trashtoss

Yes but also no. One of the most fascinating applications I've seen is here: http://versor.mat.ucsb.edu (and in subsequent work).

There's already a decent tl;dr of the approach on that page, but the tl;dr of that tl;dr is that conformal geometric algebra seems to provide not only a rich language of geometric operations but--importantly!--these operations seem to compose intuitively and interpolate well ("well" in the same way interpolation between quaternions afford the most-natural interpolation between 3D transforms).

The work there uses it to develop tools for parametric design...I'd be very curious to see it extended (e.g. to include time dimensions).

What is notable though is that whereas a lot of the "hype" around geometric algebra revolves around the ostensible intuitiveness--"look, we only need Maxwell's equation, singular, in GA"--actually using it effectively seems to require acquisition of a lot of vocabulary and concepts (e.g. to make use of versor you need to know about blades, rotors, etc.)...the learning curve to use the material is actually steep. That wouldn't prevent it being used as the backend of some tool, but the idea that GA is intuitive and "easier" than alternatives doesn't seem to hold up in practice (IMHO)...at least for uses like these.

Then there's the efficiency issues in that, in general, each term in a k-dimensional geometric algebra will have 2^k coefficients (and thus adding two terms is ~ 2^k operations and multiplying is ~ 2^(k+1))...a good implementation will have a lot of difficult tradeoffs to consider.

Is anyone looking into/using algebraic topology and sheaves to analyze or interpret these deep networks?

Thanks for posting this. It's unlikely to get much discussion due to the lack of detail and the poor English (and it is hard to know the context here)...but it's interesting to see this nonetheless.

I should be more concise.

Fiasco is also first contact gone wrong and is quite something...like almost an anti-star-trek episode.

It may be an easier entrypoint than Solaris, at cost of arguably not being as "deep" in its reflections.

It's a wonderful luxury to craft such a sufficiently vast work of nonsense that no one possessed of sufficient reason to craft an informed critique will ever feel it worthwhile to invest the time to do so...one can putter away indefinitely in such a self-crafted safe space

You have "interesting" and, to be polite, "idiosyncratic" ideas and framing to the point that the expected cost/benefit (for me) of having a real discussion doesn't seem favorable.

Instead, I would offer you some friendly advice: since you have such strong views, I encourage you to write down your political predictions (what you think the new admin will do; what you think will happen as a result; how you think other parties will react, and how those reactions will play out...whatever you think is valuable).

File these predictions away and revisit them at some future date. Keep score!

What did you get right? What did you get wrong? When you get things right, were you right for the reasons you expected to be right, or did you get lucky?

When you get things wrong, was it because you had bad information? Faulty reasoning? Unexpected left-field development not reasonably foreseeable?

Doing this exercise will only serve to sharpen your mind and your understanding!

Very late to see this but am curious how these approaches handle words with numerous meanings (like run, which arguably has dozens if not hundreds of idiomatic meanings in English).

Distinct vectors for each meaning? One vector and the metric still works better than you'd think? It's not clear from the paper at a skim.

You'd think there'd be an appeal to being able to just say "Computer: syringe of young blood, body temperature."

Perhaps it only works if you have to pay someone for it first.

Nah, Trump and his crew are useful idiots when it comes to Russia; they think they are #1 teaming up with #3 to keep China stuck at #2, when the reality is they are getting tricked by the old "let's you and him fight, partner" gambit.

So, useful idiots, some bought off for stunningly cheap and others true believers or just outright incompetent.

Far likelier than a non-imperialist defense policy will be Flynn finally trying to launch that pre-emptive Christian jihad he's been salivating for, in partnership with Russia.

It would be nicer to see what you see, of course, but I can't what with having familiarity with the people involved.

Actually easy to find, for example here: https://members.loria.fr/RSchott/staceyredujanv08.pdf .

Seconding the question because I want to see the encodings.

Intuitively this makes sense: in the GA formalism a "single" term requires 2^n fields (where n is the spatial dimension), and "simple" operations like addition and multiplication thus require 2^n (or more) operations to evaluate.

If you could instead somehow do those operations in O(1) time you would clearly pick up a rather nice speedup, but again I'm curious what the problems and encodings (as GA) actually look like.

Done and noted moving forward.

I don't envy you your job.

I also don't like your odds here: the current site mechanics and moderation pace don't seem adequate to preserve the good parts of the site in the long run, but any significant overhaul would also risk the same.

I wish you luck, with sympathy.

"Because Politifact and Snopes are biased and opinion based, they are not credible to determine whether stories are 'fake'."

