Good point. Worth capturing somewhere.

This is a nice, level-headed article. I can easily see that the arguments made in the setup section could well be quite robust. But there's no actual evidence.

"...many trans people...." How many is "many"? What research exists to support this? It's generally accepted that about 1% of the world's population is trans. While this is many millions of people, one must then wonder how few might actually fall under the rubric of this essay.

"...coming out as trans is often viewed differently...." Again, what does "often" mean here?

Still, many of the thought experiments offered in this essay are interesting and worth being considered by anyone interested in understanding themselves and thinking more clearly.

I should extract the thought experiments to a separate note for the sake of presenting them as exercises for self-discovery.

Or. perhaps, it's just rampant civic ignorance. I think there's a significant portion of the population who just don't care to be informed about the demographics of their own countries.

Consider how rhetorical analysis applies to alt-right political arguments. Alt-right arguments fail miserably under rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis is a tool of academia. Therefore academia is inimical to the alt-right. Therefore, the alt-right will seek to weaken and impune academia. And this is in fact what they do.

No new physics and no new mathematics was discovered by the AI. The AI did however deduce something from the existing math and physics, that no one else had yet seen. Skynet is not coming for us yet.

Aptera is trying to "disrupt" conventional automotive engineering. We need that. Sincerest good luck to them. They're also clearly left-leaning, progressive, and not bound by conventional economics. Could pass this around to my classes.

One reason why software engineering isn't "real" engineering: no ethical obligation to "the public good".

Note for historical purposes.

This is specific to USA. I wonder if anyone has compared performance in Canada, especially in engineering. The difference in the approaches to accreditation suggest to me that this may not be as much a problem. That is, since getting a license is harder in the US, then it may be that many students study engineering but then don't go into engineering. I'd like to see the numbers for just engineering. I'd like to see corresponding numbers for Canadian engineering. And I'd also like to know the numbers for the subset of students that then actually go on to a career in engineering. I wonder if the effect will still be present, and what the Canadian numbers would show.

An interesting bit of code that could let me have a single template to create a note or a project or a MOC. I could replace 3 of my current templates with a single one, and reduce the number of special hotkeys too.

Ghosting is only a problem for the ghosted if the ghosted values the opinion/support/endorsement of the ghoster.

So the real questions are: Why does one value the ghoster? Is that valuation warranted?

Assuming the facts are correct and complete here, it's surprisingly naive of Thunberg to take this view. One unknown is whether the displaced villagers were suitably compensated for being evicted. Still, taking 8 years off the deadline to end coal use - that's a pretty massive win and could set the stage for even more in the future.

Excellent article on the complex nature of rape. The key point for me is that too many people think it's always a black-and-white matter. In fact, the boundary between rape and not-rape is not that crisp. There is a boundary layer here. I think that if more people realized every boundary is really a boundary layer, there would be fewer conflicts about such matters.

In broad terms, when I read this highly abbreviated account of a very complex matter, I cannot help buy see a reflection of what's going on in the US - where Lenin is in the role of Trump.

Most significantly, it seems that in both cases, a madman got the poor and uneducated to throw out one form of power structure for another, in both cases of which the poor and uneducated gained nothing.

Incorporate this into my courseware and productivity notes.

This is a good example of how undesirable social facts (i.e., that some people will homeless) can undermine the overall health of the society. I added a comment to the article to explain in more detail the systems-level effects.

This just means that they're measuring productivity incorrectly. If they worked out productivity per work hour, they'd likely find the drop in productivity was much less, if present at all.

It's so disappointing to read about this ridiculous capitulation by New Zealand's government to woke extremism.

Māori "ways of knowing" are just not science, and no amount of political doublespeak will ever make it science.

Or like The Handmaid's Tale.... SF accurately predicts the future yet again.

This is a pretty good example of a strawman argument. The author uses the correct exponential growth formula to describe a precise 1% improvement rate. But that's not what the 1% improvement idea is about. For instance, consider https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/get-1-better-every-day/19161/ or https://betterhumans.pub/continuous-improvement-how-to-get-1-better-every-day-from-today-a8128c942c61 The argument isn't based on a strict interpretation of 1%.

Interesting statistic. Is this for USA? Globally? In any case, if true, I strongly suspect it means more fathers per capita are in prison than bachelors. The implications could be quite significant.

A great example of the lag that large, complex systems exhibit when responding to significant input changes.

Lag is something that humans are woefully weak at recognizing and understanding. This, and other systems concepts are what we need to add to the curriculum at all levels of education, to change this very significant shortcoming of "common knowledge".

