Recently in Thoughts Category

I hate tl;dr

By
Gabriel Weinberg
on February 14, 2010 1:27 PM  
tldr.pngHappy Valentine's day. Here's something I hate: tl;dr comments. 

tl;dr stands for "too long;didn't read." I've seen these types of comments increasingly on Hacker News lately, the only online forum I routinely visit. Searchyc (a site that searches the forum) confirms the increasing frequency of these comments over the past few months.

People who comment tl;dr are pretty much confirming they didn't read the article they are commenting on, which means the chances of their comment being useful is slim.

The worst is just 'tl;dr' and nothing else, or perhaps even worse, a tl;dr followed by an emoticon. It adds nothing except that the article seemed long in the commenter's opinion. And it's really smug, which annoys me in and of itself.

Slightly longer tl;dr comments try to summarize the article, which can actually be useful. But I'd strongly prefer if they didn't use that abbreviation; just say summary or abstract. Saying 'tl;dr' just brings that smug tone into it.

Finally some people say they serve a purpose to inform writers their posts are too long. I don't buy that, especially on a forum like Hacker News that works on a voting system. Just don't upvote it.

I think pg (the forum creator) agrees, though I sent him an email about it and never got a reply back.

Avatar: is assimilation of the natives bad?

By
Gabriel Weinberg
on January 14, 2010 7:36 AM  
Like a lot of people in the US, seeing Avatar made me think of native American/European history. Yes, there were a lot of wrongs committed. And yes, a lot of it had to do with diseases. 

On HN, bokonist started an interesting thread asking whether it would have been better to turn back the clock and not have ever interacted?

I think that is one legitimate, albeit unrealistic, logical conclusion of our modern moralistic sensibilities. hristov makes the point that a peaceful co-existence would have been possible, but in the same breath talks about assimilation.

Avatar sheds light on both possibilities. As a viewer you're almost screaming for the former where us Earthlings would have never set foot on Pandora. Yet both in the movie and in real life I think it just couldn't have happened that way. There are too many independent variables, i.e. people.
 
We're always going to have explorers, entrepreneurs, and frontiersmen among us. And society isn't going to stop them from interacting with new things. So while idealistic, I think these alternate histories are dream worlds.

Interaction is inevitable. And with interaction, some degree of assimilation is inevitable. 

From the Avatar perspective, assimilation seems pernicious, as it would certainly mean the destruction of at least in part the Navi's day to day life, which is painted so majestically in the movie. 

Imagine many peaceful human colonies with their modern technology and economy. Some Navi are intrigued and gradually some start to assimilate--have jobs, trade, etc. Is that progress or a destruction of culture?

Avatar paints the Navi as an essentially homogeneous group. And given that they are not human, I'll let it slide. So back to the native Americans.

As like any human population, native Americans have their own explorers, entrepreneurs, and frontiersmen. Some of these people want to assimilate. Some will have gone home at night wishing that they had been born into the European way of life, and visa-versa.

We like to think of these groups as homogeneous, but in reality they are from it.

Would we (Earth) show up in our universe's stats pages?

By
Gabriel Weinberg
on January 13, 2010 9:04 AM  
I recently read The Black Hole War. This quote from pg 418 really got me thinking: "Out of every 10,000,000,000 bits of information in the universe, 9,999,999,999 are associated with the horizons of black holes." 

As an apathetic agnostic, I don't think much about how our universe was created. Yet doing so is pretty hard to escape when reading this book.

Suppose the universe was created, but the creators are not omnipotent. For a bad analogy, consider the universe as a large computer program. They designed this system, perhaps one of many, and let it go. 

Further assume that though the creators are not omnipotent they may be able to interact with our universe without obeying our laws of physics. That is, they can measure or get views into certain things without effecting anything.

Now if they have active interest in monitoring their creation, what will their stats pages look like? 

If indeed pretty much all information is in black holes, would they even know there are bits of information out of black holes? If so, would they further know about life in the universe? And of course, would we (Earth) show up anywhere?

Update: additional comments can be found here (on HN).

I love TV! There, I said it...

By
Gabriel Weinberg
on July 16, 2009 10:21 AM  
Woke up today to see yet another anti-TV post on Hacker News.  The comments link to two really funny takes on the issue at Stuff White People Like and The Onion.

Here's what I like to watch on TV:


I find it odd to indict an entire communication medium with anything. Of course there is stuff you are not going to like on TV. But by the same token, there is probably stuff you will like too.

Do you want to be good friends with the average person? 

I can understand the argument of wanting to reclaim your time. I cut out reading the newspaper in paper-form last year. I used to get the WSJ and the Phoenix delivered. But I didn't cut out the entire news medium. Instead, I just cut down my consumption to what I find most interesting, which I now get through a site I made for that purpose and via RSS feeds.

Similarly, cutting out all TV seems a bit drastic me. Ne qid nimis (nothing in excess).  I DVR everything, so I watch it when I want and I get to skip all the commercials.

Anyway, my point here is not really to defend TV. I'm just saying I consider myself a hacker and I, for one, love the above shows. 

What do you like to watch?

What makes you weird?

By
Gabriel Weinberg
on July 6, 2009 8:13 AM  
What does most (>75%) of the population (of your country) do that you do not?

Note that I'm not asking what makes you unique.  For example, I'm an INTJ, which is one of those 1% personality types. However, it's not like 99% of people are one personality type and then us INTJs are the other one. There are 16 Myers-Briggs types, so this doesn't count, although it certainly contributes to my uniqueness.

I'm looking for (at least almost) binary things. The first thing I thought of is that don't drink, but it turns out 40% of Americans don't drink.  So that doesn't count.

Here's some things that seem to count (with my % estimates):
  • I have a graduate degree (10% of US pop>25). (A bachelor's degree doesn't cut it any more as 27% of the US population over 25 has one.)
  • I went to a top-10 school (3% of school goers).
  • I am a business owner (15% of US pop>25).
  • I did not get a job after school. (I started a business instead.)  I can't find a stat here, but I'm sure it is very low.
  • I'm a stay-at-home Dad (1% of dads).
  • I blog (12% of Internet users).

What about you?

Will a Colony on Mars Save Us Humans from Extinction?

By
Gabriel Weinberg
on April 10, 2008 3:49 PM  
We (the human race) need to establish a colony on Mars as soon as possible.  Why?  To start the process of saving ourselves from the possible extinction we face by remaining solely on Earth.

Pick your poison.  Nuclear holocaust.  Disease.  The death of our Sun.  It doesn't matter. 

Every day we are only Earth-bound is a day we can become extinct relatively easily.  In other words, why put all our eggs in one basket?

Of course, we nay naturally progress to colonize other parts of space, most likely due to private market forces (frontier desire, exploitation of resources, etc.).  And farther down the road we may more or less be forced to due so because of overpopulation (unless we stabilize our birth rate). 

But why wait?  We have the technology now!  We've had it for decades really.

I think it is completely irresponsible of past US presidents (since and inclusive of Nixon) to not fully engage our resources in creating a fully self-sustaining Mars colony.  Human space exploration should not have ended with moon landings and should not have stalled in space stations.

This idea isn't new of course, but it is not said enough IMHO.  I feel this point is getting lost in the recently increased debate about sending humans into space again, and going to Mars in particular.

So, what do you think?  Will a colony on Mars save us humans from extinction?

Update: additional comments can be found here.
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