thelamest

8 ms·

31.
by thelamest 4y ago
I’m strongly in favor of abandoning FPTP everywhere, etc., but I’d caution against tying hopes to a single cause. IRV/STV/RCV/PV are used around the world, and their effects are not that revolutionary. (My softly preferred ap
32.
by thelamest 4y ago
Historically, hard-to-falsify documents are an anomaly, the norm was mostly socially conditional and enforced trust. Civilizations leaned and still lean on limited-trust technologies like personal connections, word of mouth, word on paper,
33.
by thelamest 4y ago
This is not the common definition (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation ), but a narrower one ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation ). Semantic difference, but one that remains a
34.
by thelamest 4y ago
You can be unprofitable at -0.5%. It stabilizes; for a runaway inflation you need to have a positive feedback loop. From the author’s write-up ( https://benoitessiambre.com/simcb.html ): >The inverse happens with negative
35.
by thelamest 4y ago
Economic “rationality” sometimes gets a bad rap, but it’s more defensible than it may appear and provides a well-circumscribed, workable general foundation to expand on. In simple versions: rational preferences (which include indifference)
36.
by thelamest 4y ago
What you wrote doesn’t appear to be true. Divide columns B7 on sheets 2 and 3 in the NZ data ( https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/dwelling-and-... ). The all-time high of 1.06 happened in 2012 and the ratio h
37.
by thelamest 4y ago
We agree that this issue needs careful scrutiny. That linked series is, unfortunately for purposes of popularizing, very verbose. The main takeaway I want to convey is that human minds are almost obviously (I think?) deeply predisposed, rat
38.
by thelamest 4y ago
I agree that, currently, machine learning systems are not there. However, do you believe that human minds are not reducible to a material process in a material entity, but somehow supernatural? Otherwise, aren’t humans an example of machine
39.
by thelamest 4y ago
Humans have brain areas that have, at the very least, a close functional link with emotional-motivational processing. Machine learning systems are currently designed with absolutely no analogous components [1]. [Edit: to be clear, I’m nearl
40.
by thelamest 4y ago
Note that observational data can come in strong flavor as well, as in natural experiments, but I’m not holding my breath on a quasi-random decades-long coffee shortage striking half of any population soon. There’s always a chance a situatio
41.
by thelamest 4y ago
It’s a pattern detected in the UK Biobank dataset. I assume by a study you mean an experiment – it wasn’t one. The dataset is longitudinal, which helps a little, but there’s still a big jump from associations to causal links.
42.
by thelamest 4y ago
Do you mean pageview stats for the mentioned articles? You can add them in this for example. Data for today are not collated yet, should be visible by tomorrow. https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&pla
43.
by thelamest 4y ago
True, but they’re still a negative sum event. (Putting aside libertarian-ish arguments, ironically overrepresented in crypto, that in the long term a crash is a healthy garbage-collection event.)
44.
by thelamest 4y ago
It’s not that dark: >When the Federal Reserve propped up A.I.G. in September 2008, unlike its approach with most of the big banks, it threw out the company’s chief executive and took control of 79.9 percent of the company, nearly wiping
45.
by thelamest 4y ago
>I run an A/B test and see statistical significance That’s exactly what power gives you: a fighting chance to detect anything. Not sure where the misunderstanding comes from – it’s about the worthwhileness of tests themselves, not “
46.
by thelamest 5y ago
Where’s the value added coming from though, and how far are you from there? If crypto enables someone to dodge taxes, sell drugs, or wire remittances with less overhead, that’s a potential value add [arguably, with externalities]. For how
47.
by thelamest 5y ago
I can't dive deep either, just a quick note that the OP article reference list includes the (important) review you linked.
48.
by thelamest 5y ago
A government bond (eg. a treasury) is a financial asset already, like cash but not as liquid. The swap was done to help avoid the "solvent but not liquid" scenarios, not to create new net assets (in first order effects).
49.
by thelamest 5y ago
No place on Earth is remotely close to being "full", and the economy isn't a zero sum game. Migrants aren't different from newborns (and simply people in general) in the way they don't "take away" some fix
50.
by thelamest 5y ago
As much as the slideshow points out a genuine, interesting question, what's a little frustrating is that presentation author then spends a good deal of time advocating for his own preferred utopian rulesets, with similar issues of micr
51.
by thelamest 6y ago
>Surely we can track any and every physical mechanism in the brain "accessible" to consciousness To add to other replies, there's a gap in our ability to measure these mechanisms. We can see the big picture with bad resolu
52.
by thelamest 6y ago
He's largely taking examples from public-sector unions, which have particularly problematic legal framework in the US. Private unions can be essentialy seen as corporations, very much like any other firm, that sell labor. Such unions c
53.
by thelamest 6y ago
It's more typical of the servers-as-pets than servers-as-cattle scenario, but sometimes one is simply curious [or extra cautious]. SSH honeypots exist at least in part for this reason.
54.
by thelamest 9y ago
If you're really interested, here are some other recent takes by statisticians on this issue: http://datacolada.org/17 https://approachingblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/powering-yo... It&
55.
by thelamest 9y ago
You can neither manipulate nor naturally observe the full range of possible cultural variation, though. And this problem will in fact inflate the additive genetic estimates. Ie. if we only observed plants in 21% oxygen, or never modified d
56.
by thelamest 9y ago
Also, there is always a hidden opportunity cost. Bitcoin using green energy would still increase worldwide energy consumption, and simply push other energy consumers onto more dirty sources.
57.
by thelamest 10y ago
China is on board though, they are implementing an ETS
58.
by thelamest 10y ago
I'm ignorant as well. I agree it would increase prices for some desirable locations - but also, increase freedom of choice of where to work and live. Hard to guarantee, but the latter seems more significant-ish to me.
59.
by thelamest 10y ago
Surely there would be higher price competition for some desirable locations, but UBI also means people are more free to live elsewhere, anywhere. More speculatively, in many formulations of UBI, authors say it wouldn't be much more exp
60.
by thelamest 10y ago
> Rather than alleviating poverty, UBI will most likely exacerbate it. The core reasoning is quite simple: the prices that people pay for housing and other necessities are derived from how much they can afford to pay in the first place.

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