df fd

Karma: 190

df fd 10 Nov 2024 0:03 UTC
2 points
0
on: Chaos Theory in Ecology
just want to express my opinion what I do not like this format, without any other implication.
specifically:
- I found it hard to read [as in painful [physically] to read]
- I found it hard to engage/understand the material [after I’ve read a bit I lose track of what the point/topic]

df fd 26 Oct 2024 13:44 UTC
2 points
0
on: Is the Power Grid Sustainable?
I was under the impression that the biggest cost of grid electricity is stability, that is most of the time the price charged on consumer is much [i.e. about 2x] higher than the average cost on the grid market, but occasionally the grid market price would go up astronomically [ say 1000x] for brief periods of time [say hours], and the household consumer would be insulated from that. I thought that something similar happened in Texas when a cold snap happened?
if you are confident that your battery can hold you over those crunch period I assume you can just import grid energy at grid market price cheaper than the solar can provide [currently you can get paid 0.03/kwh for using electricty at peak solar here is Sydney]. I mean your solar, no matter how cheap, can not beat being given money. or so was the result last I did the math in Australia.
Actually I don’t have the number now but the calculation I did suggested that running solar but using the grid as a battery is more cost effective than running your own battery, but my result may not generalise.
I am suprise you can get gas so cheap where you are, in Sydney the cost of electricity is similar to you 0.33/kwh but gas is 0.17/kwh. Have you check if you are receiving some subsidies for it?

df fd 21 Sep 2024 23:11 UTC
1 point
0
on: How Often Does Taking Away Options Help?
In the context of minimum wage.

I assume Abdullah has many options mean he has many job offers/alternatives to jobs.

What does it mean for Benjamin to have many options?

df fd 29 Aug 2024 3:14 UTC
1 point
0
on: Why do firms choose to be inefficient?
But wasn’t bell lab the most innovative when they had monopoly? I recalled people telling me that monopoly has more money to invest in R&D.

df fd 9 Jul 2024 13:07 UTC
1 point
0
on: What are things you’re allowed to do as a startup?
contra evidence, I ’ve been trying to make a vein finder device and multiple Chinese manufacturer on alibaba have been cold to luke warm to talk to me.
been trying to find out how to export squid from australia and both the fisheries and the trandport companies have been ignoring my emails
granted I probably sound totally unprofessional in some way as I don’t have much idea how the process look like.

df fd 7 Apr 2024 13:47 UTC
7 points
0
on: on the dollar-yen exchange rate
Nikkei 225 and Shanghai Composite Index have been flat for decades
to put concrete number on this, the Nikkei 225 is up 41% in the last year and 78% in the last 5 years denoted in yen [which lost 30% of value to USD in the last 5 years] for better tracking, maybe the iShares MSCI Japan ETF [EWJ] denoted in USD would be a better measuring instrument. EWJ is up 53% in the last 10 years [since 2014]
compare to QQQ tracking NASDAQ up 394% and IYY tracking Dow Jones up 170% in the same time period [since 2014].
Calculation not including dividend

df fd 3 Apr 2024 1:55 UTC
2 points
0
on: The Story of “I Have Been A Good Bing”
Any chance we can have the instrument only version so we can do karaoke or somesuch?

df fd 30 Mar 2024 5:32 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: abstractapplic’s comment on: Back to Basics: Truth is Unitary
I am a bit lost. What is that a reference to?

df fd 4 Feb 2024 8:25 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Most experts believe COVID-19 was probably not a lab leak
But we don’t care about random flu virus. We only track pandemic.

Furthermore random pandemic virus could happen in rural areas but more likely to turn into pandemic when they happen in crowded city. The more crowded the higher the pandemic chances.