Even here you could go more honest and humble--"I think that Politifact and Snopes are biased and opinion-based to the point I can't see them as credible to determine whether stories are fake"--but such a modest approach would indeed be very counterproductive if your real purpose here is to, as you say, invite reactions and watch your karma to take the pulse of the community.

Yes, I provided no evidence. I don't care to. What minuscule effect can I hope to have on a tiny handful of strangers on the internet?

None, with that attitude! Have a good evening.

First I will explain the joke in my previous comment, since it seems to have gone over your head. Read what you wrote literally, as if someone else wrote it:

I do not put myself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact. Facebook isn't going to be appending my critical analysis to alleged fake news stores.

The joke I made works--or doesn't--based on whether or not you can see those statements as a self-evident good thing: wouldn't it be good and proper that Facebook isn't going to be appending your critical analysis to alleged fake news `stores` (sic), given that--by your own admission--you aren't putting yourself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact?

Now to be a bit more serious.

You claim to have an argument...but, where? What is your argument? Where can I find it stated, explicitly, in words?

I can't imagine myself walking away from this conversation saying "you know, despite my initial reaction `halpiamaquark` was actually totally right about...". I mean really, how should I finish that sentence? What's the point you came in here trying to make?

You come across as wanting the world to know you don't like Snopes and Politifact and...that's it?

The play-by-play as I see it starts with this:

The kosher fact checkers list includes the biased and opinion-based Politifact and Snopes.

That's not an argument; it's a statement of your opinion, but presented as fact.

Now purely talking rhetorical strategies I can't blame you here; after all if you'd lead with this:

The kosher fact checkers list includes Politifact and Snopes. In my opinion, Politifact and Snopes are biased and opinion-based.

...I think the natural response would be "...and I care because? Is there going to be a point here, eventually?". On the other hand, if you just state your opinion like a fact it's pretty good bait--you'll get people jumping in to play the "I'm going to respond to what I guess you're probably thinking" game.

That's what happened: `morgante` played that game and made a guess, and then, in your own words:

I rebutted that the fact checkers in question aren't simply disproving my worldview. Rather they are advancing an opinion-based counter-narrative under the guise of objectivity.

I'd characterize this as (a) rejecting his guess at what you think and, then, once again, (b) stating your opinion about Politifact and Snopes as if it were fact.

We're now 3 comments in and there's still no argument: what, again, is the point you're actually trying to make? I mean it's quite clear that you think Snopes and Politifact are biased because you repeat that claim every chance you get, but what's the implication? Can you be direct and make the point you're trying to make, or is there really no point to be had here?

At this point I jump in. It was amusing to me that there was something about presenting opinions as fact that had you so mad--so mad!--while on the other hand you seemed to have no way of expressing yourself other than, well, presenting your opinions as facts.

So I did make a snarky reply but I have to disagree with your characterization of it:

You replied and suggested that I should be held to the same standard as a purported arbiter of truth.

...no, that's not it at all. Where are you getting this "should be held to the same standard as a purported arbiter of truth"? That's all you and your quarky ways, and presumably all your unstated ideas and assumptions that could perhaps comprise an argument if you were to surface them explicitly.

All I actually did was (a) take your quote:

Politifact and Snopes push their opinionated worldview as though it is objectively true and morally righteous.

...and prepend an "I think" to it, and then (b) point out that failing to do so would've left you seeming guilty of the same thing you are so mad--so mad!--about Politifact and Snopes (allegedly) doing.

Your follow-up response was where you finally introduce some actual statements of fact:

I do not put myself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact. Facebook isn't going to be appending my critical analysis to alleged fake news stores.

...but despite finally providing something other than simple re-statements of your opinions, as a response this was incoherent.

I mean, yeah, I can guess what you might be thinking, but I'm not going to do your job for you.

If you want to claim to have an argument you have to, you know, actually make it: state your premises, show your steps, show your work, and how they all fit together to make the point you want to make. Otherwise you're just venting!

Given this:

I do not put myself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact.

...all I can say to this:

Facebook isn't going to be appending my critical analysis to alleged fake news stores.

...is quelle surprise.

Were you expecting some other outcome?

Yeah maybe, even the pope said fake news isn't real.

Your belief is that Politifact and Snopes push their opinionated worldview as though it is objectively true and morally righteous.

Wouldn't want to be guilty of the same sin, right?

Can you supply any concrete examples of fact checkers that have undergone such rigorous evaluation?

