When I was in college, a friend gifted me with a old slide rule (German make), but it was missing the slider scale. I created that slider by cutting a stripe out of my plastic shoe box. Worked like a charm.
I think Slide rule is an amazing invention, for it's simplicity and vastness of calculations that can be done.
People fall because the surroundings are unfamiliar, their trust and assumptions about things around them, and about themselves, have gone wrong. Why does this discrepancy arise? For older people, the world around them and food they eat has changed too fast, to the extent of being an alien land. They walk on a surface, making assumptions based on what they were familiar with in the past. But the surface is no longer the same. They eat the changed food, assuming that it will keep them as strong as before. That turns out to be false as well. Most old people feel that they are living in a world that is completely unfamiliar and untrustworthy.
I think this can be seen here up north, where people fall through ice and drown every fall and (more commonly) spring. It's not a new thing – these people are almost always male, at least in their 50s, alone on the ice, and taking stupid unnecessary risks trying to reach their favorite ice fishing spot or whatever – but I can't help but think that increasingly these deaths are caused by assumptions that the ice is strong enough because it has "always been at this time of the year". Except that it isn't, not anymore. Or even if it is this year, the annual variance is much greater.
Ofcourse, it applies to younger people as well. I didn't exclude them.
Other than, if it sounds like "ai slop" to you, you probably did not expect a properly written statement from real people. It gotten to a point someone saying real world experience witnessed by me as "ai slop". This HN land became unfamiliar alien land to me now. Do I need to force myself to sound trivial, incorrect, slangish?
And the disconnection is .. ? Infact, forget it. Your comment proves that this is already at ridiculous level. The message I posted about alienation of old people with the changing world, close to my heart than anything else, as I went through painful experiences that lasted for decades.
And now treading the slippery slope of social forums of HN, where the floor suddenly slips and we fall into getting called as "ai-written". This world is done.
The blackout itself isn't the primary issue; it's the information vacuum it creates. I haven't been able to reach my relatives for 104 hours, and that lack of transparency, not the lack of connectivity, is what is truly terrifying.
It's not the biggest problem, but if your government is shooting masses of its own people in the streets and they are trying to keep the rest of the world from seeing it, it is a problem.
> The Washington D.C.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said that, as of Sunday, the 15th day of protests, at least 544 people had been killed, including 483 protesters and 47 members of the security forces. HRANA said the unrest had manifested in 186 cities across all of Iran's 31 provinces.
> The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), which is also based in the U.S., said over the weekend that it had "eyewitness accounts and credible reports indicating that hundreds of protesters have been killed across Iran during the current internet shutdown," accusing the regime of carrying out "a massacre."
> The Iran Human Rights (IHR) organization, based in Norway, said Saturday that it had confirmed at least 192 protesters were killed, but that the number could be over 2,000.
> "Unverified reports indicate that at least several hundreds, and according to some sources, more than 2,000 people may have been killed," IHR said in a statement, adding that according to its estimate, more than 2,600 protesters had been arrested.
(with that said, the US government is likely not impacted and has the intelligence they need for coordinating air strikes, if they elect to proceed with them)
Question is, is this human-caused change or the usual natural climate shift that Earth goes through every few thousand centuries or millennia? And is there anything humans should do about it, other than adapting to it?
People who hold this viewpoint interest me because you always seem to display a certain confidence that because the changing climate is "just part of a natural cycle" it's going to be fine. Not all changes on earth have been "just fine" and quite the contrary.
Look at a chart and you will see just how quickly the climate is changing and how we've done almost nothing to improve the situation, then why do you think it's "ok" because its "natural"? Are you nor alarmed about the mysterious force making the earth hotter? Isn't that alarming to you that we're just going along with a hotter and hotter planet? At what stage does this natural cycle stop?
Clearly, thanks to science, we know it's because of human activity, and I guess you could argue that is "natural", like our behavior is part of nature, but to pretend it's just some unknown warming force that's making the climate change seems much more disturbing to me than actually know why it's happening and addressing the issue?
