This reminds me of this video that shows how Italian food is a recent invention https://youtu.be/iZZfwyKa0Lc

On mobile atm but there’s the Princeton books on Computer Science

There’s a fair bit of bias in the terms “restrictive” and “permissive”, which make MIT seem like a ‘better’ choice than a give-and-take license like GPL.

The truth is, MIT is risky for developers. Using just one line from an MIT-licensed project will automatically allow others to exploit your work without giving back. I’d prefer to advocate for balanced licenses that protect both user and developer interests.

We are at risk

of losing many developers who would otherwise choose a license like the GPL. Fortunately, I’m glad to be surrounded by people, just like you, who care about licenses like GPL. By uploading this type of content and engaging with it, be show our commitment to it. I wish to suggest how we can deal with this threat.

We will lose developers who choose GPL if we use words that suggest GPL is “restrictive”. Sure, the word “restrictive” was avoided in this meme by using the word “copyleft”, but the cognitive jump from “permissive” to “restrictive” is minimal: just add an “opposite” and you’ve got “permissive is the opposite to restrictive”. It really is that simple. That’s how brain works (check out Relational Frame Theory to see how that works).

So what can we do about it?

Well, we can approach this with science. There is a historical global trend towards people being more meta-cognitive. That means that people are becoming more aware of how our thoughts interpret everyday reality and how to be intentional with our relationship with our thoughts so that we live better lives. We know this trend is happening to virtually everyone everywhere because of the work of brilliant sociologists like Anthony Giddens and Christian Welzel. Heck, even the history of psychology —going from noticing and changing behaviors (behaviorism) to noticing and changing behaviors and thoughts (cognitive-behaviorism), to noticing and changing the context and function of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions (functional contextualism)— reflects this trend.

We can use meta-cognition in our favor; we can use the meta-cognitive tool of framing to change how we think about GPL and MIT licenses. Effective communicators like influencers, political campaign experts, and influential activists use framing all the time. For example, instead of using the dangerous framing that suggests GPL is ‘restrictive’, we can use another one that truly displays the virtues of the license.

What would this other frame look like? I may not have a perfect answer, but here are some

ways of framing (thinking about) the relationship between licenses like GPL and MIT:

(ironically!!!, these were ‘suggested’ by an LLM; I wonder if these frames already existed)

• “Investment-Protecting Licenses” vs. “Investment-Risking Licenses” (as in developers invest by working on projects that they could (not) lose the ability to contribute to)
• “Community-Resource-Guarding Licenses” vs. “Exploitation-Vulnerable Licenses”
• “Give-and-Take Licenses” vs. “Take-and-Keep Licenses” ⭐
• “Freedom-Ensuring Licenses” vs. “Freedom-Risking Licenses” ⭐
• “Contribution-Rewarding Licenses” vs. “Contribution-Exploiting Licenses”
• “Open-Source-Preserving Licenses” vs. “Closed-Source-Enabling Licenses”

I’d be happy to hear what you think, including suggestions!

I think I just exposed how expensive and rare I think kidney-stone treatments are…

Edit: clarity

Oh… I wonder how expensive using that bathtub is. Are they rare? Like, would almost any hospital have one?

The way string of any material is woven should be durable. But plastic can be a magical material. It doesn't cool when wet, regardless of whether it's got fat on it (unlike wool, which requires lanolin). And its cheapness makes it readily available to billions of people.

To be clear, yes, we should avoid overproduction and overconsumption of plastic. Yes, we should research cheap ways of making durable and waterproof/still-warm-when-wet clothes that are biodegradable. Yes, we should require good filters in every washing machine and dryer so that we don't get full of microplastics.

Sometimes I don't either…

You could check out NixOS :)

I'm glad that you have such a nice experience with your pens, but I don't know if this is a showerthought :(

Some would argue it’s not OK.

I think most of the criticism on Telegraph regarding how Matrix handles rooms and events are addressed by the work behind linearized matrix: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&q=linearized+matrix+messaging&t=web

EDIT BEINGS HERE

So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded "enshittification", Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.

This does not mean that it's not problematic that their code is closed-source.

EDIT ENDS HERE

I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.

For one, it's based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.

It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.

Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.

It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Thanks! I changed the post so that it reflects the broader concept rather than the specific indicator :)

I know encapsulation is desirable in part because of security. I figured something similar could happen by removing the ability to import anything from another program. However, I struggled to think about other situations in which no imports were desirable, and so I wondered…

That sounds exhaustive in the good sense. Rigorous. Would you say your math education was particularly good compared to that of, for example, the rest of your country? Could you know, perhaps through standardized testing, if it was good compared to the rest of the world? Would you attribute the exhaustive domain and range statements to just the book, just the teacher, or just the school administration, or some combination of them?

Fair enough, I changed “never” to “rarely” :) I’m actually curious, did you have to specify the ‘type’ often?

lol I see how this shower-thought can seem obvious.

What lead to the shower-thought was thinking about dimensions in linear algebra. If you want to represent a function with more parameters, you need more dimensions.

For example, two parameters could be represented by ax + by = c where a, b, and c are constants and x and y are real numbers. Note that this equation describes a 2-D plane. Three parameters would require an additional variable and an associated constant: ax + by + cz = d, where d is an additional constant and z is an additional real number. Note that this equation describes a 3-D space.

Can you see how if you wanted to represent four parameters, you would need four dimensions?

However, facet plots seem to override this need for more dimensions in a particular way: splitting up axes, like cutting up a cake. If you have four parameters (in which two of them can only take up discrete values), instead of requiring four dimensions, you can split up two dimensions in discrete chunks, like a cake, and represent four parameters in two dimensions. That was interesting for me to realize.

I guess for cake-cutters, this post is silly and trivial. But for someone trained to think “more parameters = more dimensions in the sense of going from ax + by = c to ax + by + cz = d”, it was surprising to realize facet plots break that rule.

https://plotly.com/python/facet-plots/

In case you’re curious about why I’m saying what I’m saying: here’s what I said in another comment:

In the socialization process, I think there’s a tension between the already-existing abstract world that language conveys, and the flexibility and creativity that kids have. I say that because I was reading a book on wonder, and how children are immensely curious. However, over time, socialization can lead to the internalization of rigid identities and worldviews. In effect, older people are much less curious because they believe they know exactly who they are and believe they already have good-enough answers to the questions they care about.

That is what makes me wonder if the reason for the new slang that comes from young people has to do with the experimentation that young people do with their identities as well as the lack of internalization of rigid identities and worldviews. In other words, if I am a child and I don’t have a (relatively) rigid mind, to what extent could that explain my slang?