Hacker News Reader

gedpeckon UnitedHealth overcharged cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

One should not profit from denying care. All health systems ration care. Doing so in a way that people profit from denying care is immoral.

gedpeckon Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

That’s a meaningless statistic. What matters is how each group respectively would do in the other format versus what they do in their present format.

gedpeckon Donald Trump Threatens Comcast in Rant over Seth Meyers' Late Night Show

Things are different this time around. The political norms are gone. He will use the power of the federal government to retaliate against whomever he wants to. He has Congress and the Supreme Court. No one will stop him. It’s why Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc. have bent the knee.

gedpeckon H.R.25 – Repeal income tax and abolish the Internal Revenue Service

I’m a liberal and I favor secession. It doesn’t have to be this way but it is this way now. There are major power imbalances. Neither chamber of Congress has proportional representation. Several times in recent elections the Presidential candidate with the majority of the votes did not win. In my mind the American Republic died when the insurrectionist leaders didn’t go to jail.

gedpeckon H.R.25 – Repeal income tax and abolish the Internal Revenue Service

There is also precedent for child labor and slavery in the U.S. Societies are far more complex now and the administration and governance of them are correspondingly more complex.

gedpeckon H.R.25 – Repeal income tax and abolish the Internal Revenue Service

Indeed we will but I think we are past the point of having a long term stable republic. Stuff like this bill and withholding aid to California normalize in liberal states the idea that secession is a possibility. We are entering in an era where it is going to be more than just crazy right wing nut jobs that talk secession.

gedpeckon H.R.25 – Repeal income tax and abolish the Internal Revenue Service

I sincerely hope this gets enacted. It would be great for states like California to stop subsidizing states like Louisiana.

gedpeckon Platforms systematically removed a user because he made "most wanted CEO" cards

This also applies to businesses.

I’m free to refuse to do business with a company for racial reasons but a company is not feee to refuse to do business with me due to my race.

EDIT: I’m pointing out one of the ways that “free association” for corporations is different than for people.

gedpeckon Thought UnitedHealthcare couldn't get more awful? They've gone villain mode

It’s weird you think nurses, anesthesiologists, etc. should work for free while the health insurance company not pay for the care that it has been paid to pay for. I suppose the surgeon should pay for the materials used and for use of the space too. We are entering an era of corporate excess and shills will be in high demand so you likely will not need to work for free.

gedpeckon Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

You miss a very important point. In the U.S. freedom of speech specifically refers to limits that the government can impose on stifling speech. It does not apply to Facebook, Meta, Twitter or any other such platform.

My point stands. Meta is suppressing speech while embracing it. It just happens that the suppression is welcomed by the group whose speech is being embraced.

gedpeckon Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for 'intense year'

Meta is embracing free speech while suppressing it!

gedpeckon Thought UnitedHealthcare couldn't get more awful? They've gone villain mode

She isn’t demanding anything as far as the article indicates. The health insurer demanded to talk to her. How do you know that the health insurer would be operating at a loss? Quite clearly it isn’t as United Health is quite profitable.

It’s the insurer that was unreasonable in this case. No one buys into your view.

gedpeckon [dead]

No country embraces free speech in the purest sense of the phrase. All societies regulate speech. The question is where the lines are drawn. Europe does not fear “free speech”. It fears enabling things like the next Putin, Hitler, and Stalin. Probably it too now fears becoming like the U.S. The U.S. conception of what free speech means is not the ideal in my opinion and we Americans ought not act as if there are no other legitimate ways of defining free speech.

gedpeckon Thought UnitedHealthcare couldn't get more awful? They've gone villain mode

…. rather than just do the surgery for free?

Weird that you think surgeons, anesthesiologists, hospitals, and nurses should work for free.

Should mechanics, teachers, police, firefighters work for free? Are you advocating for a communist type economic system?

gedpeckon The Origins of Wokeness

You got a lot on your hands and I’m writing what follows more for myself than for an attempt to change your mind. The Overton window has greatly shifted rightward the last 50 years. The sort of statements being made by people like Musk merit condemnation. It’s no longer a matter of let’s politely disagree and state our mutual positions. We are well into the realm of the Paradox of Tolerance. Normalizing abhorrent viewpoints is not a lofty goal.

gedpeckon The Origins of Wokeness

He’s smart in Computer Science. I studied mathematics in graduate school. Lots of smart people in my class…in mathematics. What I’ve experienced since graduate school is people being smart in their area of expertise thinking that smartness automatically extends to other areas. Arrogance and stupidity shine brightest when such people write authoritatively on areas they haven’t actually studied in any real depth.

gedpeckon The Origins of Wokeness

I’ve been on the site since the beginning under various usernames. I agree with your point overall but sometimes something said truly is “bad” (idiotic, foolish, whatever) and is deserving of being called so.

