Google should totally be experimenting with what can be done, but it seems to be a bit odd that they put something so uninspiring front and center like that.

You can hardly blame people who make fancy websites for projects which look cool but you can't tell what it is they have to offer. If the alternative is a plain simple 'here it is, it does this' followed by a pile-on of armchair critics who have already decided on the quality of your project because your page lacks razzmatazz.

I had a conversation a day ago with a couple of high-school students who, were obviously smart (and a bit on the spectrum), but also lacking in broad knowledge, as one would expect from high-school students.

I think it revealed something about that sense of 'magic' or inaccessible talent. One of them mentioned the fast inverse square root function and marvelled about how even anyone could even come up with an idea like that because it seemed to him to be some transcendent feat to be able to realise casting binary floats into ints would be useful. They had looked at the function and couldn't fathom how something like that worked.

We had no computer to hand, but I asked him what 10^100 divided by 10^10 was. Smart kid that he was, answered instantly, correctly. I then asked him what operation he performed in his head to do that, and noted floating point exponents are just using 2 instead of 10. On the spot he figured out how the fast inverse square root worked. The magic vanished and it became accessible. Some people lament the loss of 'magic' in this way, but I think the thing that makes it special, in this instance and in the universe in general, is that it still works, and it isn't magic. It's real and the fact that it be that without invoking some unaccessible property makes it even more special

I don't think an opinion becomes more based in reality by sticking the words "As a matter of fact" in front of them.

Last time I tried I ended up getting sidetracked by making a tool to help me. https://fingswotidun.com/PerfBoard/

But at least that's made the job of building a nice compact ALU module much easier. (One of the test boards in the app shows it)

I think Curtis Yarvin(And indeed Davis) are not a representative example of any particular idea. Pathologies perhaps, but while the symptoms of such things have enough similarities to identify them, they do not manifest in a way that can characterise a typical expression of the phenomenon. To do so can be dangerous, and result in management of a set of symptoms rather than the cause.

Put into the context of Terry Davis. Terry was not racist because he was Christian, and neither is it true to say that people with schizophrenia will be racist. It was a complex and unique manifestation. I think Curtis Yarvin has a similar level of incomparability

It's a classic Hitler was a vegetarian argument.

Talking to people with different opinions is considered tantamount to joining them. It is much better to point the finger of blame rather than suggest a way forward. The best way to criticise someone's argument is to take their words, explain what they really meant by that in a way that supports your argument, making the counterargument ridiculously easy.

What I don't understand is that how people have come to believe that arguing for the things that corporate interests fought for represents standing against those interests.

The thing that has it in a nutshell was this line

>The cumbersome copyright/patent process. Cumbersome to whom, exactly? This is always the move. The thing your industry would prefer not to deal with is reframed as an obsolete burden. Your refusal to do it is rebranded as innovation.

Cumbersome to everyone without a battery of lawyers. Copyright law has only become more powerful, and the patent process has become more a game of who can spend the most in court on this meritless claim. Disney didn't spend all those lobbying dollars extending copyright out of concern for the welfare of the people. They did it because they wanted to buy and own ideas and keep them for themselves for as long as possible.

I am all for robust well enforced regulation to help and protect people. I thing laws should be in the interest of society and the welfare of everyone more than it should for individuals. I don't think anyone advocating for personal freedoms is necessarily arguing against the interests of the group. There are people out there suggesting ways to correct the system through many many boring but required changes, some of them quite little, some of them large, one of the large ones is getting money out of politics.

I wonder if John Perry Barlow advocated for electoral reform to reign in lobbying? Because it didn't happen, and quite frankly arguing about the world that came to pass without that happening isn't going to represent anyone's plans for the future no matter

So what do we want to build? How should the better world be. Don't frame it as Not that!. Do you want the Revolution and Reign of Terror or the Declaration of Independence and a Constitution?

You can fight to build something better, don't confuse fighting to tear down as the same thing because you are angry and fighting about it makes you feel good about that.

Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government. - John Perry Barlow

If AI is being used in these areas it is less as an attempt to manipulate as it is to just create noise and engender distrust in what they hear.