Yes, thank you for compressing it. They start their answer with:
> Here is the answer I want to suggest: Japanese companies excel in lots of very different domains because it’s inherent in how they’re structured.
Which is then backed by some economists saying something similar (generally), but all of which completely ignores Japan’s specific history.
As a better example
Of examining Japan, here’s a look at Japan’s monopolies, how they were broken up, and partly how that effected the future of their industry:
I felt the opposite, because Python isn’t a great language. It won because of Google, fast prototyping, and its ML interop (e.g. pandas, numpy), but as a language it’s always been subpar.
Indentation is a horrible decision (there’s a reason no other language went this way), which led to simple concepts like blocks/lambdas having pretty wild constraints (only one line??)
Type decoration has been a welcome addition, but too slowly iterated on and the native implementations (mypy) are horribly slow at any meaningful size.
Concurrency was never good and its GIL+FFI story has boxed it into a long-term pit of sadness.
I’ve used it for years, but I’m happy to see it go. It didn’t win because it was the best language.
> lambdas having pretty wild constraints (only one line??)
I will never understand why people are upset about this.
You HAVE multi-line lambdas. They're called functions.
Yeah, I know you want a function that's only used once to be able to be defined in-line, but tbh I've always found that syntax to be pretty ugly, especially once you're passing two functions to a single call, or have additional parameters AFTER the function (I'm looking at you, setTimeout/setInterval).
once you use any language that lets you fluently inline a multiline lambda / closure you can never use Python again without it constantly irritating you
F# as well, and that tends to exist in parallel with some degree of C# written by the same devs… the indentation enables cleaner, smaller, simpler code function by function.
It’s pretty ok in Python, but meaningful indentation is amazing with a proper type system and compiler. Clean, consistent, efficient, and ensures working code is easily read and standardized.
I’m unaware of anyone accepting improperly formatted C# as ‘done’, and would reject any such PR out of hand because of the potential for legibility issues to hide bugs. So: if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done by the compiler to save line noise.
That’s exactly how I think, too. But at the same time, I like indentation in Python, because I would logically indent in every other language as well. In fact, I find all those semicolons and similar things at the end of each line completely redundant (why should I repeat myself for something the compiler should do) and I hate them. And that’s despite having experience with Modula and 10 years of C++. But when I look at Rust, I find the syntax simply awful. From an ADHD perspective…
I'm baffled how you think syntax doesn't matter. Syntax affects how hard something is to understand when you read it, how hard it is to physically input, how hard it is to make mistakes, how hard it is to parse, interpret or compile.
Have you never tried to read someone else's Perl code? Syntax matters.
But complaining about indentation is silly. Other languages' compilers don't require it like python does, but the humans using those languages all absolutely require proper indentation. Why not make it part of the language?
Lambdas are intentionally kneecapped in python because Guido van Robson doesn't want to make a functional language. (As in "functional programming", not that it doesn't work.)
If he kneecapped an advancement for the language intentionally, then, well, yikes! It's a tautology to say that it isn't bad because the creator said it shouldn't be there. That's not what you want to see from leadership.
Ruby has `do … end` blocks that are readable and greatly improve the language, without turning it into a "functional" language.
"I don't think it makes much sense to try to add "functional" primitives to Python, because the reason those primitives work well in functional languages don't apply to Python, and they make the code pretty unreadable for people who aren't used to functional languages (which means most programmers). I also don't think that the current crop of functional languages is ready for mainstream." https://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/08/25/2115204/inter...
Sigh. You clearly don't remember the year 2003, when your choices were basically C, Perl, bash, php, or Python. C is not a language for quick scripts or dealing with strings like web apps do. Perl was so fun to write, but impossible to read. Bash actually requires you to know bash, awk, sed, grep, and to if you think Python is slow you've never written and used a 2000 line bash program. php was pretty readable and writable, but so full of security pitfalls for Web apps, and was also slow. Python was an amazing breath of fresh air compared to them all!
The claim was there was multiple "organ harvesting scandals". Upon reading, it seems like the system worked, the doctors refused to retrieve the organs because the patient showed signs of life. It also looks like they have worked to put in place stricter protocols for organ retrieval since then.
I would say accidentally mistaking the patient is dead in any case is hardly the same as purposefully harvesting the organs from people they know are alive to get paid. The article does not state any evidence to suggest they are doing this.
There is obviously going to be some pressure to make a decision to retrieve the organs in the interest of not wasting something that could save another's life as there is a limited time frame where these organs can be viable. There is a huge distinction between that and going to patients that have no doubt they are alive and harvesting their organs.
At some point, these people will come up with a ransom-as-a-service that you can subscribe to make monthly payments. It's no different than having to pay criminals monthly for security to prevent them from harming your themselves.
> for social media where you are writing for fun, and to express yourself, it'd be odd to let AI be your voice unless you realize your own writing is very poor.
A lot of people post for clout, so something that can skip the difficult process of becoming a good writer (and original thinker) is more than enough. They can churn out think pieces about any topic at an unlimited pace, basically.
It doesn’t add much to the world, but they get a lot of traction (which I cannot understand, given the quality of content.) And that’s what matters to them.
I think if you gave most people the choice between (a) being a thoughtful and original writer (b) being seen as a thoughtful and original writer, the vast majority choose (b). Especially when it is zero effort.
Yeah I mean the US has gotten tough on, like, foreign interference in elections and cyber security, but if you have the Chinese state behind you—which they absolutely do and as an observer, obviously, they have to—no company can stop them.
Case in point: North Korea, with far, far fewer resources.
