sapphon

In case it helps, the single biggest software-dev term he's probably using without consciously thinking about it is "sandbox". This is what we say when a program/set of programs' environment is so limited, they can't even know their little world isn't the big wide one.

If you are a toddler in a sandbox, not only is your sandcastle real as fuck, but brick-and-stone Neuschwanstein is decidedly not real because you haven't seen it as an image and lack the familiarity to even yearn for it as a cultural symbol either.

If you are a program in a sandbox, you are supposed to be given limited access to a very convincingly complete, but small, set of "allowed" resources. You are not supposed to be able to touch disallowed things, or even perceive that they exist!

OP describes one case/way in which that failed.

It occurs to me that, even if we're maximally successful at getting most folks to humanize most other folks, sociopaths will become more of a glaring problem the more successful we are. I also believe that sociopathy is currently mostly an advantage in our business climate.

So, we're in a position where improvement would mean ousting a lot of the people currently in positions of power over our society. I don't see a way forward in that situation, because they won't let that happen and no amount of humanist arguments are going to make them.

tl;dr if dehumanization continues to be profitable, how will opposition to it rise above a token level? Our society already permits almost any heinousness in the name of profit, if practiced judiciously and impersonally. (We won't let you rape for money - that's personal - but we'll let you sell rape whistles that don't whistle).

Today, I was alive and someone called Java 'fast'.

I'm old as dirt!

Seconded that Python wins on its strengths as an ecosystem. The industry could've chosen any language to coalesce around. However, data scientists, perhaps obviously, want to do data science to the extent that's possible, and Python is simply the best language at getting out of your way if you are a scientist but not a computer scientist.

Why is "we pay a lot more for X" framed that way when it's us, but "corruption means that these dollars for X do not reach the intended recipients" when it's the third world? What are the possible reasons other than corruption that everything costs us more without being higher quality, and if there aren't any, why don't we use the damn word?

shhh...don't tell Reddit!