> The “Social-Communicative” level barely changed in size. But nearly a quarter of the words in the 1953 list are gone, and 39% of the 2023 words are new. Humble, loyalty, fellowship, generous, polite, and companionship gave way to community, identity, organization, ethnic, gender, and narrative. ...It offers fewer words for the people directly around you, but more for belonging at a distance.
I would blame inequality on this one. In a more unequal world tribalization is a survival strategy and language follows.
When you see everybody else as your equals then focusing on describing that individual person, instead of their group, makes more sense.
Economic inequality affects deeply how we think about others.
From 1945 to 1980 inequality was the lowest in the USA. From 1980 onward economic inequality exploded. I understand that you cannot follow my point without this important piece of information.
I don't follow your reasoning at all. It's a shift and what people talk about and write about. It can't be anything more than that, by construction.
What I see is shifting from a focus on individuals and close personal relationships to a focus on the functioning of society and, well, identity.
It seems like a swing of the pendulum to me. Encouraging people to create their own identities, creating vocabulary to describe one's identity, and advocating for a restructuring around society that is relatively collectivized economically, but culturally celebrates individual diversity. I'm not a professional historian, but I think that's somewhat of a new phenomenon historically.
And it's clearly a reaction to the perception that the ideals of equality and being uniformly kind to each other we're not enough to bring about a just and equitable society, and if anything were abused in order to suppress diversity. We still have to be kind to each other at a basic level, but it's not enough anymore.
So maybe now there's too much focus on that stuff and not enough focus on the part where you should actually just be nice to your neighbors and be humble and all that. Or, maybe people are disproportionately writing about it, because it's a new thing, and a lot of people know a lot to say about it, and a lot of people want to talk about it.
I don't think it makes a shred of sense to conclude that somehow the world is now more equal than it was in the 50s. It's disappointingly far from equal, though, and I think the change in lexicon is a change in people's focus specifically because the old system clearly wasn't working, and people are eager to try something different.
As someone living in Stockholm I find this very interesting. A football field, or a rose garden are very good public infrastructure, and I will never argue against them. But I love to go around Stockholm forests. Yes, these are not parks but forests with wildlife, hiking paths, and nature all around. That connection with nature cannot be replaced with any kind of facilities.
> A lake in the middle of a big city that you can simply get into is not a normal thing.
Stockholm is a big city (for European standards) in the middle of a lake. So, this is probably very difficult to emulate for other cities. Sadly around Sweden, trees that have been harvested for wood are replaced with low quality forest that do not meet biodiversity targets.
> I also feel like during the winter, even though the park looks amazing under snow or fog, there are not many things to do.
Parks are amazing and we should have more in our cities. I see people hiking and running in the forest all year round. Forests and nature are better than parks to bring a pace of mind and mindfulness that cannot be replaced by anything else. And they usually are free, so everybody can enjoy them independently of their economic situation. But each steps forward is a welcome step. And parks are also needed.
> That connection with nature cannot be replaced with any kind of facilities.
100% this, I moved out of city (Geneva, Switzerland), even though it had 100km long crystal clear lake, plus pretty awesome mountain for climbing/hiking/paragliding very close with 600m vertical cliffs.
True nature ain't parks, however well curated. I live next to cca 1x1.5km wild forest, even scientific reserve, and on frequent walks there the feeling and energy recharge effect is real, very pleasant and (for me) was almost non-present in otherwise beautiful Geneva parks.
We are creatures of nature and still connected to it deeply, everybody I know feels better after even 1h walk in such forest.
There are several large parks that resemble forests and are barely touched by human activity in Moscow as well. Can't say I liked walking in them very much when I was still living there, but I support the idea, it's good that they exist
> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections.
The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.
Why should software companies hire electricians and carpenters by the thousands?
Because these are not AI companies, these are infrastructure companies as their main source of revenue and cost is renting and building infrastructure.
Which has been a general point about AI - it's expensive to build and expensive to run, and requires a lot of infrastructure. Which is increasingly making it look like software might turn into a limited margin business, like making cars.
> A couple of years and millions spent on PR? And LLMs are "intelligent" all of a sudden, is what everybody says nowadays?
Inequality gives a few people the resources to change the mind of millions. As far as inequality remains high, propaganda will shape the ideology of a big chunk of the population. That is not good for society.
They are not bizarre but a good compromise between consistency and optimization for any possible existing and future CPU architecture.
What the author correctly points out to is that GSL implementation does not remove that undefined behaviour as it lacks the proper checks. And that is the problem as it does not fulfill its own documented guarantees.
tldr; C++ is just fine. The implementation in the library is wrong.
No it isn't. Using undefined behavior for things which can be implementation-defined behavior instead is harmful. It creates more space for bugs and security vulnerabilities.
C++ was designed as an universal way of writing low level system code. It has some abstractions above C, but still allowing for all kinds of optimizations. (Think using a class vs a template, similar abstraction different impact).
To use C++ to code user programs is the actual mistake.
Think about assembly. Should assembly also be safe in all calls? That will make everything slower, and consume way more energy. Will you blame assembly if people used it to create a phone app and it had memory leaks? Or will you blame the developer for using assembly in the first place?
C++ is a tool designed for a range of purposes. There is a push to make it an universal language that makes everything well. But engineering is about making compromises.
For your use, C++ may be the wrong language. I do not disagree with you. But maybe you should be using another language instead. Or we should create a new language that fills the sweet spot that C++ covers, and then evolve C++ to be the safe language that you want. One way or another, it is a compromise.
I thought C++ was designed to fit all sorts of applications. There is many GUI libraries for C++ for example, and the language has all the capabilities to add abstractions for making these sorts of libraries easy to work with. I think you could argue that C was made for low level code, since the working group seems to be focussing on making the core of the language more usable instead of allowing for abstractions that make libraries easier to work with (I think we can all agree that the C interface of gtk is not that great to work with, though I do commend their efforts).
Sorry for rambling so much, I hope I got my point across.
Yes. In 1985. Processor allow for things like garbage collectors that in the 80s would have been a terrible waste for most uses. Most game developers will never create a 3d engine while 80s developer will do their, 2d engines, by themselves.
Assembly was created to be able to create any kind of applications. In the 50s that made sense, not in the 80s.
> I don't actually think the current administration, or the people behind it, actually care about real world economics anymore.
They are aristocrats. They are worried about accumulating more power then their peers, about alliances to gain that power, and about projecting an image of infallibility.
Aristocracy has never been known for caring for economics, technology or practical matters. They just care about power. Ruining nations, building useless vanity projects and going to war is kind of their main thing.
That would not be a big problem. But the next Republican president may be even worse than Trump. Trump is just the symptom of a deeper corruption problem.
That things will fix themselves when Trump is not in the White House anymore is a dangerous misconception.
I would blame inequality on this one. In a more unequal world tribalization is a survival strategy and language follows.
When you see everybody else as your equals then focusing on describing that individual person, instead of their group, makes more sense.
Economic inequality affects deeply how we think about others.
reply