[programmers frantically pulling cables out of the wall] AI: "Nuclear power. Double teachers' salaries. Build more houses. Distribute food more fairly. TRAINS—" — qntmyrrh (@qntm) November 24, 2023 I remember growing up with that same old adage of how you could be the next scientist to invent a cure for cancer, or a solution to climate change, or whatever. What they don’t tell you is that we already have solutions for a lot of problems, we just don’t use them.| Erik McClure
At the turn of the 20th century, the Swiss were plagued by strange, interlinked medical conditions, which existed...| London Review of Books
(public policy) The principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.| Wiktionary
[Previously in sequence: Epistemic Learned Helplessness] I. “Culture is the secret of humanity’s success” sounds like the most vapid possible thesis. The Secret Of Our Success by …| Slate Star Codex
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over The Technical Interview lately. Many people realize that inverting a binary tree on a whiteboard has basically zero correlation to whether or not someone is actually a good software developer. The most effective programming test anyone’s come up with is still Fizzbuzz. One consequence of this has been an increased emphasis on Open Source Contributions, but it turns out these aren’t a very good metric either, because most people don’t have that ...| Erik McClure
