biswaroop

Do you by any chance have the base model? I'm trying to see if folks think it's sufficient for their needs. It's hard to calibrate memory needs coming from Intel.

This may be off-topic, but it's incredible how Brian Josephson went off the rails with his paranormal quantum theories.

A fascinating read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

The list is full of people who are obviously 'smart' in some way, but somehow also incredibly full of bad ideas. It's possible that being insightful also requires you to have bad ideas as well - as if they're fountains of ideas, good and bad.

Crucially though, these Nobel Laureates possess a lack of critical thinking to filter out the bad ideas (that are often outside their field of expertise). They're definitely not unique among scientists.

It's worth repeating Mark Kac's famous quote:

In science, as well as in other fields of human endeavor, there are two kinds of geniuses: the “ordinary” and the “magicians.” An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what he has done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician’s mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber. Hans Bethe, whom [Freeman] Dyson considers to be his teacher, is an “ordinary genius”.

Einstein was unquestionably a magician. He had an incredible ability to come up with simple ideas, and follow the chain of logic wherever it leads, without prejudice against its outlandish conclusions. Those ideas appear as seeds of 'genius' to those studying his work. I'm not sure if it's 'smart', but it's definitely insightful. I've met clever people, but sometimes, they're not insightful. I've also met many insightful people who aren't clever in many ways. To quote Kac again:

I am reminded of something Balthazaar van der Pol, a great Dutch scientist and engineer who was also a fine musician, remarked to me about the music of Bach. “It is great,” he said, “because it is inevitable and yet surprising.” I have often thought about this lovely epigram in connection with mathematics… The inevitability is, in many cases, provided by logic alone, but the element of surprise must come from an insight outside the rigid confines of logic.

Interesting you mention Russia. The leadership of Russia spends a lot of time thinking about how to denigrate LGBTQ+ folks. Racism is alive and thriving in Russia. They even recently went through the trouble of decriminalizing first time domestic violence. Could you elaborate on why you think a trip to Russia would be useful to [eta:American] progressives?

Sorry honest question: why is that dystopian? Also :+1: gives me the usual yellowish emoji.

Thanks for linking this article! I loved reading it. I'm curious to hear any counterpoints from experts to the main ideas presented here.

Fun fact about sardines: they used to be super popular in the US, until they were massively overfished on the west coast (Cannery Row is the classic example). They were gradually replaced over the 80s with milder fishes like tuna and tilapia.

I usually eat them with cheese and homemade bread. Sometimes I'll add a caprese salad on the side, and that's dinner.

Another fantastic recipe is pasta con le sarde. It's a classic Sicilian pasta with sardines, fennel, saffron and nuts.

It's exactly the same with quantum computation right now.

This is a wonderful idea. Children (and adults) learn best by doing. There's such a big difference between watching some tv show and making an actual experiment to see structures invisible to the naked eye. I know I would have been psyched to see atoms as a kid.

relying on vaccination and sterilisation too much, causes the immune system to be weak

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the mechanism of vaccination.

True. Our brain also makes similar guesses, e.g. in the blind spot, and in most optical illusions.

They're private companies. They're free to decide which countries to serve in. That is very different from dictating the laws in the countries. In one case, they're sacrificing profits for company values. In the other case, they're forcing others to follow their laws. I honestly wouldn't care if a conservative Christian software company decided not to do business in California because they thought the state had immoral laws. That doesn't mean they're forcing their laws on us.

Well that's a long reply, and I agree with you by and large. RH has a bright future if they communicate better with their users.

Re: Fidelity, by excellent I mean: it does what I want it to do, and the UI is clear enough. To be fair, I'm an infrequent trader who mainly uses Fidelity for banking, so I don't spend much time on the app. I'm also willing to sacrifice UI flashiness for a functional service that doesn't block me from trading when I do.

[ETA: I believe there's a lot to be said, and has been said, for ugly functional UIs that outlast fancier competition. The archetype is craigslist]

I've used Fidelity for many years: the app is excellent.

Do you know if there's an open source PLB like the inReach?

The IPS V2 fixed the quality issues in the early displays.

I can honestly recommend buying another GBA and modding it. The panel is 4x upsampled, which brings a very cool look to many classic GBA games. It's also a fun experience hacking around in it.

you present it as if the non-eurocentric world is more conducive to the continental tradition

Ah okay, I see the confusion: I mean "western philosophy".

