230000+ entries in 0.068s
mircea_popescu: So, in a bid to remain relevant in a world that didn't want their products, 3D Labs showed up to a Game Developer Conference wielding presentations for something they called "OpenGL 2.0". This would be a complete, from-scratch rewrite of the OpenGL API. And that makes sense; there was a lot of cruft in OpenGL's API at the time (note: that cruft still exists). Just look at how texture loading and binding work; it's semi
mircea_popescu: See, 3D Labs was a dying company. Their expensive GPUs were being marginalized by NVIDIA's increasing pressure on the workstation market. And unlike NVIDIA, 3D Labs did not have any presence in the mainstream market; if NVIDIA won, they died.
mircea_popescu: with expressions like "nici o sfiriala" =lit "no sizzle" = no big deal.
mircea_popescu: (much funnier in romanian, where sfrr is an onomatopeia for sizzle, as in a steak's sizzle, and thus implicitly a pars pro toto reference to "servants, friends, riches, reputation", ie the steak's sizzle.)
mircea_popescu: "So what is power? According to our friend Thomas Hobbes: servants, friends, riches, reputation, success, affability, nobility, eloquence, and being handsome." sheeit i had forgotten that definition.
mircea_popescu: "if only you were a sheep" "but i'm to big to be a sheep!" "nevertheless" "but sheep don't get milk anyway" "well... they're in the general area of where cheese is made..."
mircea_popescu: sort-of like the bear wondering why he's not getting any milk and the shepherd dogs bark.
mircea_popescu: and if you don't put them in, hell, you'll sit and wodner why is it eliezer potterboy "gets funding" and why is it that the retarded seem to be particularly offended at whatever you happened to write last.
mircea_popescu: if you allow them to respect you on their own terms you end up buying into their stupidity sooner or later.
mircea_popescu: well, kinda poisoned. you don't generally want the respect of ignorant people on their own terms, but on yours.
mircea_popescu: i go to fratelli icecream parlour, does that insult you ?
mircea_popescu: what exactly would be insulting about you going to mit ?
mircea_popescu: well if you do it inappropriately it may well command the disdain of thinking people.
mircea_popescu: you can be the dean of aids-is-cured-by-raping-virgin-infants university of harare for all i care.
mircea_popescu: moreover,without specific cause, why would i judge the affairs of another to begin with ?
mircea_popescu: anyway, to answer the general question : biases are a statistic concept, they are meaningful when discussing groups, not individuals. for all i know you're there to troll them, or the only pipe you can get water to your house in happens to be rusted, what are you to do, be without water at all ? gotta wash etc.
mircea_popescu: i don't particularly care, but doesn't it make you yourself wonder ?
mircea_popescu: even if they appear smart, that flaw is hard to wash. "he's dumb at least some times, apparently..."
mircea_popescu: still, a significant bias against anyone that offers their being a mit graduate does attach. one necessarily thinks "so this kid is dumb or what."
mircea_popescu: used to be. not anymore, thanks to wot etc, but myeah.
mircea_popescu: than with no conjugal arrangements to speask of and institutionally abused people ("but you don't know mit like i do!")
mircea_popescu: imo society would be better off with a lot of conjugally abused women ("but you don't know him like i do!") and functioning institutions
mircea_popescu: now we're going to excuse everyone on the grounds that hey, no matter how badly the perceptible mit sucks, there's a really cool meta-mit ?
mircea_popescu: i am saying that historically kids that could add were excused from having to express themselves on the very flimsy grounds that "hey, not like they went to vassar, they're technical minds". hence the humanities-technicals division.
mircea_popescu: division of labour is one thing. thought however... now that's indivisible.
mircea_popescu: so now we're split in three, technical, humanities AND podium shenanigans ?
mircea_popescu: an earthworm taped to an empty box at the grocer's is at least unrelated to academia, rather than the exact opposite of it. they would have been better served by the earthworm.
mircea_popescu: a more grievous insult to what mit aims to pretend it is could not be devised. even if they invited elena ceausescu to hold that podium.
