It's about half of my state in Brazil (which is one of the smallest in the country). However, I've been to Belgium many times and it feels bigger. I think the key is the population density: 388/km^2 in Belgium vs 70/km^2 here. Like, yes, it's big, but empty space is truly boring.
I am with you. That said, I feel like looking at a photo when I was very young say around 4 or 5 does seem to invoke memories about the house I grew up in. I wonder if the brain is just making up the memory or the photo is actually helping the brain access some dormant region in the brain.
Further, I have also noticed that when I meditate sometimes my mind wanders and brings me some memories from the childhood - totally random, unrelated to current events memories.
I have a decent memory for places, so-so for people, very little for events. I could draw a reasonable floor plan of my childhood home and tell you about friends and family who were there. But I could only tell you about a handful of things that happened in that place.
It's not much better in more recent times. I could say much the same about everywhere I've lived as an adult.
A skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, /ˈskjuːəˌmɔːrf, ˈskjuːoʊ-/) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort to speed understanding and acclimation.
Funny to learn this word today. Stuff have been pretty rough for me these past few month and I have been unknowingly practicing ataraxia. Problems (at least mine) are temporary, instead of lamenting I should stay cool and enjoy what I have, preparing for the better days. It's truly liberating.
In Epicureanism ataraxia is paired with ἀπονία (aponia).
Aponia is for the body what ataraxia is for the mind. You can find more details in the Wikipedia page about Epicureanism [1]. True pleasure comes from the absence of spiritual trouble and the absence of physical pain. The Latins used to say "mens sana in corpore sano" (healthy mind in a healthy body)
Next question / consideration in your situation of course is whether it's ataraxia, indifference, stoicism, emotional numbing, or disassociation. I think they're probably all related concepts.
The intersection between biology and computer science is by far my favorite topic. I wish I would have gone into bioinformatics after my CS masters degree. Both sciences really get the best out of the other.
It depends on what type (and also whether you distinguish computational biology from bioinformatics). The people who create new algorithms for sequence assembly, protein folding, etc. tend to be computer scientists who got into biology. On the other hand, the people who analyze biological data computationally tend to be biologists who got into computing.
Don't you mean the opposite? Surely the crime comes from the financial instability. I don't see how you could address the crime without addressing the financial instability.
concentrating/diffusing poverty is a different axis of policy vs. housing/not housing the destitute
the unfortunate circumstances surrounding NYCHA properties was due to concentrating poverty, in singapore public housing is economically integrated so as to avoid the same problem
Causation goes both ways. Intelligent, educated, and well-paid Hacker News posters often don't understand the cloud of chaos, crime, poor decision-making, and deflected blame that hovers over the lives of many poor people. Section 8 landlords understand that while such people may comprise a minority of their tenants (or not), it only takes one to ruin a building and the surrounding neighborhood.
On a certain level this is common knowledge, reflected in the real estate markets of all big American cities. Dirt-cheap housing stock can be found in large swaths of Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, et cetera. It's cheap because even the most desperate families would rather live anywhere else, around anyone else.
Prioritising business just concentrates money in the hands of people who already have money while nothing to address the day to day concerns of actual people.
London seems to manage this petty well. I think it’s quite healthy for a city to commingle folk from different income groups rather than house them in specific areas.
How is the government stealing your income or destroying the value of your property? Seems a bit hyperbolic.
And if the free market solves this, why are we in this situation in the first place? Shouldn't the free market have solved this already? Instead we have piles of empty houses/buildings and more homeless than ever before.
Because there is no free market in housing whatsoever.
Owning land doesn't give you the right to build anything. You need planning permission - which means permission from the local council, local homeowners and consultation, etc. which gives the NIMBY attitude so much power.
There aren't piles of empty houses. There aren't enough houses at all.
> And if the free market solves this, why are we in this situation in the first place? Shouldn't the free market have solved this already? Instead we have piles of empty houses/buildings and more homeless than ever before.
There is no 'situation'. Rational participants in the free market mostly have housing. The issue is that there is a widely available drug (fentanyl and meth too) that makes people behave irrationally, and thus the free market principles stop applying, since they presume a basic level of participant rationality. The fix from a government perspective is to remove the agency of those who are so drug addled that they cannot make good decisions.
The posts you are responding to said "low income", "poor" and "different income groups". The classism required to go from that to "criminals" is very disturbing.
