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The article touches on this only briefly at the end, but I wonder whether the popularity of tattoos is beginning to wane. After more than a decade of a cultural embrace of tattoos, we could be starting to see the fashionability of tattoos decline (and then I'm sure it'll be back in a couple decades).


But this is also why face tattoos are more popular. Face tattoos are still considered “hardcore” of whatever. Before just having a tattoo anywhere made you an outsider. But then emo happened and everything that was cool was commoditized and now the modern world is the way it is. Or something. I don’t know how you feel but I think we should blame the world on emo.


I haven't seen a good-looking face tattoo yet.


What about Mike Tyson's. Looks pretty good to me.

Head tattoos are quite cool too. This Youtuber's (https://www.youtube.com/@Gratitude.Driven) tattoos are pure art for example.


Mike Tyson's is very clean, but personally I just don't like "tribal" tattoos unless you're Maori or part of a cultural that does them. They seem more cohesive somehow.

Ok, I do like her head tattoos.


It's generally an indicator of poor impulse control. Lack of taste comes with the package.


Chakotay.


"you are unique, just like everyone else"


this guy probably thinks Green Day is emo lol


This is a little meandering so just to focus on one part:

Philosophy can be valuable, but applying the ideas meaningfully requires discernment. I’m thinking particularly about the popularity of “Meditations”, for example.

Take Plato, for example: He and his also-famous mentor believed knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives, an idea illustrated with an unconvincing geometry lesson in Phaedo (EDIT: It’s Meno).

Sure, it’s worth stepping back to reassess what’s going to increase your “PC” to borrow from seven habits. That could involve leaving behind surface-level achievement in favor of deeper reflection, as the referenced article suggests.

But let’s not overly-romanticize ancient thinkers: Plato and Aristotle held fundamentally different views on knowledge. Even they couldn’t agree; there’s no need to treat any one of them as infallible.


Philosophy is just one of the liberal arts. This idea has declined in popularity in recent years but I still think there's a lot to be said for possessing a liberal arts education. If you have a good one your understanding of the world around you gets broader and deeper. You recognize why things are the way they are. In the long term you may spot opportunities you wouldn't have otherwise, or be able to solve problems that would have seemed intractable. Maybe most importantly you end up developing a sophisticated moral framework that's grounded in history and all the things that eventually led up to you existing and living the life you live.

You don't have to major in a liberal art or even go to college to get one, you can just read books. You also don't have to learn it all in your early 20s. You can just incorporate the great works into what you read throughout your adult life. It's very easy to find lists and recommendations online for what you should read if you want a broad-based liberal education. The general idea is simply to be informed about and understand the foundational concepts in philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, history, sociology, law, and so on. There is no need to go deep in any one them, unless you find it interesting and wish to do so. Someone who reads one or two foundational works in each of these subjects will have a wildly better understanding of the world than someone who doesn't. To me this is what living an intellectually rich life is and it's very rewarding. If nothing else, due to my liberal arts education I will never be bored in retirement, there are thousands of books that I would find it interesting to read.


I don’t have a problem with having a good understanding of classics (liberal arts is a category that far encompasses more than just classical education, though).

I do have a problem with blindly assuming Plato/other ancient philosophers were some sort of omniscient super-intelligence we should blindly follow, which I do see happen with some regularity in my own life.

Plato et al might’ve been the start of our modern understanding of ethics, but the concept of a moral life or epistemology certainly didn’t stop with him!


> Philosophy is just one of the liberal arts. This idea has declined in popularity in recent years but I still think there's a lot to be said for possessing a liberal arts education. If you have a good one your understanding of the world around you gets broader and deeper.

Look no further than all the AI debates on HN: from the perspective of someone with a couple of college classes on philosophy (not even a minor), it’s looks like a bunch of five years olds debating particle physics. Complete ignorance of what the academic precedent is, retreading ideas that philosophers have moved on from hundreds of years ago.


Why shouldnt people on a message forum explore "ideas that philosophers moved on from hundreds of years ago?" It seems to suggest philosophy is more about the conclusions than the process. I cant think of an academic field where that is less true.


Yes, people are going to be ignorant of things they haven't studied previously. So, people exploring the ideas and debating them for the first time might look amateur to you, but why is that a bad thing?


This is a social media site; people can shoot the shit about whatever they want and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But… what’s the point? It’s like going into a thread about modern chemistry and debating about the four basic elements of ancient Greece. Sure you can have fun shooting the shit about what is essentially a historical novelty, but if you really want to debate about chemistry you need to open a high school textbook and get up to speed on at least the first few chapters.

