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 @ThomasEWoods:
These people are subtle twitter.com/wef/status/133…
I hadn't used Ruby on Rails in a good while. Been back at it for about a week now. I had forgotten how productive it makes you. Template preprocessing, CLI generators, convention over configuration... it's good to be back.
Does that include lockdown policies in the West?
CA admits that mask mandates and stay-at-home orders don’t work: “COVID-19 is spreading rapidly.” Their response: let’s instate another stay-at-home order, destroy more businesses, ruin more lives. Shame on you @GavinNewsom https://t.co/kvkm23dsLI
In the sense that all problems in all fields require knowledge creation to find solutions and therefore are affected by one’s epistemology/methodology. twitter.com/tomhyde_/statu…
Everything is downstream of epistemology. twitter.com/hildherlo/stat…
Is it possible to build a mind out of purely static memes?
Maybe, but when building a mind one doesn't pre-implement ideas into it except for some very basic starting points.
isn't this a situation where "parasitic" and "cooperative" collapse into one?
I don't think so because that situation doesn't benefit the mind, only the memes.
It's a situation where "parasitic" and "static" overlap.
@micahtredding @DavidDeutschOxf
Would you be okay with being snapshot and then run in parallel for each question?
To do nothing but faithfully enact those memes, presumably.
RT @DavidDeutschOxf:
"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen." Larry Niven.
RT @HowardSteen4:
Oh good...that Mr. Drosten already received his Christmas present from the Corona Ausschuss. As I read this, it is only t…
For them to be identical, every static meme always has to be parasitic and vice versa, and every dynamic meme always has to be cooperative.
What are examples where that isn't the case?
Two replication strategies of memes: parasitic (i.e., stealing a mind’s resources for the meme’s purpose) and cooperative (i.e., helping a mind use its resources for its purpose).
Are these two categories identical with Deutsch's concept of static vs dynamic memes?
RT @YALiberty:
.@KamalaHarris gets confronted about tyrant CA Gov. @GavinNewsom not following his own rules.
In classic bureaucrat fashion…
Are you suggesting billionaires should not be free to decide how to spend their money?
How anyone could sit down next to Xi and not throw up from the disgust of sitting next to a murderer is beyond me. And smiling at him takes a whole other level of either profound ignorance or malice.
Sam Harris once said something along the lines of: the response to bad ideas shouldn’t be to ban them but to discuss them.
Sometimes we may find that the ideas aren’t so bad. Or we learn why they’re bad. Either way, better than banning.
RT @patrickc:
Someone I know has had some quite useful COVID-related posts removed from Medium, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor—they've been deemed…
Isn’t it curious that the word “therefore” is used all the time, but “wherefore” has all but disappeared from the English language?
That's usually the hidden goal of socialists. At least to keep everyone roughly as poor as they are.
Do these “essential” workers have a harder time getting tested because of these new spots?
Just spoke with a friend who described lockdowns as a “public-health draft.” I think that’s a fitting description of what’s going on.
So hab ich abgestimmt. Insgesamt ein erschreckendes Abstimmungsergebnis. https://t.co/7xqqlQKj4i
"Vielleicht hört der ein- oder andere in der Pandemie künftig stärker auf sie – und auf die Wissenschaft."
Autoritäres, szientistisches und technokratisches Gedankengut.
I've argued that all people are software engineers. Even if it’s not their profession, they program all the time—in their heads. Here’s an example of what I mean:
Typo on stripe.com/docs/js/append…:
"[...] you should set your page's viewport width to device-width with the the viewport meta tag." Double "the"
I started a Chalk room for web development. For web devs to talk code, tools, tips & tricks, etc.
If the stereotype that Americans are more litigious than Europeans is true, doesn't that mean the courts have more influence in America than they do in Europe?
If they should all have the same serial number (though maybe that defeats the purpose?), one could add the same trace amounts to every square inch or so of the sheet.
Depending on what you mean:
If the resulting parts shouldn't all have the same serial number, one could add the trace amounts only to the resulting parts, not the sheet beforehand.
Im Kapitalismus dürfen Menschen diesem Existenzbedürfnis frei nachgehen. In anderen gesellschaftlichen Organisationen darf er das nicht oder (wie in Dtld.) nur eingeschränkt.
Obwohl Ideen à la “man sollte die Wirtschaft nicht über den Menschen stellen” sicher gut gemeint sind, werden sie—wie momentan auch—oft dazu genutzt, die Wirtschaft einzudämmen, was letztendlich Menschen schadet und daher angesichts der guten Absichten ironisch ist.
Ah, ich meinte es so in der Richtung: Der Mensch muss wirtschaften, um zu überleben. Wenn zb Friseurläden zwangsgeschlossen werden, dann ist das eine Existenzbedrohung für sie.
Kannst du bitte erklären, was du damit meinst?
Ohne Wirtschaft keine Menschenleben.
I think it’s more driven by a migration to freer states with rational governments. Lower taxes are only one part, albei…
It's not you who's paying for their time and fees—or for anything else you do. It's the American people, from whom you have stolen that money.
“...as we rebuild and reimagine an economy...”
At whose expense?
“Rebuilding” an economy is the stuff of communism btw...
No, I’m against force. Pro-force views aren’t compatible with CR because, among other things, force stifles the growth of knowledge.
Re speed limits: blog.dennishackethal.com/2020/11/28/lib…
The acquiescence is so widespread that the police need not hide their actions but can openly brag about them and then call for new recruits! twitter.com/WMPolice/statu…
As much as I love Clojure, and as much as I dislike OOP, Rails is still the best tool for rapidly prototyping web apps.
They can always use such graphs to claim that restrictions aren’t *strict enough yet *, too. Doesn’t really matter how the graphs look, lockdown proponents can always rescue their theory. Which is why, by Popperian standards, they’re being unscientific.
Nice, this allowed me to change from spans with a custom class to a simple tag.
Nice. Used to be you had to render some invisible element above the target one to simulate this effect. twitter.com/piccalilli_/st…
Freedom is being granted conditionally, not presumed given unless violated—a dangerous trend that is gaining traction in many countries, even in the West.
If you think all that sounds bad—and it is alarming!—here's what, IMO, is much worse: the sheep-like acquiescence. According to my contact, most people in Singapore are happy with these measures. Most don't mind.
If you can afford to re-enter, you are submitted to a test at the airport. If you test positive, you are forcefully quarantined for two weeks in a hotel that has been repurposed for that (presumably not voluntarily).
Whenever people leave the country, they have to pay $1,600 to re-enter. It appears that the country is effectively closed down for anyone who can't afford to come back. Meaning freedom of movement—a basic civil liberty—is more or less gone for most.
My contact was unclear about the government's privacy policy—well, it's the government, so expect the worst. All that data about ~everyone's movement in the hands of government is bad news. If they didn't already get it from cellphones, now they have it for sure.
Everyone is required to scan a barcode whenever they enter a business or otherwise publicly accessible building. People who don't have smart phones are given devices for this purpose. The tech for that is developed and run by the government.
Just got off the phone with someone in Singapore. Singapore's lockdown policies are nuts. Some "highlights":
👇
How many lives were stolen by your restrictions today, @GavinNewsom? twitter.com/GavinNewsom/st…
RT @iamdevloper:
I’m sure base jumping is a thrill but have you ever tried running an UPDATE query on a live database before?
Been a while, but I loved this book when I read it.
@DavidDeutschOxf @yaacovlozowick
The “ka” reminds me of: Wieso sind in Kanada die Lichter aus? Weil kana da is.
RT @DavidDeutschOxf:
@yaacovlozowick
LOL. Ka' Mensch is' uns zwider. Die Union is' ja ka' Mensch!
RT @CommunistTerror:
This is a proof of a new booklet we have created. It is called "Communism: A little book of facts". It will be printed…
Think about what people could do with all that money if the state hadn’t stolen it from them. twitter.com/KevinKileyCA/s…
I just checked and when tasked with "hey siri, set a recurring alarm for Friday at 8pm" it sets an alarm for 8pm today.
I use the "recurring" feature for that. No special UI or laptop.
I can set alarms arbitrarily far ahead if I do it manually through the UI.
"Hey Siri, set an alarm for tomorrow at 6pm."
"I can't set an alarm for more than 24 hours ahead."
Why not?? That's "artificial intelligence," folks.
@dvassallo @FourFourths
Evo psych is overrated... it's not in people's "nature" to work any particular amount of hours per week, but in their interests and decisions, which differ from person to person.
What about morals? Can we put those at the forefront, too?
Non-refuted arguments in favor of lockdowns: 0.
Months of “two weeks to flatten the curve”: ~8. twitter.com/GavinNewsom/st…
"The order prohibits “all travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit,” with limited exceptions."
This is insane. And illegal.
I'm live streaming on Twitch again, answering programming questions on Stack Overflow. Join me!
Trying out Twitch for the first time... join me as I look through SO questions.
There wouldn’t be a tunnel without your pointless and cruel regulations.
And they eagerly pressured others, without warning or consent, into submitting to the “health orders.”
I think the underlying cause of that is altruism.
I had a related thought back in March regarding how readily people embraced totalitarian measures. They almost seemed relieved that somebody was telling them how live their lives. Also, they jumped on the opportunity for such nonsense as “cancel rent.”
Would you like to take responsibility for this @GavinNewsom @MayorOfLA? twitter.com/jakecoco/statu…