blix

19 ms·

151.
by blix 5y ago
"Left" and "Liberal" are distinct political ideologies which happened to both oppose monarchies at one point in time. Their proposed solutions even then were quite different. Liberalism ostensibly values things such as p
152.
by blix 5y ago
This is a very interesting project! I love maplotlib but sometimes getting it to do what I want is an absolute chore. I may give this a shot with some of my next figures.
153.
by blix 5y ago
It sounds to me that you are arguing that consciousness fundementally doesn't exist; what we think of consciousness is an emergent property of fundementally determinable physical rules. If this is the case why are you arguing on HN? Is
154.
by blix 5y ago
I'd argue there is more evidence for the lab leak theory than either aliens or reptilians; it's a tremendously low bar. There is not even flimsy circumstantial evidence for aliens, yet many people believe. Yes knowingly abandoning
155.
by blix 5y ago
Depends on which real scientists you are talking about. I've worked with many "real scientists" who will consider possiblity unless they see conclusive evidence against it. On the frontiers, there is very little conclusive ev
156.
by blix 5y ago
One problem with reading Epicurus is that there is not so much surviving Epicurus to read. The second-hand story from Lucretius is about as good as you can get.
157.
by blix 5y ago
A young black man in the 2nd perctile of income has the same chance of being incarcerated as a young white man in the 65th. The difference between the 1st percentile and 99th percentile young white men is smaller than between 80th percentil
158.
by blix 5y ago
"Solely" is a thought experiment, just to highlight the importance of that question. It's a tough sell because statistics don't back it up; there are other significant factors at play. There are certainly some biases aga
159.
by blix 5y ago
Even if you accept that differences are solely economic (this a very tough sell for raical inequality imo, it's far from fully explained by economics), that leaves you with the question of why are black people disproportionately impov
160.
by blix 5y ago
It's getting into the weeds a little, but there are also likely differences between local vanquished populations, immigrants and their descendants who arrive voluntarily by air/sea, those who arrive voluntarily by land and those w
161.
by blix 5y ago
"Foreign born" is really not the best judge of diversity in this context imo. I would instead look at the fraction of population that has European ancestry. I have not seen many statistics linking foreign-born residents to higher
162.
by blix 5y ago
There are a few very significant cultural/economic differences between the USA and Canada/Austrial/NZ. The biggest one is that only the USA has a legacy of slavery. The USA has much higher population density as well. The USA
163.
by blix 5y ago
From a purely observation perspective, pornography consumption has increased dramatically at the same time as falling fertility. Even if a mechanism isn't obvious, it at least seems like there is a possibility of a connection. Studies
164.
by blix 5y ago
There do exist materials for which hyrdogen embrittlement is 'solved,' but they are far too expensive to build 2M miles of pipe. Transportation at scale is a difficult challenge, and an active goal of a lot of metallurgy research.
165.
by blix 5y ago
There are 50k miles of natural gas pipeline in my state alone. The US as a whole has 2M miles. Somtimes problems become a bigger as you scale. The main issue is hydrogen embrittlement; where steel spontaneously weakens and fractures in the
166.
by blix 5y ago
Nuclear could be cheaper; its high cost is probably more regulatory than instrinsic. There is an obvious tradeoff here, but if you look at the renewable/clean energy programs in many first world countries, the primary trend seems to be
167.
by blix 5y ago
Germany's renewables are made ~30% up of burning hydrocarbons, which allows them to sneakily work around the baseload problems of wind and solar.
168.
by blix 5y ago
Diamond's band gap is 5.5eV; it's not too hard to be more conductive. Based on their expeerimental procedure controlling band gap carefully would be pretty difficult. Graphene-based materials probably represent a better path forwa
169.
by blix 5y ago
It is probably very brittle. Diamond is a brittle material and this is basically a 'disordered' diamond. It is quite unlikely that any mechanisms of ductile deformation would be active in this material.
170.
by blix 5y ago
> Some things can only be saved with insecticide So you can say, with absolute confidence, that no other conceivable solution could ever have been effective? I don't know if I'm that confident about anything. I don't agree
171.
by blix 5y ago
Human activity currently puts about a million species at risk of extinction [1]. I don't feel picking a few, coincidentally aesthetically pleasing species as winners really moves the needle in terms of the health of the global ecosyste
172.
by blix 5y ago
I don't really feel that maintaining the bird population above the plutonium and chemical weapons landfill really moves the needle on the global ecosystem either way. This is a vanity project. If they were serious about the global ecos
173.
by blix 5y ago
There's some evidence that increased padding leads to increased impact force in a wide range of sports, from boxing to running, that have a padded person initiating impact. Anecdotally, this is well known among hockey players and there
174.
by blix 5y ago
But Cottage-core is in the aesthetic section, not the pessimist section. I also know quite a few people with this general perspective and I don't think any of them would use that label. (To reference another comment; this seems like a
175.
by blix 5y ago
It took over a century for the median wage in Great Britain to return to pre-industrial levels after the first industrial revolution. > reduce the amount of labor required to do a task... leading to wages increasing. I'm not aware
176.
by blix 5y ago
The changes in productivity due to computers, robotics etc. are probably closer in economic impact to the first industrial revolution than the second. The second industrial revolution increased demand for labor, raising wages. The first vas
177.
by blix 5y ago
Degrowth has happened many times before in human history, including last year. Almost no one wanted it but it still happened. As far as I know, total abandonment of free markets has not ever happened, despite many people saying they want it
178.
by blix 5y ago
Degrowth is probably more likely than humans deciding overnight to stop optimizing for profit and short-term growth. It just might be unintended. I'm not sure why we should seek to maximize the exploitation of the planet to optimize fo
179.
by blix 5y ago
> Virtual desktops depend on monitors Why is this a negative? This is actually one of the largest pain points for me in switching from Windows/Mac to Linux.
180.
by blix 5y ago
The USGOV has bombed it's own citizens before, but it probably wouldn't go over as well in the age of twitter as in the past.

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