The only difference is that nerds look down at philosophy and not chemistry; and the former is rarely taught in high school after which the arrested development seems to set in. No one blinks an eye telling flat earthers that they don’t know what they’re talking about.


I believe the point was this is preventable by having a slightly wider knowledge base.


Wont discussing these things widen their knowldege base?


Possibly, but slowly and inefficiently.


>If you have a good one your understanding of the world around you gets broader and deeper.

The problem is, is it _unique_ to liberal arts? That is what must be true to give it some purpose. If you can just read a bunch of books or study something else with additional positive benefits why do liberal arts?

I am a liberal arts and computer science degree holder. I don't think liberal arts is _worthless_. I do think its a terrible value proposition and that the positive side effects can be achieved while studying something far more marketable. Computer science has made me a much stronger general problem solver and a better critical thinker than liberal arts did. These are the primary skills touted by the liberal arts.


> Philosophy can be valuable, but applying the ideas meaningfully requires discernment. I’m thinking particularly about the popularity of “Meditations”, for example.

From one translation of Meditations (I forget which), and from memory, so I may have it slightly wrong:

"You can live your life in a calm flow of happiness, if you learn to think the right way, and to act the right way".

The act the right way is the hard part. The frame-of-mind stuff that lots of people focus on is necessary, but not sufficient. On its own it can be of some help, but it can also lead to traps like going too easy on one's own deficiencies of action. The thinking bits that get most of the attention, at least in stoicism, are largely reactive—the acting is proactive, as is the thinking to support it (which gets less attention in popular takes on Stoicism, and is harder).


Meditations is particularly interesting because it’s clearly just Marcus Aurelius’s diary that was doubtfully ever meant to see the light of day.

He spends a fair amount of it repeating mantras to himself over and over again, or even arguing with himself in stream-of-consciousness.

It’s Marcus Aurelius giving himself a written pep talk. He struggles to uphold those stoicism ideals his whole life, failing constantly ant it, and Meditations is an artifact of it.


There's also an awful lot of really boring and silly Stoic physics and metaphysics in there, which topics for some reason people who love the book rarely bring up, LOL.


>But let’s not overly-romanticize ancient thinkers: Plato and Aristotle held fundamentally different views on knowledge.

1) everyone agrees “overly” Romanticizing is wrong. By definition of “overly”.

2) why should having a fundamentally different view on knowledge disqualify something from being romanticized? Isnt romanticizing precisely for things that are different?

3) i think its a mischaracterization to say Plato thought “ knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives.” He was not talking about “past lives” but the “soul” (which I think wed both agree is a loaded term). He said the soul knew it before the person was born. This goes to his theory on the forma which I think is a better way to characterize his thoughts on knowledge. In general terms id say he believes truth exists in a timeless, non-empirical realm (the Forms). With the physical reality being an imperfect imitation. Which people have some mediated access to.


> everyone agrees “overly” is wrong

I mean, apparently not - this author alone takes Plato’s cave allegory at face value without spending even a moment to criticize it.

> I think it’s a mischaracterization…

It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the exact same.


The example he gives about geometry is actually quite interesting. It is one of the early highlights of a deep question: is this knowledge, geometry in this case, learned/learnable or is it, somehow, innate? Do we learn this from scratch or do we have innate pre-existing cognitive structures that are “configured” by experience? If the latter, what does “learning” mean? It’s definitely not what we usually mean. If the former, we meet Hume and Kant and have to show how we arrived at space and geometry ex nihilo.

If learning is essentially based on “configuring” innate structures, you can IMO state it is eternal or uncovered or whatever poetic vehicle you desire. I’d say give these pre-modern guys a break.

These are issues being discussed way into the modern era starting (again) with the likes of Hume and Kant and no easy solutions are available. This is not a solved problem.


Is math invented or discovered?

I think most people’s intuition is that the methodology and conventions are invented but are constrained by some transcendental reality. It seems difficult to argue its instead purely natural or purely convention.

This is very much inline with Platos theory of the forms. I dont really understand the idea that Plato’s ideas are dated.


> I mean, apparently not - this author alone takes Plato’s cave allegory at face value without spending even a moment to criticize it.

Does HE say hes over romanticizing it? No.

He would probably argue hes not over-romanticizing it. So the question isnt if over-romanticizing is improper (which is true by definition of “over”). The question is if he actually is over romanticizing.

>It is not. Read Meno. Socrates thought this, and has a very painful example of trying to prove it. Plato thought the exact same.

