Viewing profile — ImSkeptical

I'm reminded of the saying "When you reach the top of the mountain the only zen you'll find the is the zen you brought with you." Or, alternatively the koan "If you meet the Buddha…

I was just listening to an interview with Elon Musk where he discussed the importance of reasoning from first principles as opposed to by analogy. The author of this wired article …

What if you pay taxes that are used to buy the weapons that kill people? For the sake of discussion, suppose you know your tax dollars will be spent this way.

I hope Uber is not the leader in driverless cars. I believe accidents and fatalities per vehicle mile traveled are the most relevant statistics. If driverless cars can outperform h…

Where I work the security guards greet you as you walk through the gate. I've always thought this was a mechanism for making sure the guards were paying attention. If someone comes…

Aren't taxes and cost of living much higher though?

Oh, I don't know, just a boundless universe of knowledge, news, politics, and people to connect with. I'm not sure why contemplating boredom is more virtuous than reading or commen…

I've read that most parents now are actually spending a lot more time with their kids than parents used to[1]. Probably your parents were working on chores that have been made easi…

Assuming you have normal hand eye coordination I have a hard time believing you can't juggle. I learned by watching a YouTube video titled "Learn to juggle in five minutes" or some…

If I had to sell a random exploit, I'd try the NSA. Email random NSA types or political appointees with the offer until someone got back to me. I'd give them the exploit first and …

Still, Windows, or Android, works on hundreds of millions of machines for long periods of time. Stuxnet is a feat of engineering, but it's not as sophisticated as millions of lines…

Complexity is about the number of interoperating parts. A math problem like 75533787543269^634678 may be difficult to do with pen and paper, but it's not complicated, whereas, take…

I think the EM drive would've made for a dark future. How long would it be before maniacs were accelerating asteroids into the planet? The EM drive seemed to be simpler and cheaper…

I believe that's the point of the comment you are replying to. You may develop weapons believing in the goodness of your country's military, but those weapons may come into the han…

I believe in some videos they show it using the arm to get itself standing upright again.

I think it really depends on the team you're on at Amazon. (well, the vesting, free drinks etc doesn't). I never found the NYT article to be even slightly representative of my time…

No, I couldn't live in such a city. If there was nobody to take out the trash we would have to raise more money to increase salaries for garbage men, etc. Some of it, I could live …

So get a place where you live next to artists if that's important. The idea that rent needs to be subsidized so the rich can have entertaining neighbors strikes me as facile and ki…

Also, there's an option to turn autoplay off. It's a special kind of nefarious that lets you opt out at any time.

I don't think we should try to guess the motivations of aliens. You can't really rule out, or make well founded assumptions about, how aliens will act or what they'll want. Perhaps…

To me, that reads as passive aggressive. "It's unfortunate you didn't do your job..." I think it's a better approach to say "The problems are X. We know this because of Y. My propo…

If that's true then shouldn't the double padlocked box be stolen as it is not a padlocked box but is instead a double padlocked box? (Here I'm assuming the "correct" solution is A …

For an expansive definition of "gun" you can absolutely make them yourself. The term "zip gun" refers to homemade or improvised guns and there's a huge variety. A gun is a lot simp…

What Android phone were you using? I have a Pixel 2 XL and no idea what you're talking about regarding glitchiness or animation stutter. I previously had a Note 4 for maybe 3 or 4 …

In any case where they have the rapist's DNA, and the rapist, I assume they'll do their own test to confirm. It would certainly be jarring to hear you were being accused of rape, b…