monkeypizza

15 ms·

91.
by monkeypizza 11y ago
I can appreciate the story - it's a paean to a lost world when we didn't need to be competitive. The thing is, money provides more power for the fisherman, which he would need if his environment changed: -rebuilding after an eart
92.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
This site also has some nice info on Mercury colonization. http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html
93.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
What precisely is the proper level of inequality? i.e. what is the Gini coefficient of an equal society? I've never seen it calculated. (It's not 1.0 since there are age effects, plus it's expected that immigrants will be
94.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
If you judge countries externally by their Gini coefficient, countries which blow up the richest people's resources (or just stifle innovation (The USSR, 60s China)) will have a "better" number. So it's a really bad num
95.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
At the margin, I think we both mainly want to help poor people, right? I'm just pointing out that using measures like the Gini coefficient can inadvertently reward bad behavior. Of course neither side directly wants to destroy resour
96.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
Say there's someone who wants to reduce inequality, and we ask them whether they approve of various scenarios: Situation: "People living on a certain well-off island discover a way to farm more efficiently, which means they produc
97.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
Focusing solely on wealth inequality leads to strange conclusions: The richest people should destroy productive resources But destroying productive resources (efficient water purifiers, better solar panels, computers that do more com
98.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
I hope he writes about wechat's grouping function, which is taking off like crazy now. Group: In a normal chat, you can unilaterally add people to create a group, and it is permanent, and can be named. The creator has kick privileges,
99.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
The selection in Ashkenazi was not done in the same way proposed here - filtering took whole lifetimes. In this system, you compress the whole "live 50 years and have slightly more / fewer children" step into one procedure.
100.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
I don't think you even need to think of it on the level of genes (because most of the time, chromosomes are inherited whole (barring crossing over)). So you'd just be picking the best combinations of random selection of chromosom
101.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
You seem to have missed the author's explanation of how they could get 10-15 IQ points per generation: "Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among th
102.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
I think "Mundane SF" is the term you are looking for.
103.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
That link pops up a login screen for me.
104.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
I think we can keep it going for a while, as you say, by continuously absorbing defectors from more fertile populations. But I think if you admit to any genetic component to this at all, there will definitely be genetic flow, with the more
105.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
The thing you're ignoring is that the easier and cheaper ways involve two people; and the trend among educated individuals in the US is that those people aren't tending to agree to have more children. Cloning or alternative strate
106.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
The things I mentioned aren't just genetic - culture is also very heritable. So selection will work on that level, too. The argument about homosexuality is similar to asking why amazon hunters keep getting killed by jaguars - you coul
107.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
Is fertility heritable? Some aspects of it certainly are. i.e. lust, passion, lack of self control, working sperm, and mental traits such as the susceptibility to anti-abortion arguments, the desire to have a child in women, and the tende
108.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
I'm surprised no one has talked about atypical reproduction strategies. If someone was the type of person who would like to clone themselves, and they did it 50 times, their kids may be that type of person too (and there would be sele
109.
Bamboo's cyclical flowering schedule causes Rat Flood(en.wikipedia.org)
3 points by monkeypizza 12y ago|0 comments
110.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
This link is somewhat relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam In India there's a species of bamboo that flowers every 48 years; during each flowering, the rat population explodes. Once they've eaten al
111.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
A system where people can survive and reproduce without working can't end well. Imagine it in the context of computer resource management - "every program deserves this much RAM and this much CPU". When you have randomly var
112.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
Consider this hypothetical situation: A game in which for evenly matched players, in a match of 1000 games, 9 are wins for white, 1 is a win for black, and 990 are draws. Would it really be reasonable there to say that W has a massive 90%
113.
by monkeypizza 12y ago
Can't the NSA just monitor the whole network to detect anyone else using an exploit? So once they discover one, just use it to their heart's content until they start seeing it in the wild. At that point, disclose it.
114.
by monkeypizza 13y ago
The idea that everyone is born with the same fitness level is rather crazy to me. For one thing there's things like fetal alcohol syndrome, malnourished mothers, radiation damage before birth. But much more than that there are recogn
115.
by monkeypizza 13y ago
http://www.hacker.org/bitbath/ is a really nice one in Java. And this one is ok, http://berlin-ai.com/ - you just provide the URL of your AI and they POST game states to you, and you have 5 seconds to
116.
by monkeypizza 13y ago
You are forgetting about all the life support systems that no longer need to be included / maintained. Oxygen tanks, ejector seat, etc.
117.
Urban Grid Management and Police State in China(chinachange.org)
2 points by monkeypizza 13y ago|0 comments
118.
by monkeypizza 13y ago
an idea about Elon Musk announcing a plan to fund 100 women/year to have his children through sperm banks, in 10 generations (1 generation/year), with fully paid support and tutoring for life for the kids, and regularly schedule r
119.
by monkeypizza 13y ago
Why is everybody so negative about this? He's doing something weird, but he is still leaving himself open to scientific evidence, which is better than the average mystical / religious diet recommendation (chinese medicine, hindui
120.
by monkeypizza 13y ago
I signed up for their free trial, and when it expired they sent me DAILY all caps messages (with no opt-out, no autologin link, from a noreply address) screaming at me about needing to update my credit card details. I like their service &am

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