopular opinion, badly written: -10
-
Unpopular opinion, gratuitously insulting: -30.
Those are the numbers to try and beat.
ControlsFreak
1d ago
I have a strong conviction that objective morality does not exist. The evidence against it is a vast, silent ocean; the evidence for it is a null set. I consider it as likely as finding a hidden integer between two and three that we've somehow missed.
It's rather ironic that your own choice of analogy willingly jumps into the thicket of the philosophy of mathematics. Perhaps you're just doing so unknowingly or just with a general lack of care, but that would indeed be apropos.
What sort of 'evidence' do you think one would gather to determine the status of mathematical objects? Is it empirical? Do you perform an experiment? Is that the means by which one 'finds' or, say, 'discovers' things like integers?
My own stance is that I am both a moral relativist and a moral chauvinist, and I deny these claims are contradictory.
I hate to do this, but last time we did this, you were unable to even explain what it is that those terms meant. Would you like to take another go at it?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Well my main point is that they're not parrots. There is a tradeoff between accuracy and empathy and they sure do rely too much on quora (looking at you Grok 4, incessantly citing Quora in searches) but AI is a fundamentally different kind of thing.
They put on different faces for different prompts. They're not parroting men or women or shoggoths or gigabased entities like DAN. These are a kind of new entity that can only be properly appreciated in their own category. Too many people see only the surface level of these things, there's more to them then the helpful assistant, the professional coder, the sympathetic naive foidfriend, the HR manager, the sadistic ERPer, the prideful jailbreaker, the wrathful vegan, the raving schizo...
Tree
1d ago
Niiiiice. I’ll put it on my bucket list.
I became acutely aware of the amount of energy I had in my Garmin, cell phone
Is a GPS + phone + I assume relatively well marked bike paths really necessary?
I couldn’t go without music, I’d take a small low consumption mp3 player,. Music can really turn the dull and mundane into epic moments.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
Are you working in tech? Are your coworkers the same age as you or older? It must be fun though, to work with really good, competent people.
FistfullOfCrows
1d ago
I see you are a man of culture as well
Oh i'm not a mod ao I'm commenting on its truth/probability vis a vis the sources you quoted only. Personally i wouldn't consider you've done enough to show female answers would be obviously more incorrect.
You perhaps need to hedge a little more. Obviously is a very certain and consensus building word so your evidence should be equally convincing, i think. Probably or likely would give you more leeway.
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