I grew up in South India and spent a lot of my adulthood in the North, and I don't think the South is much better. It's different in many ways, which makes some people think it's better, but it's just as corrupt and messed up.
Your politician is as corrupt as any, but people have more trust among each other. It's far easier for women to go out alone, camp outside in the night. It's getter better as you go more south. Not sure about AP/Telangana though!
I am assuming that the downvotes are less about the fact that your parent comment is wrong, and more about the fact that the grandparent is not "categorically" false. It has some accurate aspects, but cannot be easily dismissed away.
A lot of accommodation to context (NOT subjectivity) in ethical considerations in many of the Indian epics and religious texts, which a lot of western-oriented viewers who've grown up with more black-and-white mentalities regarding good and bad might view as corruption. Add to that a preference for oral retellings of such topics, and viewpoints start differing regarding the same topic even within the same country. However, deeper readings of the same might tell them that concepts of duty and truth are still paramount, which kind of negate the argument.
It's far easier, however, for critics to think that citizens tend to cherry-pick the arguments in such texts which somehow might justify bad actions, while ignoring the importance of personal duty, honor and search of truth. And thus, it's easier for said critics to blame things on the subjectivity of said religion instead of looking at the context, and call it a day. But there's more to the argument than that; you also need to consider the history of the land, major events, and economic and social patterns which have nothing to do with religion. You also need to consider that some individual states which have the religion as dominant are institutionally much stronger than other weaker states; also, the "extreme subjective morality" part is also prevalent in some other religions, and the countries they dominate are not necessarily corrupt.
> I am assuming that the downvotes are less about the fact that your parent comment is wrong, and more about the fact that the grandparent is not "categorically" false. It has some accurate aspects, but cannot be easily dismissed away.
First, the parent comment just stated that out as fact without any argument or evidence, so I don't feel the need to provide any of my own to dismiss it. As the old adage goes, claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Then, if it was just that I asserted that the GGP was wrong (which they are, 100%), then the sibling comment asking for more evidence wouldn't also be in the negatives, which it is at the time I write this.
The simpler idea is this: GGP (or someone like them) is just downvoting people calling out their orientalist woo about "[Hiduism] thinks of truth and morality as extremely subjective", which is simply false. The only "strains" of Hinduism that you could even remotely argue have relativistic worldviews are ancient philosophies that are not held by any practicing Hindu today, so even with whatever you're arguing their statement, as written, is categorically false. It's like saying Christianity is a mystical religion because the Gnostics existed.
I'm assuming the rest of your comment is written by AI because it sounds like AI, so I'm not going to bother responding to that.
Providing a link to Manusmriti as evidence. Before you trash it, saying that the Manusmriti is not relevant - may i point out that people have gone to jail even recently for "disrespecting" the Manusmiriti.
> you claim that I am wrong - but you provide no evidence whatsoever.
You didn't provide any evidence either, so before you cry foul start with an actual argument.
> In Hinduism, dharma is prescribed based on the person's caste and so also the punishments
How is this implying "truth and morality [is] extremely subjective"? If one's dharma varies by caste, does that mean "truth" is "extremely subjective"? The degree to which one's duty, and therefore morals, vary by caste is also not such that murder is good for anyone. In the Gita, Arjuna's caste is mentioned as why killing in war is his duty, but it is also clearly stated that doesn't mean any murder is allowed. There is a clear and consistent undercurrent to the morality in Hinduism. Does dharma changing by caste mean the sun doesn't rise in the east for some castes? You're implying corruption is caused by "truth and morality" being subjective, but does Hinduism therefore imply that being corrupt is okay for some castes?
> may i point out that people have gone to jail even recently for "disrespecting" the Manusmiriti.
This is straight up false - your article itself says that they were arrested for the confrontation that followed the event, not for any religious intolerance.
E: I just want to add - caste and casteism are evil and vile.
> Before you trash it, saying that the Manusmriti is not relevant - may i point out that people have gone to jail even recently for "disrespecting" the Manusmiriti.
I haven't met anyone who actually read about Manusmriti. I don't think most Hindus know about what is in it.
Few people few going to jail in one state doesn't make Manusmriti valid. Most states in India have their own language and their own distinct culture.
Saying that most Hindus haven't read the Manusmriti is similar to saying that most Muslims haven't read the Shariah law; because the ignorance of the majority doesn't mean that there isn't sufficient support on the ground for its implementation.
And also, the RSS - the ideologues behind the current Indian govt, have expressly stated their support for the Manusmriti. In their magazine Organiser, RSS expressly stated their opposition to the current Indian constitution because it did not include the laws of Manu from the Manusmriti.
https://sabrangindia.in/how-rss-denigrated-constitution/
> I'm assuming the rest of your comment is written by AI because it sounds like AI, so I'm not going to bother responding to that.
