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Slow

michaelnotebook.com

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Re: Slow

#211

Post by vntok »

coldtea wrote: post #204
dxdm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is good to be able to recognize charming tales and other biases and influences in a narrative. Having them pointed out counteracts the readiness of people to take things at face value. Knowing that something is a tale does not have to take away from it. I don't know what irked you about the other comment, but I think there's a positive side to it.

> Knowing that something is a tale does not have to take away from it. Oh, but it does. Here's "a thing that happened" vs "here's a tall tale" means whatever message is approached very differently.

"You know the great story you've been telling others for years as truth? It was in fact a lie" is much much worse.

Better to know up front that a tale is only a parable.

Re: Slow

#212

Post by vntok »

coldtea wrote: post #206
simianparrot wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_colonization_pro...

Parent didn't say he doesn't pay lip service to it, or doesn't make bullshit timelines and promises.

One can be both "working toward" a goal and "making bullshit timelines and promises" at the same time, those things are completely orthogonal.

Re: Slow

#213

Post by snarf21 »

saulpw wrote: post #76
snarf21 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Stewart Brand and the Clock of the Long Now (and other longer time horizon projects they are working on). Reminds me of a statement he made during a Tim Ferris interview that I think is quite profound for our mental health. ".... being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know."

Proud of your work, not proud of yourself. The latter is quite a reliable source of unhappiness, I've found.

In the full quote, he is talking about fitness and being able to lift things and being proud of your abilities to do so. I'm not saying it works for everyone but it is nice to have a "thing" that you can hang your hat on. The whole interview is quite interesting and worth a read.

Re: Slow

#214

Post by yifanl »

fragmede wrote: post #135
7373737373 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting new contender for simplest to state unsolved problem: The Antihydra Does this program halt? a = 8 b = 0 while b != -1: if a % 2 == 0: b += 2 else: b -= 1 a += a//2 (// being integer division, equivalently a binary shift one to the right: >> 1) https://www.sligocki.com/2024/07/06/bb-6-2-is-hard.html https://bbchallenge.org/antihydra

Fwiw, ChatGPT is able to say that it doesn't. I wonder what other classes of programs it's able to state if it halts?

Tom from the pub says that it does.

Re: Slow

#215

Post by dxdm »

coldtea wrote: post #204
dxdm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is good to be able to recognize charming tales and other biases and influences in a narrative. Having them pointed out counteracts the readiness of people to take things at face value. Knowing that something is a tale does not have to take away from it. I don't know what irked you about the other comment, but I think there's a positive side to it.

> Knowing that something is a tale does not have to take away from it. Oh, but it does. Here's "a thing that happened" vs "here's a tall tale" means whatever message is approached very differently.

> Here's "a thing that happened" vs "here's a tall tale" means whatever message is approached very differently.

I agree. I meant to point out that tales can be entertaining and/or instructional, too, even while we're aware of what they are. ("Knowing that a story is fictional does not take away from it", maybe I should've written that.)

My point still stands, though: knowing a tale from a "thing that happened" is important, and what you said underscores why.

Re: Slow

#216

Post by antisthenes »

simianparrot wrote: post #195
sussmannbaka wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not doing that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_colonization_pro...

I'm surprised this kind of garbage is allowed on Wikipedia. The whole article reads like a PR statement, constantly stating what is "possible" or "planned", but never any actual progress in terms of missions.

Basically lots of forward-looking hot air like a financials press release for shareholders.

Utter nonsense.

Re: Slow

#217

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

simianparrot wrote: post #177
neumann wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just compare the billionaires actions now - they are building tunnels in hawaii to prepare for survival just as they are knowingly destroying the future instead of spending their obscene wealth to protect it.

Elon Musk is working towards getting humanity to Mars in the low chance Earth becomes uninhabitable, and he'll never live to see the Mars dream become a reality even if everything goes as planned. But I guess that doesn't fit the common narratives about a man that isn't a cartoon but a flawed human with strengths and weaknesses. This is why we don't hear of great men anymore: We only hear about them when they're long…

There are places on earth where life is unhabitable and on mars its absolutely nonsense really.

But maybe its a dunning kruger effect, I asked an actual aerospace engineer and he said its doable but he's a bit of an elon fan too, and I did read on HN an article on how life on mars is impossible..

Still, it would be most likely be very bad life on mars compared to earth but nope, we all are ready to burn our earth so damn quickly... and listen Elon has a band around him and you could say that he was a salesman in the sense that he had a lot of hype around him which inadvertedly helped tesla

But one shouldn't live life on rocks floating in water [hype] since that might just be a dream or you are crashing down.

And he's a little pathetic in the sense that maybe when I think of all, that could actually be done to help people and with all the influence he had, he fulfilled his agenda really but the agenda was never to better us humans but to get him more power..

So lets call spade a spade shall we?

Re: Slow

#218

Post by km144 »

wwweston wrote: post #62
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #11

The 2nd Ave Subway in Manhattan, with preparatory construction beginning in 1942. First phase opened in 2017. Although the outcome should be celebrated, the slowness and the added costs that brings certainly should not be. While every project is unique, it is not immediately clear why digging a subway on the Upper East Side is twenty times more expensive than in Seoul or ten times more expensive than in Paris. https:…

The “it is not immediately clear” part should be taken to heart a lot more than it is. Right now I’d bet you could elect Ezra Klein president and he would be as unable to improve things as most, and he probably has a somewhat clearer picture of the factors than your average internet commentator. Railing against optimizing for caution in a vague sense really isn’t articulating specific dynamics however well it leans i…

Theories are hard because the world is complex. I guess that sounds trivial but it really should be said more often. There is no silver bullet with these things, because the systems are so complicated that it is hard to reason about how one thing is the true root cause without implicating another cause. That's also why economics is so difficult I suppose.

Re: Slow

#219

Post by 2b3a51 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #115
dfabulich wrote: post #84

Here's another good example of a series of slow experiments: the cosmic distance ladder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdOXS_9_P4U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder You can compute the distance to the moon if you know the radius of the earth by looking at how long lunar eclipses take, data gathered over years of observations. Eratosthenes computed the radius of the earth by clever trigonometry in…

Beat me to it. Indeed, from that video I learned that astronomy work requires large and/or longitudinal datasets. I loved the tidbit that Galileo had a spat with Tycho Brahe because Brahe wouldn't share his data, so Galileo stole it (?)

Johannes Kepler was in there somewhere I recall. It was Brahe's data on the motions of Mars that lead Kepler to the idea of elliptical orbits.

Re: Slow

#220

Post by saulpw »

snarf21 wrote: post #213
saulpw wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proud of your work, not proud of yourself. The latter is quite a reliable source of unhappiness, I've found.

In the full quote, he is talking about fitness and being able to lift things and being proud of your abilities to do so. I'm not saying it works for everyone but it is nice to have a "thing" that you can hang your hat on. The whole interview is quite interesting and worth a read.

That's all fine and good. But nothing lasts. And then when you can no longer lift things, the humiliation you suffer is proportional to the pride you take in it.

Saying "it is nice to have a thing to hang your hat on" sounds like a very pleasant form of personal pride that is easy to let go of. But Hubris is a mortal sin for a valid spiritual reason, and pride is a slippery slope. The advice I gave--pride for your accomplishments, not for yourself--is similar to the advice to how to praise a child: for their efforts, not for their talents.

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