tjs8rj

5 ms·

1.
by tjs8rj 11mo ago
Is happiness the point of life? We just exist self referentially, to live, churn chemicals in our skull, and then stop living? The whole thing is just a self perpetuating chemical reaction?
2.
by tjs8rj 11mo ago
Back-of-the-envelope - Road area. World road length ≈ 60–70 million km. Using an average paved width of ~8–10 m ⇒ area ≈ (0.9–1.3)×10¹² m². Earth’s surface is 5.1×10¹⁴ m², so roads cover ~0.09–0.13% of the planet. - Albedo change. Dark asph
3.
by tjs8rj 11mo ago
Or the simpler answer: there’s a drug problem in the US and people want solutions. The republicans make a show of solving it by “blowing up boats carrying drugs”. Democrats make a show of solving it with their own ideas The republican base
4.
by tjs8rj 11mo ago
Is an individual human raised alone significantly smarter than a chimp? How much of the intelligence gap is culture and communication that lets us educate ourselves and compound knowledge vs biology? Homo lived for thousands and thousands o
5.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
As long as the state has power over Google (and it does, even if the media cycle presents it like they’re powerless), they can surveil billions of people, control populations, distribute propaganda. Look how the US is able to spread it’s cu
6.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
Really? 20 mid sized Googles is better for US power than 1 mega Google dominating the planet? Repeat for any corporation. Breaking these megacorps benefits little guys like you and me, but I doubt it benefits state power on the global stage
7.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
Englewood for instance, increased likelihood of murder being the main disadvantage.
8.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
In today’s world is it actually in our best interest to have the government break up large organizations? Or is that the worse of 2 evils? The state derives a lot of its power globally from wealth, influence, military power (funded by wealt
9.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
White privilege is a specific case of the phenomenon: “if you live in the culture built by your culture, you will benefit”, which is the whole point of culture in the first place. A Japanese person has Japanese privilege in Japan, an Egypti
10.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
Great to acknowledge luck but too often it’s used as an excuse. Even the story you laid out has to do with a lot of persistence, grit, determination, learning from mistakes, etc A better way of putting it is probably: barring terrible luck,
11.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
This is pretty obvious when you know what to look for. How many people did it take to build the pyramids? Now how many would it take today? Look at revenue per head and how it’s trended Look at how much AUM has flowed into asset management
12.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
AI and technology is already replacing jobs. The way this manifests isn’t mass layoffs after an AI is implemented, it’s fewer people being hired at any given scale because you can go further with fewer people. Companies making billions in r
13.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
It’d be strange if they didn’t. All human organization should be expected to behave like this, especially as rates of communication become faster. As much as our brains seem to be evolved to delude us about it, we’re not uniquely able to re
14.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
The alternative is what? “Working to live” is often just making more money so you can spend it hiking, traveling, and maximizing your dopamine. Maximizing your happy chemicals is also materialist. Working a substantive job contributing posi
15.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
“A culture evaporating cannot be discussed and addressed because genocidal dictator multiple generations ago had adjacent motivations when he killed a bunch of people” The problem with Hitler wasn’t that he wanted German people to be succes
16.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
And yet the innovation density is lower
17.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
This only seems confusing to people who valorize intelligence as the most valuable trait one can have. What really matters is the impact you can have on others lives: making them a lot of money, saving them a lot of time, making them happy,
18.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
Norms against nudity being based on abrahamic religions is still wrong. It’s like saying norms against murder are based on abrahamic religions because the 10 commandments say so. Cultures the world over have general norms against nudity in
19.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
A norm is a norm, the normal, the usual. Not the “always”. Every culture has times where nudity is acceptable or encouraged (it’d be ab-norm-al for you to shower or use the bathroom without exposing your genitals).
20.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
So China and Japan are abrahamic? India is abrahamic? Every civilization on earth has norms against public nudity. Seems to be something more fundamental than blaming abrahamic religions
21.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
Every civilized culture on earth has norms against public nudity. Objectively there appears to be something more biologically successful about cultures where nudity is reserved for private spaces than those who treat it otherwise
22.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
Why do we need to make mental healthcare available to everyone? For all of human history people have got along just fine, happily in fact, without “universal access to mental health care” This just sounds like a bandaid. The bigger problem
23.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
This isn’t about research topics, this is about money being spent on activism I said “nobody except a fringe”, which is correct
24.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
Nobody is complaining about research into stuff we’re not sure is useful yet. The problem is public dollars are being spent on activism.
25.
by tjs8rj 1y ago
The problem is our public institutions (universities) are using public dollars on things that are not desired by the public. Institutions have accountability to the people. Nobody except a fringe wants universities to be maga centers, most
26.
by tjs8rj 2y ago
Because universities have a duty first and foremost to their community. That is the citizens of their country and increasing duty to those local to them in their country. The United States is not an economic zone that belongs to the world i
27.
by tjs8rj 2y ago
This is where climate skepticism comes from by the way. Even climate skeptics will acknowledge that climate scientists are well educated, they don’t deny science as a process of truth seeking, the problem lies in the incentives. There’s a l
28.
by tjs8rj 2y ago
Scrolling through here I get the sense that these answers are from people who’ve never actually done 0-1. The truth is when you’re as tiny as you are you almost certainly won’t have any scalable channels. What you need to do is hand to hand
29.
by tjs8rj 2y ago
This is 100% correct but because society is increasingly apathetic about everything we're only interested in the low lift solutions. You don't fix a drug epidemic by going after the symptoms: narcan and other drugs that are a band
30.
by tjs8rj 2y ago
We’re the cohort putting our hand on the stove to remember you get burned. Vices like gambling, obscenity, prostitution, drugs, etc are banned or heavily controlled societies over because they have significant negative cultural effects. “Wh

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