ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1d ago
Well poop. Both our Chromebooks are ARM. I guess I'm going to have to give up on this hardware, even for a trial run to see how it functions on a day-to-day basis. I guess my next steps are to look for cheap x86-64 laptops to push Linux on or to reorient my focus toward the desktop, probably starting with just making it dual-boot for now to see how things go before Win10 goes EOL and decisions become real.
Thanks for all your help!
ControlsFreak
2d ago
As the old saying goes, "Context is that which is scarce." I know, I know, it's all the rage to try to shove as much context into the latest LLM as you can. People are even suggesting organization design based around the idea. It's really exciting to see automated theorem provers starting to become possible. The best ones still use rigorous back-end engines rather than just pure inscrutable giant matrices. They can definitely speed up some things. But the hard part is not necessarily solving problems. Don't get me wrong, it's a super useful skill; I'm over the moon that I have multiple collaborators who are genuinely better than me at solving certain types of problems. They're a form of automated theorem prover from my perspective. No, the hard part is figuring out what question to ask. It has to be a worthwhile question. It has to be possible. It has to have some hope of leading to "elegance", even if some of the intermediate questions along the way seem like they're getting more and more inelegant.
Homework questions... and even the contest questions that folks are so fond of benchmarking with... have been extremely designed. Give your cousin a couple more years of doing actual research, and he'll tell you all about how much he loves his homework problems. Not necessarily because they're "easy". They might still be very hard. But they're the kind of hard that is designed to be hard... but designed to work. Designed to be possible. Designed to have a neat and tidy answer in at most a page or two (for most classes; I have seen some assigned problems that brutally extended into 5-6 pages worth of necessary calculation). But when you're unmoored from such design, feeling like you might just be taking shots in the dark, going down possibly completely pointless paths, I'm honestly not sure what the role of the automated theorem prover is going to be. If you haven't hit on the correct, tidy problem statement, and it just comes back with question marks, then what? If it just says, "Nope, I can't do it with the information you've given me," then what? Is it going to have the intuition to be able to add, "...but ya know, if we add this very reasonable thing, which is actually in line with the context of what you're going for and contributes rather that detracts from the elegance, then we can say..."? Or is it going to be like an extremely skilled grad student level problem solver, who you can very quickly ping to get intermediate results, counterexamples, etc. that help you along the way? Hopefully, it won't come back with a confident-sounding answer every time that you then have to spend the next few days closely examining for an error. (This will be better mitigated the more they're tied into rigorous back-ends.) I don't know; nobody really knows yet. But it's gonna be fun.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
Man, always a banger with you! I'm sure I'll be coming back to this comment many times, but let me start with where I was hoping to start for my actual conversion - chromebook replacements.
ChromeBook replacements / web browser machines: 110%. You can just run Chrome/FireFox/Brave on a local machine, and be happy, or you can install LibreOffice/various calendars/whatever and also have good local offline functionality, if sometimes with a dated UI. The only real downside here is that new laptops running on their Linux compatibility will usually start at four or five times the price. If you're comfortable buying used equipment and swapping out batteries, you can get <150 USD pricing on three-year-old mid-range hardware, but this is extra work and has limited availability.
and
Trying to convert existing Chromebooks to Linux can be doable, but is seldom worth it, and it's not always even possible.
This is really depressing from my perspective. What I love about the chromebooks are that they're cheap (I think I paid sub $200 for each) and small (I think both are only 11.6" screens and 2lbs or less, which I think is about perfect for rolling around and just browsing or whatever), and I barely care that their raw compute specs are abysmal (if anything, it makes the battery life even more awesome). They can play 720p video (more than enough for a small screen), and even when I've done some toy math coding on them, they just made sure that I couldn't be horribly inefficient. I don't even need hardly any storage space as far as I'm concerned; anything big can just be floated up to the NAS. It's super easy for me to have everything backed up (not even using the built-in sync with Google stuff) and just powerwash it and start over if something stupid happens. Even if my hardware just caught on fire later today, I'd be a little sad that I'd have to spend a couple hundred bucks, but honestly, I'd basically not care.
A quick search validated that most of the built-with-Linux laptops I see are significantly beefier/more expensive. I guess maybe the Venn diagram of the people who want super low end hardware and the people who are techy enough to dive in with Linux is extremely small?
Are the main problems for converting existing chromebooks mainly driver support? You called out lid-close (probably important), fingerprint readers (probably not important if I'm shooting for low-end hardware), and battery life (probably no prayer of having comparable-to-ChromeOS battery life, eh?). Anything else? Is there much point in even trying to pre-plan and figure out compatibility issues, or should I just dive in, hope, and know that I might just have to give up and reset back to ChromeOS?
