vannevar

12 ms·

181.
by vannevar 1y ago
The difference is that the border wall was an expensive publicity stunt and this is a working wind farm that will actually accomplish its intended purpose if completed. it's worth noting that border wall construction in fact resumed un
182.
by vannevar 1y ago
Maybe 38% vs 31% saved the city a large amount of money. The question wasn't whether the results disappointed any particular individual. The author's claim is that Denver overstated their results and that turns out not to be true.
183.
by vannevar 1y ago
>I read your other comment with the numbers and I don't think it makes the amazing difference you seem to. Maybe you're looking more at the article headline, which implies the author was focused on the study results. The thrust
184.
by vannevar 1y ago
Where are you getting the figures for unsheltered participants? The page I linked seems pretty clear: there was a 31% increase in housing for the control group, and a 38% increase for the group that received payments. That's a signific
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by vannevar 1y ago
Contrary to the author's assertion, the Denver Basic Income study, which gave $1000/mo, found a significant improvement in housing for the test group vs the controls. She misread the results, failing to note the initial housing ra
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by vannevar 1y ago
Actually, the Denver Basic Income study cited did find a significant benefit for the $1000/mo payments (and even larger benefit for the lump sum). The author of the article misrepresents the actual findings, which are here: https:&#
187.
by vannevar 1y ago
They misrepresent the data, unfortunately. See my comment above. These are pretty sloppy mistakes about evidence that is core to the argument presented.
188.
by vannevar 1y ago
The centerpiece of the author's thesis, which is that "the media" exaggerates the impact of cash payments to the poor, is undercut by an egregiously sloppy reading of the results of the Denver Basic Income study: she criticiz
189.
by vannevar 1y ago
>Finally, why should a person communicating from the Chinese room sometimes be treated as simply themselves and other times as only a mouthpiece of the system? If one of the participants simply responds to queries from outside the room w
190.
by vannevar 1y ago
The Chinese room setup just hides the problem behind a facade, it does not solve the problem. Which is that as soon as you communicate to someone in the dinner party that you're running the experiment, it ceases to be a dinner party. I
191.
by vannevar 1y ago
I think the fact that it's difficult to even conceive of how to interact with a dinner party as an entity illustrates the point. It would actually be easier to assess the sentience of an insect. Rather than a person, it makes more se
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by vannevar 1y ago
Declaring corporations "legal persons" does not make them actual persons. Congress has the power to declare automobiles or refrigerators as legal persons if they choose. This would not magically grant those items any form of consc
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by vannevar 1y ago
>And there's not much selection bias in the old footage you see of crowds walking city streets at the turn-of-the-century. Are you sure? What part of town were the photos usually taken, and for what purpose? I would actually be very
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by vannevar 1y ago
Yes. The cult's "beliefs" really boil down to one belief: the infallibility of the leader. Much of the attraction is in the simplicity.
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by vannevar 1y ago
"Rationalist" in this context does not mean "rational person," but rather "person who rationalizes."
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by vannevar 1y ago
>Nobody can say for sure whether the AI boom is evidence of the next Industrial Revolution or the next big bubble. Like the Internet boom, it's both. The rosy predictions of the dotcom era eventually came true. But they did not come
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by vannevar 1y ago
They spend less than the US as a percentage of GDP, yes, but they don't spend zero: 2.5% or so vs our 4%. But who's to say they aren't right and we're wrong? Think about the cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Good investm
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by vannevar 1y ago
>Of course there's a connection. A connection, yes, but not a feedback loop. A drop in the value of a degree does not lead to everyone panic-selling their degree. What you're describing is simple ROI---as the return on the educ
199.
by vannevar 1y ago
All demand is not created equal. The rich buy more houses than they need for shelter, in order to produce income. This essentially creates an artificial shortage of homes for purchase by actual homeowners. I believe that is what the comment
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by vannevar 1y ago
Singapore is a city-state. You may as well compare the Vatican.
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by vannevar 1y ago
>Europe has repeatedly tried to soak the rich, and the results are always the same: Yes, the results are always the same: Europe consistently runs lower budget deficits, yet provides greater benefits to their citizens. How awful for them
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by vannevar 1y ago
The analogy of education to housing "bubbles" doesn't work. Housing bubbles are economically destructive because dropping prices induce new sellers to drop their price even further, which reduces the market value for everyone
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by vannevar 1y ago
It's a multi-variate optimization problem for sure, where mass, specific impulse, thermal protection, structural load, aerodynamics, and entry profile all interact. The author may be right. But I'm not yet convinced there is no so
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by vannevar 1y ago
In a sense, housing suffers from the same identity crisis that bitcoin does. Because so many homes are now being bought for investment purposes and not by resident homeowners, housing has become speculative and the historical slow-but-stead
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by vannevar 1y ago
"Doomed" is probably an overstatement. "Way more expensive than originally planned" will probably be closer to the truth.
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by vannevar 1y ago
>The best AI architectures in use today treat all inputs equally. Doesn't this architecture also treat all inputs equally? It seems like an encoder that preprocesses the input by inferring hierarchy. But don't all models essent
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by vannevar 1y ago
This short is an amazing achievement, and (at least to me) a very skillful and clever use of AI. But I don't think it's a good film. And that has nothing to do with AI blemishes. If it had been made shot-for-shot without AI, I p
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by vannevar 1y ago
It's an interesting idea, I've kicked something similar around with politically-minded friends for years. I don't know that a completely random group is the answer, but a hybrid approach might solve some critical problems: -
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by vannevar 1y ago
The LVT would get rolled into rent, which would propagate through the economy. I think the chief effect of a fixed LVT would be discouraging passive land investment (since you've got to collect rent to pay your LVT). IMO, while this mi
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by vannevar 1y ago
Yes, it's a straw man argument. It may be possible to tax the rental value away, but in practice, no jurisdiction levies a rate that high, because the officials that enacted it would be thrown out of office in the next election. It c

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