whoByFire

Woah.

I was expecting a discussion of harmful technologies. Instead, he essentially says "rationalization considered harmful". Which is not too controversial.

But his model of humanity is interesting. He seems to think of humans as harboring dark passions that are just itching to be rationalized. Despite Russell's atheism, I can't help but wonder if the doctrine of total depravity [1] hasn't rubbed off on him. Or if we are seeing evidence of the typical mind fallacy [2].

But I also can't help but wonder that maybe he's just better at introspecting than I am. And that maybe my model of humanity should be a little more depraved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity [2] https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Typical_mind_fallacy

That final paragraph is great

Some theorists agree. Talk of disappointment is “crazy talk,” Arkani-Hamed said. “It’s actually nature! We’re learning the answer! These 6,000 people are busting their butts and you’re pouting like a little kid because you didn’t get the lollipop you wanted?”

I'm really surprised at the comparison of motorbikes to cars. I don't own a motorbike, but my impression was that compared to cars the fuel costs are trivial. This data suggests a cost reduction of only ~25%. Was it dumb of me to expect a cost reduction of >75%?

You can avoid saving time stamps if you just do separate sums for preset time stamp ranges. It will add another dimension to the data but that dimension can be pretty roughly discretized. 99% of users would be perfectly happy with 15 minute, or even 30 minute discretization. 95% with 1 hour discretization.