Nothing new under the sun. When clocks and precision mechanics started in the 17th century, there was a tendency to view humans as "machines". Computers came, suddenly human brains are "computers". Now we're LLMs.
If scientists make green jelly that emits thoughtful judgements, humans will be compared to green jelly.
None of these analogies are entirely wrong, they're just incomplete.
Humans are similar to machines for example in that our bodies convert energy to do work through a series of pumps and pipes and sensors and actuators. Life is not animated by some magic force but instead operates under the same physical laws that machines use to function.
I had my phone fell from my pocket while in a dancing club at night. Someone found it, took it to the bartender and I got it back (saw the location on my computer using Google's find your phone).
But would I deliberately leave my phone or laptop unattended on the table at a random coffee shop that I know nothing about? Probably fine but not taking that risk. Also as others pointed out, context matters. A small indoor coffee shop while I visit the toilet? No problem. Large crowded outside terrace? I'm not stupid.
My ex-wife grew up in a small town in 1970s Francoist Spain, so I've heard these types of stories before. (Though she didn't have to crank her phone!!)
She actually had two phone lines in her house: One for employees of Repsol - the national oil company - which didn't have a dial and used a central operator, and another with a dial to make regular calls. It created a sort of 1970s "blue bubble" effect because the company line was free to use. Friends whose family also worked for the company were sort of privileged as a result.
Visiting my kid's grandparents in the late 2000s was a blast from the past as they still had the same pink phone in the living room they had had since forever (it may have even been a rotary phone, I can't remember). My son at the time was honestly perplexed at the whole idea of a landline.
>> Friends whose family also worked for the company were sort of privileged as a result.
Well to tell the full story, my father was an employee of the Agricultural Production Cooperative (CAP - Cooperativa Agricola de Productie - in Romanian), the national company who owned the land (forcibly nationalized in the 50s) and grew food. No individual would have been able to afford a private telephone line in the village, there were two of them, one to CAP one to the Post office. While it was possible to go to the post office and pay to make calls, it was more awkward getting them. So we hooked a phone to CAP's line, meaning we shared the calls with it's office, phone rang both at out home and in the office and everytime we made a call, someone in the office could pick up the phone and listen (and we could do the same with them). And of course not every employee of the company was allowed to hook up a personal phone to the company line ;)
And with the unappreciated feature that the Securitate's people listening in could always be counted on to be available for consult in case you forgot a detail discussed in a call...
>> I have a hard time spending, to the point where I would often procrastinate on buying things that I know I’ll need in the future.
Well, what I noticed is that I go to great efforts to avoid buying me some stuff that would make my life easier (say an electric bike or a better computer). Month starts, I get my paycheck and every day I fend off the desire to buy the stuff I want/need. And then come the bills. Like some surprise "regularization" gas or electricity bill that costs more than the item I didn't buy. If it's not that, some darn thing breaks and needs repairs. And if it's not that, kid has to go in some school trip, there's some birthday or wedding we have to attend, someone asks me to lend them some money (coze they know I save) or some other event happens and requires a ca$h infusion.
By the end of the month, money's gone and I haven't got nothing. At some point working just to pay bills and expenses makes Jack a dull boy. So funk it, I buy that stuff AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MONTH. And when shit arrives demanding money I can truthfully say: "I don't have any money left". But at least I got the thing, opposed to neither money, nor item.
We're cargo culting "the manager view". Like the critic you can read on Bret Devereaux's blog about Game Of Thrones having been written from an elite's point of view, it's utopian and sounds good ... for the elites, the people who benefit from the hard work they never have to do themselves. But like any elite bubble wildly disconnected from reality, this one will fall bad. Maybe French revolution bad, when the answer to the masses of unemployed "displaced" by AI screaming "we can't get a piece of bread to eat" is "let them eat cake instead".
>> But ok, you do you. Thanks for the insults jerk.
ROFL. Didn't you notice he's Dutch? And old (add insult to injury).
Expect extreme absence of delicacy from the Dutch, they simply lack that gene.
Then again, your comment was a complete, shameless plug of promoting your own crap, in total disregard of what the man said. Someone had to say it to you.
>> Also why did you bloviate so much about yourself here? Was it to make yourself seem more important? Because honestly you come off as a real asshole Merick.
I would bet on "I'm old and I don't care".
What I'm curious though is why would he sell the physical collection.
> Then again, your comment was a complete, shameless plug of promoting your own crap, in total disregard of what the man said. Someone had to say it to you.
It was, it's fine. But it's also something I spent 6 months on, purpose built for his scenario, and most importantly released under MIT license without charge.
And yeah, I totally didn't notice he was Dutch. I'm used to rude, but the whole pivot to his life accomplishments was quite gross and repulsive.
>> But there are no other kids out there. I'm sending him out into streets empty of kids.
This. It's a number's "game".
My father, born in rural Romania, had 8 siblings, one of them died of an accident in his childhood (yeah, during "free range stuff"). I was born in a town and have 2 brothers. Live in a city and have one kid.
I can't send my kid out carelessly because I don't have a backup.
