Recent submissions

Comment · 4 years ago
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It's amazing how easy communication is when your words aren't interpreted in the most obtuse and uncharitable way by extreme progressives
Comment · 4 years ago
He still has time to do loan forgiveness "helicopter money" style. But even if all we got was an expansion of targeted relief programs I think it totally counts as fulfilling his talking point. The issue with student debt is that for some people there's no way out, but generally speaking college-educated people are more well-off and forgiving all debt would be a regressive stimulus that targets the wealthier side of the population. Targeted relief is a great way around that.
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
A major factor that I see surprisingly few people advocate for even in an educational setting is helmet color and high-visibility clothing. If I remember correctly just wearing a white helmet alone is associated with a 25% lower risk of being in a fatal accident. A white helmet + high vis gets you closer to 40% or 50% reduction.

There were rumblings in Australia about making high-viz clothing a requirement but I'm not sure if that actually got passed or not. From the data I've seen it makes nearly as much of a difference as wearing a helmet vs not.

Comment · 4 years ago
From what I've seen, collision coverage tends to be used for cases where you made a mistake and need to get your own vehicle fixed. Generally all the coverage sections will get more expensive when you move to a more densely-populated area but the from the cases I've seen, collision coverage will tend to be significantly more expensive in Chicago than southern Illinois.
Comment · 4 years ago
I think it's safe to use insurance rates as a proxy for the likelihood you'll get into a crash. Rates are almost invariably higher for every type of coverage if you live in a more densely populated area.
Comment · 4 years ago
Motorcycles have about 29 times the deaths per mile compared to cars. If all you're worried about is saving space and gas they're a great option - my Honda cruiser gets about 80mpg. But it's incredibly dangerous. I think it's plausible that safety could improve with infrastructure changes and driver education, but I don't think it could ever compare to being strapped into a metal cage with airbags and crumple zones
Comment · 4 years ago
Producing data for something like that sounds like an incredible ask and I'd be super interested to see how other people have tried to tackle that problem.

My anecdotal experience is that they teach something close to that in philosophy departments, at least insofar as you need to be able to present the logical steps and connections you're making in a plain way so your paper is easier to engage with regardless of how abstract the topic is.

I think the actual critical thinking is something that happens internally and you can't really correct or improve that as a teacher if the student isn't capable of explaining what they're thinking - and if you can teach the student to explain what's going on inside their head, they can learn more effectively from people more intelligent than them later on because then it's public knowledge what they're screwing up instead of private. So to that end good writing might be even more fundamental than critical thinking skills.

Comment · 4 years ago
If they took the same heavy-handed approach to diet that they took with smoking I'd find the policy approach a lot more tolerable honestly. Just picking one or the other seems like discrimination because I think generally being fat is comparably unhealthy to smoking.
Comment · 4 years ago
yeah 100%. I do wonder about the energy requirements though because intuitively they don't totally make sense. I still don't understand why it couldn't be used as an infinite energy generator. Is it really just that the ship would move without gaining any momentum since it's the space around it moving instead of the ship itself?
Comment · 4 years ago
Even if the FTL aspect turns out to be impossible, I think it's still an interesting hypothetical alternative to chemical and electric thrusters. More realistically I'd bet it's even further off than terrestrial/lunar mass drivers to solve the payload problem but it's an interesting thought nonetheless.
Comment · 4 years ago
I don't know if this was clear to you, but the link was no associated health problems -> less funding for research -> no available cure. I'm sure hairline surgery would be a lot more popular and people wouldn't balk at the cost nearly as much if the surgery added 20 years to your lifespan
Comment · 5 years ago
It would be worth quite a bit, but it would have to be comparable to either rogaine or hair transplant surgery. Hairline surgery isn't worth the money for most men, but they wouldn't even blink paying that much for cancer treatment. If it were comparable to rogaine in price it wouldn't be as much of a cash cow since they're making less per sale and maybe making fewer sales because it cures the problem. And if I remember correctly, we only have finasteride/minoxidil for hair loss because they were originally used for high blood pressure
Comment · 5 years ago
What on earth are you talking about. Some dudes rock the bald look by choice. Cancer will literally kill you if you don't pay to get it treated.

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