> Question is, is this human-caused change or the usual natural climate shift that Earth goes through every few thousand centuries or millennia? And is there anything humans should do about it, other than adapting to it?
From the parent post who he was talking about...it does say "natural climate shift" and mention adaption. I think the point is that some people are way too sure sure that we can just adapt to a rapidly shifting climate even if we don't understand the mechanism behind the warming.
Most natural shifts are explainable by science, so why is the trend of the last 75 years, unexplainable yet people are fine with it and just make assumptions we can adapt if we don't understand what's driving the warming?
I do see this view a lot on podcasts like Joe Rogan (which has one of the largest audiences in the world) and it does seem to maintain the idea that climate change is a natural thing and because of that it will be fine. It's not really a fringe idea even though it's a completely baseless idea IMO.
If it is man-made, blame your science, not people who is interested in path forward, instead of wailing about what happened, as if someone else did that. Western world is mostly responsible, and they are the ones who keep blaming some imaginary agent and shouting in online forums.
Let's talk about per capita energy usage and garbage dumping. Your businesses are cramming you homes, offices and roads with the stuff that you don't need. Basically, businesses are like high pressure pumps that circulate garbage through homes.
> That’s rarely the opinion of those who hold that view.
I've tracked climate science deniers for decades and that simply isn't true.
> If climate change has any non-human causes, then to what extent are we humans able to have an affect on those non-human causes?
Of course climate change has some non-human causes, but most of them aren't the ones that we humans are able to have an effect on, so the question is off base. It's the human causes that we humans are able to have an extensive effect on, obviously.
Your question can possibly be read as implying that the causes are either non-human or they are human, rather than there being both types of factors ... if that's the case then it reflects an extraordinary lack of knowledge about the subject.
Have you seen literally any chart covering just the past one to two hundred years, or even just the past 50-70 years that covers emissions, population, industrial scale, environmental destruction, weather patterns, etc.? They would answer your question.
There is no end to the concrete evidence of the negative effect of humans towards the climate.
Here's something simple. Deforestation is directly caused by humans. (Note that wildfires "deforest" but without human intervention, they grow back and thus reforest.). So then ask yourself, what is the role of forests and jungles within the environment and climate?
Look at this article: https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation. What began 10,000 years ago, 200 years ago, and 100 years ago? This couldn't possibly be major changes in human activity could it?
This isn't actually the question though, and have you done any research yourself or are you Just Asking Questions [1]?
tl;dr we have extensive historical records of past weather progression through e.g. ice cores and the recent weather and climate changes are unheard of outside of cataclysmic events like meteor strikes or volcano eruptions, with a very close correlation with emissions. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_last....
As for whether we can do anything about it, personally I don't think so, we passed the point of no return... probably decades ago, even if emissions suddenly stopped then, the wheels were set in motion, for example through the melting of permafrost causing ???? amounts of sequestered plant matter to start decomposing and releasing methane and the like.
If we are past the point of no return decades back, what are the current goal of talking about it now? Our social and economic structures, and life styles are also well past the point of no return. Energy and resource consumption is at vulgarity levels. We bring a 10 ton machine from 10 miles, to sweep a floor of 10 square foot area. That's us. The expectations are set, supply chains are set, global domination goals are set. Science is only a force to drive us towards these directions. That's our choice made.
You asked whether there anything humans should do about it other than adapting to it, and the answer is yes. And we may be past the point of returning to some baseline (it's interesting that you took one person's opinion that we are as if it were an established fact) but that doesn't mean that we can't possibly hold the line at some higher level.
> Energy and resource consumption is at vulgarity levels.
That sounds like a very good reason to be talking about it.
> Science is only a force to drive us towards these directions.
This is not at all true. And given your original very uninformed question about "natural cycles" vs. human causes (which is quite the false dichotomy), I don't think you're any sort of authority on science.
What else, other than science, has enabled climate change through uncontrolled exploitation of resources and nature? I resisted myself not to comment on your authority on science.
What else has enabled global trade and business motives that led to everything that caused the climate change?
> What else, other than science, has enabled climate change through uncontrolled exploitation of resources and nature?
