jds375

I don't think it's that simple and I don't see why it's a given that refs are bent.

There is far more money at stake in maintaining the legitimacy of the the NBA (player salaries, tv deals, team valuations - all of these easily trump all the money made off of betting). Wouldn't that money fight a lot harder than any bent refs in order to fight corruption and maintain the legitimacy of the NBA?

If a bigger story about bent refs got out it would destroy the NBA and a lot of the associated revenue. I'm sure the NBA is aware of this.

I'm not arguing that there is no corruption, but I don't see why it's so 'obviously' commonplace as you and others suggest. I'd like a more concrete reason why than 'its good for marketing' since that seems like a weak argument in the bigger picture of money made from the NBA.

It's true there's a lot of money in sports betting, but there is even more money in the NBA (TV deals, player salaries, team valuations, etc). That larger sum of money would be existentially threatened by continued corruption within the league due to sports betting. Thus, one would think that more money would go towards stopping any corruption.

I suppose that doesn't mean there wouldn't be any corruption, but it seems like there would certainly be less?

I would love to get more people's opinions on if this is still happening in the NBA and to what extent.

Naturally, I would assume that this rarely happens still if ever. Modern methods of oversight and statistical methods ought to be enough to ensure such things don’t happen. The NBA has a vested interest in maintaining the legitimacy of the league and thus are naturally inclined to root out any kind of cheating or illicit betting. Could you imagine if it got out that this was still happening and a more intense, modern investigation happened? It could destroy the NBA, which is something I’m sure the NBA is working hard to make sure doesn’t happen.

However, at least on reddit’s r/nba it seems a common opinion (at least according to upvoted responses) that much of this is still going on. Obviously that’s not saying much, but it makes me wonder… Do I have it wrong? If so why? And likewise, if so what’s the point in watching these sports?

I totally understand what you’re saying, but at what point does it become “putting money under your mattress” versus using a bank?

Yes a major outage that’s no fault of my own could take down my site - and that isn’t great. On the other hand, wouldn’t you trust them more than yourself? Just like you trust a bank more than yourself to keep your money safe? I’m sure the average major cloud service has far better uptime than the average on prem solution. At what point does it become hubris to spin up your own on prem solution?

Because not every employee was complicit in that....... And those that weren’t most definitely DO deserve their PTO.

The problem is when you say “same people” you’re just lumping everyone together and implying everyone at Buzzfeed news was trying to run articles that ruins a person’s life forever. That’s what you’re missing.

Hopefully that doesn't get shut down anytime soon (it's actually owned by Lyft I think). That service is one of the few services I've seen over the past several years I've seen where I've gone "Wow, this is a great thing for the world"

Agree with the point about tipping. As for why this is happening see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/dining/san-francisco-rest...

That's definitely a good point; language would likely be much better than binary unless the aliens had some special capacity for binary (which I'm pretty sure was not the case)

But it wasn't a human computer. It was a trisolarian computer made up of trisolarians that were alien beings that had the ability to do things like hyper-fast communication and always be truthful. Both of those traits could actually make for a viable computer system whereas humans obviously would not. I can see how you may have thought that though because in the 3 body problem simulation "game" in the book the trisolarians are represented as humans (the author does point out the difference though)

On a side note, is our system of government really all that different from a mass human computer?

I actually disagree and have wondered myself how he got such a book published in China. He is very critical of China's history throughout the series and collectivism. Also the sophons seem (at least to me) to be a direct parallel to the 'surveillance state' concerns that China has right now and how the citizens feel about them

Much of the content of that article is talked about in depth in Why We Sleep[1] (and much more)

[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep

Great explanation (even though you're not OP), makes sense now!

Very interesting comment, thanks!

Could you elaborate on what you mean by ‘evolution doesn’t abstract’? I did not totally understand what the example given had to do with abstraction

They seem to suggest that it is being removed because it wasn’t being used. Does anyone else find that hard to believe? Obviously it’s totally antectodal, but I checked that EVERY time I logged onto Facebook.

Just because people don’t click on it doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t read it.... Afterall it’s visible right in the top right of the site. To be honest this kind of sounds like Facebook is trying to skirt around the real reason for removing it (it was contributing to promoting fake news).

Does anyone know if all of the trending items were reviewed by editors? If so, then I’d be more inclined to believe their explanation

I actually completely agree with you (Enlightenment Now by Pinker provides excellent data backing all of this up). Our collective pessimism is actually a major problem I think.

But to clarify, when I said “sure it’s bad now” I meant that in the context of the current military leadership.

Unfortunately I can’t really defend that argument much further given that I don’t necessarily agree with it (it was just speculation on potential counter-arguments).

I agree. I’d guess that the downvoters are thinking along the lines of:

- Sure it’s bad now, but the US military is made up of far more than just the president... many of which may be good, rational actors.

