"Grinding is a fantasy by which the change you desire can be achieved by continuing to do what you are already doing in small, comfortable increments. Grinding is the copium of liberal democracy: enough small instances of inoffensive protest and general decorum will gradually push society to Max Level. Is Metaphor: ReFantazio an allegory😉 for the Obama administration, some mildly progressive status-quo-ing aestheticized as radical change?" (by Todd Anderson) I disagree with this but it is usefully provocative haha
"Large increases in material output, we are assured, can save liberalism from the civilizational choice between socialism and barbarism. I disagree; refusing to be forthright about society’s structural antagonisms opens the door to demagogues who peddle false conflicts that still ring truer than the liberals’ false peace."
"An engineering problem is solved when the structure works: a bridge bears the weight. However, a bridge bearing weight does not confirm one's hypothesis that bridges possess an understanding of gravity."
"I am in a position to know and appreciate what a difference education makes to the quality of your life. The vastness of the world it opens up to you while simultaneously instilling in you the curiosity to explore it. The sense of perspective it offers, enabling you to view the events of your life, and the events of whatever historical moment it is yours to live through, in a much larger context, rather than being resigned to viewing them from a standpoint of uncomprehending ignorance, as if they were all happening for the first time and for no discernible reason."
"[G]iven that the cost to use a larger, better capacitor is effectively nil in most cases, you can keep experiencing that exact same level of cognitive load avoidance by just using 1uF or 2.2uF instead, in the smallest capacitor package that is practical for the voltage and assembly constraints you have, and placing it right up against the power pins. It’s free real estate, or something."
"Digital marketing is a fundamental threat to human flourishing, cognitive autonomy, and democratic governance. The industry has normalized a state of perpetual surveillance and manipulation that would have been unthinkable just decades ago. Its methodologies have created a world where attention is constantly hijacked, emotions are continuously manipulated, and reality itself is customized in pursuit of extraction value."
"The fight you're in is about segregation. The government is forcing you to choose segregation -- the obstruction of non white people (and white women) -- as well as queer, trans, and disabled people -- from entering or advancing in your industry." honestly "DEI programs" should have been called "anti-segregation programs" since the beginning
"... the imperfections and bad decisions are what makes Gorton come alive. They don’t feel like a profound misunderstandings of typography, typesetting, or Gorton itself. They don’t feel like abuses or aberrations. No, they feel exactly how Gorton was supposed to be used – haphazardly, without much care, to solve a problem and walk away."
"[E]ven if the growth in AI never materialises, the hype has set in motion a chain of events which, if allowed to go unchecked, can only lead to a rise in emissions.... [G]enerators will want to sell [their excess] electricity and therefore push hard to increase consumption... as they need at least to recoup their investment. Data centre operators also want to make a profit... so even if AI would die an ignoble death, they will try to find new workloads, and again push at consumers to use those new services." extrapolating from this: if it wasn't AI, it would be something else. there's nothing in place to meaningfully stop big oil from selling their product and capitalists from using that oil to power whatever new useless scheme they can come up with to make number go up
"Convincing everyone isn't the goal; noticing direction is, and noticing who aligns with and against simple declarations of truth and decency will do that. Your practiced indifference to convincing your opponents, meanwhile, will deliver the message that truth and decency are things that will be pursued without first receiving permission from indecent liars."
"[E]ssays like pg’s... create the permission structure for people to discriminate against me. [...] I’m better at my job than most. I’d be a better startup founder today than I was in 2015. None of that will matter. It feels as if people like pg, or at least people he hangs out with, who once upon a time believed in me, who lifted me up, recognized my talent, would now prefer that I be relegated to the sex slave caste."
"When eugenics-obsessed billionaires try to sell me a new toy, I don’t ask how many keystrokes it will save me at work. It’s impossible for me to discuss the utility of a thing when I fundamentally disagree with the purpose of it."
"Embedding tricks and chain-of-thought prompting simply extends their ability to do more sophisticated pattern matching. The mathematical results imply that you can always find compositional tasks whose complexity lies beyond a given system’s abilities."