Warning though: this requires amazing bike infrastructure. In most places in the US, cycling on the road can be an extremely stressful experience.

Sorry, when I say Eurocentric, I include the UK. Europe for most people still includes the British Isles, regardless of the preferences of certain conservatives.

Also, wow that's an ignorant quote. Let me rephrase it: "We have no internal problems. All of our external problems during a 60 year period have come from our neighboring countries, and all the solutions are the ones we and our allies came up with." Genius. (sorry for the snark). Is your argument that the analytic-continental divide is just Thatcherite Anglocentrism? Because I really don't think it is.

This is such a good point. Pretty much any human endeavor (philosophy, startups, physics, mathematics, literature, music, art, physical training, etc) can be much more fruitful when done in collaboration with others who are also trying hard. This is why cutting edge research continues to be done in universities, and why YC is so successful.

As a fan of both analytic and continental philosophy, I can also confirm that professionally trained analytic philosophers tend to be biased and limited in their arguments. But aren't we all.

I agree: it's essential to expose yourself to broader works of philosophy. I would extend this beyond Europe to Asian works of philosophy, and aboriginal and indigenous stories across the world. Outside the Eurocentric philosophy bubble, it can be harder to disentangle philosophy from religion, culture, and myth, but that's part of the fun.

How idiotic would it be if there was a book called "A Perfectly Complete and Eternally Correct Encyclopedia of Philosophy", and we all read it and called ourselves 'philosophers'.

I'm elated that Andrea Ghez won!! She came to talk at my high school in 2007, and sparked a lot of my interest in astrophysics. Highly deserved. Here's something closely related to her research that always blows my mind: A video of stars orbiting Sag A*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0QRpid5_QU

Such resistance is not unprecedented. When Gallup in 1954 asked U.S. adults who had heard or read about the then-new polio vaccine, "Would you like to take this new polio vaccine (to keep people from getting polio) yourself?" just 60% said they would, while 31% said they would not. So far, willingness to adopt a new vaccine looks similar today.

Interesting that attitudes haven't changed. I read a bit more about the history of the polio vaccine.

In 1938, FDR founded the March of Dimes, a nonprofit to help people with polio. Incidentally, this is why the US 10 cent coin has FDR's face on it. That nonprofit funded Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, the researchers who developed two different kinds of Polio vaccines in the 50s. Salk published in 1953, and large scale trials began in '54 and concluded in '55. Note, the Gallup poll was made in 1954, when the vaccine was still in trials. The successful vaccine was then licensed, and promoted by March of Dimes. "The annual number of polio cases fell from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,600 by 1957. By 1961 only 161 cases were recorded in the United States."[1]

In 1955, a manufacturer of the Salk polio vaccine had failed to properly inactivate the virus, leading to the deaths of 11 children, and 250 cases of paralysis. This led to a temporary drop in vaccine confidence, and the adoption of Sabin's less dangerous oral vaccine across the USSR and other non-US countries. Despite opposition from the March of Dimes, Sabin's vaccine replaced Salk's vaccine in the 60s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#1935

This is a great point. Also related: garbage disposal isn't as lucrative as the business of making garbage.

Absolutely. I highly recommend going outdoor climbing: the mental aspect is even more intense. A lot of the time is spent route reading and figuring out safety gear, which are mostly cerebral.

I agree that we should generally support the terminally ill in their efforts to seek alternative therapies. However, the point of the article is to highlight the rampant misinformation available online. Conspiracy theories about the medical industry neither provide useful solutions nor palliative care to the terminally ill. These theories are often propagated by perfectly healthy people preying on the vulnerabilities of the sick and their despondent relatives.

How do you feel about the climate change impact due to red meat production? I can't really imagine any way to decrease that other than drastically decreasing red meat consumption.

Your other discussion with GPT-3 [1] about covid was ridiculous. Did you have to edit responses or cherry pick out of a number of different paths of conversation? What happens if you ask it the same thing again? Do you get other opinions?

[1] https://medium.com/@kirkouimet/my-conversation-with-an-artif...

Humans have proven time and time again that we are very good at optimizing for specific metrics, and apparently generally very poor at choosing the right metrics to target.

Maybe it's Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Ah well my concern with eating red meat is related to the cancer risk and the impact on climate change. Are you worried about these issues in relation to your diet?