seventhtiger

If entropy continues to be an issue taxation and regulations are sensible solutions.

Just add a billing item "30% Apple Fee" and you'll know their true feelings.

I'm childless but I disagree. Children are a public good (objectively) and a moral good (in many frameworks). The childless also benefit from children, as the very social order they exist in depends on raising children. They enjoy the public good with minimal contribution (additional tax). They take on very little of the real cost.

If everyone was childless, applying Kant's categorical imperative, I think the societal issues would be obvious, as society would cease to exist within 90 years or less. If not everyone can be childless then morally some sufficient amount of people must have children.

The fact that the parents do it for themselves doesn't reduce its importance or benefit to society. It's just a fortunate alignment of incentives.

The problem I see is that further accommodating parents isn't enshrined in law. Parenting is essential work that is undervalued because it is passionate labor.

Isn't that the crux of Jean Baudrillard's Simulcara and Simulation? To be honest I've never read the original text, which is not the most accessible, but I've read many overviews and analyses.

When you create a rich enough symbolic system you can detach from what it was intended to symbolize. If the king ordered a map as detailed as possible, as big as the kingdom itself, and dedicated resources to maintaining it, people would start living on the map itself as it becomes less of a map and more of an alternate reality.

The richness of human thought over history is less and less dependent on reality. It will only increase with time.

I honestly don't understand how that is unique at all. It sounds like every government that has ever existed. Once you define the community, its mechanism of decision, and the reprimands and punishments, I'm not sure what's less government about this than current government.

I always wondered about the "computability of the universe" and its compressibility.

If the universe is actually compressible, then object permanence may actually be a trick, like it is in video games. Objects are generated on demand and deleted to save space and processing.

If it's not compressible, which is where I lean, then the full universe must be fully computed every time. No savings can be made, and any delay in computing an object might propagate and cause recalculation cascades for other objects. I lean this way because from my layman's understanding, quantum mechanics act similarly to random seeds, which increases entropy by a lot.

If it's not compressible, then the smallest computer able to simulated the universe is at least as big as the universe itself.

They do exist but are they the best single screen multiplayer experiences? Even indie developers of the genre target Nintendo platforms because they know Nintendo draws that audience. They are the only local-multiplayer-first AAA developer.

Nintendo games with 4+ player multiplayer is actually a great time with family and friends. In general I think Nintendo makes social games that are intended for the living room, which is harder to find on the other consoles, and almost impossible on PC. I say this as someone who mainly plays on PC and has LAN parties at home.

Consoles can be social devices. PCs can be isolating devices.

It's the best trackpad out there, and all trackpads are clunky and non-ergonomic. A mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, or almost anything else is better. Due to the location of a trackpad you are guaranteed to have your wrist bent which limits how long you can work before discomfort.

Isn't that what Ingress tried to do first? And the Google local guide program seems quite successful.

Biblical names have versions in all languages from the Middle East and Europe, and to a lesser extent Africa and Asia as well. Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Mary are near-universal.

Some of the different versions are not easily recognizable, like the English John and the Arabic Yahya, but if you knew the original Hebrew Yohanan it's not so hard.

I've noticed my allergies are more severe when sleeping on the floor. I believe more dust settles on the futon and bedding if it's directly on the floor.

Platform beds are great, and there are quite minimal ones. It improved my allergies.

A locked cabinet has been working wonders for me. It's hard to restrict everyone in the house to my dietary needs, but it's also hard to live in a house where unhealthy temptation is in every corner.

Give her the key and ask her to lock all her junk food up. It works.

This has become the norm now. High quality local multiplayer is the exception. Split screen was more common on the 30" CRT than the 60" flat screen.

Also pretty much the last refuge of video games as a social activity offline. Everyone on the couch playing together.

For PS4, Xbox, and PC I never find someone with enough controllers for 4+ players. Even if indie developers make these games people don't buy the gear to play them. They're almost designed for single player and only online multiplayer.

On the other hand almost every Nintendo console will always have many controllers. They company produces high quality party games, and in the case of the switch they're literally selling joycons two at a time which means indie developers can rely on players having 4 or 6 or even 8 controllers.

I honestly think the revival of board games is because of this gap that video games created when this type of play was abandoned in favor of online experiences and graphics.

That's true, but it only redeuces the probability some. There existed well-fed healthy populations at many points in history and geography.

Even if the probability is much lower, there is estimated to be over 100 billions humans that have lived.

I think we intuitively underestimate ancient peoples' individual abilities because we have so much knowledge and wisdom that's been built up over millennia easily available to us. But someone had to figure out how to farm using primitive tools and develop the tradition for the community.

What was medieval Von Neumann doing?

The fact that we are overlooking our Einsteins and Gödels says more about us than about them. For a moment in history scientists were looked up to and mythologized. Today they're doing the same work, but they've been put in a different place in society.

If you assume humans have not evolved significantly over the past 20,000 years, you have to wonder what all the geniuses were doing.

Perhaps genius is a function of childhood nutrition and medicine, but if a genius is 1 in 1000, then every village must have had one at some point.

