hegemonicon

11 ms·

31.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
32.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Ah, the infamous Hollywood Accounting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting They apparently tried to pull something similar with Peter Jackson and the billions of dollars from LOTR, though Jackson did end up taking them to co
33.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
For 1) That's going to be true of any resource that's used in spaceship construction. If you're building interstellar ships at such a scale that you might conceivably run out of stuff to build them out of, it's a fair assumption that you ha
34.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Indeed. Scott Adams is one of the most frustrating bloggers I know - he frequently makes sound points, but far too often you're blinded by a glaring error he makes in the first sentence or two to ever see them. Skip the first paragraph, and
35.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
The world is a big place - annual lead production is approximately 7 million metric tons. Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/news/lead-uses-that-go-back-...
36.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
For those like me who find it difficult to parse things like this without examples, here's an explanation of how the No-Free-Lunch Theorem applies to evolution (specifically, why it doesn't apply): http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nf
37.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
If I'm reading something, I don't want to be distracted by the fancy text layout and bright shiny colors. I just want clearly presented text with a minimum of complexity. In rare cases special formatting can enhance the effect or help inter
38.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
The millenium bridge was not simply a case of a bridge designed in 2-d instead of 3-d (it would have had to be designed in 3-d to account for wind loading). It was a math error, but it was much more complicated - essentially, the slight sid
39.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
And more recently: http://www.slate.com/id/2235504/
40.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
This is a very hard problem to solve, as the very act of marking something signals "Hey, there's something important here!" The natural curiosity of whoever finds it is likely to override any respect they might have for the warnings of a lo
41.
Why Does The Universe Look The Way It Does?(edge.org)
4 points by hegemonicon 17y ago|0 comments
42.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Malcolm Gladwell has a rather long history of being corrected by experts. See here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point... and here: http://www.dr5.org/judge-posner-on-blink-the-power-of-thinki... Full disclosur
43.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Yup. A list is really a lens for viewing a particular chunk of the world. It's "here are all the things that have this particular characteristic", be it generals in an army or items you want to buy at the store. The characteristic tells you
44.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
It's one thing to say "create something challenging and interesting". But just that by itself won't be enough - it's gotta be something you're really passionate about, otherwise "interesting" won't be enough to carry you through that 9th mo
45.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
What's he not getting? The current method of news distribution, where papers put their content up for free on the web and continue to take punishing losses isn't sustainable. From what I understand, online advertising alone simply won't cov
46.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Probably the same reason everyone else seems to - it runs completely counter to our intuitions about how the world works. As far as I know (and my knowledge of QM can charitably be described as 'nonexistant') if you ignore intuitions and si
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
Needs more explanation on the actual mechanism at work. There is a preponderance of evidence of the instructiveness of failure, and we have a fairly good understanding of the underlying mechanism behind that (the dopamine prediction error s
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
I didn't read the whole thing, so correct this if it's wrong but... He hasn't dropped out at all - he's just found a way to live within the system such that he can take from it without giving back. He benefits enormously from the very syste
49.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
Does anyone know of any estimates of rates of depression say, 75-100-150 years ago? Depression seems to be a disease of civilization, but as far as I know it's not clear if it's rooted in something chemical (as this article suggests) or psy
50.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
I'm sorry you didn't like my blog (though I feel you're a bit uncharitable in your summary), and that you felt I was making some sort of attempt to foist my ideas on you. My moniker is actually derived from the greek word 'hegemonikon' whic
51.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
You have psychological problems. Go see a psychologist.
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
It's easy to discount that when we have the benefit of 400 years of his work being verifiably true. Without that, the fact that he was an alchemist WOULD put a dent in his credibility, and you would be RIGHT in doubting the quality of his w
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
Worth pointing out that busy beavers have the potential to be alot more than just 'interesting'. If you knew what the busy beaver numbers were for a given number of states, it could be used to solve various unsolved mathematical problems. F
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
Just replying to say that anyone who read the original article should go read this - it meticulously lays out why the idea of p-zombies is utterly incoherent.
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
A meta-analysis of 85 years worth of studies on the subject places IQ as the best predictor (conscientiousness comes in 4th) See here: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/selecting-tal...
56.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
It's inherent in a synchronus communication medium like a phone call. With letters and email, you can respond at your leisure, but with a phone call you have to make an instant decision whether to answer it or not. Seeing as people both A)
57.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
It seems like the big players that give away their content for free (Hulu, youtube, most newspapers, etc) seem to be struggling financially whereas the ones charging for it (netflix, itunes music store, WSJ, economist) seem to be doing well
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
This may get voted down as it hasn't gone through anything resembling a review but... My blog. It's the first thing I've ever done not on the school->college->job path that gets set for us when we're young that I've stuck with and d
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by hegemonicon 17y ago
The amount of energy put out by Wi-Fi is absolutely dwarfed by the radio, television, and cell phone EM signals that we are swamped in at all times. And none of them put out enough energy to do anything but raise our temperature an immeasur
60.
by hegemonicon 17y ago
The most famous study confirming this is the one where they give two groups of kids relatively easy math problems. The first group they tell "wow, you must be really smart to complete all those!", the second group they tell "wow, you must h

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