_Nat_

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301.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
I think I'd understand the concern if a regulatory body within Massachusetts were directly penalizing Exxon without judicial oversight. But since they're taking Exxon to court for the legal system to determine if the case is vali
302.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
> This is [...] a threat to the rule of law. Could you elaborate on this point?
303.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
The last two pages of the complaint [1] list its specific requests in "VIII. REQUEST FOR RELIEF". This includes a request for $5,000 each violation of a consumer-protection-act, recovery of legal fees, and a request for " com
304.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
The complaint [1] is 211 pages long, but it seems to argue that ExxonMobil misled both investors and consumers about climate change. a. Allegedly, investors were wronged by being presented with misleading projections about the company'
305.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
" Check facts " as in investigating tangential issues, or as in fact-checking assumptions? If the latter, then that'd seem very healthy. People can come to all sorts of strange conclusions about topics like politics if they&
306.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
The core argument seems to be that, since scientific analysis isn't a perfect tool, we ought to hedge our bets by also acting based on emotional reasoning. > The time has come to pause the second phase of the scientific revolution —
307.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Does anyone know what sort of " moral compass " Neumann may've been imagining his great-great-granddaughter imposing in 300 years? I mean, that's just a really weird scenario. Even ignoring the implausibility of modern
308.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
I'm not particularly worried about dystopian outcomes like that because I don't see how they'd actually happen. I figure that there're basically two cases: 1. Automation kicks in slowly enough that the government isn&#x2
309.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Most of the comments strike me as negative, like the article's discussing a bad thing. This is weird because the article itself is very positive. From the conclusion: > It is natural to be fearful of the consequences, for it is a l
310.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
This argument seems to pop up with respect to proprietary software, where folks can be reluctant to acquire a dependence on a commercial vendor making acceptable offerings in the future. In more extreme cases, I've seen it as an argume
311.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Yeah, we could make an argument for a hybrid system that provides cameras for human-drivers that might be later repurposed for autonomous-drivers. I dunno how practical that might be, though. I mean, while I agree that mature self-driving
312.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
This seems like one of those things that'd be easier to reason about if the bigger picture weren't about to change (in this case, due to self-driving cars). I mean, if not for self-driving cars, then we could reason that camera
313.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
And: > 1600. Collect payments from customers.
314.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
To clarify, is this meant as a joke of some sort? Just not sure if it's just a satirical thing -- like, " Hah, look at the silly word jumbles my script generated! " -- or if it's meant as a tool for something.
315.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Looking at his biography on Wikipedia, it seems that he: 1. Earned a BS in Physics from Harvard with a near-perfect GPA. 2. Got into a PhD in Physics program. 3. Dropped out of the Physics program to pursue a non-degree-track research progr
316.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
> However, several of the PhDs had forgotten they had one, particularly those that had not subsequently remained in the ivory tower. Hah, yeah, sometimes PhD's don't stress their " Dr. " title to avoid being mistaken
317.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
> i have never (ever) seen someone with an honorary doctorate actually call themselves doctor. You're right that this is abnormal in American academic culture [1]. Apparently German culture would afford him the title " Dr. h.c
318.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
I'm not sure I follow your point. I mean, hypothetically, let's say that a student never attends class, just aimlessly wandering the halls (which I'm skeptical about, but let's go with it). Then even if they somehow gam
319.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Yeah.. prep doesn't seem too effective. That's what they told us at prep school ( heh ). I mean, they basically just said that we ought to ensure that we have sharpened pencils; adequate batteries for our calculator; a good-nigh
320.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
> from hard poverty to not being able to afford tutors and SAT prep courses. I went to a pretty fancy prep school with a lot of rich folks, but I don't think most did any special prep for the SAT. I think we had a class period wher
321.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Pop-science journalism is still neat to observe! The thing's that, as far as I can tell, economic/political journalism seems to be at least as corrupted (intellectually; not talking about moral corruption), where explanations of c
322.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
I thought that we already conclusively ruled out alien life by observing that there aren't huge, galaxy-sized smoke signals, generated from their massive candles to heat their galaxy-sized cottages? I mean, if aliens were out there, t
323.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Is that a misrepresentation? I mean, I'm not familiar with that story, just they linked [this tweet]( https://twitter.com/corbett/status/994012399656042496 ) which says: > My first interaction with RMS was a
324.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
The trillion-dollar coin is so amusing because it's so blatantly disingenuous. I mean, no one's seriously going to treat the coin as actual money, but rather as a symbolic trinket. For example, say someone steals a trillion-dolla
325.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
I'm fuzzy on the particulars, but I think the big thing's that a trillion-dollar coin is a loophole to bypass Congress, allowed because Congress has already authorized the laws that contain the loophole. Bypassing Congress seems t
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by _Nat_ 7y ago
> I think the common understanding is the opposite. That you are better off thinking about the problem 4 hours today and 4 hours tomorrow, than 8 hours today. I think it depends on the problem being solved. If it's a separable probl
327.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
It's always weird to see a study reporting a hypothesis you'd always assumed to have been established as common knowledge. It's exploitable, too. Health concerns aside, it seems like if someone needs to crack some really har
328.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
Apparently it was like [Pig Latin]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin ), where it wasn't really so much "secret" as much as it was a linguistic buffer: > When Nüshu was first discovered by people
329.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
> Interestingly I've seen the question often as "which do you identify as", Self-identification is a weird metric. I mean, I'm pretty sure bigotry's about how others see a person rather than how a person sees th
330.
by _Nat_ 7y ago
> They just revised it a bit and gave it a new name. Asians are a minority but out-score whites. So, if you were responsible for assigning an adversity score: 1. Would you say that Asians should get a lower score (since they tend to do

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