"The rationalist community rediscovers Bayesian epistemology and treats it like a revelation, apparently unaware that the philosophy of science has been working through these questions since the 1920s. Blog posts get treated as foundational texts. People who have never read Kuhn or Lakatos or Feyerabend construct an epistemology from first principles, marvel at what they’ve built, and proceed to use it as the intellectual building blocks for decisions that affect billions of people. The confidence is inversely proportional to the depth. Dunning-Kruger at scale."
a lot of this resonates with me, but the nick bostrom ref takes me out of it, and honestly i have a hard time buying the idea that the best way to keep software open is a bunch of local openclaw installs
"Perhaps, back then, the problem was that FOSS communities lacked the political consciousness necessary to recognise their strategic position and to connect it to a broader context and a theory of economic warfare. Nowadays, we deal with the reverse problem — growing political awareness with little strategic application."
"If a working version of an operating system exists somewhere, the goal is to have it here, in a form anyone can run on a reasonably modern laptop/desktop."
"Unlike those of us that got an early glimpse of the potential of the internet before corporatism chewed it up and spit it back at us in subscription form, all many young Americans have seen is profoundly terrible assholes doing increasingly vile things in a country too broken, stupid, corrupt, and racist to function or resist"
"[S]uddenly an entire industry is telling you that you’re not capable of moving through your day without their help. An entire industry gaslighting you, until it becomes easier to just gaslight yourself into believing that you were never truly capable of things you are very much capable of."
"Are scholars truly defined by the fact that we cannot seek specific outcomes? I cannot agree with this. If I was a scholar of the environment, I would be seeking to end environmental catastrophe. If I was a scholar of medicine, I would be seeking to change health care outcomes. If I was an engineer, I would be seeking improved engineering methods."
"The singularity is MAGA for nerds. A fascist narrative used to undermine everyone’s right and ability to envision futures." (among various other quotables)
"[A] curated collection of simple, free web tools that just work. No subscriptions, no accounts, no tracking. Install them to your phone, use them offline..." these are nice but the lack of explicit licensing and source code gives me pause. also the font choice—unfortunately narrow serifs have been completely colonized by fascists and grifters
"[T]he age of around 2000 years stated in the Guinness Book is contested. According to the latest literature, the oak is estimated to be between 700 and 800 years old. [...] In its root zone, directly below the hollow trunk, there is a brick-built crypt containing the body of the manor owner Hans Wilhelm von Thümmel [de], who died in 1824."