premium-komodo

I think you mean to say, Yelp users are sharing information, and patrons are choosing to go to different establishments that cater better to their desires. That was the idea of Yelp, was it not? Not seeing the problem.

> If an equality program is so successful that it creates an equality imbalance in the other direction what do we do?

Equality of outcome is not possible or even desirable. That is the problem. The more people try to force some completely unnatural result, the more terrible things they'll have to do (e.g., discrimination on the basis of body attributes, as if there is some good way to do it) and the worse things will get.

The reason we have to go to the trouble of making cryptocurrencies is that busybodies like this guy are endlessly trying to reduce our freedom. They're not trying to look out for people; they're trying to protect their ability to print money and steal. In crypto parlance, they want to remain the VIPs that have centralized special privileged access to create tokens, and force usage thereof. But now we have the technology to enforce currency issuance by immutable programs. That's a better way, because programs are very strong exactly where humans are very weak.

Well, I don't think "more powerful" is a good way to think about it. A spreadsheet is essentially a functional programming paradigm. One programming thingie is not going to be "more powerful" than another. That said, one could be cooler or more interesting than another one, at least to you.

My feeling is that it doesn't have to make sense, and you don't really need to have any justification. If you want to make a spreadsheet system with Lisp, I'd definitely do it. You learn the most when you do your own projects, and interest is the fuel.

Also, we're bad at determining beforehand what actually is important, so maybe you work on something as a toy, but later it (or some piece of knowledge developed while working on it) is crucial for something else later.

If you think it might be a little inappropriate to care much about a programmer's endorsement of a vaccine, here's an actual famous doctor saying "for God's sake don't take this thing".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IBv3A8-ShI

Well, entire generations were brainwashed not to eat good foods, and to substitute more harmful foods in their place. Remember the food pyramid? Many of my schoolmates are obese and well on their way to an early death due to diabetes, from being told to avoid fat and to eat plenty of cereals and grains.

As is often the case with the FBI, they were apparently facilitating the crimes. It's easy to argue that the crimes might not have taken place without the FBI's help. Somehow this is never entrapment when the FBI is doing it.

It's allowed, but I get the sense that many HN users don't want it to come up to be discussed in depth, because it's a huge can of worms, because if it's established that it works, intellectual honesty compels us to ask why it was suppressed, and a lot of people would have their fundamental assumptions challenged.

I think that's why the hivemind often finds it convenient to just squash the topic by flagging it. Nobody knows who did it, nobody has to provide any reason for doing it, etc. Flagging is very convenient for suppressing discussions where we might actually get something done.

I basically agree -- the woke interpret anything other than absolute unconditional support as opposition. But there may be something to this strategy of making the announcement so insipid that the woke don't have anything in particular to get upset about, or perhaps aren't even sure they're being opposed.

It obviously has value to the people who are involved with it. We don't decide if other people are allowed to do the things they're interested in by comparing their activity to something in Argentina. If you are able to say precisely how some particular person or organization is harming you, I encourage you to file a lawsuit against them. If not, I encourage you to take up some kind of spiritual cultivation practice to help you not be unduly concerned about the activities of others.

Sure, I don't think it's good tech, and I don't like it. But I don't like a million things people do, and I don't try to make some convoluted argument that their weird activity is a matter of public concern.

> And the world burns for it.

Please support this with data. It doesn't literally burn for it; fires are down, what, 90% from a century ago?

Well, it's hard to evaluate a complex situation like yours, but I get the sense that you're doing a lot of outward searching for good things, e.g., searching for a good job, satisfying interactions with others, interesting topics that could be studied for a long time, etc. Let me suggest that you may be finding this search discouraging because you've gained perspective. I was obsessed with computers for 20 years, and I just can't see them the way I used to because I just don't think the big wins lie in some new web site or app or database or whatever.

There's a good book called _The Path to Nibbana_ that describes a practice I've found helpful. It's about reducing craving. Reducing craving allows there to be contentment and equanimity, and a different kind of happiness than most people are used to in that it doesn't depend on anything. In any case, whatever you do, I hope you'll feel better.

These are like dispatches from deep within a cult compound that can only be made by ignoring virtually every metric of human well-being. Poverty, illiteracy, infant mortality, etc., one could go on for days, they're all better. But from within the cult, it looks like "disaster" for other people to use the electricity they bought how they want.

I find it revealing what happens if you say "oh, well, if you're worried about pollution, let's do nuclear." The strange thing is, somehow it's still a problem for them. One begins to wonder if the real issue is not pollution, but simply using plentiful electricity for purposes the complainers don't approve of.

> Dear Dr Marik I am from a remote place(Muzaffarpur,Bihar) in India.people are not that rich and can’t effort costly treatment.i used your MATH PLUS protocol in TOTO to save hundreds of life at very low cost.since there is limited govt facility I have managed pts with SPO2 of even 72% at room air with home oxygen,proning and MATH PLUS. I don’t have words to thank you for this.you deserve to get Nobel Prize for your protocol. Words are not supporting me enough to thank you. Dr Vimohan Kumar

Source: https://www.mountainhomemag.com/2021/05/01/356270/the-drug-t...

