jlawson

36 ms·

361.
by jlawson 6y ago
Not applicable because no attempt was made to "discredit an opponent's position". GP is clearly not saying that "... therefore, Chinese oppression is okay." My takeaway would be that we have work to do with China, a
362.
by jlawson 6y ago
The other way is to just keep criminals in prison until they age enough that their hormones change and they no longer feel the urge to violence. The good thing about this is that it works very consistently and predictably. If he's in p
363.
by jlawson 6y ago
How sure are you that this wasn't a practiced sob story designed to extract money from passerby? I've heard many such stories just like this. Criminal beggars will A/B test and refine their story over years to optimize result
364.
by jlawson 6y ago
MP5s are modern high-quality weapons. They'd need MP5s in case a group of terrorists attacked the checkpoint, or got caught going through the checkpoint and decided on plan B (just kill as many people in the airport as possible). They
365.
by jlawson 6y ago
Think of it as a Maslow's hierarchy of needs-like thing. You take care of the lower tiers before worrying about the upper ones. The lower tier is that things work. Food gets grown, things get built, medicine gets done - and it's a
366.
by jlawson 6y ago
YouTube isn't a 'community' any more than the roads we all travel on. There is no viable alternative to YouTube/Google. There is no way to escape its influence. And being banned from it can ruin you (depending on how you
367.
by jlawson 7y ago
I hope you'll consider changing your media diet, because your current selection is filling you with irrational racist fear. That's not how the real world is. Consider lolc's comment below: "I once got lost in typical U.S
368.
by jlawson 7y ago
The last 150 years have absolutely seen huge increases in leisure time. Notice that in the Bible, there is only one day of Sabbath, the rest of the week is work. A 6.5 day work week was standard for millennia. This idea of a relaxed bucolic
369.
by jlawson 7y ago
It's a list of old cities. Of course it's not going to mention a people who didn't have cities. It doesn't mention stone age European or Asian nomads either. I'm also confused at your 14,000 years comment... this is
370.
by jlawson 7y ago
I guess it just doesn't check out with me. I've been around poor people. I've lived with them. I'm sure some of them are working constantly (probably more the ones with kids, which they shouldn't have had in the fir
371.
by jlawson 7y ago
>you're going to die homeless next month Help me understand how someone could believe something along these lines for more-or-less their entire life. The fact is that poor people live long lives of many decades; they observe others
372.
by jlawson 7y ago
Definitely true. We could compare it to the food industry (from production to retail including restaurants). Its ideal purpose is to provide people with nourishing, healthy, enjoyable food. But its actual incentive is to give people the foo
373.
by jlawson 7y ago
No, it originated in Veracruz, Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
374.
by jlawson 7y ago
The tiles are extremely low-density, so their heat dissipates quickly because they don't hold much of it. So the corners of the tiles become cool within a few seconds, even though the material inside just a centimeter away is at thousa
375.
by jlawson 7y ago
Bill called this years ago. He's also incidentally done more to save lives from disease than possibly any other living human, having prevented millions of deaths by malaria and other illnesses purely because he wanted to. There is lots
376.
by jlawson 7y ago
This notion is dangerously pro-totalitarian. Government=the people who have the power to kill other people and get away with it. No more, no less.
377.
by jlawson 7y ago
Being fair, efficient allocation of capital is important. it creates wealth, which improves human life. There are definitely lots of bulshit jobs out there, but I wouldn't call quants among the highest tier in terms of waste of human t
378.
by jlawson 7y ago
What word? In normal discourse everyone knows you're talking about long term policies so unsustainable equals impossible.
379.
by jlawson 7y ago
Is it made clear what the rich father does for work? We have no idea how great his contribution to society could be. He could be more intelligent and productive than the poor family. Just because some people deceive you (in your off time) d
380.
by jlawson 7y ago
>going out of your way to rail against others' sensitivities (political incorrectness) helps nobody. It helps the people who are being bullied or silenced, with those sensitivities used as a justification. Typically those sensitivit
381.
by jlawson 7y ago
There's a video of Google's first all-hands meeting after the election. It's like a funeral. Even the concept that someone could want Trump elected for a decent reason is utterly ignored. This includes and is led by the most
382.
by jlawson 7y ago
Yes. For a visual example, look at John Malkovich's character in the film version of Of Mice and Men. He's mentally retarded. But people tell him - "carry these bags over there". And he does it, and he's useful. The
383.
by jlawson 7y ago
No, there's an understanding that nobody works 'purely for the public good' because we have no selfless angels that we can assign to run the government. Since we only have selfish humans, they'll always work for their ow
384.
by jlawson 7y ago
The problem is that the old jobs didn't require high IQ but the new jobs increasingly do. In the old days even the dumbest man could carry grain from one place to another or push a plow. Even the dumbest woman could churn butter or mil
385.
by jlawson 7y ago
>They lost the fight and none of the evils they claimed came to pass. You sure about that? Christian bakers being hounded for years because they don't want to make a cake which artistically expresses support for gay marriage. It&#x2
386.
by jlawson 7y ago
>how do we ensure machine learning is trained and verified in ways that don't encode bias Or, more commonly, people work to ensure their machine learning is trained and limited to not specifically notice any patterns of fact that wo
387.
by jlawson 7y ago
Eyes are just better at distinguishing similar dark colors against each other compared to cameras. Only the most expensive, massive and heavy cameras (costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, generally) can compete with eyes in this respec
388.
by jlawson 7y ago
Saving money, even from a salary job, gives you the breathing room you need to take economic opportunities. For example, if you save a year of expenses you can start a software business without external capital or connections. Most of the p
389.
by jlawson 7y ago
Not sure why you're so optimistic to be honest. In our world, human population groups evolved in isolation for one hundred thousand years[0]. And at least as measured, the difference between the lowest and highest IQ groups is about 35
390.
by jlawson 7y ago
Results in either direction will make some people angry, but the power differential in terms of who will actually punish dissenters is obvious. One of those sides gets you fired for arguing it respectfully in good faith (e.g. Damore) and th

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