xkcd

moiraemachy

Net neutrality is complicated, and I'm not too on board with it. On one hand, internet access obviously should be considered a public utility. But should, for example, 1080p Netflix qualify? Seems like a luxury to me, and properly regulating the boundary is hard (and something lobbyists do quite wel...

moiraemachy

Yeah, as much as I like fivethirtyeight, this just sounds like hard science people having a go at law scholars by picking on clumsy wording when talking about math. The idea that objective metrics should inform SCOTUS decisions implies that the proposed metric perfectly encapsulates what they should...

moiraemachy

Also, you need a lot of salt to get water to freeze at -20C (about 25% in mass), so it's probably not that cost effective unless in bulk. Regarding food, usually you want either to refrigerate (coldest possible without ice crystals forming, breaking tissue and changing the texture) or to freeze (the...

moiraemachy

Not just "meh they're only Nazis getting punched so I'm looking the other way", which I would get, but actively encouraging people to go do more of it? Not actively in defense of self or others, not in any way that's going to do any practical good, all of which I could get behind dependin...

moiraemachy

Ugh, back to the rabbit hole... So, I googled this a while ago... and yes, those sensitivity charts are very fishy. They either come from measuring how the pigments in the cones absorb light, or from "do you see the difference?" tests which attempt to isolate one kind of receptor ( link )....

moiraemachy

Does anyone really say "line"? I've heard "link", but not that. And "arc" is usually only used in the directed case, in which case you could also throw in "arrow" as an option. I was never taught graph theory formally and neither were my peers, soo... anythin...

moiraemachy

Does anyone really say "line"? I've heard "link", but not that. And "arc" is usually only used in the directed case, in which case you could also throw in "arrow" as an option. I was never taught graph theory formally and neither were my peers, soo... anythin...

moiraemachy

Remember, these marketplaces are a thing that the free market has failed to create. Which is why Obama made a law and then commanded a federal agency to make one. Honest question: why? Every time someone explains to me how the average american gets health insurance, it feels something is missing. I...

moiraemachy

Yeah, as somitomi said, this is complicated to properly model. But in the case of simulated physics in a game, maaaybe you can get away by using 3 different friction coefficients: one for side slip, one for longitudinal slip (when braking), and one for regular longitudinal (when not braking). Then y...

moiraemachy

Ugh, all 3 answers are equally bad. I'll go with log(log(x)) if it's in print, and (log(x))² if it's handwritten. log(log(x)) is clearly the correct one, but using it as (log x)² is much more useful when writing stuff at hand because "o shit I forgot to open the parenthesis now it's too late wa...

moiraemachy

Don't do it. Also, probably wouldn't work. Reasons: - Battery capacity has nothing to do with conductivity; - I have no idea why heating a metal would somehow increase its ability to "contain electrons". I strongly suspect it's the opposite; - Even if it does, in a battery you don't store ...

moiraemachy

It leaves the obvious question: if there is such a big divide between city and country, and the key demographic is angry small town people looking for an asshole (their word) outsider to rally behind. Shouldn't the winning candidate be a small town asshole? The US is big, you surely have one or two...

moiraemachy

He does care about the white constituents, I think. After all the tax cuts are said and done, I think they'll get their abortion restriction and their social security. Anything else is a wildcard. I may be giving him too much credit, but IMO Trump is not likely to lower the overall tax burden. I sa...

moiraemachy

Does any county have a multiparty system *and* a separately elected head of state + government? Brazil has that. Our system has a few quirks that arguably stop it into devolving into a two-party system: mandatory voting, a two-round system for executive elections, and rules that try to make electio...

moiraemachy

He lost really hard in the beginning, but managed to recover somewhat. My take is:

10-7 Hillary
10-9 Trump
10-9 Trump

Since MMA scoring translates directly to votes, Hillary will get a 1% bump and Trump will lose 1%. Science.

moiraemachy

sardia, I'm pretty sure Yakk isn't disputing that Trump's case is some egregious bullshit. I was the one who suggested bullshit like that probably isn't that uncommon. Maybe they set up charities because they have the power to fund worthy causes, and doing it out of your personal bank account is a h...

moiraemachy

I wonder how Hillary could capitalize on that. The "crazy bigot" angle has only strengthened his narrative so far. Maybe she could suggest he only did those fiscal maneuvers and isn't releasing his tax records because he isn't so rich, after all. Take the "successful businessman"...

moiraemachy

This is the direction of my overall argument: meaning can only derive from the full context. Nothing has any meaning by itself (see the argument above regarding partial description). Yes. And that's why mathematicians don't really bother with this "meaning" thing. Actually, that's not rea...

moiraemachy

At best we'll have the same deal as before except lose our rebate. The rebate is calculated based on contributions to the EU. Yes, the rebate will disappear, but so should those contributions (and EU investment on the UK). So the net result would be 0, but the UK can choose exactly where to spend t...

moiraemachy

The EU does prohibit individual countries from making trade/immigration deals. And it has a pretty high incentive to force a bad deal on Britain. Forcing a deal that is economically bad for both sides for political reasons would also make the EU look exactly as tyrannical as they are painting it to...

