mindstalk

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• Commented on Gods and genre
  Fables is DC, though in the Vertigo imprint like Sandman, Lucifer, Y, and others....
• Commented on Schroedinger's Kingdom: the Scottish Political Singularity Explained
  Wrong. "So-called devo max - the devolving of all powers [and tax revenue] to Holyrood other than defence and foreign affairs" That's far more extreme separation than the US, where the federal government collects the bulk of taxes, dominates banking...
• Commented on Schroedinger's Kingdom: the Scottish Political Singularity Explained
  Remember your Krugman. Spain didn't get into trouble because of public debt/GDP, it got nuked by capital inflows driving up prices, then capital outflows tanking the economy, and no way to revalue the currency to adjust. Can Scotland keep private...
• Commented on Schroedinger's Kingdom: the Scottish Political Singularity Explained
  Scotland has (imperfect) proportional representation, though. So it's fairly possible for two center-left parties to co-exist. You'd ideally want some differentiation, but duplication isn't the killer that it is in Westminster elections....
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  "You didn't read to the bit where the land in london is valued at an amount of money that exceeds several multiples of the GLOBAL GDP." There is no part that says that. He said London might lose 50 trillion...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  "If we could deflate the housing market down to actual cost of houses, rather than speculative land prices geared against future rent-seeking," Uh, Charlie? Supply and demand? I don't know the exact role of "speculation", everyone's favorite demonization target, but...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  Yeah, the US uses 3 TW of energy, and optimistically you could turn that into 1 TW of clean electricity given alternative infrastructure. Roughly 1/3 electricity generation via heat engines (for 300 GWe), 1/3 heat outright, 1/3 transporation via mostly...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  "50 billion pounds sterling, no strings attached, would be plenty to guarantee the working-age population a good income" Are you talking Scotland or the UK? Because the UK has 63 million people, so you're talking less than 1000 pounds per...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  (Why do I have to sign in again like every hour?) By "energy in my country" Charlie actually means electricity in Scotland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Scotland Rather to my surprise, a majority of that seems to be wind, not hydro. http://www.scottishrenewables.com/scottish-renewable-energy-statistics-glance/ For the...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  "I wouldn't bet on an average lifespan above 40 for them." That's pretty extreme, given that life expectancy by country today bottoms out at around 45-47 in poor and war-torn countries like Sierra Leone or the CAR. So you're expecting...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  That's excessively simplistic. World TFR was 2.5 in 2005-2010 and is projected at 2.4 for 2010-2015. "most of humanity" having "rather high" fertility rate won't get you that. Also, world GDP/capita is $10,000; while we've got close to a billion...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  "Another way of thinking about it is that 2.5% "unemployment" is equivalent to full employment with an average tenure of about 2 years if workers take a week off when they change jobs." Eh? If the worker has 4 weeks...
• Commented on A nation of slaves
  I'd go for Swiss capitalism. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing, but they're achieving 3% unemployment (which they consider high, it's been as low as 1%), and 3% youth unemployment (which is basically incredible for Europe or the US)....
• Commented on Time tourism: some reaction shots
  "Heroines are rare in all of fiction" is rather less true given YA, romance, or Japanese fiction. (Japanese culture may be sexist in ways we're not so much but they know girls and women are markets.) (The market of guys...
• Commented on Time tourism
  Heh. Nestor beat me to the core point while I typed....
• Commented on Time tourism
  I have to sign in once a day? My escort suggestion was me thinking more about an uptime partner, e.g. "senior partner in a Time Patrol team", not a downtime recruit, though I grant 'servant' confused the issue. But pretty...
• Commented on Time tourism
  An easy trick for a female tourist is to have a male servant or partner escort. She can still make the decisions, especially as senior partner in a Time Patrol team, but society will see her as covered. Empires of...
• Commented on The Fumes of Mordor & Other World Building Models
  My impression from checking weather reports is that Hawaii doesn't have a cool season, it's mid-80s all year. My impression from being there in spring break is that it's the most comfortable 80s ever, with a constant sea breeze, plus...
• Commented on The Fumes of Mordor & Other World Building Models
  "The Metro is actually one of the few relatively decent mass transit systems in the US; only New York and Boston rival it" Chicago? I haven't experienced DC much, or NYC in a while, but my ranking would be NYC...
• Commented on Wow
  Sounds a bit like a Larry Niven essay, "The Roentgen Standard". Which is up on his website....
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  If creation isn't an intentional act then there's really no point to future SI torturing simulations of people who failed to stumble on the right initiation sequence. You need intentionality for the basilisk to have a chance of making sense....
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  You didn't say 'some', you said "The transhumanists", in whicn number I include myself: "The transhumanists’ want to be STALIN when they grow up, or Kim Il-Song, punishing people for their ancestors’ behaviour." Nor have I seen any evidence that...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  " - SI will save hundreds of thousands of lives by making human life better" You know, the assumption isn't just that SI can and will Solve Our Problems, but that it is the only or overwhemingly most likely way...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  I agree in not anticipating Shadowrun prosthetics, chopping off perfectly good body parts, any time soon. OTOH, I note that the standard of "normally healthy body part" is different for a 20 year old vs. an 80 or 90 year...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  I'd call your list Singularitarianism, not transhumanism. Former is a subset of the latter. People who believe in an imminent Rapture are Christians but not all Christians believe in an imminent Rapture. (Analogy isn't perfect: a transhumanist doesn't have to...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  "pretty much all people would agree with and support the improvement of the human condition through technology " The Catholic church opposes IVF and birth control. I believe people did oppose anesthetics for reason of interfering with divine order, though...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  "I coul blather about technology making people immortal or dead all day long without being advised of religious fervour." That's provably false. People were sneering about the Singularity as "Techno-Rapture" or "Rapture for Nerds" long before retrocausal AIgod punishment got...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  But if working to create AI is the first step in the process, the putative future AIgod could punish 'us' for not putting more effort into the process. I think much stronger defenses are the plurality of 'basilisks' like your...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Our not being the immediate antecedent seems unimportant; what would matter is our having the foresight to initiate the process. Our antecedents lacked the foresight, so they're not subject. Not that I buy into the Basilisk but Charlie's refutation seems...
• Commented on 2512
  Catholicism does not go back to 4 BC. The alleged birth of Jesus does. The roots of Christianity start around 30 AD and developed over the next couple of centuries. The documents go back early -- just as the Vedas...