HN user
I find the resistance to understanding these models so interesting. I talk to friend about this and few people are able to get over their initial optimism bias. Some of us who have familial experience with less ideal circumstances—war, poverty, genocide, and hyperinflation—do not hold the same biases.
I once created a website to catalog all of the out of copyright books in the Library of Congress and randomized selections so one could replicate the serendipity of browsing (locserendipity.com). In the process of doing this, Jessamyn West identified stickers or stamps on some of the books (https://twitter.com/jessamyn/status/1114333025716854784). Some of the staff at the LOC knew what they were—-stamps marking which books to take offsite in the the unlikely event the Nazis invaded the United States.
Wow, this is flagged? What was wrong with it, the suggestion we should not be intolerant of others? I will remind you of the paradox of tolerance, which explains why we shouldn’t tolerate intolerance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It is an important philosophical principle that is crucial to maintaining a free society.
Thankfully nothing like this is in Jitsi Meet’s TOS: https://jitsi.org/meet-jit-si-terms-of-service/
It never ceases to amaze me how companies choose the worst software!
Key takeaways:
1. One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary
2. Stuffy writing is bad writing! It lowers the power of your brain and mine!
3. What words should you never use in writing? Words whose exact meanings you don’t know! Never use a word unless you know EXACTLY what it means
4. If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too!
5. To keep things clear and readable: Put the main point of each paragraph in its first sentence
6. Pretend you’re writing a textbook! That’s how I ended up writing so many books...Organizing knowledge Learning is a lot like writing a book
7. I often write the introduction last, after I know what it will introduce!
8. Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that is not the main point