706f6f70

The really interesting studies will be longitudinal IMO. It's almost certainly not going to be another tobacco, but it strikes me as impossible that smoking marijuana is harmless. Should also be interesting to see what marijuana culture develops when the entire country is allowed to consume it legally.

> why the experience has to be so patronisingly humiliating.

It's intended to be stressful because that gets people to crack. My advice is to not take it personally unless they really push the line. The stress is part of their procedure to make sure you are not lying.

Experimental Roomba built up a static charge and fried something important.

> "You're a Christian? Didn't know anyone who believed in that stuff would be in engineering..."

Religion is a funny one in Silicon Valley because it's outright religious discrimination of Judeo-Christian traditions, while embracing Islam. It makes no rational sense at all for anyone with even the most superficial understanding of religion or history.

With race I can see the logic of "well, people that looked like your ancestors were really good at empire-building a while ago, so we're going to favour everyone else instead of you to try to make up for that" and gender "well, women in the workplace is a relatively new phenomena and they're 50% of the population, so we're going to favour them in order to hasten their representation in the workplace and make up for recent transgressions". But the religious one is truly baffling.

AI also means we may finally get to ask the last question[1]. Reading that first sentence, it looks like we may actually be ahead of schedule.

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http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

It certainly seems like the circumstances under which the UN Convention on Refugees was written no longer reflect the realities of the world. Increasingly, refugees are fleeing natural disasters and near-collapse of governments instead of genocide. Whereas once you were fleeing certain death, it seems like now it may be damaging countries by removing the very people who would help rebuild or restore order. They also seem to be using the system for economic migration instead of actual asylum.

There is also a large unintended incentive to enter a country illegally and then make an asylum claim, since it is faster and often means near-immediate access to state benefits. Article 31 of the Convention [1] is the one which grants amnesty to asylum claimants entering illegally and it made a lot of sense post-WW2, but seems like it's going to seriously test some country's ability to maintain order in the face of potentially tens of thousands arriving overnight at a border.

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[1] http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10 on page 29

The really interesting part is the need to appoint two independent directors. Currently, Tesla's leadership could best be described as a monarchy, with King Elon appointing family and favoured friends. That will have to change now and I think it will be quite telling who ends up in the role as well as how long they remain at Tesla.

Because when the rated party also rates the rater, ratings are essentially useless. The question you ask yourself is: is this person so absolutely awful as a passenger/driver that I'm willing to risk being kicked off the platform to get them kicked off?

Head's up on the publication's goal:

> Medical Hypotheses is a forum for ideas in medicine and related biomedical sciences. It will publish interesting and important theoretical papers that foster the diversity and debate upon which the scientific process thrives. [. . .] Medical Hypotheses was therefore launched, and still exists today, to give novel, radical new ideas and speculations in medicine open-minded consideration, opening the field to radical hypotheses which would be rejected by most conventional journals. Papers in Medical Hypotheses take a standard scientific form in terms of style, structure and referencing. The journal therefore constitutes a bridge between cutting-edge theory and the mainstream of medical and scientific communication, which ideas must eventually enter if they are to be critiqued and tested against observations.

Not saying it's completely without merit, but this should not be interpreted as a scientific study of any type.

> To 99% of people, these features are useful and helpful, with the downsides being mostly philosophical or theoretical.

There is something there that makes it comparable to the early nature conservation movements. Fast forward a couple generations and nearly 99% of the population is pretty convinced on climate change and that we've messed up quite severely - but not enough to stop messing up.

Commenting specifically on the black names example: I am skeptical because they replicated the results of a study on humans based on the Implicit Association Test. I would be generous in calling that the Myers-Briggs of this generation, but it's probably even less valuable other in that it's free to take online so a huge data set is easily available.

> Seems like a lot of people want to travel, and would love to spend part of their 20s doing so.

I think a lot of people in their 20s want vacation travel, but business travel loses its lustre quite rapidly. The extremely odd subset of the population that legitimately enjoys business travel usually ends up in consulting which is more rewarding and has a better career progression.

> Is not having a straw really the struggle people make it out to be?

Counterpoint: are straws really the problem? Last I checked they were a fraction of a percent of total plastic, whereas things like fishing nets made up slightly under 50% of total plastic. Haven't seen anyone forego seafood or demand seafood caught without the use of plastics though.

The short of it is that the ACLU consider affirmative action a form of just racism. This form of racism corrects for past transgressions, helps achieve diversity targets, and "keeps the doors open" for minorities, so they consider it not only morally justifiable, but commendable.

Their position paper on affirmative action is available here: https://www.aclu.org/other/affirmative-action-aclu-position-... and I think it illustrates not only their rationale, but the tone of their support for that philosophy.

Fair disclaimer that I am obviously opposed to this approach and have been cautiously skeptical of the ACLU for a while now.

I think a lot of it stems from the dorm-ification of workplaces. Because the ROI is so good, employers want you to think of work as more of an institution that is heavily tied to your identity rather than just a place of business. You're not an employee at Google - you're a Googler. Once you leave, you are a Google Alumni. The end result is that your whole self is brought into work because the boundaries between personal and professional life are heavily eroded.