“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” –Whitehead
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“Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments”
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It's an interesting argument... but does it suggest that you can manually "level up" a civilization by throwing more effort specifically at automating operations? I'm not sure you can push on a large-scale human machine like that without some weird precession effects.
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Isn't automating things a big part of how civilization has leveled up over the past few centuries?
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This assumes that the current processes for important operations have no room for improvement which is unlikely.
one of my favorite quotes of all time
it includes also better notation and concepts. a better conceptualization of a problem can let one skip many unnecessary steps
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News you can use if you have hypothetically made the (poorly considered) decision to rely on Google as an infrastructure provider.
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"In an unexpected announcement today, Google Domains is “winding down following a transition period,”"
*unexpected*
9to5google.com/2023/06/15/goo
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The scale of modern GPU computation is so incomprehensible that I regularly find that even experts underestimate it. A 4090 can do ~150 THOUSAND fp32 ops per pixel per frame at 4k 60 Hz, and can load kilobytes for every single pixel from VRAM (and more from on-die SRAM).
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I wonder if there were people who furiously started writing a Community Note to this tweet, but upon checking the sources found out that it was actually true, and in fact slightly understated.
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It’s amazing that arresting everyone with a gang tattoo in El Salvador literally cut their murder rate in half
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Getting a degree for some purpose other than occupational training is luxury consumption, which should not be financed with debt, and definitely shouldn't be subsidized
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As a quantitative social scientist at @NuffieldCollege, I heartily oppose this very limited, pernicious argument. There is room in our world for many ways of thinking. And not every degree or job should be valued by its earnings potential. Oh, and FWIW I was a history grad.
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