• 9 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2021

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  • How do you choose what facts matter? How do you choose how to communicate them? Who do you communicate them to? What does news reporting mean to you? What about news reporting makes it worth your precious time alive? What purpose do the people around you have when they amplify, ignore, or quiet your facts? These are all questions that are answered, explicitly or not, by everyone who communicates or relates to facts.

    We could play the impossible “no agenda” game. We could lie to ourselves and to others. Or, we could notice that whenever we are dealing with the truth, we have a point of view. We stand here and not there. We can learn to travel around the mountain of truth, so that we mitigate our blindspots. We can be explicit about where in the mountain we are standing (The north base? The vegetated slope? The summit?).

    Instead of playing the “god trick”, we can situate our knowledge. That’s the best we can do. Check out this article by Donna Haraway on situated knowledge. It changed my life. https://philpapers.org/archive/harskt.pdf






  • Check out Christian Welzel’s work on how values have changed over time. The world is becoming more secular and more democratic. Secular in this context means that religion plays less and less of a role in every day life. Democratic in this context means that they believe everyone should be able to pursue their interests and we should have a system that increases all of our capabilities to pursue our interests.

    An implication of adopting democratic values is that you understand that your identity is not defined by “white”, “able-bodied”, or whatever, but by the fact that we are aware. By doing this, you’re not giving special treatment to your in-group (whichever it may be), but you’re considering all of humanity (and all aware beings) as equals and as a group that you belong to. Cosmopolitanism is an example of this stance.

    Something else that is happening is that the world is becoming more reflexive. Check out Anthony Giddens’ texts on this.

    But, to answer your question directly, yes, grandparents and parents are generally less welcoming and less tolerant.


  • Reading How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barret and A Liberated Mind by Steven Hayes will answer your question. More broadly, emotion construction theory and relational frame theory will answer your question.

    Self awareness can be seen as set of relational frames. Relational frames are things like “equal” and “opposite”, “I” and “you”, “here” and “there”, “now” and “then” “more” and “less”… Each of relational frame (like “I”, “equal”, “here”, “now”) is like a Lego piece that you can combine with other relational frames (“I am here now”). Piece by piece, frame by frame, thought by thought, you build a sense of self! This is also roughly how feelings are built. Interestingly, your sense of self is not necessarily the same thing as self-awareness; people can believe all kinds of things about themselves and not be aware of them!

    You can use self-awareness to examine emotions (e.g. “I notice that I am sad”). You can also create emotions based on your sense of self (e.g. “I failed, and therefore I am sad”). Sometimes, someone’s sense of self does not accept certain emotions (e.g. “Real men don’t cry”), and this rigid and skittish sense of self will do all kinds of things to escape self-awareness. One of therapy’s goals is to shine a light (the light of self-awareness) onto the sense of self, so that people can become psychologically flexible and resilient.







  • I agree that we shouldn’t jump immediately to AI-enhancing it all. However, this survey is riddled with problems, from selection bias to external validity. Heck, even internal validity is a problem here! How does the survey account for social desirability bias, sunk cost fallacy, and anchoring bias? I’m so sorry if this sounds brutal or unfair, but I just hope to see less validity threats. I think I’d be less frustrated if the title could be something like “TechPowerUp survey shows 84% of 22,000 respondents don’t want AI-enhanced hardware”.


  • Agile is indeed more of a mindset than a rigid system. In my recent experience helping a tabletop game team, we applied Agile principles to great effect. Rather than trying to perfect every aspect of the game at once, we focused on rapidly iterating the core mechanics based on player feedback. This allowed us to validate the fundamental concept quickly before investing time in peripheral elements like the looks of the game.

    This approach embodies the Agile value of ‘working product over comprehensive documentation’ - or in our case, ‘playable game over polished components’. By prioritizing what matters most to players right now, we’re able to learn and adapt much more efficiently.

    Agile thinking helps us stay flexible and responsive, whether we’re developing software or board games. It’s about delivering value incrementally and being ready to pivot based on real-world feedback.


  • I appreciate your candor about not wanting to speak on topics outside your expertise. That’s commendable. I wonder if we can still talk with the understanding that we may not know it all. I truly believe curiosity is able to sidestep many of the problems related with ignorance.

    You’re right to be cautious about appeals to authority. My intention wasn’t to suggest NASA’s use of Agile validates it universally, but rather to counter the OP comic’s implication that Agile is inherently incapable of achieving significant goals like space exploration.

    Regarding Agile-like practices in earlier NASA projects, you’re correct that concrete evidence is limited. However, we can analyze their approaches through the lens of Agile principles. Scrum, for instance, aims to foster characteristics found in high-performing teams: clear goals, information saturation, rapid feedback loops, adaptability to changing requirements, and effective collaboration. These elements aren’t exclusive to Scrum or even to modern Agile methodologies. The key is recognizing that effective project management often naturally gravitates towards these principles, whether formally adopting Agile or not.

    It’s an interesting area for further research: have complex engineering projects historically incorporated elements we now associate with Agile? If so, how?

    Your skepticism is valuable in pushing for a more nuanced understanding of project management across different domains.


  • You’ve got a good point. I wonder if this an example of a trade-off between convenience and security. If you’re logging in and you get an MFA prompt, a Yubikey has to be physically searched, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass only have to be clicked. A Yubikey can only hold a limited amount of accounts, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass could hold many more. Of course, a Yubikey could be used as MFA for Bitwarden or Proton Pass, but that would create a single point of failure and reduce factor separation (which I think is your original point).

    While I posted a Bitwarden or Proton Pass recommendation of sorts, I genuinely wonder if it’s advisable to not use MFA at all if the factors will not be separated. Or, perhaps, the best security solution is the one you’ll actually use. I guess the answer is the good ol’ “What’s your security model?”





  • I can see you’re frustrated by the downvotes and pushback you’ve received. It’s understandable to feel defensive when your viewpoint isn’t well-received. I appreciate you sharing your perspective, even if it goes against the majority opinion here.

    Your points about the space shuttle program’s challenges are valid and worth discussing. It’s important to note the timeframes involved though. The shuttle was developed in the 1970s, well before agile methodologies emerged in the 1990s and 2000s.

    Interestingly, one could argue that NASA may have used agile-like practices in the space shuttle program, even if they weren’t labeled as such at the time. However, I did a quick search and couldn’t find much concrete evidence to support this idea. It’s an intriguing area that might merit further research.

    Regarding modern agile approaches, while no method is perfect, many organizations have found them helpful for improving flexibility and delivering value incrementally. NASA’s recent use of agile for certain projects shows they’re open to evolving their methods.

    I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts on software development approaches for complex engineering projects. What do you see as the pros and cons of different methodologies? Your insights could add a lot to this discussion.