nathan_compton

9 ms·

91.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Yes, but for "land locked". I've been owned.
92.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
The problem is that the founding fathers believed in constraining the state because it could be abusive, but they should have understood that all power ought to be subject to the people, not just state power.
93.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
A lot of words to say "The initial part of a sigmoidal curve is not very informative about the parameters of the sigmoid function in question."
94.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
How are you dealing with the chademo only charger thing?
95.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
I don't know of a single leftist who would call Gates a leftist. Liberal, perhaps, in the economic and social sense, but not a leftist in any way shape or form. I don't know why its so hard for people to distinguish between these
96.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
What prevents you have from claiming to have one bias but having another (the one powerful people with money want you to have)? The problem isn't bias per se - its the desire of some parties to clandestinely shape public opinion. Mer
97.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
To me it feels like controlling a power tool. These things have a sort of momentum to them, because they do stuff so fast. It's easy to let the tool get out of hand.
98.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Are the trade-offs really unacceptable? Like why can't we just build treaties and international accords and just like do what humans have always done forever, and muddle through?
99.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
No comment on whether anarchists achieve this goal.
100.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Maybe we should have the balls to admit that these two obviously good things are good and maybe, if you give free humans good things, and they decide to have fewer children, then that is good too.
101.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
It isn't so much a problem with democracy as it is with human beings. I think of democracy as averaging out things so the swings related to specific types of evil, shortsightedness, good, bad, aren't as big. More authoritarian sys
102.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
A better, cleaner, solution that literally no civilization on earth would ever vote for or want to deal with. "Support families to raise kids" sells way better than "let old people die if they don't have kids to support
103.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
No one seriously wants to compare the relative merits of child factory slavery and traditional child bride type situations. Like literally no one here is saying "its better to enslave children in factories compared to having them excha
104.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
People think of anarchism as against organizations and rules, but its just against hierarchy. Western people in particular are so used to hierarchical thinking that its difficult to even imagine an organization that isn't hierarchical
105.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
It isn't just that they believe this - they want a business model where this is how it works. For a big company a star coder is a liability - they have strong labor power, they can leave and they are hard to replace, etc. Companies wan
106.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
I think a mature person accepts some compromise with society at large. How do you make sure your wife always wants to do what you want? You don't. You live with other people, depend on them, pay for them when they are sick or poor (one
107.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
I don't think this is obvious at all. I think its a reasonable function of the state to pursue policies that improve the mental and physical health of its citizens, partly because the negative effects of an unhealthy population are not
108.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
This is the reason I recently ran for my kids school board. I use AI every day and I think there is a lot of utility there, but I don't want it anywhere near my kids school. Honestly, I don't think kids need to even lay eyes on a
109.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Everything we don't understand we conceptualize using the most similar tools which we do have command over.
110.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
I'd much rather live in europe, having experienced both cultures. I don't have any problem with people earning wealth from selling goods and services, but I could do without people who want to be billionaires simply to be a billio
111.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
You can claw my HP48 out of my cold, dead, hands.
112.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Its funny, I can definitely sympathize with wanting multishot continuations, but I can't think of many times where I have wanted them to solve a problem.
113.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Yeah, its genuinely a case of "software hard."
114.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Perhaps that is all that is required, but I don't want the minimum. I want a simple life with enough to live. I don't want to optimize everything and I don't want to live in a world which is trying to optimize every interacti
115.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
I have written a very large codebase in Scheme (gambit) and in the end I really, really, wanted a type system to catch bugs.
116.
by nathan_compton 5mo ago
Kawa is a Scheme which runs on the JVM and is pretty great. https://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/index.html I am one of these people who cannot countenance a Lisp that doesn't have `syntax-case`.
117.
by nathan_compton 6mo ago
Yes, people in government famously don't know anyone else in government anywhere else and never communicate with one another or read the same research or look at what other countries are doing.
118.
by nathan_compton 6mo ago
Maybe I'm just spoiled with a large working memory, but I don't want an AI agent thinking or remembering of synthesizing for me. Seems like a great way to never have a new idea.
119.
by nathan_compton 6mo ago
I'm not optimistic. I think an accurate assessment of the world is, in a sense, pretty pessimistic. But I don't see any reason to get worked up about it. It would be very stupid to let my mind tell me that I cannot experience plea
120.
by nathan_compton 6mo ago
I don't know, I'm a die hard nihilist and atheist and I'm married, have kids, friends, and think life is beautiful and generally ok. I don't see why people need to believe in imaginary stuff and I don't really see h

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