1545 is well after European contact and close enough that it seems unlikely to be a coincidence. 1519–1521: Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire. 1532–1533: Francisco Pizarro conquers the Inca Empire.
Further low 10’s of millions of deaths on its own really doesn’t explain the 90% population drop across several hundred years here. Smallpox killed between 65% to 95% of Native American populations but it was far from alone. We’re talking devastating plague after plague for generations which canceled out the tendency for populations to rebound when competition is low. Something like 200+ million deaths on the conservative side over a few hundred years not just one or two devastating but short lived outbreaks.
It is interesting precisely because we know it wasn’t smallpox and we know it killed a large portion of the native population in places like Mexico. 1545 was just the first year the disease was documented by Europeans. There have been a dozen epidemics of this into the 19th century and then it just disappeared, long before smallpox was eradicated. It also didn’t spread indiscriminately across North America, it was correlated with specific types of environments.
The particular epidemics in question killed both natives and Europeans. Furthermore, the manifestation of the disease was unfamiliar to the Europeans.
You are assuming facts not in evidence. This is actually pretty interesting because it suggests there is a latent pathogen with a very high fatality rate in the Americas. It wouldn’t be the first.
We saw this with the hantavirus. The Old World hantavirus species were never dangerous enough to even deserve a footnote, but the New World hantavirus species are essentially like Ebola. But outbreaks are very rare and hantavirus doesn’t seem to be communicable between humans, so the damage is localized. The hemorrhagic fever that killed millions of people in the desert-y parts of the Americas a few centuries ago was something else.
Well, we have plenty of plagues to go around in Eurasia. There's plenty of diseases we barely notice, because pretty much everyone has enough immunity to mostly shrug it off.
Missing entries don’t get corrected by looking at the LLM output. That only helps when the LLM makes something up from thin air or mangles the output.
Of course it’s not the kind of question you can get an objectively correct answer for, but you could come up with the correct answer for a given methodology.
You can only correct for missing entries by doing the same work you’d need to start from scratch. But after that you now have a second list to consider.
That subtilely implies it’s a decision to view oneself as a different gender from what was assigned at birth, but it’s not entirely clear it’s a choice in every case. Edge cases in biology get wild and sex assigned at birth can be a near arbitrary decision. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)
Parents making major medical decisions has a huge precedent in a wide range of procedures with significant risks and consequences. Separating conjoined twins for example.
There is a logical flaw in suggesting that something that occurs with a small percentage of a population such as “detransitioning” implies anything about every member of a population.
Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.
I do not suggest that detransitioning can indeed extrapolate to the whole group.
I am saying that it exists, therefore at least some people regret their transition, therefore they should not be allowed to make that decision at 12, or for their parents to do so.
That’s pretty flawed argument on the face of it, very few things win a cost benefit analysis if you disregard the benefit and thus require exactly zero cost.
The real question is whether detransitioning or other negative outcomes are greater than the number of suicides prevented by allowing early transitioning, and that’s a rather more complicated hurdle to jump.
> There is a logical flaw in suggesting that something that occurs with a small percentage of a population such as “detransitioning” implies anything about every member of a population.
> Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.
This is funny because that's the exact argument that transphobic opponents say about trans people themselves and the argument as to why gender fluidity or gender outside of sex doesn't exist. "Just because an extremely small number of people believe they are a different gender than their biological sex doesn't mean that gender is different from biological sex" is almost exactly the argument that transphobes use.
I think you fundamentally fail to understand what I just said. Proper unbiased random sampling allows you to create sub populations that tend to reflect the characteristics of a larger group, biased populations don’t share that relationship.
“Because some animals hibernate, all animals hibernate” is just as flawed as saying “Because only a small percentage of hibernate, no animals hibernate.” Instead the relationship is “Because some animals exist that hibernate, there exist animals that hibernate.”
So-called "detransitions" represent way less than 1% of the trans population. In particular, the proportion of people regretting their transitions is much smaller than that of mothers regretting having their kids. They receive massively inflated media attention because their stories are picked up and turned into propaganda in service of bigoted narratives.
So-called "trans" represent way less than 1% of the world population. ... They receive massively inflated media attention because their stories are picked up and turned into propaganda in service of [self-serving] narratives.
The vast majority of trans people wish their demographics received much less media attention... The issue is with right-wing bigots who feel it is their life missions to make their lives as miserable as possible, when they just want to be left alone.
It is quite common for babies to come out of the womb with blonde hair, only for it to darken to brown later in life. The baby isn't blonde, it just looks blonde right now.
Same with gender. Doctors observe a flavor of genitals, make a reasonable assumption, and legally assign the gender which seems appropriate.
Only in theory is it so easy to separate clerical errors from other issues.
