Viewing profile — xherberta

Crime as in algo crime; there are not humans pulling a lever labeled “trash this relationship.”

Observe how this amounts to crime. The platform has motive: -newly single users attract more views -newly single users are worth more to advertisers because they’re likely to spend…

> What if a learning dataset simply has not enough info for a correct answer to have a greater weight than all the “con” noise? Indeed. I wonder what happens as available training …

Curiosity killed the cat. We’ve developed disgust and taboos and physiological responses like vomiting to safeguard our interactions with living things that are small enough to eat…

Here's a discussion on pain points in the ICU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33661482

> think I’m burning out (home, kids, marriage, etc) Do you think you could manage the job if there were no expectations on you outside the job? Could your partner get on board with…

Art Against Despair is a book put together by The School of Life. It's arranged with one page of text for each image, so it's an easy serving size when you don't have much time or …

One that Loeb has mentioned: the status quo 10-year plan involves searching exoplanets for oxygen, which could arise without life, and which organisms would not necessarily need or…

If the US hadn't dropped the ball on enforcing existing antitrust laws in the 80s and 90s, we wouldn't have to ask. Perhaps many more regular people would own productive enterprise…

Wow! I did somehow miss the 15 years aspect. Mysterious. I'm glad you're feeling better.

I am skeptical of the headlines touting medical mistakes as the No. 3 cause of death in the US. But to be fair, someone could put up a similar site listing thousands of people who …

"The great secret, known to internists and learned early in marriage by internists wives, but still hidden from the general public, is that most things get better by themselves. Mo…

I agree. Kahneman and Harari also discussed how the shift to agriculture, while a great step forward for humanity as a collective group, was a major bummer for the individual. (Muc…

On people becoming superfluous to the market and the state as machine intelligence progresses: "... [in the future, work no longer exists for] most of humanity... That mass of peop…

> Even after multiple generations of mutations, Bacteria can do thousands or millions of generations more rapidly than we can tweak our nanotech.

I don't know. With the third-party payer system, cost is hardly a factor in medical decisions.

Point taken. Thanks for the call out.

Why talk in terms of one big company? Maybe small investors with conflicting ideas and interests would like to own and run small companies. Except, a couple of big companies are ma…

The US hasn't enforced its anti-trust legislation in over 30 years. Some link Reagan's "assault" on anti-trust to the breakage of the American job market. There's been zero net job…

I guess as long as there has been cheese, mice have been eating it.

I think you may be underestimating the real-world messiness of this water sanitation example, and other types of problems where location-specific factors WILL make or break the pro…

I agree. The incentives are out of whack. Being a self-pay patient over the last several years has been enlightening. The health care people I've dealt with are generally ready to …

Here are a couple of related resources: An eye-opening conversation with a palliative care physician: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/11/becky_liddicoat.htm... "Five Wishes,"…

There's only one place I'm aware of on earth where organs can be sold: Iran. Here's an interview with an economist who helped set up that market, which does seem to function fairly…

Right. Monetizing death. Ugh. I'm also not certain that you can donate organs if you've been on pain (and other) medications.