Alternatively, anything in particular I should look for/avoid if I'm considering buying new low-end hardware, for the purposes of flipping it over to Linux?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
What I have going for me on the wife approval factor is that she's been using a Chromebook for the last few years. She was definitely annoyed at first, just because she had to learn new stuff. But once she learned, she grew to mostly like it... until the latest issues started popping up. It's a balance between feeling bad, saying, "So, uh, how about you learn another new thing?" and trying to package it as, "Yes, you'll need to learn a little bit, but this is a solution to your recent frustrations!"
ControlsFreak
3d ago
I would love to know what your top choices are for a daily driver... and if they would differ if you were considering choosing a daily driver for a less-techy wife.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Thanks for your experience!
Linux gaming
This was one of the main things that kept me from switching from Windows back before I got married. I don't really game much anymore, and it's instead the wife that is making me hesitate to switch...
At some point I also got fed up of Ubuntu's bullshit, and switched to Peppermint, which is small, blazing fast, and since it's Debian-based, it was easiest to switch to from Ubuntu.
I almost installed Peppermint on a random old device I have; downloaded the iso and everything. I was trying to solve some problems with getting Home Assistant running, but I eventually figured out how to get HAOS working on it. It does seem like a real contender. What made you fed up with Ubuntu?
Never owned a chromebook, does it let you install other browsers? If so, have you tried Brave?
Not really, but that was supposed to be kind of the point of the design. You can run Linux on it via crostini, and I've done that for a few things (just the default debian; I think you can install other distros, but I've never bothered). The GUI support is a little janky for some programs, and I've never bothered just living on a different browser in it on a regular basis. It kind of defeats the purpose, and I feel like if I was going to go down that route, I'd just say screw it and go full Linux.
I still haven't tried Brave at all. I've been sticking with Firefox outside of the Chromebooks. Nightly on my phone; I set that up a while back, because that was the only way to use extensions like uBlock on FF for Android, though I think that has probably been relaxed since then. I've not yet gotten to the point where FF is doing something annoying enough or Brave is offering a feature killer enough for me to make the switch.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
In honor of @WhiningCoil's epic rant about Microsoft products, can we talk about "personal stacks"?
I'm about ready to jump multiple ships. Right now, we have one Windows 10 desktop chugging along, some chromebooks for just hanging out and browsing (or bringing up recipes for cooking or whatever), and android phones.1 I'm still okay with the phones. Like WhiningCoil said, Windows has gotten worse and worse, and our current desktop hardware is in the "will they, won't they?" land of whether Microsoft will even allow it to upgrade to Win11, not to mention whether I even want it. It seems like every week, I'm learning about yet another "feature" they've added that I just have to go turn off (and then put on my long list of stuff to turn off for the next time I have to bring to life a new windows machine... or reset this one (yes, I just had to reset it not long ago, because it went utterly bonkers with forgetting to let me have proper privileges)). Sunsetting of security updates (as insane as they've become) might push me over the edge.
As for the chromebooks, anyone else looking to jump ship because of Manifest V3? Maybe I need to suck it up and just try out uBlock Origin Lite for a while, see how it goes. But we've been having other issues, too. Since getting the chromebooks, we've done a lot of simple coordination stuff with google sheets, but they've been really glitchy lately; about half the time, when I navigate to an open sheets tab, the entire display is all scrambled. I have to switch tabs and switch back, and then most of the time it'll work. I don't recall seeing this behavior when I go to sheets in Chrome on my non-ChromeOS devices. On top of that, there's an issue with internet connectivity randomly dropping (still can't figure out if it's fundamentally a hardware limitation/problem or something going on in ChromeOS). For several years, these have been amazing, cheap devices that just worked for a lot of our poking around day to day, but the annoyances are building up.
I have been seriously considering just tossing both Windows and ChromeOS. Apple is too expensive; I genuinely like having super cheap chromebooks that are small (even the smallest MacBook Air is pretty big for just throwing around), have real keyboards, can be abused, and just thrown away and cheaply replaced if I break one (I could blow through at least five cheap chromebooks for the cost of one MacBook Air). Soooo... I'm thinking maybe just Linux everywhere?! Probably the biggest barrier I have to that is the Wife Approval Factor. I'm definitely her "Tech Department", and it would basically be on me to retrain her and work through her annoyance at having to learn new tech things.
Any thoughts? Has anyone else taken a similar plunge, especially with a less-techy wife involved? What are y'all currently running?
