You are dead right. Agnosticism is much closer to a "null hypothesis" than atheism, yet many atheists like to present their view as "more scientific".

A really rigorous scientific examination pretty quickly comes to the conclusion that the existence of deities (in the spiritual, moral, and experiential ways that most deities are defined) is essentially impossible to prove or disprove with scientific examination of the material world.

In my own opinion it's because faith and religion are mostly about questions of meaning and purpose rather than physical assertions. One's reaction to the tenets of a religion are also experiential - if those tenets provide meaning clarity and improvement in one's being they make sense.

The other aspect of agnosticism is that I find attractive is a kind of intellectual humility. As a single, limited human being, who I am to say what is absolutely true in the metaphysical planes of existence?

I think his age is a big factor even without dementia.

Many older people I've seen have a much stronger "wow, look at this reaction" to new technology- they still see advances as minor miracles when myself and others see them as incremental progress.

I also think a lot of people in that generation have spent less time with psychology and are less prone to being aware of their own emotional and cognitive reactions. This means they don't spend much time reflecting on whether that "wow" reaction is a factual assessment or just an emotional reaction.

And of course the LLM vendors love having people debate this stuff, it keeps the "AI is magic" aura alive even when so much of what "AI" is making seems to be slop.

You donâ(TM)t need to pay Apple anything after youâ(TM)ve acquired the hardware. You donâ(TM)t need to use the Mac Store if you donâ(TM)t want to; apps can be distributed as a download, like before the Mac Store existed.

Does the job. Been doing the job on Macs for decades (since 1992). Sometimes called Text Wrangler (it was the free cut-down version), until BBedit got a free version too. Please support Bare Bones by using BBedit.

And there's always VIM.

BBedit and Beyond Compare are my two must-have utilities on my Macs. Both companies have served Mac users for a long time, great products, great support and none of this bullshit and enshitification like so many recent software companies.

How can you have a speed limit for bicycles? They donâ(TM)t have speedometers!

Cycling 20mph (32 kph) on a normal road bike is easy. Here in the UK, e-bikes require peddling and the assist has to stop at 15.5 mph (25 kph). Anything else is illegal and requires a helmet, insurance, license and the bike has to be registered and have plates fitted.

There is also a problem with illegal e-bikes here, as well as them being used in crimes or causing a nuisance. But the far bigger problem are cars exceeding the speed limit. This is more dangerous.

And then thereâ(TM)s the culture war propagated by the right wing hate-bait media who claim the left are waging a war against cars and cyclists are the root of all evil and need to be banished. Theyâ(TM)re dehumanising cyclists in the eyes of some drivers who respond with aggressive, intimidating and dangerous driving.

Probably contains bugs for things theyâ(TM)re still including in recent versions of Windows.

Sounds like you're referring to the EU, not to Europe.

Since when has the UK not been European? Or was that a joke?

Europe is cheaper hey? Let me introduce you to HS2: budget in 2020 was £98 billion (USD $132B) for 230 km. That's over $570 million per km.

It might be a reality, but that doesnâ(TM)t make it a legitimate excuse as you first stated. Itâ(TM)s bad, lazy parenting.

Bullshit. There are plenty of ways to sit with children in restaurants without resorting to screen time or the children annoying everybody else. I say this as a parent myself. No doubt it starts in the home and every other minute spent with the children: how do you engage with them and how much effort do you put in to helping them stay or entertained. It's called parenting.

It's true, N. American vehicles seem to have misaligned lights a lot more often than European ones. N. America headlights also have a different cut-off pattern (non-existent?), which maybe is partly to light up overhead road signs, whereas European headlights have a very distinctive horizontal cut-off with an up-sweep to light the edge of the road better. This is why, for example, UK drivers put stickers on their headlights when taking their cars to the continent: it covers the up-sweep so it doesn't dazzle on-coming vehicles.

...and the Cybertruck range and launch date, and the Model 2, and the 4680 battery process, and...

Based on Musk's track record, you can pretty much count on this being a lot less than what is promised and a lot later.

I also just don't see the opportunity. I wouldn't call myself all that knowledgeable about WeChat and its ilk, but I think these "super apps" emerged as China's mobile revolution was taking off, meaning that people started out doing banking and ride sharing etc within these apps. In the US, all those services came out separately.

Admittedly the app landscape is fairly cluttered, but I just can't see the path to US consumers suddenly wanting to hail a ride inside of Xwitter. It's not how most Americans learned to hail rides, and the consumer value in having it all inside of Xwitter seems pretty minimal.

Thatâ(TM)s not true. The UK is a G20 country and doesnâ(TM)t have a federal system, let alone a federal government. The UK governmentâ(TM)s Department for Education is only responsible for England; the governments of the other UK nations are responsible for their own education.

I've also noticed that Teslas don't have blind spot protection lights in their wing mirrors. I guess Tesla has invested so much in their other tech that they want the driver's eyes on the in-dash display rather than up at road level physically watching surroundings. When I'm cycling in London, I'm often faster than cars and one of my defensive tricks coming up the inside of a vehicle is to look in the wing mirror to see what they driver's doing in case they're going to make a sudden unsignalled turn, and so I notice these lights.