Im not contesting that Plato believed in reincarnation. But its not true that he thought knowledge comes from "past lives" (as in when you were previously some other person). He believed the _soul_ had direct access to knowledge. In a past life you would have only had an impression as well. This is all downstream of his actual theory of the forms though. Why not attack that if you want to attack his theory of knowledge.


The dialogue you refer to is Meno and the idea is a solution to “Meno’s Paradox”.


Thanks, that is what I was thinking of.


I like How To Think Like a Roman Emperor's analysis of Meditations but maybe it falls into pop self-help/psychology, it discusses the history around the text and how modern psychology has similarities with some of the techniques and aphorisms.


Here's how I would put this: reading the classics can be valuable, but if you want to become wise you need philosophy.

Philosophy isn't a set of ideas or texts. It's a practice.


> Take Plato, for example: He and his also-famous mentor believed knowledge was a form of recollection from past lives, an idea illustrated with an unconvincing geometry lesson in Phaedo (EDIT: It’s Meno).

I find the line of thought in "Meno" extremly impressiv. Let me try to reformulate it in modern terms.

The literary form of a dialogue emphasizes that the thoughts of the participants should not be considered as doctrines, but the whole as an investigation of a problem domain.

The dialogue starts with a distinction between empirical knowledge ("The way to Larisa") and mathematical knowledge. Empirical knowledge is something that I cannot know from introspection. In contrast, the nature of mathematical knowledge comes from inside the mind. This is demonstrated by an uneducated, but smart child (a slave boy). The child is guided to discover a mathematical insight by questions alone. At first the boy does not know the right answer to an initial question. Then Socartes starts again with a simple question the boy is able to answer. Then a sequence of other questions follows each building on the previous answers. Socrates only questions, the boy only answers. Finally the boy arrives at the correct answer of the initial question whose answer he did not know at the start.

This scene should demonstrate the essence of mathematical proof. First we do not know the answer of a mathematical problem. Step-by-step we clarify our understanding, until we arrive at an answer. At this stage we know whether the particular mathematical statement is true or false. We expanded our understanding by only just thinking. In one way it is new knowledge (we now know something we did not, when we looked for a proof), in another way the knowledge was always there, just hidden in our mind.

At this point Socrates hits a limit where he runs out of questions to invistigate this further. This is when he starts to tell a story (the greek word for story is "myth"). Such stories are just tools to further investigate a problem when purely theoretical thoughts come to an end. In the dialogue it is also accompanied by a lot of joking, and "let me speculate" and "don't take it too serious" sort of remarks. So he reminds his fellows about some old stories (that he adapts and decorates a little to match the problem) about reincarnation where one looses the memory of one's past life but has occasionally some sort of flashbacks. This is more or less the whole point of the story: Perhaps we should think of mathematical knowledge as analogous to memory, but in a in a transcendent way.

Our modern doctrins are not very much off: Our ability of mathematical thinking is something that is inherent to us, more specifically to our brains. The blueprint (a sort of memory?) for our brains are in our genes. This way we are a sort of reincarnation of our parents, but in a state were we have to undergo all the mathematical training again.

What Plato lacks is a theory of evolutionary epistemology. But this is a really new development.


Also helps save Wikipedia if it gets shut down - which might happen!


True. Musk for example is publicly attacking it for spreading "left-wing lies" because in his wiki page there are statements like "He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including COVID-19 misinformation and promoting conspiracy theories, and affirming antisemitic, racist, and transphobic comments." which are just pure facts.

It would be nice to have something like this more decentralized.


I was perusing some recent discussions on sources with interest. It seems that Wikipedia's intelligentsia have managed to "blacklist" (deprecate or declare "generally unreliable") practically every prominent source of news in the US that is not centrist or leftist.

I kid you not; through a process of attrition they've attacked the very reliability and reputation of every source, including Fox News and the like, and they've told editors sitewide that they simply can't be cited as a "Reliable Secondary Source", like at all.

I am not sure if that is an accurate assessment of the situation on the ground for mainstream media, but it certainly exposes some real systemic bias.

And this is the highest-order and most enduring method of ingraining systemic bias in the project: by weeding out sources with unfavorable viewpoints and perspectives, saying they publish lies and untruth, and being able to prohibit them globally from any use.

And I was pondering this state of affairs and just thinking about Karoline Leavitt's press room, and wondering what will the landscape be, if there is precious little intersection between press outlets who may be favorable or deferent to the present administration, and those which are allowed to be cited on Wikipedia? Ouch!


