FredPret

41 ms·

571.
by FredPret 2y ago
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/calculus The usual sense involves integration and derivation but look at senses 2 & 4. It also means any calculation.
572.
by FredPret 2y ago
What I'm saying is regulation slows down all of society to solve yesterday's problems, when we should put as much resources as possible into developing tomorrow's solutions. How much does it bug you that Xerox has (had?) a mo
573.
by FredPret 2y ago
I had no idea they were mammals until this comment. I thought they were furry birds!
574.
by FredPret 2y ago
People already have a right to buy any of the hundreds of models on sale right now, many of which allow putting your own OS on it. People also have the right to start a new phone brand (if they feel like burning a couple hundred billion). T
575.
by FredPret 2y ago
The market will tell Apple what its role is. And the market wants a walled garden. It’s half the reason I buy iPhones. If you want a computer, get a Linux box. The iOS guardrails are a major selling point.
576.
by FredPret 2y ago
The notion that there is no objective truth, that everything is a social construct, is intellectual poison. Fundamental truths exist in physics and mathematics and other fields, completely orthogonal to politics. People may have opinions ab
577.
by FredPret 2y ago
It's like we're talking past each other. SciAm and the media are held to a higher standard... by themselves. They claim a position of authority. So when they are biased or get something wrong, it's a problem because their bra
578.
by FredPret 2y ago
It used to be all the science-y people on one side and Bible thumpers on the other... decades ago. There has been something of a sea change.
579.
by FredPret 2y ago
I think nradov's question stands. Why was this the case?
580.
by FredPret 2y ago
I grew up in the third world in an anti-US intellectual environment. I lived in and visited countries from across the spectrum. Now, I've concluded that the West is Good and communism is Bad. Nothing a priori about it. My only prior
581.
by FredPret 2y ago
Fair. My frustration arises from people who say that the US turned Guatemala or wherever into a banana republic, and therefore the West has zero moral worth and capitalism must be overthrown.
582.
by FredPret 2y ago
This amounts to “only rich people should be able to travel”
583.
by FredPret 2y ago
It’s the opposite of a rain forest in every interesting way. Development springs from us, it doesn’t appear out of the sky like rain. Having personally experienced the humans in various places, I’m astonished at how differently people see a
584.
by FredPret 2y ago
> The locus of fast development will always develop superiority narratives. True > The fact is that there will always be a locus of concentrated development Also true > and it's not because it has a special culture. I don&#x27
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by FredPret 2y ago
I actually agree with many of the points you made here, especially your two policy proposals. But I don't think you can mention the US in the same breath as imperial Belgium. Leopold was surely one of the low points of our species. But
586.
by FredPret 2y ago
Puts a new spin on it when lefties tweet to "eat the rich". Stomach churning stuff.
587.
by FredPret 2y ago
The undeveloped world doesn't have, and never had, enough money to be "drained" into a pool as large as the current US economy
588.
by FredPret 2y ago
Unquestionably some of these were unacceptable acts. But the numbers don't stack up. There's also a huge qualitative difference. According to [0] there was a population decline adding up to 4 million native deaths (from all causes
589.
by FredPret 2y ago
Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa from around the time when they were abducted into slavery? To ascribe Amer
590.
by FredPret 2y ago
Name one on par with Stalin’s agricultural reforms or the Cultural Revolution or the madness in Cambodia.
591.
by FredPret 2y ago
That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. (By the way, they're a hell of a lot better than any historical empire you could mention). I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at
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by FredPret 2y ago
Travel is such an important part of a well-rounded education because it forces things into perspective. I’m glad it’s becoming cheaper. I dream of the day all kids can do it.
593.
by FredPret 2y ago
So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south, and next thing you know the US is a global superpower, and that’s all there is to it? Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that?
594.
by FredPret 2y ago
OK well I’m from there. When I moved to the first world, my eyes were opened. They literally are worlds apart culturally and economically. The term “third world” is a good and very descriptive one.
595.
by FredPret 2y ago
Putin 2.0 would still have nukes and a huge, if ineffective, army
596.
by FredPret 2y ago
Muammar Gaddafi was a terrible person. But when he died, things in his country got even worse.
597.
by FredPret 2y ago
"Third world" was a geopolitical term but now it's economic and cultural. I assure you South Africa is third world by any measure. The GDP of SA (a large country with tons of resources and a population of 60m) is roughly on p
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by FredPret 2y ago
> There is an insane wealth gap. Your unexamined prior is that this is a bad and unsustainable thing. It was always thus. > People always seem to be stressed. They really aren't. Americans are extremely happy and relaxed compared
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by FredPret 2y ago
I'm part of the brain drain from my developing country-of-birth. It's more than just money. To me, the money is a symptom of the real issue. The real issue for me was the culture that exists in my birthplace. It just isn't we
600.
by FredPret 2y ago
The marginal utility of an extra dollar goes down as you get more of them, but it never reaches zero, especially if you have big dreams. Just look at Musk and his startups - I bet he's very glad to have that 200 billionth dollar, becau

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