Nessuss

I'm shocked there has been no mention of The Economic Laws of Scientific Research. Terence Kealey makes a compelling argument that government funding more than crowds out private funding for Science.

I.e., we are worse off in terms of absolute contributions to Science because 'everyone' expects government to fund it - especially basic research surely has no profit motive so only public funding can possibly work. Completely wrong historically.

The risk of losing money in a savings account is not zero. By losing I mean, losing its purchasing power. Banks have repeatedly gone bust throughout all of history, in all countries. But there is such a thing as deposit insurance. In the U.S., your savings (up to 100K per account) are 'insured' by the FDIC, but the FDIC has a mere pittance of money compared to the total deposits in all the banks, or even in one of the big banks. It cannot, using the money it has, save all depositors if a big bank is allowed to go bust.

So, given your bank goes bust in say, one of those recessions the U.S. experiences in greater and greater frequencies, either you lose nearly everything in your 'savings' account as the FDIC doesn't have enough money to cover all of its deposits the bank loaned out for its own profit - fractional reserve banking serving YOU since 1913. OR the FDIC pleads to the Federal reserve to 'give' it money, print it that is, causing massive inflation. Though in that latter case, you get the money first, so get to spend at current prices before the influx of new currency causes prices to inflate.

Though in current times, the solution is that these banks are too big to fail. So whenever they gamble your money to make a profit, yet lose, they get some of those nice big bailouts from the Fed. In that case the banks get to the spend the money first, and everyone else holding USD gets an inflationary hit - again you lose your purchasing power of your savings.

This isn't the funeral for the fella.

Being able to discuss taboo subjects is what makes it great to be an intellectual after all - why are they taboo? is the reason a good or illogical?

In this case, death is bad, very bad. Something to resist with all our might, and cryonics is one just one tool in saving lives (yes, you are not dead until your actual neurons irrecoverably die). No need to go into the details of information theoretic death, just look into it yourself.

The point is, people deal with the concept of death in ways to prevent the unpleasant thought that you WILL die. One of these ways is to celebrate what a great life this person had, how sad it is that they have died but they had a good life. It's slightly more obvious that this person did not in fact have a good life (he only had 21 years), but the argument applies to all ages.

It's precisely why I decided to not self-censor here. I wanted to point out that we shouldn't celebrate death. Don't let death become something slightly more inevitable in your mind, fight it!

I hope he had a cryonics contract.

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In reading the above, some people might think it insensitive to 'peddle' this here, and I almost censored myself because of that.

But that's not helpful at all.

People are dying unnecessarily because they don't understand physics, cognitive neuroscience, and the possibilities the future allows.

May he live again conditional on him being cryo-preserved. Otherwise, it is sad news that yet another human has been annihilated.

The essence of capitalism is that consumers buy what goods or services they think are worth for them, otherwise they don't. If a handmade knife is worth more to a chef then a china created one, then the chef benefits. Remember, knives are their tools of trade, just like for many of us computers are the tools of trade - who doesn't want the very best tools?

Even if the knife is not better than a mass produced one, as long as the consumer believes they are better off then the consumer gains from the transaction. Perhaps you, as a non-chef, are ignorant of the subtleties of knifes. I use a macbook, and there are sure to be people that wonder why I spend a big premium in price for computer with similar hardware. Why? well, I like quality tools.

It strikes me as attacking the very heart of capitalism by saying that its "an extravagantly wasteful alternative" to a mass produced knife - who are you to decide that? For one thing, this is competition, if mass produced knives are worse than hard crafted, let the market decide that and punish this (awesome) fella for his short production lines and 'inefficient' capital to knives ratio. The price for his knives will reflect how much better (or worse!) they are compared to the 'efficient' mass produced ones, and if he can't work fast enough to make a living, then he moves onto something else. It's sad, but life is about risks.

However, apologies if I have mistaken your point, though you claim that you're in Marxist mode so I'll counter it by being positively capitalistic.

I think the idea is that what you want to do differs from what you are doing, or what you must do. When you run faster than you're comfortable with, the will to do that comes from yourself. External forced, not using your willpower.

Two eyes are not a requirement for depth perception. They help, especially for stuff close to you, but are not absolutely necessary.

Don't take my word for it, close one eye and move your head from side to side and see the 3d jump out at you.

Reuse of old code, familiarity with API's (other's old code).

Except that the more you exercise, the more your body hungers for more calories. The homeostasis theory of the body makes far more sense than the current thermodynamic view of eating; that change in weight is equal to what you eat minus what you burn.

If you exercise more, you burn more of course. Supposing that your body has no idea how much energy its consuming, and thus the 'what you eat' part of the equation is independent of the 'what you burn' is simply ridiculous.

Those diseases, the diseases of western civilization wont go away by simply exercising more. Exercise more, you eat more, you don't lose your fat weight, you won't reverse those diseases.

The line should be more "most people don't understand what kids can do".

And now we have power problems, so you can't have everything on at once. Such is life.

The hypothesis though, is to remove the emotional part of the memory, which this does seem to be doing a reasonable job of doing it.

Much better than bilateral lesions to the Amygdala!