mbrock

33 ms·

361.
by mbrock 8y ago
Indeed. But questions of how to evaluate results are always answered by way of some kind of preference, desire, or ideology, right? Different ethical principles can be in conflict; there's no objective measurement of the good.
362.
by mbrock 8y ago
In political issues, what kind of evidence do you require? For example, what evidence can settle the question of whether the state ought to use taxes to provide healthcare?
363.
by mbrock 8y ago
NixOS seems in some way to have more momentum for curious hackers than any other GNU/Linux distro; people who get into it really get into it. I myself consciously try not to be evangelical about it, still many of my friends and acquain
364.
by mbrock 8y ago
You still need a company or foundation stable and competent enough to maintain it and not ruin it for 50 years...
365.
by mbrock 8y ago
I’ve been learning about Barry Smith’s project for a scientific base ontology, Basic Formal Ontology, and it’s really fascinating stuff.
366.
by mbrock 8y ago
What does it even mean for one aspect of the business to be “less serious”? It sounds like an immature and useless valuation. The frontend is a critical aspect of all user facing systems. Excellence in developing and improving that is very
367.
by mbrock 8y ago
I sounded more judging than I really am. The contrast between virtue as perceived by one’s peers and global utility is a fascinating problem. Few people appreciate the virtue of someone like Norman Borlaug, but if you personally abstain fro
368.
by mbrock 8y ago
Doctors and journalists use a lot of software. Everyone uses computers all the time. Making software better can be a very high leverage activity. Sometimes fixing one bug can save hours of work for a whole bunch of people. Right? So it basi
369.
by mbrock 8y ago
That’s not the only possible ethical judgment. You’re assuming a kind of utilitarian perspective, but I think most people have at least an implicit virtue ethical perspective, which might come into play when evaluating the morality of a per
370.
by mbrock 8y ago
I've only been using GNU/Linux since around 2000. I started on Slackware 7, then I was on Red Hat for a while, had a Gentoo phase, and then Debian was my main choice for a long time, although I used Ubuntu on some computers... Whe
371.
by mbrock 8y ago
That sandwich anecdote reminded me to post a link to this essay about Tractatus as a demonstration of the "autistic cognitive model par excellence ." http://autisticsymphony.com/wittgenstein.html "Ludwig W
372.
by mbrock 8y ago
I think there's a certain economistic mindset that has a hard time dealing with how a more restricted interface can actually be more inspiring and productive. If all the measurable quantities are smaller, how could it possibly be bett
373.
by mbrock 8y ago
Pretty interesting that there are to this day updates in the POSIX standard for ed...
374.
by mbrock 8y ago
I use it when I for some reason need to do something like "delete line 398". Just open ed and do "398d" and "wq". That's my habit for deleting stale entries in ~/.ssh/known_hosts. For a while I m
375.
by mbrock 8y ago
Whether philosophy has been a useless waste of time is a commonly recurring question. I think it's asked from a kind of historically privileged position, since we have already mostly gotten it over with, so to speak. Another perspectiv
376.
by mbrock 8y ago
I enjoy Richard Rorty's writings along similar lines, like in his essay "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids": "I decided to major in philosophy. I figured that if I became a philosopher I might get to the top of Plato's &
377.
by mbrock 8y ago
There’s a nice book by Edward Kanterian called “Ludwig Wittgenstein” from Reaktion Books Critical Lives series which is quite good, and shorter than Monk’s biography.
378.
by mbrock 8y ago
“I should have liked to produce a good book. This has not come about, but the time is past in which I could improve it.” (Preface to Philosophical Investigations)
379.
by mbrock 8y ago
https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/python3/ could be useful.
380.
by mbrock 8y ago
I'm renting a private office space where I do my work as a remote contractor. It's glorious; it's also my firm's biggest expense, but hey, life quality. For various reasons I'll be terminating the lease soon. Instea
381.
by mbrock 8y ago
And yet I still think that computer programming, and solving computer problems, requires a high tolerance for boring drudgery... Imagine teaching coding skills to an impatient friend. “Okay, today we’re going to learn about Node package man
382.
by mbrock 8y ago
This whole question is obviously kind of tiresome in how it’s repetitively treated on internet boards every day, but I think it’s still fundamentally baffling and I’m always curious to interrogate people who seem to have “figured it out” in
383.
by mbrock 8y ago
I don’t make any claims about this mystery or try to deal with it in any pseudoscientific way. My stance is something like: empirical science is the functioning mode of investigating and predicting the patterns of observable reality, and th
384.
by mbrock 8y ago
Why is continuity in that sense important rather than the sheer experienceness of experience?
385.
by mbrock 8y ago
http://www.kfs.org/jonathan/witt/t563en.html Tractatus 5.6.3 presents the metaphysical problem quite clearly. The perceiving subject is a limit of science, kind of like the big bang which is also fundamentally and
386.
by mbrock 8y ago
Somewhat spontaneously attending the GF (Grammatical Framework) summer school gave me a totally different appreciation for natural language formal grammars. Now when I’m learning a foreign language I can actually look at its GF grammar and
387.
by mbrock 8y ago
Wanna name a supposedly easy language and let’s see if we can come up with a list of things about it that are kinda difficult?
388.
by mbrock 8y ago
Functional purity isn't broken by Haskell-style I/O. In Haskell, I/O is not done through side effects, and I/O effects are not functions, so your points 1 and 2 are not violated. It's not a "fantasy." You
389.
by mbrock 8y ago
I don't think that's what functional purity means. Actually I think there are a lot of huge misunderstandings about this. It's kind of like, think about grammars of human languages. Obviously human communication involves comm
390.
by mbrock 8y ago
Try putting something like this on your Mac in /usr/local/etc/wireguard/foo.conf: [Interface] PrivateKey = redacted Address = 10.100.0.3/24 [Peer] PublicKey = redacted AllowedIPs = 10

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