this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

on a side note, I notice this passage in the review:

Wolfram refers incessantly to his "discovery" that simple rules can produce complex results. Now, the word "discovery" here is legitimate, but only in a special sense. When I took pre-calculus in high school, I came up with a method for solving systems of linear equations, independent of my textbook and my teacher: I discovered it. My teacher, more patient than I would be with adolescent arrogance, gently informed me that it was a standard technique, in any book on linear algebra, called "reduction to Jordan normal form", after the man who discovered it in the 1800s. Wolfram discovered simple rules producing complexity in just the same way that I discovered Jordan normal form.

this is certainly mistaken. I think the author or teacher must have meant RREF or something to that effect, not Jordan normal form

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Gauss–Jordan elimination, maybe?

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

yah there we go. gauss-jordan to reduce to rref

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The fractal border between reality and bullshit, in a nutshell.

Wolfram refers incessantly to his “discovery” that simple rules can produce complex results.