domain:gurwinder.substack.com
TwiceHuman
31m ago
I'm probably in the tail-end of the openness-trait, but I value authenticity and aesthetics, and these categories are so loose/vague that I tolerate a lot of diversity of thought. I want more stories which are different and unique in the sense that Made In Abyss is. I feel like art is a kind of escapism, and that making statements about current real-world events undermines this escape
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
54m ago
NIH has done a study that shows that any study (like the one above) that assumes kids are even eating the meals is dubious. Some are, some aren't.
Among actual schoolkids, school lunches are considered somewhere between "literally inedible" and "prison food." Occasionally there's a Friday special that the kids consider tasty, but most of the food is significantly lower quality than anything someone would pay for on the open market.
It got worse after Michelle Obama's reforms; suddenly even the white bread that people found edible became nasty whole wheat versions that were much less appetizing. I think if we want to make school lunches more nutritious, the first thing to do would be to stop making them slop and actually make them something a human being would want to eat.
TwiceHuman
55m ago
That doesn't seem like a way to generate prime numbers directly, but to sort of chip at the problem by creating a scaffolding around it and then getting close and closer. It doesn't feel elegant like some math does. And yeah, I think that pure maths is largely useless (because its scope is wider, i.e. less restricted than our reality). We can find interesting properties in math which hints at properties in reality, though. At high levels of abstraction, these things overlap. "The dao of which can be spoken is not the real dao" is a logical conclusion, since you can judge the limits of a system from within said system. Gödel did the same with math. You can use a similar line of thinking to derive that everything is relative (there's nothing outside of everything, so there can be no external point of reference).
Maybe this is "abstract reasoning" rather than math? I'm not sure what it is, but this ability is useful in general. I don't suffer from the philosophical problem of "meaning in life" because I recognized that the question was formulated wrong (which is why there's no answer!). I also figured out enlightenment, which you usually cannot reach by thinking because it requires not thinking. But you can sort of use thinking to show that thinking is the cause of the issue, and then "break free" like that.
Edit: Nietzsche came up with his "Eternal recurrence" through logic, showing that if time goes back infinitely, the world would already have been looping forever. Same with his "Perspectivism", that there's no facts, only perspectives. He wasn't a mathematician, he was just highly intelligent.
But I'm sort of weird, most subjects I think about don't fit any common categories
wemptronics
1hr ago
Have you read Children of Men
Is the book good?
magicalkittycat
1hr ago
When reading a news article, let the word "could" serve as a little bell. In journo-speak, it means "isn't technically impossible". When someone knows they'll be sued and they'll lose if they say something "will" happen, they say it "could" instead. Any time you see the word "could", it negates everything that follows.
That heuristic goes way too far into the point of absurdity. Sometimes they say could just because they don't want to appear like psychics with 100% accuracy when they aren't that. Especially since policy can always change. You don't wanna say something will happen only for the underlying causes to disappear underneath your claim.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1hr ago
While I'm sure you're a perfectly smart chap, I'm also sure that neither of your ideas is worth patenting. If you don't actually work in data storage research or linguistics, the chances of your ideas being useful, or unacknowledged by domain experts, are low.
That's not to say they aren't interesting ideas for you to explore, or things that are worth investigating for your own curiosity. But absolutely what's happening here is that Claude is telling you that your idea is the greatest thing ever, which it's doing because your text prompts are incredibly excited and intrigued by these new possibilities: "You have no idea how desperately I want to share the details of both of these."
It's just mirroring that, and glazing you. And Claude won't "push you off of them" because that wouldn't be an appropriate AI response; it's trained to continue your conversation and explore the ideas you want it to explore, not to tell you "you should stop exploring this." Imagine if it did that when you asked it a question!
Hey, Claude, what's the capital of Venezuela?
Claude: Obviously this is a dumb curiosity question, just Google it if you really need to know.
Not a very helpful AI assistant! Now imagine the inverted behavior: "Sure, the capital of Venezuela is Caracas! Let me tell you some fun facts about Caracas..."
And then imagine that behavior amplified by your obvious curiosity and fascination with these ideas you've come up with; of course it's going to tell you they're the best ideas ever!
So, stay curious, stay fascinated, but don't believe an LLM when it tells you you've squared the circle. You almost certainly haven't.
anti_dan
1hr ago
No, you posted leftist propaganda, the equivalent of me posting a Glen Beck video from his crazy 2010s era, as a source.
