> It is possible for two things to simultaneously be true: things are awful for many people, AND things overall are better than they used to be.
That is correct and I agree.
What I am saying is that the global average getting better is a skewed and rather meaningless metric. The fact that 100_000 EU/USA citizes are slighly better off at the cost 1_000_000 asians -- random numbers to demonstrate how an imbalance can be evened out -- does not mean that humanity's economy is getting better. Not at all.
We should strive for everybody to be ever so slightly better, not that the average people that are extremely poor number to go lower, because that doesn't mean anything as the author proved -- $1.90/day for food as a measure for poverty? Laughable and irresponsible. Please try it yourself for a month and let's talk again.
Hence my angry reaction to the claim that the global average numbers are entirely pointless and non-informative. The world is too big, too much is going on. You cannot even know why something fell down by 0.1%.
> People seem to hate Pinker because they interpret his words as saying their suffering doesn't matter.
I am one of these people. And I will stand by it. Middle-class well-to-do authors do not belong in discussions like these. Go recruit people from the suffering countries. We the Westerners have almost zero credibility when talking about poverty. At least I am realistic enough to be acceptive of that.
> > Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely making ends meet and not being able to pay for the kids' gyms and proper nutrition.
> Again, that's not the point.
If that's not the point then any other discussion is tragically irrelevant.
The "global average is better" is a meaningless assertion. Everybody in the world has roughly one testicle. How useful is that piece of info?
And how useful is the "global average is getting better" to people who want to raise kids well-fed but currently cannot?
> ...but Westerners have a habit of classifying dissenting opinions as "just wrong" and dismissing/ignoring them.
Fully agreed. This is also extremely prevalent in any economic discussions here in HN where most of the first-world dwellers are cozying up their minds with the generic statement "it is all getting better on average" which I think is utter BS.
As a guy who has been to pretty poor parts of the world and lives in a country that touts any small bill that will benefit zero common folk -- but is always advertised as such for 30 years now -- I have to say, most first-world population is tragically misinformed on how are the average people around the world living.
How is anything you said related to the points defended -- and others debunked by -- by the article?
It was mostly talking about the amount per day needed to have proper nutrition. Why do you shift the goalposts to abstract terms like "it's improving faster"? Sure, if you are on the rock bottom, it's only up from there on, and obviously you want to go faster when distancing yourself from the bottom.
> Do people have access to more wealth (things they desire) than before? The answer is yes.
You lost all credibility right here. I suppose people living in their economically-alright bubbles will never be able to look objectively at how awful things are in so many places in the world. You just prefer the cozy illusion that it's all getting better.
Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely making ends meet and not being able to pay for the kids' gyms and proper nutrition. But sure, "on average things are better" -- and even this outlandish claim is proven wrong by this article, with hard data.
> The most optimistic opinions on where we would see autonomous car were on the 2020s.
Sure, keep moving timelines. It's what makes you money in the area. I am sure when around mid-2019 hits, it will suddenly be "most experts agree that the first feasible self-driving cars will arrive circa 2025".
I believe it's a good time for the publishing of a high-quality article detailing on how to build such mirroring servers with minimal budget.
Usually such machines don't need best CPUs around but they definitely do need ECC memory and serious NAS-like capabilities. So maybe older-gen Xeons? I am no expert though. Hopefully somebody publishes a blog post about it.
Since this is technically very illegal I'd be inclined to view your message as a bait to capture and jail one of the very first people who managed to mirror the whole thing.
On point, thank you. And pretty good evidence of neural network [re-]training, too.
You know, I couldn't give two shits about xenophobic and racist people like them, really. Let them do that and be happy.
As we say in my country however: "be stupid but get the fuck off the road".
Bad influences on young people from old and prejudiced (and bitter?) people is never good. We need a world with more open-minded people and societies like the Japanese aren't helping matters at all. But to be as objective as possible -- not sure our societies help matters either.
In my observations (and some bias; I am openly admitting it) which were sometimes reinforced by meeting real Japanese people, most Japanese are xenophobes, racists and very easily collectively agree not to speak about stuff they dislike / feel threatens some imaginary dominance / endanger their prejudices.
For all the glorification the country and its people get around the globe, and for all the romantic blemish their fatalistic and stoic philosophy receives, the Japanese I've encountered and observed remotely are pretty ordinary people with a lot of prejudice and hostility towards foreigners attached.
Not impressed. And this news comes as no surprise as well.
Guess people just love to glorify stuff that's very different from their own, with zero thought if that's actually a good thing?
One can easily get fed up and thus resort to a throwaway account. Hypocrisy is one way of looking at it. I'll not argue as to how you should be looking at it through my point of view.