You're changing the subject and attacking a strawman. That's not at all what I said is not true. And you're cherry picking, focusing entirely on negatives and ignoring all positives of science, which is how you come up with "only a force to drive us towards these directions". Science is also giving us wind, solar, and geothermal power, EVs, etc.
The human impact is unquestionable. Is it part of a bigger cycle? maybe, but I feel like people use that as a cope to not do anything. "it doesn't exist", "it exist but it's not bad", "it's bad but it's not our fault", &c.
I never understood the Linux guys. All that matters to a common user is the user interface and whether their apps and games run or not. They don't care about telemetry, architecture etc. The damn thing should just work and it should allow familiar interactions.
I have tried switching to Linux several times over the decades. It required many compromises on the interface and compatibilities. Why is it so difficult to slap on a clone of Windows or Mac UI on Linux? I'm not saying they are good. But it avoids the feel of moving to an alien land and learn everything afresh. People don't have time for that.
This is why I recommend macOS to everyone. It's the only OS that is truly polished and where you don't have to worry about viruses and everything just works. mac could be better, but it's still leading the pack. People don't want the OS to become their hobby.
I dislike what Microsoft is doing to Windows as much as the next guy but if you get Windows Pro and disable all the icky stuff it is a rock solid OS that just works. Sure, once a year an update might add some new icky stuff but then you just spend 10 minutes to find out how to disable that and go about your business. It. Just. Works.
Windows is prone to getting malware and ransomware. When you buy a new Macbook, you can use the Migration Assistant to move all your apps and files to the new Mac. With Windows there's no easy way. On Mac, apps are almost always safe and not going to crap up your computer. With Windows you have to be wary. Windows usually comes with bloatware, Mac doesn't. Windows you have to manage and install drivers and always update them and sometimes they break. With Mac, drivers and updates are seamless.
I daily drive Windows since Win 95 but there are rough edges that less technical people get cut on.
What the hell are you doing to get malware? I have never had a virus ever. And I only keep Windows Defender running in the background. Though I doubt I'd even need that.
Bloatware – yes. Uninstall it once and it's gone. Once or twice a year a new thing might pop up. Uninstall that and be done with it.
Do you really have to manage drivers or is that just on old wives' tale? I sure as hell don't manage drivers. Windows Update will install any driver I need automatically. Only driver I upgrade manually is GPU a couple times a year when there is a new game that can take advantage of it. Really, that whole driver story is just a bunch of lies since at least Windows 10.
Pavlov experminted and confirmed about the shortcuts taken by animal instincts via correlations, avoiding the hardwork of reasoning every time. This optimization is natural for all life forms including humans. And that's how evolution happens.
But, you don't need to game it by being specifically aware of what's going on. When you fabricate your responses in order to give false correlations to people around you, it causes distrust and alienation, purely because of your inconsistent responses over time. So the optimal option is just being what you are.
If you are aware of what you are and find that it needs improvement, a good technique is to fabricate the responses as those of the person you want to become. Fake-it-until-you-become-it is imperfect but an improvement on I'm-an-asshole-so-they-should-adapt-to-it. After all, if you want to change, that's who you are too.
So, by "AI", you mean programming AI. Generalizing it as "AI" and "anti-AI" is adding great confusion to the already dizzying level of hype.
At it's core, AI has capability to extract structure/meaning from unstructured content and vice-versa. Computing systems and other machines required inputs with limited context. So far, it was a human's job to prepare that structure and context and provide it to the machines. That structure can be called as "program" or "form data" or "a sequence of steps or lever operations or button presses".
Now the machines got this AI wrapper or adapter that enables them to extract the context and structure from the natural human-formatted or messy content.
But all that works only if the input has the required amount of information and inherent structure to it. Try giving a prompt with jumbled up sequence of words. So it's still the human jobs to provide that input to the machine.
Given the common goals of every book (fame and sales by grabbing user attention), the general themes and styles would have high similarity. It's like flowers with bright colors and nice shapes.
Orwelliian motives (sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purposes) are somewhat dated.
I think Slide rule is an amazing invention, for it's simplicity and vastness of calculations that can be done.
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