Sounds like he was in the trenches, not an armchair.

This is a very good initiative, but keep in mind that it's probably not one percent of the actual list. I searched for four people that I could think of immediately, and none of them were there.

Hmm, I'm kind of doing this. After 20-someodd years of programming, I no longer think the big wins are in technology, but rather within, in cultivating mind. So I'm going to gradually help people with meditation. One thing I'd ask you is, have you used your skills to straighten out your own life, i.e., have you dogfooded your methods?

Were there around a hundred million buffalo in North America for quite a long time? Were they emitting dangerous amounts of gas?

Many HN users seem confident they know the truth, and that they know which sources are credible, and are comfortable suppressing anything contrary to what they already think, often without explanation. I don't think HN is quite an echo chamber yet, but it's well on its way.

> Dear Dr Marik I am from a remote place(Muzaffarpur,Bihar) in India.people are not that rich and can’t effort costly treatment.i used your MATH PLUS protocol in TOTO to save hundreds of life at very low cost.since there is limited govt facility I have managed pts with SPO2 of even 72% at room air with home oxygen,proning and MATH PLUS. I don’t have words to thank you for this.you deserve to get Nobel Prize for your protocol. Words are not supporting me enough to thank you. Dr Vimohan Kumar

Source: https://www.mountainhomemag.com/2021/05/01/356270/the-drug-t...

Weird, inappropriate wording. "Satellites taking measurements may have underestimated"? What's actually been happening is that satellites take measurements, and then all but a few climate models (around 100, IIRC) run way too hot, i.e., hotter than the actual measurements. It's the models that are estimating, and they're wrong compared to the actual measurements, which are not estimates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-8Nws5wfG0

Begging the question. There are highly qualified people like Sucharit Bhakdi who are being declared conspiracy theorists for no other reason than that they are going against officially sanctioned truth. Which is the high-quality signal, the NYT or Bhakdi? One is held up as authoritative by those in power, one is suppressed in the hopes that it will not even be considered. If delusion and propaganda gains prominence, filtering the truth might seem like filtering noise.

I'm trying to think of a more clearly deserved rebuke and exodus for terrible behavior, and nothing is coming to mind.

Sure. Even free speech extremists seem OK with cordoning off immediate plans to commit violence. But try to find a place where a waitress or bartender will interrupt your conversation to insist on the correct view on the flatness of the earth, whether the moon landing occurred, etc.

Facebook and Twitter consider themselves to be official arbiters of truth, and they are increasingly putting their hands over the mouths of people who espouse "wrong" views.

I agree, but I don't think they'll ever see any need. From their perspective, The Science said one thing back then, and then The Science changed its mind and is saying something else now. As long as you're obeying The Science, you can do no wrong.

Bars and restaurants are unmoderated discussion forums that have been used to organize violence and real-life crimes since forever. Who exactly do you think is wise and moral enough to police what everyone talks about?

> When 1984 and "Orwellian" are used as a catch-all for any type of oppression or even any type of propaganda, I think it does a great disservice.

I agree, but it's not hard to make a stronger case. Organizations like Google, Facebook and Twitter centrally decide Truth, and then penalize anyone who posts anything in conflict with their version. Google censors the videos of people who dare to disagree with e.g. the WHO. Facebook deboosts "vaccine hesitancy"; Twitter sabotages the engagement of people with a diverse set of "wrong" opinions, degrades the various subnetworks by silently deleting followers, annotates tweets with the Official Truth, etc.

The same thing is done here on HN, a kind of filtering that assumes its own hypothesis. Someone posts something contrary to the prevailing story? Well, if it conflicts with the WHO, it must be conspiracy theory junk. I don't recognize this site, so I'm going to flag this article. People seem sure they know what the truth is, so they feel comfortable squashing anything that conflicts with their current understanding.

Suppose someone offered, say, ten million dollars to the first team that could write code to discern, from the outcome data, which areas had locked down and had mask mandates, and which hadn't. Would anyone be able to claim it?

If the answer is no, is it possible that most of what governments did in response to this outbreak was inferior to what they did on previous similar outbreaks, i.e., basically nothing? (Was there anything like a lockdown or a mask mandate during the HK flu in 1968?)

Exactly. Could they beg the question any harder? "Sometimes people post more blasphemy even after I show them the relevant passage in my book of scripture."

I think this was wrongly flagged, so I'm resubmitting it. If you flag it, please say why. If you want to block discussion on important topics, you should at least give some explanation.

Yes, that seems to be how it is in SF. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arss9V3A1VA

Is it possible that, despite good intentions, the policies being implemented there actually have very harmful effects?