mircea_popescu: "because it's what's done. because it's what was always done. citation needed."
mircea_popescu: he is simply making stuff out of masticated wood pulp, like a wasp
mircea_popescu: i do not read in the original speaker even the faintest glimmer of intellectual life.
mircea_popescu: it's really a very well constructed piece, what with this classical parts of discourse, reinforcements of thesis etc approach. the guy that made it handshakes with me, and that's why i believe the piece to be important. it's not a matter of the wikified "was it or wasn't it", totalitarian superficialism. it's that the guy that made it clearly knows what he should be saying, and how.
mircea_popescu: it's a sort of self-parody, that thing. the lightbulb segment merely drives this point home to people who aren't accustomed withj judging discourse : the guys are making total fools of themselves. the way they do it reminds the way the original guy did it.
mircea_popescu: if we shall excuse him for this, then why is he speaking at all ? he should show, right ? he's a technical guy, riught ? how come the only way his technical achievement reaches me is through rhetorics ?
mircea_popescu: oh, shall we excuse him because well... he didn't say premiere humanities, he said premiere technical, and this distinction is actually a thing ?
mircea_popescu: well for one, rhetorics is more than praxis, it's also the voice. that is NOT how you speak, if you even know what speech is.
mircea_popescu: the important part of that video isn't even (to my critical eye) the "light a bulb" segment. the important part is the opening sequence. a dweeb dweebing about how "we are the premiere bla bla". o yeah ?
mircea_popescu: to a sadly larger degree however, the mit graudates' professed confidence rings hollow, like the posturings of the tiny dicked.
mircea_popescu: sure, to a certain degree the problem with the world is that idiots are cock sure while mit graduates are full of doubt.
mircea_popescu: and that problem is present, and that problem is the deep reason i despise mit as an intellectual approach.
mircea_popescu: the problem is that they are selling themselves wrongly : as an achievement rather than as an attempt. which is what allows stuff like that video to *denote*, whether it describes or not.
mircea_popescu: still - ars longa, vita brevis. betting on ignorance is always safe.
mircea_popescu: i've never irl met anyone who couldn't actually light a bulb.
mircea_popescu: mr d is fortunate to have never considered "social studies" seriously.
mircea_popescu: "During the last decades the American Departments of Computing Science have severely suffered from a discrepancy between what society asked for and what society needed, but, be it slowly, the gap seems to be closing."
mircea_popescu: "exactly like the bible was driven. before was before, but this is after."
mircea_popescu: someone early may be excused because the word did not exist, is all.
mircea_popescu: williamdunne someone late may not be credible if they do not get in the wot.
mircea_popescu: I knew a girl once, she was very smart. She went to mit, then returned but never came back.
mircea_popescu: I once knew a girl, she was very smart. she went to mit, and never came back.
mircea_popescu: to go with the "how to fight pseudoscience : ignore it" stuff on trilema.
mircea_popescu: but people we don't know from before 1980 MAY NOT EVER BE CITED unless they get in wot.
mircea_popescu: "knowledge" without source is gunk. ideally the source is a pgp signature. absent that, it may be a name pre 1980.
mircea_popescu: i propose, broadly, that nobody ever cites wikipedia, in any context. for this exact reason : source needed.
mircea_popescu: gabriel_laddel see, the djikstra quotes are great. because they are SOMEONE.
mircea_popescu: an' all that's really missing is someone willing to go to the trouble.
mircea_popescu: if you can spend half your tiem on your farm and half the time shooting socialists in the head and still be a region leader, clearly the region's not much of a challenge in the first place.
mircea_popescu: rhodesia is the informative example on this topic. the white guys could survive the attack of outside blacks with the support of the inside blacks, even as the outsiders were being sponsored by the usual "helpers".
mircea_popescu: africa is actually, at least from what i've observed, extremely ordered.
☟︎ mircea_popescu: "africa is still trying to work around the genetic/epigenetic/cultural relationship that leads the inhabitants to destroy anything resembling order."