cayblood

One of the profound contributions of Christianity, corroborated in other wisdom traditions, is the assertion that every single one of us ignorantly does irreparable harm to others in the course of our lifetimes. Recognizing this is the beginning of wisdom, and figuring out how to live life in light of this reality has been the driving force behind many different philosophies and religious traditions passed down over the ages. Pretending other people are the problem is the problem. Of course, that doesn't justify gross negligence, but the human ego is very good at dismissing selfish, entropy-increasing behavior as harmless. May I humbly submit that the approach you suggest here is incomplete.

You're partaking of the spoils of your ancestors, and the material losses they caused can be directly traced to the living citizens of Haiti today. It's not really that much about guilt, but about actual liability.

It's important not to treat all porn equally, but I think it is fairly safe to say that much porn was not obtained with the full consent of the people depicted in it, or with completely fair terms of compensation. Even if it was, it is often shared in contexts that pay no royalties to the original actors and creators. Moreover, much pornography depicts sexuality in a way that is focused primarily on male gratification and that treats women abusively. Many young men take these unhealthy and unrealistic depictions of sexuality with them in their relationships, and many women also feel obligated to perform in the ways they are depicted even when they don't enjoy it. To the extent use of certain types of pornography incentivizes all these problems, consumption makes one complicit in these abuses. Regardless of its affect on your personal life, I think it's important to be fully candid with yourself about these 'collateral damage' aspects and be introspective about the extent to which you might be supporting exploitation with some types of porn.

Part of his technique is to plant tall shade trees on every street, shading both streets and houses.

"That, not exploiting people, is the defining quality of people who become billionaires from starting companies."

This is one of the sentences in the essay that most reveals Graham's reductionism. A person can become a billionaire without any desire to exploit someone and still the conditions resulting from the success of their organization can, and often do, result in exploitation. Even a brief study of organizational behavior reveals that all organizations do damage, some more than others. We don't need to keep defending organizations. They can handle their own defense. Individuals, on the other hand, are far more vulnerable.

Did you consider Step Functions for taming some of this complexity?

Still confused about how micropayments for content would work practically. Either you have to wait at least until the next block is produced to verify that payment has received before responding to the HTTP request, or you respond before getting paid. Even if the block period is only 10 seconds (which would result in tremendous ledger bloat), the delay would still be too long.

This doesn't seem that "jaw dropping." Hans Rosling was saying this for at least a decade prior to this, that global population would peak around 10B and decline thereafter. That said, I think that viable longevity therapy will significantly alter this trend.

Those are three anecdotes, and at least two of them are not as stark as described. The data scientist's timing was bad and his prior relationship with several stakeholders was already on the rocks. There are rumors that the worker who had no idea what the connotations of the ok symbol are has been re-hired. This is hardly anything compared to the armies of celebrities who signed the Harper's letter and are mostly complaining that they can no longer express their opinions without being criticized.

The difficulty here is that several things are happening at once. There is a problem with groupthink at some institutions, but there are also people who are trying to suppress legitimate criticism.

All it takes is one accidental sneeze in a grocery store for a face shield to become useful.

What was the process of registering a domain name at that time? I've often dreamed about going back in time to when I was a kid and registering a bunch of domains before 1995. What would have been involved?

Several highly-educated Mainland China associates and colleagues have shared such thoughts with me and expressed general disdain for the HK protestors.

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. It's good to point out the positive potential uses as well as the negative.