The idea is that you change leadership with those who have genuine alignment with subjects' preference for certain policies or ideas, it is not about electing kings who may demand "machines must agree that the Emperor is not naked".
For me, the sense of a greater degree of independence and freedom is also important. Especially when the tech world is out of its mind with AI hype, it's difficult to feel the normal tinkerer's joy when I'm playing with some big, proprietary model. The more I can tweak at inference time, the more control I have over the tools in use, the more I can learn about how a model works, and the closer to true open-source the model is, the more I can recover my child-like joy at playing with fun and interesting tech-- even if that tech is also fundamentally flawed or limited, over-hyped, etc.
Your subtle idea that the comprehension and understanding is the shortcoming of political apparatus is overlooks the million issues as basic healthcare not being addressed. The problem is not understanding, I can assure you of that.
As someone who uses AI everyday. People who wish to restrict the use of their code by AI should be allowed to do so, but they should make sure their LICENSE is aligned with that. That is the only issue I see.
The mass production discount must not be overlooked, whatever most people want becomes the most cost effective, and it appears that most people want cheap, and so anything beyond the absolute minimum costs a lot more relative to the quality.
I don't believe the "people want cheap" spiel. Sure, they want affordable.
As consumers can not tell the quality of products beforehand, and price is certainly no guarantee of quality, the only logical choice is to buy cheap.
I wish there was a sort of rating of product quality [1], so I can choose the optimum price/quality for a product.
[1] Reviews suck for this purpose. Half of them say things like "Fast shipping, five stars!". By the time defects show up months later and the one-star reviews arrive, the product is discontinued anyway.
I am always fascinated by this degree of assurance and absolute lack of scepticism.
In what way, do you think, a show can have no room for critical viewing? Does being related to "reading or books" sufficient for such unquestionable and noncritical acceptance? Or was something else about it that makes it so cocksure good?
Watching Mr. Rogers as an adult, I was surprised by how opinionated the show could be. There was an episode where one of the puppets was trying to teach a child puppet to read before they entered school, and it was presented as a extremely harsh and mean way to treat a child. A human actor comes in and starts scolding the puppet that it's not necessary to teach the kids to read before school and that she needs to stop. Later, Mr. Rogers talks with an actual kindergarten teacher, and they discuss how it's completely unnecessary to teach kids to read before they enter kindergarten.
It felt like it was indoctrinating kids into believing that the right way to raise them was the way that Fred Rogers preferred.
There's this strange point of view that once it's decided that something is good and it's being made by good people, it's absurd to look at it critically and anyone who does should be mocked.
I think the one you are talking about is Episode 1462.
In Episode 1462 Lady Elaine is badgering people for not knowing all their letters and numbers etc before showing up for school.
The point is not about knowing them before you show up, the point is about addressing learning anxiety!
The point of that section is to tell children that if they don't know these things before they first show up at school, that it's not the end of the world!
Different kids are going to come from different backgrounds, this segment addresses that so when kids show up to school and don't know these things, that they don't feel stressed and upset that other kids may know something they don't. That is something they can turn a kid off from school and wanting to learn forever.
Were in a place where you learned things like that before you ever went to school? If so, that can cause resentment!
The episode only portrays education before school in a negative light, though. It's message isn't "it's fine to teach kids before they enter school and after they enter school, but you shouldn't badger them." Characters continually say that it's wrong to try to teach kids these things before they enter school, or that if a kid doesn't want to learn them before they enter school parents are wrong to try.
In 1462, look at around 12:30, Elaine is trying to teach Tuesday, who doesn't want to learn, he wants to leave. So Mr. McFeely objects by saying that Tuesday doesn't need to learn them before he goes to school.
Then look at 17:15. Elaine says that Tuesday needs to study, and Aberlin immediately objects saying that he hasn't started school yet. When Elaine says that school is about learning numbers and letters, Aberlin says that that's not true "according to the real teacher." Followed by Mr. Rogers saying that Elaine thinks that everything about school needs to be hard and boring, and that's just not the way it is. But "parents trying to teach you about numbers and letters just want things to be hard and boring" isn't a good message, to say the least.