So in practice clerical errors cause all kinds of long term havoc. Once declared dead it can be a monstrous effort to prove to various systems you are in fact alive.
Sometimes people use something called analogies or similar examples to help explain a foreign concept. In this case, the poster was trying to explain that our traits are birth do not always reflect who we are as adults. Gender is one such trait. Hair color is another.
There’s this phenomenon in this thread where commenters are taking something that’s superficially similar and then making an extreme claim that, upon inspection, does not hold up at all or is completely irrelevant to the argument being made. That is what is happening here. “An adult’s hair color can be different than what it was at birth” is a true statement, but of course is not relevant at all to the claim that one’s gender is just as malleable as one’s hair color, which is what this so-called analogy attempts to do. Real analogies do not do this, and when people deploy the above formulae it’s easy to recognize as bad faith.
Except gender is as malleable as hair color. Sex isn't, but gender is. Gender is the social expectations for a human in the context of a specific culture.
If I live in Virginia until adulthood, then move to American Samoa, my gender expression is going to radically change. I'll start wearing skirts. If I then move to Qatar, my gender expression will change again. I might still think of myself as a man through those changes, but whats expected of me and how I view myself with those cultures will shift. "What does it mean to be a man?" Is very different, globally.
So even if I consider myself a man, that definition regularly changes for different contexts. Clothing, conversational style, physical affection (it's common for men to hold hands in parts of the Middle East, and considered uncomfortable in the states.)
Given gender expression and identity can change as you transit cultures, surely you can see that some people might belong to cultures whose definition of "what does it mean to be a man" might be "whatever the fuck you want". Punk and queer subcultures, for instance, have different gender expectations than say, the Vatican.
For some cultures, genitals have little to no bearing on one's social expectations. Fit into the role that feels right, who cares about what is in your DNA.
Incredible statement, and you contradict yourself later on in your response. If I go put on a skirt that does not change my gender. You are, perhaps intentionally, injecting commentary on differing cultural norms on gender expression in order to deflect from prior statements that are more definitive on the malleability of gender itself. There's that motte and bailey, again.
>For some cultures, genitals have little to no bearing on one's social expectations. Fit into the role that feels right, who cares about what is in your DNA
This is fantasy, but I'll play a long for a minute. If one's physical characteristics have little to no bearing on one's social expectations [for gender], then why is it necessary to implement significant physical alterations via medications and surgery to "fit" into a role that feels right?
One cannot ask a baby what social role they would like to have. Typically, in approximately 97-99% of cases, that aligns with the genitalia. So no, no coin flip. It's typically done by looking at genitalia. You'll be right almost always.
Of grid homes are vastly more concerned with the energy efficiency of their appliances and thus DC refrigerators generally have more insulation. Most AC customers prefer more internal volume for food over slightly increased efficiency.
AC motors are using way more power than the puddly control boards in most home appliances. So you lose a little efficiency on conversion but being 80% efficient doesn’t matter much when it’s 1-5% of the devices energy budget. You generally gain way more than that from similarly priced AC motors being more efficient.
I agree with everything you said, except it seems like a false dichotomy. We can clearly build DC refrigerators with more or less insulation. We can clearly build them large or small. If you want to prioritize volume, then surely you could do that with DC. Right?
I know that a long time ago DC-to-DC voltage converters were very large in size, which meant AC would win on space efficiency. But unless I’m mistaken, that’s no longer the case. Wouldn’t a DC refrigerator with equivalent insulation and interior volume have nearly identical exterior dimensions as an AC refrigerator?
> Wouldn’t a DC refrigerator with equivalent insulation and interior volume have nearly identical exterior dimensions as an AC refrigerator?
Sure, but it’s important to separate what could be built from what is being built based on consumer preferences and buying habits. The average refrigerator could be significantly quieter, but how often do people actually listen to what they are buying? People buying Tesla’s didn’t test drive the actual car they were buying so the company deprioritized panel gaps. And so forth, companies optimize in ways that maximize their profits not arbitrary metrics.
Waymo as a system has crossed the threshold where I trust them more than average driver, but all this hardware is relatively new, well maintained, and their software is closely tied to it.
I’m way less confident of self driving in the hands of the general public when differed maintenance often results in people and even companies driving with squealing breaks and balding tires etc.
I am also not looking forward to the system transitioning from "big experiment, burn money to make it good" to "established business unit, tweak it to death for incrementally more money / personal promotion." We're still in the honeymoon period and I very much expect to hate Waymo in 10 or 15 years when they reach a steady state.
What levers are there, really? Waymo has a monopoly and it seems like they will for a while, so they have a lot of power, but all I really see them doing is making it expensive. Anything that makes the experience worse takes away from their ability to take market share away from Uber/Lyft.
