Depending on the language it could be tricky. For example in Ruby everything literally is an object. There are no standalone functions. Not having a class simply makes it hard to use. I can't autoload methods. I could group them in a module but that's not the point. So while coding in Ruby I'm planning to stay with small classes. I treat class as a smallest testable entity in Ruby.
On the contrary, in Python, a function is a first class citizen which can be selectively imported and easily tested.
As Smith described, people didn't invent money straight away. First, resources like salt and metals; then stuff you can melt (easily divisible). Then official coins of equal weight to fight counterfeiting and inaccuracy of weight.
I'm afraid this is one of the "history doesn't fit my ideology" pieces.
I expected such semi-negative, distrustful comment the second I finished reading this list. Some will dislike the individualistic, anti-collectivist character of it.
There's a big difference between ugly ad hominem comments and saying that your code is bs.
> and has no practical downside
That's the place when we differ in opinion. It has one direct downside of preventing some people from expressing their opinions and conveying the point. And another in the long run – setting up a precedents of what can and cannot be said.
> Feel free to label me however you please
It was general note not something directed at you.
It always contains some information payload. If you felt triggered by it and failed to parse the content then maybe you're overly emotional.
For some people who aren't it's going to be useful assessment of how bad this code was.
I see this ongoing trend (Twitter) that by limiting the ways in which people can express themselves, you can in theory broaden the recipient circle (to include people who otherwise would be offended and wouldn't read).
In practice you not only limit the ways in which information can be distributed but often also barter away some people who weren't offended and would get useful information this way.
Looking at speech this way is also a bad idea because today's acceptable is tomorrow's unacceptable word and the only way to allow all information is to allow all speech.
There's plenty of people arguing that logic itself is white oppression mechanism so I'm not surprised.
This is a moral / philosophical problem not technological one.
We have lots of things opposing each other:
- democracy and majority vote vs minorities
- solving 80% of problems efficiently vs ideal utopia
The world itself is biased, we are all biased, we all have different moral values. There is no definitive moral rule with which we could compare anything and easily say it's good or bad.
Conservatism isn't inherently bad just like openness to new ideas isn't. We usually need the right proportion of both to go forward.
I'm not sure if the US freedoms are just talk because all those successful companies which Spain wants to tax were started in US not in EU.
So Spain with it's $12B of export can risk imposing tariffs (it's essentially a tax at mostly US companies) compared to e.g. Germany which exports much more.
According to CEIC Spain had $232B of tax revenue in 2018. The article suggests it's going to bring 850M EUR = $943M to state's coffers so would represent around 0.4% of yearly tax revenue.
How come it's easier to impose a tax on particular area (which sounds unfair) and risk international relations with US instead of doing something else to gain just 0.4%. Either it's ideologic or they really can't find the money.
One doesn’t have to be exponentially smarter than others in given moment – by compounding smart ideas and decisions one can get exponentially better outcomes in time.
That's a great point! The pain rule seems a little arbitrary to me. Pain evolved only in some life forms for which it was beneficiary. It doesn't seem to make killing them more problematic than life forms which can't feel pain. It's only our emotions which react to pain and thus it seems worse.
First of all we should at least have a common definition what intelligence even is.
Even then I'm not sure we'd know what General Intelligence would be because all we know is Human Intelligence or maybe lower level Animal Intelligences where the problem solving mechanism seems to depend on biological body and it's form.
Humans navigate the world with automatic impulses which we evolved over time to deal with way too much signals from the environment so we can filter and react only to those important.
We can then use consciousness to slowly map new impulses as the environment changes and go back to autopilot for most of the time.
What if our intelligence isn't general but it's just enough to navigate the world we can perceive with out senses? What if we'll never be able to understand e.g. the quantum theory (or at least the part of a world experience which we call this way)? If there's is superset of out intelligence or different sets of intelligences which we just don't undestand?
We think that our problem solving can take on any problem but maybe we're only taking on the problems we can take on, limited to our perception of reality which can be limited?
So I think instead of calling it AGI the name should be more like Artificial Human-like Intelligence.
It depends on your moral values which can be different.
If you skip the simplification vegans are using to justify eating plants (they don't scream and run away when we're trying to eat them) you hardly can eat anything ethically.
Apart from "written in X" is kind of clickbaity I find it useful after all. I think that Go code is clear and readable and so it would be much easier to add missing feature and use if I had such need.
Where "written in Rust" is almost a show stopper for me because I just can't read through the source despite numerous attempts (not saying that Rust is bad of course, it's just subjectively hard to approach for me)
I think it's big companies' websites which are bloated and slow compared to "kids and experimental artists".
> Second, the internet is supposed to be a place of equality, where kids, experimental artists and businesses all get the same respect and treatment
I think it's okay not to respect poorly written websites as long as it's the people who can judege. But when big corpos are putting regulations in place on what it means to have a good website – I agree with your point and someday it might impossible to run your own website like it's now with mail server.
On the contrary, in Python, a function is a first class citizen which can be selectively imported and easily tested.