CharonY

I would agree that addressing that sentiment is politically important if you want to have success. As a matter of fact, in contrast to the fantasies OP has, controlling and restricting immigration has been a key point across the political spectrum by now. In Europe it is a center issue for decades now, and Brexit is in part driven by that. Trudeau’s and Biden’s overcorrection of immigration after COViD-19 to kickstart the economy cost them politically quite dearly. But there is another dimension I would like to address. A big issue I have with that argument is, as I mentioned before, it is almost entirely emotional and thereby not really objectively addressable. It is not, for example an economic argument, where one could pull economic data and simply align immigration goals with it. And what is even worse, the exclusion is eventually treated as an virtue all by itself, from which there is only a little step to demonize the others to further that virtue. The most neutral way I can express the issue is that folks are upset that parts of the country are not pandering to their sensibilities and needs. But this has two issues. First, it kind of ignores the other forms of exclusion, which could be way more consequential. For example, even if the vendor is advertising in Turkish, I likely can walk in and buy things. In contrast, I cannot simply walk into a country club, which is likely going to be far more exclusionary, even if they speak a language I am more familiar with. There is also the corollary- if all spaces have to pander to the sensibilities of the majority, it suggests that minorities are not allowed to create similar spaces if they are different. I think much of these issues can be resolved simply by engaging with each other, rather than by wielding political power. Unfortunately most are more content to just argue in inflammatory fantasies, such as OP in this case. There is also a whole issue in terms of the implications of the term assimilation. I.e. the implied suggestion that one is only accepting of otherness, if it remains invisible. That of course is a goalpost that has been used consistently to penalize minorities and is ultimately an unattainable goal for many, especially with features that are not easily erasable. I.e. it is often not enough to speak the language (even accent free) and engage in local activities. The best one often can hope for is to be one of the good ones as the endpoint of assimilation.

I will add two things. Things change, this is just how it works. As a kid there was a small forest and a wonderful creek where I just to play. Now it has become a suburbian hell. Do you think folks should be upset regarding the young families living there now? Do you think folks would be more or less upset if said families spoke German, English, Polish, or Arabic? Consider a different scenario. There was a rough area in the city I lived in. There used to be shops on the ground floor, but they had been empty for a long time. At some point a Turkish shop came in selling vegetables. And then next door a Turkish tea house opened. Should that shock folks? My overarching question is basically why do cultural changes have such an outsized emotional impact compared to other things which potentially affect your life more directly (positively or negatively)?

Sadly, it is a powerful political message that many current (reform, AFD, rassemblement national,Reps etc.) and past parties have used successfully to find useful scapegoats, drive resentment, and ultimately avoid any form of responsibility for their actions. The baseline is, of course, the assumption that anything not exactly like them is detrimental. And make no mistake, if they can't find someone with a darker skin color, they will blame someone with the "wrong" religion, political outlook, or some other form of otherism. Considering how prevalent this is, one would expect that by this point folks would have found a way to actually document and quantify why the "others" are causing the death for their beloved identity (as opposed to, say economic and political decisions). Yet instead, they just assume. And even after self-inflicted wounds to "safeguard" their identity, such as Brexit, no lessons will ever be learned. This, of course is because the whole argument is entirely emotional, devoid of any reason. Which is why asking for reasons is usually a waste of breath.

Also, what about the implication that a kid with a foreing born-parent is a detriment? What is the reasoning there? Why is the skin color relevant?

Also, even those spaces seem to have declined. Much of reddit is dominated by engagement bait, often bot-driven. Likewise, I found that most of these subs have declined markedly in quality (at least those that were decent to begin with). Some are outright cesspools of misinformation. Also, even without shouting, quite frequently there is poor reasoning and I have seen how misconceptions at some point become consensus. Yepp, searches in TikTok are quite common, apparently. Rather depressingly, that is what students confirm they are doing nowadays. The argument was that google is for old folks. Though google is getting worse, anyway. Also wikipedia is too long to read, according to many.

I would like to emphasize a point exchemist made, science is fundamentally a process and methodology and as such it does not have an inherent end point. Even if the natural world could be somehow be fully understood (an extremely unlikely assumption) science methodologies can continued to be deployed to interact with the world based on that knowledge.

