All of velcro's Comments + Replies

I absolutely agree that children should be exposed to interesting people and environments, be self-directed, be tutored, and have apprenticeships.

But given that thousands of people had these experiences contemporaneously with geniuses, and only dozens are geniuses, I think the genetics are the secret sauce.

Also, genetic geniuses with non-exceptional experiences may have been just as much a genius as the famous ones, but did not have a chance to become famous, so again the experiences help with the fame, not necessarily the base characteristic of genius.

The... (read more)

I loved this!
But I have a compulsion to point out that Cyprus is on the same end of the Mediterranean as Cairo.

Given the horrifically inefficient way we are using our current idea-creating resources (people), it seems a much better investment to improve our efficiency, rather than creating more underutilized resources at great expense.

I see some basic flaws in the sleep-exercise and sleep-food analogies.

There are reasonably well-understood physiological mechanisms showing how slight overuse of muscles starts a process of strengthening those muscles.  I did not see any proposed mechanism for less sleep reducing your need for sleep.  (If I missed it, please let me know).  While it is true of lots of inputs (food, oxygen) I do not think it is defensible to arbitrarily generalize the idea that reduction of any input allows you to function with less of that input.

With the food... (read more)

In equatorial Africa, I assume it is quite dark for 10-11 hours every single night where there is no moon.

Generally interesting, but I have a quibble with this:

In the text here, you say

>>Walker outright fakes data to support his “sleep epidemic” argument. The data on sleep duration Walker presents on the graph below simply does not exist:

I went to your link to see the proof that it does not exist.  Pretty extraordinary claim.  Difficult to prove a negative and all.  Figured I would find something solid.  Other than two studies with evidence that contradicts Walker's general claim with a few specific examples, here's what you had:

>&... (read more)

Could you (or others) provide one or two particularly egregious examples where "Governments Most Places Are Lying Liars With No Ability To Plan or Physically Reason. They Can’t Even Stop Interfering and Killing People"?  Maybe just one or two weekly posts to look at?

Clearly these organizations made mistakes, some significant.  I think even if 50% of their decisions were mistakes, the wording here is not really supported. You claim these organizations "Can't Stop Killing People"  Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence.

Other than that, great post.

I apologize if this is explained somewhere, but I have a question about this statement;

The key takeaway is that a 1% chance of having COVID, which is about the base rate of COVID in the US, costs older relatives a few days of life if you pass it on to them.

Is that an average loss of life over a large population of people exposed?

So in an oversimplified example, if the only effect of the behavior is 1 in 1000 older relatives would die 1000 days earlier than they would otherwise, the average loss is one day of life?

If that is the meaning, I am not sure I fin... (read more)

Overall, I found this very informative.  One quibble:

Shorter hours, cleaner and safer factories, and the end of child labor are luxuries that could only happen after an increase in per-capita wealth. 

The per-capita wealth is at least one level removed as a cause.  The actual cause is increased profit for the factory that can be turned in to those benefits.  Do you have any evidence that early unsafe factories had insufficient profit for that to happen?  Is it safer to assume that the owners felt no pressure to give up their generous profits for the benefit of worker safety?

Regarding sports - I agree that physical activity is critical to wellbeing. I agree that team sports are a good way to build community.  But the non-physical benefits of sport are the lessons in perseverance, sharing, cooperation, humility, etc.  They are not intrinsic to the sport, but I agree sport can be a good vehicle for learning them, so they can be a net good. But there are other activities that teach the same lessons, and at the end of the day you have something more than a score.  Think Eagle Scout projects, hackathons, or Habitat f... (read more)

I was thinking the same thing about retro, but it seems to have connotations of recent past, i.e. living memory.  Hundreds or thousands of years ago is not "retro", IMHO.

I agree.

It’s almost impossible to predict the future. But it’s also unnecessary, because most people are living in the past. All you have to do is see the present before everyone else does.

To be fair, it is still necessary to model/predict the future to make good decisions that have consequences in the future.  As this post says, your prediction will be better than others if your data is more up-to-date and from better sources.

 

One of my favorite stories.  I am rereading it after reading many of the sequences, and am getting a lot more out of it.

I also read the comments, and wanted to add to the non-consensual sex discussion.  (Obvious but necessary disclaimer, I am opposed to rape in any form)

I think I understand the purpose, i.e. show how future societies might accept things we find repulsive.  I think the example the author chose is problematic.

Many things we do now that were offensive to past generations seem to fall in the category of allowing more rights for ... (read more)

There is a lot of good information here, but unfortunately a lot of hyperbole, and a lack of sources to allow us to check your numbers.

First, the headline, which conveys emphatic certainty. Contrast that with the body, which says 

"all signs point to it being about 65% more infectious than the old one, albeit with large uncertainty and error bars around that. " 

 "I give it a 70% chance that these reports are largely correct." 

(Bolding mine)

Next:

The media told us it was nothing to worry about, right up until hospitals got overwhelmed and

I'll b honest, I almost stopped reading when the you said "Throughout March, the CDC was telling people not to wear masks and not to get tested unless displaying symptoms." as an example of how they got it wrong.

The reality is they did not encourage people to buy masks initially, because the very credible concern was that the public would hoard masks that were in short supply for people who absolutely needed them immediately. As soon as supplies were available, they recommended getting them for the public.

And similarly, the shortage of testing drove the ve... (read more)

One reason for the lack of celebration may be our increased awareness of negative effects. When the railroad was completed, or the bridge built, nobody worried about the environmental costs.

Another reason is "low-hanging fruit". Speeding up the time to get from New York to San Francisco from 6 months to 6 days required a steam engine and a lot of steel. Speeding it up to 6 hours took heavier-than-air flight and jet engines. Going from 6 hours to 6 minutes will take a lot more work.

The internet is a big deal, but as mentioned elsewhere, it is not a singular event. Nobody had a ticker-tape parade when libraries were invented, or when they reached a certain percentage of towns.

Do you have sources for that? From what I can tell, China had 1000 executions to 22 in the US in 2019. Also life expectancy and suicide rate seems to be worse in China, not better. I didn't check the others.

The WHO has lied repeatedly, to our face, about facts vital to our safeguarding our health and the health of those around us. They continue to do so. It’s not different from their normal procedures.

The FDA has interfered constantly with our ability to have medical equipment, to test for the virus, and to create a vaccine.

Almost all government officials in America, and most other countries (I won’t get into which ones are the exceptions) have done the same. They’ve joined in lying about everything.

Would you be willing to provide exam... (read more)

It seems like the stability point of a lot of systems is Moloch-like. (Monopolies, race to the bottom, tragedy of the commons, dictatorships, etc.) It requires energy to keep the systems out of those stability points.

Lots of people need to make lots of sacrifices to keep us out of Moloch states. It is not accidents. It is revolutions, and voter registration, and volunteering and standing up to bullies. It is paying extra for fair trade coffee and protesting for democracy in Hong Kong.

Moloch has a huge advantage. If we do nothing, it will always win. We need to remember that.

I really love this story, and what you are doing, but I have a few disagreements with what is presented.
Maybe this is just Harry, and not what you are trying to convey, but I do want to counter some of the points made.

Death, right now, is inevitable.

Until we conquer it, we should not fear it. As with all things inevitable, there is value, and wisdom, in trying to derive meaning from it. Right now, simply opposing death, fearing it, and hating it will make our lives worse, not better.

Should we strive for immortality? Maybe. Is it irrational to think th... (read more)

The killer instinct reminds me a bit of Ender.

I was binge-reading for a bit, just realized the "enemy's gate" header was for this chapter. Nice reference.