I am not sure what you mean. Most people in the world including every single one of your ancestors has managed to have kids - including the physical aspects.
People aren’t comparing today to the ancient past. They’re by and large, comparing life to when they grew up.
So on HN, that’s the 70s through the 90s.
Since then maternal mortality in the USA has only increased. The reasons vary, but this still supports your comment as less people ought to be willing to risk having more children.
I would add, that this stat also pairs with the prevalence of hard pregnancies in the USA, so people may become more protective of their children since they suffered more to have them.
Other countries don’t have this issue, and also have more free range child allowances (e.g. Japan with low mortality, low number of children, but highly independent children supported and watched by adults in general and not their parents).
If one in 8 has that kind of accident in America they will seize all the kids and you will lose all of them, so other than just spreading your DNA that approach won't work. There are many, many documented cases of people having all their kids seized because they had a child with a brittle bone disease, and after their brittle bones break (happens easily with such child) the government blames the parent and takes all the other children too.
3 means 3x the chance of them all being taken away when something goes wrong. 1 seems better if your goal is to have at least one child remaining in custody with you to age 18, since if anything goes wrong other than a provable unavoidable medical accident they're typically all seized.
It actually can't be determined if it's "overstated", because the child snatchers have intentionally hidden the data (under seal, "think of the children") so you can't determine the ratio of "overstating." It is illegal to pull the data, so instead you just have to rely on the many many articles you can pull up of people speaking up on their own accord despite the fact their adversary is usually using their children as leverage to keep them from speaking out.
That is part of the genius. They hide the data then declare "just show us the data" knowing damn well they hid it then try to hide under just being reasonable and why can't you prove it. It's quite sadistic actually and of course arguments such as yours play into this intentional subterfuge. Note that this hiding of evidence, when done by private actors, in a court of law usually means it is entered in evidence in favor of the other side as hiding means the worst case scenario of that is contributed towards the burden of proof ("spoliation of evidence.") You don't get to play the fuck-fuck game of simply asking for additional burden of proof when you've intentionally induced spoliation of the evidence.
> I can't send my kid out carelessly because I don't have a backup.
I don't understand this reasoning. Are you saying you're knowingly stunting the growth of your child because you would have to deal with your emotions if something terrible happened?
I understand the emotional pull of it, but I don't understand being able to identify it, put it into words, and then continue to do it.
I don't understand the "knowingly stunting the growth of your child" attack. What makes you conclude I'm stunting the growth of my child?
He's not chained to a tree. He goes to private school in a country where public schools are free and excellent. Visits his friends and play in the public park or the private yard. Spends vacations in the countryside unsupervised by me because unlike the city, chances of being run over by a retard driving a car are much lower. Still, I advise him not to wander around freely as I did in my childhood because the world has become much shittier. One thing, there are bears everywhere, thanks to the animal rights lobbyists. I feared dogs and bulls when wandering across countryside as a kid, now I have to add bears too for my kid.
>> Software engineering is looking more and more like it needs a professional body in each country, and accreditation and standards.
Doesn't help much, accounting needs accreditation and standards, but that doesn't prevent competition level of some 100 accountants per job. Only way you prevent that is by limiting numbers, like lawyers do, case when connections and nepotism matter, you basically get a hereditary aristocratic caste.
>> We live in a world where someone has to clean the sewers, unblock toilets, maintain electricity lines in snow storms, weld deep underwater, clean, wipe the butts of old people, and 10,000 other thankless, tiring, and dangerous jobs which no one in their right mind would ever do because they found it fun and interesting.
>> I do think AI and robotics will usher in a much more abundant world in the future. It's unclear how we navigate that - economically, politically, socially.
Delusional optimism. If AI and robotics take over, the only effect will be another wave of layoffs and unemployed, not even the willingness to unblock toilets or wipe butts will save you from homelessness and destitution. We're already on the way to Victorian era poverty, if robots take the shit jobs too, we're back to Oliver Twist: please sir, can I have some more ... tokens?
Given how we handled the industrial revolution and more recently, the destruction of Midwest industry in Chinese offshoring, you may very well be correct. People will cheer cheaper products and services while watching unemployment rise around them.
However if it happens so fast, and so many of us are impacted, I have to believe that will impact how we vote.
Well, Alt+Tab in Windows is supposed to switch windows. That's unless you're in Microsoft Edge where obviously, it switches tabs. Inconsistent and annoying.
Browser tabs are the fault here and browsers are trying to be OS environment, so Alt+Tab is useful for major task switching. I agree it's inconsistent and annoying, but I like Alt+Tab as a way to try to find the window I'm writing that email to someone.
Android and Chrome worked like this for a hot minute too. I assumed the idea was to promote webapps to look like they're first-class citizens, but in practice it's just bizarre and confusing UX.
I hate this too. You can turn it off. In Settings, go to System->Multitasking and change "Show tabs from apps when snapping or pressing Alt+Tab" to "Don't show tabs."
If scientists make green jelly that emits thoughtful judgements, humans will be compared to green jelly.
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