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allisthemoiston Dostoevsky’s Empathy

Reminds me of Dickens' portrayal of Sydney Carton in Tale of Two Cities. Dickens' ability to peer into the soul of Carton moved me in ways no longer work has before.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

allisthemoiston Cambodia's vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle

> LIDAR: An airborne laser scanner (ALS) is mounted to a helicopter skid pad. Flying with pre-determined guidelines, including altitude, flight path and airspeed, the ALS pulses the terrain with more than 16 laser beams per square metre during flights. The time the laser pulse takes to return to the sensor determines the elevation of each individual data point.

The data downloaded from the ALS is calibrated and creates a 3D model of the information captured during the flights. In order to negate tree foliage and manmade obstacles from the data, any sudden and radical changes in ground height are mapped out, with technicians who have models of the terrain fine-tuning the thresholds in processing these data points. Once completed, the final 3D model is handed over to the archaeologists for analysis, which can take months to process into maps.

It's so interesting that technology advancements must often precede discovery and thus are part and parcel (imo) of the discovery process. The same can very much also be said for medical and biological science - e.g., MRI and associated analytic techniques.

allisthemoiston Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'

The recent move of Adidas back to Germany seems to contradict your assertion: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-...

allisthemoiston Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'

This begs the question: as human productivity is increasingly usurped by machines, what will happen to the human manufacturing population? Will we finally figure out a way to distribute wealth in a agreeable way (through, for example, basic minimum income) or will we go back to the a feudal model of living?

Interestingly, someone has to purchase the goods that these systems create. Thus, giving people the funds to do so, regardless of where they come from, seems like a necessity.

allisthemoiston For some, meditation has become more curse than cure

One of the interviewees mentioned that meditating was very difficult because he kept having thoughts that were not supposed to come up emerge. My immediate thought was to what I learned in Buddhist teaching to have compassion for oneself. If he had been instructed well, we would have known to accept all the thoughts that arose and merely observe them.

The following passage from Thich Nhat Hanh comes to mind:

Before the Buddha attained full realization of the path, for example, he tried various methods to suppress his mind, and they did not work. In one discourse (the Mahasaccaka Sutta), he recounted:

I thought, Why don't I grit my teeth, press my tongue against my palate, and use my mind to repress my mind? Then, as a wrestler might take hold of the head or the shoulders of someone weaker than he, and, in order to restrain and coerce that person, he has to hold him down constantly without letting go for a moment, so I gritted my teeth, pressed my tongue against my palate, and used my mind to suppress my mind. As I did this, I was bathed in sweat. Although I was not lacking in strength, although I maintained mindfulness and did not fall from mindfulness, my body and my mind were not at peace, and I was exhausted by these efforts, This practice caused other feelings of pain to arise in me besides the pain associated with the austerities, and I was not able to tame my mind.

allisthemoiston For some, meditation has become more curse than cure

The first half seemed to be about fear mongering but I found the last half more balanced. And discussing the Three Marks of Existence as the full breadth of what meditators are supposed to achieve was quite refreshing to read from a mainstream Western source.

Overall, what I got out of this article was that in some cases, problems can arise from engaging in contemplative practice. But these instances are rare and usually come about due to existing mental illness.

allisthemoiston For some, meditation has become more curse than cure

There was stuff dropping away … [and] electric shocks through my body. [My] core sense of self, a persistent consciousness, the thoughts and stuff, were not me."

This sounds to me like the beginnings of psychosis. I don't doubt that these feelings could be induced by meditation, but I do doubt that they would not have emerged in some other way.

allisthemoiston $12M stolen from 1,400 convenience store ATMs across Japan in 2 hours

100 people involved? That's a lot of people who could potentially slip up.

allisthemoiston How the Gut Affects Mood

I went to a conference recently where an MD/researcher in this field discussed the latest state of the art findings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83u-i73ppr8

Long story short, the gut-brain axis is a compelling area of study, but based on the fact that nearly all studies have been in murine models coupled with the relative paucity of human trials, the jury in the medical community is still largely out.

allisthemoiston This Biology Book Blew Me Away

Agreed. This is why origin of life scenarios are so fascinating!

allisthemoiston This Biology Book Blew Me Away

If you are at all interested in the origin of life and the role of energy therein, I cannot recommend any single source of knowledge more than the following paper as it has literally changed my life: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.20191/abstra...

It is written by two of the most intelligent people I think I've ever come across, Eric Smith, who is an external professor at the Sante Fe Institute, and Harold Morowitz, who founded the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason. Both men work in very disparate fields. Morowitz was a specialist of biology, origin of life scenarios, and biochemistry while Smith is a (brilliant) physicist and chemist. However, together they have assembled an encompassing theoretical structure that I am confident will lead science for several decades, once it is gradually integrated into other fields of research - e.g., Jeremy England at MIT has looked at some of the same thermodynamic phenomena using statistical physics (great article on his work - https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory...)

