Interesting points, maybe a book I’ll have to give a read to. I’ve long thought that information overload on its own leads to a kind of subjective compression and that we’re seeing the consequences of this, plus late stage capitalism.

Basically, if we only know about 100 people and 10 events and 20 things, we have much more capacity to form nuanced opinions, like a vector with lots of values. We don’t just have an opinion about the person, our opinion toward them is the sum of opinions about what we know about them and how those relate to us.

Without enough information, you think in very concrete ways. You don’t build up much nuance, and you have clear, at least self-evident logic for your opinions that you can point at.

Hit a sweet spot, and you can form nuanced opinions based on varied experiences.

Hit too much, and now you have to compress the nuances to make room for more coarse comparisons. Now you aren’t looking at the many nuances and merits, you’re abstracting things. Necessary simulacrum.

I’ve wondered if this is where we’ve seen so much social regression, or at least being public about it. There are so many things to care about, to know, to attend to, that the only way to approach it is to apply a compression, and everyone’s worldview is their compression algorithm. What features does a person classify on?

I feel like we just aren’t equipped to handle the global information age yet, and we need specific ways of being to handle it. It really is a brand new thing for our species.

Do we need to see enough of the world to learn the nuances, then transition to tighter community focus? Do we need strong family ties early with lower outside influence, then melting pot? Are there times in our development when social bubbling is more ideal or more harmful than otherwise? I’m really curious.

Anecdotally, I feel like I benefitted a lot from tight-knit, largely anonymous online communities growing up. Learning from groups of people from all over the world of different ages and beliefs, engaging in shared hobbies and learning about different ways of life, but eventually the neurons aren’t as flexible for breadth and depth becomes the drive.

Any good options recommended for self-hosting something similarly functional that doesn’t take too much effort to get up, audit, maintain? Discovery isn’t really important for me, so federated isn’t really necessary, but a cool extra. I’d love to host something or contribute to hosting for my gaming groups, my class or multiple classes at my school, or otherwise. Voice, chat, screen share, camera, would all be great if possible, but range of options would be good. I’m still using Mumble for gaming…

Haven’t tinkered much with Matrix nor do I know much about Revolt, but I’m curious before I look into it deeper if anyone in the community has experience hosting any communication platforms for small, invitational groups.

At some point, if we aren’t already there, the tactic might be to recognize that the ship is sinking (or be pleasantly surprised it floats) and front-run another con to denounce PP to have the next election campaigning on “I was the only con who stood against PP, who lost such an incredible lead over the libs”. I’ve thought it for a bit, and seeing Ford being so vocal against PP now terrifies me given he keeps getting elected in Ontario somehow. I’m not very tuned in politically so I have no idea if this is something thay might happen, but I feel like we need a big push for “Strategic voting BUT let your liberal MPs know that you urge election reform” from day one, every day, until the next election.

Oh yeah, the 365 version is terrible. And post of the time, it could have been a Python Gradio interface or similar simple implementation without having to fight so much to make basic things work. Most of what I want Excel to do it just isn’t efficient enough for; particularly with lets and lambdas, it’s gotten quite powerful as a programming paradigm where you can visualize and manipulate your data spatially in a kind of Logo / NetLogo style way which is really interesting, but the second you reference a few thousand cells a few times even a solid CPU starts screaming.

I use Excel for a decent number of tasks and can do some magic with it, but only ever really for work where it’s easier to share a weird Excel sheet than it is to pass around a Python script (which given I teach Python, isn’t actually as often as most people experience).

But what about those of us in R1C1 mode using lambdas to do recursive cell operations across data pulled from multiple sheets? Am I anywhere near the kinda of Eldritch horrors discussed? I’ve also written indirect references based on Sheet name to populate filters from web scraped tables. I just don’t know how deep the pit goes at this point.

Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of the visual scripting, but I do consider composing nodes in the editor, connecting signals, modifying field values with sliders, having global variables in a separate editor, visual curve editors, file managers, etc. to be a form of visual scripting by a different name, and I do quite like that.

I’ve been curious how this sort of editor would work for non-game code, like making a CLI in C, C++, Kotlin, etc. Where you primarily interact with nodes and inspectors for data organization and scripts for behaviour implementation. I need to go back to Smalltalk to see some of the ideas there for alternative code organization structures.

Maybe I’m an old fogey, but I usually hear more pushback against visual languages as being too finicky to actually create anything with and I usually advocate for a blending of them, like working in Godot and having nodes to organize behaviour but written scripts to implement it.

I really appreciate the talks from Bret Victor, like Inventing on Principle (https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII), where he makes some great points about what sorts of things our tooling, in addition to the language, could do to offload some of the cognitive load while coding. I think it’s a great direction to be thinking, where it’s feasible anyways.

