I've found my writing has stagnated due to lack of feedback. Unfortunately my friends and family don't seem interested enough in my writing to engage with it.
For business writing, peers/colleagues will rarely turn down a request to proof/edit/comment on a document. We’ve brought more focus on narrative writing in the last 3 years (and even more in the last 7 months).
People who invest time in refining a doc before the main meeting tend to get better results in the meeting. It’s not subtle and the acts of asking for help and helping each other out seem to forge mutual reliance and a sense of being on the same team (plus the company gets a better doc and meeting).
> I'm more scared of the stagnation world I feel ultimately goes straight to apocalypse.
What apolcalypse is he worried about? Or is it the breakdown in politics, due to the stagnation, the problem? Why should the breakdown lead to an apocalypse, rather than a reformation?
> The claim is largely that voters started to care more about politicians implementing their favorite policies than being the recipient of trickle-down graft.
For me graft is a more acceptable in good times. When things are booming it doesn't matter too much if a little extra is skimmed to one side.
When things seem dire, you want someone that will actually fix the problems you are worried about. So graft goes out of fashion.
> When you look at how many bad decisions have been taken these past few years despite plenty of access to good information, this sentiment seems pretty out of touch…
I'd argue we have lots of good information about what is going on. I'm not sure we have lots of good information about what we should do. Should we move to renewables and storage, nuclear or carbon capture and storage or would it be better to geo-engineer?
There are lots of trade-offs for all these paths. Being able to simulate their interactions accurately and under different assumptions might help form a consensus about a not too bad way forward.
> kind of arrogant "make the world a better place" attitude
It's not "arrogant" to want to make the world a better place. If GP thinks they're lying, they's better described as "deceptive". If GP thinks they're naive, they should say that, and ideally provide some constructive feedback. This kind of knee-jerk comment (and the subsequent knee-jerk upvotes) is my least-favorite thing about HN.
Meant to agree with your reply, the comment was for the post you were replying to. We have lots of data but that doesn’t mean we have widely distributed understanding. Data != understandable models of the world. We need much more of the later.
I've been thinking about these kinds of things a bit. PDE and FEA seem core to lots of interesting simulations. From chemistry and climate to engineering.
Firedrake [1] and Fenics [2] seem like interesting approaches to this. I know that firedrake is being explored for some climate modelling with fluidity project [3][4].
The value of any simulation platform is based on the value of the models and datasets in that platform. So the key question is, can you attract the people making the valuable models to your platform. Working with things that people are already using seems important, as does talking to those people about it. I've got a Google form asking questions currently to try to get more information about what people who currently make and use simulations need. [5]
One of my wishes is that it would support a hardware token like the yubikey for storing the private key, to make leaks less likely (although it might not be super performant).
>“ According to Maistre, any attempt to justify government on rational grounds will only lead to unresolvable arguments about the legitimacy and expediency of any existing government and that this in turn will lead to violence and chaos.[23][24] As a result, Maistre argued that the legitimacy of government must be based on compelling, but non-rational grounds which its subjects must not be allowed to question.”
>
>Perhaps whatever is useful is oftentimes more important than what is true.
There has been an ongoing debate in the UK about proportional representation and the first past the post system. It has not, as yet, lead to violence and chaos. So I think that the link Maistre identifies between questioning the status quo and chaos is not always true.
Admittedly there is time and place for debate. You don't argue about the cars direction, when the driver is trying to concentrate in a dangerous situation.
Yeah. I shared that quote as an example of the “terrifying” conclusions this good lead one to, not necessarily because I though his reactionary stance was true (or useful, haha).
But maybe the success of representative democracy is not based in rationalism but instead the mythology around individual liberty.
This is one benefit of democracies. People can form alternate leadership structures with different strengths and focuses, without them trying to wrest power at unpredictable times.
