Viewing profile — xr4ti

In no way do the benefits outlined by OP even come close to outweighing the systemic risks posed by omnipresent surveillance coupled with precise targeting of individualized persua…

Not just private prisons. The prison guards union has been one of the most potent political forces in California over the last 20-30 years. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/07/us/po…

The converse is also true -- a wide range of drugs are subject to metabolism by gut microbes. This can throw off plasma concentrations and reduce effectiveness, or cause unwanted s…

Sorry I don't quite follow your comment. What does free speech have to do with unregulated, unconsented mass surveillance and violation of end user privacy? That "new" social netwo…

Seems perfectly in line with restrictions on other dual use technologies, such as biological pathogens, nuclear fuels, etc.

Possibly naive question from a non-physicist... does this not follow from relativity as a natural a consequence of the effect gravity/mass has on spacetime? By that I mean that the…

Not sure I agree. Inheritance refers to flow of influence on properties from parent to child. I think anything beyond that high level definition requires additional qualifiers (e.g…

What is this "free speech" on the net people that speak of? Has it ever existed? With few exceptions the right to post in a forum has always been at the pleasure of the mods/sysop.…

I don't see why this should be very surprising to people. It's not difficult to think of heritable traits that have nothing to do with genetics such as: social status, money/proper…

A better term to use would be ancestry. There is a very strong social component to race and ethnicity. Case in point, I know a number of people who "pass" - meaning 99.9% of people…

A manager can't follow each individual employee every moment of the day. To be a little more abstract, I'm talking about the degree of privacy and autonomy that workers are afforde…

There are qualitative and quantitative differences between requiring weekly progress meetings, daily updates, and microchipping employees.

Because economy exists to sustain and enrich the lives of humans, not the other way around.

I think the underlying assumption that the "amazing transparency" enabled by crypto currencies will necessarily lead to a fairer more humane world is dangerously naive. Does it not…

> Touting the amazing evolutionary benefits of CF isn't really helping your case. Sure you (maybe) can't get cholera but you will likely die by 40! Only if an antibiotic resistant …

Not leave things up to chance?! Is the universe not inherently probabilistic? I'm guessing you mean make things a little more deterministic than they are now in terms of human evol…

Unrestricted gene editing in humans is probably a bad idea. (1) Evolution has been pretty effective to this point, (2) decreasing genetic variability will make humans as a species …

My tinfoil hat theory is that there is currently a giant transfer (or several transfers) of wealth going on outside of the purview of regulators (e.g. evasion of sanctions). The bi…

I really don't like the authors shoehorning a linear model into this work. I perceive it as an attempt to give the article an undeserved veneer of statistical/mathematical rigor.[1…

Well change the words "music" to "conversation" and song to "person" (or phrase), and things start to get pretty scary.

> Now Playing, has a daily battery usage of less than 1% on average, respects user privacy by running entirely on-device and can passively recognize a wide range of music. Maybe I …

I tend think of compassionate use more in the context of medical devices and biologics (e.g. synthetic antibodies) than small molecule drugs. And to reiterate FDA regulation has mo…

The FDA specifically (and famously) does not regulate the practice of medicine. They regulate the marketing of drugs and medical devices - mainly that you cannot market something a…