Privilege endures. The lucky player gets a good roll against the odds, the privileged player casts loaded dice. You can be privileged because you were once lucky (e.g. you were born to parents who bequeathed their…
This is probably a bit unhinged but sometimes I will talk to an AI about my interpersonal problems as if I am the other party. I feel that this can be helpful for better understanding the other person, mainly because I…
Ruminant meat production is estimated to release 62 grams of CO2-Ceq per gram of protein raised. Pork: 10 grams, legumes: 0.25 [1] I think maybe beef would be more expensive, in a more-just world; Though of course I…
I don't know anything about Google's architecture but I would guess that the average Gemini request per search query is < 1, surely there's a lot of caching that can be done and a lot of money to be saved by doing so.
Yes, in my interpretation, though not in isolation. > It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and…
You originally expressed surprise that skeptics hold this book in high regard. I just find your surprise a bit difficult to understand. If, on the whole, the work advocates for skepticism (among other things), wouldn't…
I read those Sagan quotes as a criticism of capital "S" Skeptics, those for whom skepticism is an identity perhaps more than it is a means to an end. I feel that Sagan's ultimate goal is to foster skepticism (or at…
Just reacting to the executive summary: where are the tradeoffs? The port decreased memory usage on the client significantly, by how much did the server's burden increase? How have their hosting costs changed now that…
> I'd love to collect on this debt somehow when you're proven wrong in our lifetimes. Sorry, this is a thread on an internet forum, I'm afraid I don't owe you anything. If you want to engage with the actual points I've…
First, "conspiracies can't be true" was definitely not the point. You're right, conspiracies happen, governments do keep secrets! The point was: if a conspiracy theory with poor evidence were to be a reasonable…
Sorry, dumb thing to write. That's not at all Occam's razor is and I clearly need to get educated.
The person you're replying to wasn't the one who invoked what you call "partisan thought short circuiting," (which, I have to say, reads a lot like parody). It was me. Occam's razor is not at all about "what I prefer"…
> the correct scenario is wide declassification It sounds to me like you and I see the same expansive hole where the evidence should be. My preference would be to say "show me a claim without a hole or stop wasting my…
Before we had the instruments to observe them directly we could theorize about the existence of bacteria because we could indirectly observe them through their effects on our biology and even their macroscopic effects…
> You can think they [...] aren't credible I think I'd pick this one as being the simplest and most likely explanation if my other options are "psy-op[s] with vague parameters" and non-human intelligences sharing the…
> Are you tired of being required to run `sudo apt update` just before `sudo apt upgrade` or `sudo apt install $PACKAGE`? Is `sudo apt upgrade --update` really that big of a QOL improvement over `sudo apt update && sudo…
I understand that this meant to be a cautionary tale more than a formal argument, but I wish the author wouldn't use "will" in place of "could" or "might" when presenting this extrapolation. Frankly I think software…
You can get nose hard too! https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeymoon_rhinitis
Personally I like my programs to be as performant as is reasonable, not just as is necessary. Rust's low-cost abstractions strike the right balance for me where I feel like I'm getting pretty solid ergonomics (most of…
I don't fundamentally disagree but I feel there's a selection bias at work here. I'm not an economist, but: maybe the things that could have a market bolstering effect are - by nature - harder to identify because they…
> software developers nowadays fall mostly in the top 1-2%[1] > [1] Beware of estimates of the “average income of the top 1%.” That average includes all the richest people in the world. You only need to earn the very…
> Most people have the common sense to avoid using the stuff without very good reason I agree that most (not all) people have the common sense to avoid the stuff most of the time. I think things would get dangerous if…
I totally believe that treatment should be the focus for drug users; the only focus, even. What I'm having trouble believing is that convenient access to drugs would not result in net-harms that are worse than those…
When I bought weed as a teen, I bought from all kinds of characters, but meth and opiates were never on the menu for me.
