HN user
It's a catchy title and so-so article, but I have to be autistic and point out that "X isn't about Y" is almost always false: rather it should be "X isn't (only|mostly) about Y". Clever false dilemmas are the opiate of the 115-IQ set.
I'll see your contrarianism and raise you an ad hominem.
As with post-modernism (which this is simply a late stage manifestation of) you shouldn't blame the superficial reaction, you should blame the initial problem, which was architectural modernism and an obsession with discarding all the lessons of the past in the name of innovation, so called. Tom Wolf nailed it in "From Bauhaus to Our House":
https://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom-Wolfe/dp/031242...
As badly as these buildings suck, they at least make a gesture at a humane world.
Christopher Alexander tried to warn us.
Unfortunately, the more difficult it is to gather experimental evidence (as it is psychology), the more this desire takes over, I think.
And doubly unfortunately, even the gathering of experimental evidence is subject to this problem: funding is denied for politically incorrect studies, the methodological problems found in all real world experiments are emphasized in the studies we dislike, ignored in studies that confirm our biases, etc.
This makes far more sense than apples touch bar, especially if it was modal with a few different keys that brought up different screens.
That is simply emotional nonsense, on par with young earth creationism. The heritability and heredity of intelligence, for example, has been established beyond all reasonable doubt and no one in the intelligence research arena disputes it.
I appreciate the moral sentiment, and to an extent I even feel it myself, but being a denialist is not an answer. We need sane, sober and humane discussions about public policy dealing with the increasingly uncomfortable results coming from the genetic research community.
Eugenics has a bad name, but it is scientifically valid. We now know that genetics play a huge role in life outcomes (e.g. adult IQ appears to be 70-80% heritable) and, for better or for worse, the eugenicists were right, even if their methods were morally wrong.
We don't focus enough on positive eugenics: getting smart, non-violent and conscientious people to have large families. Right now we do the opposite: smart folks feel all sorts of pressures to have a small or no family due to careers, the expense of elite schooling, the environment, etc. The opening scene of Idiocracy nailed it.
It is reasonable to look at soft negative eugenics, such as offering free, voluntary sterilization for reduction of prison sentences for violent crimes, but getting smart folks to have more kids is far more important.
It is worth meditating on the fact that such a terrible idea was and is able to dominate the visual design community for so long without any significant push back. It has caused real pain for end users, and people who objected were shouted down or ignored.
All the more outrageous in an industry that likes to wear the mantle of empiricism.
Your weekly reminder that flat ui (and its derivatives, like material UI) are big steps backwards in usability:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/
Granting the validity of many aesthetic criticisms of over the top skeuomorphism, it will be a good day for users when the fashion-chasing flat ui era is over.
Javascript is the Chauncey Gardiner of programming languages.
It was there.
Yes, that is a great book as well.
I think "From Bauhause to Our House" is more important because we can survive a period of terrible art: most people will simply ignore it and when it is over you can throw most of it into the dumpster easily enough.
Unfortunately we are not free to ignore the work of architects, and correcting their mistakes will take us centuries.
Very sad to hear. His book "From Bauhaus to Our House" changed my life, finally giving me a plausible explanation as to how we managed to create such a horrific built environment post WW2.
Setting aside the logical impossibility of people f-king up but not f-king down, that is not true at all: men will f-ck down quite readily if it is convenient and there is low commitment. This is due to the obvious reason that males can have ten kids in a day by ten different women, whereas females can have perhaps 10 kids in a lifetime and each birth is incredibly high risk to her.
The core problem in the mating world is that the middle of the female attractiveness curve is having sterile sex with the top of the male attractiveness curve and then failing to pair bond with the middle of the male attractiveness curve. This is due to female hypergamy coupled with male promiscuity, arising from the dynamics of male and female reproductive constraints.
I am saying that the evidence suggests that 70-80% of adult[1] intelligence is based on genetic factors (that is distinct from heritability, which is lower, ~60% iirc) leaving the remaining 20-30% as unknown environmental factors. Wealth intuitively does play a role in that, although I believe (with as strong of evidence any anyone else does in the matter of environmental outcomes) that a strong parental bond matters more than wealth.
Again, my concern is that if unstructured wealth transfer is treated as a panacea, it will end up having compounding dysgenic effects that outweigh whatever short term individual benefits come of it. This will, in the not very long run, make poverty worse.