Self-driving vehicles need aircraft-type maintenance. Yet there's nothing like the FAA to enforce a minimum equipment list, maintenance intervals, or signoffs by approved mechanics.
Is there a scratch or chip in the scanner dome? Are both the primary and backup steering actuators working? Is there any damage to the vehicle fender sensors? Is dispatch allowed with some redundant components not working? If so, for how long?
Here's the FAA's Minimum Equipment List for single-engine aircraft.[1] For each item, you can see if it has to be working to take off, and, if not, how long is allowed to fix it.
There's nothing like that for self-driving land vehicles.
What's the fleet going to look like at 8 years of wear and tear?
> Self-driving vehicles need aircraft-type maintenance.
That's a hyperbolic false equivalence.
Aircraft typically carry hundreds of people and can crash to the ground. As long as a self-driving car can detect when it is degraded, it can just stop with the blinkers on. Usually with 0 - 2 people inside.
The question is how broken can a car be when dispatched. What's the safe floor? See the other article today about a Tesla getting into an accident because of undetected sensor degradation.
> Aircraft typically carry hundreds of people and can crash to the ground.
Cars are more numerous and could spontaneously either plow into pedestrians, or rear-end someone, causing chain damage and, quite often, a spillage of toxic chemicals (e.g., a cistern carrying acid/fuel/pesticide).
Plus, you have a problem of hostile actors having easier access to cars compared to planes.
Waymo's software has crossed multiple generations of sensors and vehicles over almost two decades. It does not seem to be tightly coupled to a particular device.
Not tightly coupled in obvious ways, but as I understand it they aren’t putting it on pickup trucks, convertibles, or anything toeing a boat etc. Their vehicles don’t have aftermarket suspension systems dramatically changing handling characteristics, or turned one into a stretched limo etc.
Which means the software can safely assume the vehicle will behave within a relatively narrow operating range.
I don't think the vehicle performance really matters in the typical case. They're using like 20% of what the vehicle "can" do. They're probably hedging against the long tail of variance on the road somehow. Kinda like how private people can tow whatever the f they want with their pickups but in a work setting you need to keep it fairly stupid proof.
I suppose owners will be motivated to have the thing do the driving (and so seek defeat devices and such), but at least the software can have "do nothing" as a safety mode if it manages to detect that the vehicle is not configured as expected.
And maybe the software can be designed to be coupled to a vehicle dynamics model that can be updated.
The new (as of now than a year ago) Waymo cars still had human safety drivers last I saw one (a month or two ago). I also don't see them taking customers. So they do seem to slow roll hardware rollouts.
The way I see it, self-driving cars have the potential to deliver us from the burden of ownership altogether--maintenance, insurance, liability, parking, and all the rest. This hinges on availability, quality of service, pricing, and a rather large shift in the culture around cars and driving but I have hope that we can get there with time.
It's not obvious that will exist in the near future, anyway. Waymo aren't planning on selling their cars, and the economics and liability structure of self-driving strongly bias towards just running a taxi service.
We're not even a decade beyond some poorly conceived software crashing two otherwise functional aircraft into the ground and now it's going to save us all...
Because raising taxes was never part of their deficit reduction strategy. Not that it matters, being fiscally conservative was never an honestly held belief but simply a campaign slogan.
Raising taxes was never part of their deficit reduction strategy, sure. But we're talking about the fact that they cut taxes. You can't fix a deficit by reducing income.
I don't think that's fair. He asked about statistical defensibility (implies an entire dataset) and was handed something that definitely does not qualify. What was provided certainly makes it clear that it's a reasonable thing to wonder about but it doesn't (at least I don't think) rise to the level of actually supporting the claim in question.
There's no obligation in either direction in this context (idle chitchat) unless of course you care to convince someone of something.
He objected to what was provided and you accused him of ignoring evidence. I'm voicing agreement with his objection. The original claim was one of a statistical nature. Thus any purported evidence should be expected to match.
> of a statistical nature. (True) … should be expected to match. (False)
If a group is more likely to be X than the average population then being a member of that group is statistical evidence you are X. Really when referring to statistical evidence here it’s an indication the evidence is of a very low standard not a high one.
He provided evidence that cops are more likely to be white supremacists which doesn’t actually mean much which is kind of a point on its own. That being it’s the same low standard as used by actual racists, but as you said there’s no actual obligation to go beyond such wordplay. Personally I was very amused by the whole thing but obviously it’s quite offensive to some people.
Taking the other side of this one, you could say something like “sure the odds at least one of them are white supremacists is non trivial, but suggesting all seven are is unlikely.” Again not a strong argument, but it’s at minimum an actual argument.
> He provided evidence that cops are more likely to be white supremacists
This is the crux of the matter. I don't agree with that statement. I believe the provided evidence does not support that claim in any meaningful sense.
