Viewing profile — pasabagi

So, I agree that good standards and (to a lesser extent) algorithms come out of practice. However, the basic point about a standard is not that it's perfect: it's a coordination me…

I actually think Germany would be really good at digital infrastructure if they stopped being afraid of friend computer. Germany is immensely proud of its history of creating stand…

I'm not sure I can do it justice in an adhoc way, but it's important to keep in mind there are a few layers of irony that the piece is working on. First, Socrates, who does not wri…

Pluto? Plotto? Platti? Seriously though, that's a horrible bowdlerization of the argument in the Phaedrus. It's actually very subtle and interesting, not just reactionary griping.

Trying to prove correlations between race and crime is literally the historical basis of criminology as a discipline. They failed, it's stupid, and now people know better. You can …

I mean, it's not a very interesting research topic? People who are poor and young commit certain categories of crime more often. That has nothing to do with immigration or race or …

German spelling is ridiculously easy, whereas English spelling is quite hard. I guess the equivalent inverse would be comma use in German.

I've read that big pharma are primarily patent companies: most of the actual research is done by universities, then most of the production is outsourced.

I think even Russia and the US still do intelligence sharing on a lot of stuff - and that's before you consider that the US seems to be in everybody's networks anyhow, so non-shari…

The expectations for hostage-takers are pretty low, whereas the expectations for police are, if not sky-high, at least that they won't kill or injure you. Disappointment is often p…

Democracy is not supposed to settle technical questions. It is supposed to settle questions about societal goals and moires. As such, there's no need for anybody to know about anyt…

Expertise exists. You can ask a hundred non-mathematicians what a circle is, and get a hundred incoherent answers. Sometimes, you just have to recognize that you don't have the req…

I think I'm pretty good for a layperson at statistics + public health stuff, and a lot of the precautions we ended up taking in the pandemic were news to me: for instance, the effe…

No need to presume: you can read the article. "dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization." Which is fa…

Do you have the same opinion on Jan 6 rioters?

Well, ~50%[0] of microplastics is car tyres, so you know, good luck. Support public transport, support cycle lanes, campaign for pedestrianization, etc. Maybe move to a low-car-den…

The Tony Blair Institute is perhaps the most powerful thinktank in the UK today, and Tony Blair loves AI in the way that only a man who peck-types can. The TBI put out a paper sugg…

I dropped reading this about halfway: the author has some fairly cranky opinions about recent history.

Is it compassion? One of my cousins has downs, and she's something of a favourite because she's easygoing and sensible - exactly the sort of person that, if you were going to live …

Eh, the per-capita housing situation in the UK is 1 house per three people, per gov.uk statistics[0]. A third of a house is plenty for most people. The problem is that these houses…

My feeling is Britain is both paradoxically tolerant (I live in Germany, and the difference is stark ), but also omnidirectionally hateful - for instance, British people are the on…

I don't know: as I understood it, the trucker thing was basically about showing that they occupy a strategic position in the Canadian economy. It's like the old rail strike idea: i…

It's often pretty hard to do public protest without breaking some kind of law, even if you do everything you're supposed to. I'm not a fan of the truckers (the loud horns were tota…

I mean, it seems a bit unclear what his political positions actually were, but it does seem they were just opinions. As philosophers go, that's pretty small beer: Thales used to ro…

Apparently bullshit, though: https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/michel-foucault-et-l... Guy Sorman wasn't Foucault's friend, and later said (about his statement) that he never…