It isn't saving me any karma since people can't be rational about this topic, but I'll stress again that I think we should help the poor for moral reasons.
[1] - It is important to specify adult intelligence, because interventions do appear to help childhood IQ, but this effect fades into adulthood and eventual life outcomes. This is why there was a lot of excitement around Head Start initially, but it has failed to produce the large changes in society that was hoped for.
That is not true. Adult intelligence appears to be ~70-80% based on genetic factors.
See The Neuroscience of Intelligence by Richard Haier for an overview of the current consensus in intelligence research.
The consensus amongst intelligence researchers is that adult intelligence is ~70-80% based on genetic factors. I refer you to The Neuroscience of Intelligence - Cambridge Fundamentals of Neuroscience in Psychology by Richard Haier and the many studies sited therein.
We should help poor and less intelligent people for moral reasons, but it is unlikely to improve intelligence in the poorer population and, if the aid is structured dysgenically, it will serve only to compound the problem.
Meanwhile economists STILL bang on about ricardian free trade while, out the other side of their mouth, talking gleefully about the fading usefulness, way of life and, ultimately, existence of the people whose communities were destroyed by their recommendations.
there was a movie about this
The elite code of conduct: Do what thou wilt, but for goodness sake don't say anything about it
Carry the five, add the expected ego crushing, broken relationships and ulcers...
I get infinity.
It costs infinity to build a startup.
Because, like monarchy, they are still the least worst option when considering both the OS and hardware combined, for most people.
The issues with the latest macbooks are real and severe, but running windows or linux, even on nice hardware like an X1, remains a sufficiently annoying and disruptive change to stop people. We can all hope that eventually this will change, but as of right now I don't see a forcing function.
I have seen more technical damage done by nice and competent people deferring to bullies in the workplace than by legitimate disagreements expressed passionately.
I expected an account of how luck is a necessary condition in unusual success. I had a faint hope that the author would be intelligent enough to recognize that it was not a sufficient condition.
However, the article doesn't even rise to my low expectations: it boils down to a freshman-year philosophy major's denial of free will, smeared across various aspects of life. Fine, whatever.
But we have NO OPTION but to treat people as if they have free will, since we have no free will in the matter. And, furthermore, talking and writing is pointless, since we have NO ABILITY to control what we think.
Unfortunately, the author can't choose not to write. I must say, I have no option but to wish sincerely that he could.
If you'd like a more technical explanation why the older systems were right, you can read Steve Keen's work.
On the other hand, if you enjoy the surprise of financial crises every decade and major currency crises every five decades, you can continue listening to modern economists.
Well, you aren't alone: most professional economists ignore banking and debt entirely. To paraphrase Paul Krugman: "It's just money we owe ourselves."
Historically, however, debt has been social nitroglycerine, which is why Christianity outlawed usury and Judaism had a 50-year debt jubilee built into it. We will relearn this lesson eventually, but in the meantime our bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire.
As is so often the case, the first comment explains more than the entire article:
"Economic division was built into USD: you either pay interest on Treasury bonds, or you live off it."
Yes. A light alarm is what let me do it, in particular the twighlight simulation, which allowed me to fall asleep consistently:
https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3531_60/wake-up-light
It also dramatically improved my depression.
I would distribute sovereignty more broadly, allow the smaller units of sovereignty to practice mercantilism to protect internal industries (i.e. productive capacity) and remove usury as the basis of the money supply to avoid wealth concentration in money centers.
Wealth redistribution is inevitable at this point, ideally in the form of debt jubilee but, given the political power of the banking class, more likely via something more chaotic.
The solution to expensive neighborhoods isn't destroying those neighborhoods with high density housing. Most humans don't want to live in hives.
The problem to solve is distributing economic viability more widely across the country and then building more cities and towns in the density that supports family formation and doesn't dehumanize the occupants: single family homes on 5-12k square foot lots surrounding walkable commercial districts.
Allowing our population to naturally stabilize by restricting immigration would help too.
The biggest, fastest and easiest change that improved my depression was getting a light alarm:
https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3531_60/wake-up-light
The usability of this model is terrible, but it changed my life, allowing me to get up consistently before 7AM without being groggy. Surprisingly it was the "sunset" feature that fades natural yellow sunlight light into a deep red that really helped by allowing me to fall asleep consistently when I wanted to.
I can't guarantee it will work for everyone, but it made a large difference in my life.