hirundo

Joined 13 years ago

Karma
15,000
Submissions
3,992
Member since
Dec 19
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Recent submissions

Comment · 3 years ago
My cheap home thermostat has that frustrating +/- 5 degrees F accuracy. Is it very difficult to build an inexpensive 1 degree sensor?
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
Why is it "Forbidden by Gravity" but the "sub-Plankian unknown"? I thought that the Plank length was a hard limit like the speed of light. Is that not true, and there theoretically are unknown features smaller than that?
Comment · 3 years ago
You could get the same distribution if everyone is assigned a random amount of selfishness regardless of wealth, but some people are better at achieving their selfish goals than others, or just luckier. How could someone know that the result is primarily due to non-uniform selfishness?

You could measure selfishness in small experimental scenarios and try to correlate it with the wealth of the subjects. Does that evidence exist?

Comment · 3 years ago
Finance used to be the driver of marriage, and now that it is less so there are fewer marriages.
Comment · 3 years ago
Wealth follows a Pareto distribution, and there are many Pareto distributions of things that are not caused by selfishness.

https://www.thelangelfirm.com/debt-collection-defense-blog/2...

If selfishness isn't a good general explanation for Pareto distributions, is there a reason that it's particularly explanatory for wealth distribution?

Comment · 3 years ago
"Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests we find, as in Dagsvik et al. (2020), that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years."
Comment · 3 years ago
I agree. Rule of law is critical and requires consistency. But given the choice I'd rather live in a jurisdiction where law enforcement tends to use their discretion in favor of less rather than more centralized control. That bias towards less control seems to be inversely correlated with population density.
Comment · 3 years ago
We have no garbage pickup in the county, we haul it to one of four collection areas. Those cost $140/year plus about $7/100lbs, so no doubt some more thrifty neighbors are burning household trash instead, but I just burn slash and take household trash to the dumpsters.

There's a high fire risk in this area and smoke watchers will report it, and the VFD gets dispatched. They don't respond individually.

Comment · 3 years ago
And it's self-reinforcing. I live in a rural county the size of Connecticut with just 5k people in it. The people that choose to live out here are frequently the ones who particularly value that extra freedom ... including law enforcement. It is almost routine here for the sheriff to announce that he will not enforce some state or federal code or another. Talk to a deputy about crime and he'll ask if you have guns, and then recommend that you buy one if you don't.

The county government does little and our property taxes reflect that.

I can and have burned very large piles in my yard, but we're not savages. I have to notify the local volunteer fire department first, or they're libel to show up, and not happily.

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