cia_plant

14 ms·

91.
by cia_plant 17y ago
In what sense do poor Americans eat better than European aristocrats from a few centuries ago?
92.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Free-market liberalism has been the dominant ideology for almost 200 years. If it hasn't solved poverty yet, there must be something wrong with the argument that it will inevitably solve poverty.
93.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Isn't it better to have one idea that is insightful and correct, than to have many ideas which are wrong, like most commentators?
94.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I've been ignoring links to coding horror for a long time. I clicked on this one because it seemed to be targeted to people like me, and I wondered if he was showing some self-awareness, or perhaps planning to take the blog in a new directi
95.
by cia_plant 17y ago
end tag is optional for <p> in HTML 4. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/text.html#h-9.3.1
96.
by cia_plant 17y ago
This article, like many other science articles, follows this template: People have long suspected that <extremely general conclusion involving vaguely-defined terms with complex meanings, like 'intelligence', 'love', 'creativity', 'beli
97.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I find this justification downright weird. Yes, a class like 6.001 is an extremely purified and unrealistic view of modern software engineering. But the same could be said of any theoretical subject. The people at the Large Hadron Collider
98.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Isn't that just an assumption? There are other reasons to fume.
99.
by cia_plant 17y ago
"People who fume inside are people who are already pretty sure they're right about everything" How does that follow?
100.
by cia_plant 17y ago
Don't all of these points apply to discussions of, say, "energy healing"? My view of energy healing is that it's obvious bullshit. However, there are a number of very smart people who believe in energy healing, and they have studied energy
101.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I think you're reading more into my argument than is there. For example, I did not say and do not believe that nuclear is worse than the alternatives - it's certainly better than coal in almost every way. I just don't like it when people pr
102.
by cia_plant 17y ago
If it is irrational to fear a nuclear catastrophe, then why are the nuclear companies indemnified against exactly such a catastrophe by the Price-Anderson act? The industry has repeatedly lobbied for this act, so it seems that they are also
103.
by cia_plant 17y ago
I don't think you're right that the people behind Java didn't understand languages. There are actually a lot of things which Java gets right. For instance, Java's namespacing is very good. Unfortunately, being smart and knowledgeable isn't
104.
by cia_plant 17y ago
We have been given the "other side of the story" repeatedly over the last decade. First the "other side of the story" was that many people did not think global warming was happening. Then, that many people did not think it was man-made: the
105.
by cia_plant 18y ago
I haven't really found a good way to support myself while doing what I want, yet. Right now I live frugally and work part-time as a programmer. One reason that I hang out at news.yc is that I'm hoping to turn some of my ideas into some sort
106.
by cia_plant 18y ago
The obvious answer is that a good science student can make 6 figures today as a programmer or in finance, or they can go to grad school and work harder for much less money. My own reasons are actually different. I'm not particularly interes
107.
by cia_plant 18y ago
I went to MIT. At the time I was sure that it was what I wanted - I felt very ready to "take a drink from the firehose" or whatever. Since actually going there, my feelings about college have changed a lot. It seems to me that I have a whol
108.
by cia_plant 18y ago
Among historians, "revisionism" is not a loaded word - it just means a challenge to the common theories about a time period. The term is tarnished outside the field because the most visible revisionists are simply denying well-documented hi
109.
by cia_plant 18y ago
Yeah, I don't think it's exactly wrong to say that greed and stupidity caused the crisis, but it seems like a category error. If a farmer kept planting crops in September, and they died during the winter, and he said that they died because
110.
by cia_plant 18y ago
I don't think the terminology is very much standardized. Our system is not "pure" capitalism, and perhaps it would be better to call it a mixed economy. By using the word capitalism, I mainly meant to contrast it with radically different sy
111.
by cia_plant 18y ago
It is odd to me that so many people are looking for some kind of abnormality which "caused" the crisis. Capitalism has had cyclical crises since its inception 300 years ago, so I would say that the crisis was not "caused" by either greed or
112.
by cia_plant 18y ago
The company in question does not cash checks; it makes high-interest, short-term loans. A valid checking account is actually a requirement to receive such a loan. http://www.cashnetusa.com/how-it-works.html I agree that payday lending pro
113.
by cia_plant 18y ago
But he ran a payday loan business. If you agree with me that this is an immoral business model, then how can you see the person who knowingly runs such a business as anything but immoral?
114.
by cia_plant 18y ago
I'm puzzled how you can claim that he has high ethical standards when he ran a business whose entire model is to rip off poor people.
115.
by cia_plant 18y ago
"quality women are pretty much universally opposed to casual sex and would look down upon it if I racked up a number when young, so that sort of behavior would limit my options in the long term." Where do you live, Utah? I don't know any wo
116.
by cia_plant 18y ago
Does anyone have advice for what to do if you are in Boston? Is it realistic to look for early-stage / seed funding, a la YCombinator, or do I need to get further on my own before seeking funding? Not that I'm opposed to moving to Californi
117.
by cia_plant 18y ago
Haven't we just rediscovered that "money management" is basically pseudoscience? These are the kinds of people who promise to beat the market using their special models or skills. On average they fail. When they seem to be doing well for a
118.
by cia_plant 18y ago
The underlying assumption of this blog post is that only experts should ever discuss technically complex topics. I disagree strongly. The common notion is that someone who hasn't read 1000 books about the conventional academic wisdom can't
119.
by cia_plant 18y ago
That's not "simple" at all. Coercion has always been part of human relations. People have conflicting interests, and when these rise to the level of open conflict, there needs to be some sort of coercive solution. What libertarians propose
120.
by cia_plant 18y ago
Rich people throughout the world, and throughout history, have had good housing, leisure time, and a sense of security. They've had the opportunity to socialize with other successful people, a group which includes politicians, entertainers,

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