pasabagi

8 ms·

31.
by pasabagi 2y ago
It's definitely a bad idea, but at the same time, are nuclear power plants the sort of things that go horribly wrong if a human doesn't press a button quickly enough? I would have thought all the things that need to be timely woul
32.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Don't you think 1400 years is a bit long? If you considered 'native people' to go back that far, you could get all sorts of really strange 'native lands'. Normally, right of return is for people who were living some
33.
by pasabagi 2y ago
That's a built-in failing of the genocide definition: it requires intent , otherwise no doubt the US would have been on the hook as early as the Korean war. Sadly for the Israelis, they have a cabinet of the kind of people who just ca
34.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Eh, Germany, Japan, and the US all extensively used central planning after WW2. The results speak for themselves. The Chinese government, for it's many faults, has a good track record when it comes to modernization.
35.
by pasabagi 2y ago
Or because of unbelievable amounts of rights won through political struggle, which cannot be spent, only lost through getting complacent. Europe was a lot poorer in the 80's. China today has a higher GDP-per-capita then the EU did in t
36.
by pasabagi 2y ago
... That's just nonsense. Normal scientists working in genetics don't believe in race. The field has moved on from the 40s. It's not a conspiracy, there's just no evidence, because why should there be? It would be very s
37.
by pasabagi 2y ago
So IQ is a word used to describe the results of a bunch of tests first established by eugenicists in the late 19th century, and has no scientific extraction whatsoever. Genetics is a field of science, and you can identify groups that carry
38.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I mean, nationality is obviously an enviromental factor, right? There's no 'german gene'. Ethnicities like 'French' don't actually exist in genes. So even if there is this nation-by-nation IQ variation, it shou
39.
by pasabagi 2y ago
I think you'd have to be a bit of an expert to understand these results, just because of words like 'intelligence', that could mean anything, really, and I think accounting for 20% of the 50% heritability of intelligence is n
40.
by pasabagi 2y ago
You can train a predictor on anything: that's how the famous cases of 'racist AI' came about. The point is, you can't establish a causal relationship without accounting for confounders. If you're starting with a que
41.
by pasabagi 2y ago
In general the thing people find obnoxious about this kind of argument is that both 'race' and 'IQ' have their origin in eugenics, but are meaningless in genetics. The genetic variation across one race (say black) is muc
42.
by pasabagi 3y ago
So, the reforms to the university system from the 90's on were supposed to 'normalize' university employment and organization, so researchers would get the kind of contracts other workers get, departments would be subjected t
43.
by pasabagi 3y ago
I have come off my bike a whole lot of times, but they've always either been I've been doing something stupid, or the street design is stupid (there's a spot in my city where you can sit and watch cyclist after cyclist eat sh
44.
by pasabagi 3y ago
> I suspect bike collisions are more common than car collisions You do? I was thinking the opposite: I've never hit anybody on my bike, I've never been hit by a bike, I've never seen nor heard of anybody being hit by a bik
45.
by pasabagi 3y ago
I guess if you get hit by a bike (which is pretty unlikely, because bikes are slow and have good visibility), you probably hit it at an angle. So you're likely to get a handlebar hitting you, but there's not going to be much weigh
46.
by pasabagi 3y ago
> I am more afraid of cyclists and scooters than of cars. You shouldn't be. Cars are a leading cause of death across the world. The likelyhood of being hit and killed by a cyclist is, I don't know, very small? Nobody even colle
47.
by pasabagi 3y ago
> Cyclists here operate in a gray area a mile wide. They are nominally supposed stop at stop signs and red lights, respect pedestrian right of way, signal turns, and all that stuff. But virtually none do, and I’ve never seen any conseque
48.
by pasabagi 3y ago
It's also a funny story because this is the most popular garage pulse jet design, but it's not really a good design other than the fact it reliably makes thrust and the most godawful noise in the world. It's so inefficient
49.
by pasabagi 3y ago
It's also Kurt Vonnegut's rule, for what it's worth. I think the problem with semicolons is twofold: 1. It allows you to write these horrible long sentences (that thankfully nobody does anymore, but if you look at like a Dick
50.
by pasabagi 3y ago
If you look at the rich history of nuclear near-misses through the cold war, I don't think there's any reason to feel secure in the idea that nuclear deterrence ensures peace. What it does do, is ensures that the consequences of
51.
by pasabagi 3y ago
What a great article! Not an area of special interest of mine, but the piece was a joy to read.
52.
by pasabagi 3y ago
Mechanical objects frequently fail unexpectedly, especially if you're trying to do something weird or unusual. We're just used to living in a world of machines that are in their second century of iterative improvement. I make inst
53.
by pasabagi 3y ago
> All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail. This is kind of a weird take: I was reading about the Therac 25 (radiation therapy machine that killed a few people because of software bugs),
54.
by pasabagi 3y ago
Chile's a very weird country, economically speaking - I don't think it's a good point of comparison. I sort of sympathize with your thinking, but at the same time, the problem with foreign intervention, even the subtle kind,
55.
by pasabagi 3y ago
Calling German infrastructure 'creaking' is also completely ridiculous. What would you call infrastructure in the UK, then? The US?
56.
by pasabagi 3y ago
> Actual “labor” has a strong social conservative streak, especially in regards to migration. Eh, this varies. Most people in the labour force are young, and young people are generally leftward-leaning. In some regions of the UK, labour
57.
by pasabagi 3y ago
Does anybody know of a good reference text that can teach you the basics of optics? I've been messing around making little projectors out of old camera lenses and cheap lenses from ali express, and I've had some success, but I hav
58.
by pasabagi 3y ago
Inflation in basic goods and exorbitant rents mean that a lot of people are struggling far more than GDP-style indicators would imply. There's also secular decline in a lot of southern european manufacturing, so the economic basis for
59.
by pasabagi 3y ago
You can also say 'consciousness doesn't exist, we're all P-zombies'. Or even the more limited version: consciousness exists, but doesn't have a lot of the magical powers usually ascribed to it (free will, etc).
60.
by pasabagi 3y ago
Farmers use their tractors year round, though? I see what you're saying vis-a-vis specific sprayers, ploughs, or even a combine harvester, but tractors are in pretty continuous use.

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