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
RT @RealSpikeCohen:
This was the scene in Hawaii last night.
Fireworks are illegal in Hawaii, which meant nothing, because the people didn…
Note for the gym: when I use my maximum weight for an exercise and notice questionable form, I reduce the weight by ~1/3 and focus on proper form at the same number of reps.
As my old trainer says: don’t make a heavy weight look easy. Make a light weight look hard.
Perhaps it’s the neo-Darwinian framework in particular, with replicators at its core, that is needed? Maybe ideas replicate within a mind.
Why not $10,000? Why not $100,000? Is there any amount of free money you'd consider excessive to hand out?
RT @NickTaber:
Partly because we assume that the authorities doing this have scientific basis for doing so. We’re led to believe it’s a sci…
RT @apelsinapparat:
@prof_freedom
”ThE nEw ChInA vArIaNt” 🤡🇨🇳
RT @AlexEpstein:
Why is @60Minutes featuring Paul Ehrlich, the anti-human ecologist who has been 180° wrong for 55 years??!!
“humanity is…
Could this be why?? (Kidding) twitter.com/womenpostingls…
Since you mentioned mind reading: blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/mind-rea…
"[...] 71 percent of the women surveyed said they would not enter a new relationship with anyone who didn’t like her having a dog."
Do you think equally many men would have the same requirement for women?
When Santa Clara County told residents to stay inside, the first thing I did was go for a walk, without a mask, as I had done for years prior. I didn’t let them change my routine. Nobody ever enforced their stupid rule anyway. twitter.com/michaelpsenger…
Does anyone know why so many women have or want to have dogs?
I’m looking for explanations beyond ‘natural caretaking instincts’ and ‘dogs are cute’.
Especially interested in the why behind the dragging of male partners into caring for the dog.
RT @newsycombinator:
Conversation Skills Essentials tynan.com/letstalk/
RT @AlexEpstein:
The fact about fossil fuels that most shaped my thinking was: FFs give us an incredible ability to master climate. Most…
RT @AlexEpstein:
It should be common sense that when we’re evaluating what to do about a product or technology, we consider not only its ne…
RT @Th3LoganRiley:
@CollinRugg @JJDJ1187
I only want to be taxed once. Taxing the same money over and over has got to stop. https://t.co/Ma…
Stay safe out there, folks. Educate yourselves about cybersecurity. Here’s a good start: twitter.com/hacker_/status…
RT @libertyrecap:
"Gun bans disarm victims, putting them at the mercy of murderers or terrorists who think nothing of breaking the gun laws…
Re 3), note that I only advocate the use of false possessives as a temporary workout.
Btw isn’t it ‘means of’ not ‘means for’?
In other words, in ‘x of y’, ‘x’ is the head noun and ‘y’ is the subject?
Re “the […] set […] aren’t”: blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/wrong-nu…
RT @libertyrecap:
"The man who is not permitted to own is owned." - George Santayana
RT @Russ_Erickson:
@MinistryofTru16
This is commonly done to children, "Do you want peas or carrots with your dinner?"
Don’t the same ppl also say claim that those evil corporations are only motivated by profits?
Couldn’t there be reasons other than inherently sexist hiring managers?
Seen on social media: if companies can hire women for less, why don’t they hire only women?
RT @wolfstrength:
Not new for the corporate press to use “experts say” to justify wildly wrong predictions, which always require giving mor…
Yes. But is there any US politician who hasn’t harmed the US? twitter.com/unusual_whales…
RT @MinistryofTru16:
Schaffe lieber mein Kapital ausser Landes.
RT @dvassallo:
My 2023 goal continues to be avoiding this: pic.twitter.com/O7XPYyRKLW
RT @JonErlichman:
Apple HQ Apple HQ
in 1977: in 2022: pic.twitter.com/C5Pk3zxSzb
RT @CommunistTerror:
Some of the most powerful condemnations of the Soviet Union are in the pages of "Everything Flows" by Vasiliy Grossman…
RT @LPMisesCaucus:
We too are curious, do the American people get to add Zelenskyy as a dependent on their tax returns this year?
RT @depthsofwiki:
.@xkcd recently told me about this urgent scientific mystery and I need everyone to know about it pic.twitter.com/lZcJ6IWaE4
RT @AlexEpstein:
Wow, ChatGPT is unwilling to write an argument for de-socializing medicine in the UK.
RT @DavidSacks:
The question now is whether a free people will demand that their government stop participating in censorship, not just dire…
Recognize any of these traits in your parent/s?
RT @libertyrecap:
"The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey." - H. L. Mencken
RT @MarkusTurm:
Javier Milei, der Hauptführer der Bewegung, ist ein charismatischer Wirtschaftsprofessor, der sich nicht scheut zu sagen, d…
RT @WallStreetSilv:
🐖 Both political parties are horrible … over $2 trillion deficit in 2023.
$34 trillion national debt by end of 2023. 😢…
RT @TerribleMaps:
Moon on flag vs. flag on Moon pic.twitter.com/M4m9onoIYt
RT @AlexEpstein:
"Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century."
