fasterik

37 ms·

481.
by fasterik 3y ago
This doesn't seem right. Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries. On the other hand, the HN crowd is much more likely to live in dense cities (which are more climate friendly), have access to
482.
by fasterik 3y ago
>You sound like someone about to perform a triple bypass with a butter knife. This style of comment is lazy and simply trying to shut down conversation without actually making an argument. If you have an objection to the comment you&#x
483.
by fasterik 3y ago
>Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. There are a lot of things science doesn't currently tell us. That doesn't mean every possible alternative is equally reasonable. Either cons
484.
by fasterik 3y ago
The worst case is worse, but nuclear disasters are so rare and reactors produce so much power that nuclear is safer than wind in terms of deaths per TWh. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
485.
by fasterik 3y ago
If we're talking about a singularity, it's not pedantic. If you reverse time and go back to the Big Bang, it's not possible to define what happens after you hit the singularity, at least according to current theories. As anot
486.
by fasterik 3y ago
>Even in the distant past, during the period of cosmic inflation that occurred before the Big Bang, that background radiation was present What does "before the Big Bang" mean? Don't space and time break down at the Big B
487.
by fasterik 3y ago
>People often ask me what’s the best language to learn to study software design. I ask them what’s the best instrument to learn to study music theory. Is the goal to learn music theory, or is it to learn to play an instrument? If I wan
488.
by fasterik 3y ago
I doubt this is true if you factor in the positive effects of medical care, safer living conditions, sanitation, etc. that are available in modern developed countries.
489.
by fasterik 3y ago
I have to agree with the other comment about intense cardio. I got into long-distance running last year and it was a big mental shift for me to go from fast to slow running. Before that, I had always approached exercise as if harder is bett
490.
by fasterik 3y ago
Yeah, I'm generally not an early adopter of technology -- I would probably let a few million people try it out before I put my own body in it. The Prestige is excellent. Christopher Nolan has a talent for taking a philosophical concept
491.
by fasterik 3y ago
According to the psychological continuity theory, it shouldn't matter what happens to the original body, as long as the experience is the same. Whether your original body is vaporized or shot, you experience entering the teleporter on
492.
by fasterik 3y ago
Not sure what you mean. Do you mean would it be ethical to kill one of them? In my opinion, once two people exist, it would be unethical to kill either of them.
493.
by fasterik 3y ago
If you don't destroy the original body, then both copies have an equal claim to being "you" right after the teleportation, since both are psychologically continuous with the person who existed moments before. Over time, they
494.
by fasterik 3y ago
>Whatever appears at the other end of the teleporter is not me, I'm dead and my consciousness extinct, so why the tut-tuting? If you think you died when you entered the teletransporter, then you either think bodily continuity or a
495.
by fasterik 3y ago
I suspect this is an area that is part of the essential complexity [1] of programming. Reachability, variable liveness, pointer aliasing, etc. are undecidable problems for arbitrary programs. Also, the control flow graph of most non-trivial
496.
by fasterik 3y ago
That's unfortunate. I'm not a defender of Windows or Microsoft; I think they're terrible. But if you want to make video games or any other software primarily for desktop computers, Windows needs to be a first class citizen.
497.
by fasterik 3y ago
I had a bad first impression when the Zig compiler refused to compile a file with Windows line endings. For all I know it might be an interesting language, but to me that decision indicates a level of pedantry and hostility to non-Linux env
498.
by fasterik 3y ago
I had not heard of Hare. It does look promising. Thanks for the recommendation.
499.
by fasterik 3y ago
Maybe your objection works for a relativist who makes claims like "one ought to tolerate moral practices of other cultures". But I don't think all relativists are making that claim. Some are just rejecting any notion of objec
500.
by fasterik 3y ago
It depends on your beliefs about the status of ethics. Moral realists believe that there are independently true facts about ethics. So for a moral realist, if "X is ethical" is true, then people who believe "X is unethical&qu
501.
by fasterik 3y ago
I generally think that C is the right level of abstraction and provides the right model for thinking about programming. However, I don't actually use C because I can work at the same level in other programming languages. Right now, C++
502.
by fasterik 3y ago
I'm with you until type inference comes into play. For example, I find the proliferation of "auto" in C++ code far uglier than Go's "foo := expression" syntax where most of the time you don't even need to
503.
by fasterik 3y ago
Ethical theory is an interesting subject in its own right. Even if studying it doesn't make you a better person, that doesn't make it useless, any more than studying abstract areas of math or physics is useless. That being said, s
504.
by fasterik 3y ago
What you're saying is exactly what motivated Effective Altruism: most charities are ineffective, and philanthropy should be about saving/improving people's lives, not feel-good causes; we should try to do the most good with o
505.
by fasterik 3y ago
The "triumph of reason" as you describe it came from philosophy. It was the "natural philosophers" who developed the style of critical thinking and rationality that resulted in the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution
506.
by fasterik 3y ago
Carmack has accomplished more in the span of a few years (e.g. 1992-1997) than most people do in a lifetime. Saying that his opinion about productivity is equivalent to a random person's is just a bad faith argument.
507.
by fasterik 3y ago
This seems like an overly cynical take. Malaria nets have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. You can be critical of some areas of EA, but it's hard to deny that organizations like Against Malaria Foundation and GiveWell are doing a
508.
by fasterik 3y ago
He clearly said that his points apply to "knowledge workers with some tactical discretion". He's not talking about productivity in menial jobs.
509.
by fasterik 3y ago
Disagree. Sure, he's not an empirical researcher, but he does have decades of experience being highly productive. I think his opinion holds some weight. He's also clear that he's speaking from personal experience and not maki
510.
by fasterik 3y ago
>This is all fun and games until you burn out Sure. Training for a marathon puts you at risk of injury. That doesn't mean that everyone who runs a marathon has an injury, or that everyone with ambitious running goals should go rel

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