In addition to the concerns about CRT generally, this popularization, and bastardization, of CRT speaks to the danger of releasing too much information from academia into the popular sphere. When incompletely considered theories, arguments, and models are made widely available, they will be taken advantage of by unscrupulous and malicious people.

Yeah, but those who would model the future for the sake of influencing it are driven to do so because they have no free well. And similarly, there are people who will patently refuse to pursue such an approach because they are driven to it by their lack of free will.

This is a good question. And we don't need to be able to predict the future to answer it.

This is a non-sequitur. Being able to predict the future is irrelevant. What matters is that whatever we do will be "determined" by the laws of physics and the state of the system at the moment of a decision.

Yup, that makes sense to me. I'm fine with that too.

Still, however, everyone is ignoring the influence of learning on our future state.

But can we? If there's no libertarian free will, then we cannot influence the future because we cannot choose to do differently than we will have done.

And that's the crux of the matter. Knowing that free will is only constructed, we can decide it would be best to not base certain decisions on its existence. For instance, how we deal with crime and punishment.

Of course, if there's no free will, then there are some people who will never accept it's non-existence.

Again, the problem here is that we can define and characterize baseball such that we can unequivocally say that a given entity either is or is not "baseball".

But we cannot do that for free will - because we cannot measure it.

Carroll is also being quite utilitarian, which is fine. My idea is that considering the utility of a concept only matters for emergent properties because they are constructed and not fundamental. The fundamentals have no utility; they just are.

Another way of saying this is that temperature and pressure are emergent properties of the more fundamental properties of the molecules of air.

The problem with applying this to free will, though, is that unlike temperature, we have no way to measure free will. If we can't measure it, I am quite comfortable in denying this analogy.

But why would they believe something so silly?

A good way to characterize free will from a purely scientific point of view.

Yes! This is very important. Recognizing that "race" is constructed rather than fundamental is the first step to recognizing the race is irrelevant, and that it can be jettisoned from our reasoning. Similarly, once we can see that "free will" is constructed and not fundamental, we can get past its philosophical shackles.

This is silly and unhelpful. How would the staff know what the laws of nature have determined without knowing more about the patron than even the patron themself know?

And there's the problem: do we really make choices? Or are we just unaware of the deterministic algorithm making the choice for us?

This is the difference between a social construct and a distinct physical phenomenon. In this regard, “time” is like “race”.

It seems to me that they tried to roboticize a manufacturing process for a product that was designed to be manufactured by humans. Rookie mistake.

If they want to automate construction of Mac products, they'll have to redesign the product to fit the constraints of robotic manufacture.

This is the wrong approach, because it imposes modern norms on past times. It's illogical and superficial.

It would be appropriate, though, to carefully review the histories of past logicians and to document more fully the roles that others played in their work, with a clinical and factual dispassion, and with the intention of being accurate and attributing progress to whoever actually did the work.

The only reason there wouldn't be enough BIPOC representation in SEP is if people were knowingly excluding that work because they were BIPOC.

Of course, sometimes you have to know an author is BIPOC to be able to appreciate why their point of view may be different than typical. It can provide context.

But even then, one must intentionally exclude people because of their background. How can one do that systemically and sleep at night?

Oh, come on. "Genius culture" exists in all academia to one degree or another. To say that logic is somehow more susceptible to this than other disciplines is stunningly arrogant and cloistered thinking.

Huh? The plastic ends up in the Garbage Patches - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

This is a surprising and disappointing oversight by ESA.

This is a fascinating bit of trivia, and that should be better known by the general public.

A good layperson's overview of one effort to increase cloud albedo to counteract climate change. I think that lowering insolation is somehow missing the point of combatting climate change, but it's a legitimate approach that still needs a lot of research.

What's particularly good about this article is how it manages to demonstrate how complex the problem is without smothering the reader in technobabble.

Seriously? Does the word "overkill" mean anything to you?

This is exactly the kind of language that is driving people psychotic: that there's only 2 modes - recalling and creating. Yes, there are these 2 modes. But there are others too, the most important of which are "resting", "reflecting", and "gestating". Without these others, which we must visit in balance with recalling and creating, we will end up in a rubber room.

This is an interesting article. It gives a historical perspective on a societal pattern in which technological changes lead to changes in architecture, which in turn changes how families and communities and societies changes.

The one thing they seem to have overlooked is the existence of a room called a "study". It was a thing, and now, perhaps, the "home office" will become the modern study.

This is a new reason to support proportional representation of some kind in elections. It doesn't fix the problem of representatives thinking of certain groups of voters as "the enemy", but it does give "the enemy" a sanctioned voice to defend them.

