warbaker

Imagine if we, somehow, had the technology to make humans live for 5000 years (bristlecone pine trees somehow manage it). Would you then say that we should still commit suicide at 90, in order to make room for the young?

My dad is in his 70's, and I consider his mortality to be a preventable tragedy, like a death from smallpox before the invention of the smallpox vaccine.

There's already a lot "unnatural" about humanity (unnatural only if you don't think of humanity as being part of nature). It used to be the case that about half of your siblings would die before reaching adulthood. Perhaps at the time, people felt that this gave their own life more meaning, and perhaps in some sense, it did. I'm still glad we don't have to go through that anymore, and grateful to generations past for spending the resources to make that so.

Children would have to be much rarer if we solve longevity, but our engineers and scientists would also be far more capable than they are right now, as they'll be able to accumulate far more knowledge and experience. Perhaps, once we solve longevity, it will be time to start the long term project of colonizing the solar system.

Perhaps we'd simply adapt, say via a global wealth tax or something similar.

CGP Grey's video adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY

I still think we should make longevity research a priority.

Are you seriously equating the two govts? Consider that, because hackernews/YC is a US company, your post is read by everyone who cares to see it.

Consider what would happen if you decried the powers of the CCP on a China-based platform. Consider what would happen to you, personally, if you did so while living in China.

So, it's ok for China to ban Google because Google refuses to help with censorship and propaganda, and because Google doesn't want the Chinese govt to be able to spy on its citizens.

But it's not OK for the US to keep out spyware. Heck, retaliation for China's banning of Google etc would be sufficient justification for banning TikTok on its own.

I feel like there's another angle here. Perhaps the attempts diversification that the author so decries were an attempt to keep Mozilla relevant even if its flagship sinks.

Also, I don't totally understand why you can expect to get and retain talent while paying way below market rate.

And... suppose the CEO were paid 1M instead of 2M. That's, what, 5 engineers? You could pay the CEO $0 and it would make only a small dent in the recent layoffs.

Imagine if, every quarter, a committee voted on whether you keep your job.

Does this make you more or less willing to take risks? More or less focused? Does this decrease or increase the amount of attention you give to "optics" and politics?

Gmail was developed internally.

Not sure how you can equate these two. Iraq invasion was driven by faulty intelligence gathered in secret by a spy organization. Here, we have millions of eye witnesses and tons of corroborating evidence.

Storing oil safely is hard: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/that-time...

No, Chesterton's Fence says for you to leave and think about why someone put it up originally, and figure out what was good about the fence. What you should instead do is look at the fence and the dangers on the other side and see if it seems worth it.

A lot of 'fences' in engineering are there for no good reason at all, so blocking until you can come up with some good reason for the fence is a waste of time.

Chesterton would have you believe that the ancients had great wisdom, and that you should try to find that wisdom before you make changes to anything. The reality is, the ancients knew even less than you do, reasoned worse about problems, and used inferior systems for generating solutions. Progress! It's real!

To remind what Chesterton said: "The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

I hate Chesterton's Fence.

We keep knocking down fences and it keeps being great, the most recent being the millenia-long prohibition on gay marriage.

People put up fences for all sorts of dumb reasons. If you see a fence that seems to cause more harm than good, knock it down. In the rare situation where this leads to surprising problems, put the fence back up.

In software, most WTFs are just bad engineering. You should figure out what the code does and how you can do it better, not take a step back and contemplate the mind of its author.

Really tragic. RIP.

Given that the researcher was a participant directly, and that he lied about his actions (he in fact presented suicidal thoughts, etc), I believe the balance of evidence says we should reject the study.

My default position on the follow-up is likewise skepticism. It seems like the filters at the time were so low that it is likely the follow-up is just a better constructed lie.

I am glad the government forced us to pay for those things. That's a lot of the job!

300k is usually considered to be upper middle class, if not upper class. The threshold for being in the top 1% of earners is 420k (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/what-you-have-to-earn-to-be-...).

We didn't do everything we could, but this goes beyond palliative care.

We underinvested in research. We aren't as far along as we could be, and we're moving slower than we can.

We, the voting public, are responsible for this tragedy. The US allocated just 2% of its budget to scientific research, and we elected officials who want to push it lower still.

There shouldn't have been a tradeoff between quantity and quality of life. The real tradeoff was made years earlier, between research and slightly more material comfort. We chose material comfort, and she paid the price for it.

I use Gobble and still like it. Unlike BlueApron etc, Gobble is intended to be quick and easy. Like, rather than giving you potato and expecting you to mash it, Gobble gives you the damn mashed potatoes and you microwave them.

Let's not conflate wealth with income. Generally, you get income by providing a service to the market in excess of that income (as perceived by the market, which can be wrong).

If you have really high taxes, the only way to get rich is to be born rich.

High estate taxes make a ton of sense from a social perspective. High income taxes, much less so.

I like "power." It's evocative, and it maps to the feeling you get with a good language - when your intent is made manifest with little effort, you feel powerful (and _are_ powerful).

Maps was always a better product, though...

I don't know, it looks like the conservation of mutual information is like the fact that entropy always remains constant or increases. This is true for the overall universe, but not true for individuals.

A human isn't some magical entropy reducer -- we reduce entropy in ourselves by increasing it elsewhere. I suspect mutual information works the same way.

This is just a correlation study, showing that states where incarceration went up did not simultaneously have decreasing crime rates.

The study can't tell you what would have happened if that state had reduced incarceration rates.

People who get cancer treatment are far more likely to have cancer than the general population. This does not mean that reducing cancer treatment reducing cancer treatment will reduce cancer incidence!

This is just a correlation study, showing that states where incarceration went up did not simultaneously have decreasing crime rates.

The study can't tell you what would have happened if that state had reduced incarceration rates.

People who get cancer treatment are far more likely to have cancer than the general population. This does not mean that reducing cancer treatment rates will reduce cancer rates!

The analysis is kinder to the rapists than the data.

They state that they believe that this ruins the woman's marital prospects forever, but that didn't stop them from doing it.

Even within their belief system, they are acting monstrously.

Interviewing them is a great idea, but the researchers should be open to the idea that the main problem is the boring, standard idea that violent criminals have little empathy for their victims, and little impulse control.

They don't lower the bar for women.

What? That is happening.

Tech companies have a strict interview process because a mediocre engineer is actively harmful.

At most companies, the hiring manager and interviewers, who are predominantly other engineers, get to decide whether or not to hire a candidate. There simply isn't a mechanism for upper management to manipulate the process in the way you suggest.