gort

45 ms·

211.
by gort 17y ago
Is this actually physically correct? I was under the impression that "width of an electron" isn't something we have a good value for, if it's a meaningful quantity at all...
212.
by gort 17y ago
I believe this is the paper, for those who can get it: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... And I believe this is a general outline of the experiment as a whole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_e
213.
by gort 17y ago
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15747540/Trial-by-Jury (I'm not sure if this is being distributed legally. It's in a collection of his essays called "A Devil's Chaplain".)
214.
by gort 17y ago
It makes no sense to declare health a human right; not while there are medical conditions that can't be helped. It's like a right not to be struck by lightning. It makes more sense to declare healthcare a human right. Naturally this require
215.
by gort 17y ago
It's not a pet just because it lives in your garden.
216.
by gort 17y ago
These are simplifying assumptions; it's rather like a scientific experiment that aims to control for other factors, in order to distill the experiment down to its essential core.
217.
by gort 17y ago
The "hockey stick" appears to have been replicated, repeatedly. Wikipedia has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comp...
218.
by gort 17y ago
Indeed, I doubt there's much overlap between Protestant theologians and professional biologists.
219.
by gort 17y ago
> lead by really deep thinkers in Protestant beliefs. Thanks, but when we're talking about the defining paradigm of biology, I prefer the views of biologists.
220.
by gort 17y ago
Who ruined it? Certainly not humans, who haven't been genetically engineering anything until recently. So who created these predators / parasites / diseases designed to kill and maim?
221.
by gort 17y ago
Apparently. The first major clue is the presence of iridium (a metal common in asteroids) at exactly the right place in the rocks (the Cretaceous-Tertiary or "KT" boundary, dating to 65 million years ago, which is also when non-avian dinosa
222.
by gort 17y ago
Meh. I'm on the fence on this one: while photoshopped images are speech, they're false speech, which the speaker knows to be false, while the viewer perhaps doesn't. If they do cause psychological problems for girls growing up, that's bad.
223.
by gort 17y ago
"humans were better-suited for survival than t-rexes" A bizarre statement, given that the two never existed at the same time. Yes, it was indeed a meteor that killed almost all the dinosaurs (except a group of theropods that had evolved win
224.
by gort 17y ago
I'm reminded of an Arthur C. Clarke story, "The Last Command", where the letter orders the men to... surrender to the enemy; since deterrence has already failed.
225.
by gort 17y ago
"There's got to be a million synonyms for really stupid people doing really stupid things" It's curious though that some similar words are acceptable. Nobody complains about "lame" or "dumb", even though there are people with those precise
226.
by gort 17y ago
While presence of controls is admirable, it's still reasonable to simply look at countries that implemented a minimum wage and ask, what happened to the unemployment rate?
227.
by gort 17y ago
Unemployment existed before those; and whether minimum wages increase unemployment should be open to empirical study - anyone got any data?
228.
by gort 17y ago
Yes, the weak anthropic principle as originally formulated by Carter is just this: "We must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our exist
229.
by gort 17y ago
I disagree. What I believe is that, if some conceivable universes could support conscious observers, and some couldn't, this is an interesting fact which warrants further discussion. I see 5 possibilities: 1. It was an unlikely fluke. The u
230.
by gort 17y ago
"no matter which universe we could ever observe ourselves in" But you can't just assume that our existence is necessary. We might not have existed at all.
231.
by gort 17y ago
"He then thinks, Wow the chances of me picking up a pebble at random that has this weight and this diameter are tiny" Meh. The difference between anthropic thinking and the pebble example is that, without the universe being the way it is, I
232.
by gort 17y ago
"we are still the only species who have a chance of making it off the planet" For now. Personally, I hope that, if (and only if) we humans do destroy ourselves, enough life remains for something else to evolve and have a shot.
233.
by gort 17y ago
Indeed, but the negative connotations of the name remain.
234.
by gort 17y ago
I sometimes wonder about the names people choose for their projects. A service to make people more anonymous, called iPredator? Even if that's not the correct capitalisation, it still sounds like some service for child molesters.
235.
by gort 17y ago
"the fidelity isn't the same as a CD" At what bitrate? I don't think I can tell the difference by 256...
236.
by gort 17y ago
It's mostly common sense. A sensible guide is: would an article on the same subject, but hosted on a different site, mention Wikipedia?
237.
by gort 17y ago
The story is incorrect. Knuth's comment was not removed because it was uncited. It was removed because Wikipedia has a policy that articles should not mention Wikipedia unless there's a good reason for them to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
238.
by gort 17y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_brain
239.
by gort 17y ago
Aren't those present in every relationship?
240.
by gort 17y ago
Assuming all other agents are rational is normally not rational. Even in the case where all the agents are rational, if they don't all know that, they should still guess above zero. Only if it's common knowledge that everyone will be impl

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