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The percentages come from their ancestry (their GRANDPARENTS), not culture.

Obviously. But the fallacy trades on that insignificant mathematical curiosity to imply something that is ultimately cultural in nature.

Being "Japanese" is a matter of culture, not some kind of "magical Japanese DNA". So it doesn't make sense to say you're "12.5% Japanese". There is no "Japanese DNA". This is different than claiming that you have Japanese ancestry.


modern instruments are actually improved designs of older instruments which were just that: badly-designed & hard to use

Modern instruments are still difficult to use unless you spend time learning how to. Just like git.

No they're easy to use. They're hard to master. Git is hard to figure out how to even upload to.

I see the point and I wouldn't want to belabor the metaphor, but I really feel like guitar is actually extremely difficult to even get started with. Between the awkward stretching of the fingers, how difficult/painful it is to hold down strings hard enough (and close enough to the fret) to get a clean, clear note, and how hard it is to hold those strings down in such a way that your fingers don't brush against other strings, I'd say guitar is crazy hard to start. I'm saying this as someone who has been playing and enjoying guitar for decades. Beginners have a rough time of it for awhile.

Git is much easier to master than the piano. I played piano for years and can only just play two-handed melodies if they aren't well-aligned.

I've read a few blog posts and half a book on git, and I don't remember the last time I had issues with it.

I also don't recall a junior ever having trouble uploading files with git. Unless they're in an interactive rebase, which wouldn't happen your first time trying out git.


There’s inherent beauty in mastering the piano. It’s worth it to spend time practicing.

Git is just a means to an end. Heck, it’s usually a means to a means to an end: it is only a tool for version control of code, and the code itself is just a means to education or running the actual business.


It can be that. In the same vein, playing a guitar can just be the means to an end. Some people play music to get paid. Do you think playing your 60th wedding gig feels beautiful or meaningful?

I personally think git is a marvel of engineering. Hackers are people who are capable of seeing beauty in systems. We're at least nominally on "hacker news", even though a better name might be "VC news".


Yes, but it's not as easy to USE as a piano is! My 4 year old niece can play a piano, but her comprehension of Git is extremely poor.

Depends on the instrument. Anyone without experience or instruction is gonna make a fool of themselves picking up a wind instrument. You need to train the muscles in your face and mouth to form the correct embouchure needed to produce a clear note.

Only people who can't let go of religious arguments about the special nature of humanity think we can't build conscious machines.

I disagree, my problem with claims of machine consciousness is that they are effectively unfalsifiable without both an adequate theory of consciousness and a way of measuring it empirically. We don't have these, so in my opinion while this is a question we may answer in the future, we definitely lack the theories and tools to make particularly credible claims at the moment. Neither pessimism nor boosterism is warranted yet in my view.

I suspect the space of forms consciousness can take is enormous, and it likely can exist in many forms other than the one we usually experience. I wouldn't rule out machine consciousness as a possibility, but without an adequate theory of consciousness it's just not something I think we can claim is possible or impossible yet with much credibility. That's not a religious argument, if anything it's the argument of an agnostic.


The problems with any claim of consciousness are that they are unfalsifiable.

But it seems to be pretty hard to come up with a coherent claim of meat-consciousness that really excludes the possibility of machine-consciousness without some kind of really motivated reasoning.


I agree that all our theories of consciousness are deeply inadequate. And it it were purely a scientific question, I'd be fine holding off on this question. But consciousness plays a huge role in most theories of ethics, and agnosticism with a negative prior will inevitably lead to unethical actions, if there are any beings that exist outside our "is it human?" heuristic.

Other adult humans? Babies? Fetuses? Brain dead patients? Severe Alzheimer's? Higher apes? Mammals? Vertebrates? Jellyfish? Trees? Organic aliens? Inorganic aliens? A pile of dirt?

Without a good theory of consciousness, we can't answer yes or no for any of them. And yet we don't have a good theory of consciousness and still want to make ethical decisions. What do? We have to rely on gestures toward a theory of consciousness and make decisions based on it, despite its flaws.


Dude. The vast majority of Irish people can't speak a word of Gaelic. 10 years ago when I went to Ireland, the bilingual population was 0.1%!!!!! How many people use Gaelic in their daily life in Ireland? Less than 100 000. Guess the rest of you are just English, pretending to be Irish, eating fish & chips & going to Tesco's...

The only thing I ever heard from Irish people that they hated about being "Irish-American" was the idea that Ireland was a magical pixie world full of leprechauns and gold.


Wow. So I guess that the 60% of Ireland's population that don't speak any Gaelic are't Irish ether. And neither were the 94% that couldn't speak any (beyond "craic" & "uisce") 10 years ago. Please tell your friend that the majority of Ireland's population is English, not Irish. After all, if they were Irish, they'd speak the language, right? And not just in school when they're forced to.

WTF is wrong wth you people?


top post, end thread

Not to mention that it shows an extreme ignorance of the fact that USA & Canada are not 1000's of years old. Of course people have a tie to ancestors who came here a few generations ago, and brought aspects of their culture with them.

I find that Euros dont really know anything about the USA. Im Canadian and when I travel I routinely shock Europeans by reminding them that the USA is a huge country of over 300 million people. They seem to think its about the size of Britain.


Really so its okay if a Canadian, Australian or New Zealander does it?

It wouldn't be. But they never do it, so I don't have to worry about it.

???? I live in Canada and people say this all the time. Always have.

Had a friend growing up from an Italian-German family. Ate schnitzel, watched soccer, corrected us on our pronunciation of 'pasta.' Didn't speak any language other than English and his parents were 2nd generation Canadians, who also spoke nothing but English.

My family came from Ukraine & Ireland 4 & 3 generations ago, respectively. Family gatherings always included halupschi, perogies, and Ukrainian pastries. Never spoke Ukrainian or heard any word of Ukrainian except for the names of the food & of some of my older relatives.

Can easily go on and on about the vast majority of people in Canada.

So I dont think you know what you're talking about.


> perogies

Do you mean "pierogi," the Polish dumplings?

> halupschi

I have no idea what this is. Are you talking about галушка? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halu%C5%A1ky)

> Didn't speak any language other than English and his parents were 2nd generation Canadians, who also spoke nothing but English.

> Never spoke Ukrainian or heard any word of Ukrainian except for the names of the food & of some of my older relatives.

This insanely non-self-aware post perfectly illustrates my point.


I dont know why it irks you guys. Canada does this too. It's because, unlike Europe, we haven't been here for thousands of years. My grandfather was from Dublin. He came to Canada and didn't want to go back to Ireland, ever, because he hated religion so much. But he still passed on aspects of Irish culture to us, and not because he wore green on St. Patricks day once.

FB Marketplace makes you click on ads in order to tell the platform that you dont want to see that kind of listing anymore.

Unfortunately, clicking on the ad alerts the algorithm, which then shows you MORE of that type of ad that if you had not clicked at all.


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