Time scale matters a lot in how we as humans perceive things like agency. Plants grow too slow for us to see any intent, but when you speed up a time lapse, suddenly it looks like plants reach for sunlight and vines for supports. Now, that may be projection on our part, but it may not be.
A lot depends on where you draw the boundary for consciousness. Michael Pollan (in his new book, _A World Appears_) distinguishes simpler sentience from more advanced consciousness, and the requirements for sentience (be aware of sense data, have preferences, be able to respond to senses appropriately) are met by plants and single celled life (e.g. moving up a nutrient gradient). Recent findings in plant science are particularly mind blowing. Some are in Pollan's book, more are in _The Light Eaters_.
Installing a plug-in and reviewing its code at that point is one thing. But if the plug-in can be updated withut you knowing, then there’s little guarantee of security.
You can automatically check for updates but it's off by default, and still requires a manual click. Also the new plugin review system automatically scans every release.
I'm surprised how few comments are written with the prior that Amazon managers aren't stupid or uninformed about how incentives work.
My guess would be that someone created the leaderboard without a lot of consultation with managers, and that some employees feel a competitive urge to try to "win" the leaderboard by burning tokens.
Mmm, no, I don’t think it’s equivalent. I think they know that if you make the work hard, some employees will have trouble keeping up and will do things like peeing in bottles. And they’re OK with that, because they think there are enough people who can keep up that they can push the weaker people out. I think they believe that the peeing in bottle is relatively rare. I’m unsure whether that’s right or not. It’s been reported that it happens, but I have no sense whether it’s common.
I hope it’s better than other sensor tech in cars that think they need to warn you that you’re about to hit something at the front when the car is in reverse, that can't distinguish a bike rack statically attached to the car from the environment, and so on.
My dislike is that they involve political parties. Which after religions are roots of all evils. I would just go with open list of candidates. The most voted candidates in order get the seats. Some argue that there would be wasted votes on most popular candidates but to me it sounds like voters got exactly what they wanted.
Interesting. I know that some smaller jurisdictions in the US (cities and counties) run non-partisan primaries and elections. Have party-less elections been done at the national level anywhere? Did they not result in de-facto party competitions? Curious to know where and read up.
A similar explanatory mirage happens in elections: when a candidate loses by (say) 1% of the vote, people go looking for factors that produced a 1% swing and declare, “it’s because of inflation! it’s because they took position X! it’s because the other team focused harder on turnout!”. You can find several such explanations and no single one is the causal one.
+1 on most of this. A small note: I think “suffering” is an unfortunate translation as it connotes dire circumstances or real pain, whereas I understand dukkha to include simple discontent, dissatisfaction, and stress. I take the Buddha to have said roughly, “I teach the origin of unhappiness and how to liberate yourself from it.”
I think when you marry life is suffering, and resistance is suffering, you get to the root of it. Ego is ultimately the root of suffering, resisting what is. Our cravings and aversions result in us not being able to be meet the present as it is, and accept it. It causes us to artificially label experience with qualifiers such as good/bad etc
As we root out our cravings and aversions, our egoic programming, fear stops running the show, and gratitude and contentment takes it's place. We're able to meet every moment as it is and appreciate the perfection.
> I think “suffering” is an unfortunate translation as it connotes dire circumstances or real pain, whereas I understand dukkha to include simple discontent, dissatisfaction, and stress.
Agree. Suffering doesn't send the right message in terms of what the word is trying to signal. The best version I've heard is likening life to a carriage ride, and the wheel is just never quite right, so it's always just a little bit uncomfortable. Nothing's just ever quite right.
reply