- @BostonGlobe, 19…
You’ve never asked me what my interests are.
RT @MostlyPeacefull:
@AdamKinzinger
Do you represent Illinois or Kyiv?
RT @mazemoore:
@WallStreetSilv
This is all because they think that the earth is too hot.
RT @SJobs_Stories:
"Now, let’s take a look at a revolutionary phone. We wanna reinvent the phone. Now, what’s the killer app? The killer ap…
RT @_Islamicat:
Is time for the Islamicat "twelve days of Christmas" tune - expect me to end up banned or something pic.twitter.com/p2bwXmV6s3
RT @PelosiTracker_:
Fun Fact Friday♟️
Pelosi's net worth has increased by $140,000,000 since becoming Speaker in 2007
Thats an average of…
RT @TivadarDanka:
This single line of bash code will crash your system:
:(){ : | : &};:
It is a so-called fork bomb, duplicating itself w…
RT @NickTaber:
“No public school in the US is set up to allow another George Washington to happen. Washingtons in the bud stage are screene…
A nice illustration of the fact that it is ideas, not geography, that shape society. twitter.com/terriblemaps/s…
If you just view it as a tradition to be continued, without regard for your preferences, both you and your kids are going to be dealing with a very difficult situation. It's not at all unlikely that you're going to resent each other.
It's perfectly okay not to want kids.
Some good arguments for why having kids isn't for everyone:
I don't agree with all of them, but some are good. For example, having kids isn't "just what you do":
Closing web browser windows doesn't close connections: lapcatsoftware.com/articles/closi…
RT @coffeebreak_YT:
game over for the biggest fraudster of our generation. pic.twitter.com/z9X1ag2Ldb
RT @AJamesMcCarthy:
I took a photo of the "Bubble Nebula", a mass of dust and gas in space shaped by stellar winds by a hot star in the mid…
RT @libertyrecap:
"It is states that are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and immeasurable destruction in the 2…
Here are my top five git commands: blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/handy-gi…
RT @paulg:
I used to think <person> was smart. Then I discovered that he disagrees with me about <political issue>, and I realized he could…
RT @AJamesMcCarthy:
I spent the morning freezing my butt off on the side of the road to get a shot of this: That’s the International Space…
RT @HoppeQuotes:
"State employees and dependents pay no taxes at all. Rather, their entire net-income (after payment of their head tax) com…
I think this is more or less how humans do it. They ask ‘Is the last digit one of 2,4,6,8,0?’
Kinda looks like the door opens before the bullet hits it?
Help: My Kid Doesn’t Want to Be Vegan Anymore! blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/help-my-…
Had they made "a reasonable effort to be truthful", and merely failed, they would have just been incompetent. From what I know, they did not, so they were lying.
From elliottemple.com/essays/lying (emphases modified):
A lie is a communication [...] which you should know is false.
'Experts' and politicians should have known that they were advocating something they didn't fully understand and that viruses don't work that way.
RT @PR0GRAMMERHUM0R:
How it feels learning to code reddit.com/r/programmerhu… pic.twitter.com/GCuQZ71X0p
RT @NickTaber:
The qualities that get kids in trouble in school are often their greatest gifts. Sad.
Unless weirdly, that universal/digital DNA coded for non-universal/analog processing units or brains in some organisms — but that would still make error correction in programming those processing units so much harder. Any digital equivalent would have an evolutionary advantage.
We also know from Leonard Adleman’s computer made from DNA that DNA is computationally universal. Due to the lack in error correction, analog computation cannot be universal, so I don’t see how any organism based on DNA would ever employ analog computation.
Those categories aren’t mutually exclusive and I suspect most biological computation is digital (as opposed to analog). Correcting errors in analog computation is much harder (impossible?), as David Deutsch has explained, and that would put a serious damper on any analog organism
Not a math wiz and I have a feeling what you’re saying is related to the shortcomings/contradictions of ‘naive’ set theory, so you’re probably right, but: a single-element set for each integer gives us an actual infinity of sets, no?
RT @elonmusk:
Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they thems…
In Germany they’re called chancellors not prime ministers.
RT @TCSparents:
After many attempts, this is ChatGPT's attempt at a Taking Children Seriously related sonnet: pic.twitter.com/SlAut7POhQ
Yes, Elon cares greatly about pissing you off, personally.
RT @elonmusk:
@StationCDRKelly
I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing thos…
Then presumably you understand how your work on ‘alignment’, when applied to AGI, is morally reprehensible?
hi, i run openai. up for a chat with me about this? (also, your books have inspired me more than anyone else’s,…
@IanMcMilan @lassekoivisto @sama
Google “the beginning of Infinity”
RT @SpaceX:
Falcon 9 launches @ispace_inc's HAKUTO-R mission to the Moon, first stage booster returns to Earth pic.twitter.com/cTnTRxzdU2
RT @AlexEpstein:
Today's environmental movement "is not about a clean environment for us or for us to be able to contemplate polar bears or…