Viewing profile — throw_pm23

The top ten countries by air pollution listed in another comment hardly produce anything the developed world uses, they mostly export natural resources.

Yeah, I call the company Facebook, I don't care enough to follow their terminology, and I don't keep track of their products.

And Facebook instead of Meta, although if I think of it, I'd rather not say any of those in any context.

Even if there were no reliable studies, the precautionary principle would suggest to limit food that is highly processed and somehow of a novel form, very different from what was c…

I loved the typo "parking your cat" -- that would indeed be the height of decadence.

More likely, by a huge margin, since it takes only checking a box in some software system, whereas the alternatives you mention need a lot of messy work to achieve.

Sorry if my question appears ignorant, but how quickly is quantum really coming? If your prior belief is "nothing practical is ever likely to come out of quantum computing", then s…

Yes, I guess in most of Europe the 200-250 years between Rembrandt and van Gogh is exactly when family names solidified from a simple description "the one from village X" or "son o…

Typst may have its pros and momentum (I haven't tried it myself yet), but I find this attitude and language used by its proponents very offputting. I've only heard Knuth and Lampor…

There is a trivial alternative that military strategists have been suggesting for decades. For a nation of 20+ M, having a reservist army of 1M would be feasible and make the islan…

That's an interesting perspective, that could be used as an argument by both camps. You say more social democracy, someone else might say, more social cohesion due to shared cultur…

I think the midwit meme captures this best, where at both ends of the IQ bell curve the characters say "I hate technology", and the guy in the middle loves it.

So why isn't the charitable interpretation that the system works well, there is even correction built into it, since they backtrack when necessary?

If institutions can only be created and never destroyed, how many institutions per person would we end up with?

I think the point of disagreement is even whether "things have already happened" have really happened or not. From reading his posts, my understanding is that he thinks the claims …

I think he is playing it smart. The more fringe/contrarian it is, the bigger the payoff if he turns out to be right. So far nothing of much use came out of QC, and if nothing will,…

It's worse, it will (likely) never work at all.

I find the opposite, he often makes some ridiculous claim in the post, the comments (the ones he lets through) rightfully point out how wrong he was, then he cherry-picks and engag…

Yes, just like putting two bricks onto each other is a first step to the moon.

Another recent writeup that adds some nuance to this (and other claims), summarizing the quantum-skeptic positions: https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/robert-alicki-mich...

You seem to merge two different points. Not reading based on sloppiness is defensible. Not reading based on the author's resume less so.