At least in my circles I'd have a much harder time getting access to meth or heroin than I would a product that can be bought from a special store. I imagine there are many individuals like me, but I'm not sure, which…
Privilege endures. The lucky player gets a good roll against the odds, the privileged player casts loaded dice. You can be privileged because you were once lucky (e.g. you were born to parents who bequeathed their…
This is probably a bit unhinged but sometimes I will talk to an AI about my interpersonal problems as if I am the other party. I feel that this can be helpful for better understanding the other person, mainly because I…
Ruminant meat production is estimated to release 62 grams of CO2-Ceq per gram of protein raised. Pork: 10 grams, legumes: 0.25 [1] I think maybe beef would be more expensive, in a more-just world; Though of course I…
I don't know anything about Google's architecture but I would guess that the average Gemini request per search query is < 1, surely there's a lot of caching that can be done and a lot of money to be saved by doing so.
Yes, in my interpretation, though not in isolation. > It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and…
You originally expressed surprise that skeptics hold this book in high regard. I just find your surprise a bit difficult to understand. If, on the whole, the work advocates for skepticism (among other things), wouldn't…
I read those Sagan quotes as a criticism of capital "S" Skeptics, those for whom skepticism is an identity perhaps more than it is a means to an end. I feel that Sagan's ultimate goal is to foster skepticism (or at…
Just reacting to the executive summary: where are the tradeoffs? The port decreased memory usage on the client significantly, by how much did the server's burden increase? How have their hosting costs changed now that…
> I'd love to collect on this debt somehow when you're proven wrong in our lifetimes. Sorry, this is a thread on an internet forum, I'm afraid I don't owe you anything. If you want to engage with the actual points I've…
First, "conspiracies can't be true" was definitely not the point. You're right, conspiracies happen, governments do keep secrets! The point was: if a conspiracy theory with poor evidence were to be a reasonable…
Sorry, dumb thing to write. That's not at all Occam's razor is and I clearly need to get educated.
The person you're replying to wasn't the one who invoked what you call "partisan thought short circuiting," (which, I have to say, reads a lot like parody). It was me. Occam's razor is not at all about "what I prefer"…
> the correct scenario is wide declassification It sounds to me like you and I see the same expansive hole where the evidence should be. My preference would be to say "show me a claim without a hole or stop wasting my…
Before we had the instruments to observe them directly we could theorize about the existence of bacteria because we could indirectly observe them through their effects on our biology and even their macroscopic effects…
> You can think they [...] aren't credible I think I'd pick this one as being the simplest and most likely explanation if my other options are "psy-op[s] with vague parameters" and non-human intelligences sharing the…
> Are you tired of being required to run `sudo apt update` just before `sudo apt upgrade` or `sudo apt install $PACKAGE`? Is `sudo apt upgrade --update` really that big of a QOL improvement over `sudo apt update && sudo…
I understand that this meant to be a cautionary tale more than a formal argument, but I wish the author wouldn't use "will" in place of "could" or "might" when presenting this extrapolation. Frankly I think software…
You can get nose hard too! https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeymoon_rhinitis
Personally I like my programs to be as performant as is reasonable, not just as is necessary. Rust's low-cost abstractions strike the right balance for me where I feel like I'm getting pretty solid ergonomics (most of…
I don't fundamentally disagree but I feel there's a selection bias at work here. I'm not an economist, but: maybe the things that could have a market bolstering effect are - by nature - harder to identify because they…
> software developers nowadays fall mostly in the top 1-2%[1] > [1] Beware of estimates of the “average income of the top 1%.” That average includes all the richest people in the world. You only need to earn the very…
> Most people have the common sense to avoid using the stuff without very good reason I agree that most (not all) people have the common sense to avoid the stuff most of the time. I think things would get dangerous if…
I totally believe that treatment should be the focus for drug users; the only focus, even. What I'm having trouble believing is that convenient access to drugs would not result in net-harms that are worse than those…
When I bought weed as a teen, I bought from all kinds of characters, but meth and opiates were never on the menu for me.
At least in my circles I'd have a much harder time getting access to meth or heroin than I would a product that can be bought from a special store. I imagine there are many individuals like me, but I'm not sure, which…