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Can't they just keep scraping these repositories for new data anyway? Or has that changed?


that's not much of a defense

"Another problem with the claim that Chomsky’s theory of language “is being overturned” (as if it had ever been accepted, which is not true), is that it’s not clear what “Chomsky’s theory of language” refers to. He has proposed a succession of technical theories in syntax, and at the same time has made decades of informal remarks about language being innate, which have changed over the decades, and have never been precise enough to confirm or disconfirm."


There are a bunch of ideas that are more core and strongly supported (language is innate) which you use to explore more tenuous ideas about what the implications are and how they specifically manifest. Linguistics is an extremely nascent field compared to other sciences, Chomsky calls our stage of understanding "pre-Galilean", no one has claimed to have solved the basic questions yet so it isn't surprising that anything other than the core ideas are in constant flux. I haven't seen a good counter argument to the core ideas of universal grammar (or the minimalist program) and to refute an idea you need to actually present a counter-argument not simply say some sub-hypothesis has been refuted in the past so every fundamental idea has been refuted.

See also https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007363

The SciAM article you linked doesn't understand the arguments Chomsky makes when "refuting" them (e.g. they erroneously say that superficial differences between languages show that there is no universal grammar).


I thought I read an article one that some very untouched tribes (ala amazon?) have fundamental different ways of communicating that undercut Chomsky's notions of universal grammer. Which the SciAm article glances on, but doesn't really go into any depth.


That's Piraha and Daniel Everett's work. Even assuming the results are correct (that Piraha doesn't use recursion) that doesn't demonstrate anything relevant. What you want to show is that Piraha people don't have the ability for recursion (i.e. they are an example of people without this innate language faculty), not that they don't apply it. I don't think anyone believes that if you take a Piraha newborn to New York they wouldn't learn English.

Chomsky explains it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Lk79bnUbM&t=1386s or here https://youtu.be/c6MU5zQwtT4?si=A9t8d0oXV4dOLZTe&t=3008


Choosing life over work isn't slacking.


In our short lives, work will probably be the most fulfilling endeavor we undertake, and we should be grateful that there are so many great companies willing to offer jobs to workers like us.


I really can't tell if this a satirical or parodical comment. Bumping right up against: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law


I sure hope this was intended to be sarcastic. I have always found my job interesting and rewarding, but I think most people (myself included) would attribute personal relationships to be a lot more fulfilling.


If your compensation agreement is based on x-hours of work and you deliberately put in less to “choose life” then you are slacking. You agreed to exchange a fixed amount of time for a fixed amount of money and are not delivering on your promise because you are slacking. I wouldn’t call it theft, but it’s definitely slacking.


contract standards at some point in history don't dictate ethics just as laws don't either. it's not as obvious and rule-based as you suggest.

it's also peculiar in my opinion to point out worker laziness without apparent recognition of the worker-employer power dynamic where wage theft vastly outweighs so called time theft dollar to dollar


You can rationalize all you'd like, but you made an agreement under sound mind and choosing to not fulfill it is slacking. It's dishonest. Wage theft or anything else is immaterial to your agreement. You are free to leave at any time and market yourself to another employer if you no longer wish to partner with your current employer. Or, if you feel your agreement is no longer fair or meets your goals, you can speak with your employer about changing the terms of the agreement.


you're atomizing the solution space by saying that workers must negotiate their conditions individually with their employers directly. that's not how this stuff has changed in the past and how we got to where the current status quo is with contracts. you're even repeating union busting talking points that are hardly settled ethics


> Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't.

Not how it happened when going 6 to 5 days. People made it happen. And OP is one of them.


This is widely believed, at least the first part, but not true.

People (trade unionists) made eight-hour workdays happen, but Henry Ford made a five-day workday happen[0]. As I stated, most labor rights came about because of blood, sweat, and tears. Just... not that particular one, oddly enough.

The fact that Ford's five-day work weeks were made up of eight-hour days, for that you can think unions and the hard work of many people! But the shift from six days to five, not so much.

P.S. OP was probably not working age in 1926, as they would need to be to have made the shift happen originally.

0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day...


Yes, the USP of Slack is that you can close it down when you're done working for the day. It does nothing better, or much worse, than any other social media chat application, except it wraps up work in one button press.

Not sure how you could monetize that but hopefully the Slack staff doesn't know either.


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