Also, one reason folks new to programming at least struggle with text code is that they don’t have the patterns built up. When you’re experienced and look at a block of code, you usually don’t see each keyword, you see the concept. You see a list comprehension in Python and instantly go “Oh it’s a filter”, or you see a nested loop and go “Oh it’s doing a row/column traversal of a 2d matrix”. A newbie just sees symbols and keywords and pieces each one together individually.

Yeah, my guess is that this post is implying the typical case - it wasn’t disrupting grades specifically, so it wasn’t diagnosed. You may have gotten those grades by staying up until 3am as a child, lying to get out of forgotten homework, had more injuries, pushed through work by building up a healthy reserve of depression and anxiety, struggled socially because you couldn’t prioritize both school and socials or because you couldn’t connect with most other people because of your way of talking, been horribly forgetful, etc. but because grades number stays high, nothing is wrong. It’s easy for people to see grades as the metric for mental wellness which is wild

Oh absolutely, I’m pretty sure I’m on the same page with this. I only pose that to someone who believes they’ve found people who respect them, and particularly those who have felt for a long time that their voice didn’t matter, it is counterproductive to approach them and their group with outward hostility.

Telling them the people who took them in and listened to them are vile, abusive, disgusting people and are exactly the problem they say everyone says you are, is just reinforcing of their views.

Consider the comment originally replied to; paraphrase because mobile is hard, “those loudest about being victimized are the most eager to take their pound of flesh”. This can easily sound like:

1. (Man) I’ve been victimized and nobody lets me voice this except for this gang/cult/militia. Cult says they should be allowed to “get support” and they know the way (it’s bad).
2. (Outsider) Claiming to be a victim usually means you are a terrible person.
3. (Man) So according to outsiders, if I seek help, I’m a bad person. According to my (cult etc) if I tell them, they will offer a form of support. I can stay with these people and get something of support, or I can leave them, be ostracized, and any attempts to voice my feelings will lead me to being labeled someone eager to take a pound of flesh.

They need to be shown that those on the outside understand them and are better people than those who took them in. They are with people whose form of empathy and respect is so distorted and toxic, but it’s the only model of that experience they know.

Your comment, upon my read, felt like anyone in that position would feel justified in their gang telling them that everyone on the outside is out to get them. If they already think everyone else is a predator, what is attacking their friends, their family, and their opinions, going to do?

They will only leave when they know they will arrive somewhere with the respect they craved without those toxic feelings they repressed during their time with a hateful group.

So I guess it’s less about the content of the comment, more of the way it represented the ideas, the timing, and the perceived intention.

I agree that much of the problem is men on men and this patriarchy - men who do not want to uphold patriarchal values can often be ostracized and demonized by those who do - but I believe OP was specifically noting that then those men who get abused and ostracized cannot speak out of seek help because many people will simply snap back at them saying that they are part of the problem and resources need to be given elsewhere. They cannot endure the abuse, and their own cohort becomes abusive, and the only way to avoid the abuse from all sides (in their view) becomes joining the “social excrement” they wanted to escape in the first place.

Angry screams tend to mask sad and lonely tears. Hatred does not end hatred; hatred ends through non-hate alone. Non-hate is not inaction, though. If we do not look at them, and ourself, with empathy and kindness and understanding and patience, they will continue living in a world devoid of and therefore ignorant to empathy and kindness and understanding and patience.

I can appreciate that. Arguably these folks might be more likely to vote because they aren’t stuck in the mud of nuance, answers they see are more clear and obvious and the other ones may as well not exist. Not contemplation of what they don’t know, in a way.

But - on the other hand, as mentioned we can’t really pick who votes without opening Pandora’s Box - and the best thing we can do is not to punish, but to rehabilitate. To model stronger behaviours, to identify why they behave in this way, and to try to help them build stronger critical thinking skills. Punishment is polarizing.

Fun, maybe related note: I’ve researched some more classical AI approaches and took classes with some greats in the field whom are now my colleagues. One of which has many children who are absurdly successful globally, every one of them. He mathematically proved that (at least this form of AI) when you reward good behaviour and punish bad behaviour (correct responses, incorrect responses), the AI takes much longer to learn and spends a long time stuck on certain correct points and fails to, or takes a long time to, develop a varied strategy. If you just reward correct responses and don’t punish incorrect responses, the AI builds a much stronger model for answering a variety of questions. He said he applied that thinking to his kids, too, to what he considered a great success.

I think there’s something to that, and I’ve seen it in my own teaching, but the difficulty now has been getting students with this mindset to even try to get something correct or incorrect in the first place, so they just… Give up, or only kick into action after it’s too late and they don’t know how to handle it at that stage because they didn’t learn. Inaction is often the worst action, as it kills any hope of learning or building the skills of learning.

Yeah, this point about really needing time is pretty real. I recently came to the conclusion that some folks really just need to retake the core courses multiple times (and seeing if we can change this pattern) because it just takes them a long time to unlearn helplessness in the field and adapt.