1 - Of course, we also have work computers, which will always be Windows for the rest of time. Nothing we can do about it, but there's not really any problem with the extremely small number of things that we need to have cross the work/personal barrier.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
the situation immediately following the vision
Small nitpick, but many timelines have these events almost ten years apart.
gentiles can exist, as gentiles, that is, not following the Jewish ceremonial law.
Right. Most of the debate is concerning what counts as "Jewish ceremonial law". Insert the many treatises.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
It's kind of amazing, this world we live in. Patients can and do consider risks/benefits of medical procedures when making decisions. Of course, some of them don't consider with italics. Some might be more willing to just listen to a doctor who "want[s] to 'cut'"1, while other doctors might have urged more caution (even if only by their action/inaction). Yet somehow, this amazing world keeps on turnin'. One might have been led to believe from this sort of story that we can't just let patients make decisions; they might not consider enough... or they might even make a bad decision! Most certainly, one could think that it would be impossible for said patients to include pricing information (including the possible cost if something goes wrong) in their decision-making process... if only, ya know, that was not the way things currently work on a day by day basis, all in this absolutely amazing world.
FWIW, I've done some significant considering about LASIK over the years; haven't pulled the trigger yet. But ya know, times change, money means different things to me at different times, risks/benefits mean different things to me at different times; who knows what tomorrow will bring? But at least in one area, I'm glad that I'm Free to Choose.
1 - Weird that doctors sometimes can just have preferences that may not always align with those of their patients, properly considered. I'm also intimately familiar with completely different situations where surgeons were extremely loath to "cut" and only after years of negative consequences from those decisions (to be clear, the surgeons' decisions, not the patient's), they finally cut, and everything went great! Statistics and different perspectives on those statistics are a wild thing. Ya never know in this amazing world.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Many many treatises could and have been written about what Acts 15 does and does not do. But yeah, there's very little that is particularly on point for what Peter's vision was about. I mean, Peter was a main character there; you'd think he'd have brought up his vision and been like, "Yo dawgs, god told me in a vision that we can eat dawgs, so we can definitely throw that bit out."
ControlsFreak
4d ago
What do you make of Peter and unclean foods in Acts?
Interestingly, that bit actually has surprisingly little to do with foods. It tells you what it's on about:
24 And the following day they entered Caesarea. Now Cornelius was waiting for them, and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25 As Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. 26 But Peter lifted him up, saying, “Stand up; I myself am also a man.” 27 And as he talked with him, he went in and found many who had come together. 28 Then he said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. 29 Therefore I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. I ask, then, for what reason have you sent for me?”
Don't you have some positions that are easier to defend than others? Some that require more work to justify than others?
What does it mean to "defend" or "justify" a position? What tools would be used to "defend" and on what grounds would one "justify"? I'm honestly still waiting for you to give me any clue as to how any of this stuff is possible.
I am sure some of my positions are inconsistent, as I mentioned before. But that doesn't mean I am lying,
I do not necessarily think you're lying. There's a decent chance you're genuinely uncomfortable with the inconsistency and just trying to avoid it rather than acting strategically, but who knows. Especially because it's a much more glaring and hard to shed inconsistency than weak sauce stuff about pro-lifers having some magic obligation from magic to go killing everyone everywhere for masturbating or whatever.
It's just a failure to understand others. Which ironically, to bring us full circle
Perhaps I have, indeed, failed to understand how your meta-ethical position actually allows you to say the other things you're wanting to say... bringing us full circle to why I'm asking you how the whole "defending" and "justifying" bit works. Whether or not that involves concepts like being rationally defensible, determinable, etc. In what sense things are "more" or "less", etc.
ControlsFreak
4d ago
Reading this again I sorta sound like Judge Holden which doesn't really help me when I'm trying to say "I'm not evil", maybe a different tone would have been better.
A bit, yeah. I don't think it's all that redeeming to say that it is everyone else's job to entertain you, because if you get bored and can't think of anything other than rapin' and murderin' to do to keep yourself busy, well then...
Boredom is not evil, but it is also not an excuse for choosing evil acts. You could instead put your bored mind toward coming up with positive acts to improve matters.
ControlsFreak
4d ago
Abstracted from
Last time, you said "separated from". This is better.
I still don't think the word swap makes sense, because I don't think that's what you meant.
I still don't know what you think it means for something to be "morally defensible". Moreover, you suggested that some things were more or less morally defensible. What does this mean? How does it work?
You still haven't answered why i would be misrepresenting the philosophical underpinnings of my world view that only gets brought up when someone asks me about them, generally. There is nothing to gain from it.
