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hmslnon Were Early Modern People Perpetually Drunk? (2016)

Actually, some monkeys develop alcohol dependence in the wild (they get their alcohol from ripe fermenting fruits).

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/chimpanzees-...

Here's also an extract from a BBC Nature documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk

Apparently, the monkeys are divided among heavy drinkers, occasional drinkers or teetootalers in proportions that are roughly equal to those among human beings.

hmslnon Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do?

Be passionate about the cultures of the countries that speak this language, and read the products of these cultures - articles and books about their peoples, histories, traditions, world views, current events - in that language. This is how I learned English - from the age of 17 onwards I've been passionate about Anglo-Saxon cultures, histories and societies (in particular about the United States) and have widely read about them, in english.

I'll grant you that this is easier if the language you want to learn is spoken in a large, complex country or countries - such as the English, Mandarin, or Spanish.

hmslnon Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny

> I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me why do I have nuclear powered ships. That is a necessary evil. I would sink them all. I am not proud of the part I played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Willingness_...

hmslnon Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins

> for instance, following this logic, the most popular religion or dominant culture is not necessarily the most useful to the host genome, but the best viral "meme" that can replicate itself while balancing its own replication vs. the viability of the host (e.g., a malaria that allowed the host and its transmission vector to slightly evolve partial defenses against it so that it too can survive and replicate or the benign Herpes simplex virus that has 90% penetration rate).

Many religions (in particular Islam and Christianity) strike me as being just that. They have features that make them viral (through proselytising, and sometimes forced conversions), and make it hard for their hosts to get rid of them (due to social pressure and penalties against apostates). These features are integral to the success of the religion, and are hidden under mythological/theological disguise.

The myths act as a vector, and these "features", which are behaviours that can be very complex (running a religious court system, enforcing those laws, proselytising), are effectively the payload of the virus. They turn society into a machine to spread the religion further and protect it, even if this comes at the cost of other achievements (technological progress, greater equality between demographic groups...).

hmslnon A Soviet scientist created tame foxes

The hands do not just need to be agile to manipulate objects, they also need to have an opposable finger.

Racoons' "hands" (more like paws) do not have any.

hmslnon A Soviet scientist created tame foxes

I remember reading an article about this in The Economist a few years ago.

The article stated that the tame fox specimen exhibited facial features that were slightly different from those of wild foxes, and that the tamer they were, the greater the differences were. Their jaws had become thinner, their chins less pronouned, and their eyes larger. The article noted that it was possible that these facial features were correlated with hormonal levels that made the foxes less aggressive and more tame, and that the same could be true in human beings.

Since human beings considers these facial features "attractive" in other human beings, it was possible to conclude that we're hardwired to be physically attracted to people whose facial features indicate a lower propensity to anger and aggression.

I've looked for the article on google but I can't find it unfortunately.

hmslnon Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

https://www.quora.com/profile/Frank-Blu/log

The owner of the profile of the person who answered your question (whoever he is) seems to have changed his username from "Craig S Wright" to Frank Blu on Dec 12th 2015. He also seems to have deleted, on that same day, every post he made on Quora after Dec 11 2014.

The titles of the questions on which he posted revolved a lot around cryptocurrencies, cryptography and supercomputers, as well as finance and economics. Some example of questions to which he contributed are:

"How large will the Bitcoin blockchain be in November 2015?" "How would I estimate the cost of setting up a 100 Tera-Flop server at my..." "Why is gold considered so precious and why does it have such high prices..." "Are there better uses of stimulus funds than others?"

His earliest activity on the site is the creation of a topic called CSCSS, on Jul 30th 2012.

https://www.quora.com/topic/CSCSS

hmslnon Homeless Millennials Are Transforming Hobo Culture

I work in an insurance company and I approve this message.

hmslnon French National Assembly approved Internet traffic monitoring system (French)

It's not. There is some talk of a Sixth Republic during the presidential campaigns, generally from far-right or far-left parties, but the two main moderate parties do not want to hear about it.

French political life is characterized by a complete lack of impetus for change.

hmslnon My Y Combinator experience

> ... without realizing that in usability studies, most computer using college graduates do not understand the idea of a file system with directories inside of directories, files at every level, and two files named the same thing in two different directories actually being different files.

That claim seems hard to believe. Would you have a link to one of these usability studies?

hmslnon Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

> I don't think there's any harm in believing in the singularity for entertainment value, but as for providing a door to immortality, I think the main danger is simply distraction. While all the effort and discussion and research is spent on something there is no way of proving -- in the meantime, 20,000 children die each day from preventable diseases.

> I invite anyone who seriously considers a singularity to set it down, and put some effort into the relief of suffering. When we have preventable diseases and poverty figured out, then let's revisit the singularity. I'd enjoy working on it then.

The amount of money currently being spent on singularitarian pursuits is negligible compared to what is spent on development aid, or healthcare.

Furthermore, one of the necessary enablers of the singularity is faster computers. Regardless of the sustainability of Moore's law, it is economic competition between chip-makers that has provided the impetus for the continuous exponential increase in computing power that happened during these last decades; as long as it's physically possible, and as long as the chip market is not a monopoly, the increase in computing power is going to happen anyway, and the singularity would be nothing but a byproduct of these market forces - and will not come at the cost of a disinvestment from charitable pursuits.

As a species, it's nice to have a portfolio of possible futures - and it's nice to know that the singularity road is being probed by some people.