> Amal sits down for a one-on-one with Alex Russell, Microsoft Partner on the Edge team, and former Web Standards Tech Lead for Chrome, whose recent post, The Market for Lemons, stirred up a BIG conversation in the web development community.
> Have we really lost a decade in potential progress? What happened? Where do we go from here?
And then you can still use SyncThing[0] to share things. Depending on what you're doing of course, and how friendly the applications you use for it are to being used that way.. but if it's all in the browser and email profiles and a bunch of data files, you're golden. Getting used to that "lifestyle" has been the biggest leap in joy of using computers since SSD, for me personally.
[0] And/or FreeFileSync or similar for manual operation: I don't want e.g. browser profile data to be synced while the browser is in use, and running the sync manually is no biggie at all.
> Other people say, and I think this is a widely used rationalization, that fundamentally the tools we work on are "mere" tools; This means that whether they get use for good or evil depends on the person who ultimately buys them and so on.
> There's nothing bad about working in computer vision, for example. Computer vision may very well some day be used to heal people who would otherwise die. Of course, it could also be used to guide missiles, cruise missiles for example, to their destination, and all that. You see, the technology itself is neutral and value-free and it just depends how one uses it. And besides -- consistent with that -- we can't know, we scientists cannot know how it is going to be used. So therefore we have no responsibility.
> Well, that is false. It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know.
> But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live.
Yet all living beings in earth are descendants of same cell, as far as we know. So if the above can happen once -- even if only "needs" to happen once, why would it not occur more than once, and lead to different "lines" of life, so to speak?
I suspect that the less evolved and less efficient replicators would not fare well against older and more robust forms - especially once those forms develop the ability to hunt and direct their food.
Basically, in an emergent adversarial environment running late to the party gets you eaten.
> Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes us human. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for mathematical comparison.
> The book caused disagreement with, and separation from other members of the artificial intelligence research community, a status the author later said he'd come to take pride in.
I've seen an example where asking the exact same question word for word lead to the opposite outcome (one was a really racist rap, the other was a really good rap against racism).
So, how do you know that posing that problem N times will not lead EVER lead to a solution like "it would not more appropriate to chop up the owner and THEN clean the room, since people living in them is the main source of dirt and disorder in apartment rooms, resulting in less frequent need of cleaning"?
Because it's looking okay-ish so far, most of the time, or because you know for a fact that it's impossible to get such an answer?
You think this is the result of how much the average person can be trusted? Trash on the streets or urine in a phone booth are one thing, but this hits a bit different:
> equipment vandalized but nothing taken from the sites
Bust just out of curiosity, how do we make it so people can be trusted, so that then "society works"?
> Bust just out of curiosity, how do we make it so people can be trusted, so that then "society works"?
By not marginalizing people. There is a strong push to make all conservative viewpoints (and people) irredeemable and not part of society.
What happened to agree to disagree?
Democrats for the most part seem incapable of understanding Republican viewpoints, they just throw up their hands and call them "crazy" or other such words. You are not required to agree with the viewpoint, but you ARE required to understand it, and understand why a person might have a viewpoint you disagree with.
I’ll agree to disagree with you about how best we spend our tax dollars. I’ll agree to disagree with you about the right strategy to tackle climate change. I’ll agree to disagree with you about what infrastructure projects we prioritize or how we distribute foreign aid.
What I won’t “agree to disagree” about is that LGBTQ people deserve not to be discriminated against. I won’t agree to disagree about whether trans people should be accepted for who they are or if we should follow the broad scientific consensus on how to help people with gender dysohoria feel comfortable as themselves.
An agreement to disagree is, ultimately, a reinforcement and protection of the status quo and when the status quo is deeply cruel to certain people in our country, I have no need or desire to pretend that we’re having a mere policy disagreement.
You don't get to tell another person what beliefs they are allowed to have.
For example you listed certain things that you think everyone must agree with.
But another person might think those things are unimportant and climate change is the thing no one is allowed to disagree about "because it's going kill everyone", which makes it easily outweigh your things.
> I have no need or desire to pretend that we’re having a mere policy disagreement.
In your mind everyone must agree with you, except on things that you define as "policy disagreements"?
What happens when another person feels just as strongly as you, but in the other direction? Is the only possible result a never-ending fight?
You seriously can not think of single argument against your positions? If you can't, then you are problem, not them.
> You don't get to tell another person what beliefs they are allowed to have.
Never said I did - just said that I’m not going to simply agree to disagree. In a disagreement between someone pushing for change and someone advocating for maintaining the status quo, “agreeing to disagree” is a win for the status quo.
> In your mind everyone must agree with you, except on things that you define as "policy disagreements"?