You hadn't asked. But there is clearly something to gain from it. You have difficulty defending other metaphysical positions without retreating into meta-ethical relativism, so you do so strategically. Of course, you don't really believe it, deep down, as evidenced by how you engage with regular moral topics, so you just switch right back when you talk about object-level morality. You gain the ability to feel like you're winning arguments, but you struggle mightily when the disconnect is pointed out.
ControlsFreak
4d ago
Separating from the example (death penalty) and trying to determine if the belief holds under all circumstances.
This doesn't make sense, though. It would be like saying, "Let's separate ourselves from this example of a black swan and try to determine if the belief 'swans are white' holds under all circumstances."
In and of itself. Independent of whether we are killing good or bad people.
I don't think that's what you meant it to mean. Let's just do a word swap and see if it makes sense.
Why do you think it is so evil to not want to kill people? I can certainly understand from a utilitarian perspective that you might argue the benefits outweigh the costs for certain people, or that executing people might be the lesser of two evils, but why is not wanting to do it literally evil independent of whether we are killing good or bad people?
Yeah, I don't think that makes sense.
Likewise anything can be morally defensible
That doesn't really tell me anything about what it means for something to be "morally defensible". Moreover, you suggested that some things were more or less morally defensible. What does this mean? How does it work?
And why are you interested in proving that I hold my values strategically? I've told you I don't, and for a good faith interlocutor that should be enough.
If people had magic labels on them that properly identified whether they were good faith or bad faith interlocutors, then I wouldn't have to wonder. But unfortunately, they don't. So, the best that we can do is keep an eye on what they say and notice whether they're engaging in bad faith behaviors. Obviously, both categories are going to just say that they don't hold their claims strategically, so that's essentially worthless information.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
If only they could have possibly been not completely naive to the idea that folks like you would intentionally do evil things in attempts to wreck stuff. Hmmm... what's this?
29 For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. 31 Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.
Oh, but you say, it's only a particular type of evil attempt to subvert others that you'd try. You'd try being overly-restrictive in your readings, giving you license to ostracize others and kick them out. If only they weren't completely naive to some people being overly-restrictive in their readings! Hmmm... what's this?
1 Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. 2 For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables. 3 Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. 4 Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.
Obviously, there are no guarantees when trying to protect something from evil people such as yourself trying to subvert it. Like all of civilization, it takes work and effort to be on guard for folks like you. You've done a pretty good number on society in general, but at least now you've come clean in saying that you like to destroy societies for the lulz. I'll try to remember that you're a self-admitted bad faith actor the next time you make suggestions as to what our current society should do.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
In and of itself within his framework.
This sentence doesn't make sense, though. Like, what does it mean?
I'm missing anything about what it means for something to be "morally defensible", and whether or not that involves concepts like being rationally defensible, determinable, etc.
What exactly are you hoping to achieve?
As I wrote:
I care whether or not you're actually acting consistently with your professed meta-ethical beliefs or whether they're just strategically-claimed.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
He said that he thought it was evil. You asked him to show why it was "evil in and of itself", which is different than simply saying that he thinks it's evil. That's a question at the level of essences.
I'm missing anything about what it means for something to be "morally defensible", and whether or not that involves concepts like being rationally defensible, determinable, etc.
I don't care if he is right or wrong
I don't really care either. I care whether or not you're actually acting consistently with your professed meta-ethical beliefs or whether they're just strategically-claimed.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
I think it's fair to say that the current administration staff are guilty of willfully defrauding the American people; whether that makes them criminals or not I'm not sure.
I would say no, but other folks might think that the only thing standing in the way is whether or not a fraudulent business document can be surfaced in the State of New York that is at all related to the scheme.
ControlsFreak
5d ago
I'm missing anything in here about how the concept "evil in and of itself" is a coherent thing for you to say or to request. I'm missing anything about what it means for something to be "morally defensible", and whether or not that involves concepts like being rationally defensible, determinable, etc. As such, I still do not even know how to parse your original comment, and nothing in your latest comment helps me in any way to do so.
My moral positions don't have a bearing here
I didn't invoke your object-level moral positions. I invoked your meta-ethical positions and demonstrated how they undermined the very language you used in constructing your position and questions. Note that you did invoke your own moral positions with "That seems wildly skewed" and "I think the position that killing is wrong is definitely morally defensible certainly an order of magnitude more than the idea that pedophilia is ok". You're not JAQing off here ("Just Asking Questions"); you're making an argument, but it's incoherent given your meta-ethical positions.
If someone tells you three is green
He didn't say that three is green. He said something else. You have the position that results in your question being akin to asking him to show that three is green, with the implied result being that if he can't make it "defensible" according to what appears to be an incoherent concept of "defensible", then his position must be wrong.
