The underlying idea here seems to be that if there's some chance of full recovery, one should not wish to be let go.
Is it better for 100 families to live for years with a vegetative loved one with the most realistic hope being that a few to emerge profoundly affected and never their full selves again, or is it better for those hundred families to get to grieve?
The pain of a loved one's continued quasi-existence, plus the difficulty of their life if they ever are to recover, make it so that the compassionate personal choice is to say "once the best estimated probability of my recovering robustly is clearly below P%, let me go". The value of P is a decision to be made carefully, and with deep consideration for ourselves, our loved ones, and for all of humanity.
Yet we have laws around child endangerment. I'm a big supporter of parental sovereignty, but I also acknowledge that if society operates the way it does, I can't immediately think of a good reason why "mental health endangerment" (which social media for kids very much is) wouldn't be included in the broader scope of endangerment.
It is also a class marker. I intentionally lived without a car in West Coast city as a younger man, and I learned to be very selective about whom I told. The vast majority of people would assume that the only reason for not having a car is not being able to afford one, and would judge me accordingly.
Exactly--they're paid a lot of money for their reputation, which is valuable in offering cover for politically difficult decisions. This was certainly net-negative for E&Y's reputation.
I want to poke at this a little. I don't think the ribs on the handle of a knife qualify as skeuomorphism, since they serve a distinct functional purpose independent of their origin (namely, better grip).
I do agree that "leather for every app" starts to deviate away from the definition of a true skeuomorph. One could argue that the iPhone was trying to evoke the personal organizer of yesteryear, and therein lies the skeuomorphism, but since the functionality of an iPhone was so much broader than a personal organizer, it may be conceptual smear to call that skeuomorphism too (but I still think a good argument could be made that it is skeuomorphism, since the functional form of a prior design is still being evoked intentionally for aesthetic / emotional cueing purposes).
I think there's more nuance to it. The big failing of progressive movements is that they seek, often from a position of disadvantage, to impose power over society too, but in the ways they feel are more just. The vast majority of progressives I know aren't very interested in listening to the other side, or implicitly believe that the other side is wrong and it's just a matter of making them see that.
But this ignores the humanity of people on the other side of the issue--people who may have legitimate moral and philosophical questions about very difficult and complex issues.
It does seem that acting locally, within the realm of actual human relationships rather than alienating impositions of authority, would likely result in much greater good in the long term.
Many Catholic believers are huge stickers for tradition. The previous Pope didn't go nearly so far as to allow female clergy, and he was not viewed with respect by many conservative Catholics. If the Pope declared that the church must allow female clergy, and if that didn't cause a literal schism, he would nevertheless lose the respect of most Catholics who didn't already agree with him.
If the Pope decides that it doesn't actually accomplish much good to force the issue when Catholics as a whole aren't ready for it, he could either try to advance women's rights without tipping the boat over, or he could just not bother.
This Pope is choosing to try to be a voice for good, and seems to do so from a deep desire for moral justice in an imperfect world. I'm grateful for that.
Arguably, just to leave them alone, neither exploiting nor trying to "help". It sucks and it hurts, but outside interference does not seem to help a society heal itself. This has been argued by more informed people than myself-- https://www.uvm.edu/~jashman/CDAE195_ESCI375/To%20Hell%20wit...
Could it be that they haven't been so infected by the money bug that for now they still have a society oriented around happiness and maintaining traditional ways of life rather than economic attainment?
Yes, and: the rot started long ago, this is just what it looks like when it goes unchecked. To quote Mencius:
Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang.
The king said, “Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?”
Mencius replied, “Why must Your Majesty use that word ‘profit’? What I am provided with are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics.
If Your Majesty say, ‘What is to be done to profit my kingdom?’ the great officers will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our families?’ and the inferior officers and common people will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our persons?’ Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit one from another, and the kingdom will be endangered.”
That is so, but my understanding was that those later stories tie back to a lost epic (Iliupersis) that, while not officially attributed to Homer, was being sung contemporaneously with the other stories of the Trojan war cycle.
They'd generate a huge amount of ill will by shutting it down, and that in turn would likely lead to a nontrivial share of people moving away from Google core products (like search) out of pure spite.
I used to get lower back pain standing in concerts. For me, the pain had a lot to do with not properly engaging my glutes and core while standing still or moving slowly.
Yoga was very helpful--it taught me to use my muscles to carry my body rather than letting myself sink into my joints.
It was a very special time when the Internet was full of people's open, personal gardens. I feel fortunate for having experienced that because it showed me what's out there if I look, and I want to cultivate the pleasure of finding such things and sharing them with people I care about.
The sad thing that I haven't been able to resolve in my mind is that this is a cultural multi-party prisoners' dilemma among sovereign entities.
From a power-centric point of view, if my neighbors intentionally cast off modern technology, they are ripe for domination, economic exploitation, etc. The history of human civilization from the age of city-states onward is about navigating the need for protection from hostile, arrogating outside forces (and/or being one of those hostile forces).
That paper is about retrieving the input (prompt from user) based on the hidden-layer activations of a trained LLM, since their mappings are 1-to-1. I don't think it makes any claims about training data, certainly not about being able to retrieve it losslessly from a model.
Tit for tat (start by cooperating, and for each subsequent choice do what your opponent did last turn) is the optimal for repeated 2-party prisoners' dilemma.
The real world is much more complex. OPEC is a multi-party game, for starters. For another thing, there are cascades of social/political problems that get in the way of optimal strategy at the level of nations. I.e. that only works if politicians are more interested in solving problems than controlling narratives or maintaining power. Unfortunately, an ineffective leader can be sustained by controlling the narrative, while an effective leader can be destroyed by lack of control over the narrative. And one of the best ways to control a narrative (especially if you aren't a very good leader to begin with) is to create so much chaos that it distracts from your shortcomings, and blame the chaos on enemies.
Is it better for 100 families to live for years with a vegetative loved one with the most realistic hope being that a few to emerge profoundly affected and never their full selves again, or is it better for those hundred families to get to grieve?
The pain of a loved one's continued quasi-existence, plus the difficulty of their life if they ever are to recover, make it so that the compassionate personal choice is to say "once the best estimated probability of my recovering robustly is clearly below P%, let me go". The value of P is a decision to be made carefully, and with deep consideration for ourselves, our loved ones, and for all of humanity.