I believe writing “after the riots of 2020” and framing what happened as “wokeness” qualifies as idiotic.

I made my points and haven’t responded further. I don’t believe I’ve said anything else that can be considered flamewar style commentary. I’ll keep in mind what you’ve said.

gedpeckon Let's Quit X

Same shit just different colors

I think though that Trump truly is worse. If you made this comment in 2008 or 2012 and used Trump or McCain I’d say you are right. But what happens when a person truly is a vile disgusting human being? Then it no longer becomes the same shit. As an extreme example, Kerensky wasn’t as bad as the Bolsheviks. It wasn’t the same shit.

gedpeckon Let's Quit X

With proper, sensible moderation it won’t get the same posts. Twitter as it is now is what happens when you let certain types of filth be posted.

gedpeckon The Origins of Wokeness

I’m not the one who quantified things. Graham did. I take it then you agree with me that Graham’s statement was written without merit or justification.

EDIT: Graham wrote, “Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one.”

He stated a limit on the level of racism. He gave a bound on it. He said it is less that what woke people think it is. CrissCross is being deliberately obtuse. This edit is for people who come across this thread. My comment pointed out that Graham didn’t justify this belief. I don’t know the level of racism and I’m not arrogant enough to try.

gedpeckon The Origins of Wokeness

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gedpeckon It's time to get back to our roots around free expression

Anti-vaccine sentiment didn’t arise due to suppression. It arose due to the ease of cheaply spreading a message on social media. We ran the experiment and see the results.

gedpeckon It's time to get back to our roots around free expression

Indeed. This is corporate America’s version of bending the knee.

gedpeckon It's time to get back to our roots around free expression

It’s bad for society that peddlers of stupidity can do so at scale and for little cost. We now have millions of people doubting the benefits of the polio vaccine. This disinformation is spread primarily through a few websites. It seems to me that they ought to have some responsibility to restrict destructive disinformation.

gedpeckon Converting shopping malls into apartments [video]

RVs in the parking lot of Walmart is an effective housing solution? I think not.

gedpeckon Fermat's Last Theorem – how it’s going

From what you and the other person on this thread has said and from what I've read it appears that perhaps the following is true:

1. The axioms of PA_2 are recursively enumerable. 2. The full semantics of PA_2 are what cause categoricity.

It seems to me then that the crux of the matter is that the full semantics of PA_2 prevent there being an effective deductive system. I think Z_2 is constructed to get around the non effectiveness of the full semantics of PA_2 and is a weaker theory.

Anyway, thanks for the enlightenment.

gedpeckon Fermat's Last Theorem – how it’s going

Thanks for the reply.

...it's decidable - otherwise, it would be impossible to decide whether a proof is valid.

Isn't that the whole issue with PA_2 vs. PA? In PA_2 with "full semantics" there is no effective procedure for determining if a statement is an axiom. In my mind this is what I mean by the incompleteness results not applying to PA_2. They do apply to Z_2 since that is an effective (computable?) system.

But Z2 is usually studied with first-order semantics, and in that context it is an effective theory of arithmetic subject to the incompleteness theorems. In particular, Z2 includes every axiom of PA, and it does include the second-order induction axiom, and it is still incomplete.

Therefore, the well-known categoricity proof must not rely solely on the second-order induction axiom. It also relies on a change to an entirely different semantics, apart from the choice of axioms. It is only in the context of these special "full" semantics that PA with the second-order induction axiom becomes categorical.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/617124/peano-arithm...

Thanks for the knoweledge. I'm going to read up more on this stuff.

gedpeckon Fermat's Last Theorem – how it’s going

Thanks for the reply.

gedpeckon Fermat's Last Theorem – how it’s going

You know more than me. That is certain.

However, my understanding is that the incompleteness results apply to only recursively enumerable axiomatic systems. I can find references for this. If I take the standard model of ZFC and collect all true statements in the one model of PA_2 and make that my axiomatic system then I have an axiomatic system that is not recursively enumerable and contains PA_1. It’s not a nice set of axioms. It’s not computable. But it shows that one can have an axiomatic system that contains PA_1 for which the Incompleteness theorems don’t apply.

Andreas wrote “meaningless” not “nonsensical”. I’m not a pedant but the former term evokes in me the idea of “does not apply in this situation becausethe hypotheses of the incompleteness theorem are not satisfied”.

From a mathematical logic book is the following. It’s the set up for the Incompleteness theorems.

Suppose that A is a collection of axioms in the language of number theory such that A is consistent and is simple enough so that we can decide whether or not a given formula is an element of A.

PA_2 is not such a system and as such the Incompleteness Theorems don’t apply. Maybe we are talking past each other. You know more than me.

gedpeckon Fermat's Last Theorem – how it’s going

The set of statements about natural numbers that are true.