ctl

6 ms·

1.
by ctl 7y ago
Software-only machines are qualitatively different than machines with paper trails, since they can be tampered with en masse by a small number of adversaries without needing physical access at voting time; and because such tampering may not
2.
by ctl 10y ago
It's politics. He's saying it because it's an effective thing to say, not because he actually didn't know health care is complex.
3.
by ctl 10y ago
So your philosophy is, "I only do healthy things if they're also painful"? That doesn't seem productive.
4.
by ctl 11y ago
You’re right. I didn’t read the paper very carefully, and was myopically focused on the emulating-a-real-brain AI strategy. As in, let’s slice up a real human brain, map the neurons and synapses, and then simulate them as faithfully as poss
5.
by ctl 11y ago
Let's look at the most important section of the paper. He estimates the processing power of the brain: The human brain contains about 10^11 neurons. Each neuron has about 5 • 10^3 synapses, and signals are transmitted along these syna
6.
by ctl 11y ago
Well, if it's possible to build a human level intelligence, it's probably possible to build an intelligence that's much like a very smart human except it runs 100x faster. And in that case, somebody with sufficient resources
7.
by ctl 11y ago
My understanding is there are two reasons you want inflation: (1) Inflation means real interest rates can go negative, which means it's harder to get stuck at the zero lower bound (as we are today). (2) Wages are sticky, i.e. workers f
8.
by ctl 11y ago
That's exactly why it's called a deflationary spiral: once you're in it, it's hard to get out even with aggressive monetary policy.
9.
by ctl 12y ago
> My general impression is that more and stricter regulations in an industry is usually (though not always) a bad thing for consumers in that industry In cable internet the average consumer has only one or two potential providers. On t
10.
by ctl 12y ago
This is astonishingly high quality for pop science. It deserves more upvotes!
11.
by ctl 12y ago
You're complaining about the system... in response to a powerful instance of the system working correctly? What?
12.
by ctl 12y ago
No, booking a ride with the intention to cancel is definitely wrong. My point is that Uber employees aren't doing that frequently enough to affect Lyft at all, so this can't be a plan on Uber's part. It sounds like some Uber
13.
by ctl 12y ago
Lyft says that Uber employees have canceled 5000 rides since last October. That's like $100k in lost revenue -- it's nothing. Definitely not some big plan by Uber to undermine Lyft.
14.
by ctl 12y ago
Uh... which of Uber's actions here are unethical? Aggressively poaching drivers from Lyft seems all right to me. That's just healthy competition. And this stuff about wasting Lyft's money by booking and canceling rides -- it&
15.
by ctl 12y ago
Your comment makes no sense. GDP is slightly down compared to 2013 . Why are you talking about 2008? The article implies that the main driver here is reduced consumer spending from a harsh winter.
16.
by ctl 13y ago
If the fixed income came from newly-printed money then yes, it would cause inflation. If it came from taxes then no, it would not cause inflation in and of itself. In both cases, it would increase the purchasing power of the poor and reduce
17.
by ctl 13y ago
Other industries are deeply unlike tech, so comparing salary trends would be meaningless. A sibling comment suggests that we look at salaries in tech companies that didn't collude. But that doesn't work either, because (1) those s
18.
by ctl 13y ago
If, in my nonfiction book, I write, "Under normal circumstances, water boils at 80 degrees celsius," then I am a liar, and there is nothing I can say after the fact that will excuse my behavior. Malcolm Gladwell often writes lies
19.
by ctl 13y ago
Right now people avoid self-employment because if they get seriously sick it will bankrupt them. Under the new law it won't. That's the argument. The premiums you pay when you're healthy are beside the point.
20.
by ctl 13y ago
If nobody's willing to do the job for $6K then why would the salary of the job drop to $6K? Nothing you've written makes any sense.
21.
by ctl 13y ago
Citation? I really like the idea of basic income but $2700/month per person seems absurdly high. I don't know why any political faction would try for so much.
22.
by ctl 13y ago
1) you might as well not give any money to anybody, because relatively no ones wealth will change Blatantly untrue -- under basic income poor people will see their relative purchasing power increase, and rich people will see theirs decrea
23.
by ctl 13y ago
This is an incoherent argument. The people who successfully make money have a larger portion of it taken away by the government and given to people who don't make money. They recoup their losses by raising prices and re-extracting it
24.
by ctl 13y ago
Citation?
25.
by ctl 13y ago
I love this article, but: what can a practicing math teacher take away from it? How can you apply this stuff if you still have to teach a standard curriculum? I'm really asking -- my friend is about to start as a high-school math teach
26.
by ctl 14y ago
But then these people look at history, and see this giant pile of anecdotes, and all the sudden it's the Middle Ages again and we can hermenutic our way to wisdom by staring at it really hard My whole life is a pile of anecdotes! And yet
27.
by ctl 14y ago
So basically: overpopulation is bad, therefore human death is a good thing, therefore curing disease is bad. This argument is simultaneously (1) viscerally horrifying and (2) completely wrong. It is wrong because curing disease does not inc
28.
by ctl 14y ago
After I wrote this one, I had to go back and armor it by pre-empting anything I could imagine anyone willfully misunderstanding to use as a weapon in comment threads. The whole of footnote 1 is such armor for example. You don't give your
29.
by ctl 14y ago
Let me tell you: if you were the one doing the design of a motion sensing system, I can bet it wouldn't be "easy". This sentence makes no sense. The patent in question is not on a single technical implementation of pinch-to-zoom; it is on
30.
by ctl 14y ago
I think it's an overstatement to say that online programs are the future of education. Coursera and Udacity are not selling the same thing that universities are selling, at all, and I find it hard to imagine them affecting higher education

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