Your point is understandable regarding source bias, but in Musk's case, the statements "they" mentioned are simply true. While you definitely have a valid point about the risks of systemic bias in excluding certain outlets, relativizing factual accuracy could inadvertently lead to a situation where every lie becomes just another "valid opinion." A viewpoint can indeed be an opinion, but misinformation remains misinformation. Wikipedia should not become a space for free interpretation of reality.

Just because one side happens to produce more misinformation doesn't mean these facts should be omitted. Consider this analogy: Stalin killed millions and was undeniably a tyrant, and even though the current Russian establishment might push a different narrative, it doesn't erase historical reality. Similarly, accurately documenting Musk's misleading statements isn't bias—it's factual reporting.


It's not Wikipedia's fault that the vast majority of right wing media consists of pure propaganda, disinformation, and lies.


[citation needed]

And you know, I wouldn't be surprised if people hurling those accusations somehow believe that the lies and misinformation are one-sided and partisan. As if leftism has some sort of monopoly on Truth and Goodness bestowed from above.

It's really been sickening to see the media outlets just lay down thick trails of bullshit that is designed to distract us, to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, to make us hate one another, to keep us hanging on that channel or that subscription for the next tidbit. It's disgusting and manipulative, and the Right has absolutely no monopoly on those tactics.

Wikipedia is simply a microcosm of the prevailing zeitgeist, so they are as likely to cure systemic bias as a leopard can change its spots.


Wait why just leftism, what happened to centrism ? Where'd the goalposts go ?


This thread is about media organizations, but I think useful context is that in non-polarized situations conservatives and liberals are similarly likely to spread political misinformation while in polarized situations conservatives are relatively more likely to spread political misinformation [1].

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00222429241264...

wyre 26 days ago [flagged] | | | | [–]

If you still think Fox News is a reliable and reputable source of information I have a bridge to sell you.


The perception shift is key. Getting fired for cause and trying to claim the moral high ground afterward often reads as sour grapes; Bitterness and/or incompetence being rationalized. Quitting, on the other hand, suggests principle and lends credibility.


As with so many modern debates, it feels like people quickly choose a side and then work backward—rationalizing every argument from that perspective without much critical thought beyond maybe acknowledging some surface-level issues (yes, phones exist and people are probably addicted to them). The author falls into this trap too!

Spending $100 on a single course material can be a real burden for college students taking multiple classes per term. Sharing lecture slides was a basic expectation decades ago. Students were cheating long before ChatGPT: The response like the one about the UGM could’ve just as easily been lifted from SparkNotes.

On the other hand: Maybe educational outcomes really are declining, but no one wants to pump the brakes because failing students might mean less funding. Maybe Socrates actually was noticing something real about generational decline—attitudes and norms do shift between generations; they’re not locked on some linear path. Maybe we need to just revisit the concept of university as vocational school in general.

We’re so preoccupied with proving we’re right that we lose the ability to honestly evaluate which changes deserve serious scrutiny and which ones are just part of the usual generational churn aside from the obviously massive ones (like phones). One side is wrong and stupid about all facets, my side is correct.


> I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Intel announced the delay to the next presidential election year..

The next presidential election is in 2028, not 2030


Election in 2028, next president takes office in 2029, realistically 2030 is the earliest the CHIPS act and staff could be rebuilt.

The people overseeing the CHIPS act have mostly been fired or flagged for firing. Many of them were in their “probationary” period because they were recent hires.

The CHIPS act can’t be instantly restarted when the next president takes office. It has to be rebuilt. It has basically been sabotaged.


That's one of the most frustrating things about the wrecking ball far right administrations going through America and parts of Europe right now. They're causing damage that will take 5-10 years to fix, so even if we get more sane administrations, the public will complain "why aren't we seeing any improvements" because all they can accomplish at first is cleaning out the rubble.

Worst of all, it could become cycle. Trump / DOGE is basically doing a wholesale cleanse of left-leaning public sector employees at all levels, replacing them with yes men and cronies. A new administration will have to revert that, meaning firing and hiring and training people yet again. And an administration after that might try do undo that. What a quagmire.

In general it's a classic that left-leaning governments fix various policy and economic problems, which often carries big cost, which gets them voted out, and then the fruits of that labor are claimed by / wrongfully attributed to rightist administrations.


If you look at recent American history you will see this pattern has roughly already played out.

If a main part of your platform is that government sucks, you have no incentive to un-suckify it. Starve the beast.


Meh, starve the beast is just another cliché of minds that want simple answers to complex issues. Life tariffs and Trump. He has no imagination. Anyway, government is the only thing that can stand up to the broligarchs and that's why Trump is doing is his best to destroy it. If you want a simple explanation for what's going on there it is.


