antiraza

Why is that a bad thing, or even a non-expected thing? If you pick up a paintbrush, you don't always nail each stroke on the canvas -- just because it's programmatic doesn't mean it should be like a calculator.

LLMs and image generators are cross pollinating human language and human visual information -- both really fuzzy mediums.

I think learning how to 'use this instrument' and 'finding the perfect brush stroke' are part of how they are supposed to work (at least in their current form). I also don't know that just because they are showing good outputs from the inputs that this is framing the narrative as one-and-done... I think the rest of the owl is kind in of implied.

If you are willing to slow down, Tildes.

Small, laid back, conversation focused, but the coverage is definitely more 'general.'

I personally find it really refreshing compared to something like reddit (or even here). It's small enough that the comments section don't feel like an artificial jostle for the fastest, most attention getting response -- and the community seems to maintain that culture well via both scale and rate of scaling.

That was... amazing.

An adage that I find more true than false through my own experience: It's harder to manage success than to manage failure.

If these contributing sciences are as obfuscated as the language in your post suggests, that could be why. Effective integration into the general discourse is about building handholds that a reader can use to climb upwards into a more complex idea.

I don't think I can grok the value in what you're saying without sitting down with a browser window on one side to research each reference in depth.

As another commenter suggested -- that's too many brain calories. Could you try a more direct brain injection?

The universe is a dark mint.

Alternatively, the Previas were always there, and they developed the memory of seeing it after having been exposed to the ad.

(To be clear, I'm not being facetious -- this is a viable possibility)

Perhaps you have something profound to communicate here, but you're not doing a great job of getting it across.

As an example, in response to "very few have achieved anything like the Incas," I asked for something specific to establish a frame of reference, and you replied with something that can be summarized more or less as "very few have achieved something like the Incas."

As to your second point, this is remarkable. Nobody has disagreed. But it's not extraordinary. Not every culture has to be agrarian. Not every culture has to be written. Draft animals, arches, wheels. These are one way to solve specific projects problems. They aren't the only solution. The Incas, through remarkable ingenuity and effort, solved those problems differently. Again, remarkable but but extraordinary.

It feels to me like you've asked and been answered, and for myself at least, it sounds like you've sort of dug in and want to be found on this hill of Incan exceptionalism. I personally find their exceptionalism exceptional, as exceptional as the many other exceptions that have been discussed in the thread so far.

> very few have achieved anything like the Incas.

Can you be more specific?

I understand they were a vibrant, far reaching empire, but I'm not sure I understand how they were so exponentially further advanced than many other past civilizations, that have each has their share of remarkable 'how the hell did they do that's.'

Taken in sum, I find them all remarkable in their own ways -- but it also proves the earlier point, that human ingenuity has found ways to express itself innumerably across the eras.

I'm not sure I'm (I'll speak only for myself in this thread) am 'playing down literacy'. It's great, we should have more of it. No questions asked.

Maybe there's a tone interpretation issue in the thread... 'How did the Incas do this' -- is that asking for the detailed specifics of their management culture and systems (mostly unknowable -- likely the subject of a many past and future academic careers), or is it a statement of incredulity. I think myself and most of the other commenters have interpreted the latter, whether that was your intention or not.

What I'm pointing out is that, if you've seen much of the developing world, or lived anywhere except the fully formed bubble of a 'modern developed society,' you will have had the opportunity to observe that 'life... (and by extension, civilization)... find a way.'

The Egyptian pharoahs ruled for over 3000 years. That number is unfathomable in the context of modern society. Yes they had a written language, but the vast majority of that empire very likely did not know how to read it.

The millions that lived through that era integrated, obeyed and functioned into that power structure for more than 1.5x the time since we all agreed on a numbering structure for 'years since some arbitrary point in the past.'

Christianity, and Hinduism, and Islam, and frankly every major religion spread, and brought most of humanity into their fold without most of its adherents being able to read. There wasn't a formal written bible until hundreds of years after the religion itself was formed. It passed through dozens of generations before being formalized.

All this is to say: I don't know how the Incas did it, in terms of the granular specifics of their culture and systems, but that they did it, somehow, and using methods quite normal for most of history, is far from implausible.

I'm not certain I understand where the problem is? Trades are learned by apprenticeship. Knowledge is learned by oral transmission. As the previous commenter said, this has been normal for most of history, and frankly is still the case many places around the world. Literacy is _new_. Even when literacy was emerging, it was likely that a mason or a carpenter was not of a literate class and they learned the same way generations before them did: apprenticeship and oral knowledge transmission.

hackernews weirdness has forced this roundabout way of replying to you about a thread from a bit ago...

i stumbled on your post about eye tracking needs for a relative dealing with MS.

i have some previous experience working with the tobii 4c and the 5 using more off-the-shelf solutions, as well as the more 'true medical grade' side of the tech, and may have some recommendations and learnings to share.

i have temporarily added a way to contact me into the about section of my profile. once i hear from you, or in about a week, i'll clear that out.

drop a line if you're interesting in discussing.

Continue, please.

I don't have the full context of the thread here, but it sounds to me like you're saying '9/11' was at scale x, and therefore a benchmark is established for acceptable 'repercussion cost.'

If that's what you're saying, I guess I'd flag that the 'repercussion cost' for 9/11 is still very much open to debate, and there is significant data to point towards almost every step the US took as a reaction to 9/11 being problematic, ranging from who was targeted, what the collateral impact was, and whether it actually solved any of the underlying problems.