oh and the whole ‘abdicated responsibility to act on climate change’ bit

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) November 27, 2019

Younger generations are correct to be outraged that Boomers enjoyed unprecedented benefits and advantages and when it came time to provide those same benefits to their own children and grandchildren, instead they pulled up the ladder, absolved themselves of all responsibility and told the younger gen to just “get a job.”

Some people say that anyone would’ve done this. Well, maybe. But the fact is that is what the Boomers did do, and they deserve much derision for it.

Hilariously, the same social safety net that the Boomers eviscerated is now not there for them when they need it.

This woman might actually be me. She seems to have lived my life story.

but at the time it was hell. bullied throughout elementary school, by middle school I learned I could deflect much of it by antagonizing the teachers, making a spectacle of my disobedience. pretty soon I had detention more days than I didn’t, and my mother refused to pick me up after school anymore. this got me into the habit of reading my textbooks cover to cover the first couple weeks of a new year so I wouldn’t have to carry anything on the two-mile walk home. it was enough to do fine on tests, but that was the end of homework.

The only substantial difference is she decided to drop out of school and I didn’t. I learned how to play the game while committing almost no effort to it, while for the last three years of high school I devoted myself to having fun and improving myself in spite of school.

Looking back, I should’ve dropped out but I had no way to know that then. You can only walk the path that you can see.

In fact, beyond fifth grade I shouldn’t have been in school at all. Probably leaving earlier would’ve been fine as well.

you can do electronics without having the cops called on you but if you want a job doing that you need a degree (usually) and that seemed like an expensive waste of time. software you can just start doing

— hello again (@bobpoekert) November 24, 2019

Same with infrastructure for me. I was already good at it. I didn’t need anyone’s permission to start doing it, and credentials when I first started were actually a net negative.

It’s changing now, though. Credentials are starting to matter more and bureaucratic pretend work is beginning to dominate. As a result of this the practitioners are starting to get worse (much dumber, less capable of making leaps of thought), so I would likely not be able to break into the field today were I starting fresh.

quote retweet this with your most controversial philosophical opinion

— Rebecca Buxton (@RebeccaBuxton) November 24, 2019

First one:

Even philosophical systems that do not map to any scientific, empirical “proven” facts or theories can have value as they often do map to primitives or intuitions directly that do have value, and thus are useful because they express those ideas in a way that is better and/or easier to understand than what jibes 100% with science.

Second one:

Statistics doesn’t just require philosophy in its various manifestations (Bayesian, quantum, frequentist, etc.) but is itself a philosophy masquerading as a science, with practitioners who often have a poor understanding of philosophy and science.

Social Fermi Problem! How many people are involved in getting me a cup of coffee in the morning?

Consider the entire process, from the harvesting of the bean to the brewing up; include anyone who inputs information that makes this process possible.

— Simon DeDeo (@SimonDeDeo) November 25, 2019

There is no way to determine this very precisely as contributions can be minuscule (do guards count? do those who installed the floor of the processing plant?) and remote, but I’d say about 2,000 people.

But also finding out that the Jesuits of La Fleche were not only responsible for introducing Hume to Buddhism which led to his questioning of God, but that Leibniz too found out about the I Ching through same monks back from Asia and went on to invent binary. In short, Wikipedia. https://t.co/WmnkkGIg1y

— Anna Gát ✨ (@TheAnnaGat) November 22, 2019

In a world without computers, if you wrote about one as myth no one would believe that such a thing were possible.

Everyone should understand how a computer boots because that is fucking magic…just that we can do anything like that, that it even works, that it’s even possible, is mind-boggling even though I understand exactly how the trick is done. Understanding the sorcery makes it even more fantastical.

As I’ve noted before, the world does have magic, and a lot of it, but the spells are just very hard to cast. But we are getting better at the incantations — slowly.

One reason I don’t think Baumol’s cost disease explains skyrocketing US healthcare costs is that plastic surgery isn’t behaving the same way. The avg breast augmentation in 1999 was $3.1k — $3.5-3.9k in 2009, $3.5-4k in 2018. Adjust for inflation & the price is actually dropping https://t.co/ryszrQOCqI

— Mason 🏃🏻✂️ (@webdevMason) November 24, 2019

I’d say Baumol’s explains 20% or less of rising medical costs. The rest is that we’ve allowed medical care to organize itself as a de facto criminal enterprise. Turns out you can charge a lot when you’re the only option, you only reveal pricing retroactively, and have state-sanctioned enforcement mechanisms for your criminal activities.

Is it any mystery under those conditions why prices skyrocket?

“It’s never aliens” is perhaps the most dangerous and destructive scientific orthodoxy in history.

— Geffen Avraham (@GeffenAvraham) November 23, 2019

I wouldn’t say the “most dangerous.” Yet, anyway, as there haven’t been any consequences.

I’d award this distinction of “most dangerous” currently to the field of economics. It’s harmed and killed more people than all our wars combined. However, I suspect we’ve already witnessed some large-scale alien engineering projects but just didn’t know that’s what we’re observing. This could have very grave consequences indeed one day.

“It’s never aliens” reminds me of the scientific orthodoxy of “animals can’t think” that was established thought until recently.

To be fair to Hillary Clinton, I’ve actually recently come around to the idea that her loss was less her fault and more the fault of the terrible staff she hired who are now running the Harris Campaign into the ground.

— Chad Hominem (@PrettyBadLefty) November 22, 2019

I agree. The Clinton campaign was run by absolute dipshits, who torpedoed her chances with a comical series of misapprehensions and missteps. Of course, she being the leader of the campaign it is her responsibility ultimately, but without those goofs running her campaign she likely would’ve won.

The progressive enforced narrative is that Trump won by accident, somehow, but his campaign management and strategy was actually really good and focused, whereas Clinton’s used fake big data, misspent money madly in all the wrong areas, and in general could’ve been bested by sharp middle schoolers.