nico λ
@nicomeemes
just a hacker tryna survive
nico λ
nicomee.com
For Lasch, these developments represented a betrayal of democracy: citizenship had been replaced by individualism; virtue had been supplanted by an ethic of material success; belief in equality and in civic obligations had given way to claims of individual liberty and an emphasis upon autonomy. Curiously, while the spirit of aristocratic generosity... See more
Christopher Lasch and the Limits of Hope - First Things
In a field like CS theory, you very quickly get used to being able to state a problem with perfect clarity, knowing exactly what would constitute a solution, and still not having any clue how to solve it. (In other words, you get used to P not equaling NP.) And at least in my experience, being pounded with this situation again and again slowly... See more
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But the informational value of the web has been nearly destroyed. Fake News isn’t even the biggest problem. It’s the digital ecosystem’s insistence on stifling curiosity by prioritizing ANSWERS over questions.
Most impactfully, the web has been systematically re-engineered to hinder discovery in order to drive people as quickly as possible to... See more
Most impactfully, the web has been systematically re-engineered to hinder discovery in order to drive people as quickly as possible to... See more
Joe Maceda • Questions and Cancers
Pythagoras, as everyone knows, said that “all things are numbers.” This statement, interpreted in a modern way, is logically nonsense, but what he meant was not exactly nonsense. He discovered the importance of numbers in music, and the connection which he established between music and arithmetic survives in the mathematical terms “ harmonic mean”
... See moreBertrand Russell • History of Western Philosophy
Pop culture soothes and placates with a steady series of uncomplicated morality tales in predigested narratives where nothing ever really changes and so there’s no worry that the storyline will move in a way that hurts your feelings. Crowdsourced “content” is built on ephemerality.
Freddie deBoer • You Are You. We Live Here. This is Now. - Freddie deBoer You Are You. We Live Here. This is Now.
Noble intentions and lofty rhetoric about justice and equality are not enough. The kinds of policies and interventions that benefit people often sound bad. Those that hurt people often sound good.
Dan Williams • On becoming less left-wing (Part 1)
"the question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
- edsger dijkstra
A talented person can quickly become mediocre when you force them to be someone they aren’t.
The mistake is that...it’s not just a logical deduction, but, so to speak, a deduction that has turned into a feeling. Not all natures are the same; for many, a logical deduction sometimes turns into the strongest feeling, which takes over their whole being, and which it is very difficult to drive out or alter. To cure such a person, it’s necessary... See more