How many lab similar to Wuhan in crowded cities vs how many crowded city without lab should be taken into account

df fd 3 Feb 2024 12:39 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Most experts believe COVID-19 was probably not a lab leak
How many virus strains is the lab studying? If the lab is studying 50-90% of flu virus strain it would not be strange for random flu virus that appeared in some area close to it to be studied there.

df fd 19 Jan 2024 23:54 UTC
0 points
−7
on: The impossible problem of due process
I assume no one will read this comment

assuming the problem is really intractable and the current panel process is the best available solution, then the standard solution is to put up a [scapegoat]
i.e. civil servant do not want to/ not able to do something for someone, instead of saying “this is my judgement”, point to an other entity [e.g. code of conduct, boss, etc], and deflect the blame. the point is not to deflect the blame though, but to keep on functioning despite having to make unpopular decisions.
I assume that chatGPT would make an excellent [scapegoat]
feed all the gathered evidences to ChatGPT, ask it for judgement [with the appropriate precondition: ” you are a wise and benevolence judge, etc”], if it agree with the panel decision, then when the inevitable blow back happen you can point to chatGPT and said it agreed with you and it is obviously unbiased
if it disagreed with the panel decision then it would be a sanity check, the panel should find more evidence or double check their reasoning, since ChatGPT can serve as stand in for the average Joe who read all the evidence, if it is not convinced you do not have a convincing case.

df fd 5 Jan 2024 22:59 UTC
7 points
4
on: Technology path dependence and evaluating expertise
I am feeling like the dialogue has diverted from its original question, so if I may as a question.
What I am hearing is bhauth formed his opinion on extrapolating from current project, reading papers and talk to expert in the field. And while I certainly can not demand him to declare his source and present his whole chain of thought from start to finish, it certainly make it hard to verify those claims even if there is a will to verify them.
E.g. bhauth stated heat exchanger is expensive, yet I have no grounding for what that mean, is $1000/unit expensive? is $1 000 000 000/unit expensive? a quick google search find people talking about the cost of heat exchanger but not what it mean.
bhauth stated the cost of lab grown meat is too high as contamination is a huge problem and the required inputs are much too expensive, but I’ve talk to a guys who said he worked for a commercial lab gown meat and he was not particularly concerned about those things compare to others concerns.
I mean the guy could be uninformed or incentivised to misinform me. But again I have no way to verify who is more trust worthy.
Maybe it would be easier for people like me if bhauth put up like a 100 prediction market that would resolve in the next 1-3 years and then when the market resolved we would be able to form our belief regarding his expertise.
[This part is only relevant to me, as I came from a culture with heavy social punishment on people that is arrogance, and bhauth writing sometime comes off as such [e.g. all those start up are chasing dead end path], I may have sub consciously applying negative modifier on his writing.]

df fd 17 Dec 2023 13:36 UTC
3 points
0
on: Linkpost: Francesca v Harvard
I am confused.
I have not read much of this rebuttal and I am not academically inclined but just reading the first part of this
https://www.francesca-v-harvard.org/data-colada-post-1
Correct me if I am wrong but Francesca is complaining that of all the duplicate and out of order ID, Data Colada is not listing all of them?
Francesca is also saying that Data Colada only picking on one variable that is suspicious and not talking about the other [?non suspicious] variable? Correct if I am wrong but isn’t this is just banana? obviously Data Colada would not talk about normal data.
Can someone with more familiarity with these things and have time to spare can read it and tell me if Francesca rebuttal make sense?

df fd 18 Nov 2023 2:25 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: Social Dark Matter
research found the autism distribution to mathematically have 2-5 peaks if I am parsing the study correctly with 1 corresponding to normal population and the other peaks gathered to the right

the study I found
https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-019-0275-3
I have not read it in depth, just skimming. [no energy to actually give it the attention]
but the relevant image seems to be this:

so it seems to me that it is bi-modal, but not in the sense of male-female bi-modal. and it can mostly be simplified as a slightly skewed bell curve.

df fd 17 Nov 2023 4:26 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Social Dark Matter
I am not sure if it’s the motivated reasoning speaking but I have a feeling that
if a distribution has 2 or more peaks it is customary to delineate in the valleys and have different words to indicate data points close to each peak [i.e. cleave reality at the joints] [e.g. autism]
If a distribution only has 1 peak, then you would have words for [right of peak] and [left of peak] and maybe [normal (stuff around the peak)] [e.g. height]
If I understand correctly Duncan is saying that the current word definition cleaving using the above rules in certain cases adheres to a false distribution leading to false beliefs.

