Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | xwkd's commentslogin

Critical thinking requires that the sources themselves are evaluated for bias. Anecdotally, I've come across several articles for which the bulk of citations all come from one source, and that source is a heavily political "newspaper" article. This is true for topics that are hot on all sides of whatever spectrum or division they tend to land. If Wikipedia is going to be taught to be used as a tool for research, then its governance structure should be taught and critically evaluated. The bias of the board of the Wikimedia Foundation should be taken into account.

I suspect that the bulk of readers don't give a second thought to Wikipedia's Magisterium.


Yes, let's bring these back. In fact, why don't we just build Khrushchevkas and skip the whole proletarian revolution step? We can even start wearing the funny little hats with flaps and drink until we forget about freedom or dignity. We're beyond that anyway, aren't we?

With this level of wealth inequality and these seeming like a good idea, I'd say we're gearing up for a bloody good time, to say the least.


It's hard to imagine that abundant housing led to the truly adverse economic conditions in the USSR. Rather than offering a cheeky strawman perhaps you could give some real thought to alternative solutions you'd like to see?


Galileo and the church were both correct.


It's rare for an app dev (of such a popular tool) to go out of their way to respond to a random forum user. Even rarer is to address every point on their list with patience and consideration.

You must be a remarkable person and I wish you nothing but success.


I'm not even able to hold a candle to Wolfram intellectually- the guy is a universe away from me in that regard. But: Given a cursory look at his wiki page and Cosma Shalizi's review of his 2002 book on cellular automata [1], I feel fairly comfortable saying that it seems like he fell in the logician's trap of assuming that everything is computable [2]:

>There’s a whole way of thinking about the world using the idea of computation. And it’s very powerful, and fundamental. Maybe even more fundamental than physics can ever be.

>Yes, there is undecidability in mathematics, as we’ve known since Gödel’s theorem. But the mathematics that mathematicians usually work on is basically set up not to run into it. But just being “plucked from the computational universe”, my cellular automata don’t get to avoid it.

I definitely wouldn't call him a crackpot, but he does seem to be spinning in a philosophical rut.

I like his way of thinking (and I would, because I write code for a living), but I can't shake the feeling that his physics hypotheses are flawed and are destined to bear no fruit.

But I guess we'll see, won't we?

[1] http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ [2] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/how-we-got-here-...


Wolfram really loves to talk about computational irreducibility.[1]

But I think his articles about Machine Learning are excellent. [2]

[1]https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=%22comp...

[2]https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/category/artificial-inte...


Produced by a Mormon whose dissertation was supervised by an atheist Professor of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion. This may be a data point in favor of the trustworthiness of the podcast, or it may be an argument against, depending on your own personal point of view.


As long as the approach is rigorous scholarship in good faith (is it?), it shouldn't matter too much.


I can't speak for the particular material referenced, but ... good faith is a lot to ask for in religious meta-literature. So often I see arguments based on the following:

* Start by assuming all the weird stuff didn't actually happen. We all know that fiction is stranger than truth.

* Next, assume it's impossible to foretell the future (in particular, "people who hate each other will start a war" can obviously only have been written after the fact), so clearly the author lied about the date they wrote it. Also, assume that nobody ever updated the grammar (due to linguistic drift) while copying it, and that the oldest surviving copy.

* Finally, assume that all previous translations were made by utter imbeciles and reject the wording they used, even if that means picking words that mean something completely unrelated to the original. You can always just assume that the words were a typo or something, and not a blatant reference to other books on the same topic.

The most basic sign of rigorous scholarship is saying "well, maybe" a lot, with just an occasional "but definitely not that".


I can say with certainty that it is not impossible to predict the future. We can scientifically do so - advertising is a form of future prediction.

All things that exist have a cause and a consequence - nothing is unknowable if we could simply see a the data, everything could be explained exactly.

The future without is easier bc ppl are almost exactly the same based regardless of culture, ethnicity, religion or class and collectively we have been simply repeating the same mistakes, in cyclical pattern, for our entire history.

