ared38

US public libraries generally have access for everyone (at least they have everywhere I've lived), and you can walk onto a ton of campuses as a visitor to get their access.

The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military operations to the long peace.

"Instead, the new incentive for most countries would be to build a military in a way that aims to minimize the political costs... it makes sense not to build an army for conventional operations but instead with an eye towards the kinds of actions which mitigate the harm caused by failed states: armies aimed at policing actions or humanitarian operations."

MRAPs exist to minimize the political costs (dead and wounded soldiers) in a policing action. When you look at conventional wars like Ukraine, HMMWVs remain very relevant in their doctrinal role.

You are actually correct. The speed of light you always hear about is the speed of EM radiation in a perfect vacuum. In a medium such as the atmosphere, the pulse doesn't travel as fast. The slowdown depends on the refractive index, which itself depends on the frequency of the wave -- longer wavelengths have lower indices. This means that microwaves will move the tiniest bit faster than light through the atmosphere.

Because we're too expensive to waste on something another employee could do. The bitter irony is we're so expensive largely because being siloed leads to wasted effort and rework.

That table is expressly from the point of view of an English speaker; I'm sure it would look very different if written for Arabic speakers. Since it's largely a function of similarity to your native tongue, how would we even measure if a language is easy or hard to learn?

And what counts as "normal language classes"? Until at least high school in the US, every class other than math focuses on reading and writing.

While I agree jumping to the conclusion that they're unreliable and flaky is ridiculous, being "polite" like that does no one any favors.

Just be honest and explain you've been caught up with higher priority issues and haven't made progress. That gives the asker an opportunity to explain why the task is more important than you thought, find someone else with less on their plate to do it, or at the very least understand what's taking so long.

> Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

Anyone that's read even the intro section of the Fermi paradox Wikipedia page already has: "There have been many attempts to explain the Fermi paradox ... suggesting that intelligent extraterrestrial life is extremely rare". The paper just formalizes that by demonstrating we can arrive at low enough expected numbers of aliens (namely 0) with reasonable inputs to the drake equation.

> Imagine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 billion alien civilization. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth.

This occludes a lot more than it illuminates. Although the end section of the paper uses the bayesian inference Sniffnoy hinted at, the graphs SSC used (and his analysis of the papers results) come from the earlier section of the paper that still use the "chance of aliens per star" model. Even the bayesian part merely refines this probability based on observations; it's hardly "the wrong way to think about it" as SSC claims.

I'm sure you're extremely smart and dedicated -- I've only dreamed of putting in that much work -- but have you considered your mindset might be holding you back? Would you hire someone who had never worked in low-level game programming and didn't have a bachelors but told you "I can do everything you can do"?

If you're serious about getting a PhD-level job without a PhD, getting someone to recommend and vouch for you is even more important than usual. Since you're up to date with papers, why not email researchers you admire with questions that demonstrate you deeply understand their work? Many will be too busy, but some will probably be impressed by your determination. Once you have a relationship, see if you can assist with their research, even if initially it's just grunt work. It will take time, but integrating yourself into the academic "web of trust" and maybe getting your name on some papers is the only plausible way you can expect a company that doesn't know you to take you seriously.

> Acknowledging that they aren't currently equipped to adequately cover this in depth is insulting?

Except he doesn't acknowledge ignorance, he plows ahead and puts the entire continent in the same category as Syria and Afganistan. Less than 2% of Africans live in the countries he does deign to mention.

> You also seem to be ignoring the premise that being armed is a key part of these plans.

Good luck singlehandedly fighting off the Venezuelan/Russian/Union/rebel army when they come to appropriate your assets. There's a reason insurgents use hit-and-run tactics, they'd be slaughtered in a pitched battle.

Campbell is tremendously overestimating how much extreme prepping actually increases your chances of survival. Keeping a week or two of food, water, and energy is smart, but "zombie prepping" is useless:

Revolutionary War: Unless they chose to fight, the "middle class" of independent farmers wasn't much affected (though I'll admit they were already zombie-prepped). The poor did the dying, and the elites got kicked out.

Civil War: Much more calamitous, but little that could be done about it. If you were displaced, your stocks of supplies were reduced to only what you could escape with. If you were killed violently, well, no point buying a gun when you'll be given one before sent charging into artillery fire.

Russia: See Civil War above. And just for fun, remember that having a large private store of grain wasn't exactly smiled upon during collectivization.

France: While farmers were undoubtedly more food-secure than their urban compatriots during occupation, those who cached guns and joined the Resistance weren't exactly making the safe choice.

China/North Korea/Vietnam: See Russia above

Africa: Is an entire continent, and reducing its 1.2 billion inhabitants to "where to begin" is incredibly insulting to their individual histories and experiences. But if we're talking colonialism, advising people to buy land is a bit out of touch, don't you think?

> the ‘reputation age’, in which information will have value only if it is already filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others

Isn't this just a return to form? This sounds like what newspapers, publishers, academics, etc have been doing for hundreds of years. Even 'fake news' is nothing new; there have always been disreputable publishers willing to endorse wild conspiracies.

The novel thing is that the filtering and evaluation has become decentralized. The article implores us to ask "Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities?", but increasingly we depend on our friends and likeminded crowds to approve information through sharing rather than engaging with an authority by subscribing to a newspaper or feed.

Since the most exaggerated interpretations of a situation are almost inevitably the most shared, just checking the reputation of the source isn't enough. Consider the amount of mainstream media coverage on the "golden shower" aspect of the Trump dossier, when it was the least supported accusation. Or how Cuddy's provocative speech on body language went viral, despite other reputable researchers casting doubt. The structure of social media rewards stripping out context and nuance.

So instead of questioning authority figures, question your tribe. Does it sound too good to be true? Did you learn something new, or just confirm existing beliefs? Have you taken the time to see how the other tribe thinks about this issue? You can only escape your filter bubble if you make a conscious effort to do so (I'm still trying).

ANNs aren't supposed to model biological neurons, they're more inspired by them. We actually know a great deal about how real neurons work, although the emergent effects keep us from learning much about the brain as a whole.

But modeling biological neurons is expensive; they're far more complex than a logistic function. Just modeling a worm is taking them an entire cluster, and they appear to be using a pretty simple model (the Hodgkin–Huxley equations way back from 1952). I don't think we'll ever simulate real neurons to detect cat photos. Instead, modeling entire brains might allow us to see how learning happens, which could be simplified into new algorithms for machine learning.

I'm not impressed with either side in this argument.

Jarrett Walker is confusing capacity with crowding. It's ridiculous that he can't admit having someone's underarm shoved into your face during peak hours does in fact suck.

Meanwhile Musk is an idiot if he actually thinks single occupancy self driving cars will reduce traffic (I don't think he does). If sitting in traffic becomes more pleasant because you'll be watching tv, more people will choose to sit in traffic. Adding tunnels won't help if you're still wasting a car-sized space on a tiny human.

Just running more buses and actually policing harassment on them would make transit both more convenient and pleasant without giving up the capacity that's essential to move an entire city worth of people around. It doesn't have to be rocket science.