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Starbase, LA

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581–590 of 641 posts

Re: Starbase, LA

#581
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I don't work on weapons as a matter of deep conviction, so I'll continue to be concerned about this.

My point is math is a weapon.

Forgive me, but I don't exactly follow. This isn't obvious to me.

Re: Starbase, LA

#583
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything at scale will have payment disputes. Did the work happen, was it for contract, did it run over? These types of questions are extremely common

Right so the article says they aren’t paying but should be. Do you have evidence to suggest otherwise?

The problem is that neither you nor I have evidence that says they should be paying, either.

Re: Starbase, LA

#584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like Kyrie Irving is a talented basketball player but also a catastrophically-deluded flat-earther, it's just as possible for gifted software engineers to have flawed reasoning about the economy.

> it's just as possible for gifted software engineers to have flawed reasoning about the economy. Are you sure your reasoning is flawless? Free markets correspond with prosperity, in case after case.

> Are you sure your reasoning is flawless?

Oh, heavens no. I'm human, so I almost certainly make logic errors all the time, whether in terms of truth or validity.

However, one thing I am very careful about is that the definitions I use are falsifiable, which makes them minimally empirically testable. ("A hypothesis forbidding some observations means that hypothesis is testable.") In the best case, I can proceed a priori with my reasoning and entirely sidestep needing to approach a posteriori, but real life is very often not that nice.

I generally find capital-L Libertarian free markets less than useful for analysis because the syllogism tends to break down thus:

1. Free markets produce prosperity.

2. Prosperity indicates the presence of a free market.

3. Therefore, free markets are prosperous.

Like, that'd be a perfectly valid form of proving both directions of a biconditional if it were possible in this framework to show the presence of a free market that doesn't produce prosperity or that prosperity happens without a free market. Unfortunately, they're taken as axiomatic, so they don't admit the reasoning required for such a proof.

I want to be wrong though. Perhaps I'm missing something?

> Free markets correspond with prosperity, in case after case.

I'll caution that correspondence does not admit causal inferences.

Re: Starbase, LA

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, just showing how ridiculous it is to hold the position that everything is political. It's okay to just talk about things casually, dude. Chill out, it'll serve you well. If your position isn't that everything is political, don't say it is. If it is your position, this is perfectly in line with what you stated.

Your strawman didn't show anything, except that you're unwilling to engage with other viewpoints in good faith and will immediately dismiss them as ridiculous instead of advancing actual arguments. Why should we be silent over the obvious political aspects of giving Musk more government contracts? Just to please you?

Why should you be silent about it? Because it’s not the topic. How is this SOOOO confusing and difficult for you? Do you not notice how annoyed everyone around you is when you desperately try to ram politics into every single conversation you have in life?

Oh, you don’t really do that? You’re just being performative online?

Got it.

Re: Starbase, LA

#586
post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debate used to be the staunchest form of resistance. This last decade, racing to call the opposition a crybaby and declare it activism seems to be more in vogue.

> racing to call the opposition a crybaby Nobody is calling "the opposition" a crybaby, but a specific crybaby person.

And I can provide more than adequate evidence supporting that assertion.

Re: Starbase, LA

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His companies have made many monumental engineering achievements at his direction. If you know anyone who has worked at one his companies, especially at a high level, you would know that they made those achievements despite his directions. The SpaceX team was ecstatic when he bought Twitter, because it meant he would be around a lot less. The policy at SpaceX was basically avoid Elon, and if you had to talk to him,…

[flagged]

Dat u Elon?

Re: Starbase, LA

#588
post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, sorry, that’s a strawman. You’re framing this as if we were talking about some nuanced policy issue, which it isn’t. The concrete situation is a president unilaterally renaming a geographical feature for no other defensible reason than hubris, in disagreement with the rest of the region. I agree with GP - there is no debate to be had over this, only rejection.

From the first entry in Cambridge Dictionary (though there may certainly be more than one valid definition to consider, this is the one I have been using): > (a) serious discussion of a subject in which many people take part The debate I'm referring to is here, the discussion between commenters on HN about which name should be used (I'm well on the side of Gulf of Mexico as well). One does not need to see multi-sided…

There is no serious discussion on this point. There was never intended to be. There is only the bullying, and now the tone policing. But we all have better things to do with our time.

Re: Starbase, LA

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve jobs was not a great engineer. He was ruthless, manipulative and lacking empathy - like Musk.

And Apple never would have existed without Jobs. Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy when the Second Coming of Jobs occurred. He took the same company, with the same engineers, from near bankruptcy to $347 billion. Again, same engineers. 90 days from bankruptcy to $347 billion. Jobs was the magic ingredient - like Musk.

And he wasn't an engineer.

Re: Starbase, LA

#590
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who build rockets and computers and the Internet are the good guys of history. We should do more of that. That statement shouldn’t have a political valence—people who subscribe to that idea can argue whether taxes should be higher or lower. But if you reject that concept you’re rejecting civilization itself.

> The people who build rockets and computers and the Internet are the good guys of history Does no one read history anymore? IBM and the Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust The V-2 rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket "The V-2 rocket (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit. 'Vengeance Weapon 2'), with the development name Aggregat-4 (A4), was the world's first practical, modern ballistic…

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky would like to have a word with you for saying that rockets were first developed by Nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky

IBM was a US company, just because the Nazis used their computers doesn't make computers bad.

Just because something was once used by bad people or for bad things doesn't mean that it is bad.

After all, books were written by Hitler and the Nazis and I would hope that you aren't willing to paint all literature as being in the same light.

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