System prompts themselves have many contradictions. I remember hearing an Anthropic engineer (possibly Lex Fridman's interview with Amanda Askell) talking about using exaggerated language like "NEVER" just to steer Claude to rarely do something.
I'm not sure what article about looting is being referenced, but NPR did interview author Vicky Osterweil about her book "In Defense of Looting". It would be extremely surprising to hear that NPR endorsed looting as a form of protest. The interview was definitely not an endorsement.
I wonder if the low literacy rate is partly an artifact of non-English speakers. The 54% stat seems to come from PIAAC which only evaluates English literacy in the US https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/faq.asp
The US hasn’t historically had high literacy rates though I definitely agree we are back to McCarthy levels of anti-intellectualism. Probably worse.
Your 10 to 15% figure is total transmission and distribution loss from producer to consumer. If you scale up the transmission distance only, the total shouldn't change much. There are several studies referenced in this course http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/harting1/. Looks like 2 to 3% loss over 1000km.
The author assumes we will only ever use raw materials on Earth. There are definitely impractical fantasies about asteroid mining in sci-fi, but the author ignoring the cost of getting things off Earth means the article is just a strawman.
Coal and oil formation would not occur due to lifeforms able to digest trees. It would be extraordinarily difficult to reset to those primordial conditions. I don't think an asteroid hit could do it.
Are you sure about this? I actually looked into this not too long ago and that theory no longer seems well supported.
Oil forms when sea plankton and algae are buried and exposed to high pressures and heat. Coal forms when dead plant material protected somehow from biodegredation (say by mud) forms peat and is then buried, and exposed to high pressures and heat.
I was also surprised to learn that the inabality of fungus and bacteria to degrade lignin is unlikely to have been a key driver of coal formation during the Carboniferous period, instead it was "a unique combination of everwet tropical conditions and extensive depositional systems during the assembly of Pangea".
The nuclear family is an American white cultural norm. It may also be a norm for other groups. You are seeing black as the opposite of white and blackness as defined as the opposite of every white norm. That seems pretty extreme; a deductive fallacy even. The infographic didn't say anything about black culture though it would be interesting to see the identical format used to describe black culture.
> The nuclear family is an American white cultural norm.
See this UN paper [1] regarding stats on the nuclear family. The nuclear family is a phenomenon that exists on all continents. It's not the only way, but it's certainly not a "white" thing. The nuclear family is actually most prominent in Northern Africa. See figure 10 on page 19.
I cannot imagine that infographic being produced about black culture without it producing a howling firestorm of opposition.
First, who produces it? Whites? Yeah, that will go over big. Blacks? That makes it look like propaganda or wishful thinking. Professional sociologists? Is sociology objective enough to produce a consensus?
Then there's the content. Black culture? Which one? (There are several.) Any one you pick, those in other cultures find your infographic to be nonrepresentative.
But every bit of what I said is true of the actual infographic. Who produced it? Whites? Blacks? Professional sociologists? And, which white culture? There is not one uniform white culture across the US.
Thank you, I appreciate your point that white isn't intended to stand in contrast to black in this context. I'll keep that in mind. Unfortunately, that only makes less clear to me what the infographic is attempting to convey, how it's supposed to contribute to the discussion. It seems to me to be implicitly encouraging some kind of comparison that it leaves to the exercise of the reader, and I don't think that's a great idea.
Separately, I'm not clear on how "white cultural norm" is defined or what exactly it means. Is it meant to imply "majority norms in much of Europe, the British Commonwealth, and the US"? If so, why call it "white" instead of something more precise like "EBCU"? Otherwise, is it implying the existence of a shared white culture based around color of skin? When Latino and African and Asian individuals/families share similar ideals, are they contributing to the white cultural norms, or not?
I think the terminology here is important to get right, as I believe that the popular terminology is a source of a lot of the strife at present, whether intentional or not. For example, the tyranny of the majority is a well established problem in democracies. Society has debated for centuries how best to protect the rights of minorities while implementing the will of the majority. Strong individual rights is one method, as it provides a platform for all of us to actively participate to expand and protect the rights of every person. Recasting that debate as white vs. black seems to needlessly alienate potential allies and to reinvent a bunch of concepts without benefiting from the lessons and debates of the past.
For a concrete example of the terminology issue, I think that a big part of the controversy around the Black Lives Matter movement is disagreement about the meaning of the omitted, implied adverb. Does it mean "Black Lives Matter too", or does it mean "Black Lives Matter more", or perhaps something else? Radicals and dissidents on both sides of the spectrum seem to assume the "more" interpretation and react accordingly, whereas sympathizers interpret it along the lines of the "too" interpretation. To complicate things further, some sincerely respond that "All Lives Matter" in a well-meaning way, apparently attempting to clarify and agree with the "Black Lives Matter too" interpretation. Declaring "All Lives Matter" is currently a fireable offense, which brings us back to the theme of PG's essay.