moiraemachy

I think the value of years of life is irrelevant in this regard. If we assume the smoker was informed properly then the smoker chose to smoke and thus chose to lose these years of life. 22,200 euros is about half of Finland's GDP per capita. According to the wiki, their tax rate is 43.6% of the GDP...

moiraemachy

"Racism" is a great word to win debates with precisely because it is bad communication: for some people, the word describes are overt, conscious bias against people of certain races. For some, unconscious biases also qualify. For some, what really qualifies as racism is structural oppressi...

moiraemachy

Trump will need to significantly backtrack on a huge number of his statements and actually apologize (He still hasn't backtracked on the Muslim Database or hell, Obama's silly birth certificate yet, but he has backtracked on Nuclear weapons for Japan / South Korea, NATO, and Abortion). And even the...

moiraemachy

You seem to be very intent on needlessly complicating everything. In reality, Newtonian mechanics are an exercise in simplicity: 1. F=ma (or more fundamentally: p=mv and F=dp/dt) 2. The gravitational force between two objects is MmG/r2. These two, by themselves, say absolutely nothing about geometr...

moiraemachy

We develop mathematical language based on what's important. I can write gravity as G=T and electromagnetism as d*F=J because we have loaded a whole lot into these symbols. Fair point. But still, even if you incorporated all the defintions along the way, I doubt the resulting statement would be more...

moiraemachy

We know what trump is doing. Now why would the primary voter lap it up over the mainstream candidates? Trump and Cruz combined have almost 50% of the vote. Trump works as a candidate because he is the living antithesis of the leftist strawman: overly sensitive college students who will make a scand...

moiraemachy

Ninja'd already. Big overnight stock price changes are a symptom, not the cause, of market failures. A very benign symptom by the way. Proposing to tax overnight trade is just populism to take advantage of the negative feelings many have against traders and Wall Street. There is plenty effective ant...

moiraemachy

English words don't map very well to material equivalence and material implication . The English phrases "imply", "is equivalent to", etc express constraints on possible truth values, so they are closer to logical relationships . Material connectives in plain English are better e...

moiraemachy

locking in votes at the primaries wouldn't really solve them, and would introduce more. A straightforward way out: lock your vote to the candidate you voted in the primaries, not the party. So if you voted Trump AND he wins the primaries, you can only vote Republican in the main elections (or just ...

moiraemachy

Limiting the language of damage and problematic phrases is the first step to reordering social thinking towards a utopian inclusive playing field. More like last step. meanieheads want to eliminate social punching down, and whilst some are perceived to be behavioural police or doublespeak thinkpol ...

moiraemachy

KnightExemplar wrote:My gosh, can a candidate really get off with simple one-liner assertions without further elaborating any point?

Yes he can.

... sorry.

moiraemachy

Well, there's still cost per kWh. Tesla promises us 100USD/kWh by 2020, and this is way more expensive than the equivalent 600ml or so gas tank. Anyway, I always assumed fuel cells would be good at storing energy from solar, wind, and nuclear sources to the grid. I mean, it must scale well: after yo...

moiraemachy

I have the solution: tabs should be always visible when coding. This way, you can clearly see indentation levels, and not get confused by ifs with multiple lines: --->--->if ( condition1 && --->---> condition2 ) --->--->--->dostuff() is better than if ( condition1 && condition2 ) dos...

moiraemachy

While in the short term the immigrants will obviously be a cost, they might be a neutral or even a benefit in the long term since the European population is ageing fast. It is no coincidence Germany is more willing/prepared to accept immigration: their are experiencing a shortage of workers, and alr...

moiraemachy

And of course, a market drop like this will spook investors: companies like Uber or Tesla (which haven't had any real profits in their lifetime) may have their funding dry up as people reallocate their investments towards safer blue chips. I wouldn't bet in these two specific companies being severe...

moiraemachy

And of course, a market drop like this will spook investors: companies like Uber or Tesla (which haven't had any real profits in their lifetime) may have their funding dry up as people reallocate their investments towards safer blue chips. I wouldn't bet in these two specific companies being severe...

moiraemachy

Saying this report proves racism is an error because the report purposefully left out the single most important factor: wealth. Because the goal of the report is not to quantify racism; it only aims to quantify racial inequalities. It shouldn't be too hard to correct for wealth, so I'm really bummed...

moiraemachy

Say I hold someone at gunpoint and force them to commit a crime. Are they then deserving of punishment (under whatever ethical framework you fancy)? Now pretend there is no free will for anyone (either because of an Omni-God or because we are all slaves to cause and effect and will do what we do be...

moiraemachy

You seem to be implying that without free will, one has no reason to, say, punish criminals. I disagree strongly with this. Oh, there are reasons , but without free will, you don't (fairly) have the reason "he deserves it". And if you punish somebody who doesn't deserve it, it's (at least...

moiraemachy

Practical difference. I don't need free will in my model to make sense of the practical aspects of assigning responsibility. You seem to be implying that without free will, one has no reason to, say, punish criminals. I disagree strongly with this.

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