Fair point. I was too dismissive in my earlier response, and I apologize. You raised strong and valid arguments. My perspective is shaped by a long pattern of historical collapses, but I’d truly welcome any examples or evidence that point to a different trajectory.
> Any living creature would fit that definition of "civilization"
It would not. I said civilization "extracts resources, generates waste and disrupts ecosystems". A sponge does not disrupt its ecosystem. In fact, it keeps it alive.
> Non-native species often disrupt ecosystems when introduced somewhere new.
And how does this happen exactly? Non-native species do not just walk around - you need humans and civilization to move them around, and create exactly these kinds of issues.
Of course it is. Every civilization so far has ended due to internal collapse. I'd love to hear arguments and evidence about why you believe our society is on a different path.
> That's not a necessary part of civilization, it's just the way we're doing it currently.
All civilizations including ours have been doing it this way, so you can argue it is a part of the civilization. It’s a comforting fiction that humanity can fundamentally change its character, but the history proves otherwise.
> To begin with, a planet can be "dirty" without any civilization. Most planets are.
They can also be clean. Look at Earth. Don't see an argument here. We are discussing whether civilization pollutes or not, not whether planets are inherently habitable or inhibitable.
From a systems perspective, civilization is the greatest pollutant. Whether it's Mesopotamia, Rome, industrial Britain, or the modern global economy, each civilization is a complex machine that extracts resources, generates waste and disrupts ecosystems. There’s no version of it that’s truly sustainable long-term, just degrees of delay or harm reduction.
There is absolutely nothing special about beef. We could replace beef with palm oil, lithium, air travel, or even data centers. The same system logic applies: convert energy and resources into power, growth, and order, while displacing entropy elsewhere.
A clean planet is a planet without civilization. This is a factual observation, not nihilism.
Apple is simply continuing to do what Apple does best - building strong products and protecting their ecosystem.
Does that mean some vendors will be treated unfairly? Of course.
Does it mean Apple users will remain happy? Absolutely.
If there is one OS that is anti-tinkering by design it is iOS, and yet people keep criticizing this intentional design decision that forms a large part of Apple’s moat.
Language helps us shape our thoughts, in a way a ruler helps us draw straight lines, but thoughts do not begin with language.
Our thoughts and ideas come from an unknown source. We might call it intuition, but scientifically speaking, it remains a black box.
Lethologica - a temporary inability to remember a particular word or name - is one evidence of this. You can have a fully formed thought in your mind, but be unable to express it with words.
This "AI detecting AI" method is a lost cause and a distraction from a larger problem of AI regulation.
The success of generative AI depends on producing human-like content, and the models are only improving. This means the signal used to detect the AI will only grow weaker, causing detection technology to fail more often, get more expensive, and end up with diminishing returns.
From a cost and accuracy perspective, Twitter's community notes system is a far superior solution, albeit a low-tech one.
What we need to do is regulate watermarking at all levels of the content pipeline: production, editing, and reproduction.
This involves prescribing mandatory watermarks for AI tools, ensuring they cannot be removed by digital editing software (and making it illegal to do so), and finally, ensuring all software dealing with the production, editing, or reproduction of content must display the watermark information to the users.
In practical terms, this means that if you get a video produced by SORA, it will have a watermark. If you use it in Adobe Premiere, Movie Maker, or another video editing tool, you will see but won't be able to remove the watermark. If you add filters, the tool might add a piece of history to the video clip indicating you made an edit. When you output a final video file, the watermark in your clip is preserved and displayed to anyone watching your video, including any editing notes added by your tool.
This is a tall order, but achievable.
It is not bulletproof by any means, and someone would inevitably find a way to crack the technology and remove the watermark.
But this happens in software all the time - the goal isn't to make the technology impossible to crack but to make it incredibly hard to do so, which protects the large majority of parties involved.
Any word can become generic when overused. As more people get access to Grammarly and CharGPT, more of them will apply the same recommendations, turning previously rare words into generics.
Looking at the screenshots in the article, the readings are wrong. You are reading the first number as if that's the amount of JS being loaded, but it's the second number (i.e. if it says 6 MB / 3MB, it's 3 MB of JavaScript, out of 6 MB total page size).
Excellent work. This is a perfect demonstration of how valuable content curation can be, paired with an excellent presentation and user experience. You made it much easier to discover interesting people in the corners of the Internet, and I am grateful for that.
From a logical standpoint, questioning whether Consciousness "exists" is ludicrous. Consciousness is the foundation of our capability to observe the world around us and make conclusions about it. Protons, electrons, atoms, molecules and other phenomena do not exist outside of our Consciousness and we cannot prove absolutely anything about the world that is not a part of our Consciousness. Therefore, if something is to be questioned, it is our strange desire to prove the existence of the only thing we are directly experiencing all the time - Consciousness. It's like a computer program becoming aware of itself and trying to find that awareness in the source code. It's not there.
Creating anything is a craft and creating software programs is no different. While everyone should strive to learn how to write programs well so the intent isn’t obfuscated, it ultimately boils down to two factors: programmer’s experience and talent. Most programs, like most works of art, will be utter crap and nonsense, as most artists are - with rare notable differences. This is why I heavily support frameworks and prescriptive style of programming, or “opinionated” systems as some would call them. They are usually invented by people much smarter than the average Joe and ultimately generate better long term results. It would benefit our productivity much more if we invested efforts into translating these brilliant minds into compiler features so the compiler checks for style as well, not just “spelling”. We need Grammarly for code.
The post is a clever implementation of the clickbait technique with a sole aim of bringing more startup CEOs and executives to visit Slab’s website and discover their product in the process. The arguments presented in the article are weak and show no proof of actual trust erosion as a result of Zuckerberg’s writing style, only a set of arbitrary conclusions on how certain words and phrases may appear to some people. This hardly belongs on HN.
Why would anyone put Amazon and a library in the same sentence is beyond me, let alone contrast and compare them then argue against libraries. The Forbes editorial in question should be publicly displayed in all libraries as an example of poor judgment and lack of civility. Bizzare.