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>other techniques include Kant's Transcendental Deduction or Descartes's pure doubt

This is not quite accurate. Kant says very explicitly in the (rarely studied) Transcendental Doctrine of Method (Ch 1 Section 4, A789/B817) that this kind of proof method (he calls it "apagogic") is unsuitable to transcendental proofs.

You might be thinking of the much more well studied Antinomies of Pure Reason, in which he uses this kind of proof negatively (which is to say, the circumscribe the limits of reason) as part of his proof against the way the metaphysical arguments from philosophers of his time (which he called "dogmatic" use of reason) about the nature of the cosmos were posed.

The method he used in his Deduction is a transcendental argument, which is typically expressed using two things, X and Y. X is problematic (can be true but not necessarily so), and Y is dependent on X. So then if Y is true, then X must necessarily be true as well.


Sorry I meant "proof method" as more like "this was this guy's angle of attack", not that they would've thought each others angles were valid at all or that they're commensurable with say, 20th century formal proof logic (or Aristotelian logic for example). Descartes and Leibniz were squarely the rationalists that Kant wanted to abolish, and Hegel rejected Kants distinction between noumena and phenomena entirely, so they're already starting from very different places.

I guess it would be more accurate to state Kants actual premises here as making the distinction between appearance and thing-in-itself rather than the deduction, but the deduction technique itself was fascinating when I first learned it so that's what I associate most with Kant lol.

I guess I have not thought critically why we couldn't use a Transcendental argument to support Descartes. I just treated it as a vague category error (to be fair I don't actually know Descartes philosophy that well, even less than I know Kants lol). Could be a fun exercise when I have time.


>I guess I have not thought critically why we couldn't use a Transcendental argument to support Descartes.

The previous section within the Transcendental Dialectic that focuses on the nature of the soul goes into a refutation of Descartes' statement. Kant basically finds "I think therefore I am" to be a tautology that only works by equivocating the "I" in each clause. "I think" pretends that the "I" there is an object in the world which it then compares to the "I am" which is an object in the world. Kant argues that "I think" does not actually demonstrate an "I" that is an object but rather a redundant qualification of thinking.

I am being a bit imprecise, so here is SEP's summary:

>For in each case, Kant thinks that a feature of self-consciousness (the essentially subjectival, unitary and identical nature of the “I” of apperception) gets transmuted into a metaphysics of a self (as an object) that is ostensibly “known” through reason alone to be substantial, simple, identical, etc. This slide from the “I” of apperception to the constitution of an object (the soul) has received considerable attention in the secondary literature, and has fueled a great deal of attention to the Kantian theory of mind and mental activity.

>The claim that the ‘I’ of apperception yields no object of knowledge (for it is not itself an object, but only the “vehicle” for any representation of objectivity as such) is fundamental to Kant’s critique of rational psychology.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/#SouRatP...


I think being a great "software engineer" at a company is about getting the job done. A great "programmer" is about designing and writing great code.

Yeah, regular and even respected media outlets are basically giving you the 2005 porn pirating site experience.

>You need to go to college to get a piece of paper saying you did. If you were passionate about computer programming, you can do it in your free time while you flip burgers or do whatever you need to survive

This is a naive view of the average (or even above average) person's approach to learning, as well as an overly cynical read on the intellectually motivating atmosphere that comes from earnestly engaging in an academic environment.


It's not naive. I've been to college. To call it intellectually demovating is an understatement

Unless you were unfortunate enough to go during peak covid years, then that was just a skill issue. If it was truly beneath you, you could have been writing and publishing papers.

This is interesting but I am not surprised. People got used to spammers putting in zero effort because it's a game of scale for them. Well now zero effort still gets them all the way there when it comes to looking convincing.

It's more than a game of scale: people who almost but not quite fall for the scam that follows the spam incur real cost to them. They don't want to trick as many people as possible with their mail, they want to trick only the most vulnerable. The obvious (to most people) mistakes are in there deliberately.

