nathan_compton

5 ms·

61.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
When I was a kid there was a strong "nerd/jock" dichotomy. But now, according to my own kid, there isn't any such thing. I view this as good.
62.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
Is this the most charitable interpretation? You could, for instance, require people who own habitations to actually live in that location. You could tax people who own property they do not actually live in very aggressively until they would
63.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
Merch has to move for them to earn a percentage. If prices are systematically too high I would guess liquidity goes down.
64.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
It took decades if not hundreds of years for the social disruption of industrialization to clear. I literally do not give a fuck about some hypothetical more productive activity I might be able to do in 150 years if it destroys my very real
65.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I've recently switched to grapheneos. I have a high tolerance for shit not working, but its been fine.
66.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
There are pittances and then there are pittances. I make a bit more than a typical adjunct or whatever because I have very specialized skills, but its ok not to make a lot of money. I mean this is a place where the founder just wrote a blog
67.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I'm not tenured and I doubt I will ever be and I'm not even interested in it. I have a support role in academia, get to teach, and am pretty well compensated (though I make 2-3x less than I could in the private sector. But its eno
68.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
> Be nice, think about hard problems for a long period of time, only speak up when you have something positive to contribute -- be labelled an underperforming academic and managed into obscurity. I'm in academy and I'm mostly q
69.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I would happily, delightedly, see the entire internet disappear in a puff of smoke, to remove ads from the world. Honestly, I'd be happy to see everything on the internet except the wikipedia vanish regardless, at this point.
70.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I don't know, it seems like being a pacifist is harder, since it exposes you to violence to which you cannot retaliate while alienating you from your peers with less stringent moral opinions. Doesn't seem like it really makes anyt
71.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
Worker owned cooperatives have a variety of ways of doing this. Voting directly, electing people, etc. The main difference is that the cooperative typically doesn't buy the myth that the person making the high level decision needs to b
72.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I have to second this. I find the AI written documentation extremely loathsome, hard to read, and somehow both pretentious and lazy. Please, I beg everyone, stop posting AI slop.
73.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I'm kind of curious as to how you justify this. I personally think its ok for people to have arms, but I don't personally believe in basic human rights. Where would such things even come from? Rights are just conventions which oug
74.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I don't own a gun, but I live in a very rural area. It might take police 20 minutes to reach us in an emergency, even if we managed to make a call (as we might not in a home invasion, for example). From this point of view I can see the
75.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I don't know - this is a highly specific interpretation of both what science is and why people choose to do it. I'm a scientist. Believe it or not, I believe in substantially more than prediction and I think its rather trivial to
76.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
It is in the nature of capital to ruin it - if users feel great about a product it implies that there is more to wring out of them. The ideal product leaves the user with nothing but the utility the product provides with no extra pleasure.
77.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
Smart phones should absolutely allow you to lie to apps about what permissions they have, to feed apps fake data, and to basically control every single thing the app sees about the phone and the user. The fact that they do not do this revea
78.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I don't think anyone with a lazy disposition would get into teaching. There are so many other jobs that pay better and involve less work.
79.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
I friend of mine once made an observation that really stuck with me: a kindle is not a book: it is simultaneously all books at once. If you lock it to a single book, its still all books at once, but with a lock on all the others. Also, why
80.
by nathan_compton 4mo ago
For awhile I tried all sorts of digital notetaking devices. Eventually I realized that pen + paper notebook was vastly superior to all of them for retention, ease of use, and cost. I am sure that, for some people, the calculation is differe
81.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
I have this issue with students a lot and I'd rather get broken english than AI slop.
82.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
But there was also a lot of hard work to push legal reforms and protections to ensure quality and a good living for people displaced by or pressed into work by the new models. It isn't just an "adapt or die" situation on a pe
83.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Who cares? It isn't like bad people can't have good ideas and vice versa. From where I'm sitting Luciferians, Theosophists, etc are just as suspect as Catholics because they believe in imaginary stuff.
84.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
You got downvoted, but I'm a bit curious - can you elaborate on these critiques?
85.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
I don't think its really feasible - there just isn't enough training data before calculus. I would guess all the mathematical and philosophical texts available to Newton and Leibniz would fit on a CD-ROM with loads of space to spa
86.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Weird thing to say about a report which literally has the attached mathematical proof.
87.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
You could make it prohibitively problematic to use for most things.
88.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
In the current system technology is meant to serve the shareholders. That might end up serving us, if you believe the standard narrative. But maybe the shareholders will just carve out a few nature reserves for themselves and just wait for
89.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
The best time to be anywhere is when the value of something is obvious but rich people don't yet understand it so they can't micromanage it towards pure productivity and ROI. Money flows in with very little oversight.
90.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Nobody's perfect, friend. You're totally right.

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