imakesnowflakes

>supplementing our humanity..

This is exactly the problem. Supplementing x implies complete knowledge of what ideal x is. And what the "ideal" is nearly impossible to assess, since it require complete knowledge of future. I mean, what form of a "human being" will the most optimal through all of human existence? When you supplement without knowing the ideal, it has more chance to do harm than good.

>using these tools is what makes you human, as without them, what's really the distinguishing feature that separates you from the apes?..

Ok. But is it the only thing? What about creativity? We have language. We can create great stories and beautiful poems in them. We can look into the secrets on nature and create immensely powerful tools with that knowledge. Isn't that more of a hallmark of being a human, than mere dependency on our tools?

And is there no limit on how much we are dependent on them. Does it make sense to trade of our innate capabilities in the long term, for minor conveniences in the short?

I had a friend who could easily navigate any complex routes and had all the local routes and short cuts in his head. I respected him for that. Now he cannot find way around a supermarket without GPS. A part of him, that once I respected as a human being, is gone now.

>To me, nothing defines humanity more than the constant improvement of our race, our reach, and our capabilities.

You think our race is improving? Why? Because we have smartphones and have a massive and collective addiction to it?

>and the largest accumulation of knowledge the human race has ever seen..

It is also one of the biggest Ad/propaganda delivery channels.

Easy access to information does not make a difference is the people does not have the drive to consume it. If you give internet to 10 persons 9.5 of them will use it for social media and porn. How many of the addictive smartphone users have you seen consuming wikipedia? I have personally NEVER, not even once, seen someone reading wikipedia on a smartphone.

I once implemented a simple back propagation algorithm in Haskell (without any libraries) that could identify the pattern (one amoung 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D') represented on an 8x8 matrix...

Here is the code..

https://bitbucket.org/sras/haskell-stuff/src/b58f3fc017ce303...

> I can think of programs that can only be designed and implemented by top 1% of programmers...

Interesting. Can you share some of those...?

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed that you said top 1% of all programmers. I was not talking about top 1%. I was talking about a handfull of them. Top 1% would be quite more than a hand full. But please share those programs anyway...

I think those things are different. How many people in the world can create music like Beethoven or Mozart? How many people would have been able to beat Deep Blue in chess at that time? I can imagine there would be music that could only be rendered on a piano or violin, by only a hand full of people in the whole world.

In a similar manner, do you know a program that could only have been written by an 'expert' programmer, or only a hand full of expert programmers in the whole world? I don't think so.

The essence of what I am saying is that, programming is not a hard enough thing to waste those precious early years on.

>they seem to grasp these at a much deeper level than I did at that age..

What real difference will it make in the future? I think none. Some one who understanding recursion when they were 10 will not end up much better programmer than someone who was exposed to it at 20, and have sufficient experience in using the concept. Same with other CS concepts.

The idea of making kids learn this sounds great, because it looks great when kids do stuff with computers. But it is not really giving them and advantage in the future.

I am of the opinion that kids should not be taught to program computers for these reasons..

1. Programming can be too much gratifying, almost drug like, and will keep the vulnerable kids in front of the computer whole day long, building stuff. This will help them blow the socks off mom and dad, but will make little real difference in their future.

2. learning to program early does not make really better programmers. But there are skills vital to life and experiences that SHOULD be picked and gone through, when they are still kids. This should not be sacrificed for learning coding.

So I think kids should not start programming until they are past their teens..

Source: My experience as a kid who used to blow their parents socks off by making games and 3d graphics in qbasic and turboc...

The golden quarter..

https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technolog...

This section from an essay I read recently [1] might be relavent here

>In the 1960s, feminists faced social ridicule, media approbation and violent hostility. Now, mirroring the incremental changes seen in technology, social progress all too often finds itself down the blind alleyways of political correctness. Student bodies used to be hotbeds of dissent, even revolution; today’s hyper-conformist youth is more interested in the policing of language and stifling debate when it counters the prevailing wisdom. Forty years ago a burgeoning media allowed dissent to flower. Today’s very different social media seems, despite democratic appearances, to be enforcing a climate of timidity and encouraging groupthink.

So we are conditioned by the social media to encourage groupthink, and so, we are conditioned to hate "trolls", when their behaviors threatens breaking groupthink.

I see this manifested here in HN in discussions involving Tesla/SpaceX. In those threads, if you are in a position where you are going against the rabid enthusiasm, moderators will step in with a ban threat, if you are even slightly combative or go out of the line. But the other side is given a lot more slack, when it comes to silencing dissenting opinion..

[1] https://aeon.co/essays/has-progress-in-science-and-technolog...

What about being a soldier? Does it seem egoistic continue being a soldier, if you have a family?

We seem to be Ok, with people, risking their life to protect the interests of the country and thus protect our interests, but not ok if they risk their lives for themselves?

I wish people think twice before calling troll. That word has so lost it's original meaning, and is now a days used to shoot down any dissenting opinions.

I say this as someone who 100% agree with the first part of your comment.

No one notices when things go as planned/expected. Make media say you cannot do it, then do it.

You bet it will be noticed.

I am not saying that it is what is happening now. But just a thought.

I mean, if the guy is smart enough to do all the things he has done, isn't it too hard to imagine he will have a trick or two when it comes to PR?

I mean, every time, one of this article show up, it gets up voted to top, and people are talking and talking and talking, about it. For a couple of days, you see Tesla or SpaceX every where..It is like walking through a neighbourhood filled with Tesla/SpaceX billboards.

Point is, there articles are generating a lot of conversation involving these companies, which makes them very endearing to people involved. So after a while, people will take it as a personal insult, if you criticise these companies...

You know, all of those are good for the company, right?

