81–90 of 202 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I'd like to see some justification for discovering America, there was plenty to be learned in Spain and Portugal at the time.
Given how Europeans have behaved themselves on this continent, that really doesn't qualify as a meaningful counterargument. If anything, it's more to my point than yours.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some level, I think this is orthogonal to technological progress. One possible way of getting at this is to ask if people were more ‘happy’ when there wasn’t this level of tech available - and I’m not sure the answer is yes - I mean, there’s the mythos of ‘a simple life’ and ‘noble savages’, but from what I’ve read of life even a 100 years back - I would surmise folks were as unhappy / miserable then too - but lik…
Maybe happy isn’t the right word, but I think it’s pretty clear people were more content and felt a sense of purpose. Social media has made things worse, but it’s really the loss of community and religion that has led to the crisis of loneliness and depression among todays people.
Is it? Because that is not clear to me in the slightest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Numerous technological advancements have been made as a result of the space race, but asking for justification on spending money on scientific inquiry is just going to come to whether or not you support science generally.
I'd like to see some justification for considering science and space exploration as one and the same. It's hardly as if we've run out of things to learn from this planet, after all.
Curiosity has driven exploration, discovery, and subsequently science. It's fine that you're not as curious as some, but suggesting that we must only focus on things on Earth when we have literally billions of people on earth that all have individual interests and things they're curious about is just about limiting progress, not about preserving Earth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The book Sapiens argues that tech has made us less happy ever since the invention of farming 10,000 years ago, the hunter gatherers were happier and healthier than the farm villagers. But since tech allows the population density to grow we get stuck in "the luxury trap", we can't go backwards or a bunch of people will die. And the unhappier larger village is more powerful than the hunter gatherers so they have an evo…
On the one hand, I love the idea of living a slower-paced, less competitive life. Most humans ending up crammed into urban rat-races is a horrible outcome. On the other hand, I like not dying in agony of easily treatable diseases. I like that the vast majority of people in developed countries have zero chance of dying of malnutrition. Having to choose between one or the other would suck. I wonder if we can have both?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is false about it? Are you arguing that we are less secure against nature while sitting in climate controlled buildings with food stores in them, and a global industrial complex raised to keep these trains running?
I have never lived in a world where there was not the existential threat of nuclear annihilation in every minute of every hour of every day of my life. But you're right: I'm not going to get lost in my own city - or yours - because I have an iPhone in my pocket. I may never really learn my city and all its hidden little secrets you find only by wandering around, but I'll be efficient getting to the bar in a "climate…
Sometimes I wonder if internet people are living in parallel universe. I see literally opposite, wherever I go, of what people like you describe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately this hasn’t resulted in people being more happy. It’s quite the paradox. What are we doing all this for? https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n... I don’t post that to be negative, because I agree with what you are saying about a unique time to be alive and have done the same Atari to Xbox Series X glow-up and I marvel at the improvements there. But I do think happiness (and decrea…
The book Sapiens argues that tech has made us less happy ever since the invention of farming 10,000 years ago, the hunter gatherers were happier and healthier than the farm villagers. But since tech allows the population density to grow we get stuck in "the luxury trap", we can't go backwards or a bunch of people will die. And the unhappier larger village is more powerful than the hunter gatherers so they have an evo…
I would like to see some data comparing modern, fit worker against average hunter gatherer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is false about it? Are you arguing that we are less secure against nature while sitting in climate controlled buildings with food stores in them, and a global industrial complex raised to keep these trains running?
I have never lived in a world where there was not the existential threat of nuclear annihilation in every minute of every hour of every day of my life. But you're right: I'm not going to get lost in my own city - or yours - because I have an iPhone in my pocket. I may never really learn my city and all its hidden little secrets you find only by wandering around, but I'll be efficient getting to the bar in a "climate…
Thanks to technology, we don’t have to try and have eight kids—losing half of them at a young age—just so that we don’t lose the farm and starve.
Thanks to technology, millions of children are protected from diseases that years ago they would’ve died from.
But sure, blame technology for your lack of self control causing you to stare at your phone at bars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am wondering about this; I have noticed the OCR (that you can photo something and the copy the text as plain text). How compute sensitive is that? Is that not available on the X? It is a useful feature. In particular in Google translate (lens function) which I am pretty was also there on the X (perhaps requiring a trip to Google’s server).
I’m not sure if it’s available on the X or not, but it would make a lot of sense if a certain level of hardware acceleration is required to do this OCR in the background with little to no negative impact on battery life. The X’s SoC can probably handle one-offs just fine, but it might not hold up as well to the OS churning through photos OCRing them in the background.
It’s funny, but you’d figure as sophisticated as the manufacturering standards are they could give an exact number. Or couldn’t they?
I'm sure the chip designers at Apple know the exact number, but that doesn't mean Apple's going to share it
It seems sort of like asking a programmer how many instructions there are in a binary we maintain. We could find out if we decided it mattered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me there’s some benefit in little things like on-device OCR and image classification, which has been helpful for quickly surfacing particular photos in my library but yes the broad strokes have not changed much.
I am wondering about this; I have noticed the OCR (that you can photo something and the copy the text as plain text). How compute sensitive is that? Is that not available on the X? It is a useful feature. In particular in Google translate (lens function) which I am pretty was also there on the X (perhaps requiring a trip to Google’s server).