df fd 6 Aug 2023 14:58 UTC
4 points
0
on: On being in a bad place and too stubborn to leave.
massive shame of having, almost deliberately, chosen to obstinately screw things up for four years.
I am confused, why shame? I see nothing here to be ashamed of.
can we treat this as sunk cost fallacy? The past doesn’t matter except for when it shapes the current situation. Now identify the best way forward for your current goal and take it.
If that does not make you feel better, then does hearing that other people wasted even more time make you feel any better? A lot of people wasted a lot of their life.
I wasted 10 years of my life for a mildly different reason. I am curious as to how that makes you feel to hear.
if that does not make you feel better. Can we say that the you in the past must have had his/her reason illegible as it may be? I mean past you decided to stick it out so surely that revealed his/her preference for continuing? Can we say that unless you have stayed you would not have known it was a mistake, and you would be complaining about that branch of the multiverse too?
if that does not make you feel better. Does the fact that your post got upvote and replied to, implying that we listened and validated your feeling make you feel better?

df fd 25 Jul 2023 2:31 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rationality !== Winning
Yes. This is what I was looking for. It makes way more sense now. I broadly agree with everything said here. Thank you for clarifying.

By the way, I think you should consider rewriting the side note re autistic nerd. I am still a bit confused reading that.

df fd 24 Jul 2023 12:13 UTC
5 points
8
on: Rationality !== Winning
Personally, I am strongly against this,
I got into Rationality for a purpose if it is not the best way to get me to that purpose [i.e. not winning] then Rationality should be casted down and the alternative embraced.
On the other hand, I suspect we mostly agree with our disagreement is on the definition of the word “winning”
I could have failed reading comprehension but I did not see “winning” defined anywhere in the post
What links here?
- Rationality !== Winning by Raemon (24 Jul 2023 2:53 UTC; 163 points)

df fd 28 Jun 2023 6:46 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: bhauth’s comment on: nuclear costs are inflation
I see, I failed at comprehension then, thank you for your replies

df fd 28 Jun 2023 5:23 UTC
6 points
4
in reply to: bhauth’s comment on: nuclear costs are inflation
It seems that I have failed to communicate clearly, and for that, I apologise. I am agnostic on most of your post.
Let’s go back to the original quote
Hinkley Point C is an ongoing nuclear power project in the UK, which has seen massive cost overruns and delays. But if you take prices for electricity generation in 1960, and increase them as much as concrete has, you’re not far off from the current estimated cost per kwh of Hinkley Point C, or some other recent projects considered too expensive.
I understand this to mean that [plant price increase roughly in line with inflation]
this does not distinguish between [lack of innovation while everything is inflated] versus [lizard men sabotaging construction].
for [lack of innovation while everything is inflated] to hold you have to argue that [there is a lack of innovation] separately. Or is your argument in reverse? [plant price increase roughly in line with inflation] → [there must be a lack of innovation].
because some other reasons could be responsible, e.g [lizard men sabotaging construction]
Whether the lizard men exist or not I am not qualified to say. Even less to say what they are if they do exist.
You seem to believe there are no lizard men, just pure inflation. Other people seem to believe otherwise.
But [plant price increase roughly in line with inflation] does not seem to support either.
as for the rest,
yes ALARA is overblown, we shared this belief
Were regulations on nuclear, relative to appropriate levels of regulation, more expensive than regulations and legal barriers for other energy sources?
I am not sure
rules about low-level waste were driven by direct public concern about that, which forced the NRC to abandon proposed rule changes. I actually think the public concern about low-level waste was sort of reasonable, because some companies could sometimes put highly radioactive waste in supposedly low-level waste. What do you do when you don’t understand technical details but a group of experts has proven itself to sometimes be unreliable and biased?
agree to disagree here, I believe privately that the level of concern is too high compared to actual risk. But I am uneducated in such matters and the error bar is big.