London has sky high rents for young professionals while also taxing them exorbitant amounts that ends up subsidize social housing for "economically inactive" people. I would not call that efficient.
It's obviously anecdotical but I know both many smart persons without higher level education and many 'not-so-bright' persons with university degrees. However, all those with degrees have parents with degrees and those without come from lower class, for the lack of better term, families.
If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider higher education. While doctors may want their children to pursue a good career, even if those children hold no interest in that education.
> If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider higher education.
That’s not what I have perceived in developing countries. Usually those kind of parents work very hard precisely to allow their children to go to university and have the life they didn’t have. They don’t want their children to work like their parents.
Developing countries are quite different from the USA (which I understand isn't everyone's frame of reference, but is mine). My family is from a developing nation, I was told explicitly as a child to focus on education to try to manifest the best possible (white-collar) life for myself. That's one school of thought. Having a degree in almost anything is probably far more transformative in Africa than the USA, presently.
But, in many pockets of the USA, most people generally do not even consider going to college outside of athletic scholarships because the only people they know who did are teachers, who might end up being some of the lower-paid people they have encountered. Or they've seen people work "by the hand" and end up in a better position than people they know who went to college.
This was my anecdotal evidence as a person from a developing nation as well. Parents around these parts give utmost priority to children's education because its the only way they can get out of the vicious cycle of poverty. Add free education to the mix and, you have a lot of people with a less privileged background getting university degrees. A Lot of people moved out of poverty within past couple decades.
My delineation between those with degrees and those without has always been the type of feedback received through the learning process.
Those with degrees tend to be great with theory, but lacking in practice or application. Mind you, they are otherwise pretty bright people, so I don't fault them. They simply didn't get the corrective feedback needed along every step that tends to come with putting an idea into practice. I think of the engineers I work with daily as I write this. They can design new product in CAD all day, but have never built one, which hampers the implementation of their design in the real world and frustrates them.
Those who learned by doing, as opposed to 'studying to the test' such as myself will have a much stronger grasp on the ways things might go wrong (or in some cases, not actually be possible even though it works on paper or in simulation) and be better prepared for it. However, we also tend to have considerable gaps in our theoretical knowledge, and tend to try to make up for it by our ability to quickly adapt or problem solve.
Combined, I'd say the two types of people do make a good team, so long as each is compensating for the others deficiencies in a mutually beneficial way. I rather like the engineers I work with, and they seem to like me, so together, we are pretty valuable to each other and our employers. With other teams, I see this relationship break down when one side starts with the "they don't know anything" attitude.
IDK, I went to a state tech school and the huge majority (including myself) were from union/working class parents with no degrees. For at least my parents, getting a degree was seen as a ticket to a better life.
At the time, that school was also the cheapest (and consistently ranked at best value) so I think it just kind of self selected.
The competing private tech university however … I’m guessing those kids had parents with degrees.
> If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider higher education
Maybe. But one thing I've noticed is that, in Europe at least, there's a huge difference people who value learning and working and those who don't: degree or not. There are people who've been doing manual labor their entire lives who value learning, knowledge and working.
One parent of mine got a university degree, the other didn't. I'm entirely self-taught (in more than one ___domain) but the thing is: my parents valued learning. My mom would, after work, create "learning games" for us, for example.
A friend of mine is a lawyer: his parents and grandparents were farmers/paesants but they valued working. He is proud of being the son and grandson of "paysants" ("peasants"). My wife's grandparent was an intellectual working... In a coal mine (after WWII he had no choice: he ended in a country where he didn't speak the language and the only job he was offered was in a coal mine).
Heck, my grandfather was a lawyer but he quit lawyering to... Build chalets in the countryside. With his own hands. He was doing manual labor but he was an intellectual and very well educated.
I've got lots of respect for farmers / blue collar working people. But I cannot stand the entitled, 90 IQ, people holding a bullshit degree (not all degrees are bullshit) and doing bullshit work and asking for 28 hours workweek while I've got doctors friends whom, after 10 years+ of studies, are working their arses off (for a great salary, granted).
My point being: there's higher education (like becoming a doctor or the engineer working on the machines that doctors do use to cure cancers) and "higher" education, as TFA shows.
People don't like IQ as a measurement but I know the IQ of those who make these machines and those who create medicine. And I know smart plumbers, electricians, farmers, ...
