It's the same in the Netherlands. It's a great system I think. Sometimes you can see kids haul all their books on a bicycle, which is quite a challenge even for the Dutch
I wrote a Todo application in Idris that compiles to Javascript (https://github.com/leon-vv/Todo). I used the dependent type system of Idris to embed a small part of SQL in Idris, which means the type system can proof certain things about my queries (for example that fields accessed are actually part of the (joined) tables).
The root of the problem seems to be the inability of people to correctly judge the likeliness of David's arguments to be true. This is not a problem that we're going to solve by banning David's content.
>This is not a problem that we're going to solve by banning David's content.
Ok. How are we going to solve it by guaranteeing that his content proliferates as widely as possible, or even as some have suggested, by having governments force platforms to host it against their will, in the name of absolute free speech?
The principle that we can debate the merit of ideas only so long as we never prevent any idea from spreading only renders debate meaningless. It's implied in the concept of a marketplace of ideas that some ideas will have value over others. And so it seems implicit to the concept of free speech that one should have the freedom to accept or reject an idea, or try to disabuse someone of an idea you deem fallacious.
This is the root of the problem. The fact that his content is on YouTube does not imply that it will proliferate.
> How are we going to solve it
Critical thinking skills are apparently undervalued. This is a problem that is hopefully solvable by education and public debate. Even if not, the situation in which a small part of the population believes in David's ideas seems preferable to me than one in which a small group of (non democratically chosen) people decide what is acceptable content and what is not.
> It's implied in the concept of a marketplace of ideas that some ideas will have value over others.
I agree, but different people will have different definitions of value.
> And so it seems implicit to the concept of free speech that one should have the freedom to accept or reject an idea, or try to disabuse someone of an idea you deem fallacious.
I agree, but censoring someone goes much farther than to disabuse. Too far, in my opinion.
>The fact that his content is on YouTube does not imply that it will proliferate.
That's not what I meant. In a world run under free speech maximalist principles, one in which society is only allowed to debate and criticize ideas like David Icke's, but no platform is allowed to choose not to host them (because that choice amounts to censorship,) those ideas would proliferate because mere criticism and debate are not sufficient to prevent their spread.
If it were, there would be no anti-vaxxers or flat earthers, or people who buy into most conspiracy theories, because those people are aware of the arguments to the contrary of their point of view, and they choose to dismiss those arguments. They don't respond to criticism with sober introspection and logic, they respond with ridicule and sometimes violence.
>Even if not, the situation in which a small part of the population believes in David's ideas seems preferable to me than one in which a small group of (non democratically chosen) people decide what is acceptable content and what is not.
Except Youtube isn't deciding what is acceptable for society, they are deciding what is acceptable for themselves. David Icke's delusional followers are free to continue to be deluded, but he is no longer allowed to host content on their platform.
>I agree, but censoring someone goes much farther than to disabuse. Too far, in my opinion.
I disagree that David Icke's been censored. He doesn't have a right to a Youtube account, any more than he has the right to break into my house and start ranting about lizard men. Youtube isn't public property just because it's on the internet.
The problem is that it's impossible for the marketplace of ideas to reject anything without it being interpreted as censorship. That's a slippery slope no one wants to recognize.
You seem to imply that it's okay for YouTube to censor content as long as the content is 'factually incorrect'. What is your definition of 'factually' incorrect content? More importantly, how do you prevent YouTube from coming up with their own definition of factual correctness and start banning content at will.
Maxima is also an amazing tool for symbolic maths, and is free software. I especially recommend the wxMaxima interface which is close in spirit to jupyter notebook
I'm taking this opportunity to post a video I made some time ago of my current work-in-progress, a new user interface to Maxima. It's more like a regular commandline compared to wxMaxima, which may or may not be what users want.
What a beautiful piece of writing. I always saw terraforming Mars as a technological challenge, it's great to see someone consider the ethics of the project. The following paragraph stood out most for me.
'Another reason for believing that terraforming would involve hubris is to consider how we treat Earth, a place we might call our “proper place” or “home.” If we think of our home as a place which nurtures us and in which we grow to maturity, then a case could be made that until we learn to treat our own planet better, any attempt to reshape another planet and call it our “home” would be hubristic.'
Whenever we apply technology people talk progress. Intuitively I would say that progress implies a destination and that progress is about getting closer to it. But can we really say we're making progress if we do not know the destination: how should people live together? When we agree to terraform Mars we do so in the belief that it's a good idea. But 'good' implies an answer to the question. It's very interesting to try to find these implicit answers and see if we can turn them into an explicit answer. Maybe then we'll find that often technology looks like progress, while it's not getting us closer at all.
Well, in order to live well together, people do need to remain alive. There's an argument for creating off-world colonies to reduce the chance of human extinction by any one catastrophe (asteroid impacts, supervolcanoes etc).
I definitely think it's important to learn to coexist with our fellow humans, as well as other life forms, here on earth, but / and it will be hard to do that if we all catch fire and die.
