It’s the subject of much scholarly debate.
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davitz@lemmy.cato
Science Memes@mander.xyz•Can any scientists confirm this important fact?English
7·8 months ago“This claim leans heavily into anthropomorphizing non-human things, and that is very rare in rigorous science. Therefore I suspect this is not an accurate representation of rigorous science.”
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Is clear and valid reasoning
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Is clearly conveyed by the part you mentioned
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Presents a straightforward reasoning tool people can apply more generally to help them identify cases where scientific results are likely being misrepresented. Exactly the kind of tool that someone can adopt to become better at applying critical thinking in their life.
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Is much more useful in a broader set of circumstances than the more specific arguments that appear later in the comment to further deconstruct this specific case.
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davitz@lemmy.cato
Science Memes@mander.xyz•Can any scientists confirm this important fact?English
12·8 months agoI mean, he’s walking through his very solid reasoning for why the headline fails the sniff test, despite being a factoid that is frequently repeated through many channels by many people.
People talk all the time about how we need to strengthen critical thinking skills in the general public. Outside of formal training, this is what that looks like: a culture of publicly explaining the thought process that leads you to question something that many others have accepted without question. The knee jerk reaction of criticizing such statements as rude or overly negative is a big part of why these skills have such a hard time spreading, since people who have the skills feel it’s not socially acceptable to share their conclusions.
davitz@lemmy.cato
Canada@lemmy.ca•Election Day Discussion thread [Monday April 28]English
3·11 months agoRight there with you man, it’s hard to imagine that any regular looking white dude in Canada could claim in good faith that they’ve never been in a conversation where they witnessed a bunch of similar looking dudes go hardcore mask-off because they thought the coast was clear.
davitz@lemmy.cato
Technology@lemmy.world•Cory Doctorow proposes that Canada break ranks with international IP law enforcementEnglish
9·1 year agoOr just revise the law to state that international copyrights will only be enforced if they are held by Canadian trading partners in good standing, and that the only prosecutable violations of those copyrights are those which have taken place during the most recent contiguous period that that partner has been in good standing.
That way we don’t need to keep updating the law every time a trading partner starts/stops acting up, and other trading partners won’t need to worry about impacts to their IP. It will simply be baked in that every time a trading partner unilaterally breaks a trade agreement with us they will in effect be granting amnesty to every Canadian citizen who ever breached their copyright in the past and creating an open season on their IP within Canada until they can reach a new mutually acceptable trade agreement. Honestly this should be a standard practice for many countries.
davitz@lemmy.cato
Asklemmy@lemmy.ml•What is the legitimate use-case for generative AI?English
5·1 year agoI use it for coding, mostly as a time saver. Generally as I’m typing, it will give a suggestion that’s functionally the same as what I was going to type anyway so I hit tab and go to the next line. It’s able to do this accurately for around 80% of the total lines that I’m writing and going from writing full lines to writing 0-3 characters + tab on most of those lines makes a massive speed difference. It’s especially great for writing one off scripts when I’m doing something that’s not even a coding project, but there’s some tedious file juggling involved. Writing a script completely by hand for that often would take slightly longer than just doing the task manually, and as I said, it’s a one-off. But writing the script with copilot often takes as little as 10% of the time which is really nice.
Even in cases where I don’t already know how to solve a problem (particularly a problem involving specific integrations) it can often be faster to ask it how to solve the problem and then look up the specific functions, endpoints, etc it uses in the docs rather than trying to find those doc entries directly with a search. And if it hallucinates a function that doesn’t exist in the docs then I tell it that and it often successfully corrects itself. When it fails more than once I’ve generally found that there’s a high probability that the SDK/API/etc I’m looking at doesn’t have anything that does what I need so it’s time for me to start rethinking my approach
Outside of coding, I also use stable diffusion to generate images of D&D characters I’m creating instead of image searching and settling for something kind of close to what I was picturing.
I also regularly use SD when I stumble upon some art I’d like to use as a desktop wallpaper, but can’t find at high enough resolution. I just upscale it and proceed. Sometimes I’ll have something at the wrong aspect ratio and use generative fill to extend the edges of the image to the desired aspect ratio, those parts of the image are nothing special, but the important part is the original image and I just need some filler to prevent it from abruptly ending before the edges of the screen.
One last case is if I need to put together a tediously long document, I generally find that having it generate a first draft with the right structure and then iterating a bunch on that comes more easily than starting with an empty page.
davitz@lemmy.cato
News@lemmy.world•World’s richest use up their fair share of 2025 carbon budget in 10 daysEnglish
18·1 year agoWell it does seem to be talking about the global 1% which is known to include a pretty big slice of the population in relatively wealthy places like the US. The more exclusive 1% that people usually talk about is the US 1% or the 1% of another specific country.
