corsac

7 ms·

1.
by corsac 2y ago
Your opium-smoking analogy is wonderfully apt.
2.
by corsac 2y ago
It always piques my interest when I hear of something economically valuable that "cannot be cultivated", as in, I wonder how much "cannot" means "not enough tinkering has been put in to figure out how to cultivate i
3.
by corsac 2y ago
"Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - but will not say how - and the decision is final." I agree. Companies like Microsoft never do this to ordinary people.
4.
by corsac 2y ago
I took the time to borrow Schwartz's book from Libgen, skim through it, and read the parts that seem relevant to that claim (it didn't look worth reading in full--lots of fluff about "quantum theory rehabilitating the basic p
5.
Ask HN: Help – locked out of longstanding Zoho Mail account
7 points by corsac 2y ago|2 comments
6.
by corsac 3y ago
How disingenuous.
7.
by corsac 3y ago
You know what is totally, totally irrelevant here? Your (incorrect) presumptions about my nationality and ancestry. "Racism" in popular usage includes ethnic and religious hatreds ("racism against Muslims" etc.). I agree
8.
by corsac 3y ago
> notions of legitimate-or-not based on the standards of the time > "Retaliation" is a huge stretch: if your trade and your trade representatives are consistently unwelcome in someone else's territory To clarify, trade
9.
by corsac 3y ago
Were anything like modern notions of political legitimacy and just war current across Silk Road era Eurasia, or not? And didn't you just say it was a Hobbesian war of all against all anyway? More to the point, supposing C has a robust
10.
by corsac 3y ago
And if A and B voluntarily engage in mutually beneficial trade, and C who rules over B (and holds trade and aliens both in contempt for ideological reasons) obstructs B and A from trading in order to weaken A, what is that?
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by corsac 3y ago
Well, I am not the former. And here's a lecture for you: comparing human beings to diseases and insects subject to eradication is plain old racism when the latter do it as much as when the former do.
12.
by corsac 3y ago
Population density != human flourishing. >> hence why they won the fight. More likely, they won because there were always far more of them, and Eurasian trade shifted from the "silk road" to the oceans. >> those are th
13.
by corsac 3y ago
"Xiongnu", the early Chinese ethnonym for their nomadic northern neighbors, literally contains a word meaning "slave".
14.
by corsac 3y ago
>> settlement Settled cultivators basically made huge swaths of Eurasian land uninhabitable to nomadic pastoralists because your grazing lands were settled (often completely unsustainably) until they ceased to exist. "Not unlik
15.
by corsac 3y ago
The more I think about this, the more it rings true. Implicit in the phrase "I have nothing to hide" is an assumption that everything is open to inspection by default, and concealment is deviance. In most situations, nobody assume
16.
by corsac 4y ago
For a careless user, or one who does not bother to learn about the risks, having one's account stolen is more of a danger. On the other hand, for a reasonably cautious user with a basic understanding of the risks involved, and whose li
17.
by corsac 4y ago
> What are the limitations? Inability to procedurally generate highly stochastic forms or textures (for instance what a haboku painter, or any kindergartner, can get by splattering paint); reliance on a finite bank of source or "tra
18.
by corsac 4y ago
How are there no constraints with AI? I'm not arguing that this piece is good art, but rather that "AI" is merely a tool, with limitations like any other tool. In fact, considering how aesthetically uniform (centerless, fragm
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Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?
39 points by corsac 4y ago|51 comments
20.
by corsac 4y ago
I'm saving this comment so that next time someone uses "begging the question" incorrectly, I can show them what it really means.
21.
by corsac 4y ago
Video games are more mentally stimulating than non-screen-based activities (building a fort, catching animals, reading a book)? People with better cognitive performance prefer more external mental stimulation? I didn't know any of that
22.
by corsac 4y ago
And language itself.
23.
by corsac 4y ago
> can (often) be refuted by zooming out and regaining a little perspective. I think this is exactly why it is so maddeningly hard to engage critically with those who espouse these theories – they keep an 'authoritative' death-g
24.
by corsac 4y ago
> It takes a bunch of ‘facts’ – some of which are accurate but entirely explicable, some of which are just plain wrong – and knits them together into an ostensibly compelling narrative. I feel a need to add that conspiracy theorists dese
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by corsac 4y ago
No doubt it's directly mentioned in that blasted library too, along with any number of perfect refutations.
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by corsac 4y ago
I love this response. Deflates the enchantment right out of Borges' library (and Nietzsche's eternal return, and fantasies about mystical significance of pi), which always bothered me somehow anyway.
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by corsac 4y ago
> Dairy isn't nutritionally necessary for anyone. Perhaps it was in the past, but not now. Assuming alternative sources of the same essential nutrients, I agree – no single food is nutritionally necessary or ever was. In the real wo
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by corsac 4y ago
> several health issues with milk consumption, unlike quinoa consumption. Are you claiming that most people who consume milk as a major part of their diet suffer health problems from it? Or that grain-based diets do not cause health issu
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by corsac 4y ago
> milk is to grow baby cows into large animals Whence this transcendent purpose that limits suitability? Likewise, quinoa grains are to grow into full-sized plants, and not for consumption by humans, etc. etc. Most people may be "la
30.
by corsac 4y ago
Koreans don't get a third of their calories from dairy products, though. Whereas if Mongolians get ~30% of their calories from dairy on average (which is credible), that would mean they are getting far more than that in summer, since d

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