You're right that Elaine is portrayed as being mean, but that's part of the problem. It feels very much like a negative caricature. No one is saying "here's a good way to teach kids before school," they're all saying "don't be so mean, they don't need to learn these things."
I don't feel so easy about a show teaching very young children that their preferred approach to child rearing is morally correct and other approaches are morally wrong.
(Thanks for a link to the episodes, by the way. 1462 and 1463.)
I think you're taking away a different message from what I did, I watch 1462 and 1463 looking for this section.
The message I got was not "don't learn this stuff before school", the message I took away was that, for a lot of kids watching that show on PBS, especially around the air date of 1979, you were looking at "latchkey kids" plus the incredible struggles of poverty and access to information.
It wasn't "don't learn this", it was "you are not less of a human being because you were born into a family that didn't or couldn't take the time to help teach you these things before you started school". That was the takeaway, for me, and for a lot of the kids I grew up around that weren't privileged.
But it's not showing that. You could have two kids start school at the same time and say that it's OK that they didn't have different backgrounds. But that's not what they showed - they're showing people who are telling Elaine it's wrong to teach the kids when the kids want to go off and play.
> "you are not less of a human being because you were born into a family that didn't or couldn't take the time to help teach you these things before you started school"
But Elaine does want to teach the kids in this episode. I don't see how this episode would do anything other than encourage fewer parents to try to teach their kids before they go off to school.
That is a Waldorf perspective, though presumably not exclusive to them. I was sent to a Waldorf kindergarten, and my mother despised it because they repeatedly insulted her for having taught me to read. They felt this was unhealthy.
Independent of Waldorf, kindergarten teachers - like most teachers - don't like it when their students already know the material they're supposed to be teaching.
> Independent of Waldorf, kindergarten teachers - like most teachers - don't like it when their students already know the material they're supposed to be teaching.
Yes, "don't do it that way, you're not suppose to know that yet" is depressingly common. Also unfair, since it usually only applies to certain kids - we don't tell artistic kids that they shouldn't paint so well, because kids aren't supposed to be at that level yet, nor do we tell athletic kids this. But it's extremely common in subjects like math.
One of the things that's frustrating is the one size fits all mentality when it comes to education. Even if some kids don't get a lot out of home education, some really enjoy it, and it can be a great bonding experience for many parents and children. It feels irresponsible to dismiss it all together.
> we don't tell artistic kids that they shouldn't paint so well, because kids aren't supposed to be at that level yet, nor do we tell athletic kids this. But it's extremely common in subjects like math.
It's even more common as applied to holding a job, which is out-and-out illegal for children in most cases.
"...when one assumes that all of the wealthiest people on the planet who share the least (and own the media, publishers, etc.) are all committed collectivist..."
I will not engage with "woke right" or all of your points, much of which appears to be sarcasm.
However, I will note that historically collectivist movements such as the early Progressives around the dawn of the 20th century, were championed by wealthy elites. Looking back it is easy to see how the centralization of authority in this era benefited the elite classes disproportionately.
So, yes, I agree that much of the messaging for collectivist movements does focus on the perceived victim classes. However, that is only the surface level marketing. When examining the historical record, critics generally cite the outcomes rather than the slogans.
Hope this helps to add perspective to this contentious issue.
Query parameters are hardly voluntary, just about every linked acquired via "share" button on various platform includes tracking query parameters, including google search results. Combined with the fact that query parameters are has legitimate uses, the distinction complexity becomes indistinguishable from "legitimate WebGL usage" vs "WebGL fingerprint".
It is scary where we are, but you can't solve it by dismissing it as FUD.
The new generation is far more anti war than the 90s hippies. The social media might have set society back on some fronts, but on some fronts, like cross-border understanding and humanisation, it has been a blessing.