I would at least agree that it suggests to seriously entertain the possibility though.
I'm not sure what to make of your true/false response. Suppose I claim that apples have a higher chance of poisoning you than oranges. Evidence that someone at some point made an effort to put poison into the apple supply does not directly support that claim. However if credible it is certainly cause to entertain the possibility.
More generally a claim about a possibility (discreet) can be supported by an event but a claim about averages (statistical) requires population data. Further, a claim that X is more likely than Y is a claim involving multiple populations.
> Evidence that someone at some point made an effort to put poison into the apple supply does not directly support that claim. However if credible it is certainly cause to entertain the possibility.
Go from the other direction suppose you had millions of cases. By your logic 1 cases is not evidence. Two cases is therefore 0 + 0 = 0 no evidence. Thus by induction 1 million cases is still not evidence. Instead 1 case is weak evidence because each individual cases adds up.
For more rigorous analysis see bayesian statistics.
Further the article isn’t referring to a single solidity case but instead multiple independent events.
Sorry, that's not how this works. Claims must be supported by evidence. I didn't ignore it, I reviewed it and explained how it doesn't support the claim.
I have no obligation to provide evidence to the contrary. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Court cases look at things like when someone arrives in a city as evidence, that alone doesn’t make someone more likely to have done whatever than a million other people, but it’s still evidence. So you dismissed it, but it is in fact evidence that there were white supremests just as your post is evidence you are a serial killer.
It’s not poof after all you could be a bot. But out off all humans who ever lived 95% of them can’t be a serial killer because they are dead, that post is evidence you where alive recently therefore it is evidence that you are vastly more likely than the average person who have ever lived to be a serial killer. Again as apposed to a dead person who at most could be a former serial killer.
Thus demonstrating that evidence isn’t the same thing as strong evidence just something that increases the likelihood of something being true.
And to expand on that, this isn’t even a debate. It’s a casual chat about an actual courtroom debate. Here, no one is judging our presentation. We don’t have to meet a high standard of evidence to speak our opinions, lest they be judged invalid.
However, in the actual courtroom where very similar arguments played out with real consequences, Afroman was found not liable for saying more inflammatory versions of the same things. That is, he was judged, for worse, and he won.
Which isn’t quite accurate as for example people prefer to move out of their parent’s homes while young adults but aren’t necessarily homeless if they don’t.
Basic housing is a necessity, but people also huge homes and 2nd homes etc. So housing policy should therefore be more complicated than simply subsidizing anything you can call housing. Capping the home mortgage tax deduction at ~median home prices for example is probably a better use of government funds.
They are 0.8 ton each and last ~5 years. 10,000 / 5 * 0.8 = 1,600 tons per year at 10k satellites, and their goal of 40k satellites would put it well above the amount of asteroid debris impacting each year. Further asteroids contain very different materials and don’t all impact at the very low angles you see from de-orbiting in satellites. Thus, I don’t think you can presume this is meaningless without actually modeling it.
Space dust on the other hand behaves very differently on reentry because of the high surface area to volume ratio.
They last 5 years if they're dead in orbit. These satellites have electric thrusters and boost themselves regularly to maintain orbit, so your estimate is wildly off.
As for presuming them to be safe, there's fuck all evidence to the contrary. Whining with baseless speculations about the effect of satellites burning up is motivated by the base reflex to shit on any technological progress as an environmental disaster in the making, but nobody can come up with a story about how dolphins might choke on satellites so instead we get this "muh aluminum" narrative.
A 5 years useful lifespan sets the replacement rate and thus the average number burning up each year. In steady state the delta between end of life and reentry is irrelevant, instead the average number of satellites launched each year = average number that burn up each year.
As to harm. Aluminum is mildly toxic, you don’t eat your bike but vaporized aluminum from a satellite is way more likely to cause harm than if the things were made of steel. The plastic bits are likely fine though.
Saying let’s study something ahead of time rather than contaminating all the world’s farmland with and then seeing what happens seems like a perfectly reasonable standard. Technology has generally been wonderful, but that doesn’t mean everything is equivalent. We want to phase out leaded aviation fuel in the US even though it’s ‘only’ 2,000 tons of lead per year, that’s still enough to be problematic. Perhaps ramping up to ~5k tons/y of vaporized aluminum worldwide is a complete non issue, but if it’s not insisting on some other material isn’t the same as a ban.
Further low 10’s of millions of deaths on its own really doesn’t explain the 90% population drop across several hundred years here. Smallpox killed between 65% to 95% of Native American populations but it was far from alone. We’re talking devastating plague after plague for generations which canceled out the tendency for populations to rebound when competition is low. Something like 200+ million deaths on the conservative side over a few hundred years not just one or two devastating but short lived outbreaks.
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