eighthnate

Isn't this just tautological nonsense? This applies to everything. If you have 1 friend rather than 5, you can focus and be more creative with that 1 friend than 5. If you have 1 sibling rather than 5, the same thing. If you have 1 book rather than 5, you can focus and read that one book.

Maybe we should have less schools and less "research" because so much of it seems like useless busy body work to justify academics' salaries.

And of course, such topics like these are great because it latches onto the simple-minded people's anecdotes as the comments here reflect.

> I would like to see western governments treat Chinese censorship as non-tariff barriers to trade when negotiating trade agreements.

Considering the west censors also, the chinese would laugh in our face. Weren't there chinese tourists who got locked up and fined in germany for silly speech recently? Weren't we all celebrating the censorship of the "alt-right"? Didn't we have celebrate the attacks on russian "fake news"? At worst, the chinese would simply justify their censorship by labeling apps as spreading fake news just like we do.

> Unfortunately for the most part western governments seem to have the same problem as western countries in not wanting to be frozen out of China and thus don't overtly question NTBs.

There you go. You act like NTBs go one way. We also have non-tariff trade barriers. Not only that, we also force other countries to end business transactions with china due to "national security concerns".

> I think the problem is deeper than the author suggests. Not only are certain groups of people not getting the resources they need, there is also the matter of a cultural disconnect between the people in power who control the resources, and the underserved who may deserve them.

Beyond the cultural disconnect and more importantly, there is a disconnect in self-interest. It isn't in the interest of those in power to level the playing field. Humans are selfish creatures. We all want our family, friends, etc to have the advantage. We want ours to always have an advantage over others.

This isn't a conservative or liberal issue. It isn't bigots vs non-bigots. It's an innate human concern. Liberal parents/people want to advantage their children, families, etc over the others just as much as conservatives.

I'd say the reason why we are miserable is because of the media and the increased consumption of rubbish clickbait from the media. We are miserable because useless journalists have to write something everyday to generate controversy, fear, anxiety, etc in order to get people to click on their links so they can sell their ads.

Same here. Not sure why you are being downvoted.

> Being in politics is supposed to mean being a public servant.

That's what the powerful tell the naive. Politics is about power and money.

They are ugly and they are noisy hence why most people don't want them near them.

> Could you imagine something that equalizes the playing field more between men and women?

It really wouldn't because women would lose the societal benefits of being child bearers. So at best, it would be a wash.

> This provides the ability for people to have a child without the woman having to gestate the fetus for 9 months? None of the terrible side effects of pregnancy, none of the pain. Sounds pretty idealistic to me.

But most women actually want the experience of being pregnant. It's why this woman chose to transplant a uterus and become pregnant. She could have just hired a surrogate for far less time, effort and money.

But the issue of artificial wombs does offer a interesting question. How would it change humans as a species. Would it make men or women or both obsolete? Evolutionary pressure has made women child bearers and men providers. How would artificial wombs change that? Not to mention, the effects on physiology. Would women eventually lose uteri or will it become a useless vestigial organ over time?

> it's that businesses accept data as identity.

Even worse. It's that businesses accept it and the individual bears some or all of the liabilities and hassles.

> A C/C++ program is usually an order of magnitude longer than what a FAUST program would need to be.

That's true for all functional/scripting languages vs imperative languages.

There is a study that was done years ago which came to the same conclusion as you did - "An Empirical Comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl".

Sure. But most people don't understand that. They think it is like the nobel prizes in science - based in achievement.

> Fortunately, USA still has robust immigration (despite political efforts), so we have nothing to worry about, compared to Japan.

Really? So the population has to always increase? When does it end?

> American population and culture is in no danger of dying off

Neither is japan's. You could argue that japan's population and culture will last longer than america's.