What did people just as intelligent as us but without knowledge do for their entire lives? They build on tradition.

This is getting back to metis and episteme. I liked how this concept was explored in the Uruk Machine series if you want to read more.

Metis is "local accumulated knowledge" and episteme is "abstract, generalized, theoretical knowledge".

Metis, tradition, is barely knowledge. It is more of a practice without any of the justification needed for knowledge. So if your community knows that it is best to plant seeds during a specific holiday, they might think a supernatural blessing is the reason. Knowing something for the wrong reason isn't knowledge.

Non-knowledge loses arguments to knowledge. When an agricultural scientist comes with theories and results it won't be difficult to say that the farming community actually doesn't know anything. That's fine. But we are too quick to throw out tradition vs knowledge because unless it is specifically measured against it, the practice of tradition may be superior to the practice of current knowledge. Their traditional planting date may be superior to all models. After all, they've successfully farmed here centuries or millennia.

The Sufis might be dancing because having community gatherings allows communities to survive. The dancing and rationalization is incidental but the actual gathering is a crucial matter of survival.

It's interesting to think that although it is highly likely that life originated on Earth, we don't have evidence of multiple originations.

If life is so rare that it occurs only once even in hospitable conditions, then it may follow that life is extremely unlikely even on a cosmic scale.

As a developer I'm much less comfortable working with JS frameworks. It seems like each one tries to hijack the JS experience and create its own.

Does anyone have experience writing SPA/PWA without frameworks? I'm interested in the idea of minimal JS even at the cost of productivity.

A human life is not a permanent installation. It is more like a mandala. Constantly in the state of being made until it is complete, and then it is discarded.

Your life is a mandala. None of it will remain. Don't hoard physical things and don't hoard information. Let it pass through you. Delete the entire lists.

Believe in the stickiness of important things. After you delete the lists try to remember items from it. Read whatever you remember right away.

In the end there's really nothing you have to do, even breathe.

The adult argument has absolutely fallen through because adults' attendance is tracked in another situation. So it's not a matter of being adult. It's a matter of what the specific relationship is of the student to the university.

It's ironic you mention psychologists. Therapists, personal trainers, life coaches, and other 1-to-1 service providers are the most likely to fire a customer for not attending. I personally know someone whose vocal coach made an ultimatum about attendance and ended up firing the customer. This is all very much adult.

In the end it's the sad consumerization of higher education in America. The pricing makes students so bitter as to demand "better service" rather than "better education". A university is more like a job in most of the world.

So the adult argument has fell through. Now it's about being a customer.

Service providers can fire customers. If you pay for membership of a club but never attend functions, the club will end your membership.

If the service aims to provide a community or is invested in the success of its customers then it should fire customers who are not invested in their own success.

Not to mention how many students are not customers. They are sponsored by parents and scholarships and heavily subsidized. All these stakeholders have a vested interest in academic success. Tracking attendance is better for all of them.

For the vast majority of jobs being absent a full work week without approval means you don't have a job the next week. Why does being an adult university student mean you can be absent for months and still succeed? It has nothing to do with adulthood.

And why do we need instructors? Let's just give each student some textbooks and their exam schedule. If they can't succeed we're not interested in their success.

The Darwinist argument can always be used to withdraw any and all levels of support. You can't use it to justify just the level of support you prefer.

I don't understand how not tracking attendance is treating adults like adults. Your workplace will track your attendance until you retire. It's pretty normal.

Just because a student has issues with discipline or motivation I shouldn't let them fail. Tracking attendance improves academic results so I'm not sure what the advantage is to not tracking it.

Nothing is wrong with it. It's perfectly ok to be vegetarian.

But if you think you're helping the environment by being vegetarian, then you might not be as frustrated about the environment. Being a vegetarian is not "doing your part" when it's just an ineffectual gesture that assuaged your guilt.

So it's only wrong as much as it is misdirected energy.

False advertising is already prosecuted. So specifically here we need to adjust the "reasonability" interpretation.

If they say Coca-Cola is refreshing, and I found it's not, courts now say it is reasonable to assume that the statement is subjective. If the reasonability test is changed they will no longer be able to advertise opinions.

I don't think this is such an effective control if you mean controlling the population. Usually when countries shut down the Internet it's to prevent protestors from organizing rather than disconnecting them from the outside world. This doesn't give them additional leverage considering the Russian government's current power.

This is actually most useful for security. At least if you are attacked your national network will survive.

Individual environmentalism like recycling and vegetarianism is an industry built to release frustration. Over and over their impacts have been shown to be negligible. They are selling you a feeling and not helping the planet.

There is only one vehicle for effective change here and it is regulation. No matter how many people practice and advocate for less consumerism, if it's just so easy and cheap to massively destroy the environment then it will continue to be done in the service of other goals, whether profit, development, or even just for kicks.

No amount of vegetarians and vegetarian-activism will have as much effect as the politician that bakes environmental costs into the price of meat. Lab meat is a similar pipe dream because it still doesn't address the problem.