The Cato study you linked isn't focused on some sort of EA evaluation of QOL/$ because doing something like that for an anti-poverty program is hopelessly confounded. This is why you should easily know the "40 billion dollars for 18 billion in spending" is ridiculous propaganda. Also, it appears to understate actual spending on these programs by between $9 and $80 billion depending on the source.
I have now read the main report from Rockefeller, and it is just full of conclusory language. So now I must read the model. The tech report is similarly full of just conclusions with no evidence to support them. They say the lunches save people in poverty money by calculating the cost of producing the same meals for a private household. This is, of course, absurd. They attribute greater future earnings to the recipients of school lunches AND reduced criminality. Again, just bald assertions. The claims continue in this fashion.
The whole exercise of fisking my priors has just been a waste of my time, as my prior that the Rockafeller report would be leftist nonsense was proven correct via a painstaking process of reading an incredibly poorly prepared report and technical supplement that should have gotten a failing grade in and freshman statistics course. Of course, in other fields it would be given stellar grades, because those other academic fields are just about producing things that re-enforce the narrative, which this "study" certainly does.
NIH has done a study that shows that any study (like the one above) that assumes kids are even eating the meals is dubious. Some are, some aren't. There is no evidence that the ones that are, are the one's whos parents wouldn't have packed a meal, which IS an essential element of proving the efficacy of the program. You need to prove there are lots of kids who have parents that cant afford an apple and a sandwich that are eating, as a result of the food program, something healthy. If they discard the broccoli you give them and eat the chips you've proven nothing. If my kid or someone like him eats the broccoli you have again proven nothing.
Overall, a government spending program needs to prove its effectiveness to a much higher degree to be justified in its continuance. School lunches aren't getting close. Its not a mystery why school lunches are a big push: Public schools are already a giant left wing boondoggle, but they are also a 3rd rail so they aren't going away. Why not append another couple hundred billion of subsidies into that ecosystem? It just pours back into the right coffers after all.
Imagine arguing with this kind of evidence in favor of free ammunition program. You'd be laughed at by yourself. But at least the ammo isn't going to be thrown away and make kids fat.
JTarrou
3hr ago
could
could be
could drive
When reading a news article, let the word "could" serve as a little bell. In journo-speak, it means "isn't technically impossible". When someone knows they'll be sued and they'll lose if they say something "will" happen, they say it "could" instead. Any time you see the word "could", it negates everything that follows.
The most important motivation for caring about civilization is igniting an individual will to overcome obstacles and shape the world. It's an innate desire, a personality trait that not everybody possesses.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3hr ago
It's not quite A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but along those lines.
What was wrong with this book? In this context
I read it as an early teen (now far too long ago) and I remember loving the concept (also a massive Twain fan) but then finding the ending so bad it retroactively ruined the book for me.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Awfully bold of you to assume the Dinosaurs didn't build a civilization.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Paging Alfred the great... a fine king, the best! He had some great people in Wessex, it was a very dangerous situation. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
I admit to having enjoyed coming up with this.
Maybe 'oddball future history' will be a feature I start on in the friday fun thread.
It's an appositive a participial phrase and isn't wrong in any way. I suspect OP could have chosen a better example.
Edit: The issue is with the hefting I suppose. Probably wielding would be better.
"No don't bow to me or call me 'sir'; I don't go in for things like that." This one is everywhere and I find it especially puerile.
Well, to contrast #3 with #4, you and I both believe in a religion in which the creator of the universe called humanity his bretheren and his friends, and humiliated himself because he loved them.
It's true that hierarchy is functional, and serves an important purpose in human social organization, but even in a traditional mindset there have long been strong disputes over the relative importance of hierarchy and egalitarianism. We both live in the societies that we do because our ancestors rebelled against strict hierarchicalism. "We developed the systems we did for a reason" is very true, and a huge part of the system we've developed includes the egalitarian handshake instead of the deferring bow.
I presume the point of the "don't bow to me or call me sir" elements you're quoting is that the character is some kind of a prince, or aristocrat -- someone who inherited noble dignity, instead of attaining practical power as a result of earned leadership. The "don't bow to me or call me sir" is an easy statement of opposition to that kind of hierarchy, which makes the authors of such texts completely in tune with the views of average Americans (who are likely a majority of LitRPG authors), and was very nearly added to the American constitution in an amendment I would support passing even today.