Fair, I think the context was more that the carbon footprint as a whole might be a bigger issue all thins considered. Especially the increase in LNG use has set off some alarm bells, though despite all the wildfires, climate change seems to be taking a backseat over AI. Fair, though I think we are still in a stage figuring out what works and how sustainable it is. I suspect that I am biased as in my industry ideas amount to fairly little and while I have tried to think about ways to improve research, beyond fairly mundane uses. I am wondering, are those operations tech-type startups?

I think deception is a big part of it. There is a sense that data centers are foisted on communities without their consent and there is apparently a lack of transparency (or at least the perception thereof). It doesn't really help that in many white collar jobs (other than within tech itself) AI use is enforced, disrupting established workflows without adding much immediate benefit. For example, engineers are forced to document all their work with AI tools, so that the AI can learn to solve problems. Rather obviously, only management really likes this. Edit: also it doesn't really help that if we are in a cold war, all the players are the worst possible people to lead it. Instead of Oppenheimer we have human-shaped caricatures.

Over the weekend I talked to an engineer who knows way more about things like data centers than I do and his perspective if that that the issue with water use is likely overblown as most newer centers are using closed-loop system of some sort (it could be regionally different), but also that other types of industries are using more water without the associated backlash. There are certainly concerns, but from a pure engineering perspective, it does not seem to be that different than any other industry as such. The issue is likely more related to the technology itself, and there are issues with it, that look very different, depending on in which industry you are in. Given the economic scale, I think the industrial revolution might be justified, though fire is a different matter. Unless they actually realize some of the use cases they envision. But over the years I got quite disillusioned at the gap between what the tech elite tells us to what they really deliver. Maybe this time it really is different, but I honestly cannot see the scale yet.

Not according to the president.

If costs can be externalized it is considered a smart business decision. Regulatory framework should limit that, but often doesn't, or does it too late. Well, there is an argument that additional LNG generators could bolster existing energy infrastructure and because of the huge capacities of data centres to absorb excess and regulate demand it can be a net boon, as you mentioned. A bit of an issue here is the significant added consumption (and emissions) that this causes. I think one issue is that there is a big push to get even more of the paste out and it is not entirely clear to me that it makes sense. There is an urgency that almost seems to be designed to throw caution into the wind. Economically it seems to be precarious at best, and at least based on my reading it seems that the bubble will have to pop eventually. It is reminiscent of the dot com bubble. I may be wrong, but I don't think that that bubble had also such ecological and physical infrastructure impact as the current situation. The main argument I have seen for the need for massive investment now relates to national security. But even if being just slightly ahead would create an advantage in protecting and/or initiating cyber attacks at scale, the companies are not under direct control of the respective governments (other than in autocratic countries, including China). But even with some of the regulations in place it does seem that there is going to be a lot of trust put into those companies to secure cybersafety. And of course, if USA wins the race (whatever it means) it could also spell disaster for its enemies, such as apparently Greenland and Canada. So following that logic, the massive investment are basically a race to weaponization, like in the early days of nuclear ambitions. Only this time not in a nationally coordinate way but via massive investment into, I would say dubious characters. I think we really need to design a better toothpaste dispenser.

That is very good to know. So it is about optimizing the margins? I assume as everyone and their dog wants to be hyperscalers it is getting competitive?

Well, some do require closed-loop systems, though I guess not so much in desert areas. Issue is higher cost, lower efficiency, especially in, say, deserts. An additional issues seems to be that coolants used in water-free systems are harder maintain and can lead to more toxic leaks. Usually that is a problem when data cenres close and someone has to clean them up. One argument I heard is that that this gives them more flexibility to address fluctuating power demands (for the given cost that is). Which is why the claim that AI is going to solve our energy and climate change problem doubly ironic.

It depends on what parameters we are looking at. I think different health systems might include different parameters in a standard blood test. Those most sensitive to diet often are conducted after fasting. For fasting blood glucose level you are typically asked to stop eating for 8-12 hours before the draw, for example. But most I can think of (e.g. blood cell counts, lipid profile, TSH, total protein etc.) generally are little impact from these types of short-term shock and/or normalize within hours.

Of course, I was referring to some of the challenges that social workers have brought when talking about reaching out to unhoused folks and the diversity of challenges they face. That being said, these initiatives are notoriously underfunded to begin with, and many, if not most help organizations focus on immediate harm prevention more than anything.

