Reputation and desire for recognition are an incentive system that have gotten us a long way. They are a way of celebrating and honoring the human reach for excellence. If you like humans, that's a good thing.
I like the UK's archaic system of measures for the similar reasons. It has the stamp of humanity. For those who think about such things it reminds of who we were. Without historical context we think less of ourselves.
If you're not from the culture in question, then these are just additional barriers to entry because you have a lot of extra stuff to learn, completely unrelated to your task at hand. It also puts you at a disadvantage to native members of the culture.
> They are a way of celebrating and honoring the human reach for excellence. If you like humans, that's a good thing.
I think progress is inevitable, ideas build on each other, and those with access to capital get to slap their name on their moment in time (yes, even if they did the hard work of converting that capital to progress). If AI takes over math, I really don't think we'll see a slow down in technological progress. Quite likely the opposite.
If you’re not hunting to survive (and even then), you have access to capital. The time to study math is, and always has been, paid for by someone, some way.
There will still be a place for posing problems and noticing how breaking assumptions can create something new. The history of Non-Euclidian geometry is a good example.
A lot of progress comes from taking assumptions and breaking them. There was a time when everyone assumed that locked checkouts were absolutely necessary for version control, for instance. You could argue that AI could learn how to do this well but humans have context that machines won't. This is just an extension of the fact that things with independent existence will have different impressions of the world. If they didn't they would functionally be one thing.
It's hard to get humans to agree to things that are in their collective interest but many not be in their individual interest. It is at the root of many problems. Look up "collective action problem."
Imagine what happens when human readability is discarded as a goal. LLMs are already very good at inferring meaning with little context. If the objective function is reduction of token consumption, it's hard to know where we will end up.
I used to do a lot of chit-chat with folks I knew on Twitter during the work day. After Musk largely torched it and a lot of people just decided they didn't need that kind of social media any longer, that channel largely went away. I use Facebook some but not the same and LinkedIn even less so.
Or fly a plane or drone overhead and see [0] where the terminals are. After a few fines most people would decide it’s not worth the risk.
I remember how the Uber rollout worked in Berlin. Uber said they don’t need to comply with anything the city asked for and enjoyed their position in the safety of an ocean away so the local authorities instituted eye watering fines for drivers caught providing Uber rides. Uber decided to comply.
Depends on how many terminals there are and whether or not the neighborhoods they are in are sympathetic to the operators. It’s very easy to move them.
I wasn’t thinking of totalitarianism but rather a country objecting to Starlink operating on its territory. This is why I brought up Berlin and fines, not the secret police breaking in your house at night.
After living under one of those totalitarian regimes, all Incan say is that everything sounds easy in an HN comment typed from the safety of a democratic society.
National firewalls and other such things are tools of totalitarianism. Except possibly in wartime, or if they are causing harmful interference, or if Starlink refuses to pay taxes, I don’t really see a good argument against things like Starlink.
Or if the country already operates another system on the same frequencies, or just hasn’t validated and authorized Starlink on their territory, something countries really like to do.
Not everything is about “fighting the power”, there are plenty of good reasons to want to validate and approve these systems.
Musk was as usual likes to talk big and brave but same as with his fight in Brazil over X, or the Tesla factory in Germany, if he wants to operate there he needs to follow the rules. And there’s no moral argument (saving freedom) he can pull out of his wig in most parts of the world that can make him money.
I can see how that worked in Berlin. In USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance that would fail laughably. Americans will drive with no license, registration, in cars they've stolen back from the repo man because they refuse to pay anything to anyone. When my car was totalled by an illegal alien, the police didn't even show up, wisely because they were surely driving without license, identity documents, insurance, registration, or any sort of recoverable assets or any way to punish them but to throw them in an overflowing jail. You could try fining them but it would be like trying to draw blood from a stone. I suppose could try to jail them, but you'd find our jails are already full, and we already let violent criminals out on bail.
