I, too, am nervous of banning things, but we need to take a holistic evidence-based view. As part of this, we should be looking at the hidden subsidies that support UPF manufacturing and enable such products to be, in many cases, wildly cheaper than healthier alternatives
Your experience sounds eerily similar to mine, especially the hacky workarounds to preempt smartphones (I peaked when getting online by Bluetoothing a Clio to a Sony Ericsson). Your comment about the robustness of the 3c reminded me about when mine fell out of a pocket when I was cycling and a car drove over it. It emerged unscathed.
I think what's way more interesting is that dogs can master class inclusion: they can understand that this toy is "Mr Shakey" and this toy is "Elephant" but they can also understand that there is a superordinate category of "toys" that includes both Mr Shakey and Elephant, and when asked "Go and get me a toy" can choose either. This is mind-blowing, as children normally have to reach 7 or 8 before they have a solid grasp of class inclusion [0]
I did not read the paper, so I cannot comment on the "solid grasp of class inclusion", but regarding the capacity that you described in your comment, I have a 2-year-old and it's been a long while since she has mastered this (book vs this book, toy vs toy, fruit vs an apple and so on). As far as I know, most two year old have already acquired this concept.
(EDIT I see the other comment says something similar and you have replied)
Yeah, it's not really convincing that it can typically take up to 7-8. By that age kids are already able to read, write and do basic math, which of course requires them to understand "classes" like numbers and letters, such that they could handle both "write a number" and "write 23".
I did not know what class inclusion was, but now I'm thinking it's more complex than that? After a little bit of reading. "all daisies are flowers" and not "all flowers are daisies", this example seems more like the "solid grasp" you're referring to. And not basic categorization that a 3 year old might have: "foods", "toys"
Hmm, I'm now struggling to remember basic developmental psych, but there's definitely a phase at which linguistic children struggle with things having two names (it can't be both "dog" and "Rex") but I think you're right - this phenomenon is subtly different to class inclusion. But either way, dogs can do something with language comprehension that speaking children can't, which is the bit I find really interesting
My niece and nephew are being raised semi bilingually and they were happy to accept things could have multiple names before age 2 IIRC. The youngest only just turned 2.5 and can happily flick between Chinese and English (though has a bias towards English because that's what she hears more by a big margin)
Will be interesting how my future kids will be as they will be pretty much exactly 50:50.
They can also be taught certain distinctions within a class after having recognized the class itself.
For instance my pup picked up pretty early on that it’s big fun to chase birds. Where we lived at the time there were few crows (I honestly don’t recall seeing any), and when we moved to Seattle where crows are many she of course wanted to chase them too. But since I know that it’s better not to make crow enemies, I taught her not to chase them specifically. She now recognizes (usually) that crows are off limits, but still understands that other birds are generally fair game. (I don’t know if she’s also picked up on the fact that the crows recognize her too, but they definitely do.)
I don't know if it's a solid grasp of abstract class inclusion so much as the concrete difference between "let's play (with a toy)" and "go get this specific toy (which will prompt play)" but yes, it's still impressive.
In seriousness, this doesn't sound very different from some of the replies I got when I gave Google's Gemini a quick test yesterday. You should have seen the ticking-off it gave me for asking whether Joe Biden or Abraham Lincoln would win in a fight - the responses were exactly like this
"neural-chat" (a Mistral fine-tune, I think?) on Ollama leans toward Lincoln, but would not commit to it.
> "Considering their physical attributes, it would seem that Abraham Lincoln had a slight advantage due to his height and potentially greater weight. However, without knowing the exact circumstances or any combat skills of either individual, it is impossible to determine who would win in such a fight."
Personally, I'm 110% certain Lincoln would win, even if they were the same age at the time of the fight.
Pretty big knowledge miss actually - Lincoln's fighting skills were both legend and a matter of public record [1].
In his most famous, documented match -- for which some credit him with the invention of the "choke slam" [2] -- the man who would one day write the Gettysburg address challenged onlookers: "I'm the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come whet your horns."
In seriousness, this doesn't sound very different from some of the replies I got when I gave Google's Gemini a quick test yesterday. You should have seen the ticking-off it gave me for asking whether Joe Biden or Abraham Lincoln would win in a fight - the responses were exactly like this
Perhaps even more crudely, something like "You claimed you crashed your car because the sun was in your eyes, but it was morning and you were heading west...."
OP meant "can't afford them" in the sense of "couldn't afford the full price of". There are lots of people here in the UK on medium incomes driving around in £80,000 cars using this finance
How do the economics work out for the seller? Depreciation is highest at the beginning, when these people are paying the per month price. If they can't afford a loan for the price of the car, how are they making a lease payment that covers the depreciation for the leasor? I'm sure there's a reason but I can't think of it.
Let's say a car costs $50,000 and Joe wants to finance it (because he either doesn't have $50,000 or just doesn't want to spend $50,000 right now), so he gets a $50,000 loan to buy it. Let's also say the loan will mature in 10 years, also obviously the loan has interest but we don't need a specific number for this conversation.
The minimum payment per month will be set such that Joe will pay off the loan in 10 years, and Joe presumably can afford the loan's minimum monthly payments since he accepted it to buy that new car.
If Joe wants to pay off the loan sooner and he can afford it, he can just pay more than the minimum due during a given month.
So Joe gets a loan from a bank (oftentimes middleman'd by the dealership), the bank pays the dealer in full, Joe gets his car, the bank becomes the lienholder on the car until the loan is paid off.
Thanks! Indeed I've always paid cash for any new cars I've bought. But I still don't see how companies that provide leases are able to purchase a car, lease it out for cheaper than the cost of a loan to people who couldn't afford the loan, and still make money despite the depreciation?
If I want to buy a car and lease it out to make money, but charge half that much so people who can't afford it can still get it, then let's say I charge 250/month. It would take 17 years of leasing it at the rate that it was worth when it was new in order to just break even and get my outlay on the car back.
So it's possible that I'm missing something else key about how car loans work but the numbers don't seem to add up for the leasor that your market is people who can't afford a car loan. Even https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/lease-vs-buy-calcu... seems to indicate that you pay a little less for the loan than leasing, so I'm still not getting how leasing is the budget option that helps people get a car they can't otherwise afford a loan for.
EDIT: the answer is here: https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/car-finance-pcp-explained/. Apparently in the UK, leases work with a small monthly payment, but at the end of the lease term there's a gigantic balloon payment where you pay back the difference between your cheap payments until then and what you actually would have owed if you had a normal lease or loan the whole time - thus making the leasor whole. The system is designed such that the leasor will always have received the cost of depreciation (plus more) at any point in the term.
Answering from a US point of view... Generally, the total cost of leasing a car is going to be more than the total cost to buy a car on a loan and resell the car in the same time period. In a perfect market, I think the difference in the total cost of loan versus lease is essentially the value of transferring risk from the consumer to the lessor as to whether the car retains its anticipated residual value at the end of the term.
With a loan, the buyer pays off the principal and interest and absorbs any discrepancy between the resale value and the remaining debt. With a lease, the lessor absorbs the discrepancy as long as the consumer meets the other stipulations of the lease, such as mileage limits and maintenance. The lessor acts almost like an insurer to charge fees and absorb this risk across a whole fleet of cars.
Are cars ridiculously overpriced in the UK? GBP 80000 is USD 101000 right now, which is basically high-end sports cars or a Mercedes S class or BMW 7 series. I’m a very high earner and have never paid USD 70000 for a car.
Sorry if this is obvious, but have you tried the options in Settings to avoid the OS killing certain apps? On my Pixel it's Settings > Apps > App Battery Usage > (choose app) > Unrestricted