Same here. All those fonts looked same until I found Tamsyn. If anyone reading here want to try it, you have to use it at the exact size it is made for, or else it will look ugly. So if you are using Tamsyn6x12 font, you can only use it at 12px font size..or it will look ugly.

I think kids should not be actively encouraged to learn to code early.

You can learn to code any time, when you are older. As far as I can see, there is no advantage in learning to code early.

But there are skills you need to pick up, and experience that you can only have when you are a kid. Let us encourage to kids to do those stuff..

>We talk to them, dance with them, have sex with them, have a lifetime of interpreting subtleties of their tone and body language and power politics. We are the same species as they are.

How is this any more of an evidence?

Can red compile GUI apps in MacOS? I just tried and it errored out..

>That's what keeps HN clean...

I really don't think HN is much better than reddit, these days...

I agree with you.

But you will provoke people by saying things like this. I have been heavily down voted else in this thread for saying something like this

I guess it is because people have great difficulty in looking from outside their current time frame. For example, people always thing that they are living in "modern times".

We were living in modern times in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, just like we are living in modern times now. People find it hard to comprehend that their times will once be old, and their beliefs and assumptions about the world obsolete, and their scientists proved wrong. It just does not occur to them.

This might be giving some kind of false belief that we know nearly all there is to know, which lead to fallacies like the parent comment. He implies we know all there is to know about the exposure to radiation.

A quote from Mark twain comes to mind.

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so"

Human beings should learn to be modest. How small we are, and how little we know. Then may be we will proceed with more caution and be less reckless with imposing our will upon the other living things on this planet...

>is whether it can infect A's friends D through Z, all of whom don't have malaria, presumably because they weren't bitten by an infected mosquito in the last couple weeks...

The point is, with mosquitos, a larger percentage of population (A's friends) will already be bitten by infected mosquitos, making it harder for the airborne strain to find a fresh host...

Thanks for the info regarding Malaria..

Thanks for the explanation.

But you haven't said anything that I don't know already.

>The point the parent and GP were making is that the advantage in being airborne exists whether or not mosquitoes is being killed off.

When there is an abundance of mosquitoes, an airborne strain does not have a sufficient advantage over the mosquito borne strain.

Now this is an assumption I am making. And this is where you people are hung on.

You are saying that an air borne strain has an advantage even now. But what if an air borne strain is limited by distances it can travel before it dies of for want of a host? A mosquito borne strain can travel arbitrary distance and spread over a vast area..

So when there are mosquitoes, it is more or less an even match.

When you take mosquitoes out, suddenly the airborne strain gains a huge advantage over the mosquito borne strain. Right? Because there are less number of mosquitoes, the spread of mosquito borne strain is reduced. This gives the air borne strain more chance to propagate to the next generation.

If you are thinking, how does it give more probability for the air borne strain to spread? Please consider this scenario.

Let there be two indviduals A and B, A infected with an Airborne strain and B infected with a mosquito borne strain. Let there be a healthy indvidual C that is, say, 10 meters away from A and B.

Case 1: Current situtation, with an abundance of mosquitoes.

A mosquito bites B, taking in the virus and takes off. At the same time, a virus of airborne strain start from A. Now, the mosquito proceeds to bite C right away. Now the virus enters C's body. After a while, C's immune system starts a response to fight this off. A day passes. C's immune system is still fighting the infection.

It is at this time at which the air borne strain enters C's body. But there is a fight going on in there with C's immune system in full alert and is killing of off the likes of this viruses. The small amount of air borne virus that manage to enter C's body gets slaughtered before it gets a chance to grow there. C might or might not get infected with mosquito borne strain...

But The airborne strain does not propagate to the next generation.

Case 2: Mosquitoes are being killed off.

Now there is a reduced number of mosquitoes. So when the airborne strain enters C's body, the mosquito borne strain is still not there yet. Immune system has not yet started fighting viruses of this type. So it gets a head start, and ends up successfully infecting C.

The airborne strain propagate to the next generation.

Sorry. I have to ask this to you also. Are you a biologists/ecologists or some one knowledgable in the field?

So it seems that it is unlikely, but not entirely impossible.

Also, I am just putting forward a dangerous possibility other than the effect on the food chain..

That would be true if you are going to eradicate mosquitoes overnight...

Also, I am just putting forward one possibility other than the effect on the food chain...

Sorry. I have no idea what you are talking about.

Are you a biologist/ecologist or someone knowledgeable in the field?

>Evolution doesn't have an intent. Diseases can't "evolve themselves."

I know. But when you remove mosquitoes from the picture, aren't you putting selection pressure on the diseases to be airborne?

>Evolution happens through random mutations* and selection of the fittest...

Yes. Say a virus of a disease x that normally spreads via mosquitos, gain a mutation to be airborne. But since there are an abundance of mosquitoes, an airborne strain does not have an advantage over mosquitoes borne strain. So it dies off (because of competition)

But when you eradicate the mosquitoes, or reduce their number significantly, suddenly the airborne strain has a tremendous advantage over the mosquito borne strain. Hence it can grow in numbers and eventually completely replace the mosquito borne strain...

Isn't this even remotely possible?

What if the diseases that depend on mosquitoes to spread mutate/evolve themselves to spread via air...

You know, "life finds a way" and all that..

Layman here.

Even if the impact on the food chain is zero, does it mean that there won't be other impacts?

For example, on the eradication of mosquitoes, what if the disease that are currently only spread via mosquitoes mutate/evolve themselves to be airborne?

Not an expert, but I always assumed that it was caused by the rotational inertia of the Flywheel[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel

Please make sure that the window has focus. If the boat is not moving, then the controls won't do anything other than rotate the sail and the rudder (which is very subtle).