Ryan Cavanaugh

Historical national accounts estimates of the share of the world's population living on less than $5 per day, by region, 1950 to 2017 Average incomes measured in national accounts are often much higher than those observed in survey data. As such the poverty rates shown are lower than corresponding estimates based on survey data – this includes the official estimates produced by the World Bank used to monitor progress against SDG1. See Roser and Hasell (2021) for further discussion. Graph goes down by a lot

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2040953/episodes/18220972-sapiens

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2040953/episodes/18220972-sapiens

If Books Could Kill covers this claim in the Sapiens episode and didn't find it convincing at all (these are not fully contiguous, just showing lead-in / conclusion)

Same!

Every fiber you are wearing right now was spun by a machine invented after the fax machine

"We perfected textiles 4,000 years ago"

A darning loom is a simple device to help you mend holes in clothes. It's just a series of bent wire and a small wooden disc; you use it with a needle and thread.

I want you guess when this was invented, go look up the actual answer, and post the difference

Ah-ha! We found the true definition of "ultra-processed" food!

==== unusedTypeParameterInFunction2.ts (1 errors) ==== function f1<X, Y>() { ~ -!!! error TS6133: 'Y' is declared but its value is never read. +!!! error TS6196: 'Y' is declared but never used. var a!: X; a; }

Analyzing behavioral differences between TypeScript 6 and 7; it's starting to feel like Zeno's Paradox in the home stretch here.

Little solitaire game you played on Steam 5 years ago, at the time: By popular demand, we added Klondike!

Its latest updates today: Play the new MECHAZAR x ED SHEERAN CROSSOVER mode to unlock CORRUPTED SPADEBOMBS in our megascale Co-op PvP tie-in with FRUIT ROLL-UPS and Mr Beast, Tuesday only!

Trying really hard to be hip and cool like the kids these days (using 'git switch' instead of 'git checkout')

My mom is the resident Excel expert at her job and, I cannot stress this enough, she doesn't know how to use pivot tables

I'm sure synonyms will please everyone, nth iteration

Sending TCP/IP packets to explain how I'd never use a technology that came from an organization I disapprove of

I still, from time to time, get packages with different variant spellings of my last name. Someone at the Peoria Custom Chimney Cap Company is typing "Kavanaugh" into a shipping label with their actual fingers.

You can go into any small business office in the country and find people doing tasks that could be trivially automated, saving time and eliminating data entry errors. There is nowhere near the optimal amount of "small software" in use right now.

This feels like an unintentional "What do you mean not everyone is fascinated by train schedules?" post. What's 1066?

Me: I don't think the intrinsic worth of a human depends on whether or not the brain can be described within the laws of physics. A Nobel Prize modeling the human mind wouldn't change my view on how I value a fellow living person.

Triple-cuers: Oh so you're a real machine pervert eh?

"don't tread on me" Gadsen flag color scheme with a baksfiet engulfed in flames

All you suckers driving expensive gas cars but I have three e-bikes, only two of which the CPSC says might burst into flames at any point

"This seems OK for third grade... oh."

ER doctor: How'd you break your ankle?

Me: Our story begins in 1996 when Neil Simmons and his wife Linda decided that the illegally steep stairs to the basement needed the option to have mood lighting,

One of many questionable decisions by the prior house owners: installing a dimmer switch on the two-way switch circuit for the lights over the stairs

This means it's possible for your kids to lower the dimmer to 0, making the non-dimming switch do nothing and you have to climb the stairs the dark

This seems to immediately rule out the simulation hypothesis, which I don't think can be done so trivially

30 years later, various governments have adopted "ten seconds inside the Alien Determinism Box" as a so-called "humane death penalty", with mixed deterrence results

A radio telescope picks up a faint signal from Epsilon Eridani. "We forgot to turn The Box on before we left, sorry for any confusion"

When someone walks into the box and describes what the thing is that it is like to be them, what's happening? How are they doing that?

Thought experiment: aliens bring us a big box. Inside the box, all laws of physics are calculable, for whatever definition you feel is salient.

We observe that walking in and out of the box seems to have no effect on anyone.

Does the box "kill you", like the transporter in Star Trek? Permanently?

Plumbing new depths here as multiple people seem to think there's a 1-hour SLA to respond to random DMs asking for stuff I posted to a Buy Nothing group

It's very funny to talk about a brain in a vat with wires hooked up to it providing sensory input as a counterfactual. What is a skull? What is an optic nerve? What do you think you are?

You, an idiot: consciousness comes from quantum entanglement, because physics can't deterministically predict waveform collapse

Me, mind understander: it comes from the radioactive decay of individual carbon-14 atoms in your brain, which has the same property

Opt-in bluesky labeller for dualist / materialist / solipsist / Chalmers / etc so you know whether to bother

If we did find out that human brains operated entirely by calculable mechanics, what would change about your viewpoint? Would you conclude that you are not conscious?