gosheroo
Joined 9 years ago
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37
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27
Member since
Apr 13
Recent submissions
Comment · 9 years ago
Comment · 9 years ago
Fine! Most of the credit goes to Chapter 6 of David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity.
Comment · 9 years ago
Yes. Past attitudes were absurdly parochial.
Half of Bach's manuscripts were lost. Writing was invented for tax purposes. Even natural selection sat on the genetic code for a billion years before branching out into multicellular life.
Comment · 9 years ago
New ideas take an effort to understand and most new things don't work or even if they do work they remain unadopted. Including apparently wonderful and well-developed ideas.
Come to thing of it we have only a partial understanding of the role of present technologies. In evolutionary terms, things persist for multiple reasons and we can't identify all of them. Small wonder we can't predict the future of technology and remain sceptical of implied claims to the contrary.
Comment · 9 years ago
Yes indeed, including in some cases changing the temporal order of events based on reason or new data. For example, I once misheard a drinking mug shatter on the floor before it slid off the kitchen surface.
But reason corrected the memory.
https://hilo.hawaii.edu/~ronald/310/310-Dennett-MultiDrafts....
I'd like to add that I think 'living in the moment' is powerful and useful despite not being literally true because it points to something real and important.
Comment · 9 years ago
'Living in the moment' is a metaphor. Thoughts about the future always take place in the present.
Comment · 9 years ago
What if you used the heat to melt rock?
Comment · 9 years ago
Using the grid there must be a lot of transformers and cabling involved. Plus with massive amounts of power in situ one might be able to process the waste rock differently (e.g. if it's looser material with fissures, compress it against the sides of the tunnel or perhaps even melt it rather than removing it. Admittedly I'm rather ignorant of soil and rock physics.)
Comment · 9 years ago
If speed is key, what about developing nuclear-powered TBMs?
Comment · 9 years ago
>I'm a professional
Nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability! Seriously, I think the typical professional carries a substantial psychological load due to the conformity and personal constraint entailed.
>I think we'd all be better off if we talked more openly about it
Well I tend to classify unwanted thoughts as the purely mental equivalent of chewing on chilli. Why would I think unwanted thoughts? The answer is similar to why would I prefer foods that cause pain to my tongue and mouth.
Comment · 9 years ago
Agree it wouldn't work in the modern age of science with all the careers, bureaucracy and funding involved.
But those days were the days of the amateur. And a return to amateurism may well be the best way forward in a number of intellectual pursuits.
Right, so the mode of intake matters, not just the salt itself.
For example one could eat bland (unsalted) food and drink salt water later which would produce less pleasure for the same quantity of sodium consumed. So there might be different physiological effects.