dan-robertson

You have quite a biased sample because most people are not going to suffer going to remote parts of Scotland to look for birds, so you are only seeing the more devoted birdwatchers.

Birdwatching can still be enjoyed in most places without needing to travel far. Birds are less active in bad weather so you don’t need expensive outdoor gear, and in many places there will be freely accessible nature reserves with hides in which one can sit in shelter to watch birds.

The highest quality glass is going to get pretty expensive (camera lenses can get to the region of $20k; binoculars $4k or so) but there are also much cheaper options and often these can be quite reasonable: you don’t need to take photos of birds; a superzoom point-and-shoot can work great; more expensive binoculars make a bigger difference in low light and if you’re young (older people’s pupils won’t dilate as much so bigger objectives at a lower magnification won’t be a huge help).

I feel like mostly you’re observing that rich people spend lots of money on their hobbies and not that opening your eyes to look at birds is some expensive exclusionary activity.

I have lamp sockets – need to rewire lamps to a different kind of plug but then they can be turned on/off with ordinary light switches. They were more common in older properties when lamps were more common, then went out of fashion, though some newer (or more expensive) properties get them these days.

Why should <.> <length> be less tokens than <RHO> <SPACE>? Obviously there will be examples that more obviously use fewer tokens but I’m not sure that the token efficiency stuff is that correct in general. Especially as it is often a lot more work to craft the correct APL for a problem than to craft suboptimal but correct python.

I’m not in your timezone.

Yes, I think it is wise to consider a world where computer programming is not a high-paying moderately high-status career which it is easy to enter. Perhaps it will be more like medicine or investment banking (where entry is difficult and working culture is intense) or maybe it will be more like being a machine operator.

I mostly think the problem with these things is not the replaceability of the LEDs but the hideousness of the fixtures. This (and the fact that the fans will obviously perform very poorly) is the reason not to get the fans pictured in the article.

LEDs mean that the light itself is cheap so you can basically ignore energy usage concerns.

Generally, I think it is better to have:

- multiple dimmer sources of light instead of a single bright central light

- shades to diffuse the light (or lights pointed at walls or ceilings) instead of having bright point sources

- some ability to adjust brightness (eg reasonable quality dimmable LEDs)

- replaceable ordinary-looking bulbs from a reputable source (if you have 10 bulbs, it will be sad if one fails and you can’t get a similar looking bulb with a matching brightness and temperature)

- lamps, potentially wired up to light-switches for the room, which can provide light closer to where people will be and from better directions (eg maybe you sit somewhere where you can’t or don’t have a nearby wall-mounted light so a lamp can provide good light for reading). This also works in rented accommodation where one has less control over built-in fixtures.

- general considerations as to the purpose of the room (eg brighter cooler directable ceiling-mounted spotlights are more useful in a kitchen than a drawing room)

- sparing use of can lights (though this can be difficult if ceilings are low)

Ceiling fans with light fixtures are very much not a new thing. The new thing is the ‘sculptural’ light fixture using a bunch of irreplaceable leds.

You’re not really demonstrating anything with this comment. My complaint was with your above non-sequitur. You’re welcome to claim that dating looks like a market for lemons but I encourage you to follow up that claim with explanations or corollaries that line up with what a market for lemons is, rather than your other opinions on dating.

The divorce rate doesn’t really show that people are bad at judging the ‘quality’ of romantic partners for the same reason that cars breaking down or needing maintenance after hundreds of thousands of miles does not show that people cannot judge the quality of second-hand cars.

If you compare the cost to the price of dinner or whatever else you spend disposable income on, it can seem high but if you compare the cost to employing an engineer (don’t forget costs for payroll taxes, office space and equipment, etc) and consider the fact that the models often seem to be much faster than even expert humans, the costs don’t seem so terrible.

I don’t think that a market for lemons is the right analogy or how it relates to your other claims. A market for lemons is one where buyers cannot distinguish between high and low quality goods (eg used cars). I think people are mostly ok at judging the ‘quality’ of romantic partners and the problem you describe is a different thing.

The parent was obviously talking about the US government. But the UK still has plenty of legacy websites and even on the new websites there are sometimes complicated or hard to understand rules one must follow. I think a bigger thing in the UK though is that, for the most part, legislation (and legal contracts) tend to be drafted in less arcane language while still being reasonably precise, compared to the US

I think if social media required logging into a desktop computer or laptop then it would be a lot less impactful. So I think I still disagree. I think smartphones can be bad even if they are limited to largely non-social media like YouTube or TikTok.

Depends on the subject, but much more ‘similar to pre-pandemic levels’ than the ‘continued decline’ observed in most places.

For PISA scores, Finland’s have been declining for 25 years and China only produces scores for the top schools in its top-tier cities (and while US averages don’t look so good in comparison, scores for Massachusetts look good, maybe better).

It feels to me unlikely that PISA scores should be particularly related to ‘country average IQ’ (except by confounders like malnutrition rates) where my understanding is that much of the research has been limited or of such poor quality that the topic has become so toxic as to discourage most potential further research.

I think the point is that they are good for comparing different cohorts and different countries, though the article makes some claims about how the scores tend to correlate with other desirable outcomes. Naturally one should try to avoid Goodhart’s law here.