pfdietz

12 ms·

361.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
You need to think more clearly about this. Reprocessing is very expensive; $1000/kg and up. Launch to space will likely become much cheaper than this as fully reusable launch vehicles become available. Even if the spent fuel must be
362.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
It's small enough a single person could write a test suite for the whole standard.
363.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
Lisp interpreters are easy to write; a performant and standard compliant Common Lisp system is considerably harder to write.
364.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
I've thought that if this idea is picked up it would have to be in space. Testing the rocket on the surface of the moon (point the plate straight up) would probably have been necessary anyway. Ordinary chemical rockets can be tested
365.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
Steel in the ocean disappears in a century or two. Look at all the rusticles draping off the wreck of Titanic. Bacteria are eating the metal and making slime.
366.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
The new species is an example of a "cryptic species": a species that is morphologically similar to another species but can be distinguished by DNA. Cryptic species are astoundingly common. A recent paper estimates that each known
367.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
The human brain is estimated to have approaching 10^11 neurons (most of them in the cerebellum). However, a neuron is much more than a single parameter. The brain is estimated to have from 10^14 to 5x10^14 synapses.
368.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
I hope there are penalties for fraudulent accusations.
369.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
I think SpaceX has a great future ahead of it. I didn't buy a single share.
370.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
It feels like the difference between short term and long term memory in a brain.
371.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
So, it's like converting to symbols in lisps. EQ on symbols is also a single word comparison. An interesting part is where you want to have maps from these.
372.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
The book was rejected because it doesn't say "load-bearing" and "now here's the thing" enough.
373.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
As a matter of personal policy I never sign up for free trials, for just this sort of reason.
374.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
At some point the effort shifts from proof of concept to exploration of impact. Of course doing proving at large scale provides further feedback for improving the AIs. Visual reasoning, for example, may still need work. The big impact wil
375.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
Thanks for the clarification.
376.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
There are also problems which list submitted proofs. The status of the problem does not officially change until the proofs have been accepted. For these two problems, the submitted proofs disappeared without the status of the problems cha
377.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
Some of the claimed proofs (#129, #130) seem to have been removed at the Erdős Problems site. Were they defective?
378.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
We have found the true use case for AI.
379.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
I thought it was Sid Meier.
380.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
The title seems to imply there's a constant amount of thinking. Isn't massively increasing the quantity of cognition likely to be a good thing?
381.
by pfdietz 3mo ago
Altruism isn't common because we're created by evolution, and nothing is created by evolution without a selfish (for the genes) payoff. Supposed altruistic behavior in evolved creatures always has a selfish alterior motive (group
382.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
The most significant limitation on Starship launches is from injection of water into the stratosphere and mesosphere, but 20,000 launches is far away from that limit.
383.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
As the renewables quickly come online, they push down their experience curves and get cheaper, and the residual demand is increasingly intermittent. Both these considerations mean the economic environment will get worse for nuclear over ti
384.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
If you're going to put it 20,000 feet deep in the sea floor, do it somewhere far away from subduction zones.
385.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
needn't
386.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Sure, "quite a lot" in an absolute sense, but the fraction of the visible universe that's still reachable is quite small. IIRC, something like 4%. Don't quote me on that.
387.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
A poignant thing about such objects is that our descendants will never reach them (unless FTL travel is a thing). Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, even a beam of light directed at it will never reach it.
388.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
The live adenovirus (engineered to express a rabies protein) is not entirely safe. It won't give you rabies, but it does infect you. For wild animals, it's ok if some small fraction die from it. They should spread some of these
389.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
> One of Cline's main points about the bronze age collapse is that it wasn't any single thing. I don't think he establishes that. It could be one root cause, and complexity in how things then fell apart.
390.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
> made in the image of a personal God How does that work? The physical image? Or the mental image? Either has big problems. An omniscient god is so cognitively beyond a mere "7+-2" human that the latter claim makes no sense

More ›