But suggesting that farmers need city dwellers for humans to continue to exist is like thinking that compiler writers need the people that use compilers. Compiler programmers could do their work just fine without everyone writing web apps and the world would keep turning. But if the compiler writers went poof, I assure you that the web app folks would have a much harder time.

I never suggested farmers need city dwellers to continue to exist; there's a crisp distinction between "continuing to exist" and "continuing to exist in a recognizably-modern state".

The binary thought experiments aren't interesting to me; they usually wind up in degenerate cases that add little useful information. It's much more interesting to look at modest tweaks to the status quo and see how things play out differently.

I also suspected from the way you insist on lumping together "farms" and "rural"--really, from failing to make a useful distinction between the two--which makes it hard to have a productive discussion.

"Rural" is a settlement pattern; an exact definition is tricky to pin down but you can do a decent job of capturing the intuition if you define it as the intersection of "areas with population-density under some threshold" and "areas more than X miles away from a city larger than some minimum size", tailoring the numbers to suit your preference.

"Farming" is an economic activity; although a large percentage of farming is done in areas that'd be "rural" under the above definition, not all of it happens in such areas, and depending on how you calibrate the parameters you can get a surprisingly high amount of farming being done in what'd be at-best "semi-urban" areas.

It's just really hard to have a useful conversation if you're going to keep equating "rural" and "farm".

Anyways, I don't really find the "what if X went poof?" conversation interesting.

What is interesting is if, for example, you saw less and less redistribution and transfer payments at the state level and below, basically (as we've been discussing) leading to each locality having to pay more of its own way.

My conjecture is in this scenario you'd see a simple "contraction": farming proper would become increasingly concentrated in higher-density "halos" around the urban areas for obvious reasons (proximity to market, reduced operating costs vis-a-vis being further out, etc.) and the further out areas would increasingly be the territory of the high-scale industrial operations (who have the scope and economies of scale to net out ahead even after paying more of their infrastructure overhead).

What'd slowly evaporate in this scenario is the horribly in-efficient low-density in-between settlements that currently comprise most of the "rural" areas (by population and by area!).

Finally, don't be too enamored of Salatin (and honestly mentioning him together with Brown is a bit odd b/c most of what they have in common is getting noticed by the popular press).

Salatin just isn't that interesting (results-wise; as a person he's quite entertaining and gives a good interview). Brown's soil results are interesting but it's hard to really evaluate--and harder to replicate!--his other results, b/c he's very cagey with numbers and even more cagey with the kind of detail you'd need to duplicate it exactly.

For Brown's system in particular it's quite likely the productivity per acre is about as high as he claims but the effective total productivity may be much lower than he likes to suggest, due to (a) having to feed a lot of it back to the livestock and also (b) having only smallish areas doing actual production-for-market at any one time.

It's again super impressive for the soil-health aspect but the jury is very much out on how productive the style is, and unless he's opened up a lot lately it's hard to independently verify his implied productivity figures.

Farming could go on without fertilizer, heavy machinery, gasoline for said machinery, for sure...and yields would go down, indeed very much by "a bit". Definitely "a bit" for some definition of a "a bit". I mean if you want to argue a pre-1900 lifestyle is sustainable without all that then I agree...

The point about cities seems quite backwards to me: cities are places where enough enough wealth is produced and enough economies of scale are available that the routine-but-necessary chores can be farmed out to professionals, taking advantage of specialization and the division of labor.

Given the generally increasing returns on density it isn't surprising that most cities have grown to the point that the mundane chores need dedicated professional staff to keep things running, but what of it?

It's also very foreign to see "a government" as some kind of abstract entity at the municipal level, where it's going to be (almost) entirely comprised of other people in your own city of residence.

So trying to put some kind of bright line between something like a volunteer rural fire department on one side and a full-time, professional fire department on the other side seems silly and artificial: they're both local organizational strategies to provide for certain highly useful services, but different resource availability leads to different strategies.

If that isn't clear, saying "the government doesn't do much for them" when we're talking municipal or at most county government is silly to me because--especially at the municipal level--they are their own government in a way you can't fairly say for state and federal level government. So in that light "the government doesn't do all that much for them" is just pointing out that they don't do those things to the same extent--or with the same level of organization--as is done elsewhere (without getting into how much of that is (not) done by choice, and how much is not done due to lack of resources to go beyond ad-hoc, volunteer-driven collectives and coops).

Anyways, you aren't as bad of a "rural pride" fellow as the commenter who has somehow come to believe that the ag sector is somehow exporting trillions each year (it's not) and that it's the biggest export (it's not and it's not even close), and that is more the kind of delusional self-importance I find rather grating.