Keep in mind that 1% of 7 billion people is 70 million. And estimates for the number of billionaires in the world look to be under 3000. In addition, most estimates for worldwide median individual income are under 3000 USD per year.
Taking all that into account, 140k sounds pretty reasonable as a boundary for the global 1%.
Sorry, but I fail to see how we can categorize a mass shooting as “Jack shit happening”. I would actually say that mass shooters are an example that strongly supports OPs sentiment that people who write huge manifestos tend to take action. Maybe they don’t achieve all the lofty goals set out in said manifesto, but that seems like it would be small comfort to the people who got shot.
davitz@lemmy.cato
News@lemmy.world•German far-right party wins a state election for the first time since the NazisEnglish
3·2 years agoI mean it’s a state election. Even if they gained 100% control of that state’s government they wouldn’t have taken over Germany.
The difference is scale. If a house is a safe investment that makes a reliable 10% return on investment before tax and then you pay 1% in property tax, the remaining 9% is still an extremely attractive return so the investor appetite for housing remains unchanged by this small tax. Change the tax to 9% and you’re only left with 1% return, suddenly other investment options become much more attractive. Once the investors have left, prices can normalize around the price tolerances of people actually intending to live in the space.
This is a simplification using made up numbers, but the overall point is that the mere fact that property taxes as they currently exist (with very low rates) allow investors to run amok, that doesn’t mean that a more substantial LVT couldn’t change that.
Obviously taxing in a way that makes rentals completely non viable is probably not a perfect solution, and raising the tax dramatically all at once before prices have a chance to react could be catastrophic, but with a careful incremental approach gradually raising LVT and displacing other taxes (starting with regressive ones like sales tax) with those revenues based on observed outcomes, progress can be made to a better equilibrium where people who want to own a home to live in have better opportunities to do so, people who want to rent still have some options, people aren’t getting rich by ransoming housing at extortionate prices, and more investment capital is funneled toward productive enterprise over plots of dirt, strengthening the actual economy.
I think it’s probable that the Georgist dream of displacing all taxation with LVT may not be achievable due to diminishing returns on raising the tax as property values react, but I think moving in the direction of Georgist policy could absolutely usher in some better social outcomes
Will this satisfy your request? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem?wprov=sfla1
davitz@lemmy.cato
News@lemmy.world•As bans spread, fluoride in drinking water divides communities across the USEnglish
18·2 years agoYes, but orders of magnitude less often than random members of the public “doing their own research”. And looking at the consensus of the experts rather than individual experts the error rate is further orders of magnitude below that. You need to let go of the idea that information being a good basis for decisions means that it’s “absolute truth”, because only religion has that; what we have is some sources of information that are less likely to be wrong than all the others, and that’s unfortunately the best you can get.
davitz@lemmy.cato
memes@lemmy.world•The more things change, the more they stay the sameEnglish
18·2 years ago
davitz@lemmy.cato
Technology@lemmy.world•A new smartphone again? Rethink unhealthy culture of frequent upgradesEnglish
31·2 years agoThe default wallpaper looks so much like testicles photographed from below and I can’t unsee it
davitz@lemmy.cato
Technology@lemmy.world•The Hyperloop was never meant to be built. Elon Musk admitted it was all about fueling opposition to California’s high-speed rail project so it would get canceled.English
141·3 years agoThe saying never says that you can make 999,999,999.99 honestly. It just says one amount you can make honestly and one amount you can’t. The implication is that the outer limit of what you can make honestly is somewhere in between.
davitz@lemmy.cato
You Should Know@lemmy.world•YSK: What other instances have the most notable Lemmy instances defederated withEnglish
4·3 years agoHaha yeah, good point. I guess I should have specified it would be a good post on this community specifically where people look to find handy tips for using Lemmy effectively. The fact that one of the huge instances where a lot of your search results come from when you’re starting out looking for content has such an aggressive pro-totalitarian moderation strategy is an unexpected, but very useful insight.
davitz@lemmy.cato
You Should Know@lemmy.world•YSK: What other instances have the most notable Lemmy instances defederated withEnglish
4·3 years agoHoly crap. This should be it’s own post. Just purged all the “serious” communities I was following on there.

The price might not be worth it, but would be really funny if Valve just delisted the claimed games in the UK and notified the publishers that they need to remove the claimed music or resolve the licensing issue if they want their game back up. Instead of one tidy lawsuit, suddenly these guys are being contacted by the angry lawyers of hundreds of orgs they have existing contracts with.