> How can we have a constructive conversation about this, come to a consensus that things are not okay now, and move forward?

How can it be a constructive conversation if you have presupposed the outcome?

I don't necessarily disagree, but researchers are not required to be good communicators. An academic can lead their field and be a terrible lecturer. A specialist can let a generalist help explain concepts for them.

They should still review the final result though. There is no excuse for not doing that.

I disagree here. A good researcher has to be a good communicator. I am not saying that it is necessarily the case that you don't understand the topic if you cannot explain it well enough to someone new, but it is essential to communicate to have a good exchange of ideas with others, and consequently, become a better researcher. This is one of the skills you learn in a PhD program.

That is how it should be, yes. Do PhDs always meet that standard though? No.

Society depends on long-term 'happiness'. Short-term 'happiness' often makes society worse.

what you are actually saying is that a certain class of people "know better" than what another class thinks they want.

If you look at financial markets and finance theory, there is no validity to the idea that people are long term blind and short term mistaken. markets discount the future, they are the best estimates of the future rather than somebody with no skin in the game magically "knowing better"

> they are the best estimates of the future

its plausible for companies to be worth less than their assets. While it might be the best estimate its still not necessarily the best one. aka the market can stay crazy longer than you can stay solvent. Markets measure confidence as much as they measure value.

What about externalities? What about policy makers going after short-term gains?

Ironically, quite a few Linux-compatible games only work for me in compatibility mode.

Yeah that sounds like wisdom, not intelligence.

There is a big green box at the top of the page explaining that.

Hah. I wonder how someone could miss that, but it does kind of look like one of those “sign up for our newsletter” types of elements.

Maybe many of us are just subconsciously blocking those types of things out now because it’s so pervasive.

It's called "banner blindness."

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-original-e...

I actually have "face blindness" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia )

Got it after a bad car accident, some brain damage. Interestingly it also made me race blind as well - I'm probably one of the few people in the world who can say that! I do identify loved ones from the sound of their voice, though, or if not speaking, I can sometimes tell from how they walk and move. Same thing races, it's not hard to tell if someone's voice sounds black or if they walk like a white guy

How about beautiful vs ugly? What do you actually perceived when you look at a face if you don't mind me asking?

> High-education countries don't look like basket cases.

They are all low fertility countries.

High fertility countries are doing great, obviously. If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

Of course there are only two options, low and high.

Breeding out of control and over consuming the earth's resources is for basket cases.

LibreOffice, GIMP, FreeCAD and Inkscape all have their quirks (and bugs), but they're probably seen as features by their core users so they won't change.

Not sure about FreeCAD but got a lot done with Gimp, Inkscape and LibreOffice in my personal projects. Totally worth my time!

Me too. I guess a majority of people don't have the patience to work around counterintuitive things nor do they want to take measures to avoid bugs. On the other hand, Blender and Krita seem to give UX a higher priority, so they're more likely to catch on.

I dislike using Gimp. Always have.

There is just something about it that does not click with me. Just selecting a foreground object even when the background was almost white never worked for me. Just so fiddly.

I can get stuff done with it.

Try PhotoGimp plugin, it solves some annoyances for me by introducing the shortcuts I used to, and a slightly more familiar interface. The rest, I just got used to, and actually now I like Gimp more than Photoshop (which I don’t like too much, even though I know it for two decades now).

> LibreOffice, GIMP, FreeCAD and Inkscape all have their quirks (and bugs), but they're probably seen as features by their core users so they won't change.

I wouldn't say that, there's bugs in Freecad that drive me bonkers but I would be dishonest if I said it hadn't gotten more stable and better supports my Nvidia card today compared to previous releases

Huh? If you are hinting on Iraq or Afghanistan, that initial hot war has been won within months to days. Follow up uncontained insurgency was a problem which lingered unsolved for years and has been very painful.

Whole initial target of the West was to fuel this insurgency in Ukraine to make it forever war and constant draw on Russian resources. But Russia decided to pull out "pro gamer move" and get stuck with hot war phase for 4 years and still counting. Obviously initial plan of the West was foiled and replaced with magnitude better way to draw resources from Russia.

Russia is trying to install autocracy and failing in even more spectacular way. Americans might have paid a lot of money for nothing, but effectively it had no influence on their daily life. Russians are wasting their own country to conquer ruins and people who hate them.