133 billion is a recent usda figure. Do you have any source for "trillions"?

For bystanders the figures I am referencing are here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...

There's a big gap between the two.

The point I tried--and failed!--to make is that in general the recipients of these subsidies have very simplistic and one-sided views of them (if they even see them as subsidies).

I'll pick on this statement of yours:

But eventually all/most/some of those roads do in fact have to exist to get the food from the countryside into the cities.

...it's not wrong, but it's incomplete: you forget as well that for modern farming, you also need all/most/some of those roads to get tractors/fertilizer/pesticide to those farms so they can actually have surplus food to bring to the city to sell (and presumably the farmers would like clothes, housewares, televisions, and so on...).

Sure, at an aggregate level the numbers wind up the same--you save some on roads but fresh produce has a higher sticker price--but it's grating that the recipients of said subsidy consistently take such a one-sided view of the implicit transaction.

Sticking to just the roads, it's also very partial-equilibrium: stop funding those roads (e.g. so they devolve to dirt or gravel) and what happens to the cost-effectiveness of those electrical coops? Maintenance and repair gets pricier b/c it becomes harder to get where you need to get...and depending on how crappy we're letting our roads get in this thought experiment we're maybe having a much harder time getting the generating and related equipment to where it needs to be in the first place.

Moving on a bit, when you dig into things like that universal service fund it's IMHO a mistake to take it at face value.

The first issue is assuming the surcharge is the only form of subsidization; this isn't generally true. It's quite common for e.g. telecom utilities to charge roughly uniform rates over surprisingly wide geographic areas, with surprisingly wide operating costs "under the hood". There are a lot of reasons behind this pricing uniformity, but regardless of why it exists it's effectively a second layer of (hidden) subsidization (b/c the residents of lower-cost-of-service areas are effectively contributing funding to the residents in higher-cost-of-service). There are enough reasons for this uniformity it's hard to imagine it disappearing...but it's still important to be aware of b/c otherwise you assume that that subsidy is sufficient to cover the true cost-of-service differential.

A second issue is mis-understanding the incidence. Let's use pretend #s to make it easy: everyone's bill looks like $localBase + $nationalSubsidySurcharge (so the subsidy is collected from everyone and then redistributed as-needed). We'll use that $7 billion / year figure as the total subsidy collected, and as a nice round # assume 350 million people paying, so basically everyone in the country's throwing a $20 into a big pot to keep everyone else's phones working.

So far so good. But now let's kill the subsidy, what happens? First, everyone's bill goes from "$localBase + $nationalSubsidySurcharge" to just "$localBase", since now we're no longer kicking in that $20.

Keeping all assumptions simplistic, we will go with 60% of the country (just under that 2/3 living near the borders) were already paying full-freight on their base rate, and thus they're now $20 richer with no direct ill-effects.

The remaining 40%, however, were paying a base rate that fell $7 billion short of what it needed to be--whence the subsidy we just threw out--and thus now it's up to ~140 million people to scrounge up that $7 billion shortfall. This isn't the end of the world--they're just going from "$localBase + $20" to "$localBase + $50 (== $realLocalBase)"--but it'd a big increase (their original contribution, that much again, and then a bit more).

In this case I had to slant the #s pretty aggressively and for this specific subsidy the reality of the situation is more modest...but I worked through it b/c it illustrates the fundamental logic of such subsidies: you have a lot of people paying a little bit to save a smaller group of people from a large expense.

Such arrangements are not, IMHO, intrinsically questionable...but it's definitely a bit questionable to conflate aggregate costs ($7 billion, cheap!) with the implicit per-capita benefit received (with my BS #s it's a net $30/head for the recipients).

Having said all this I feel the need to point out that farmers proper are usually much more realistic; it's more the farming-adjacent (e.g. those who live in "rural" areas) who tend to think of roads as (literally) one way "food to town" transports and so on.

It is subsidization, on too many fronts to name. If anything it has been too effective because it is quite invisible and taken for granted by the recipients, which then allows them to see their own life narratives as stories of succeeding in the market economy due to hard, honest work.

The work may indeed be hard and honest, but it only succeeds at the costs and prices it succeeds at due to vast subsidies, which again are taken for granted (if even seen as such--or seen at all).

The worst part is that even with this heavy subsidization the cost difficulties of modern infrastructure under sparse settlement leave non-urban residents feeling shortchanged despite the disproportionate spending they receive.