Yes, this is a very predictable failure mode of presidentialist governments.


Yeah typo on my part there, ty


That's not what a "typo" is. A typo is a typing mistake, not a lack of knowledge or error in thinking.


If a person misattributes one thing, it is generally called as thinko.


[flagged]


semanto? semantic mistakes


Appreciate your concern and pedantry - the typo was saying presidential election instead of administration. Believe it or not, I do know when the next election is.


That doesn’t really change the point though.

There might be longterm malnutrition problems if you’re solely eating eggs in mass quantities (since 20 eggs for a 50 kilo person would be hitting near your daily caloric intake just in eggs), but for most people this isn’t a concern.

Having 5 eggs for breakfast (not as an omelette, which obviously has other stuff in it) every day would probably improve most people’s health.


I’m not someone who wants prison purely as a punitive measure. I’d much rather the focus be on rehabilitation. But you’re making it sound like Elizabeth Holmes was accused of something relatively "harmless" like insider trading, rather than what she actually did.

A small sample from Wikipedia:

> In January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a letter to Theranos based on a 2015 inspection of its Newark, California lab, reporting that the facility caused "immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety" due to a test to determine the correct dose of the blood-thinning drug warfarin


She was not convicted of crimes against patients. She was only convicted of crimes against investors.


I’m aware, and Al Capone was busted for taxes. I’m still content with his conviction and punishment.


It seems cruel and unkind to punish someone for a crime they were tried for and found not guilty (on all counts) of.


What is this, army of accounts for hire to sway sympathies like its election times?

Most people in prisons, especially US prisons, are not anyhow threat to society. That 1 or 2 joints that got people in bible belt states for solid 2 years is one example.

If you are questioning basis of basically every law system in place anywhere in the world, thats a fine discussion but please frame it like that. She is a criminal, fraud, liar, thief and god knows what else, in range of hundreds of millions. Jail for her, a long one, no special sympathy for nepo kids. Sort of litmus paper of whether US justice system still works as intended.


True, poor Al Capone!


Sadly this is an explicit allowance of the justice system. :-/ There was a case about it, though I don’t have the reference handy.


You're in agreement then that people who commit tax fraud should be imprisoned?


Especially the wealthy and/or powerful, 100% yes.


Sure, everyone who commits tax fraud, including the wealthy and powerful, will go to jail then. We're going to need more prisons.

edit: just realized that al capone was busted for tax evasion, not tax fraud. we're going to need even more prisons than I realized.


I’m more than happy to start laying brick myself if it means holding the wealthy accountable by the legal system.

This isn’t the strong argument you think it is.


I'm not making any argument, just stating your position.


Great! Let’s build the white collar prisons, then.


I won't be participating in the building of prisons, but I will watch you build them.


She could not have been charged with crimes against investors if the patient's blood work results were correct. She knowingly lied about the capability of these devices knowing it would garner investors. That's the crime she got convicted of, luckely no one appears to have died from the invalid medical testing.


Guessing based on what I see: The act of simply pulling out your phone can break the moment. Kids tend to zero in on it immediately, making it the new center of their attention.


After they learn, they can look at the picture you just took and then come and look at the picture you just took. It completely breaks the moment.


I dunno, I have lots of photos of kids on my phone just like I described. It's true, sometimes they do do that, but also, because I take so many, they got over it.


Ah, so the "candid" goal here is taking photos without the kids knowing?


> I’m encouraged by people who talk about their AI setups using the same words that musicians use to talk about their guitar amps or pedalboards. This is a good sign. Obsessing over gear - not over purchasing gear exactly, but anything that feels like “how do I get a particular kind of crunch out of this preamp” is a great sign for the medium because it’s a format where you look at your own output serially over time and develop a style that you actually want.

Hmm, I tend to dismiss this idea mainly because I think it'll soon become unnecessary and also belies why most people have "custom setups". My feeling is most people are using LLMs to achieve concrete goals: How to do some basic woodworking, bake bread, get a condensed version of a college course on nuclear physics, or write code to accomplish a task.

Right now specialized setups and finely-tuned models might make sense for bridging the gap between "almost there" and "good enough", but the overall trend seems to be moving toward general-purpose LLMs becoming “good enough” to handle most of these tasks. Over time, the gap between a highly specialized model and a general-purpose one seems to shrink for the level of expertise most people are looking for.

No doubt there may still be some customization for more novel creative applications (and the author even touches on one I expect to see-emulating the dreamlike aesthetic of early generative AI). But novel creativity is a small minority of "My AI Setup" type articles that I see at the moment.


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