statstutor

My point is that there is a difference that creates a category of error in bilingual speakers.

French speakers are likely to use the word fairly commonly; whereas, people with English as their first language are unlikely to know it.

So, via translation, the readability level has changed considerably.

> In that sentence, the article hasn't defined hieratic or quotidian

I suspect the author is a native French speaker? Where "quotidien" is an every-day word.

This might misunderstand how science authorship works.

I was once congratulated for publishing a paper I had no idea existed, after I gave someone permission to use my research work in exchange for credit.

It took me some effort to view a copy of what I had "written".

> That's a point of view, and a pretty cynical one.

Twitter can and do ask for user feedback all the time, without making a press release about it.

I don't find it cynical to ask why they are doing this in public - it seems likely that the parent has hit upon a good part of the reason.

I understand "credibly neutral" here to mean the idea that you appear neutral, whether or not you are actually neutral. Compare with: plausible deniability.

The goal of credible neutrality is to convince people that you have acted fairly and gain political acceptance [Vitalik does this by appealing to the standards for property ownership under capitalism]; the goal is not to act fairly [as Vitalik softly admits, the true goal is to do whatever is necessary to support (his) wealth accumulation].

I would much rather credible neutrality did not exist as a justification for particular actions, and that it faced automatic criticism.

Give Bob 1000 coins and admit that you did so, rather than set up a system of rules which is designed for Bob to receive 1000 coins. The use of passive voice is an indicator that someone has disguised their responsibility.

> But the betrayal at the end just makes zero sense

It's more surprising than we expect from Disney: there's no 'villain song' explaining the villain's private intent.

I liked it that way. It felt real to me. I felt that I had been tricked, even after the naivety of the love/relationship was heavily foreshadowed. (I felt that) we experience the scene more exactly as Anna does.

Electricity in the UK is provided in two ways - some pay at the end of the month on a contract basis, some pay via a pre-payment meter (on different terms - more expensive and more dependent on regular servicing).

Wealthy people typically get cheaper utilities with less hassle. People renting somewhere with a prepay meter don't have the same level of access (whether they make reliable payments, or not).

We might agree that it is reasonable to differentiate when it comes to private loans, but when it comes to utilities, this is pure discrimination.

> I've also noticed that even fact-checking is being weaponized for political reasons.

I don't think fact-checking exists for any other reason. People like fact-checking that confirms their beliefs.

Even if objectivity is possible in fact-checking, objectivity is not going to build your audience, nor find you clients.

I feel sad about Snopes, which used to be about exploring urban legends. It had a good sense of humour; it was delightful. I spent countless hours exploring it.

From my recollection, it previously had no explicitly political content (unfortunately, it has been blocked from the Wayback Machine).

I don't have any interest in what I see on the current version of snopes, which I guess must be following some money.

I imagine my consciousness as a communion of all my cells... a central decision-making council, if you like.

If my cells are in conflict or disagreement about what action to take (which I presume they often are), my consciousness resolves this by taking a decision.

As such, I find it likely that this sense and experience of consciousness is shared by all, or almost all, multi-cellular organisms on the same evolutionary tree of life.

Governments have taken the decision to pause vaccinations with AZ, on the basis of this emerging information.

It's only right that we, the people, can see what our elected representatives are basing this decision (to pause) on. It makes sense to me.

Living in London (specifically Haringey, which is mentioned in the article), I was amazed - positively - when my residential street switched to directed, white, LED light.

It lit the street and not everything else.

I could see a few stars in the night sky, for the first time since moving to London.

I no longer had to deal so carefully with light leaking into my bedroom.

I appreciate these points, which are well-considered.

> But it's interesting why this is the case. Why us, and not chimpanzees.

As you admit, we could ask about exceptional adaptations in other species, e.g. "why do birds rule the sky, and not other species?". This might be sometimes studied, but there is not nearly a comparable level of interest in that form of exceptionalism. I'd say there's so little interest, that we often fail to even observe such cases.

It strikes me that we are really just interested in ourselves. (I have no problem with that.)

I don't think we will learn very much as long as we start with the assumption we are primarily exceptional above all other species. I think it immediately leads to circular logic, where any and all differences become evidence supporting the assumption.

I accept what you say about natural selection having a bias. I remain doubtful that we are truthfully observing that bias over the noise of essential randomness. (Edit: on further consideration, I'd strengthen this and believe it is statistically impossible to distinguish evolutionary pressure from randomness, if you are considering N=1 runs of evolution).

> If that isn't scientifically provable exceptionalism, I don't know what is

My point is that it isn't scientific at all.

Any person can declare themselves exceptional - I have observed consistently that if a person has to declare they are exceptional themselves, it means they probably aren't.

I don't assume that general rule to be different on a species-level: if we (as the human race) feel a need to spend a lot of effort making claims to why we are exceptional, acting both as the judge and the jury, it leads me to suspect that we probably are not.