Here's how that usually goes: basic infrastructure (roads, power, water, communications) has costs that scale roughly linearly in terms of how much you build: your build and maintenance cost are roughly proportionate to how many miles of road or miles of pipe or miles of wire, and so on.

Thus as you have a population that is more widely spaced-out your effective per capita infrastructure costs go up: you have more road per person and more wires per person just to deliver the same level of capability.

You often wind up, then, needing as much as 5x or more the per capita budget in a sparsely populated area to build and maintain infrastructure at a comparable level to a denser area (whether this is done or not is about administrative competence but that is a separate issue from the cost themselves).

At a state level, however, it is hard to have wildly disproportionate per capita spending: you can maybe get away with spending 2-3x per capita on infrastructure in non-urban areas versus urban areas, but not 5-10x.

But this spending-effectiveness discrepancy means that even with heavy subsidization--eg non-urban areas effectively getting 2-3x the infrastructure spend of the urban ones on a per capita basis--the spending outcomes will likely be better in the urban area because the cost efficiency is that much higher.

This thus leaves the non-urban areas feeling neglected--the infrastructure isn't as well maintained etc--even though they are in fact already given disproportionate resources...they just aren't given resources that are disproportionate-enough!

Ironically the "decaying small town" is the best proof of this effect: you go from comparatively well-maintained state highway to a city of 10-20k with crumbling streets and broken street lamps, etc., back to well-maintained state highway...because the state highway is subsidized by the entire state (and often federal funds), but that small town is on its own fundingwise, and reveals what the surrounding area can actually afford, sans subsidization from outside money.

Respectfully, "those guys know how to do one thing well" is (IMHO) much more accurate phrasing than "those guys know what they're doing". Note that these are compatible statements.

You misunderstand the point about limited "places" (or at least the point I believe is intended).

For sake of argument, assume 90% of jobs out there are "bad jobs"--no prospect of real wage growth, declining stability, decreasing benefits--and the remaining 10% of jobs are "good jobs" (with some wage growth, stability, and benefits).

Assume also that it is widely believed that in general, to have a chance at landing a "good job" you need at least an undergraduate degree (necessary, not sufficient!).

In such a situation, will you not see everyone throw as many resources as they can into getting their kids a better chance of making it into one of those good jobs?

There's a lot you can quibble with but that's the "limited places" of significance, with demand for university education a byproduct of that more fundamental demand (for better positioning vis-a-vis the "good jobs").

This is thus more of a race to establish relative position vis-a-vis other entrants, so IMHO looking at tournament theory (etc.) is helpful for understanding the overall dynamics.

It happens a lot.

Hard problems are rarely just one hard problem, but until you solve the first hard sub-problem you won't even know what the other hard sub-problems are, let alone what proportion of difficulty each contributes.

It's like climbing a mountain in the fog: you've found the way forward and if it holds out you can extrapolate when you will reach the top, only to find you dead end at the face of a sheer cliff...it will be awhile before you find the next way forward.

It's progress but the destination remains further than it seems.

This is more or less what will happen.

In addition to (eventual) climate change China has been making itself increasingly unlivable due to conventional pollution (in all forms)...but the leadership there has always seen this as a temporary cost that must be borne to catch up with the west.

Internal pressure will already force China to do something sooner rather than later; handling the problem is a good way to consolidate power internally and thus tackled enthusiastically.

Throw in the USA voluntarily ceding its position of world leadership and it's an opportunity to go from barely-tolerated semi-pariah to increasingly-respectable world leader.

In particular expect China to "save" Africa once the worst begins. But, not immediately; groundwork is already being laid, but right now they can afford to be patient.

Back in the cold war days it was something of a banal truism that only an objective, external threat--e.g. alien invaders--could ever get us squabbling apes to set our differences aside and work together towards some common goal.

It is very likely that within a decade the effects of climate change will go from "scientists arguing" to "transparent to everyone".

Although this will not exactly be "alien invaders"--"real life godzilla" seems closer to the mark--civilization as we know it will be faced with an external threat that cares not for what we think--indeed, that cannot be bargained with--but only for how we act (and indeed, if we act).

If nothing else that thought experiment will become a real experiment soon; I hope we make it through.

One thing to consider is how much uglier our national discourse will likely become. For example, the narrative around our recent election seems to be settling around a rejection of urban and coastal elites and experts: middle america is tired of being ignored, insulted, condescended-to, looked down upon as ignorant yokels, and so on and so forth..."show us and our opinions some respect", they say, electing the man who's now appointing the man who's going to (literally) slam the pedal to the metal while (figuratively) rolling coal all the way.