Relatedly, the book Vagina Obscura talks about women’s anatomy as a battle between the baby (wants as many resources as possible) and the mother (doesn’t want to die from what is, essentially, a parasite.)
Fascinating mental shift to explain things like the menstrual cycle (why would we want an environment that can be fully shed every month? Isn’t that crazy expensive?)
> a battle between the baby (wants as many resources as possible) and the mother (doesn’t want to die from what is, essentially, a parasite.)
That's hard to reconcile everything else we know: The baby needs a healthy mother in order to survive until and past childbirth and to be healthy itself. For the mother, for multiple reasons, nothing is more important than the baby's survival and well-being. Humans generally care for and will help and sacrifice for other humans, most especially those in their clan (however that's defined) and with their genes.
It's easy to reconcile with many pregnancies I've known amongst friends. Decrease maternal health, and real threats to her survival, are far from rare. Daily puking for an extended period is a common side effect. The mother loses a great deal of mobility in the last trimester...
Don't confuse terms like "parasite" with implying evil or malicious intent.
But that doesn't mean the mother sees herself as competing with the fetus, nor sees the fetus as a parasite. Pregnancy may be unpleasant in that sense, but only sociopaths weigh that against the fetus' well-being. When a parent buys food for their child, they don't think of their children as parasites on their income!
Evolution does not optimize for anything. If the organism propagates, it may propagate again. But there is no goal.
As the RQ shows, this process often leads to a dead end. Such as a short term success for cancer, but no long term success. Deadly infections lose their deadliness over time, as killing the host does not lead to propagation.
Evolution often falls into a local optima, which will inevitably lead to extinction.
Deadly diseases losing their deadliness over time is possible, but hardly guaranteed even at the species/population level. Rabies has effectively a 100% fatality rate in host species. Smallpox, which is human-specific with no animal reservoir so must have been spread consistently and entirely within humans, had a fatality rate on the order of 10-30% even after thousands of years of co-evolution.
Smallpox was much less deadly to Europeans than the Indians. Indians fell like flies to European diseases.
Covid seems to have its mortality dramatically shrunk.
Our genomes are full of bits and pieces of ancient disease DNA. Our bodies are full of bugs that have evolved into peaceful coexistence. Some bugs even became part of us (mitochondria).
> Smallpox was much less deadly to Europeans than the Indians. Indians fell like flies to European diseases.
That does not support your argument that there is a adaptive advantage for reduced deadliness. The fact that it was exceedingly deadly to non co-evolved hosts indicates it was not the disease that became less deadly, but that the co-evolved hosts developed better defenses.
> Our bodies are full of bugs that have evolved into peaceful coexistence.
That is a argument that there is a continuous adaptive advantage to reduced deadliness down to ~0%. Again, Rabies had and continues to have a nearly 100% fatality rate in co-evolved hosts for thousands of years. Smallpox had a 10-30% fatality rate. Any magical inherent adaptive advantage for reduced deadliness failed to materialize to continue pushing down their deadliness.
Or put another way, a disease can have a 30% mortality rate and still do a really bang-up job at propagation with limited adaptive pressure to reduce that further for thousands of years. Peaceful coexistence is more likely a artifact of the specific dynamic than any sort of meaningful fundamental advantage to reduced deadliness.
> it was exceedingly deadly to non co-evolved hosts indicates it was not the disease that became less deadly, but that the co-evolved hosts developed better defenses
That's a good argument, but it is not proof that there wasn't some adaptation of smallpox to Europeans. The immune systems of Europeans and Indians diverged 10,000 years ago.
> Rabies had and continues to have a nearly 100% fatality rate in co-evolved hosts for thousands of years.
I doubt that there were large enough epidemics of rabies to influence its evolution.
> Peaceful coexistence is more likely a artifact of the specific dynamic than any sort of meaningful fundamental advantage to reduced deadliness.
Killing your host does not help propagation of the disease. Causing your host to cough and sneeze is a great way to propagate.
Not saying that evolution has a will, but the mechanism is that those species that are best adopted will prosper and go one. So that species that can reproduce the best, wins. So I don't see why you disagree that evolution does not optimize for it. (No one said anything about perfectly optimized)
Kind of like JQuery. I know why it was such an incredible library and am happy no new devs I work with (a) know what it is (b) understand why it was necessary.
Thank god the underlying language, libraries, and browser support have moved forward. And IE6 is dead. God, what a nightmare.
> the framing that we are using this to train AI to do everyone’s job and the sort of unapologetic, ‘we’re training your replacement, and we’re not paying you more for it’ approach is just another signal of how little Meta cares about the humans that it employs
Look, I want everyone to be happy, but if you’re working at the addiction factory, I mean, let’s not kid ourselves about how much Meta cares about people.
I didn't hear anyone complain when Meta was only ruining other people's lives. I can't feel any sympathy now.
Also, if you promise to put everyone out of a job with AI, it's only logical to start with your own employees. Give everyone a preview of what's coming for them if the promises hold.
It is frustrating, because I really enjoyed my Valve Index and want a replacement and Meta has some of the best VR tech in the world, but I've waited 6 years for Valve to release their new headset to buy a replacement, simply because Meta can't be trusted.
It doesn’t even really have anything to do with that. Training people’s replacements is as old as time. It’s business. Why would they pay above market rate just for fun?
> Here is the answer I want to suggest: Japanese companies excel in lots of very different domains because it’s inherent in how they’re structured.
Which is then backed by some economists saying something similar (generally), but all of which completely ignores Japan’s specific history.
As a better example Of examining Japan, here’s a look at Japan’s monopolies, how they were broken up, and partly how that effected the future of their industry:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5_-Ac68FKG4
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