In much of the world including USA poor people will slang crack for $5 under threat of life in jail and fines higher than they could ever hope to pay. Suffice to say there's an endless line of people willing to uber for roughly crack slinging wages without the risk of life imprisonment even if the fines are as bad -- because their alternatives are worse.
Albania and Georgia have much healthier culture of resistance than the US.
The US has almost entirely lost this culture except for short moments in isolated places. Minneapolis is nearly a proof by exception in this. Very, very few people need to be detained or killed to get the mass of Americans to stay inside and self-censor. Much less is required to get businesses to put their head down and play nice with the government.
FR lol, people in the US love to talk a big game but most of us take the freedoms for granted and will fold at the drop of a hat when real consequences are on the line
I think you wanted the opportunity to beat that “healthy culture of resistance” drum. Every tweaker, every inbred, every starved person acting out of desperation is Rosa Parks now.
You name things and decide that‘s “resistance”. People break the law because there’s no real consequence or because they just have nothing to lose. They’re not “resisting”, they’re surviving. The US society decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life and are incentivized to do worse by the insane punishment model applied only to them.
The only people doing the “resisting” in the US are those who can afford a good lawyer. Everyone else does what the cracks in the system allow, or what they need to do out of desperation.
No German Uber driver is desperate enough to risk their whole livelihood especially for that meager payoff. Most civilized countries make sure that people have something to lose which will keep people acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people exercise self restraint works better than restraining them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
> because their alternatives are worse.
Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
>Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
This is logical fallacy, but you've tried hard to pull a gotcha out of it.
Resisting because you are desperate is perfectly valid and doesn't create a contradiction.
It's not something reserved to "those who can afford a good lawyer." Desperation is one of the hardest drivers of resistance, not something reserved to rich people with lawyers and something to lose. And even if we suppose there's not resistance in USA, I said in USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance, which means even if you don't consider USA a place of resistance it still meets the logical test of falling within my statement.
>[now deleted] If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
Lol you couldn't resist adding that in. Your little racially charged bits about why we're not allowed to call it resistance when a poor black person does such acts. While ignoring your very example of Rosa Parks who was a black woman, child of a teacher and itinerant worker and before activism working largely in domestic work for white families. The contradiction is yours.
Resistance is a choice. “No other choice” is just surviving. The gotcha was already in the fact that you started by proudly waving a flag of “healthy culture of resistance” and immediately switched to desperate people having no other options. The healthy culture of resistance as you see it is made of the most desperate and dilapidated people doing desperate things.
My “very example” about which you are now quoting Wikipedia to me was resistance, not desperation. It wasn't a tweaker selling $5 crack because he literally has nothing better to look forward to. It wasn’t a mother driving without a license because she couldn’t afford the court taxes for a few traffic tickets. It was a woman who did it out of principle alone. That’s resistance, and it’s rare. Your speech fell on its face as soon as you had your big boy proud moment because you’re missing something important to back it up [0]. You were never taught enough pst that proud song and dance.
If you thought calling you privileged for your dissonant and ignorant line of argumentation is racist then let me add not educated enough[0] too. Read a book to understand these concepts, don’t expect you can just throw words around and people will bow to your wisdom. You make it impossible for me to take you seriously when you make junior level confusions like “resistance” and “desperation” all for a shitty national pride moment.
Your rebuttal rests upon a logical fallacy of false mutual exclusion that one cannot exercise resistance as a means of survival. You believe resistance comes from rich white people with lawyers; I believe it largely comes from the hungry and those with no other choice. The truth is it comes from a bit of both.
Putting aside the geopolitics of satellite destruction, we're likely moving to the realm of microwave based disablement instead of kinetic. It's the thing that can scale and provide some plausible deniability while the numbers are low.
I like the UK's archaic system of measures for the similar reasons. It has the stamp of humanity. For those who think about such things it reminds of who we were. Without historical context we think less of ourselves.
reply