Over at Overcoming Bias, Robin Hanson writes:Humans have long lives. We are unusually dependent on our parents when young, and we then slowly gain competence over a lifetime, usually reaching peak productivity in our forties and fifties. Most of the time we are aware of this. For example, we count on our peak earning years by taking out loans as young students, and later saving for retirement. And we prefer leaders at those peak ages. But when people get idealistic, they tend to forget this.Young idealists often ask me and others what they can...
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Monday, 29 October 2012
Finally, an excuse to explain this word!! Syzygy (pronounced sis-zeh-gee) is when the Sun, Earth, and Moon all form a line. This happens twice a lunar cycle, once during full moon and once during new moon. During Syzygy, the tides are stronger. Much stronger.This is relevant because Hurricane Sandy's storm surge should be crushing Long Island Sound right about the time the Syzygy-induced high tide rolls i...
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Friday, 26 October 2012
Andrew Sullivan, with his usual bravado, provides three reasons why morally he thinks the right thing to do is to vote against Mitt Romney. TL;DR: On the universality of access to healthcare, on torture, and on pre-emptive war, my conscience therefore requires me to withhold support for the Republican candidate. I disagree with him on many prudential policy grounds - but none reach the level of moral seriousness of the above.Of course, on these three things I agree with Sullivan. Absolutely I believe that health care is a peculiar institution...
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Hillel Fuld:This kind of cheap and inaccurate marketing on Apple’s part is to me a clear indication that it knows its tablet dominance is for the first time, being threatened. It knows the iPad Mini cannot compete with the competition if you take all factors that matter including performance, graphics, and price into account, and it planned this launch accordingly...I hate to say it again and state the obvious but this kind of product launch and cheap marketing tactic would never have happened if a certain someone was still running this company....
Friday, 19 October 2012
January 18, 2016. My device works. Building on the brain-machine interface work done by Parviz, Hanson, and others, I developed a coding language that could translate neural signals to digital 1's and 0's, and translate the other direction as well. The oversimplified description is a biological AC/DC converter. I didn't have any research money to do a clinical study yet, so I implanted it in myself. In my right arm. I hijacked the signal to and from my index and middle fingers, then wrote script in the ADC to "right click" and "left click". Double...
Monday, 15 October 2012
A quietly unadvertised truth is that there are resources on this planet that are being exhausted that don't involve your car or your wallet. We hear all the time about "peak oil" or "peak coal" or the depopulation of various fish species.Less often we hear about the increasing rarity of "rare earth metals" specifically neodymium.One resource we are rapidly depleting but you never hear about is helium. It turns out that there's not a lot of helium...
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Here's a video out by Thomas Peterffy.Here's a link to the wikipedia article that explains what "socialism" in Hungary was like during Thomas Peterffy's childhood.An excerpt:The name [goulash communism] is a semi-humorous metaphor derived from "goulash", a popular Hungarian dish. As goulash is made with an assortment of unlike ingredients, it represents how Hungarian communism was a mixed ideology and no longer strictly adhering to Stalinist interpretations as in the past. Sometimes described as "the happiest barrack in the socialist camp," Hungary...
Friday, 5 October 2012
Monday, 1 October 2012
If President Obama is reelected I see a clear example of specialization-elimination in effect here.Let's say each of the GOP primary candidates represented a group of the same species of bird, all in a suddenly-secluded valley (isolated ecosystem for this example). They each compete with each other for food and mates. Because they are isolated, they begin to specialize. And so in order to win the most mates, each group employs strange tactics, either by evolving absurd plumage or by doing a dance/song/nest-building ritual. And let's assume...
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