comicjk

49 ms·

421.
by comicjk 9y ago
I suspect that human ethics transfer much faster memetically than genetically. In which case, their heritability is relatively unimportant. What matters is believability. It seems as though there will be a natural ebb and flow between ethic
422.
by comicjk 9y ago
It's a straight answer to the question. If there's any snark in this chain, it's the quotes on "specialists" in the top-level comment.
423.
by comicjk 9y ago
"Officials at the agency estimate the changes could save tens of thousands of man-hours across the federal government." So, since an employee works around 2000 hours/year, this is something on the order of 10 employees.
424.
by comicjk 9y ago
There are some physical systems (mathematically, "Hamiltonians") which have this "stateless" property. However, if the time/energy uncertainty principle is true, simulating time T in O(1) cannot be possible in gener
425.
by comicjk 9y ago
It's not weird, I'm right there with you. I love this stuff.
426.
by comicjk 9y ago
If the universe simulator can solve iterative problems in O(1), then I question whether our concept of optimization is meaningful enough to it for this discussion to make sense.
427.
by comicjk 9y ago
I dispute whether a wavefunction can influence things without collapsing, but putting that aside... Your example of a polygon with a constant velocity is carefully chosen: that equation has an analytical solution, so you can calculate x(t)
428.
by comicjk 9y ago
See the last sentence of my comment: it's not consistent with experiments. The success of quantum mechanics as a predictive tool comes from acting as if the wavefunction is always present, no matter what aspect of it is measured. There
429.
by comicjk 9y ago
The title of the article is misleading: this "virtual universe" simulates only gravity, which is all that was needed by the astrophysicists who wrote it. If it were simulating complete physics as we observe it, this amount of comp
430.
by comicjk 9y ago
That's not what quantum mechanics really does. The wavefunction, which is the core of a quantum calculation, "runs" all the time whether any part of it is observed or not. A given observable property of the wavefunction may n
431.
by comicjk 9y ago
Yes, it is unsound. Quantum mechanics has features which aren't observable (the imaginary components of the wavefunction, the value of position and velocity at the same time, etc). However, this does not mean less computation, because
432.
by comicjk 9y ago
I don't think the D-Wave article is very good. To pick one choice line, "The term 'Interference' refers to the electrons - which behave as waves inside a quantum waves, interference patterns which give rise to the quantu
433.
by comicjk 9y ago
> Wouldn't it be nice if we could just simulate the behavior of a molecule to predict what useful properties it has? We already do this with classical computers to a significant extent. It requires a lot of approximations, but it wo
434.
by comicjk 9y ago
At some point, the individual losses from planting later become larger than the losses from birds. Then somebody plants, and then they all do. The first farmer to plant loses more to birds than everyone else, but less than he would by delay
435.
by comicjk 9y ago
Energy can't be recycled in that sense. There is a maximum amount of useful work which can be extracted from a given source of energy - this is called the "exergy." Exergy is not conserved. Once all the exergy is gone, it doe
436.
by comicjk 9y ago
An executive picked by sortition is indeed risky. A legislature or jury filled by sortition is workable, though, because of regression to the mean.
437.
by comicjk 9y ago
Some environmentalists are anti-technology types or nihilists, who look forward with pleasure at the idea of humanity suffering for its hubris. The only solution they'll consider is people changing their behavior for moral reasons, whi
438.
by comicjk 9y ago
> Without fundamental technological leaps Sounds like we'd better get working, then? Emissions controls to stimulate private innovation, plus public research grants to help longer-term innovation. We need to set up incentives wherei
439.
by comicjk 9y ago
I didn't mean "what they have" in an exclusive sense. Tropical regions have access to spices and a reason to use them, as you said, so the people get to like them more than people elsewhere. Of course they also have foods tha
440.
by comicjk 9y ago
No one is surprised that people in tropical climates like spicy foods, or that people near the Mediterranean like olive oil while people further north like butter. People's tastes adapt to what they have. That's a great thing abou
441.
by comicjk 9y ago
Very good point. If you're interested, this principle has a catchy name: Chesterton's Fence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
442.
by comicjk 9y ago
Cooking sour liquids in lead vessels makes them sweeter - but not in a way you want. The lead reacts with acetic acid to make lead acetate, "sugar of lead." The Romans used this method to sweeten sour wine. It's the oldest ar
443.
by comicjk 9y ago
That sounds like a "motte and bailey" argument to me. It's common sense that "the good and bad consequences of regulations should be understood." That's a position that's trivially easy to defend. Libertar
444.
by comicjk 9y ago
I think the idea is to replace more-wasteful wealth signaling with less-wasteful. I don't think this is meant to be a part of the economy which everyone partakes of - it's for people who would instead buy yachts and jets. It seems
445.
by comicjk 9y ago
Tariffs on the EU strengthened manufacturing employment in Germany, but many other EU countries don't seem to have much manufacturing and are poorer than Germany, yet still pay those tariffs. That's consistent with the idea that t
446.
by comicjk 9y ago
In the past, diversified land holdings across many countries haven't been a great strategy, because they're too difficult for the foreign owner to hold on to politically and military. Land is expensive to protect.
447.
by comicjk 9y ago
Hanging clothes in direct sunlight is overkill, and probably reduces their useful life due to the UV. All you need is sufficient moving air. I hang mine under the deck or just on racks indoors.
448.
by comicjk 10y ago
Physics simulations. I work in drug design, and my field would be enormously benefited by this. Quantum mechanics calculations are naturally reversible.
449.
by comicjk 10y ago
Prednisone pills are substantially more dangerous than cortisone cream, no? The one time I've taken prednisone, I had pretty severe mood swings, which is just one of a dozen notable side effects.
450.
by comicjk 10y ago
Don't you think high school course grades are pretty well correlated with each other? I don't think it takes language talent to get As in a high school language class, just good study skills and memory, like all the other classes.

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