I would also like to add something that has been implicit in some of the posts. The solutions are not universal. The issues leading to homelessness for example are extreme diverse and so are potential solutions (if they are known at all). In some cases, especially folks that are at risk to losing their home due to loss of job can be assisted with bridge funding, retraining and other measures. However, folks that have lost their home for an extended time, often require additional assistance benefit from such funding. That part touches on it, and there are a wide range of reasons why some refuse such accommodations, ranging from experience of violence to deep mistrust to organizations and so on. Then add to this health issues of various sorts, which requires bespoke, and thus expensive support to really help them.

Oral tradition is notorious for misinterpretations even within generations. Cultures that depended on oral tradition often had fairly elaborate systems to reduce that. While books can have similar issues, the baseline is less volatile short-term, at least.

If you are talking real transfer rather than training on a specific subset of skills, I disagree. Or rather,I think for anything somewhat complex you need both. Books for the broad foundation, and direct guidance to fill in gaps and consolidate the ideas. Fully oral training is hard. I have talked with folks regarding traditional knowledge transfer in oral societies and typically there are dedicated positions (knowledge keepers) who are heavily trained to retain and transfer information. Once trained, the person is highly capable, and it could be considered effective, but the effort needed is much higher than textbook assisted knowledge transfer.

The US is doing a lot of silly things but this one is hilarious (and dangerous) on so many levels: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5969935-hegseth-testosterone-testing-dod/ There are so many layers to it. This is biologically and medically dubious, and shows what happens if lack you weaponize stupidity to max lethality or something. It also shows that the weird one-dimensional gender/sex view of these folks is not just a slogan, they really believe in it. (I.e. testosterone is manly, more manly -> more lethal). And on top it betrays a rather limited perspective on modern warfare (how much testosterone does a drone operator need?). And then also the absolute hypocrisy regarding hormone treatment of personnel. Added to that, we get a view what happens if influencers actually run things (see RFK for the the show on the health side of things). It is like a multi-layered idiot sandwich with misinformation sauce.

The concern that folks opt not to learn if an answer is already available is a valid one and we do issues with that in practice. However, regarding teaching, it can be a good supplement when done correctly. I mentioned that I think that there are certain elements to teaching that seem to be used for a long time, such as dialogue. And in areas where the knowledge framework is well-defined, chatbots are now good enough to simulate such dialogues. Where it can serve a role is then to supplement teaching. E.g. provide a way for students to fill in the gaps in their understanding. An example if they miss out or misunderstand a step in a proof or complex chemical reaction. But the difference here is that the student has to use it to develop their thinking rather than demand answers. A human instructor would try to give hints without outright giving the answer, and I assume that it should be possible to train a chatbot to emulate that.

I think it is just more exciting for male pupils. And at least to a certain degree it can also be framed in a way that is less uncomfortable. I know two highschool teachers who are on the opposite spectrum of this. One is way into the minutia of battles and military hardware and can for example, talk at length about the strengths and weaknesses of the Spitfire vs the Bf109. And I learned way too much from it about that. The other is predominantly interested in social aspects, including how folks reckon with their past. One is way more popular than the other with pupils.

There is increasing evidence that replacing textbooks with computers and tablets might have degraded teaching effectiveness. Yeah, well an issue is that many of us are (by necessity) ultra-specialized and it can be a bit tricky to think broader in some cases. I found that there is a huge variety in how history gets taught. The best teacher in highschool I had, focused heavily on social context over individual drivers, which I found was a much expansive view that made you think more. At least, compared to troop movement and focusing on individuals.

I think it depends on what you focus on. Topic-wise cross-fertilization can be very forced. But the part that you can emphasize are transferable skills. Careful reading and interpretation can be applied to both, poetry and natural science paper. It is the framework of interpretation that has to change. And highlighting those differences can crystallize the skills you need to do either. And there are topics where there are overlaps. For example, as a natural scientist, if you work even a little bit with humans, certain principles and ideas on community engagement are incredibly valuable to make inroads in your research. I think there is some value in the idea of rounded training and education, but one need to put some thought behind it.

To a certain degree, there might be. As a whole I found a combination of dialogue and hands-on work to be the best way to convey concepts in many domains. Regardless of all the add-ons that companies, administration and even some areas of research suggest, none of the stuff I have tried was giving better long-term results. It is, however, not easily scalable to very large groups.

Depends, CGI traditionally required humans to generate the effects. AI sort of interprets the input but creates the outputs based on directions. I.e. the human input is vastly reduced and, in theory, could be eliminated entirely.