I've got friends (well, family really) who are both doctors and they don't get to see their kids as much as they would like to: but they explained me that they prefer their kid growing up seeing as role models people who save other people's lives and who work hard to do that.
They consider their job useful. Just as they consider a plumber's job useful (I had to dig once for five hours in human manure to locate a clogged pipe on a sunday to save the plumber some time on monday morning... Though job they do these guys: yup, it's virtually always men doing that).
But bring me someone with a 90 IQ holding a "gender studies" "higher education" degree and I'll want to slap him/her/zhe in the face with a cluestick for they produce jack shit of value to society.
- Innate capability, as intelligence, drive etc
- Access, in terms of money and background culture
- Accumulated capability, as education or training
- Credentials, certificates
Two are input conditions, two are outputs.
Some people are born smart, but they choose not to go to university.
Or they live in a culture where it's unnecessary. They thrive as
autodidacts. Or they are lone wolves who can accumulate capability on
their own much better.
Others are born smart but they have no access, no family money, no
grants or loans, or they live in a culture that frowns on class
mobility. If they are lucky they can self-teach anyway or find
mentors. If they are unlucky they are sadly wasted. That's a lot of
people in the world, because IQ and global intelligence has been
steadily rising.
Some people are born dumb as a brick, but they have family who insist,
and pay for them to attend. Or they live in a culture that shoehorns
everyone through university as a matter of course, or as a holding pen
for youth.
The outputs of formal education likewise vary. Some really smart
people go to university and fail. Some universities are
awful. Students come out lacking the piece of paper their parents and
gatekeepers want.
And of course there are some really dumb people should never have gone
to university, but they were sold it, or pushed, and their failure is
a real knock-back in life. I've seen university destroy many young
people. It's a fucking tragedy and I absolutely blame the extractive
wannabe culture of education as a cosmetic product.
Some cognitively challenged people manage to cheat and weasel their way through
obtaining a degree certificate. Maybe they're not so dumb huh, because
they learn guile and corruption necessary for modern life.
Regardless the credentials, some people may or may not obtain an
actual education while at university. The space, free time, the
library, access to smart professors... these are all opportunities to
blossom. Some, at the lower ranking universities, merely get parochial
training, which expires within a year and they need to "retrain". In
this way education is a great racket.
Some people follow the path of enlightenment. They really do start out
quite intellectually weak, but while at university they find
themselves, study hard, become well educated and smarter as they
"learn how to learn" and the value of knowledge and
self-discipline. For them, university is the making of them.
Some even follow this path and realise late in the game that the
certificate isn't worth waiting for, so they jump off and start life
early. I believe Messrs. Gates and Zuckerberg fall into this group.
Anyway, in 30 years as a visiting professor I've seen all of these
things and more. Higher education varies around the world, as do the
cultures that set the value and desirability of HE.
The problem is that western universities have become
degenerate. They've been taken over by a toxic culture of financialism
and professional management and are no longer fit places for teaching,
learning and research. They fall into the GIGO taxonomy, as degree
mills where you pay £20,000 or whatever, and you damn well expect a
degree. And if you don't get one then sue.
And to be honest, in the UK that's most of them now, not just the
provincials but the Russell Groups too. The only reason to go is for
the networking and certificate and that requires a gatekeeper culture
to keep up its value - one which is rapidly crumbling.
When people ask me now, "Is it worth getting a degree?", I have to be
very sceptical. What do you really want to do in life and what sort of
person are you?, those are the more important questions.
Read any book by Vaclav Smil if you want to understand the space of energy and not live in fantasy land.
There is no way solar is going to overtake everything by 2027.
I wish that was the case, it would be awesome but that is just not going to happen.
This fantasy land stuff is so counterproductive because when it doesn't happen it causes people to question the entire idea.
How the World Really Works is Smil's book to counter fantasy land stuff like this article but the problem is there is a true believer contingent that that is just not interested in the real world.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply uneducated, ignorant or a true believer themselves.
The fundamental problem is reflected in Smil's writing. The space of energy is incredibly complex and an incredibly dry read. It couldn't lend itself less to news articles and social media posts. So we end up with this ridiculous two sided argument between climate change denial morons and climate fanatics who think solar is going to overtake everything by 2027 and to think otherwise is to be one of the climate change denial morons.
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