spacemark

Right. It's not existential, sure. It helps that all our debt is issued in our currency. But the fact is that ~30% of our national debt is held by foreign entities, and at the very least interest payments are an outflow of wealth from our country. This is not a healthy position if we value freedom of action. It WILL eventually constrain our country in meaningful ways. At the very least the mechanisms to manage this debt will weaken our currency, leaving everyone that doesn't invest in the market behind (which is a sizeable portion of our citizenry).

Pointing out that earth is a closed system so it's all good doesn't address these very real concerns about our unchecked national debt.

Where do you get this idea that our national debt = private liquid assets? How does that make any sense at all?

This kind of intellectual rationalization about something that is obviously not healthy is why people distrust so called experts.

In your analogy, people are dying of thirst, but it's ok because the whole world isn't losing water. Mmmkay.

The cost of the war is zero? You're off your rocker.

The constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war and authorize military force. The fact that our country's politicians have manipulated our system to the point that this has been disregarded basically since WWII should never be normalized.

This country has been run by the rich for a very long time and democracy is on its way out.

So what do you think the cost of the war is, then? $50bn? Seems like splitting hairs or missing the point. Even $50bn is too much for a war that congress nor the American people approved.

Surely at some point compounding interest will eclipse this, no? If our debt is 500 trillion does your opinion hold?

Lol. Speak for yourself, AI has not diminished my thinking in any material way and has indeed accelerated my ability to learn.

Anyone predicting the "end of humanity" is playing prophet and echoing the same nonsensical prophecies we heard with the invention of the printing press, radio, TV, internet, or a number of other step-change technologies.

There's a false premise built into the assertion that humanity can even end - it's not some static thing, it's constantly evolving and changing into something else.

Super cool. Hope to be well enough off one day to do stuff like this.

>Sitting on a bike, you're even shorter than a pedestrian and more likely to be completely out of sight.

Not true at all except for the lowest-sitting cruisers. Most bikes put you eye level with an SUV driver and taller bikes above.

Don't be bothered by the down votes. HN consensus is not something worth pursuing. Your criticism is valid, it's just that it runs against what HN readers want to believe in this instance. Readers here like to think they're motivated by reason and intelligence and whatnot, but that is laughable - examples of logical fallacies and assertions of fact rocketing to the top comments abound. Overconfidence and readiness to accept bold claims is a more dangerous cultural dysfunction than the lack of seriousness and ubiquitous monetization that plagues other platforms.

In any case this study will likely go on the pile of papers judged by time to be an overreach of conclusions and a dead end.

Yeah, it's an obsessive personality trait that I've observed in most high achievers. Often not healthy. At least scrutinize your obsessions, people.

Seriously. Hasn't the main thesis of that book (a distinct advantage of human upright evolution is our ability to run long distances) and several key supporting points been mostly disproven scientifically (early humans often hunted by running to exhaustion, for example)?

Seems to me another enticing narrative with little to no sound evidence a la Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sapiens, and the like. The stuff this site loves to gobble up with comment after comment of supporting anecdata.

I definitely believe you. I know from a few injuries that with tendons you want to be moving and applying resistance as soon as you are able to prevent the formation of scar tissue and encourage blood flow. It's not a huge leap of logic that bones, too, benefit from movement and resistance when healing.

Honest question, how did you know to disregard the doctor 's instructions and start home exercises on the bone at 4 weeks? How did you limit yourself during your riding and other resistance work? How long was the recovery period after every session?

Maybe it's just too early or there are other posts, but I find it an interesting insight into human behavior - supposedly intelligent human behavior - that there were hundreds of comments on the posting of the original study here at HN, the vast majority of which accepted the study's conclusion, yet there are much fewer comments on the "adjustment" to the study's conclusion.

I shouldn't be too cynical, but it's a reminder to be skeptical, always.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Is Rumi a character in a video game or something?

Right, but life down there didn't independently spark from raw organic molecules. Or, rather, there is no evidence for that, whereas there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest all such life on earth is migratory to new ecosystems and shares one common ancestor.

That leap from organic molecules to "life" is still a bit of a mystery. And how often it occurs is still up for debate.

Look at Earth's history - trees existed for 60 million years before some chance bacterial mutation stumbled on efficiently breaking down lignin. And then boom, trees everywhere - every continent on earth - immediately (in geologic timescales) were decomposed.

The fact that it took 60 million years for extant bacteria to allow for that should give pause to any sweeping statements about the certainty of life and especially complex life.