Author Archives: Dustin - Page 21

She is temporarily jolted by the episode, her heart racing

Posted by on March 15, 2016 2 comments
That was odd, she thinks, though it doesn’t stop her from having another bite. She has absolute faith that it won’t happen again. But it does, over and over.

Seemingly overnight, at the age of 39, Anderson has lost her ability to swallow.

Dysphagia: it’s like being waterboarded 24 hours a day
One morning, completely unexpectedly, Samantha Anderson woke to find that she could no longer swallow. Three-and-a-half years and many medical appointments later, she’s finally regaining her ability to eat. Bryn Nelson finds out more.


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Someone again mistakenly conflates religious faith with probabilistic confidence…

Posted by on March 15, 2016 4 comments
Someone again mistakenly conflates religious faith with probabilistic confidence in future outcomes.

At Its Heart, Science Is Faith-Based Too
Writing in the Houses of Worship column about the recent LIGO observatory discovery that Einstein predicted, Matt Emerson says science is faith-based too. After all, scientists held firm to their belief that they’d find gravitational waves from deep space.

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On why humans explaining the reasons for the moves AlphaGo makes are likely nons…

Posted by on March 13, 2016 No comments
On why humans explaining the reasons for the moves AlphaGo makes are likely nonsensical.

Imagine someone in the 11th century trying to figure out how people in the 21st century might cool their houses. Suppose that they had enough computing power to search lots and lots of possible proposals, but had to use only their own 11th-century knowledge of how the universe worked to evaluate those proposals. Suppose they had so much computing power that at some point they randomly considered a proposal to construct an air conditioner. If instead they considered routing water through a home and evaporating the water, that might strike them as something that could possibly make the house cooler, if they saw the analogy to sweat. But if they randomly consider the mechanical diagram of an air conditioner as a possible solution, they'll toss it off as a randomly generated arcane diagram. They can't understand why this would be an effective strategy for cooling their house, because they don't know enough about thermodynamics and the pressure-heat relation.


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(Long.) As I post this, AlphaGo seems… – Eliezer Yudkowsky | Facebook
(Long.) As I post this, AlphaGo seems almost sure to win the third game and the match.

At this point it seems likely that Sedol is actually far…

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On why people continue to elect governments they don't like

Posted by on March 13, 2016 No comments
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
_"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" _

Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

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LOL 

Posted by on March 5, 2016 1 comment

Reshared post from +Katie H.

LOL 


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If you're opposed to abortion, I'ts not very clear that supporting actions…

Posted by on March 5, 2016 7 comments
If you're opposed to abortion, I'ts not very clear that supporting actions like the Texas law that may restrict the number of facilities offering reproductive services is a good idea.

It's entirely possible that the absolute number of abortions (which is what you should care about if you think abortions are morally wrong) will stay the same or go up because of the fact that people will have less access to birth control.

At the same time, it's entirely plausible that the number of at-risk people (poor, teenagers) having babies will go up.


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The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where roadside bombs are a constant threat, have…

Posted by on March 4, 2016 2 comments
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where roadside bombs are a constant threat, have left more than 1,300 American soldiers mangled in this way. But a team of doctors and scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine is now ready to help—by performing the first penis transplant in the U.S.

That is a cringe-worthy picture.

How Does A Penis Transplant Work?
Here’s what the first American recipient will undergo

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Terribly heartbreaking to be volunteering at my daughter's book fair and to see…

Posted by on March 2, 2016 4 comments
Terribly heartbreaking to be volunteering at my daughter's book fair and to see how many kids come in with like 50 cents or less hoping to buy a book.

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The reason you have a kneecap

Posted by on March 1, 2016 2 comments

(or at least thats what the internet told me)


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How come nuclear power is so expensive in the USA compared to some other countri…

Posted by on March 1, 2016 No comments
How come nuclear power is so expensive in the USA compared to some other countries?

As Tyler Cowen points out this is also a good way to understand the cost of health care in the US.

Why America abandoned nuclear power (and what we can learn from South Korea)
Nuclear power could help us solve climate change — if weren’t so absurdly expensive.


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