carbonguy

7 ms·

31.
by carbonguy 3y ago
Almost certainly: improving the ease/consistency of producing this stuff.
32.
by carbonguy 3y ago
IANA physicist, so grain of salt etc. but yes, I agree with your assessment - even if not as impressive as we're all hoping, at the least we have a very promising new vein of superconductor research to mine (as it were). In other words
33.
by carbonguy 3y ago
Having read the essay, I'll take a crack at a causal hypothesis: "geniuses" in the sense that the author seems to be using the term[1] cluster in periods and settings where: 1) their societies were "recently" expose
34.
by carbonguy 3y ago
Extremely high-quality work here - I spend (what I think is) a significant amount of time trying to understand systems, in general and in detail, and this feels on first reading like something I'll be referring to repeatedly in future.
35.
by carbonguy 3y ago
After reading this, I'm also reminded of (among other things) one of the points that Paul Graham made in "Lies We Tell Kids"[1]: > You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing thi
36.
by carbonguy 4y ago
Perhaps a bit late to the thread here, but I have to put in my $0.02 for "The Way Things Work" (and its sequels): https://www.alibris.com/Way-Things-Work-David-Macaulay/book/... For the unfamiliar - the
37.
by carbonguy 4y ago
> Are you not interested in ensuring that the answer or solution is based on the most authoritative information that exists, the source material on which all regurgitations are based? Not OP, but I'll answer: No, I am almost never i
38.
by carbonguy 4y ago
> I don’t like the phrase “normal reward behaviors” in this article... Maybe these responses are adaptive and provide a fitness advantage under historically normal conditions even if they appear maladaptive in the current environment. Ag
39.
by carbonguy 4y ago
I gotta say, it's hard to know how much of a hurdle has been cleared here when this project seems to be absolutely nothing but hurdles to clear. Normally I would guess that getting this report approved would be a big deal in that const
40.
by carbonguy 4y ago
While land and resource availability are definitely reasonable concerns in any discussion about, say, shifting humanity's primary energy source to direct solar (lots of panels means lots of factories to build them and lots of land to p
41.
by carbonguy 4y ago
> Kerosene makes aviation viable because it has a high energy return on investment and is readily available because it is produced by fractional distillation that would occur regardless. Kerosene (and liquid petroleum-derived fuel genera
42.
by carbonguy 4y ago
Presumably that it costs more energy to produce hydrogen than you get back when you use it as a fuel, which is strictly true for all fuels; however, with fossil fuels, the energy cost of production has mostly been "paid" already.
43.
by carbonguy 4y ago
The hypothesis described in this article sounds remarkably similar to one advanced by Günter Wächtershäuser back in 1988 [1], the key concepts being that a) "metabolism" preceded and eventually gave rise to life and b) arose in a
44.
by carbonguy 4y ago
> the only advantage would be temporal storage. This is not an insignificant advantage, to be fair. However, I agree that using electrolytic hydrogen as a Fischer-Tropsch or Sabatier feedstock is the way to go.
45.
by carbonguy 4y ago
> I will be[t] $1000 immediately that kid will do well without knowing a single other thing about that family or situation. I'd take the other side of that bet; in my experience, a parent who still feels the need to take on their ad
46.
by carbonguy 4y ago
Historically, because it hindered the ability of independent movie productions to get access to audiences: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-cour...
47.
by carbonguy 4y ago
Almost certainly referring to this technique: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Temporarily+Repair+a+Lost+Cause...
48.
by carbonguy 4y ago
I can't recall the last time I threw away a computer. Either I've repurposed or fixed my devices over the years, as you have. A few examples: - When my partner replaced their desktop, I rebuilt the old one into a NAS. I had to get
49.
by carbonguy 4y ago
> Is it true that any community that grows big enough, gets ruined? Well, you know what they say - nothing lasts forever. But, glibness aside: I think the answer is yes, ultimately. But I don't think that it is bigness per se that d
50.
by carbonguy 5y ago
Not so much a fan of white noise either, but I like brown noise so much I wrote my own generator: https://justbrownnoise.com
51.
by carbonguy 5y ago
You may be interested in Railroads Online: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1696810/RAILROADS_Online/ It leans less to the "model railroad" side of things and more towards the "Railroad Tycoo
52.
by carbonguy 5y ago
I'm not the parent commenter, but I studied biochemistry and find abiogenesis to be a particularly fascinating topic, so I'll take a crack at answering your questions: > How far down does this apply? E.g., do amino acids come b
53.
by carbonguy 5y ago
> The human body and the ant colony are units of reproduction; an individual ant, like an individual cell, cannot reproduce. Only the colony or the human can do that. I honestly don't know if you're trying to be rhetorical here
54.
by carbonguy 5y ago
From the abstract: > We find tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment. Our results therefor
55.
by carbonguy 5y ago
Reading the abstract for the paper (thanks to skybrian for providing the link) it seems that the phrase "anti-aging vaccine" is a gross exaggeration in this context rather than the science itself being flawed. Broadly, the abstrac
56.
by carbonguy 5y ago
> I didn't say that waiting for western countries to decline to 5% of their populations was solution. I suppose not, though what you say later in this comment is remarkably close: > Most of the highest consuming countries have na
57.
by carbonguy 5y ago
The point is probably that, if you believe the biosphere is in crisis NOW, then waiting hundreds of years for human populations to decline is not a solution. There's an odd disconnect in the comments you've been making where you i
58.
by carbonguy 5y ago
> _My_ world view deems no person "excess". So we don't have "too many" people? The world is not OVERpopulated? Because excess means "too many" or "more than needed," so if you're saying
59.
by carbonguy 5y ago
I suspect part of the reason people have a strong response to your suggestion is that it's patently impractical, and thus easy to pick apart. To offer one small critique: you suggest that we first need "people to migrate from Eart
60.
by carbonguy 5y ago
> Generally I think I change my mind if new (reliable and significant) facts come in. I think most people feel this way - but it's the very notions of "reliability" and "significance," and how personal they are,

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