Eric Smith actually did a video describing this work while at Sante Fe that is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElMqwgkXguw

This is the first paragraph of the paper mentioned above:

Life is universally understood to require a source of free energy and mechanisms with which to harness it. Re- markably, the converse may also be true: the continuous generation of sources of free energy by abiotic processes may have forced life into existence as a means to alleviate the buildup of free energy stresses. This assertion – for which there is precedent in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and growing empirical evidence from chemistry – would imply that life had to emerge on the earth, that at least the early steps would occur in the same way on any similar planet, and that we should be able to predict many of these steps from first principles of chemistry and physics together with an accurate understanding of geochemical conditions on the early earth. A deterministic emergence of life would reflect an essential continuity between physics, chemistry, and biology. It would show that a part of the order we recognize as living is thermodynamic order inherent in the geosphere, and that some aspects of Darwinian selection are expressions of the likely simpler statistical mechanics of physical and chemical self-organization.

allisthemoiston OxyContin's 12-hour problem

> The U.S. Justice Dept. launched a criminal investigation, and in 2007 the company and three top executives pleaded guilty to fraud for downplaying OxyContin’s risk of addiction. Purdue and the executives were ordered to pay $635 million.

A mere fine for ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

allisthemoiston “Extremely angry with the state of academic CS research right now”

His claim is hyperbolic, but only from the perspective of the way that scientific research has been conducted for the last 10-15 years. Prior to this, many researchers were forced to tell "a story" because the sheer volume of data and complexity in fields like cellular biology was/is so massive. This does not mean that their findings were in any way intentionally deceptive, it's simply that it was impossible to cover all the ground necessary to tell the whole story.

However, as data analysis techniques have become more powerful and data more easy to produce thanks to advances in the scientific methodologies we use to access information about the matter we are studying, the datasets are getting bigger but also easier to manage.

allisthemoiston iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

As a company that has a huge grip on higher end hardware sales, I definitely think they will stay in the space. That being said, product innovation certainly needs to happen for them to retain their dominance.

allisthemoiston iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

Product innovation I would think

allisthemoiston iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

When Apple Pay came out I was astonished. It's a brilliant move to act as a middleman between a device that almost everyone possesses and currency. After all, what is more profitable than a financial institution?

allisthemoiston iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

Why do you think the era is over? Are people buying less cellphones and laptops?

allisthemoiston iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

"Apple may be reaching the saturation point (of the products it currently sells) among potential customers in some countries"

allisthemoiston What Happens When Baseball-Stats Nerds Run a Pro Team

Because what is a story really but condensed data?

allisthemoiston The Epic Rise of John D. Rockefeller

I imagine this complexity comes from his combination of economic and religious values. Interestingly, it was not uncommon for Protestants to have this kind of dilemma - they were encouraged to work very hard (see "The Protestant Work Ethic") for having success in life was the only indication that one was in god's favour. However, it was forbidden to actually spend one's earnings on selfish pursuits thus many Protestant businessmen reinvested the money into their enterprises which only increased their earning power.

allisthemoiston Amateur ISIS Investigator Ends Up in Prison

> “Any attempt to arrest me will be treated as a hostile act,” he wrote to Mr. Reising. By then, agents had been informed by the Delaware State Police that Mr. Lopez’s mother, Joyce Lopez, had told them that her son had a shotgun and was in a “poor mental state.”

allisthemoiston Why do so many people continue to pursue doctorates?

I'm actually at the point of considering graduate school to help my chances of establishing a life science based start-up in the future.

Is getting a graduate level degree (at least a Masters) a necessity to be the head of such a company? From what I've seen, most other companies in the space seem to be headed by people with either a PhD or MBA.

allisthemoiston How biological invaders challenge our idea of self and other

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”

― Dōgen

allisthemoiston Got a Hot Seller on Amazon? Prepare for Amazon to Make One Too

The argument against planned obsolescence is not an economic one but rather one against the immense waste it creates. The so-called "fast fashion" model now employed by H & M and other clothing retailers also falls into this model and it's an established business model in many other spaces as well.

If you create products that need to be thrown out and bought again cyclically, you create a much higher volume of sales. The problem with this is that our current recycling capacity is not able to handle the excess in resultant waste products.

allisthemoiston Argentine government favors farmers in dispute with Monsanto

The key issue here is equating a living organism with a patentable technology. That is, in fact, the reality we are now living in, but many people are uncomfortable with that.

allisthemoiston Argentine government favors farmers in dispute with Monsanto

> Also within the current regulatory environment, where it costs >$100MM to deregulate a GMO any other business model will be flawed.

So if I wanted to create a GMO and sell it in Argentina, I'd have to pay a premium? At what stage of development does payment occur or is it a tax on sales?

allisthemoiston Argentine government favors farmers in dispute with Monsanto

> Argentine farmers had benefited substantially from its Intacta technology and called for “all producers to pay ... if they decide to use it.”

This sounds a lot like the music industry and their constant call for "royalties".

allisthemoiston Got a Hot Seller on Amazon? Prepare for Amazon to Make One Too

> You can buy one every 5 years for the rest of your life, and come out way ahead.. so why not?

This is the principle behind planned obsolescence [0]. While I agree it may in some cases benefit the consumer, it generally seems designed more to maximize volume of sales and leads to degradation of product quality overall.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

allisthemoiston The Hedonic Treadmill

"The top 1% own 48% of global wealth, but even they aren’t happy. A survey by Boston College of people with an average net worth of $78m found that they too were assailed by anxiety, dissatisfaction and loneliness. Many of them reported feeling financially insecure: to reach safe ground, they believed, they would need, on average, about 25% more money. (And if they got it? They’d doubtless need another 25%). One respondent said he wouldn’t get there until he had $1bn in the bank." [0]

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-...

allisthemoiston Canada to introduce legislation to legalize recreational cannabis

quality marijuana.

Quality would definitely be the main difference. Although I have friends that have made decent wine and beer themselves.