Yeah. It's also my explanation for why the internet became crap: the early internet was very under-monetized. Creators were putting stuff online in a way that most of the surplus value went to viewers. That's why to early viewers the internet felt amazing, magical: all this value lying around. Then platforms sprang up that redistributed some of the surplus to creators (like YouTube with its ad revenue sharing, I remember how jarring it felt when I first saw creators beg viewers to watch ads), but of course that didn't make creators better off, because content creation is a business with free entry and exit; instead we got a lot more creators, with the median one losing money and only being in it for the passion and hope, and the viewers getting not much surplus either.

The frustrating thing is, it's still very possible to make a platform that will be under-monetized in the same way as the old internet was. But most creators won't go there, because they understand that content creation is hit-driven and they want the chance of a windfall that the monetized platform offers. Meanwhile the platforms reduce money sharing with creators to just the right amount that they don't leave en masse, and use network effects to make sure a new less hostile platform doesn't get traction. A sticky situation, this is what the logical late stage of a market looks like.

Are you sure it makes sense to go into these details? After all, the US has waged many wars since WWII, and the Iraq war doesn't seem unusual among them. So maybe we shouldn't explain it by unusual events; the right explanation would have to work for the whole reference class.

I'm against IQ tests for employment. My idea was more about job-relevant tests. They do require study, but the point of banning discrimination by diploma and allowing only tests is that people will be able to study for the test in any way they like, because employers won't be able to demand Ivy League etc.

Thank you for writing this!

I think my ideal system would differ from Singapore's in a couple important ways:

• Classes would be grouped by subject+level. A student would progress in different subjects at different pace and level, and there wouldn't be an overall "level of student" or "level of school".

• Employers would be banned from discriminating on education. They could only discriminate based on exam results relevant to the job, and the exams would be accessible to everyone regardless of hours of study.

It seems to me that this setup is equivalent to "skim air from the top of Earth's atmosphere, drop it back to Earth, extract gravitational energy", with some more details that don't change much. This fails for density reasons, unless I'm missing something.

In fact, I’m less likely to do it than if my friend weren’t trying to pressure me to do it.

Interesting! Why? I mean, the friend probably has your best interest in mind, "you'l be glad you jumped". And empirically, when I take the jump in situations like this, I feel happy with myself afterward. Isn't it the same for you?

(Also, to me it's not as much about what other people will think of me. It's more about me actually having certain qualities, doing certain things, or not.)

It feels to me that "evidence of X" as colloquially used might be a stronger phrase than "evidence for X", and almost as strong as "proof of X". So maybe correlation is evidence for causation, but isn't evidence of causation :-)

One example I like is Eminem's line "I make elevating music, you make elevator music". The meaning behind the line is unremarkable: "I'm better at music than you". But it works so well on the level of language, it's clear that it was born in the form of language straight away. I think all good writing (rap, poetry, prose) is full of this kind of thing.

Is boiling actually necessary for this scenario? Let's say the planet had pockets of pressurized gas instead. We drill into them, the gas expands, does work, and cools below ambient temperature.

This suggests Kelvin's formulation is actually ok, if we focus on the word "by". The work has to be extracted solely from cooling: something cools below the lowest temperature of surrounding objects, some work is extracted, and no other changes happen. If something else happens - for example a rock falls down, a spring is released, a container is depressurized, two fluids get mixed and so on - that doesn't count.

Idk, I feel all this new therapy-speak like "setting boundaries" leads people into wrong directions. Like, therapy assumes that you're the customer. For example if your friend tells you come on, jump in the cold water, you can respond by setting a boundary: I don't want to jump! And I'm right, because the customer is always right! But the real issue maybe is that you're a coward. It's not a pleasant thing to think about, the customer in you recoils from the thought that there's some fault with it - that you're being cowardly, greedy, gossipy, etc. And the right move is to stop being a customer and be a human. Don't distract yourself with therapy speak. When your friend in good nature says jump into cold water, just take the damn jump.