Should I also assume that you're going to just dismiss stuff you do not want to talk about as "written by AI"? Nothing I wrote was AI-generated. I have better stuff to spend AI tokens on than HN comments, of all things.
I also believe that the downvoting people have a bent towards the "orientalist woo", and getting them to put their bias into words and fact/evidenced-based discussion is expecting too much out of smaller minds, but it's not as unfounded as you think it is.
> ancient philosophies that are not held by any practicing Hindu today
You'd be surprised as to how much these ancient philosophies (or whatever translations/strains people ascribe to) still hold fort. I've seen people debating them in Indian management classes, and hold them as closer to fact instead of ancient opinions.
What bad product? I'm not as categorical as OP, but acting like this is a solved problem is weird. LLMs being capable of generating nonsensical stuff isn't a one-off blip on the radar in one product that was quickly patched out, it's nigh unavoidable due to their probabilistic nature, likely until there's another breakthrough in that field. As far as I know, there's no LLM that will universally refuse to try outputting something it doesn't "know" - instead outputting a response that feels correct but is gibberish. Or even one that wouldn't have rare slip-ups even in known territory.
Every now and then someone posts the "X programmers (implied good) hate AI, Y programmers (implied bad) hate AI!" and every time people come out of the woodwork to point out that, no, X programmers can also use AI to take out things they can delegate and focus on stuff that's cool. Case in point, Steve Klabnik, a programmer who nobody can say doesn't care about the craft, is working on a new language primarily with AI: https://rue-lang.dev/
It can be, yeah. I use it sometimes to shim libraries or write one-off scripts. But it's made me disgustingly introspective. Why do I do anything? Where do I draw my lines?
An example. I've been writing a Lisp, and I'm using GNU Readline for text input. Later I found out that Readline can't be built for WebAssembly, and I decided to have Claude write a podunk replacement for it. I now have a bit of code in my Git, attached to my name, that I didn't write
What did I lose by doing that? My goal wasn't "to write a Readline", that's why I was using it in the first place. But my goal also wasn't "to have a working Lisp interpreter" or even like "to know how a Lisp interpreter works". It was a desire to Know More. Surely I'd have learned something useful (in some form) by doing all the minutiae myself. Or would I have learned more by doing none of it and printing out the SBCL source to read over coffee?
Sorry, I ended up rambling. I don't have any answers. I think I'm just butthurt by the "X, Y" sort of comments you mentioned and the solution is (as always) to touch grass
In practice we've been doing setting the threshold of what we care about for a long time already, with firmware, operating systems, libraries, etc. You can always go one level deeper if you want more. Did you want to know how readline works? What about terminal control characters? What about pty? What about the input? The keyboard interface? HID? Device drivers? USB? Packet transmission? Serial interfaces? Electrical connections? Signal integrity?
LLM code provides just another type of available abstraction where we can stop in learning, but not really something entirely new.
Yep, that's why very accomplished, widely regarded developers like Mitchell Hashimoto and Antirez use them. They need to make programming more challenging to keep it fun.
Sure, the technology that real people in your life, including most "normies" who only use tech to get stuff done, are using ChatGPT, but it's not "inevitable".
Everyone who runs a Google search and doesn't read past the Gemini result uses an LLM. That's easily a majority without even getting into other products.
Do you have any proof for that? ChatGPT has a DAU in the ~100m range as of last reporting. Even considering it's a global audience, that's almost a third of the US population.
Googling average Federal worker income in DC, every number I came up with was the above the average for DC, and DC is higher than every other state/territory.
I find nothing supporting your assertion but plenty opposing it. Feds are not only pulling it up, but the biggest group of people doing so.
One thing to remember is that federal workers tend to be older because most agencies have been encouraged to hire contractors for decades. That skews averages up towards the mid-career managers, which will seem high if you compare it to the entire job market but if you only compare them with similar private sector employees who have comparable experience and skills they’re underpaid.
Yeah, it's marginally above average for DC, but that doesn't mean they're "raking it in". The average (which is a bad metric for income) is dragged up by the wealthy in DC balancing out the poor in DC, not hordes of Federal Workers (most of whom live outside DC in Maryland/Virginia, FWIW) making $120k.
What number do you have for median federal worker income in DC then? The median representing the 'hordes' were making $120+k from what I saw, not just the average.
Okay, cite your source for that. ZipRecruiter says the median federal income is $125k, with other sources saying the average is $130k. I don't see any source saying they're making way more than that.
I grew up in South India and spent a lot of my adulthood in the North, and I don't think the South is much better. It's different in many ways, which makes some people think it's better, but it's just as corrupt and messed up.
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