If anything, I have numerous anecdotal evidence for my generalizations. But we all do, so that's not really a defensible position, I realize that. :)
My original objection is that many people in the thread, right here in HN, the place that should be where the modern intellectual elite hangs out, are no better than your random Google zealot who never misses the chance to piss on people for using Apple devices.
All of us should do better. I appreciate your criticism of my generalizations. While I think they are well-justified in the background of my life's experience, I am still not blind to the fact that they are prejudices as well.
Yes. Insulting people on the basis of using Apple products should disqualify them from any discussion beyond drunk jokes on a table in the suburbs.
(Disclaimer #38274932: I am not defending Apple per se. I find them pretty shady in a number of aspects as well as Google. But what is happening in this thread is just shameful.)
Yes. I am using a throwaway exactly because of this close scrutiny like yours. Examples: I've known racists who are amazing engineers. The fact that they were awful racists didn't demean their engineering ability. That's why for some of my posts I prefer being anonymous. People like you would probably try and demean me because they disagree with me on something.
I am flawed like everybody else and I'll be the first to admit my own prejudices -- even if I am not ready to overcome them at the moment (which is a sad reality for most of us).
But the amount of nitpick and prejudice I am observing periodically on HN is alarming and I feel the need to call it out here and there.
You can take it as an insult or you can try and extract something from the criticism that can enrich you. It's your choice.
Also please note that I am not defending Apple per se. But I expect better criticisms on HN compared to what is rampant right here in this thread.
WARNING: Meta comment. Downvote to your heart's content.
I am very disappointed and disheartened by a good chunk of the HN commenters right here in this thread. I would expect Apple hating in some Android-focused outlet where people get points and badges based on how much times they repeat "iSheep" in an hour, but here?!
Boys and girls around here, HN is the modern place where the more intelligent and supposedly open-minded folk gathers. It's one of the last bastions of free thought which isn't a filter bubble. You should be much better than what you show.
"Yeah but Apple doesn't protect privacy, it just..."
"Everybody looks privacy-oriented when compared to Google..."
"Google just collects data for its ad platform which people view as a bad thing..."
"Apple plays the privacy card to get more customers..."
etc.
...Seriously?
Look, none of us knows for sure. But talking like that disqualifies you from any intelligent and adult discussion in my eyes; and yes, you aren't much better than the Google fanboys I stumble upon daily on Google+ and 9GAG. Hence I am using a throwaway account. I am pretty sure plenty of people won't take this comment well.
Do better. A good part of you here are a disgrace to watch. And you're supposed to be an intellectual elite. Damn.
Can confirm. Currently working on several Elixir API apps, they are absolute joy to work on and you get tons of freedom on how exactly to structure them.
The "cruft" from the Phoenix framework is absolutely minimal -- mandatory 4-6 files per project at the most. And they're quite small, too.
>Guess what, no one, not even the most optimistic person, would predict it will beat the best human player in 10 years.
This is what I call living in a bubble, dear sir/madam.
I grew in a small town in Eastern Europe (~100k population) and me plus the local 50 or so programmers (using Apple II and 8086-based computers), in 1996, while we were in our teenage years, were painfully aware that games like chess and Go are brute-force-able with some elements of recognizing and memorizing viable strategies (and throwing out the unviable ones early on). And that was what, 15-19 year old late teenagers, and we knew it. So be sure that many people knew it -- they just never chose that area of expertise specifically.
This also says a lot about the quality of the average professors and textbooks, but let's not go off-topic, plus it's a huge discussion area.
Exactly what I was also aiming at; such mass exodus events signal either (a) that Rubin hired a bunch of greedy freeloaders that leave after the first signs of struggle, or (b) he is a dictator who's not pleasant to work with.
That is correct and I agree.
What I am saying is that the global average getting better is a skewed and rather meaningless metric. The fact that 100_000 EU/USA citizes are slighly better off at the cost 1_000_000 asians -- random numbers to demonstrate how an imbalance can be evened out -- does not mean that humanity's economy is getting better. Not at all.
We should strive for everybody to be ever so slightly better, not that the average people that are extremely poor number to go lower, because that doesn't mean anything as the author proved -- $1.90/day for food as a measure for poverty? Laughable and irresponsible. Please try it yourself for a month and let's talk again.
Hence my angry reaction to the claim that the global average numbers are entirely pointless and non-informative. The world is too big, too much is going on. You cannot even know why something fell down by 0.1%.
> People seem to hate Pinker because they interpret his words as saying their suffering doesn't matter.
I am one of these people. And I will stand by it. Middle-class well-to-do authors do not belong in discussions like these. Go recruit people from the suffering countries. We the Westerners have almost zero credibility when talking about poverty. At least I am realistic enough to be acceptive of that.