I happen to think one of the strengths that drove the West to the levels of power and wealth that it has attained simply is that it adopted values, including the Christian religion, that militated against the worst excesses of hierarchical thinking. A common feature of airplane crashes that involve non-Western pilots is that a captain will make a critical error, the first officer will mentally understand that something has gone wrong, but strict norms of hierarchy will make him nervous to challenge the captain in command, and then hundreds of people die.
Additionally, setting aside the need to be referred to in formulaic ways of deference is actually a status signal: "My status is so firm that I do not need you to make displays of public worship."
GBRK
5hr ago
anti-dan already attacked your source.
No, he didn't. He attacked the people responsible for the source, and acted like that was sufficient to dismiss the source itself. That's a textbook ad hominem.
Buddy, I am really not asking for much. I'm not asking you to make an hour-long takedown of the study's contents, I'm just asking you to find a concrete problem with it or find a contradictory source. Take my response to the CATO article as an example: I didn't go in and question every single stat, I just raised a single, salient problem.
You don't have to find the perfect source or argument, you just need to do a little bit better than I did. I probably won't be convinced on the spot-- but it'll force me to either give up on convincing you or do even better. In the latter case, even if neither of us ultimately manage to convince the other, at least we'll both have better knowledge of the subject that's tested against oppositional analysis. Which is still a pretty great outcome, for anyone who believes in the value of reasoned, good-faith debate. And if you don't believe in that value, why are you on the motte? If you just want people to agree with you without regard for truth value there are other, better platforms.
(also I just realized that you and anti-dan aren't the same person. Which is honestly kind of sad. You have the energy to dogpile me, but not the energy to find a single source to the anti-school-lunch position?)
srf0638
5hr ago
running through Wilson's Ramble with her male boss to get ready.
Woof.
I think I could manage faster than 40 days, but yeah, that's the rub. I've enjoyed interacting with fellow travelers on previous tours, so timing things to line up with the Grand Depart has a certain appeal.
srf0638
5hr ago
TitaniumButterfly
5hr ago
I like the Mist Crown series by Sarah Maas, but its so annoying to read a medieval peasant acting like a modern, feminist, atheistic modern American as though the author literally couldn’t conceive of a premodern woman in a premodern world.
She can't!
TitaniumButterfly
5hr ago
See I found that good. Actually I'm not sure why it would be upsetting to you. Oh no! Too many cool ideas!
Yeah I'm open to that and also didn't expend any real effort here. You know what I mean. The point is made. Yes I could be happier with it. It's difficult for me to be ugly, even on purpose. Take no joy in the awful stuff and would sooner screen it out than collect and revel in it. Else I'd be on /r/drama.
Corvos
5hr ago
My biggest personal grip with litrpg is when the story reads like a D&D campaign converted into a novel. The fights feel like a string of meaningless encounters.
This was the big problem with Worth the Candle for me. It felt like the author had a list of a hundred 'super cool D&D adventures' that he wanted to fit in, and just slotted them one after another, with only the barest excuse for why they were happening. I grant that this is somewhat justified by the setting, but it doesn't make it good writing.
DiscourseMagnus
6hr ago
While there's often an unfortunate association there, I don't think that the problem is so much inherent to the grammatical qualities of the perspective as it is the thoughtlessness the author employs in selecting any perspective at all. This is closely related to the oft-commented-upon "books as wannabe movies" problem.
That was an interesting link. I often wonder about all the variables that are leading young people to date less — of course, “no woman wants to date me” seems to be a plurality answer from men, and I’m well aware of male friends of mine for whom that’s the entire reason they’re single. I have a friend who’s gone from social and engaged to depressed, suicidal, and medicated as his 20s have flown by without a wink of intimacy. Nicest and most prosocial guy you’d ever meet — maybe that’s the problem.
I do wonder sometimes how I’d feel romantically if I hadn’t had some formative positive experiences with dating as a teenager. It certainly wasn’t all roses, but I can trace my own strong drive for intimacy to a before/after with my high school sweetheart. If I hadn’t fallen into a relationship with her… would I be dating now? Would I feel as strongly about dating as I do now?
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