zopa

12 ms·

91.
by zopa 4y ago
If it buys some time, that’s a good day’s work and I’ll be very satisfied. All you can really ask is that a regulation makes things better in the near term. The future will know a lot more about the nature and implications of persuasively-h
92.
by zopa 4y ago
This is in a timeline where governments are capable of long-term secret plans that move markets, but haven’t thought of strategic reserves?
93.
by zopa 4y ago
We ought to require OpenAI to run something like this: a “Hey ChatGPT, this you?” endpoint that replies Yes/No/similarity score, and a creation timestamp, when you hit it with some text. As regulations go, this one’s not too burde
94.
by zopa 4y ago
Posting a question in an internet forum counts as doing research, surely? It’s much more persuasive to allow reasonable-sounding questions to arise and receive polite, well-thought-out answers, as happened here, than to have everyone chanti
95.
by zopa 4y ago
I don’t disagree with what you’re trying to say, but keep in mind that SpaceX still has shareholders, and a board. It’s a much more limited and vetted set of investors, but very much not a closely-held corporation or anything like it.
96.
by zopa 4y ago
Coordinating how we expend resources, and on what, is always the biggest problem, by far, and that would be true under any system I can think of. Money is a very imperfect solution to the problem, but that doesn’t mean money is the the prob
97.
by zopa 4y ago
Not so sure about mandatory. A system like this is pretty useless unless you’re motivated to use it. How much benefit would the students taking the module only because it’s required really see?
98.
by zopa 4y ago
Why? Settling new places doesn’t have to mean expanding the existing polity: the settlements can be self-governing. See the Polynesian expansion through the Pacific, which to me is a closer (and more hopeful) analogy to space colonization t
99.
by zopa 4y ago
All empires collapse eventually.
100.
by zopa 4y ago
There’s a rule of thumb (“canon of construction”) that ambiguities in an agreement are construed against the drafter.
101.
by zopa 4y ago
> I’m always a bit confused if seemingly otherwise smart people simply don’t understand something so basic Are you surprised, truly? All right, I’ll play along. We have a progressive tax system. So the majority of the costs are born by t
102.
by zopa 4y ago
Sure, but these are low-paid jobs with no agency. Of course turnover is high. If customer service were a priority companies could figure out how to build a trustworthy workforce.
103.
by zopa 4y ago
Really hard not to gloss this as “heal people’s trauma, and why would they keep voting conservative?”
104.
by zopa 4y ago
I'd agree with almost all of that, but with two additions: I think we can locally approximate reality as an axiomatic system, with the axioms just being the stuff we've decided to treat as true for the moment. When the context c
105.
by zopa 4y ago
We’re not solving climate change because the solutions endanger the wealth of powerful interests and because getting large groups of people to agree to do things is hard. But the overall cost of solving the problem is quite modest: a few pe
106.
by zopa 4y ago
> […] how to build a self-sustaining colony anywhere inhospitable first because it's never been done before, and all previous attempts have failed. Hmm? It’s been done lots of times: it’s just that once people start living somewhere
107.
by zopa 4y ago
Except there’s no intention to deprecate Earth and replace it with Mars. Not a rewrite, just new parallel development. Should we never start new software projects at all? All the code ever written should be in one repo (probably in FORTRAN)
108.
by zopa 4y ago
I agree about the problem —- I might quibble with the psychology, but close enough. But that’s exactly why the distinction I’m trying to draw is so important. If we keep in mind the difference between what we can rigorously establish and w
109.
by zopa 4y ago
If we're talking about fallacies, we're invoking old-fashioned classical logic. The nice thing about having a notion of strict deductive reasoning is that it gives you an idea of what arguments might persuade someone of basic good
110.
by zopa 4y ago
Absolutely we can't get very far with logic without relying on some axioms, and those axioms can't themselves be proven. But I don't think it follows that we need to accept every axiom someone proposes, such as what counts as
111.
by zopa 4y ago
Sure it is: an appeal to authority is not a valid step in a deductive logical argument, unless you have somehow established that the authority in question is literally infallible. Now, it's grounds for an (extremely) persuasive inferen
112.
by zopa 4y ago
I don’t see how those price bands would work for a fashion company. Charging more once you’ve been noticed is the whole business plan.
113.
by zopa 4y ago
Not every contract term is enforceable. And every contract has an implied obligation of good faith and fair dealing. I’m not saying this is a sure winner: I don’t know the case law well enough to have an opinion. But I don’t think it’s capi
114.
by zopa 4y ago
Well, yeah. His comic timing’s not the best but I think that was meant to be the joke.
115.
by zopa 4y ago
I don’t know why we treat cognitive dissonance as some huge gotcha, when so far as I can tell that’s almost all of us, almost all the time. There’s an obvious practical difference, exactly because of the scale. Shark finning is a gratuitous
116.
by zopa 4y ago
Step inside a woodworking- or machine shop sometime and see how many of tools there you can instantly use with proficiency, with no instruction. (Please stand back from the table saws while trying this experiment.) It’s wonderful and beauti
117.
by zopa 4y ago
vi and emacs don’t follow desktop conventions because they predate desktop conventions (and vim of course follows vi)
118.
by zopa 4y ago
I’m assuming the poster meant refinance with the same terms. So the borrower can get another 40 years to pay back the remaining balance anytime they like.
119.
by zopa 4y ago
> The question is did he personally benefit from the change made more than his usual salary? That’s not the question — as in, it won’t be an element of any of the crimes he’s eventually charged with. The question is whether he was knowi
120.
by zopa 4y ago
So, this didn’t age well: > We now live in a different economic universe than we did before the crash. Falling unemployment no longer drives up wages. Printing money does not cause inflation. Yet the language of public debate, and the wi

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