panda-giddiness

6 ms·

1.
by panda-giddiness 14d ago
Eh, agree to disagree. Any of the alternative formulations wouldn't have changed your comment substantially.
2.
by panda-giddiness 14d ago
Language is different; the tone changes when you change any word or even just punctuation. Language doesn't work that way -- moving the placement of even a comma will affect its tone. However, language isn't like that:
3.
by panda-giddiness 1mo ago
I don't think someone needs to be a (former) string theorist to have an informed opinion on string theory, but I do think they should at least have a physics research background. Like, if someone can't explain what second quantiza
4.
by panda-giddiness 2mo ago
Precision results are usually blinded, so it's not as if scientists can just rejigger the calculation if it's giving an implausible result; once the result has been unblinded, the calculation is finished. The physicists working on
5.
by panda-giddiness 4mo ago
There is already a term for this, and ironically enough, it's often thrown around in discussions of machine learning; it's called emergence . As scales change, new properties appear, which is why we can describe a Chimpanzee as &
6.
by panda-giddiness 4mo ago
Just to elaborate a bit: companies register in Delaware so that legal disputes will be resolved by the Delaware Court of Chancery [1]. Although there are more business-friendly states, the Court of Chancery draws from a much larger body of
7.
by panda-giddiness 5mo ago
I'm surprised this article is gaining traction on HN when it's propping up such obvious conspiratorial drivel. For a counterpoint I would recommend this article [1], but I'll summarize the main points here: - The investigatio
8.
by panda-giddiness 5mo ago
I think a better formulation is the so-called "platinum rule", i.e. to treat people as they want to treated (with the important qualification that you ∈ people). But even then it's not without issue (what if someone's
9.
by panda-giddiness 5mo ago
Fair enough, I should have mentioned that the points-based system is for an accelerated application. The fact was on my mind as I was writing but I see that I forgot to mention it. My bad. But I will point out that ten years is a major comm
10.
by panda-giddiness 5mo ago
It's not as if Japan (or any other country, for that matter) doesn't already have immigration restrictions. Japan uses a points-based merit system for permanent residence [1], not unlike the criteria you suggested. Just to give an
11.
by panda-giddiness 6mo ago
Per capita vs absolute numbers are not especially relevant in this case. The figures differ by orders of magnitude.
12.
by panda-giddiness 6mo ago
Over the last 100 years, almost certainly not. For the most recent decade? Yes, of course I would expect these statistics to be fairly accurate. Between 2021 and 2025 (inclusive), Wikipedia lists 68 dead in Germany versus 5882 dead in the U
13.
by panda-giddiness 6mo ago
It's your source, not mine; if you have a better one, post it. I won't do your own research for you.
14.
by panda-giddiness 6mo ago
What a disingenuous comparison. The wiki article you've linked ("List of killings by law enforcement officers in Germany") sums to 552 people over the last 100 years. In contrast, the corresponding wiki article on the US (&qu
15.
by panda-giddiness 7mo ago
Entering illegally != Overstaying a visa. That may sound like a distinction without a difference to you, but legally they provide very different avenues for acquiring a residency permit.
16.
by panda-giddiness 7mo ago
> People underestimate how effective direct personal accountability is when it comes with harsh consequences like jail time. That's how you fix all issues in society and enforce law abiding behavior. You make the cost of the crime g
17.
by panda-giddiness 8mo ago
Essentially all of your concerns concerns can be mitigated by building somewhere else. Worried about natural disasters? Build some place less prone to natural disasters. Worried about the strain on local communities? Build some place more r
18.
by panda-giddiness 8mo ago
> A friend of mine has a terrible Instagram addiction, yet has developed for himself a certain degree of cinephilia lately -- we've watched long movies together in theaters and not once has he been on his phone during the screenings
19.
by panda-giddiness 8mo ago
It's satire. It's supposed to be absurd. Why else do students still read A Modest Proposal nearly three hundred years after its publication? Regardless, LLMs are already being abused to mass produce spam, and some of that spam h
20.
by panda-giddiness 8mo ago
No, the cause is structural. Even if one could identify the sources of rot (money in politics, an outdated electoral college, the collapse of our information environment, whatever), Congress would deadlock, the Courts would block any meanin
21.
by panda-giddiness 8mo ago
> Whatever power you put into the hands of the government is guaranteed to fall into your enemy's hands some day. Only if there's a functioning system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, there is not. This Court is willing
22.
by panda-giddiness 8mo ago
Clearly the "on-topic" and "off-topic" sets have a non-empty intersection, so the guidelines are inherently ambiguous.
23.
by panda-giddiness 9mo ago
Even this is too charitable. A short timeline of January 2025 would be something like this: - Jan 16: The Supreme Court issues its opinion, upholding the legality of the TikTok ban. The Biden administration declines to enforce it, preferrin
24.
by panda-giddiness 11mo ago
CAIR is an American organization established to protect the rights of Muslims in America. The people who work at this organization are, presumably, Americans by and large. So why would an American civil rights group divert its limited resou
25.
by panda-giddiness 1y ago
Attached end-to-end, they'd extend almost from the Earth to the Sun [1]. Placed in a grid, they'd cover an area larger than Wales [2]. Piled on top of each other, they'd reach a tenth the distance to the moon [3]. --- [1] ht
26.
by panda-giddiness 1y ago
Unfortunately, addressing those issues would do little to address the underlying cause: We have many more ways to amuse ourselves compared to a generation ago, most of which require less "reach" for a dopamine hit (social media, n
27.
by panda-giddiness 1y ago
So you think, in order to attract better talent, we should exclude roughly 95% of the world? If "there's an argument" to be made, then make the actual argument. Don't just lazily reference it and expect everyone else to
28.
by panda-giddiness 1y ago
Just to add some more motivation: in a typical physics undergraduate curriculum, you will spend roughly as much time doing homework as attending lectures. If you skip the exercises, you are quite literally skipping half of the education.
29.
by panda-giddiness 2y ago
A reference for those curious: - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-do...
30.
by panda-giddiness 2y ago
Essentially all of the theory research (specifically, lattice QCD calculations) since the previous white paper in 2020 have been conducted blinded, and at any rate, the deadline to be included in the theory average has already passed. It wo

More ›