I wonder how these people will wind up being thought-of once climate change goes from deniable--as it is now, at least domestically--to undeniable (as it certainly will, and likely soon).

I mean, seriously: if for forty years you've been warned by experts that continuing to do X will eventually lead to Y, you continue to do X, and it eventually leads to Y...how can you reasonably expect anyone to respect you? To consider your opinions worth the time and energy even to listen to, let alone take into consideration? Why should you not expect to be seen as anything other than an idiot in the classical sense ("incapable of useful reasoning; danger to self and others")?

I do not expect this to end well--culturally and socially--and expect it will play out far uglier than the dust bowl...

I also think readers on this site vastly underestimate how radically the world will shift once change becomes undeniable; the default assumption seems to be that things will generally continue as they always have right up until it gets so bad it's game over for everyone.

In reality, as soon as it climate change begins having undeniable impacts expect a radical changes in financial behavior...which will likely have direct, pervasive impact upon daily life well in advance of the direct impacts of climate change proper.

Will the 30-year mortgage remain typical for home purchases? Will 5-year commercial leases remain typical? Will it remain possible to price weather derivatives accurately enough to be viable? Will SV angels continue hobby-investing in high-risk, high-reward gambles, or turn their attention to second homes in northern latitudes?

I can only see a move to shorter time horizons and more risk aversion from the private sector.

This is true, but being honest if not polite: in many ways, considering poor rural whites stupid is an act of charitable kindness, even if it doesn't seem as such (the connection to your point will become apparent by the end).

To a complete outsider, the situation of poor rural whites summarizes as "sucks, and has sucked for 20-30 years".

One interpretation is that (on average) things are as they are due to lack of capability: in short, "those people" are sufficiently stupid--and consequently also ignorant--that it would be inappropriate to hold them fully-responsible for their decisions and circumstances (in the same way we don't for children or the mentally-handicapped).

An alternative interpretation is that (on average) things are as they are due to lack of character: in short, "those people" are sufficiently sound of mind and body that it would be inappropriate not to hold them fully-responsible for their decisions and circumstances (just as we do for everyone else).

As insulting and demeaning as it is to be thought stupid and ignorant, in this specific case being considered stupid and ignorant is, in fact, coming from a place of (unconscious) charity.

I'm deadly serious here.

Someone cruel and nasty will default to the second interpretation--your life sucks because you suck at life, and moreover it's your own fault for choosing to suck at life, despite having been perfectly capable of not sucking at it.

Someone kind-hearted and generous will default to looking for some other--any other--interpretation (many would say: "excuse"): perhaps your life sucks because of systemic discrimination and structural racism? perhaps your life sucks because of structural economic changes brought about due to unfair trade policies? perhaps your life sucks because your formative years were in a difficult and unstable environment, given inadequate education and surrounded by crumbling infrastructure? or, perhaps, your life sucks because you are simply stupid--and therefore also ignorant--and you thus are simply incapable of effectively navigating the modern world?...

So as patronizing and demeaning as it was to be thought of as stupid and backwards--and to know that's what you were seen as--at least it came from a place of kindness (if you had the eyes to see).

With love and sadness, I don't see that unconscious kindness surviving for much longer: rural america has now commanded the nation's attention and asked to be treated seriously, but will likely find that the consequence of asking the rest of the nation to treat rural america seriously will, eventually, shift the default coastal outlook away from the insulting "those poor morons, too stupid and ignorant to know how to help themselves" and towards "those useless trash, too lazy and prideful to help themselves"...and that this shift will be irreversible once it does get underway.

After all of which, it's time to return to your point: the challenges and difficulties you point out are real...and on top of that, success is not guaranteed, you can move to a larger city, wind up failing, and return home worse off for having even bothered to try.

But, to raise those challenges as anything other than common and mundane--difficult, yes, but similar in nature and magnitude to the problems we all face and deal with, in our own ways, such as our abilities are--is at once to illustrate "I am still living in a bubble" and to engage in what, outside that bubble, will likely come across as "special pleading": it's too hard, my circumstances are special...which I both understand and empathize with, but also makes it that much harder to grant as much respect as one might hope for from within said bubble.

Which is why I am pessimistic: asking for respect and to be taken seriously means people who used to look down upon rural people from a position of ignorance, but also (unconscious) charity and good will...those people will now take a closer look, and I think that will result not in increased respect, but only in harsh judgment and the loss of that former kindness and charity (as unrecognized and unconscious as it was).