Late binding of metadata is critical to my notetaking, and the primary advantage of digital over physical media. I am curious whether any technology like the Nuwa pen will be able to provide a transparent bridge between the two.
If a person could unequivocally understand themselves without understanding their past, then the trivial understanding of mere knowledge of the past should have no impact on their current self-understanding capabilities. Thus, a person with ongoing amnesia, unable to form memories which extend beyond a day's context window, would have no disadvantage in terms of self-understanding.
Further, history isn't just a series of events that happened long ago. It’s the story of how we - communities, nations, and civilizations have evolved over time. The experiences of previous generations shape the social, cultural, political, and economic structures that define a society today. Understanding this history allows a community to grasp why they are the way they are. For instance, the American Civil Rights Movement helps explain contemporary discussions on race in the United States. Without historical context, many aspects of the current social fabric would seem inexplicable or disconnected.-
Collective memory, as Halbwachs would have it, is like the shared pool of information and experiences held by a group of people. This collective memory is essential for maintaining cultural continuity across generations. When a community loses touch with its history, it risks losing the cohesion that binds its members together, which can lead to a sort of cultural amnesia. This concept isn’t just for nations; it applies to any group with a shared identity, including religious communities, ethnic groups, and even professional organizations.-
For example, indigenous communities often emphasize the importance of oral histories and traditions because these narratives carry the accumulated wisdom and identity of their people. If these stories are lost, so too is a sense of who they are as a distinct group.-
An understanding of history also allows a community to make informed decisions about the future. When people understand the causes and consequences of past events, they are better equipped to navigate present challenges. Santayana's quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," might sound like a cliché, but it's rooted in the idea that historical awareness helps societies avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The European Union, for instance, was built on the memory of two world wars, which profoundly influenced its emphasis on cooperation and integration to prevent similar outcomes. Notwithstanding this whole mess in Ukraine ...
You've just made a whole load of claims this without backing any of them up. But okay, let's take one which does make sense:
> When people understand the causes and consequences of past events, they are better equipped to navigate present challenges
To a small degree. Most of this boils down to the bleeding obvious, like "avoid war when you can because it's hideously expensive", treat people with decency etc. is there really much more to it than that?
And you talk about cultural continuity – some of these continuities are not good, q.v. the Taliban. Also cultures change very rapidly – the kind of homophobia that was acceptable or even encouraged when I was a kid is now seen very much as a serious transgression or crime (speaking as a straight bloke, I'm glad it; I'm very glad things have changed). We haven't achieved gender parity in pay, we getting there. You can't stick your hands all over a woman as you could in the 60s and expect to get away with it (ditto good).
Well I don't know. I can't say I'm convinced by what you've written but I appreciate the answer anyway. Thanks.
> some of these continuities are not good, q.v. the Taliban
Indeed. Good point. As you well point out, in this case the past determines an outcome for the worse ...
PS. That said - I found interesting how, in a recent "live from a Taliban courtroom" video, the Sharia judge made a point along the lines of "We are lucky these aren't medieval times anymore and we have Sharia law with us ..."
They considered themselves an advance upon a certain past. Progress.-
Very cute but that's all. No reason for me to consider it true. This if we are making unbacked claims then let me riposte thus, "the past is another country, they do things differently there". Which if true would mean the past has little bearing on the present – if true.
I'm riffing on bluestein, not defending lo_zamoyski — as far as I'm concerned, the invention of the web has made it far easier to go through the pockets of older cultures and discover what sorts of things they have that are worth taking a five-finger discount on.
(then again, I also find it worth learning how things are done in other countries, so I believe both the Durants' statement and your proposed riposte may be true at the same time)
[as for the truth: from a DBMS' WAL (the past) one may always reconstruct its tables, but for queries it's more convenient to always have them materialised (the present); does that make sense?]
The first order theories of the real numbers using addition and multiplication are decidable [0], while FO theories of the integers under the same operations are not.
The Curry-Howard Correspondence is more of an observation than a theorem, but insofar as it describes the general concept of relating logics and programming languages, what is the CHC for logic programming languages? If strikes me that LP directly instantiates and manipulates logical expressions, in a "self-dual" sense; or, is it that the various "proof procedures" of the logic side map to "proof search" algorithms on the computing side?
YeGoblynQueene, would you be amenable to discussing certain questions of logic programming via e-mail? I am reading about Jean-Yves Girard's "Stellar Resolution" model of computation, and would greatly appreciate a knowledgeable counterpart in the investigation.
It makes no objective sense at all, and merely reflects hypersensitive German policy regarding civilian ownership of anything resembling the means of force application.
No, it's the US gun control that is abnormally relaxed compared to the rest of the world, especially among developed nations. Not the other way around.
The reason why it's never gets fixed for the US must be that the US also has total global socioeconomic dominance and none of you guys want to rock the boat and accidentally fix that too in the process.
Id argue that it is not so much American gun control that is different but American gun culture.
The Nordic countries are not far behind on gun ownership, and I recently learned (I have my gun background from mandatory military training + farming/hunting, so mostly bolt action except in military) that even semi automatic are still very accessible than I assumed, you just need to know how.
The Czech Republic is even more liberal than that.
Several European countries also practice the storage of military weapons at home, actual full auto assault rifles meant to defend against an invader.
So again: the difference I think is more in culture than in the amount of weapons. Obviously control makes a difference as to who gets hold of the weapons, but again, the rules are pretty lax: a good reason (hunting and/or sports shooting), and, in the case of sports shooting (at least for single hand guns) a recommendation from a local club.
The American culture were guns are stored loaded around the house however and the glorification of gun violence, that however scares me.
Indeed, the United States is abnormal in the statistical sense, and superlative in the moral sense. Free men fear not to bear arms, and so this status befits us.
It's not just Germany that is very sensitive towards guns - that's an attitude prevalent on the entire continent, maybe except the Balkans and Switzerland. The UK has even stricter regulations on guns, and not just guns but also other kinds of weapons like knives.
I like this a lot. A habit I picked up in grad school for math was to, if I thought I understood something, really check my understanding of it by re-explaining it to myself. Serializing thoughts into language is a pretty great way of catching holes and errors in reasoning.
I suspect this is also why rubber duck debugging works.
Pay successful bounty submissions on a faster than net 180 time frame. A friend was interested in the rather extensive Expensify bug bounty programme [0], but the red tape involved created far too long a turnaround time between claiming a ticket and receiving compensation.
Do they get to claim it and then work on it, or do they need to have a solution already to claim it? net 180 wouldn't be bad if you could reserve several of them to work on at a time. It'd suck to work 'for free' that first few months, but then you'd have consistent income coming in regularly after that.
