magna7

Ethereum has been designed from the very start to switch from PoW (mining) to PoS (validating) and Phase 0 of that transition has already started.

I still use dapps almost every day

Comparing GWB to Trump is a bit disingenuous, don't you think? Trump is an actual wannabe autocrat, as opposed to GWB and Obama.

Serious question. Why don't homeless people in SF and NYC go look for work in cheaper cities across America? It seems like these people with degrees and work experience can find work elsewhere and affordable housing, so I don't understand why they would continue to live in the most expensive cities in the world... I'm not American, so maybe I'm missing something.

Why unfortunately? Ethereum is great

I disagree with you. There were plenty of ideas during the 1990s that were technically infeasible until further infrastructure upgrades allowed them to exist. Video streaming immediately comes to mind. It was unfathomable to have a video streaming service like Netflix exist in the 1990s. People would have ridiculed you, just as people ridicule some crypto ideas today. A modern example is video game streaming. Even 5 years ago, it was unfathomable that video game streaming high quality games was possible, and yet we are starting to see these services today.

How about borrowing and lending using MakerDAO and Compound? Or, a decentralized prediction market through Augur? Or, decentralized derivatives through dYdX? Once the Oracle Problem is solved, you'll be able to trustlessly buy synthetic decentralized shares of the S&P500 without using a brokerage. Some people have already done this as a proof of concept.

What you're talking about is infrastructure. How does infrastructure get built if people aren't actively building it? Yeah, these things take time, but people have to actually build out these ideas first before others in the future can build on top of them. Amazon sold books online because it's all the internet infrastructure could handle at the time. That's why MakerDAO made DAI because it's a low throughput d-application that doesn't require scaling through upgrades in infrastructure. Give it time. This space isn't a scam, it's just very early, and people are enthusiastic, as they should be.

Surveillance capitalism is going to get a lot more scary

I haven't looked into this yet, but one question I always ask for new blockchains is: Why use your own blockchain? Security is expensive, and it's trivial to 51% attack new chains with minimal hash power. This would make sense if you were using a shared security model (i.e. building on Ethereum). That being said, what kind of consensus algorithm are you using?

Banks gotta make money somehow in a low interest world.

I don't think anyone disputes the laws of thermodynamics, just how the body processes different macronutrients in the presence of certain levels of hormones. By changing those hormones, you change the balance of the total energy equation. For example, I know someone with crohns disease, and her body just doesn't metabolize nutrients the same way mine does. I burn a donut more efficiently than she does. In this case it isn't about hormones, but about inflammation, but it's generally the same concept just on a more apparent scale.

Why aren't you a proponent of Fung? I'm just curious.

While I agree with you that this is not a major effect, it is an effect nonetheless and it's due to changes in hormones. Dr Fung has a blog where he discusses it using an analogy https://idmprogram.com/how-to-control-the-body-weight-thermo....

I'm not the OP, but I'm also not convinced that the set point exists. Regardless, fasting is a better way of losing weight than caloric restriction IMO since it lowers insulin, but to each their own. Either way, the laws of thermodynamics haven't changed, it's just how your body responds, and we're all unique in that sense. Whatever works for people, so long as they're losing weight if they're obese or overweight.

Yes, but they are deficient in many aspects without realizing it. For example, Alzheimers is almost certainly a condition caused by chronic sleep deprivation. The results don't speak for themselves at all. Read Matthew Walkers book and you'll have a better understanding of why we need 8 hours of sleep, and anyone saying otherwise is frankly misinformed.

Why We Sleep is a fantastic book. Everyone should read it.

A perfect example of this is Facebook. There were several social media platforms before Facebook, but they succeeded where others didn't because of a few distinctive features. They also benefited from improved internet infrastructure, and increased user adoption of the internet. So it was really just a matter of right place, right time.

"But what about the children?" never ends well. I'm a damn adult and I vape because the alternative is worse. I'm certainly not going to vape unflavored e-liquids, so people like me will be forced to buy the flavors separately. Vaping has seriously been a life saver for me. I and my surroundings no longer stink, my lung function is back to normal, and my oral health has improved. When will society learn that prohibition is never the solution? The solution to this is, like all societal problems, is to improve access to education, wealth and social circles. People that are educated, don't worry about bills, and have large social circles generally don't abuse drugs.

Recently there are newer cryptocurrencies like Monero and ZCash that focus specifically on anonymity/privacy.

There's also zero knowledge proof contracts on Ethereum that provide privacy, like the mixer tornado.cash

It's all relative. I don't see the CDC telling people to stop stuffing donuts in their mouths, which is far more harmful for public health.

Studies with Rapamycin suggest otherwise. Mice live on the order of 20-30% longer, so for mice, simply inhibiting mTOR is enough to extend the biological age.

Centenarians have been shown to have increased healthspans. They still get the same diseases as everyone else, however they get them much later in life (90s, 100s). That's all I'd want. If we can get medical science to a point where healthily living to 100 is common, then that's a win for everyone and it'll save us a ton of money. The problem is, like you said, that it's unlikely to be some miracle drug; it's going to be small routines and habits throughout your life that will require willpower and discipline, so that'll exclude a lot of people unless we restructure society in a fundamentally different way.

I'd wager that it's the metformin. Metformin inhibits pathways associated with mTOR (the growth signaling protein). When you inhibit this pathway, it tells the body to start the process of autophagy. It's the same process that occurs during fasting, and it's the same reason that the mTOR inhibitor Rapamycin has been shown to extend lifespan in mice and dogs. This is also why fasting has been shown to increase lifespan. It seems like if you don't constantly tax your body with food (growth signaling), then you can allow the body to repair itself. If you don't give it a break through fasting, then your growth hormones will be continually signaling to activate mTOR within your cells and thus never start the process of autophagy (cell death, and regrowth).