Everything has done before and everything will be done again - different eras tho, same humanity broken in the identical ways living the sames lives leading to the same mistakes and then forgetting all that and doing it again.


I gave one episode a listen and can now say it's not what you described. They conveyed actual scholarship but kept it light-hearted. Religious fundamentalists might not like it because it doesn't start from the assumption that the canonical Bible is inerrant, but for anyone who wants to learn about the Bible from an open-minded viewpoint, I think it's worth a listen.


If singular, this definition makes sense. If not, then I have to ask: Independent of what or whom?


Late reply but think of it like this: they are financially dependent on themselves. All involved have to secure any and all moneys to enable them to continue their work.


Please excuse my understanding as a layman, but could this be related to the electromagnetic absorption spectrum of water?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Absorpti...

It seems that the "green" wavelength that the article cites is exactly where the lowest point of absorption is. Could this suggest that heat is created as a result of electromagnetic resistance? (Like water molecules vibrating as a result of microwave radiation?)


That’s what I’m trying to understand too.

Analogously, chemical sunscreens turn UV to heat by absorbing wavelengths with their different bonds and vibrating.


> Could this suggest that heat is created as a result of electromagnetic resistance?

Lightbulbs getting hot would suggest that is correct, but maybe I'm missing what you're saying


I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.


I suspect that, if it came down to it, you wouldn't.

It's easy to wrap yourself in the nobility of someone else's words but you have your limits like everyone else.


You can suspect whatever you would like. I don't mind.

Your comment is rather disrespectful and yet, if someone tried to shut you up, I would proportionately respond. You have a right to your disrespectful speech.


Needs to be played on a CRT in general. For retro games, you can't beat the low latency and fantastic glow of an electron gun. No shader emulation comes close.


...I find this hard to believe. A modern high-quality 4K HDR screen is exceedingly good at recreating all sorts of lifelike imagery. You're telling me the one thing it can't effectively recreate is a CRT television?

Input lag is probably the biggest issue, but you can get very low-latency screens nowadays! None of them are actually 0ms, but neither were CRTs unless you're measuring only the top of the screen and not the bottom.


It depends.. the waterfall effects in the likes of Sonic are pretty hard without a real CRT.

If you're using an emulator, there are quite a few filters that can help to recreate that old feel, none are quite right though.


The waterfall effect of Sonic is more of a result of composite video artifacts. Using a RGB cable, the effect is much less pronounced.


I know.. and it was designed that way. It wasn't a bug but a feature of the game where the designer/developer knew how that would artifact on the screen, and was done intentionally. It really doesn't emulate/simulate well on a modern display.


The waterfall effect is basically just blur! The problem with adding blur is that—although it makes the waterfall effect work—it makes the image blurry.

Personally, I don't think it's that the CRT is better than the filters, I think you're just used to the imperfections of a CRT.

Also, I really do think you need a 4K HDR screen (with good HDR, there's a lot of variance) in order for filters to really emulate the look of a CRT.


It's not a blur so much as intentionally designed to use how a CRT/Composite video would artifact on a CRT. It's not a matter of better or worse, just that filters/simulation won't work well for that same effect.

Also, in a lot of ways a good CRT does look significantly better than all but OLED displays for games. The down side is they're heavy. I used to have two 22" calibrated flat screen displays that I loved, and only very recently are new displays visual quality on par. I stopped using them more because of space and size than quality. They weighed 85# each and had a permanent bow in the desk I was using back then. Moving 3x in one summer I decided to go with flat pannel. Not as good, but was doing less design work and more programming since then.


No matter how nice a tv, when someone shines a flashlight at the camera, it won’t make you squint. Same problem. Plus, no static.


> No matter how nice a tv, when someone shines a flashlight at the camera, it won’t make you squint.

It actually can on a really good hdr tv! And there's no reason a crt filter couldn't add static.


I meant physical static. How are my overlays supposed to stick?


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: