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
“[...] 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/
To those concerned about ICU numbers, their loved ones, etc: their is another way. Lockdowns are not the only way. You can persuade people to stay home. And those who are vulnerable are free to stay home already, no lockdowns. required.
6/
Same goes for lockdowns. Even if there were overwhelming scientific evidence that locking people into their homes lowers transmission rates, death rates, what have you, it would still be evil.
5/
..., and advocates of such force can always point to scientific evidence for that. It'd be "based on science."
And still, forcing people not to smoke is wrong. Forcing them to exercise is wrong. Force in general is wrong, and no amount of scientific evidence changes that.
4/
Take an example where we know that the outcome of force, in purely scientific terms, is beneficial: that of forcing someone not to smoke. Or forcing them to exercise a few times a week. Scientifically speaking, their body will be healthier as a result of that force...
3/
It's still letting scientism off the hook too lightly.
And say the argument were refuted tomorrow, that would be fine, because the moral problems would remain, and lockdowns would still be a horrendous evil.
2/
I agree with the underlying message, but the thing is, even if lockdowns were scientific, that would say nothing about the morality of the situation.
So the argument that lockdowns aren't scientific runs the risk of being refuted tomorrow through new scientific findings.
RT @cat5657:
@dchackethal
Are you stupid? It's our tax payer money. We earned it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: do NOT take any government payments. You’d be trading your freedom for a dime.
He calls it “The American Rescue Plan.” He actually sees himself as a savior.
This is why “learn to code” is great advice. twitter.com/tanoaksam/stat…
@CarolaHeibach @EGermroth @c_drosten
Ich bin kein Troll. Du könntest meinen Kommentar ernst nehmen, so, wie ich es bei deinem auch getan habe.
@randomdorkynig @ProJavaOrlovsky @ASpittel
It’s not really a conclusion but an interpretation.
Again, can you think of another?
If you can, you might realize that “aggressive involvement” is not only unnecessary but also counterproductive.
For if you need legal help defending yourself against lockdown measures. twitter.com/angela4LNCChai…
“Master” is a big word. And the first two can be built without JS.
Mastering comes after maybe 10,000 hours, as they say, of coding in JS. For some it will be sooner or later, but it takes a significant amount of time either way.
Nothing to be grateful about when the government robs you of your money at the threat of violence.
@randomdorkynig @ProJavaOrlovsky @ASpittel
There’s no reason to be mean to me.
There are other explanations for that data. Can you think of one?
This is starting to look really good.
Watch yourself react to the robot. I caught myself thinking it was conscious for a second there.
@randomdorkynig @ProJavaOrlovsky @ASpittel
That 90% of JS developers are men does not mean that women only have a 10% chance of becoming Js developers.
@CarolaHeibach @EGermroth @c_drosten
Richtig, jeder sollte die Verantwortung fuer seine Handlungen tragen. Deshalb sollte man fuer medizinische Leistungen auch bezahlen anstatt ein Gesundheitssystem zu bauen, das durch systematischen Diebstahl finanziert wird.
Axes could use labeling. I take it the x-axis is "months"?
I'm responding here in an effort to respond to everything you wrote, but I refer to my previous tweet asking for a way to change your mind about these things before continuing the conversation.
These arguments are very commonplace, so again you could assume that those disagreeing with you have considered them.
That rests on the notion that the state should have a monopoly on violence and that such violence can be justified, e.g. democratically through elections (which you have brought up).
Arrest and imprisonment are okay in certain situations but persuasion would always be better if possible.
I think you're arguing that when the state does it ("it" being taxation/arrest/etc) it's not bad but when private actors do it it's bad.
Also this conversation is getting unwieldy because 1) it's Twitter and the character limit is horrible for discussions and 2) you comment breadth-first not depth-first which makes it harder to navigate.
Instead, you seem to assume that I have problems and lack understanding. That attitude is counterproductive to a rational discussion.
Please state what it would take to change your mind about coercion/taxes/lockdowns. If you can't, there's no point in continuing the conversation
You say things that are conventionally held opinions by many, many people. You could assume that I've heard these arguments before, maybe even shared some of those opinions at some point, and yet have decided to change my mind about them.
You say things like "you don't understand," which isn't a very humble attitude. You seem to think that you already know the right answer.
Also that isn't a problem I have.
If somebody takes away your house against your will, you won't consider that theft as long as they give you something in return?
Theft means something is taken from you against your will, period. Whether you get something in return doesn't matter if you don't consent to the transaction.
There is no "common" morality because there is no such thing as an acting, thinking collective. Morality concerns individuals.
What is the moral explanation for why it should be okay to force one person to help another?
Well, again, I wasn't talking about elections, but yes, taxation is theft, so I don't think elections—or anything else—should grant a government the ability to tax (except for each citizen's individual consent, at which point it's just a voluntary contribution, not a tax).
And even if it did start with my moral obligation, where, pray tell, does that obligation come from?
The logic starts with your moral obligation.
That's in conflict with what you wrote here twitter.com/bizwarre/statu… where you said the reason (i.e., starting point) is the right the constitution grants.
I don't know if the constitution does or doesn't grant such a legal right—I'm arguing that, if it does, it shouldn't.
The moral question of whether it should can't be answered by merely saying that it does (if true).
The first one, the one you had emphasized. Which you seem to have understood correctly because you then replied "the constitution is why."
It's relevant because if they don't have a moral right then I don't have a moral obligation.
When asked "why" it's not enough to say "that's why." You need to give a reason.
The "that" can't refer to the constitution because you hadn't mentioned the constitution previously.
What does the “that” refer to in your previous tweet?
It may well be that people have some legal right to certain services such as healthcare. I'm arguing they don't have a moral right to it, and that they shouldn't have a legal right to it.
Yes, I know what a right is. I also know about the difference between positive and negative rights and the danger of the former.
I have stated pretty clearly that I disagree with that.
RT @nixcraft:
Are you getting ready to debug some code in production? It's dangerous to go alone! Take the rubber ducky with you. https://t…
gitpretty.com just got better!
- Improved navigation through commits
- Breadcrumbs at top
- Improved spacing and font-size
- Improved pagination
What will you build today?
Cheers to @MatMcGann, @Hukkinen, and @mewriko for your feedback. twitter.com/dchackethal/st…
@lolo16268
That looks cool. I've been meaning to tinker with a Raspberry Pi and get into robotics. This kind of project reminds me of doing that.
RT @Space_Station:
The @SpaceX #CargoDragon is now targeting Tuesday at 8:40am ET for its undocking from the station. @NASA TV coverage beg…
So people might feel quite sad when their robot pet dies. The manufacturer may even abstain from supporting backups/software transfers onto new hardware just to make the experience more special for each robot/owner relationship.
Maybe. Then again, people feel bad when their Roomba gets stuck.
Eventually robots die too because there's wear and tear. Now imagine a robot that "learns" to respond to your personality in a certain way and when that robot "dies" (breaks) its "learned quirks" are gone, too.
It would certainly be bad not to have access to healthcare, but that does not mean that I, or the government, or the public, or whoever, have a right to levy a tax on you to ensure my access to healthcare.
My misery is not your or anyone else's responsibility.
No.
To be clear, I said there was no conflict because "ensuring availability of healthcare" and "ensuring health" are basically the same thing for our purposes here.
That was the original goal anyway. I then realized that it could be used to host blogs whose articles are made entirely of commit messages.
I wrote about the functionality and purpose of gitpretty here: gitpretty.com/dchacke/gitpre…
No, it's a website that uses the GitHub API to render the commits of any public GitHub repo but (hopefully) more aesthetically pleasing. Markdown is part of that rationale.
Yeah I linked the title at first but it was just a lot of blue on the page. Maybe I should just keep them black even when they're links, because I think you're right that it's not clear where to click right now.
You say "no" but your statement and mine do not conflict.
At most it could pretend to feel boredom, and then pretend to be extra excited when you come home because you've been gone a while. And the logic for how to pretend would again come from the programmer.
Plus there'd be no ethical concerns. People may think animals are conscious, but there'd be no problems with, say, leaving a companion bot at home alone while you're on vacation. It would simply go to sleep mode—and even if it doesn't, it's not like it can feel boredrom.
Software updates could keep improving the companion's abilities.
The necessary iterations wouldn't require generations of dogs and selective breeding, but, like all software-engineering improvements, iterations in the minds of the programmers, which are much faster.
It should be possible to build a robot that, at least in terms of software/behavior, would resemble a dog (hardware might be harder to do for now).
And then, one day, one could make software that makes for an even better companion than a dog.
Somebody told me about this little companion robot:
I've been thinking for a while how cool it would be to build something like a dog that doesn't have any of the downsides of having a dog (feeding, waste, etc).
I'm not convinced that the healthcare system allegedly being overwhelmed justifies placing an unbearable strain on everyone's lives, or any amount of coercion.
It's not your job to ensure my health, nor the government's to force you to do so. But that's the tacit assumption.
I’m building gitpretty so yeah I can change it. Will need to think about how to solve that problem.
You’re not the first to make that argument. I do understand the argument and I’m not convinced by it.
Plus what you’re arguing for is not something I was arguing against in my previous tweet.
RT @OxfordPopper:
We look forward to hosting our guest speaker @dchackethal on 17th of February.
Dennis will speak to us about his ideas…
RT @Der_Postillon:
Dieser Mann hat das Geheimnis geknackt, wie man Spezi herstellen kann
der-postillon.com/2016/01/dieser…
It's nice to see how much effort people put into writing good git-commit messages. Here are the most recent commits in the Ruby on Rails repository:
Agreed, I’ll need to make navigation better in the second one.
If true, it may be tempting to consider these findings evidence of creativity in animals. Recall that the smarts of an animal (a matter of degree), as great as they may be, have no bearing on whether that animal is intelligent (a binary matter). twitter.com/DegenRolf/stat…
I'm trying out hosting my blog on gitpretty.
Compare the old one (blog.dennishackethal.com) and the new one (gitpretty.com/dchacke/git-bl…)
I prefer the second one. What do you think?
Blogs, what's stopping you from looking like this? 😃
Why not $10,000? If we’re measuring by ‘compassion’, let’s be compassionate! Also, hate to ask, who is payi…