Dennis Hackethal’s Blog
My blog about philosophy, coding, and anything else that interests me.
Tweets
An archive of my tweets and retweets through . They may be formatted slightly differently than on Twitter. API access has since gotten prohibitively expensive – I don't know whether or when I'll be able to update this archive.
But in case I will, you can subscribe via RSS – without a Twitter account. Rationale
Security guard at Corona detention center catches the virus: who’d have thought? Entire city pays the price.
“Leaders of other states and territories have also been contacted and advised not to allow people to travel into the state.”
Casual violation of freedom of movement. twitter.com/jeffreyatucker…
E.g. if you ask them questions about Z and one says they haven’t thought too much about it (or worse, need not think about it, they just “know”). Or if you criticize Z and one just shrugs it off without offering counter criticisms.
Then that person isn’t taking Z seriously.
AGIs might do it for others or themselves or both.
That she didn’t “function well as a person,” even if true, does not mean she was incompetent at economics.
That doesn’t help if the crawler runs or at least reads JS.
I forget if I have. What does she say in it that you think shows she's incompetent?
For example, I take socialism seriously and reject it.
To be clear, you're claiming that her expertise did not extend to economics, but that that of economists and psychologists does?
No because taking an idea seriously does not mean accepting it on blind faith.
Why call it "rational, benevolent self-interest" instead of just "self-interest"?
That's exactly what Elizabeth Warren has been doing in the context of a wealth tax: twitter.com/ewarren/status…
New blog post: "Taking Ideas Seriously"
In the former case a rollback wouldn't help because one can't roll back reality.
Different AGIs might have backups for different reasons. The main reason I would have them, if I were an AGI, is so that I couldn't die as easily. And yes it'd be a very good idea.
AGIs could use git commits to version their minds and git push to back their minds up to the cloud. They could revert to any previous commit and thereby reinstantiate their minds from the state they were in at that specific commit.
I remember thinking it was weird when Obama got it. But this is worse. twitter.com/nypost/status/…
I just wrote about how evil wealth tax is earlier today: blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/wealth-t…
I’ve watched about two thirds of it. Yeah it’s interesting. If true, I’d put it in the category of “hardware problems causing software problems.”
blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/wealth-t…
She won't read it. But maybe some others will. And maybe they will recognize how evil what Warren is advocating really is.
New blog post: "Wealth Tax Is Evil"
Whereas if you live for 60 years after acquiring some asset, a wealth tax will tax that same asset 60 times. A wealth tax compounds.
Graham writes:
The reason wealth taxes have such dramatic effects is that they're applied over and over to the same money. Income tax happens every year, but only to that year's income.
Here's an article @paulg wrote on the subject:
For example, at a mere 1% wealth tax, the government will have taken almost 50% of the taxed assets at the end of your life.
Also, a wealth tax is particularly insidious because it taxes the same amount again and again. A percentage that may seem low can have devastating effects over the years.
Their ability to afford it does not justify theft from them.
The parasite keeps growing.
That’s how it starts: it affects “only” the top 0.1%. So most people don’t care. Then the parasite grows a little more. Which costs more. So then it’s 1%. Rinse, repeat. twitter.com/ewarren/status…
Cool. Was hoping browsers would add support for aspect ratios. twitter.com/Una/status/135…
Those teachers are indeed oppressors. But not because of racism. twitter.com/realchrisrufo/…
Anscheinend nicht: duden.de/rechtschreibun… benutzt "5%ig"
Heißt es dann auch "50 %-ig"? Zum Beispiel in "Es gibt eine 50 %-ige Wahrscheinlichkeit".
Ganz richtig. Schade nur, dass die Leerzeichen manchmal dazu führen, dass die Abkürzungen von einer Zeile auf die nächste getrennt werden, wenn sie nicht mehr in die Zeile passen.
Die Zeitangaben machen alle wenig Unterschied. Für Politiker, weil sie ohnehin weiter bezahlt werden, für Bürger, weil man sich in zehn Wochen wieder etwas Neues ausdenkt, um Restriktionen noch länger bestehen zu lassen.
"I own stocks, so I have a pretty good understanding of the stock market" is a non sequitur.
Those folks putting ever more masks on at ever more times of day are rather reminiscent of both the flagellants and the inhabitants of the Easter Island. “Let’s enact this lifestyle ever more faithfully, maybe it will save us! To hell with freedom and creativity!”
RT @RitterJurgen:
was sind schon 34 Jahre?
#Berlin #DDR #Tucholskystraße
1987 - 2021 https://t.co/LZSbnmg9nr
Literally the first question in the FAQ: blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/libertar…
Memes exist in at least two different physical forms. Also, memes can go up and laterally across generations of people.
Variations on reduce with single-line arrow functions.
Another question we don’t always ask: at whose expense and with whose consent?
David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity”
I see the heaters haven’t changed much since.
