dynomight

Pop quiz: Infer the axis comparison

Good points. Both the absolute numbers seem low for the napoleonic wars and it would make more sense to look at rates rather than absolute numbers.

I just meant that if nukes reduced combat deaths, the graph suggests that's by preventing WWIII. (It's not like there was a long history of WWI/WWII-level catastrophic wars pre-nukes.) But it's not entirely to me if WWIII might have been avoided even without nukes being invented.

I agree they probably did reduce combat deaths so far in our branch of the multiverse, although it's surprisingly hard to be confident. You sort of have to assume that another WWI/WWII in Europe would have happened without them which isn't totally clear.

This is not as crazy as it sounds! In the US Civil War, 2/3 of soldiers died from disease rather than in battle. I could easily see myself predicting that better weapons would reduce deaths. (It's even conceivable that they did?)

The placebo would just be a needle inserted with no, or minimal, water delivered. I think you wouldn't be able to tell the difference?

Sadly, I can't say that this is *that* important? If anything, I think even with a positive result people probably overrate water now, so...

Maybe there's a pattern here? dynomight.net/pattern/

Somehow we've written ourselves into a corner where the only places we feel like we can be our full selves are places where everything is controlled by some third party.

i'm not being fed into a wood chipper you're being fed into a wood chipper

roon @tszzl X.com there is no contractual redline obligation or safety guardrail on earth that will protect you from a counterparty that has its own secret courts, zero day retention, full secrecy on the provenance of its data etc. every deal you make here is a trust relationship

this tweet is such a wild ride

how can you write something like this and not conclude that you should never ever ever ever work with the DoW?

seriously, if this is your position, how is it remotely feasible?

Getting a little nervous that this might, in fact, not happen.

Sure, probably. I also think NASA was likely capable of doing it themselves if there really was political will. I just don't think that political will ever actually existed.

Anyone remember when NASA announced in 2018 that they would be sending humans back to the moon by 2024?

www.nasa.gov/specials/apo...

I guess... everyone found this so implausible that it wasn't even worth making fun of them?

There's a super complex mechanistic debate. But the experimental impact of "normal person drinks a extra liter of water" seems to still be almost totally unknown.

All: Please consider politely asking niplav to do this.

i'd do this myself if not for an aversion to needles and inconvenience

Not even joking I think you can be the first person in history to actually check if water is a nootropic

@niplav.site can you please do a self-experiment where you do double-blinded randomized saline infusions (or placebo) and check for cognitive effects?

But even if they're skimming, you should put your section titles where it matters, not _everywhere_

An under-theorized bit of convergent evolution: >50% of modern people write with way too much "formatting" with constant disorienting bold text and recursive bullet points. I think this reflects a lack of confidence in the power of paragraphs. Experts don't do this. But LLMs have the same addiction?

(quibbling about position of quiche in the simplex)

Humans are unusual in that instead of laying around until hungry and then finding something to eat and then resuming lying around, they are obsessed with "doing stuff".

Personally, I think the reason that (secretly) using AI for writing is bad is that it disrespects readers.

1. They want to know.
2. So you should tell them.

Openly using AI for writing is fine. But currently almost no one does that, because no one would read it. (Which is the point...)

do not shape thyself to reddit

I hated you a lot while reading, 90% gone after seeing spoil.

Apparently this is true

This is a pretty strong counteragument:

bsky.app/profile/alem...

Part of me wants to embrace a sort of Marxist worse-is-better attitude. Why not let grade inflation spiral forever until we can eventually get rid of grades?

(Only part.)

I think a steelman might be analogous to, "not all police bend the rules, but almost no police report their colleagues when they bend the rules".

I tried to explain what's happening in that recent paper about the heritability of human lifespan: dynomight.net/lifespan/