Do they? I mean so much of learning (certainly of school) is along the lines of "this is the way it is, don't worry about first principles just accept this"

If there's learning how to think stuff going on I'm not sure I want the schools doing that, it seems more like the job of parents.

Imagine if you had! You might be the 100X JavaScript writer.

More seriously everyone knows there are patterns that keep repeating themselves from low level on up. The more exposure you get the better you get at understanding them. I think there's a reasonable question about if the best methodology for understanding is to see the same thing repeatedly (that is just study JavaScript) or to see multiple variations on the same thing (that is learn the entire stack imperfectly).

The counter to this in my mind is that learning for it's own sake is often imperfect. If I know I'm learning about semiconductors simply to get on to learning Assembly and then JavaScript (my actual goal) I'll retain less then if the initial steps are the goal itself.

Pedagogy is a tricky thing.

Some of my best friends are lactose.

That Ars these days. They want attention and this is the way their audience wants them to do it.

Personally I'm a bit bummed out about it because there's less that I want to read and the articles make the comment section... well, like the articles. I shouldn't complain though - someone took note of where the traffic was and it wasn't people like me. Also I still visit the site, it just seems like there's for me.

It's been depressing to see the progression of a lot of formerly good tech sites/blogs into anti-tech doomslop.

Meta can't literally force this on people.

The idea that looking around would instantiate ads sounds pretty bad. (though the devil's advocate position would be - compare that world to the one we live in today where the ads are viewable to everyone all the time). For that to happen Meta couldn't force people to buy it, the product would have to be so compelling that people wanted it despite that. Think about how good that product would need be?

No one is going to buy glasses that only show ads, that's obvious. They'll start out with something useful like glasses that recognize people and show you their public Facebook profile info. Or you look at things and it will identify what it's made of. Or show you a recipe of a dish you see in the restaurant.

Later on, when everyone's hooked they'll start showing these "relevant ads" when you look at things. Slowly at first but over time it will become a torrent.

I'm going to torch these things publicly in the street if this ever becomes a reality.

I read about an experiment with pigeons. The birds were given a target. For one iteration if a bird pecked a target it would get a piece of corn. For another it got nothing and for a third... sometimes it would get piece of corn and sometimes it would get nothing.

Tech for me is that third variation. Sometimes you get nothing and sometimes it totally delivers (and more!) on what it promises. This is as a user and even as a provider. You take various bits and bobs and suddenly with a slightly clever idea and you've got something that's more then the sum of the parts. Sometimes. Other times it just never comes together.

I'm not sure if that makes me happy or sad. Bit of both I suppose but I keep going back to the well because you never know.

They aren't. It's still being looked into.

Sample size of 1 but I tend to think something like Prokaryotes is common. I'd bet money that it either did or does exist on Mars. Eukaryotes will be much much less common for reasons that I do not understand and we'll never find intelligent life (or it won't find us) because the distances are too great and the probabilities too small.

> More productivity means less labour per productive cycle, hence less profit.

Rising productivity either means more stuff or lower prices.

How would that work? I'm a generous guy, I like to help people. I'm also a psychopath who likes to kill people.

Kind of like Robin Hood but slightly crazier I go around murdering people who have just taken out policies to help out their beneficiaries.

There is nothing generous about selling life insurance policies so the idea of there being some cognitive dissonance is irreparable flawed

Its one of the most unscrupulous sales person industries there is, if not the most based on how tightly (but inadequately) regulated it is

Its just a cesspool of chasing leads and commissions from people that don’t actually need what the salesperson is selling

and the motive would be unrelated to life insurance, just taking advantage of a gap in the justice system, a sure fire way to get away with it and frame someone