Again, not what I said. You are free to hold those positions but I’m not going to “agree to disagree” and I’m going to judge someone who holds those positions.
> You seriously can not think of single argument against your positions? If you can't, then you are problem, not them.
I definitely can, but I don’t particularly care to examine or take seriously the arguments against “trans people shouldn’t be discriminated against”.
What about difficult topics like whether males who identity as women should be allowed into female-only spaces like prisons, domestic violence refuges, sports teams, changing/locker rooms, nude spas, events for lesbians, and so on?
This the crux of the matter. This is what is so controversial - should women lose their hard-won sex-based rights, just so men who want to be them can benefit?
Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting your post but are you implying that republicans are marginalized? A group of predominantly white cisheteronormative Christians is the marginalized group? I don’t buy that for a second.
Since valid conservative viewpoints exist outside this segment you've just reduced in your stereotype, then yeah, you are powerful at personally enacting this marginalization while demonstrating precisely that it's your own projected ignorance which does so. Do try better at buying things before selling your product.
Can you further your argument by pointing me to conservative viewpoints that live outside of the white Christian capitalist hegemony? I have a hard time understanding how Republicanism is an inclusive ideology considering their platform and talking points the past few years.
We feed them, house them, and give them medical care by paying them a living wage & making all these things affordable. Affordable enough so the norm is people being able to have a family.
This cannot be difficult for anyone to understand. Most people cannot afford this in the US (and many other “modernized” countries) — yet we have access to lightspeed comms, which enables mass organization.
It is only a matter of time before these injustices materialize insurgency.
Even land these days costs a fortune almost everywhere. land — undeveloped, with nothing. So legally, most people can’t even opt out in this country by buying a remote plot, building a little cabin and getting some peace and quiet. The paperwork and process is so convoluted with so many useless parties, and the asking prices for land that’s being squatted is unbelievable.
I think we are just at the end of the experience of a nation’s cycle. You cannot show people “with” what it’s like to be “without” so it simply cannot be understood. Those “with” rule because they have time to rule, and they always rule in their favor. It isn’t hard to imagine what proceeds from that.
It’s not a matter of understanding. Many people just don’t believe that the statements you made match reality.
It’s not a difference of competence, it’s a difference of axioms. You believe that (almost?) all people would desist from antisocial behavior if they had food, shelter and medical care. Others do not believe this, because they have different beliefs regarding human nature.
I didn’t say they would desist from antisocial behavior. Vandalizing the infrastructure for an oppressive society can be a perfectly social activity when conducted with others outcasted from said society.
I am saying there would be significantly less legitimate reason to vandalize or rebel against a social structure that was inclusive and supportive of its people. If opportunity was afforded people, with a patient kindness, you would be amazed at what’s possible.
Not seeing that is most certainly a difference of competence, the competency being compassion.
I hate software bloat and thrown away milliseconds, but even then I realize that our visual cortex is really good at noticing movement, but hasn't had any experience in the last millions of years with stuff just popping up out of nowhere or teleporting. I know nothing about usability but just from knowing that, and my own experience, I can't dismiss any and all "useless" animations out of hand. There was a time when we couldn't afford them, now it depends.
Maybe this would be a useful way to look at it: if the average disorientation caused by instant change (which also depends on whether the change is predictable, makes other things change position, etc.) takes longer to recover from than the shortest animation/fade you could come up with, have a transition.
(but even then it doesn't hurt to gate all of that behind a global configuration option, IMO, and if you want to be really fancy make it a float, not a boolean)
> It is everyone being complicit in this act that demonstrates to you how worthless you are that destroys you.
And that's why any generic, vague rules to supposedly "prevent bullying" or "fix the environment" will be used by "everyone", before you can blink. Just think of https://medium.com/@rebeccarc/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-acti... and how many are complicit in that, paying lip service to being against what they do with their hands. Humans are very good at this, always have been, also see organized religion.
What really gets me is that even those few people who are in high enough positions in big enough companies to have material benefits from "capturing" customers and making everything "sticky" and as pushy as possible... all of them in turn are customers of dozens, hundreds, thousands of other companies that make their life more complicated than it would need to be, with the same motivation. I would say people, all of us, are having a way worse time than we even know, because we don't have a somewhat sane world to compare to.
https://changelog.com/news/web-developments-lost-decade-LWao
> Amal sits down for a one-on-one with Alex Russell, Microsoft Partner on the Edge team, and former Web Standards Tech Lead for Chrome, whose recent post, The Market for Lemons, stirred up a BIG conversation in the web development community.
> Have we really lost a decade in potential progress? What happened? Where do we go from here?