Yes, but people don't usually mean herbal teas or tisanes when they say 'tea'.

That depends very much on the people with whom you interact.

You could think of a plugboard as hardware, too, hence there is no longer a clean hardware/software distinction

It's not known that a software/hardware distinctive is even applicable to brains.

Moreover, If you simulated a brain, you might be simulating in software what was originally done in hardware .

What's the best way to learn programming from a fundamentals-first perspective? I've taken / am taking a few introductory programming courses, but I keep feeling like I've got all sorts of gaps in my understanding of what's going on. The professors keep throwing out new ideas and functions and tools and terms without thoroughly explaining how and why it works like that. If someone has a question the approach is often, "so google it or look in the help file". But my preferred learning style is to go back to the basics and carefully work my way up so that I thoroughly understand what's going on at each step along the way.

I bought a new office chair. My selection process was to take my coat off and sit on every single damn chair in the store until I found which one was the least awful. The most comfortable (at any price) that I found was this one - the multiple points of adjustment turned out to be the key so that I had both enough padding and lower back support. Link

However, from the perspective of wanting to prevent harm in all sentient beings, they cause a large negative utility.

Let's take two ecosystems. One is rich and diverse, full of creatures mostly eating each other. Another is poor and sparse, hardly any creatures live there.

Can you gain utility by converting the first ecosystem into the second one?

On the other hand, you could see how things go for the first 5 years and then go back to work if needed.

Will you be allowed back into the labor force? Many employers, especially in the IT industry, will almost certainly turn you away if you have an unexplained hole in your resume that's 5 years wide. Basically the only reason that can cover a 5-year gap is education of some kind (usually something like graduate education). If you say, "Oh, I just retired for 5 years, but now I'm looking for a job again," that's not going to help your chances of landing a job.

I wondered what "processed meat" means exactly and looked it up in one of the studies:

“Red meat” was defined as unprocessed meat from beef, hamburgers, lamb, pork, or game and excluding poultry, fish, or egg; “processed meat” was defined as any meat preserved by smoking, curing, or salting or addition of chemical preservatives, such as bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs, or processed deli or luncheon meats, and excluding fish or eggs; and “total meat” was defined as the total of these 2 categories.

I also looked up "resistance training" but it is not clear exactly what is meant. I have to assume that it is streangth training.

I recommend adding this post to the boring advice repository

Basically, open threads are a replacement for forum-style discussion, with topics promoted or demoted according to frequency of comments. Is there some way to just make reddit code display posts ordered by most recent comment? Then someone could make us an "Open Forum."

Recently there were a few posts about using bikes as transportation. This left me curious. Who are the transportation cyclists at LessWrong? I am interested in hearing your reasons for choosing cycling and also about your riding style. Do you use bike infrastructure when available? Do you take the lane? I'm especially interested in justification for these choices, as choices in the vehicular cycling (criticism of vehicular cycling) vs. separate bike infrastructure debate don't seem to always be well justified. (To outsiders, vehicular cyclists might be considered the contrarians among bicyclists.)