I guess it depends on what a "disposition" is too. One definition is "a person's inherent qualities of mind and character." But if it's inherent, then it's not something that emerges from behaviours in the right circumstances.

This should be motivation enough for instructors to take the time - assuming their bureaucratic overloads allow it - to find ways to make education relevant. This is something, however, that must be baked into people at a young age. And that's the real problem.

We need to slow down - in every aspect of our lives - so we can attend to the present more thoughtfully, seriously, and appreciatively. Now will never happen again.

This is clearly a political statement intended to get more people to contribute to the country's economy. It is, however, woefully wrong in the broader sense.

Persistence does matter, but it isn't "omnipotent". Persistence, like education, can and should be acquired. But without talent and intelligence (and curiosity, and honour, and truthfulness, and...), persistence alone will not suffice.

Nowhere in this article is any attention paid to how "hybrid work" would be implemented, the variable implementations that might be offered by different organizations, and the influence of corporate culture on the success of a hybrid work implementation.

The use of the word "illusion" is a bald assertion. None of the studies I've seen have examined "independence, flexibility and control" to see (a) what workers mean by these terms, and (b) how they measured those terms, and (c) whether there's any factual basis in calling it an "illusion".

Yup. This is basically a version of "don't coddle your students".

Bloom's work suggests that good parenting involves follows the child's natural proclivities and preferences. This runs contrary to the over-scheduling, helicopter-parenting approach of many modern parents.

Hasn't the 10,000 hour rule been debunked? See https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not-real-180952410/ for instance.

There is an implication here that "high performance" is a desirable goal for parents to attain in raising their children, as well as goals for schools to shape their curricula.

The question is: Why is high performance so desirable? And since high performance is a relative term, isn't this just a slippery slope that leads in the long run to utterly untenable expectations on children?

All this tells us is that IQ isn't necessary for "high performance".

This is irresponsible journalism. It implies that vaccinated people are more than twice as likely as unvaccinated people to be hospitalized for COVID.

This totally ignores the fact that more than 4 out of 5 Ontarians are vaccinated.

Systems that are too efficient will become brittle. Brittle systems collapse catastrophically when conditions vary too far from expectations. The only way to accommodate unforeseeable circumstances is to give up some efficiency for greater flexibility. This produces robust systems that endure where brittle systems collapse.

The lofty p=0.5 is utter bullshit. It was just an arbitrary, made-up value with no real evidence behind it.

That's 99.38% chance of being correct, yet that's considered "weak". Would that we could do that in medicine or the social sciences.

That's bollocks. Even when this article was published it was bollocks. There was evidence from all around the world that lockdowns work.

This is a case of false generalization.

The world was such that slavery was an accepted practice. Even if a person were against it, one wouldn't be taken seriously if one had no slaves. They were trying to change the system from within. I could live entirely off the grid to "save the environment" but then I'd lack the infrastructure to convince people to be more environmental. Why does Suzuki.org keep sending me paper things in the mail, arguing to save the trees? Why is it legal for women to go topless, but none of them do? So long as CRT advocates are fixated on imposing modern morality on ancient contexts, nothing will change. And so long as they keep up these ad hominem attacks on people with good ideas because they weren't saints, nothing will change.

This is not a claim about CRT or its validity. It's a claim about the public. Which means it's irrelevant to the validity of CRT.

Sure, but why do they want large families? Religious reasons? Ancient traditions? Ensuring continuance of the line? These are all terrible, laughably primitive reasons to have large families. I've yet to come across someone who could offer a good reason for having lots of kids.

That may be what some people believe, but there are other reasons too. Resource depletion, food shortages, and underemployment are big ones. Having fewer children isn't just about the climate; it's about creating a generally healthier society in the long term.

So, taxing people, say, $50 per year would allow the government to fund those charities, right? Sounds like an excellent way to facilitate climate change mitigation.

Are there countries that haven't already blown past their own targets and had to reset them? It seems quite naive of them to suggest that any country will be able to meet their targets. Indeed, considering how many countries that produce lots of GHGs have had to step back from their climate change targets, I would expect that accounting for policy changes would actually make population reduction even better.

This would be a useful plugin for freely publishing Obsidian content via Git, except for this problem. I depend on whitespace in filenames. Pity.

I'm forced to wonder if this is actually an instance of coddling. Creating the summaries for students removes the need for the students to learn to summarize what they study & learn on their own. Being able to summarize the work of others is an aspect of life-long learning that is, IMHO, crucial.

All this demonstrates is the amorality of capitalism. Ham is richer, but also an immoral propagandist for a demented worldview.

Too broad of a spectrum here. And why should students not fear recrimination? This is coddling, pure and simple.