And absolutely, as you’ve said, I find those who do adapt go from someone taking our most basic course three times to becoming a top student. Those who don’t adapt fall to cheating and/or dropping out. I usually have about 500-800 students per term, and with about 20-30% falling into this category with more each year, one-on-one interventions are rare and you usually only catch them on their second time around once they finally heed our requests to come talk to us.

I’d be curious what other fields work with this so I could go read some papers or other materials on these mindsets, it sounds like there is quite an overlap to what we’ve been experiencing, I appreciate these insights!

Edit: Oh, and adding that I’ve spoken to some researchers in trauma informed education and I imagine the overlap here is high in terms of approach - recognizing how different behaviours can be linked to trauma and considering the approaches that can be taken to ease them back into stronger academic habits. It’s been a while since my talks, but this could spark some more, as I hadn’t quite connected the rote memorizes to this. Seems quite feasible for at least a subset.

Yeah, you can feel it pretty quickly in an interaction. I like how the other comment put it, where it seems like they are stuck in rote memory mode. Having a list of facts in their head but no connections between them, no big picture capability. I recently had a student who seemingly refused to read the six bullet points describing a problem, and couldn’t comprehend that they described requirements, not step-by-step instructions. Without step-by-step instructions, this group flounders, and what should be insignificant details stand out as blockades they can’t get past because they can’t distinguish the roles of the details.

Reasoning blindness is an interesting term for it. Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, which has its controversies, stands out to me here; it’s like they are stuck at recall problems, maybe moving up to understanding a little bit but unable to get into using knowledge in new circumstances, connecting them, or being able to argue points. It works well for certain testing, it’s a great skill to be particularly astute in for many lines of work, but it really is a critical thinking nightmare.

Really great point - purely rote learning is definitely a major piece of this category, if not the category in itself. Basically an inability to move up Bloom’s taxonomy from the first level or two. I very recently spent hours with a student who had this exact issue - they tested well, but couldn’t even begin to do the applied work unless they were walked through it, precisely, step by step. Zero capability of generalizing, but fully capable of absorbing and recollecting facts… just no understanding associated with it. No connections.

That gave me something to think about, thank you!

I was once teaching a student introductory programming when I was in my undergrad.

The problem was to draw two circles on the screen of different colours and detect when the mouse is inside of one.

I said, “So our goal is simple: Let’s draw a circle somewhere on the screen. Consider what you’d tell me as a human - I’ve got the pencil, and you want to tell me to draw a circle of a certain size somewhere on this paper. We have three functions. Calling a function will draw a shape. Each function draws a different shape. We have rect(), circle(), and line(). Which of these sounds like the one we want to use? Which would get me to draw the correct shape?”

“… Rect?” “Why?” “It draws a shape.” “What shape would rect draw?” “I don’t know.” “Guess.” “A circle?” “Why do you think that?” “We need to draw a circle.” “If I said that rect draws a rectangle, which of the three functions would we want to use then, to draw our picture?” “Rect?”

I’ve now been teaching for many years, and those situations still come up a lot. When I put up a poll in class, with the answer still written on the board, about 25% of people in a 100+ student class will get it wrong - of people who were not only admitted to a competitive university program, but have passed multiple prerequisite courses to be here.

Not only is it unknown gaps in knowledge, there is just a thought process I haven’t been able to crack through that some people really can’t see what is immediately before them.

Message not clear; some man in the mirror is now telling me to change my ways, and now they’re angry and crying and it’s making me uncomfortable and feel alone. The man in the mirror said the world would be a better place if I changed, but why can’t they change? After all, they sure don’t seem like a good person, you can see it in their face. Disgusting.

Maybe the discomfort of looking at the person on the other side of the mirror, with their hate, sadness, and confusion, is part of what fuels their hatred.

I think he’s basically saying that it’s racist to “artificially” integrate communities, because (I think he’s saying) if they need to be integrated, then that’s the same as saying that black folks are necessarily inferior. I don’t think he’s trying to say they’re inferior, but that laws forcing integration are based on that assumption. So he can be well educated and successful because he isn’t inherently inferior, therefore there is no need for forced integration.

… Which is such a weird stretch of naturalism in a direction I wasn’t ready for. Naturalist BS is usually, “X deserves fewer rights because they are naturally inferior”, whereas this is “We should ignore historical circumstances because X is not naturally inferior”.

Start a game of monopoly after three other players have already gone around the board 10 times and created lots of rules explicitly preventing you from playing how they did and see how much the argument of “well, to give you any kind of advantage here would just be stating you’re inferior, and we can’t do that.”

Man probably got angry at his golf handicap making him feel inferior and took things too far. Among other things.

Canadians still feeling scorned after eliminating FPTP was a big election point, only to have it fizzle away when third parties clearly started garnering too much support (not that I think it was ever really in the cards regardless) and concerns about proportional representation being too supported by the other parties.

Hah, yeah I learned I wasn’t so much a night person as much as someone who indulges in revenge sleep procrastinating and doesn’t get enough alone time in the day.