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My goal for 2018

Is to discover whether there is a last image among the Apple animated GIFs, or if they are like the integers.

DevOps and the Division of Labor

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The benefits of the division of labor were, of course, recognized at least as far back as Plato and Xenophon. Adam Smith famously expounded upon them in The Wealth of Nations . In the early 20th century, this method of increasing productivity was pushed to its limits. Tasks were broken down to the extent that workers with minimal skills could be assigned simple, highly repetitive tasks, and perform them with almost no knowledge of what anyone else on the assembly line was up to. Although this led to higher productivity of standardized products, the disadvantages of extending the division of labor to this extent were not overlooked. Karl Marx noted that the extensive division of labor alienated the worker from the product he was producing: someone who spends all day tightening a particular lug nut may be little able to associate what they do with "making a car." But even, Adam Smith, typically understood as a great proponent of the division of labor, commented: In the pro...

I tried to give a lecture...

on how to best construct a dictionary when the items to be stored are known in advance...

The Most Important Intellectual Event of the Last Two Centuries

Has been the development and completion of the critique of Enlightenment rationalism. The figures who accomplished this included: Edmund Burke Alexis de Tocqueville Fyodor Dostoevsky Lewis Carroll G.K. Chesterton T.S. Eliot C.S. Lewis Kurt Gödel Ludwig Wittgenstein Michael Oakeshott Eric Voegelin F.A. Hayek Michael Polanyi Paul Feyerabend Thomas Kuhn Jane Jacobs Alasdair MacIntyre Nassim Nicholas Taleb The job was difficult, because it required using theory to show the limits of theory. (Gödel's incompleteness theorem was an especially clever instance of accomplishing this.) But it is now done, and all that is required is to make the accomplishment more widely known.

O Holy Night

Foolish atheists and fundamentalists both try to judge if Christianity is true by arguing historical evidence. Idiots! Instead, listen to Aaron Neville sing “O Holy Night.” You will hear truth filling your ears.

The Curse of Modernity

"The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding" -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game , p.14

How to "measure" belief

"How much you truly 'believe' in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it." -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game , p. 223