MikkoFinell

As good a time as any to quit HN I suppose.

I asked why OP is dismissing the possibility that the authors considered the specific factors OP mentioned.

The quote you posted did not address that question. That is why it is not related to my comment, like I already said.

LOL, what are you talking about? I asked why OP had such a dismissive attitude towards the original paper, and that's "researcher worship"? Gotta be one of the most toxic responses I've gotten so far on HN.

What gave you the idea that I was making a scientific argument?

The quote you copy-pasted from the article has nothing to do with my comment.

So you were able to think of a couple confounding factors off the top of your head, but you dismiss the idea that the researchers had considered those factors and controlled for it? Despite the fact that their full time job it is to think about things like that, and their careers are on the line if they embarrass themselves by disregarding something as obvious and trivial like that? Did you even read the original paper?

With no disrespect to Dabney, but these kinds of obituaries make HN kind of morbid in my opinion.

I'm satisfied with Cinnamon. If any dev happens to read this: thank you and keep up the good work, it's appreciated.

> what's gravity got to do with it?

Gravity got the following to do with it: Lower gravity makes it easier for the atmosphere to escape to space, especially since Mars has a very weak magnetosphere. Second, to have a human-breathable atmosphere you need not only the right composition, but also the right pressure, and to get that pressure on Mars you'd require an atmosphere more than 2,5 times the mass of Earth's. Where are you going to get it from? Even if it was available to you, using it to make Mars globally breathable would be an ENORMOUS waste compared to simply pressurizing domes and bunkers instead.

> If we nuked the polar ice caps (or similar method to warm + evaporate them) it would generate enough of an atmosphere for the external pressure to be livable - maybe even breathable.

Source?

Even granted that would be possible, it would be an enormous waste. Let's say it's possible to use the polar ice caps to create a breathable atmosphere, why do it for the whole planet instead of using it strategically to pressurize domes where people actually live? Added bonus: The domes provide partial shielding for the radiation on Mars. If you believe the ice on Mars can sustain a breathable global atmosphere for ten thousand years, how long will it last when used in closed systems like domes?

You can't really terraform Mars either, not enough gravity. And even if it was possible, the amount of work required to bring the air there is orders of magnitude more than simply building domes over some select craters and filling those with air, a sort of micro terraforming if you will.

Why don't they just write the network stack in Rust? Then we would know it's secure with no audit required.

Sorry but I don't see how that follows from my logic at all. Would you please care to clarify how you reached that conclusion starting from some assumption I made?

So allowing Mexican cartels to smuggle and sell, for example, heroin has a positive economic effect on society? I have to admit that's a fresh perspective.

I meant the effects of fever, so that perhaps different parts of the brain was affected differently by the temperature increase. I really have no idea, but I was saying that it is not an obvious fact either way.

I'm not saying that filtration theory is false, I'm saying it seems less likely to me than the following alternative: The chemical composition of a sober persons brain causes us to have the usual experience, but taking a substance like psilocybin alters the chemical balance and therefore makes us have unusual experiences. It seems like I have to suppose more assumptions under filtration theory, and that those new assumptions are unfounded and that the consequences of accepting filtration theory leads to predictions that aren't true (vis a vis brain damage).

Which brings us to why I tried to make the point about brain damage. Since we are working with the idea that psychedelic experience is the default but that the brain is filtering out most of it, it seems to follow that strategically damaging the filter should allow psychedelic experiences to flow through. You're right, not all brain damage is the same, but enough people suffer similar brain damage that I believe we ought to have seen by now some subset of patients with certain types of trauma reliably report psychedelic experiences as part of their symptoms. If such a subset exists, then I stand corrected.

No hadn't seen it.

Okay so damaging the neurotransmitters (filters) should create a more psychedelic experience for that person. I find that unlikely.

I agree that fever and lack of sleep can produce hallucinations, but I'm not convinced that they are non-localized effects in the brain, nor that psychedelic chemicals are non-localized in the brain.

If the hypothesis was true, we would expect the effects of brain damage to reliably create a richer and more psychedelic experience for the sufferer. Hallucinations and paranoia are only a tiny subset of the effects experienced by people on psychedelics, so logically the only part of the hypothesis that becomes more probable is that the brain usually filters out hallucinations and paranoia. But I won't accept that either, because neither brain damage or psychedelics reliably produce paranoia, and brain damage does not reliably produce hallucinations.

I don't rule anything out, but the filter hypothesis seems a lot less likely to me given the evidence, than the simpler explanation: That psychedelics just mess up the normal functioning of the brain to create a different experience. This requires less assumptions than the filter hypothesis, which is akin to suggesting that the brain is actually drunk all the time, but alcohol merely removes the filter to allow us to experience the drunk phenomenology.

The problem is the theory implies that people with brain damage should experience psychological effects similar to those induced by psychedelic drugs, and we don't see anything like that.

Why not?

Suppose they are smuggling narcotics.

> Furthermore even though these lasers are very cheap, by army norms, to fire, they're still 600$ or so for a single shot. So shooting down drones will be expensive. Far more expensive than the drones themselves.

What is the approximate cost of allowing the drone in?

I hope you're right.

So somewhat less likely then.

I wonder what the odds are we would be seeing articles like this if Philip's apparent bias ran in the other direction.

Yes it's fantastic. Now if we only could ride the momentum of this and slam something equally as punishing on Facebook, then we could be heading towards a renewed golden age of the internet.

I'm so so sorry that my right to privacy is inconvenient for you.

> So I think you're entirely wrong to say that something that is part of a causal chain cannot be called free.

Yes you can call it free since you have defined free to mean acting according to your motivations, just like I predicted in my original comment. But since your behavior is caused by your motivations, and your motivations have it's own causes, and so on, I really don't see what you actually win (except the language game) by describing the process as free. It's about as free as the last cogwheel in a machine.

> I'm sorry I'm not directly addressing your point about changing the past, but that's because I'm still rather confused by how it relates to free will.

Suppose your will is a function of your brain, and suppose that your brain is a function of gene expression and environmental stimuli. Suppose you are unable to choose your genes, and suppose that you are unable to alter the history of environmental stimuli. It follows that the causes of your will are outside your control. If you don't control your will, then your will is not free.