ControlsFreak
6d ago
I think the position that killing is wrong is definitely morally defensible
But not as, like, a rational, 'seeking Truth' sense of "morally defensible", right? I had thought that somewhere between here and here we shed the concept that moral concepts were rationally defensible, determinable, etc. in some sort of objective way, and it was instead just people's emotions/feelings/vibes. So when you ask:
why is not wanting to do it literally evil in and of itself?
you're actually asking, from your meta-ethical perspective, something like, "Why is three green?" You have completely hidden first principles that make your question incoherent and impossible to answer. That really undercuts what I think is an implied argument from incredulity, where one asks what is merely a difficult question from a position of first-impression skepticism, being open to a plausible answer and interpreting a lack of a complete and convincing answer as evidence against the position. No, your prior meta-ethical position is such that this question is impossible to answer, either for or against, because you actually think (when pressed) that your own question is an incoherent one. You're not asking it to rationally grow closer to some truth of the matter.
...or have you changed your mind, and you now think that there is some sort of concept of "evil in and of itself"? If so, what would that concept be?
I think the premise is valid for the four examples I gave. Some are softer/harder barriers, but they're there for all of them. Like, yes, you can sell your house on your own, but you will have The Mark of The FSBO and the cartel will go to great lengths to prevent their buyers from even looking at your house (and warn them off very strongly if they find it on their own; maybe let's not get into details of MLS access). There are similar barriers for buying "unrepresented". You can't do your own AC work without passing the test (no quibbles with @hydroacetylene's statement; that is the nature of the barrier; you can just get the certification and not have to deal with contracting it out). Having someone with a law degree does open some barriers (in fact, in some states, having an attorney is required for real estate transactions, and in others, you can automatically get a real estate license, just for one example). And of course, the biggest one of all is that you absolutely cannot provide professional medical services to yourself... at least not anymore, anyway.
Perhaps I've managed to hit on the only four examples of certifications/licenses that are like this at all. I'd be a bit surprised, because those are four that just came to mind briefly. That's kinda why I was asking; I figured there would be other examples.
Any good stories about people getting fed up with the mess created by occupational licensing and just getting a license/certificate/whatever on their own, not even planning on making it a full-time occupation?
I saw a reddit post this week from someone who became a real estate agent just to sell their own house, with a, "Maybe it'll be helpful in future situations, too." Requirements differ by state, but it's typical that a basic requirement would be a relative short, relatively easy, relatively cheap course plus a relatively cheap, relatively easy test. I think they still had to "attach" themselves to a broker, but there is apparently a little industry of brokers who will pretty much just accept a small fee and otherwise let you pretty much do what you want. Looks like in some states, you can just do a small amount of additional coursework to upgreyyyed to being able to ignore even that and just do it under your own name (or and LLC or whatever).
I know a small-time landlord who got fed up with finding good HVAC guys. He just went to a community college to do the learning (not sure if this is even strictly required) and took the EPA's test. He's not contracting out to do work for other people, so he doesn't have to do the insane number of hours/full-time work to get contractor certified.
I'm sure there's a wide range of possibilities, with a range of ridiculous regulatory barriers. My guess is that the worst (to industry-protectionists, "most effective") barriers are ones that require a bunch of hours/years of full-time work underneath someone else who has already paid in to the cartel. What's surprisingly feasible... or maybe even a good idea/valuable? Any good examples of people doing seemingly-infeasible things just as a middle finger to the BS? Like, someone out there has probably gotten a law license just to not have to deal with any of that shit (my sense is that in a lot of places, yes, you'll have to pay a bunch of money to the cheapest online school you can find, but then, you pretty much just have to pass a test, no BS about needing to further work full-time for a long time under another licensed attorney or anything)... but even I can't imagine climbing the utterly insane walls that are set up to protect doctors.
ControlsFreak
10d ago
political contradiction ... contradiction or a gotcha ... valid expression of people's political desires
I have no idea what you're on about. I'm not claiming a contradiction or gotcha. I'm not claiming anything is invalid.
Totally agreed that having rigorous engines that are able to provide synthetic training will massively help progress. But my sense is that the data they can generate is still of the type, "This works," "This doesn't work," or, "Here is a counterexample." Which can still be massively useful, but may still run into the context/problem definition/"elegance" concerns. Given that the back ends are getting good enough to provide the yes/no/counterexample results, I think it's highly likely that LLMs will become solidly good at translating human problems statements into rigorous problem statements for the back end to evaluate, which will be a huge help to the usefulness of those systems... but the jury is still out in my mind to what extent they'll be able to go further and add appropriate context. It's a lot harder to find data or synthetic data for that part.
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