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Comment Threads

• shimonhaber123 commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  "We don't have to invent everything for ourselves, we just need to learn how to use others inventions." - this doesn't stop there. Most of the tools were not invented for what they are used today. They get redesigned, reshaped and end up being used for completely different purposes. Just look at the PVC. Some two centuries ago, when it was discovered, it wasn't intended to become one of the most widely produced plastic. - Shimon Haber...
• guthrie commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Certainly I found that cabbage was alright when steamed, rather than boiled. I still refuse to try that with broccoli, sprouts or cauliflower though....
• justoneoff2 commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  @ 470 imho agreed about perceiving control systems and ability to game the system efficiently. Not so sure about cooperation as we are already sensitive to tit-tat with initial tat economics. @ 471 using others inventions for mass market profits requires/presupposes constancy in the environment which may be social rather than base environmental. We don't see much market for 8track tape adapters or old style printer cables ...so tooling up to make them might not be economically advantageous. On the other hand, a suitable "killer app" in social context could well sustain a growth industry in designer accessories for that...
• Charlie Stross commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  I wonder ... I've met a couple of other people who couldn't/wouldn't eat same, mainly because of the really crap cooking methods they had endured. No, Greg. There's a well-known category of supertasters who are sensitive to certain plant alkaloids -- notably found in Brassica oleracea and grapefruit juice, coffee, green tea, and various other foods. In my case, grapefruit juice tastes unspeakably bitter, and just the smell of cauliflower makes me nauseous: something in it reminds me of diarrhoea....
• jseliger commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  I'm late to this party, but regarding your list set of comments, I'm reminded of comments in Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy, in which he says that even if only a minority of people are actually reading about improved efficiency and techniques, efficiency as a whole may move forward through the spread of information from books to interpersonal contacts. Mokyr uses the example of farming: In the long run, it may not have mattered all that much that only a small minority of farmers took the trouble to read these books. Knowledge spread and filtered down through networks of personal...