101–110 of 153 posts
All of these score 1 on one of my favorite HN comments, the Yudkowski Ambition Scale[0]. That's OK, but it's a bit disappointing for a post that clearly tries to come off as visionary. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702
Honestly, I find some of these points quite disturbing. And a lot of them are not a matter of technology. 13. Keep track of where everybody in my team is physically right now. I don't want to work with you, ever. 40 hours a week are for the team, sure, but during the remaining 128 you don't have any business in my life. What you propose is creepy. 25. Be able to take a course online and get graded -- and get a diplom…
As far as 30 is concerned, we already make smokers and drinkers pay more taxes through the various huge taxes on cigarettes and alcohol directly (at least in my country). It's not so far fetched, and if it reduces obesity then it's a net good for society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding 30. wasn't it recently concluded here on HN that obese people actually end up costing less to society since they tend not to survive into their 80s/90s? Not that his thought is good even if this was not true.
An obese person costs more per year but less per lifetime since he dies sooner. Correspondingly, an obese person should pay more each year but they will pay less over their lifetime.
Thought this was basically urgent care.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure this is to enable an acceptable level of fraud protection. Within some countries (UK) it is more or less instant most of the time.
Since 2008 the UK, the Faster Payments Service[1] on infrastructure run by Vocalink[2] enable bank-to-bank payments that usually clear in a couple of seconds. This should work 24/7, depending on the sending and receiving bank. Many banks will "soft post" the payment during the day in a mirror ledger, and then run overnight batch processes to "hard post". Of course, their batches only run on business days. Because the…
Honestly, I find some of these points quite disturbing. And a lot of them are not a matter of technology. 13. Keep track of where everybody in my team is physically right now. I don't want to work with you, ever. 40 hours a week are for the team, sure, but during the remaining 128 you don't have any business in my life. What you propose is creepy. 25. Be able to take a course online and get graded -- and get a diplom…
As far as 30 is concerned, we already make smokers and drinkers pay more taxes through the various huge taxes on cigarettes and alcohol directly (at least in my country). It's not so far fetched, and if it reduces obesity then it's a net good for society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Society is an abstraction for the aggregated product of individual actions. It's an abstraction layer above the level of individual choice, much as thermodynamics is an abstraction layer above mechanics. Now lets suppose we do want to work on the societal abstraction level. The problem is that the proportion of people making a certain individual choice has gone up. One solution is a pigouvian tax to disincentivize th…
1) people want line item veto from taxes? Where can individuals opt out of paying for wars they don't agree with? 2) taxing obese people would (beyond all the moral and ethical questions that arise) disproportionately affect people that already screwed by the status quo, people of lower income that cannot afford to eat better. Obesity is a symptom, in the same way that homelessness is a symptom of a failed policy tow…
People of lower income can't afford to spend less money on food?
...keeps them awake while working two jobs.
Please familiarize yourself with even the basic statistics on poverty in the west before discussing this topic further (hint: google the fraction of poor people who work).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Society is an abstraction for the aggregated product of individual actions. It's an abstraction layer above the level of individual choice, much as thermodynamics is an abstraction layer above mechanics. Now lets suppose we do want to work on the societal abstraction level. The problem is that the proportion of people making a certain individual choice has gone up. One solution is a pigouvian tax to disincentivize th…
1) people want line item veto from taxes? Where can individuals opt out of paying for wars they don't agree with? 2) taxing obese people would (beyond all the moral and ethical questions that arise) disproportionately affect people that already screwed by the status quo, people of lower income that cannot afford to eat better. Obesity is a symptom, in the same way that homelessness is a symptom of a failed policy tow…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as 30 is concerned, we already make smokers and drinkers pay more taxes through the various huge taxes on cigarettes and alcohol directly (at least in my country). It's not so far fetched, and if it reduces obesity then it's a net good for society.
Smokers die sooner and cost the system less. You should get a tax break for smoking. Forcing people's choices is not a net good for society.
This is only true if you have high taxes on tobacco products. Those high taxes introduce other distortions -- smuggling of tobacco and increased use of counterfeit product. Smuggling is sometimes done by criminal gangs. Counterfeit product is considerably more harmful than actual products.
The reason we want to stop people from smoking has little to do with the fact that they die earlier, but that they live for years with reduced quality of life and that they harm the health of their children.