Ishmaeli

That was my reasoning as well. Whenever there was the option to kill the passengers, that's what I chose. The car's occupants are the ones introducing the risk of death to the scenario to begin with. There is no dilemma without the car.

Interestingly, the summary at the end did not even allow for this conclusion. The evaluation anticipated that people might value the lives of animals over humans, but not those of pedestrians over passengers.

It seems likely that this was designed by promoters of self-driving cars. No one would want to be a passenger in a car that was programed to prioritize the lives of pedestrians, so that was not even considered as a moral option.

I would suddenly feel a lot better about things if this explained the resurgence of stuff like Flat Earth theory.

Sadly, I don't think that's the case.

Wow, your stuff looks amazing and I can't believe I've never heard of you. I can't wait to dive in.

I came of age in the Infocom era. Do you know any of those guys? (Brian Moriarty, Steve Meretzky...)

I bought a Kindle in 2012 but I think I'm finally done with it. I don't have any problem with the device or the format, I'm just tired of all the typos in ebooks.

Yes, printed books have the occasional typo, but they seem much more prevalent in ebooks. I think there are just a lot of books out there for which the only electronic copy is an optical scan, and as good as OCR is, the process still introduces errors.

I feel ripped off when I come across a typo an ebook that's not in the printed version. It already feels like a stripped down version of the product—I'm only getting the text, not the material assets of a real life book—and now I discover it's an inferior version of the text to boot? No thanks.

Ugh. I have enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's writing in the past, but this smacks of the Tucker Carlson defense.

It reminds me of all the new ways Wall Street has found to squeeze every last dime out of American life.

Such as: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-w...

"[...]ratings indicate that the American public prefer hillbillies, cowboys, and spies."

This kind of correlation has always seemed specious to me. It's the streetlight effect—it's hard to quantify why a show is popular we'll just assume it's because of the genre, since that's easy to identify.

I remember when Desperate Housewives took off in 2004, and studio execs assumed that viewers suddenly wanted prime time soaps. And they released a bunch more prime time soaps that were lousy and flopped.

I think viewers want quality content, regardless of genre. Genre is just a heuristic device.

Looks like correlation, not causation.

Our precocious angels have been transforming into sullen monsters at the onset of adolescence since the beginning of time. Do we really think they would have stayed precocious angels forever, if only they had never discovered comic books or rock'n'roll or TV or video games or whatever the current teenage vice happens to be?

Sure, there is good evidence that smartphones are more addictive than a lot of other pastimes and devices, but the fact that your daughter turned into a teenager isn't that.

I absolutely agree that for most people it is a hobby. Unlike some other hobbies, though, this one comes with an ideological bent that can be dangerous for impressionable people.

No one is going to liquidate their 401k to get new golf clubs or model trains.

I loved the knots book. It turned me on to Clifford Ashley, and also got me questioning the gospel according to Boy Scouts. BSA taught me that the square knot was some kind of lifesaver, and here Klutz was telling me it was the worst knot ever.

It's a small thing, but that was kind of a big moment for me in terms of developing my critical thinking.

Also taught me the constrictor knot, which I have used instead of the clove hitch ever since.

Mini Metro: https://dinopoloclub.com/games/mini-metro/

I only go to Fry's for geeky gifts. My local store seems to always carry a full selection of "As Seen On TV" merch, for instance. And they have a lot of video game themed plushies and other toys.

But I haven't bought computer parts from them in years. I think I got a CPU fan there maybe three or four years ago. Meanwhile I bought a Das Keyboard from Micro Center in the past year because the price beat anything online.

RPN FTW.

Most won't even know what's wrong with their lives because they've never seen anything else.

I feel like that's something every older generation says about the younger generations. Why should the younger generations care about ways of living that are no longer relevant to them? If nobody knows that they're doing it wrong, then are they really doing it wrong?