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mudlus

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Yeah, it's really a shame that geo-engineering projects keep getting shut down. We either control the climate, or it kills people. It's that simple. Without controlling the climate you don't get to pick and choose who lives and who dies because of "nature". It's not even a coordination problem. It's a regulation problem. People don't all need to agree before progress can happen and errors can be corrected. We just need any organization to show some backbone and stop kowtowing to the suicidal environmentalists.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/3/20/harvard-geoengi...

Yes. It's one of the few countries where citizens are protected from the government. This means anyone can make huge mistakes, and it's viewed as immoral to stop them. Myopically, it drives a politics of fear and control ('Won't someone please think of the children [who we don't consider people with rights, so as to individually choose not to go to school, for example]'). Long term, America has provided more progress to the world in terms of ideas, technology, knowledge, than any other community in human history. It also means that they are free to make ideological mistakes, no one is embraced to say their opinion even if it's wrong. This is a Tradition of Criticism, and it extends to the West in general, but is exemplified by America (Hollywood, US media, etc). All progress comes from criticism. America is 'exceptional', but with that power comes great responsibility--something recent generations don't seem to want. So, giving up rights, puts the responsibility in some other's hand--an appeal to authority. This has lead to a great culture of pessimism. I hope that will end soon and more American's will be optimistic and proud of their responsibility to infinite knowledge growth through a Tradition of Criticism.

Vangelis has died 4 years ago

RIP. One of the most influential musicians on me, for sure. A legend...Love to his family and friends.

Claim 1: bubbles are natural, that doesn't mean that underlying solutions are wrong, just that not all speculators are right or understand the problems being solved.

Claim 2: Google 'Bitcoin Spacechains'

Claim 3: On a long enough time scale all discoveries are minor, this is what it means to always be optimistically solving problems at the beginning of infinity.

All value is explanatory, that is, even if it has "intrinsic value" like carbohydrates in ATP in a cell, it is still knowledge instantiated for a resilient purpose (eg to power a cell to replicate its knowledge).

As explanations change, value changes, so anything can be a currency at the level of the individual--in this way, at least for conscious minds, a public monopoly on money is, while possible, morally wrong. It's a form of Marxism.

There's already been a solution the problem of state monopoly on symbolic abstractions for value (money), that started with Bitcoin and has been growing a new global economy since 2009.

It starts with knowing why it was originally pronounced "eh-mohjee", and not "ee-mojee".

The better question, then, if you really want to learn about culture, is why red is a good color in Japanese culture.

I'll just tell you: Red is related to sun symbolizm in Shinto, it scares away evil spirits of 'the dark'. And the Japanese emporer (before McArthur said otherwise) was a sun god (descended from Amaterasu). Some Japanese still intrinsictly believe this. This is represented in the Japanese 'asahi' emperial flag with the red circle and red lines, and in the current national flag with the red circle (white is a symbol of purity in Shinto, as well, btw). Torii gates are also red, etc etc.

Flickr is awesome. As Instagram plays out, Flickr, and those that have paid for it for years, will be rewarded with full control over years and years and years of photos. I have full control of tens of thousands of photos I've taken since I was in high school. I LOVE Flickr. hey have excellent customer support, too. I'm less interested in the community aspect, though that is fun, as just the photo storage and organization product. It is indeed leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

I suspect most people won't understand the value until they immediately need the privilege of using it--a privilege which anyone with a computer has, but no one is required to exercise (unlike every other national currency).

Love to see it on the top of HN. To Popper!

"Popper has argued (I think successfully) that a scientific idea can never be proven true, because no matter how many observations seem to agree with it, it may still be wrong. On the other hand, a single contrary experiment can prove a theory forever false."

But then how do we decide which theory is worth taking the time to criticize?--I think this is where David Deutsch comes in. Redefining scientific progress in therms of "hard-to-vary explanations". No need to eat a pound of grass to test if it cures the common cold, because it's an easy-to-vary and doesn't _explain why_ it works (eg why not a pound of rosemary or a pint of beer)? Seems like a pretty obvious thing, perhaps, but then why is homeopathy such a huge industry? See also, A New Way to Explain Explanation: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain...

The AIM of science: https://www.bretthall.org/uploads/3/1/2/9/31298571/karl_r._p...

The Open Society and it's Enemies: https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/open-s...

Economist article: https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/fr...

Also, David Deutsch: https://archive.org/details/TheFabricOfReality/page/n45/mode...

The Beginning of Infinity: https://ia800107.us.archive.org/29/items/RichardDawkinsTheSe...

Let the meme in, bad is good if it stays in people's head. Accepting the memeplex into a business is all here is really, that's marketing.

The government doesn't make discoveries, the government isn't creative. People are. Solving the problem of climate change can be helped by governments as a tool people use for coordination, but generally governments are best at defining rules, which are compulsory--this is antithetical to creativity. All this is to say, yes governments SHOULD fail us in solving this type of problem. Capitalism, though it is not the most popular tool in the zeitgeist right now, is a much better tool for solving this type of problem. If you have money, it's a good time to take on risk and invest in solutions. Uranium seems to be a popular one right now, as nuclear energy is the greenest energy generation tool we have, and problems from the past are being solved through better engineering currently (micro-nuclear). Private fusion investment is a much better long term investment, though it's unlikely you'll get a return in your life time, humans will get a return in the long run. The billionaires know this, look at who is investing in fusion right now.

Cool, do it on a federated Bitcoin sidechain using OP_CTV or something, integrate MimbleWimble or some anonymizing tech, use a Spacechain, burn the bitcoins going in to create a perpetual one way peg to stabilize the peg from perverse incentives, then you've got yourself a decentralized global stablecoin?

Trash that will age as poorly, as long as people keep solving problems. There is no perpetual motion machine, so the answer to this shitty rhetorical question is: We die when we stop making new technology. Welcome to the beginning of Infinity.