thomyorkie

I wonder if breathing through your mouth would mitigate these effects.

> Really? Were you at one?

Yes, I was at the one in Oakland.

This is a silly statement. It's almost impossible not to think he left his position on the advisory council due to the fantastic level of backlash his company has received over the last couple of weeks. To think he is doing anything except trying to stop the bleeding seems willfully ignorant.

> Nope... impeachment... Lotsa work to do... No non-violent resistance that has mobilized more than 3.5% of the population has failed in the last 100-ish years. On Jan 21st 1-1.5% of the US population participated.

While there certainly was a large anti-Trump sentiment at the Woman's March, there were a plethora of issues that brought all those people together. To imply that all who participated want a Trump impeachment is not accurate.

I would argue that presenting one (obviously biased) view as the ground truth would qualify as distortion. For example, consider how Fox reports news regarding separating religion from public, tax-funded institutions, such as removing the 10 commandments from schools, as infringements on religious freedom.

Of course, liberal news organizations distort the truth as well.

And yet another nit must be picked. Breath awareness is simply one way to meditate. There are a broad array of different meditation techniques and some do involve breath control.

> There is a name for that: price gouging.

No, it's called value-based pricing. Price gouging is raising prices beyond what is reasonable. For almost all products and services charging a percentage of the value that the product or service creates is completely reasonable.

> What if your hospital/doctor/insurance starts doing that?

Sometimes it's quite difficult or impossible to calculate the value created by a product or service and in those instances attempting value-based pricing could lead to price gouging.

Could this possibly lead to a cure for neuro-degenerative diseases like parkinson's and ALS?

Perhaps slightly, but there's a huge difference between cold air and cold water when it comes to removing heat from your body.

Eating a low-carb diet is a kooky theory?

Again, I'm not making the claim that neural nets will lead to AGI. I was only commenting on the claim that they can't or won't just because they don't accurately model the human brain.

I was just commenting on how you weren't really backing up your statement that parent had 'been had'. He thinks neural networks could eventually lead to AGI. You said he was wrong because neural networks aren't really a good model of the brain. My point is we don't know that something has to be a good model of the brain to lead us to AGI.

Regardless, neural nets could eventually lead to AGI.

For VCs who focus on AI, I think it would actually be irresponsible if they didn't show interest in a start up that was garnering so much praise from AI experts. Its not as if term sheets were sent.

Sure if one out of every three had vomit, syringes, or feces it would be a huge problem. One out of three seems incredibly unlikely and off by at least a couple of orders of magnitude.

You may want to consider the possibility that you have generalized anxiety disorder. The symptoms are vast, constantly changing, and often different from person to person. Some of the things you've described like PVCs, digestive issues, muscle weakness, and obsessive thoughts are quite common symptoms. The best way I know how to manage this without pharmaceuticals is cold showers, believe it or not.

I too have met some extremely intelligent smokers. But, I think you may be missing the point. This study doesn’t provide evidence that pollution by itself hinders your cognition. Rather that pollution (or some other urban-related phenomenon) may blunt some of the positive effects that aerobic exercise would have had otherwise.

The negative effects of pollution have been well documented, so its not like this study is coming out of nowhere. But, I do agree that one study should not be given too much weight. And how pollution affects exercise needs more research before conclusions can be definitively reached.

Some of the more dangerous pollutants are ultra-fine particles (less than 100nm in size). I wonder how effective these masks are for trapping these particles. I can only find information on how well they trap particles larger than 100nm.

Unfortunately, some of the benefits of running may prove elusive to those of us living in urban settings.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23073213

I'm a huge believer in the power of the individual, and under today's conditions I wouldn't support a universal basic income. But in a possible future where AI is sufficiently advanced to handle the majority of 'jobs' and where corporations dont employ people at the scale they do today, I would support a universal basic income. What would your solution be?

