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minblaster

204 karma · joined October 16, 2019

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minblaster··on We've Just Had the Best Decade in Human History
Sorry, not convinced that the earth has been uninhabitable for humans in the past few hundred million years. What conditions made it uninhabitable everywhere on the planet?

Earlier posters made it seem like the problem with climate change was that earth was moving out of a narrow temperature band that supported human life. We live in the arctic, jungles, deserts, ice ages, mountaintops. We will be fine. The problem is the transition’s impact on our existing civilization (sea level change, new weather patterns), not the final temperature.

Let me put it this way: if we discovered earth 100 years in the future, even with our current climate change rate, we would rejoice about how easily it could be colonized (vs Mars, the moon, etc).

The climate will get hotter, and it’ll still be quite livable in places. This is the equivalent of people who think earth is in the “just right” orbit, if it were 10 feet off in either direction the planet would freeze or burn. And yet the elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun varies by millions of miles, and we don’t light on fire when climbing a ladder. We don’t die because someone left the AC 5 degrees too hot or cold.

minblaster··on People who tend to be optimistic are likelier to live to 85 or more: study
We like to think of rationality as objectively true, but it’s not. Rationality is based on axioms that “feel right” and even the idea of being rational “feels good”.

Is it rational to believe the parallel postulate? In unchanging laws of physics? In using logic with creatures who tend not to share your axioms?

It comes down to a feeling. From a rational point of view, if rationality were always helpful it would be highly selected for, yet it is not.

minblaster··on We've Just Had the Best Decade in Human History
You do realize the chemistry of the atmosphere has changed far more than a few ppm of carbon, right? Like oxygen varying from 15% to 35%?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Sa...

The argument that extra CO2 or a few degrees C will be unlivable for humans is laughable. The changes to our civilization from this is not (farming, weather patterns, mass migrations).

minblaster··on Ask HN: How to Make $20K a Month
Do you want to manage a company, or do you simply want financial freedom?

If it’s the latter there are easier ways. Real estate and index fund investing. Google FIRE.

minblaster··on We've Just Had the Best Decade in Human History
There was a temperature in recent times (hundreds of millions of years) where humans would not have survived, anywhere on Earth? Yet giant dinosaurs with the wrong ratio of mass to surface area did?

Really, when? How much hotter was it in the past?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t fix the issue. I’m saying the argument that the average temperature will be unlivable is bad. It’s like saying bullets kill people because of the lead content, not the process of getting injected. The process of climate change will impact us most, not the impact of the temperature on our biology.

minblaster··on We've Just Had the Best Decade in Human History
“All humans are going to die because the temperature gets too hot for our biology” is fallacious. Do you think we’ll gain 30C and Siberia will become unlivable? Does everyone die when the summer temperature is 30C higher than winter? We are literally planning Martian colonies, do you think we can’t figure out how to survive on Earth?

The issue is the effects of moderate temperature increases, rising sea levels, changing farming, etc. so it’s a mass disruption to our civilization (migration, resource wars, etc.) Not that we’ll literally be too hot and can’t somehow survive that as a species.

Humans live in Australian Outback and Alaska. We are adaptable, but the growing pains are not pleasant, hence the problem to civilization.

minblaster··on Tell HN: I grew Visa List to $5k per month in a year
It’s simpler to create a db, password, keep up with correct salted hash scheme, email password reset, mail service, getting through spam filters, user profile icon? As soon as you’re dealing with customer info you took on a bunch of requirements.
minblaster··on Having Kids
Thank you for sharing that. PG doesn't seem to realize there's a tremendous survivorship bias in what you read about kids due to the taboo of saying you regret it.
minblaster··on I stood up to my boss, then he got promoted
Get financial independence and escape the need to kowtow to those who don’t have your interests in mind.

Tech is one of the few industries where this is possible fast.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

minblaster··on College-educated workers are taking over the American factory floor
For most, college education is a signaling method. You learn on the job.

If this weren’t the case, just hire people who dropped out during senior year for a wonderful discount. They got 7/8s the education!

minblaster··on Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox (2004) [pdf]
I normally don’t like the time = money idea (not all hours are equally valuable), but for a commute it makes sense. You paid about 40 bucks to get back 1.5 prime hours of your life, plus the mental stress.
minblaster··on Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox (2004) [pdf]
Yep. And the interaction with coworkers is shallow/guarded because of the nature of work.

It’s like longing for the interaction offered by a long flight. Chat with your neighbor, get on with your day.

Why not have social interaction with people you look forward to interacting with? (Does anyone go to the office to hang out on their day off?)

minblaster··on Generating a Java program with 90% less code
YAGNI was coined for a reason.
minblaster··on Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
I agree. It’s amazing how easily people slip into the ends justifying the means.

Yes, he’s contributing now. Doesn’t excuse the practices that got him there.

minblaster··on Google Kills Cloud Print
Sounds like they’ll learn a valuable lesson about not relying on services they aren’t paying to keep alive.
minblaster··on A Black Hole Threw a Star Out of the Milky Way Galaxy
It's less than 1% of c unfortunately [1111 miles per second]. (https://www.google.com/search?q=4m+mph+in+miles+per+second)
minblaster··on Renaissance Technologies
Thank you. People cling to the efficient market hypothesis like it’s a law of nature.
minblaster··on Nothing Matters
Turn off simulations where the net amount of suffering vs joy is negative? Even if it’s barely a net positive it’s not necessarily worth the suffering.
minblaster··on Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinforcement learning
Starcraft is an incredibly complex game. 10^26 possible moves at any point (you can click/drag anywhere on the screen, pressing a keyboard button as you do so), imperfect information, real-time constraints, etc.
minblaster··on Ask HN: What software/app do you wish would exist?
Look for 1-star reviews of existing software, and make something that fixes those pain points.
minblaster··on Craig Federighi‘s message to young aspirants pursuing Software Development
The developer will consider whether the app is worth the fee. If they aren't committed to maintaining the app, they'll stop paying and it will be removed.
minblaster··on Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet
I agree. On a tech forum the bias is to consider the internet a panacea.

Look at the US. We went from ~0% internet penetration in 1990 to 75% in 2017. How much have real wages changed since then?

We fantasize about an impoverished person learning a new skill, but it's not the reality.

minblaster··on Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet
https://ourworldindata.org/internet

Almost none of the desperately poor had internet between 1990-2000, yet poverty fell steeply.

minblaster··on Craig Federighi‘s message to young aspirants pursuing Software Development
That tax is one of things keeping app quality high, and they have to pay people to screen your apps. They can offer an educational scholarship.
minblaster··on US Law Enforcement Traces Bitcoin Transfers to Nab ‘Largest’ Child Porn Site
Unfortunately, some relative comparisons don't matter as much as the absolute. A world where the number of slaves is objectively increasing (as it has now) is worse I'd say. The total amount of suffering is more, even if there are billions more happy people oblivious to your plight.
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