- Just because it’s bad now doesn’t mean it won’t get better quickly (there has been a lot of pushback on the president’s agenda)

- The US may still be comparatively better/benevolent than any other dominant superpower

Note that these aren’t necessarily my views (I’d need more time to think and consider). But I think they point out some decent possible counter arguments to OP

Obviously not EVERYONE is. I think it’s pretty clear that I mean most people are. Do you take everything literally? I doubt that strategy works well in the workplace or life

Living in SF I think this is totally false. I see a bike on the street once in a blue moon (and it’s often someone riding extremely slow). Bikes literally don’t fit on most sidewalks and there are extremely clear bike lanes. Plus you can’t pick up much speed before reaching an obstacle.

I consistently see people zooming down the sidewalks on scooters because: they fit, they accelerate quickly, and they are often too slow to be in the bike lane. Personally I think this was the massive failure by these scooter companies. No one is riding them in the streets. They are on the sidewalk going 10+mph. I really don’t think people would be quite as upset if they weren’t constantly dodging scooters going down the sidewalk.

Just because a rule applies to more cases doesn’t mean it’s the best answer for a given case (or that we should prefer it over other rules). Consider this example that’s true for many cases, but overall not a sufficient proof https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pólya_conjecture

In fact, I’d be willing to bet both hypotheses contribute to the overall effect we observe.

After reading the comments in the linked google group it seems like the issue is that they just need to more clearly define (and perhaps more fairly) what ‘merit’ is.

Each team/role should have this clearly defined to eliminate bias/subjectivity. Also by clearly defining that, you help escape a meritocracy where ‘authority’ decides what ‘merit’ is behind close-doors (which isn’t really a meritocracy).

Instead of abandoning a meritocracy because it has implementation issues, why don’t they just fix the problems?

I completely agree. It’s super fascinating to think what other skills/practices that reasoning applies to as well (nutrition stands out the most to me).

That being said, I don’t think your final comment is true (minus the part about farming) due to scale. Sure early humans spent just about all of their effort on hunting, but there weren’t many humans back then. Nowadays we spend much less effort on a given task, but because that effort is distributed amongst billions and billions of people we end up collectively putting in even greater amounts of effort than was likely possible in ‘early human history’.

This suggests to me the need of another Asilomar Conference whereby scientists can get atop regulation ahead of the game[1]. From the book The Gene, "Asilomar was different: here, scientists were alerting themselves to the perils of their own technology and seeking to regulate and constrain their own work. Historically, scientists had rarely sought to become self-regulators. As Alan Waterman, the head of the National Science Foundation, wrote in 1962, “Science, in its pure form, is not interested in where discoveries may lead. . . . Its disciples are interested only in discovering the truth.” But with recombinant DNA, Berg argued, scientists could no longer afford to focus merely on “discovering the truth.” The truth was complex and inconvenient, and it required sophisticated assessment. Extraordinary technologies demand extraordinary caution, and political forces could hardly be trusted to assess the perils or the promise of gene cloning (nor, for that matter, had political forces been particularly wise about handling genetic technologies in the past—as the students had pointedly reminded Berg at Erice)." [2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombi... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gene:_An_Intimate_History (page 231)

I'm going to guess it's the potential the technology has. In the US in 2016 almost 40,000 people died in car accidents and millions were injured [1]. Also the average commute round trip in the US is almost an hour [2].

Self-driving cars have the potential to eliminate a great deal of human suffering AND unlock a ton of productive time that has been held up in commuting (back of the napkin calculations suggest tens of millions of hours). If we consider what could be done with all of that lost human potential, the value of self-driving cars is staggering.

Disclaimer: That doesn't mean that self-driving cars shouldn't be made and developed in safe and properly regulated ways. But the promise of the technology likely makes the engineers working on them feel a bit better.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

[2] - https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42...

That data appears to be relative to the number of native apps in the app store, so that doesn't necessarily mean that moving towards non-native development is a misconception. In addition, many apps are not moving to non-native entirely... but instead module by module. I wonder how they account for that and how it impacts their statistics.

Does anyone have any solid basis for the degree to which this discrimination is happening (specifically scope and severity)? I'm curious to know if this is something that is impacting a large number of potential students in a significant way or is only a minor factor amongst many others when determining acceptance.

All of this is discussed in depth in Hooked, an excellent read[1].

[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1382248812

A fantastic article. One actionable example given for consumers was to turn of notifications/vibrations. Another was to move those subconsciously-addicting apps off your home screen. I'd be interested in seeing a more comprehensive list of those.

I wonder what that could mean for us as humans. Is some degree of "strife" necessary in society for people to be happier?

Perhaps our work to eliminate many of the more primal issues that affect us (the need to hunt, survive in the wild, etc) are only making us worse off?

It would be interesting to hear more about this, as well as what the potential "cures" may be, as alluded to at the end of the article.

I gave that out a try myself. While they certainly are cheaper than disposable or cartridge blades, I found that for the amount of time that went into a good shave I could get an even better one with disposable or cartridge blades.

I read all of the DE blade shaving guides, but it really didn't work well for me.

All in all, they're definitely cheaper... But I don't know about better.

The article makes the argument that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, thus a hotter atmosphere, thus the atmosphere can hold more water.

Does that at all explain the increasingly frequent droughts? Could it be due to more water in the water cycle being stuck in the atmosphere instead of on earth's surface?