1. That individuals are capable of unique achievements separate from their context, trends, etc.

2. That doing some intellectually impressive thing is "great", in a values or ethics sense. There are many things listed here that other intellectuals have argued as having extremely negative consequences for human society, culture, etc.

Which is why I think a list of the "greatest" is inherently a bit flawed, and you're better off looking at a list of "influential" people or ideas instead.

Cryptocurrency is an interesting technology with some niche use cases, but it was pitched as replacing the entire money system. LLMs are extremely useful for certain types of work, but are pitched as AGI ending all work. Etc.

Some kind of physical “totem” that came with an ebook would be an interesting idea, like a bookmark or a postcard-sized note.

All three are essentially just short book reviews written by experts on the topic, for example, a book on the history of Constantinople written by a Greek history professor. The books reviewed are definitely more “serious” and sometimes a little niche, so you usually won’t see the stuff on Amazon top charts.

In any case I highly recommend it, if only as a way to discover some new books and learn about different topics:

https://www.the-tls.com/ https://www.nybooks.com/ https://www.lrb.co.uk/

Polish (and other Slavic languages) for example, has some interesting ones:

- February (Luty) comes from “bleak, harsh, bitter”

- April (Kwiecień) is “month of flowers”

- August (Sierpień) is “month of the sickle,” as in the harvest time

- November (Listopad) is “month of leaves falling”

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691301

Points: 3

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Even if you almost always end up paying the bill + 20% tip, Americans like the idea that they could not pay the tip if the service was bad.

The appearance of free action is appealing and preferable to being forced to pay the extra amount, even if you almost always pay the amount willingly anyway.

Which is a shame, as it seems to me that the overwhelming risk of AI is from the latter scenario, and not as a rogue individual entity.

And so it's much better to compare the US government's record with the record of other states, and in that comparison I think the US comes out reasonably well. Not the best, but certainly not the worst.

A better way to think of this nonsensical online content: it's just the form that has been shown to win in the modern democratic political arena. Unfortunately, being a serious professional doesn't connect with voters anymore. Posting lots of goofy memes seems to, or at least it did a few years ago – IMO the media tactics used by current politicians are a few years out of date, culturally.

I imagine a similar exercise might work for pixel art, with each square of the grid representing a single color.

Even then I’m not really claiming that academic philosophers are always right and amateur ones always wrong. Rather that amateur philosophers tend to make glaring mistakes that those educated in academic philosophy can easily see.

It depends on the field, but just to use one that I'm familiar with, philosophy: everyone seems to think they have novel insights on philosophical issues, but unfortunately these opinions tend to be really, obviously wrong and half-baked when analyzed by actual philosophers.

Assuming of course that you aren’t working at Slop Burgers, but even then… almost everyone is happy to get an ice cream cone, or a hamburger with fries, or just food in general.

It’s a shame that white collar professions typically have such a distance between make thing and give it to customer, who’s excited to receive it.