greeneggs

Joined 15 years ago

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Sep 29

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Comment · 6 days ago

And the Supreme Court did this because the Republican Justices were caught accepting bribes. It's become just another corrupt Republican institution, the same as the Presidency and Congress.

Comment · 1 month ago

Atoms aren't a mystery. We know all the relevant laws of physics. No known law of physics could possibly lead to consciousness. Consciousness might as well be magic from the point of view of modern science.

Numbers versus atoms, what's the difference? Machines could certainly be conscious, by some weird, "magical" process. Maybe it is a crude, unrecognizable kind of consciousness, that turns on and off with the electricity.

But, given how we understand essentially nothing of where consciousness comes from, how can we possibly claim that it can never arise from just numbers?

Comment · 1 month ago

This is a pretty good article on Mercer and Renaissance: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-... https://archive.ph/8Iuyh

> Magerman told me, “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” Magerman added, “He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.” … Another former high-level Renaissance employee said, “Bob thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.”

Comment · 7 months ago

It doesn't have to be traded globally. The US could ban oil and gas exports, and that would decouple local prices from the global market.

Comment · 1 year ago

> I doubt anyone would dispute that public benefits flow disproportionately to those 72 million households for obvious reasons.

I would dispute it. One of the main public benefits, if not the main benefit, is protection of property rights. Those with the most property disproportionately take advantage of this protection.

Are you deliberately confusing taxes with federal income tax?

Comment · 1 year ago

I think everyone drives less in California than in Florida. (Google says ~14,500 miles annually per licensed driver in Florida, versus ~12,500 miles in California.) Gas prices are a factor in this.

Comment · 1 year ago

FYI, the last sentence, "Start building today on GroqCloud – sign up for free access here…" links to https://conosle.groq.com/ (instead of "console")

Comment · 1 year ago

> Edit: You can also "hand feed" your jumping spider with a cotton swab dipped in sugar water. They drink flower nectar in the wild, so my wife and I tried this and it worked!

But don't they need live protein, like flightless fruit flies? I feel like the need to raise prey is the biggest downside to having a jumping spider pet.

Comment · 2 years ago

> Our existence as a field pretty much hinges on classical computers not being able to simulate all quantum mechanical problems efficiently.

I don't think this is quite accurate. It could be that many of the kinds of quantum simulations we care about can be done efficiently classically, even if the worst-case quantum simulations are classically intractable. Certainly, classical simulation algorithms are steadily improving.

Comment · 2 years ago