Viewing profile — jbay

That could be part of it. But I think survivor bias generally gets much more credit as an explanation than it deserves, and I strongly doubt that older generations of tools would h…

How many R&D engineering hours do you think the extra 1m of piping equals in cost? I'm actually surprised they didn't go and put a column there, too, just in case.

A rock the size of a human head (or, say, a container of seawater) has just as many electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and other particles going about their business and doing …

Not sure it's a fair analogy. Even while they were being deceitful, the Soviet Union seems to have at least invested a serious effort into tackling the problem head-on.

That sounds good. =) By the way, and not to put too fine a point on it, is there a reason why you don't call them Republic-of-Chinese friends?

Yes, but that also comes with the notion that a wealthy family can become poor by moving to a higher-cost area, or a poor family can become wealthy by moving to a lower-cost area; …

There's so many times that an ostensibly international website has rejected me because I don't have a US-formatted numerical zip code. Even when they have a country field.

I don't have any dislike for the fact that the ROC is an independent country, whether my government diplomatically recognizes them as such or not. I'm just pointing out that, if a …

Do you tell your friends about your summer trip to the Republic of Korea? Or were you visiting the Kingdom of Belgium that year? Do those friends invite you to visit their hometown…

Every one of the many Taiwanese people I know refer to it as Taiwan, too. It's very rare to hear anyone refer to it as the ROC, unless in the context of specifically making a disti…

Even for Latin, apparently Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin, which is more familiar to most people today, differs in pronunciation from Classical Latin. For example, Ecclesiastical La…

Practically, the fastest and easiest way would be to turn a good cylinder and measure the diameter at several points (or roll on a surface plane) to make sure it's not tapered, bec…

It wasn't nearly so easy. Dan hand-scraped in several surfaces on the lathe; for example the headstock, to get the axis parallel to the ways, and so on.

Fast-forward to 2016 to see how much the technology has changed: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2016/09/meet-bob-pmls-...

The grandparent's label of "central planning" seems to encompass almost any possible policy that deviates from a completely free market. I don't think any mainstream economics, oth…

You sound very certain about this. Where does that certainty come from?

Wait, who was proposing or even talking about central planning in this thread? I think you're the first. I was going to propose we allocate resources by sacrificing goats to the th…

> The higher price discourages hoarders or others with lower needs. Others with lower means, you meant?

Demand at the old price from people who bought them to resell at the new price?

Why do the design in the US? Chinese engineers are doing great designs themselves, and for less than American salaries... And they can visit right there on the factory floor, talki…

I'm not sure why this concept is such a challenge for me to convey. I'm probably not doing a very good job of it. The investors aren't particularly concerned about small positive e…

In my real estate venture, the dividends are paid exclusively to the investors who are my shareholders. So there are no free riders; the people who don't invest don't get the same …

Was my explanation inadequate? We're not the people in category (2) who are concerned about free riders; we're all the people in category (3) who would be free riders. But we also …

> "The only time taxes are required is when people will not freely give money for a project. That is literally the only reason taxes exist. Nothing is stopping people from donating…

Actually, the US only thought that there wasn't MAD. As mentioned in the documentary "The Fog of War", only decades later did the US discover that there were already nuclear missil…