mbrock

54 ms·

271.
by mbrock 7y ago
No Buddhist would say that, so clearly there's some misunderstanding. There is no Buddhist claim that the true self is an inert observer. Fixating on any aspect of your experience as true or authentic is the problem, not the solution.
272.
by mbrock 7y ago
It just seems a bit optimized for people who actually love RPGs in all their complexity with different items and stuff, when I might prefer something that has a game aspect while staying quite simple. I’m less motivated by the possibility o
273.
by mbrock 7y ago
I’m trying it now, thanks. It seemed a bit too much when I considered it once but I can see the appeal.
274.
by mbrock 7y ago
This has been my approach but I’m getting fed up with my consequent inability to manage my time, which is way more precious and easily wasted than money, and harder to budget well. There are a lot of things I want and need to do but find ve
275.
by mbrock 7y ago
And practice editing, especially deleting.
276.
by mbrock 7y ago
Sure, I agree that prohibiting passive voice entirely is a bad idea. No rule can ever substitute judgment and experience. I’d formulate the passive thing as “watch out for the passive voice and try if an active reformulation sounds better.”
277.
by mbrock 7y ago
I think the US government’s “plain language” site has examples showing that changing passive to active can definitely improve texts, like here: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/empl...
278.
by mbrock 7y ago
Do you think there might also be some people who are currently working in a job that's not really the optimal use of their time, who would be able to substantially improve their lives with the help of a basic income? What do you think
279.
by mbrock 7y ago
I've heard that there might be some evolutionary biological reasons why families would be inclined to desire children and grandchildren... :)
280.
by mbrock 7y ago
Dependent type systems are one way to verify logical constraints in code, but not the only way. Look at Dafny for a good example of how checked invariants can be integrated into an ordinary imperative language. Or ESC/Java for the same
281.
by mbrock 7y ago
The mythological framing of this essay and its theme of good and evil as they appear in economics and war remind me of a great book, Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain . This book is an exploration of making and unmaking, where making i
282.
by mbrock 7y ago
With a simpler interface for posting and a more stimulating like reaction, who knows?
283.
by mbrock 7y ago
Well, every dichotomy is false, probably even the dichotomy between dichotomies and non-dichotomies... Dreyfus’s critique is about the first order (or whatever) logic programs, and I don’t think neural nets are cognitivistic in the same way
284.
by mbrock 7y ago
Weird. The podcasts I listen to are mostly improvised long form conversations between interesting people: EconTalk, Partially Examined Life, Primo Nutmeg, The Henry George Program, Software Engineering Daily, A16Z, Track Changes, Joe Rogan,
285.
by mbrock 7y ago
The question then is whether the kind of work a philosopher supposedly does—formal, conscious, symbolic—is especially fundamental to intelligence. Like, is the mind in its basic function similar to an analytic philosopher or logician? In or
286.
by mbrock 7y ago
Scandinavian entrepreneurs and coop workers can certainly participate in the social security. Probably some reforms could make the situation better, especially if cooperative business becomes more of a norm. When the firm spends more than i
287.
by mbrock 7y ago
An original source for the Heideggerian critique of symbolic AI projects is Hubert Dreyfus, a philosophy professor at MIT who specialized in Heidegger and argued that his colleagues in the CS department were codifying just the kind of naive
288.
by mbrock 7y ago
Why should they give up those things? Why not have both?
289.
by mbrock 7y ago
Renting out capital is not an ethical problem, but renting labor is. Human actions are not a commodity, and treating persons as tools is wrong for the same reasons “voluntary slavery” is wrong—it violates inalienable rights. The problem wit
290.
by mbrock 7y ago
Something like using legislation and taxation to shift corporate structure towards something more like democratic worker-owned firms. But that’s a long term project; I don’t suggest suddenly and forcefully restructuring existing corporation
291.
by mbrock 7y ago
Nowhere have I argued for eliminating private property or renting out land or capital; I’m for all of that, so I can’t really respond to your condescending dismissal.
292.
by mbrock 7y ago
Exactly, and there’s in particular the very special kind of rent extracted by the hiring of people to work for you without profit-sharing, and using your negotiation power as a capital owner to get people to agree to the terms of your emplo
293.
by mbrock 7y ago
> wealth is made by work It’s also naturally abundant in the form of land, those cadastral game tiles on which life plays out, dominion of which are allocated by the state in a system of hereditary monopolies. Wealth is not allocated the
294.
by mbrock 7y ago
I don't look for any ultimate or final meaning, ordinary everyday meaning seems quite sufficient. But worldly meaning is a vast thing with unfathomable depths. https://meaningness.com/misunderstanding-meaningness-makes-
295.
by mbrock 8y ago
Really good stuff! It’s kind of sad to see the cookie warning on first visit to an NHS page—from an accessibility point of view. If you’re sick and maybe older and you go to find some health information, the first thing you want to see isn’
296.
by mbrock 8y ago
Why can’t you do that?
297.
by mbrock 8y ago
Basic idea: to verify your robot in a quick and harmless way, disconnect its actuators, feed fake data to its sensors, observe its stream of decisions, and verify that it behaves according to some rules. If your robot has different parts wi
298.
by mbrock 8y ago
In a paradise world, every woodworker could have a deep knowledge of forestry, plant biology, the chemistry of dyes and glues, structural and mechanical engineering, metallurgy and tool repair, and so on ad infinitum. But actually we learn
299.
by mbrock 8y ago
I know that feeling but people were not entirely unlearned before widespread home broadband. Consider the possibility that you could even learn more than you do now, without using the internet at home. It’s likely possible!
300.
by mbrock 8y ago
I mostly associate procrastination with the inability to make myself want to deal with chores that seem alienating and dumb and like impositions from a boring bureaucratic external system that makes fundamental demands on me as a person wit

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