jnicholasp

5 ms·

1.
by jnicholasp 3y ago
Amazing, Germany has radically innovated a way for people to travel throughout the country via a (logistically) complex system requiring multiple stops, transfers, waiting for vehicles to arrive, unload & reload, where transporting larg
2.
by jnicholasp 3y ago
Cities don't use public transport, people do. The public transport system for a given city, as compared to the personal transport choices made by individuals, is Worse Is Better in all the ways I said.
3.
by jnicholasp 3y ago
Public transportation is obviously WIB: one solution "fits" all, monolithic, logistically complex, not amenable to rapid & piecemeal innovation, good enough for basic function but doesn't & can't offer excellent
4.
by jnicholasp 7y ago
Not true in my mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest.
5.
by jnicholasp 7y ago
Anyone riding a motorcycle who is simply blindly counting on other drivers to see them, follow all the rules of the road carefully, and never do anything unexpected, is not going to last long. Everything motorcyclists do has to be done in
6.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
Ideas don't matter (assuming the set of ideas you're choosing among are roughly equal in quality, and that the average quality of the set is well above outright stupidity). Which is to say, ideas matter a lot, but no one who subsc
7.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
Do you expect an alien species that is intelligent enough to create the technology to travel through space will understand math in a way that is at least in principle intelligible to humans? If yes, is it possible that there are also other
8.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
We're obviously not living in a best-of-all-possible-worlds simulation, but that doesn't preclude us either from being in a simulation or from being in one created by thoughtful entities for morally good ends. If you consider that
9.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
I think you forgot to write what should have been paragraph three of your comment, but from context I'm guessing that your proposed effective, ethical response to repeated nonsense is just to change the subject and see who goes with yo
10.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
Any more than it is begging the question to assume that there cannot be anything that is beyond physical explanation? Yes, words are symbols. But when we're talking about consciousness, we're talking about the experience itself, n
11.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
Why are you trying to tell this guy what he should value? He wants to do work that interests and excites him, and he's making the tradeoffs that balance his personal set of values - with, incidentally, far more information than you hav
12.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
This, exactly. I don't understand why these aren't required stock equipment on all cars.
13.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
Birds? Source?
14.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
They were simply commenting that there were a couple people they especially admired, who they think are really decent (i.e., better than average at being decent). It is neither a necessary nor a natural reading to think that means they be
15.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
And in a similar vein, we have only very recently become able to detect (some) objects such as this one, and shortly after we gained the ability to spot things like this, we spotted this one. It at least allows the possibility that events l
16.
by jnicholasp 8y ago
I'm not affiliated with Optina and I don't know specifically what they're doing, but the classic symptom of Alzheimer's is the formation in the brain of amyloid plaques - and it appears to be the case that they also form
17.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
What incentivises individuals to obey the decisions of courts? In the end, again, it's force, as monopolized by the state. If you don't abide by the court's decision, the state will take measures against you: it will impose f
18.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
No, because a symbolic contest is not final in the way that the physical imposition of force is: a country who loses a symbolic contest has limited incentive to abide by the symbolic outcome if they believe they can nevertheless impose th
19.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
Is there any evidence that people who are at high risk for Alzheimer's will benefit from a regular regimen of antioxidants, then?
20.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
How many more successful, country wide, democratic movements would there have been in the history of humanity if there had been a means of communication and coordination as effective as the internet? "Need" is distinct from "
21.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
For one, as kazinator said in the sibling comment, even in the best democracies this is only true of a small percentage of government jobs - there are many powerful agencies and influential staff positions that are not elected and therefore
22.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
The opposite condition also exists: I don't understand how some people can be so paranoid about large corporations, and so trusting of government. They are both merely human organizations with large powers, and subject to corruption. W
23.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
At the very bottom of physics, if we ever reach it with our observations and theories, there will be something that simply is, and is not explained by the interactions of some sub-system. The foundational elements of physics are probably no
24.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
> Lets assume there is some sort of physical process involved You're begging the question. Why is "some sort of physical process" the only hypothesis space you're considering?
25.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
> Because, as far as we can tell [...] conciousness is dependent on our brains. This is neither a logical/mathematical proof, nor an empirically established fact. So how do you know ? Why are you making statements of faith in w
26.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
> the process that makes conciousness is also governed by physics. How do you know that this is true?
27.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
> Because the brain is composed of physical matter Is consciousness?
28.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
> made a spherical chalkboard Interesting. How? Chalkboard paint on a globe? Does it ride in/on a globe carriage?
29.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
I don't know if you've done any home wiring, but in case you haven't and it seems like something you'd have to hire an electrician for, it really isn't. Swapping light fixtures, at least, is super easy, and so are t
30.
by jnicholasp 9y ago
Over millions and millions of years. A civilization that could colonize another planet could manage to mitigate or outright solve that kind of problem with that kind of time.

More ›