We have much bigger illusions than wrestling. Ironically, a piece of fiction made the point much clearer to me: “All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU…
>Without abstraction, there is no human society to speak of I'm appalled that such a quote could be used to support such an argument. Grandparent, and Pratchett's Death, agree that humans and human society are supposed to support humans. Grandparent maintains, quite correctly, that our current society is, in fact, tooled to support abstract concepts like "valuation" and "wealth creation" instead of things like clean nutritive food and safe affordable shelter and supportable realistic hope -- and the biosphere itself that serves as backdrop, stage, and audience all in one. Whether…
> "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" > YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. > "So we can believe the big ones?" > YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. (Death about belief and humanity, from Hogfather by Terry Pratchett) > Until human society stops serving abstractions […] Without abstraction, there is no human society to speak of. No government to organize large scale actions, no incentive to share ideas, no way to exchange goods from places where there is overabundance to the places in need of those resources. Wanting to maintain a…
Not many people bought color TVs in the 1960s. Did their availability make black and white TVs cheaper? Hollywood movies better, or at least more spectacular? Not many people traveled by air back then, but did jet airliners make cars better and cheaper? I think the answers are obvious I don't think these are as obvious as you might think. Cell phone service is more akin to TV stations or other television service than the hardware used to view it. Black and white hasn't always stayed cheaper: You could buy a "normal" color television cheaper than a small black & white portable, for example.…
Perhaps you should read Hogfather or Making Money by Terry Pratchett. In which the importance of the lies that society tells itself is touched upon. "All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF…
Satire/comedy helps me cope with the world. For me, his stories are a nice balance of story, pragmatism, stoicism, fantasy, whimsy, and most of all satire. I particularly love his dialog. I have been searching (in vain) for whimsical/clean satire that helps me cope since Pratchett’s passing. I second the suggestion to give one a go. Pratchett is not for everyone though. I encouraged my office mate to read Going Postal; he liked it so so, but declined to read another. My flight instructor liked small gods at first, but then didn’t; he wanted to dissect it too literally. I think it bothered…
> “All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." > REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. > "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" > YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. > "So we can believe the big ones?" > YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. -- Terry Pratchett, The Hogfather ----------- One of the defining characteristics of humans is our ability to create shared…
> There are many things considered facts which are really little more than fictions which have been accepted society-wide. […] I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE. ‘All right,’ said Susan. ‘I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.’ REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. ‘Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-’ YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. ‘So we can believe the big…
For your amusement, a quote regarding fictional-computing from Hogfather (1998) by Terry Pratchett: > "That is the long-term storage, Archchancellor." > "And how does that work?" > "Er ... well, if you think of memory as a series of little shelves or, or, or holes, Archchancellor, in which you can put things, well, we found a way of making a sort of memory which, er, interfaces neatly with the ants, in fact, but more importantly can expand its size depending on how much we give it to remember and, er, is possibly a bit slow but----" > "It's a very loud buzzing," said the Dean. "Is it…
If you want automated fact checking you need to create a god. (... and creating a human team that does the same is playing God) If you want to identify contagious emotionally negative content you need ModernBERT + RNN + 10,000 training examples. The first two are a student project in a data science class, creating the second would wreck my mental health if I didn't load up on Paxil for a month. The latter is bad for people whether or not it is true. If you suppressed it by a large factor (say 75%) in a network it would be like adding boron to the water in a nuclear reactor. It would…