rando_dfad

Huh. I thought the camel/needle's eye thing was about a small narrow gate into Jerusalem. You can get a camel through it, but it needs to get down on its knees and crawl. Apparently, camels don't like to do that.

But I've never seen the gate, and don't have strong views on biblical accuracy.

Traffic flows better if played as a collective game, where the objective is to help the others get through it along with helping yourself.

This strategy, if followed by enough people, massively reduces traffic stress. It may also reduce travel time, but honestly the difference is likely just a few minutes each way.

Yes, I've driven in cities that play by the "we are in it together, let's work together to get us all out", and cities that play by "any advantage I can get regardless of the cost to others".

Problem is, once enough people start playing the selfish game, the equilibrium breaks and everyone has to go selfish.

that's how you kill a society. Kill the social contract, the care for your fellows, one form of interaction at a time.

> I doubt that the state will be more efficient in building houses than private enterprises can if allowed to do so

Depends. If the profit is in more expensive housing, than private enterprise will bias towards that and ergo be less efficient at building lower-margin "affordable" housing.

Ideally, in a perfect frictionless economy populated by spherical cows, yes, private enterprise will more efficiently allocate across the entire spectrum of market needs -- so in principle, I'm agreeing with you.

But spherical cows make lousy roommates.

and cross-referenced with your location at all times, all of your shopping habits, your viewing and reading habits, and every person you communicate with?

In an easily searchable database?

Sooo tempted to go Goodwin here and mention a nice use of computers from the late 1930s...

Excuse prior rant. New rant beginning here:

The real public school horror story is that today, in America, a "good school" is defined as one where your child won't get shot.

I leave the rest of the rant as an exercise to the reader.

The biggest US public school horror story is how we have taken a great instrument of social progress and decimated it.

Public schools in countries where schools are treated well have phenomenal success.

US schooling has been taken over (at the level of the state legislatures; blame goes to state Congress not to the schools) by companies selling "achievement" test. And also by charter schools whose success is based on only selecting high-achieving problem-free children?

Why do teachers say they are nothing but babysitters? Maybe because they aren't allowed to teach, to inspire love of learning in the children? And their classroom budgets are so tight they buy school supplies out of their own pockets, while living on an income that is close to poverty level? While facing felony charges for having the wrong book in the shelf behind their desk???

When things like "Creme de la Creme Early Learning Center of Excellence" are real institutions instead of something from a comic dystopia, you know you have a problem.

> Yes there is, it's crime. Street lights deter crime.

> Also simply driving safety. Driving with just headlights causes more accidents than on a well-lit street, since visibility is so much worse.

Accepting your points for convenience, wouldn't we get the same benefits with lights that only pointed downward? And if you further restrict to warmer colors (which interfere less with low-light sensitivity, also less diffraction reducing light pollution), with a sensible but low max intensity (again keeping the human eye more dark-sensitive, allowing better visibility into the non-illuminated spaces)?

Reducing nighttime lighting by 50% would make a huge difference in sky visibility.

> Sure, they didn't have to pay with money, past a certain point they didn't even use money, but they paid with (much) shorter lives. Money is just the cost of self-determination.

the cost of a clear night sky does not have to be "no technology". We don't need nearly as many streetlights, lighted signs, houselights, etc as we have.

I've lived in areas where regulation restricts lighting choices; it is a good thing.

Excess lighting is called light pollution, and it is a societal choice to put up with it. Society can choose otherwise and help us rediscover our wonder at the world.

They thought about it a lot, that's the origin of astronomy and math.

Original to Jeff or not, "A Thousand Brains" does a decent job presenting an interesting and highly plausible model of how the neocortext may function.

Your comment would be very valuable to me if it included pointers to better sources. I have sufficient background to see gaps in Jeff's book, and would be interested in exploring these, perhaps through the references you seem to be aware of.

and more specifically, between chemical-based information processing systems and Von Neumann architectures for binary information processing.

Agreed, a widespread fallacy of category.

But computers still do some pretty cool things. Powerful tools.

>The US government loves outsourcing technical problems and hates developing that stuff in-house.

No, no they don't. They would love to build in-house, but are constrained in what salary ranges they can offer.

The other challenge US government faces is that they continuously get their chain yanked by congress. I've read many stories of (corporate) management incompetence over the years, but they mostly pale in relation to the ability of congress to completely change priorities and goals every 6-12 months.

Even the most disfunctional corporation has some kind of force/attraction towards having a product line with an outward semblance of consistency and cohesion.

How many of these are police officers (in non-emergency situations)

>the sand from the Sahara Desert

Most people forget that the Sahara Desert is man-made. Back during the Cathigenian period, the southern Mediterranian was the breadbasket of Rome, and the land was verdant plains, antelope, hippos, rivers and streams everywhere.

So we killed it.