This changes, of course, with phishing. Will phishing by email even survive when voice imitation calls become more and more available? I guess it will, the bar for monetization is too low bar with resellable accounts and the like.


Exactly. When you're spending money, you want to be in the loop. It's why the Alexa Echo devices as media for Amazon purchases never really worked out. Amazon had two conflicting aims. They wanted to race to the bottom with their increasingly shady vendors which eroded trust, while also positioning themselves and their devices to be trusted agents of purchases. Of course no one wants to buy anything sight unseen through them.

This was my general reaction when it was determined that the "log review" portion of the PCI checklist (can't remember what level) could be satisfied by computer "review", and that newer PCI versions were moving towards preferring automated "review"

>Human-driven research is also brute-force but with a more efficient search strategy

No it's not. Is there anything to back that up? There's a creative aspect to human research that I've yet to see with gen AI. All it does is regurgitate stuff and get some "new" ideas via the latent space of the distribution it models. But a generative model cannot by definition create anything new. Just estimate its data well enough that it can sample it well enough to fake novelty.


>Now that the CAFE standards have been rendered toothless

Can you elaborate on this? I'd love to have a cheap small truck like they used to make, but CAFE largely killed those.


OBBB removed any fines for violating CAFE standards. They still exist technically, but it'd be like getting a speeding ticket but the fine is always $0...

CAFE killed small trucks in part, tariffs in another part, but US manufacturers are the real reason small trucks are dead.

US manufacturers want margins, and they're not getting margins on little, efficient cars. They get enormous margins on gigantic trucks that start at $55,000. Have you noticed that all the sub $20k cars went away from all the manufacturers around COVID?

Ford makes the Maverick, which is a small truck. They were priced very reasonably at release, at $19,000 or so. However, Ford didn't make very many of them, and the ones they did make got up to $15,000 over MSRP from the dealers, who scalped them. Why would Ford want to cannibalize their pricy gigantic trucks when they know that they can get their $50k asking price because there's nowhere else for people to go?


>Why would Ford want to cannibalize their pricy gigantic trucks when they know that they can get their $50k asking price because there's nowhere else for people to go?

Why isn't Ford worried that Chevrolet, Toyota, Ram, or Nissan will bring back a small and cheap U.S. built pickup? Is that because all manufacturers are afraid of cannibalizing their more expensive offerings? Are they all colluding? Or do not many people want small pickups? I guess if the Slate becomes a breakout hit, we'll know that people really want the smaller pickups.


Neither GM, Chrysler, or Ford wants to hurt their expensive offerings. Toyota and Nissan have less expensive offerings, but can't bring them here because the tariffs make them much less margin, and the CAFE standards kill the rest off.

The Ford Maverick sold out for it's first few years despite them upping the price repeatedly. The demand is there.

I got a new Maverick last year for $24.5k.

Cheap small trucks were killed by the chicken tax, not CAFE.

The Chicken tax didn't kill the domestically manufactured Ranger and turn the Colorado into the huge thing it is today.

CAFE killed them too. You can't have a small vehicle that gets fuck all MPG because it's built like a tank to do work. You gotta have a bigger one that gets slightly worse MPG but has a way huger footprint in order to make the math math.

This didn't just kill compact pickups for 20yr. It also killed the Chevy Astro (the most "fullsize work van" of the minivans) and why you'll never see a car with a giant overhanging cargo area again.


That’s not really sufficient explanation due to vehicles manufactured in the USA, CA or MX being exempt, and yet there are no small vehicles being made and sold in the USA in any large volume (despite clear demand).

My understanding is that this is due to fuel regulations being enacted by size and weight where it’s simply easier to make bigger vehicles.


This is just a blog ring.

I would also love to go back to Geocities style web interaction, but the medium is the message, and the way the Internet has evolved as a medium means that people don't naturally interact with it in a way that supports regression to that era. Attempts to force it like neocities have a hyperreal quality to them.


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