Now imagine it from the students' POV, students who are taken 4 or more courses, and having to do the same engagement exercises over and over again in all their classes.

I think it would drive them in the opposite direction from that intended by the instructor.

Quite a pithy remark. Even though some may say it's far too reductionist, I would say reductionism remains the truest mirror of our selves. We're nothing but monkeys, except that we don't throw shit at each other, we throw nukes.

Might be worth discussing with class.

A very interesting design case, and addresses an important issue for (some) shoppers. (Probably mostly introverts.)

An interesting thinking exercise. Ask students the question as posed in the title. The critical thinking part is: question the assumptions baked into the title. And see how many students can explain the physics.

The trick here is that the retention seems to be the result of the application of active, IBL/PBL teaching methods. Indeed, the authors suggest that this retention wouldn't happen if conventional, passive teaching methods were used.

This is really more evidence that IBL actually works.

I disagree with this rather dated bald assertion. I think our experience includes everything processed by the brain - which is more than what we attend to - as well as the meta-level experiential interconnections our brains form in connecting memories to each other.

Bezos is failing to recognize the essential and fundamental differences between business and scientific exploration. The basic goals of the 2 types of enterprise are entirely different. We are not in the 15th century, and we cannot treat basic exploration like Queen Isabella treated Columbus's trips.

Not that Musk is any better than Bezos, of course, but the "competition" Bezos claims is essential is something that only works on paper in capitalist communities. Science and exploration don't work that way any more. Thank goodness.

This is exactly my problem with "knowledge" and it's inherent vagueness. I think it's far better for us all to admit that we have virtually no knowledge and instead only have beliefs of varying strengths.

This is a nice introduction to some issues of concern to me. For instance, the absence of pain is good - but why is it good? The empirical reason for this is that it satisfies evolved instinct. So again, what is good tracks to what is natural. But the naturalistic fallacy undermines that. And most importantly, there is no known scientific connection between evolution and instinct on the one hand, and "good" on the other. My answer is: morality is not natural, it is an artifice of humanity. And since it's an artifice, we can make it whatever we want.

Consider what's in Oxford Languages vs what's in Wikipedia. There's quite a difference between them. I suspect this is another term coopted by "emotional extremists" and irrationalists, but I'd have to study it more.

This article fails to recognize the societal benefits of free education. Since the US is all about the individual, this isn't surprising. However, the facts - as evidenced by countries where education is essentially free - is that it increases the societal level of education, which improves so many things, not the least of which is more informed and rational voting.

Isn't this an example of the law of the excluded middle? If LoEM doesn't exist (in Gisin's theory), then could there be information that isn't either created or destroyed?

The big difference between the paranoiac's conspiracy theories and the real ones is that in the fake ones the conspirators are "in it together" and form a like-minded group. In reality, the billionaires would be very happy to through each other under the bus if they could.

So it's not so much that there are real conspiracies as there are a known set of methods and tools - known to everyone, everywhere - that allow this gross power imbalance to be created. These methods and tools are known to all but can only be used by the rich because they are themselves very costly.

Quite frankly, I find these 8 rules quite pedestrian.

A potentially interesting task management plugin for obsidian. I'm a little worried about long-term support. I'm going to wait and see what happens.

This is not a published Chrome extension and it uses an odd workaround to circumvent Chrome security. So I'm not sure how safe it is. Keep an eye on it; if it develops enough, it could be quite useful.

This is an excellent example of just how convoluted and brain-numbing statistics can be if you really get into it - yet how vitally important it is to have excellent statisticians working on important problems like determining how exactly COVID is spreading.

Example of how expending a little extra energy creates two more useful outputs (compostable solids, and "cleaner" greywater) as well as lowering sewage system maintenance needs. Possibly, an example of how TRIZ "separation" principle can be applied.

I've got serious reservations about this Gerst fellow. His answers are too vague and contain too many bald assertions. The form of his answers fits what I've noticed to be a "style" of regressives seeking to promote obsolete traditions and social norms.

Granted, it's difficult to present precise information in "interview format" articles like this one, but education is too important to get get wrong - again.

This is another good possibility to hide most of the machinery of connecting hypothesis to obsidian. I like that it takes advantage of relatively robust existing bits of obsidian.

This is analogous to how I see systems everywhere, having studied them for a couple of decades.

Python batch-file approach for exporting from hypothesis.

CLI-based method for batch exporting hypothesis annotations in markdown suitable for adding to Obsidian. I'm not sure I like it; the idea of batch-filing the process irks me. I would prefer for it to all happen in the background.

This has possibilities because it backgrounds a lot of the heavy lifting by saving the annotation to a local markdown file.