cactusface

Here's my sealion of a question. What parts of climate change research are actually backed up by the scientific method (experiments with falsifiable hypotheses and all that) and what parts are more akin to natural history or something else? To clarify, I believe humans caused the problem (it appears that stating this makes people like you more, which is weird, but ok) but I cringe every time I hear the word science attached to the debate. Is it like a social science? I think someone told me that we know for sure that greenhouse gas emissions cause ozone depletion but I can't remember anymore. What is the actual hard science here?

Why doesn't a bike save you a lot of money on fuel? Keeping a car on the road is expensive, you can save on insurance too. Also you can take the bus. I know, it's a pain.

> They're selling real products that everyone needs (not wants)

Sikhs?

If you can simulate matter, certainly you can simulate a brain. Qualia appear not to derive from pixie dust but accumulated experience in the world. You might need to train a brain for a long time to develop qualia. You might not be able to copy qualia from one brain to another. I think these are the main objections, but I'm not sure.

Personally, I'm not convinced that simulating matter is feasible, never mind a living organism, never mind an intelligent living organism, which is what the brain is, when you account for all of it.

We know how far away Andromeda is. We know how to build a spaceship. Therefore, it is possible to go to Andromeda. Is it though? What if the Earth doesn't have enough resources? How big is your brain simulator allowed to be?

It's actually reasonable. Step 1, translate key push. Step 2, broadcast key message. What you're missing is that there's an alternate Step 1, translate joystick hat push (or mouse drag, or whatever). So Step 2 should be broadcast generic up/down/left/right input message. Step 3, translate message into movement. But what you're missing is that dependent on context, there's going to be other things besides movement that those keys do. Step 4, pan the map with N/S/E/W. Again here, you have the flexibility to work with a rotated map. Your code was probably overdesigned for the use case, but I've seen your solution many times, in books and in real life.

However, I've also solved this problem by passing around polar coordinates, it's elegant and very flexible but you have to munge some data at the beginning. You can also pass around a simple vector [{-1, 0, 1}, {-1, 0, 1}], which is basically what you describe.

On reflection, I concede that AirBnB is largely landlords renting their space or tenants subletting for substantial profit without their landlord's permission. However, I think subletting is fine, as long as you aren't making a substantial profit without your landlord's permission. I've sublet many times with my landlord's permission, it's regulated by tenancy laws, etc.

Japan > England >> USA. Just being able to take the TGV from London to Paris is mindblowing.

I define great as it being generally possible to get where I want to go on the train (this is the most important factor) and then as a bonus it's usually competitive with driving, busing, flying, cycling, or walking in terms of comfort, cost, and convenience.

It is if you live there. You share space and cost.

I think population density is a factor. China and the US have the same area, but China has 4x the population. Consider also England and Japan, densely populated islands with great train service.

When you take a roommate, aren't you sharing the cost of rent? Sharing can mean mutual contribution as much as it means mutual partaking. Also, what? Amazon is not a retailer? They have giant warehouses, they ship physical product with Amazon logos on the boxes, and they accept returns. They allow for 3rd party vendors, but they are still very much their own retailer. eBay perhaps, but not Amazon.