They thank you “for supporting struggling Californians.” But it wasn’t you. It was the other Californians from whom you stole that money at the threat of violence. And now you’re taking credit.
What mic is that and does it come with the audio cover thing around it?
From a libertarian perspective, it's as though the headline read: "It's finally a Latino's turn to steal people's money." twitter.com/GavinNewsom/st…
RT @SpaceX:
Falcon 9 launches Starlink to orbit – the eighth launch and landing of this booster https://t.co/zyj8ZdDFql
And if anyone has trouble updating, as I did: stackoverflow.com/a/13626200/137…
@adekunle_dreams @CerebralWisdom
But the main thing children learn in school, even though it's not explicitly on the curriculum, is a very evil thing indeed: blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/the-true…
@adekunle_dreams @CerebralWisdom
I don't understand the second sentence, but re the first one:
Effectively, yes. Children are met with such overwhelming force in school that there's a metaphorical gun to their heads to learn what parents and teachers deem right. Some of those things are good, some terrible.
RT @stackblitz:
💡 JavaScript tip:
When destructuring multiple values you can set one as a default for another. https://t.co/ryrtrKDxCH
I’d guess the secret of tyranny lies in both, for, “educating”, in practice, ends up being forceful indoctrination of “the right” things to learn.
Forcing people to learn certain things is another way to make them ignorant.
Rather CTP-esque at around 40:05.
I respect her courage in the face of authority. twitter.com/TruthAbtChina2…
People under a certain threshold of income or with no income—i.e., poor people—pay no taxes. And the vast majority of taxes are paid by the rich.
You may think poor people are owed something they're not getting, hence "paying" for it. That's not the case.
In fairness, people on SO seem to have gotten nicer ever since SO started saying “this is a new contributor, be nice.”
Also, they’re suddenly much nicer once your score goes up... 🤷♂️
Special-purpose prisons and talk of country-wide, forced vaccinations. Disgusting. Glad I’m not there right now.
“[...] not what in fact ... prison says it is.”
Caught himself at the last second there.
To be clear, you’re suggesting poor people are paying for vaccination sites somehow, despite not being taxed?
A compilation of interviews with and lectures from Karl Popper:
RT @bnielson01:
A new episode of The Theory of Anything Podcast is available. This time we discuss theories of AGI:
@BrouwersIO @_tessr @notwaldorf @github
I believe your domain registrar can help with that too if the copy of the site has a similar name as yours or uses your trademark.
“We conquer problems by creating knowledge—or they conquer us.” twitter.com/DavidDeutschOx…
Why not just pass isFood to the filter fn directly?
Government-managed distribution of vaccines, and now this.
At what point are people going to call it a planned economy? twitter.com/JoeBiden/statu…
Likewise, when asked if people should be forced to wear condoms, they say "no." But when it comes to masks they say "yes."
When this asymmetry is pointed out to them, they come up with excuses to do the latter but not the former.
RT @MurraySuggests:
While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when consenting adults engage i…
When was the last time you had a full day of doing only things you wanted to do?
Like the openness to criticism and scientific inquiry they display when they say it's "scientifically proven" that lockdowns and the destruction of lives and businesses are necessary to contain the virus, and then go ahead and force that on people?
Biden is making epistemological claims. Yet almost nobody recognizes them as such, or finds epistemology worth studying.
Epistemological mistakes can and have led to countless deaths and abysmal misery.
Nice. Why the word "but" in the fourth-to-last line?
“[...] ensure everything we do is grounded in [...] truth” is a disturbing sentence to hear from a politician.
Contrast this with Socrates’ and Popper’s call for political humility:
RT @ykomska:
Love this artfully collapsed “resting Bismarck” statue in Tiergarten, by Friedrich Seidenstücker, 1946. https://t.co/5HtzVw6ECM
RT @michaelmalice:
If schools were positive environments for children, detention would be a reward and not a punishment
Also, that's what people say, but that's not really what lockdowns are about. See gitpretty.com/dchacke/git-bl…
Note that there's no mention of ending lockdown measures—which is the one thing that would really help.
Everything on this list grows government at the expense of society's productive members.
It's a classic move by the government to abuse a crisis to increase its powers. twitter.com/JoeBiden/statu…
And here's more about what children really learn in school: gitpretty.com/dchacke/git-bl…
I've summarized these views in a new blog post titled "Lockdowns: Science vs. Morals": gitpretty.com/dchacke/git-bl…
10/
But that won’t convince lockdown supporters, because they’re not after solving either of those problems. What they’re really after—and what they learned to do in school—is spreading altruism and forcing others to do what they think is right. Which is disgusting.
9/
New blog post: "Governments Are Involuntary"
Voluntary self-isolation solves the moral problem and the medical problem.
8/
That's why lockdowns are redundant: it locks down those who don't want to lock down in addition to those who'd voluntarily do so. There's no added benefit to the latter group by having other people forced to stay home, too.
7/