I admit I haven't given it a whole lot of thought, but, for the US at least, I see it happening slowly over time as a smooth extension of welfare, not as some piece of landmark legislation. As automation increases and jobs become more scarce, more people will need welfare assistance. With strained resources the government will look for solutions such as an automation tax for corporations, perhaps less defense/military spending, etc. Taken to it's logical conclusion, I think you end up with something like a basic universal income.

> ”Will I survive?” seems, I said, equivalent to “Will there be some person alive who is the same person as me?”

Although taking these two questions as equivalent does simplify the thought experiment, it goes so strongly against my intuition that I find it incredibly unsatisfying. Of course, I know that doesn’t make me right. But, If the stream of consciousness that my mind is currently experiencing ceases to exist, it gives me no comfort to think that someone exactly like me would live on. However, I recognize that this statement is filled with a ton of metaphysical baggage, and Occam’s razor may suggest Parfit is correct to eliminate the concept of personal identity. I do wonder though if we really can properly describe our reality without the concept of personal identity.

I don't disagree. For the record, I didn't make the original comment.

You are making assumptions. I never claimed I don't think freewill exists. Also, why would the absence of freewill prevent your mind from being changed based on the evidence another presents to you?

I think argument still has a place in a world where freewill is illusory. Surely, one's opinions can change when presented with new evidence, regardless of whether that change originated from a free agent's conscious choice or a more deterministic background process of which one's consciousness is only partially aware. Furthermore, that change in opinion can have a meaningful effect either positively or negatively for both the conscious entity and the world at large.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Obama's quote from the article you posted: "We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so."

I agree with Obama's overall point about guns. But from what you've written, I'm under the impression you think he's wrong about terrorism.

> Actually, the majority of Americans agreed with Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by over a million votes. We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people. Trump won on a technicality of our (antiquated and frankly awful) system, not on a mandate.

While I agree that the electoral college is not the best system, we can't really know what the results would have been if the popular vote determined the presidency. Campaigns are optimized based on the electoral college and each would have been run differently on a different system. Also, voter turnout may have been different because you no longer have partisan strongholds which may discourage voting.

> Will you vote for the candidate that will protect our drinking water no matter what?

I think you are making a straw man argument. Perhaps I haven’t been clear enough about this, but I’m not saying terrorism is the biggest existential threat or that it’s the only issue that matters or that it’s worth sacrificing our freedoms for or that certain groups should be discriminated against. I’m just saying that its something that should be taken seriously. Every political candidate takes it seriously and I think for good reason. I’m also not advocating some of Trump’s extreme rhetoric. I didn’t even vote for him. I also don’t believe that I’m personally being terrorized. I don’t think about this stuff on a daily basis. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want my government to think about it.

> What attacks are terrorists becoming "increasingly competent" at, exactly?

The obvious one: aircraft as a weapon. Then there’s Chemical/biological. Historically, used by sovereign militaries and now starting to be used frequently by terrorist organizations. ISIS recently started using chlorine and possibly mustard gas. The fairly recent poisoning of schoolchildren. The recent use of other poisons such as rat poison. Another big one is Cyber attacks. Recent ISIS attacks on power grids show show increased capabilities. The department of homeland security thinks this is a new major threat to US infrastructure. BTW, the FBI and Homeland Security have published a detailed list of possible attack vectors which includes a lot more than the few I’ve mentioned here. As far as nuclear attacks go, terrorist organizations like al Qaida have expressed their desire to obtain these weapons specifically to attack the US. Shouldn’t we do every reasonable thing within our power to stop them?

No need to be condescending.

Can you tell me what the likelihood of a nuclear attack by terrorists will be in 10 years, 20 years? How about if Iran develops nuclear weapons? Do you think 9/11 will be the worst terrorist attack we will ever see? My whole point is terrorists, and those that support them, are becoming increasingly competent in nearly every vector of attack, nuclear being only one. And their destructive ambitions grow even faster than their competency. I simply don't see how anyone can call it a fake issue.