To summarize, I think that terminology is incredibly important. Using "white" as a placeholder for a nebulous concept, especially when it routinely has a negative connotation, only seems to make unified progress more difficult.
The vacuum has a finite impedance of ~375ohms so it is not a perfect insulator. This comes from the fundamental magnetic permeability constant mu naught divided by the speed of light. Also interesting is the fact that the vacuum impedance is an exact number because it’s solely based on fundamental constants.
Given a small enough distance, arcing is possible between 2 surfaces in vacuum as charges are ejected from the surface (that’s how vacuum tubes and these transistors work).
It is essential to distinguish between characteristic impedances (of free space or other) and resistances. Although both are real values measured in ohms, characteristic impedances are non-dissipative.
Just because EM waves can propagate in vacuum does not mean you can induce a current density.
Right. I see now that I was unclear in that second part - I should have written something like "just because EM waves can propagate in vacuum does not mean you can induce a current density in vacuum." Of course EM waves can induce current density in antennas and other structures.
> Obviously you can't induce a current in vacuum ...
Yes. I wrote that second part because 'mmmBacon seemed to be arguing that one could induce a current in vacuum; that because vacuum has a characteristic impedance, it isn't an insulator (i.e. can support current because it has characteristic impedance).
@twtw was not arguing that one can induce a current in the vacuum. However, I did say that a surface can arc in vacuum. This is because a surface can emit charges either thermally or in presence of a large electric field. This is correct and didstinct from current induction in media. Please note this phenomenon should not be confused with arc discharge in gas.
IIRC diamonds are good isolators because their crystal structure is both very close to perfect (few defects) and because their crystal lattice has all electrons tied up.
Vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) work by heating a tungsten filament-- the cathode-- until the filament is hot enough to emit electrons, which are then attracted to the positively-charged plate (anode), traveling through the vacuum (and thus flowing current). Current only flows in one direction in this setup, which has two electrodes, leading to the moniker "diode." Adding a third electrode in between the cathode and anode-- called the "grid" based on its physical shape-- allowed a vacuum tube (now a 'triode') to use a small signal to control a large one. An amplifier!
The key to the function is the heating of the cathode filament. Vacuum tube designs that use a separate heating current (which is, today, most of them) do not conduct if the heating current is not applied. "Cold cathode" type tubes are not vacuum tubes-- they are typically filled with a low-pressure gas.
An insulator by definition is matter that doesn't have freely flowing electrons so vacuums aren't an insulator. However, all insulators have a "breakdown voltage" at which point the electrons start "ripping" through the material so a vacuum has all of the properties of an insulator except the mass: the breakdown voltage is the the amount of energy required to eject electrons from the materials surrounding the vacuum and until you reach that point, no current will flow through the vacuum.
You are correct. Except, this quality of the vacuum is very fragile. "What's perfect is imperfect, it is the imperfect that is perfect." (Example: a perfectly rigid system will collapse under stress while an imperfect one might withstand it.)
Vacuum is a special case of an insulator. Others will conduct beyond some threshold voltage; vacuum will not. On the other hand, vacuum will conduct at any voltage as soon as free charges are injected into it.
A capacitor shouldn't allow electron flow between its (dielectric separated) plates. The charges should build up on the plates, then exit through the terminals when discharging. If charges cross the dielectric, then you have leakage.
You think there is a conspiracy to supress detailed global temperature measurements that were taken before 1880? It's interesting that we have ways to estimate global temperature before 1880, but that marks the start of modern record keeping.
It also has the advantage of showing the blip of very high US temperatures in the 1930s. People also complain about bias if those extremes are left out.
I'm not sure my personal opinion is relevant, but the answer to your question is no. But understanding the typical patterns of climatic change is absolutely critical for making an informed opinion. These sort of presentations prevent a misleading snippet of climatic activity that is taken out of the critical context of typical patterns. Consequently it seems intentionally geared towards trying to provoke people into responding in an ill informed fashion.
And while I suspect this is well intentioned, I also think it's more likely to backfire than to help produce positive change. Poisoning the well [1] is very much a thing. When information is presented in a way that can be shown to be very misleading, it tends to make one question the integrity of all other data even when it is presented in as forthright a fashion as possible.
North America is a large place. There are at least a half dozen different climates. Michigan has excellent variety with apples, peaches and cherries for example, but bananas are limited to Dole or Chiquita's Cavendish. Perhaps the availability of local fruit suppresses demand for banana variety. I've only seen more choices of banana in larger cities and university towns.
