Kellyanne Conway on surveillance: ‘I’m not in the job of having evidence’

_zenith · 2017-03-17T01:42:54+00:00

Oh, I agree! What I proposed is merely a base in attempting to make people WANT to know more, as an attribute of their own desires - not an attempt at a kind of prescriptive curriculum; indeed, quite the opposite in intent. Sorry for not making this point clearer!

People are currently rather apathetic, not learning anything without direct interventions - or worse, simply absorbing information from a highly restricted and little-varied sourcebase, leading to a kind a cognitive myopia.

We need more autodidacts. I do not believe that most people lack this ability at some fundamental level, no, they simply either do not naturally have a propensity for it, or were trained out of it (as traditional schooling, sadly, seems to do most effectively) and so, if encouraged, might then actually develop this skill. It is indispensable.

It is okay in my opinion if, at the point that I wish our cultures to reach in general knowledge and critical thought, that they cannot assess the claims of Nobel laureates (at least not at first, for any one particular claim) - but for the quantity of other claims that fall below these levels of complexity is many times greater - and, arguably, at least in immediate applicability, less vital - and as such carries a greater importance.

_zenith · 2017-03-13T21:53:25+00:00

Nah, I meant more basic than that. Eg.

The deep relationship between electromagnetism and light, and how these propagate each other (or are essentially the same thing).
The sorts of cognitive biases people subject others and themselves to, and how to tell if you're being affected by them.
The relationship between DNA, mRNA, proteins, and how these are created from each other. How all life is related though the timelines of modifications of these elements throughout time simply because they worked better and made more of themselves through being better.
Lessons in politics from history, especially the fact that civilisations end. Often by their own hands through mismanagement and superstitionz driven by greed and hubris.
Comparative religion study, and the history of how these interacted and modified each other over time, and how observance of each of their seemingly otherwise immutable tenets changed over time
That computers are not magic, but are instead the exact opposite of magic in a deep way. How computing is all about the structuring and processing of formal grammars, and how their relates to the abstract grammars of mathematics.
How simple rules can combine to produce dizzying levels of complexity undreamt of through examination of possible interactions of those rules, and how recursive application of those superstructures can continue the same trend into a veritable explosion of novelty and unintentional yet seemingly designed function and mechanism.
Most importantly, the instilling of a reverence for knowledge, particularly when put into practice, and the revision of that knowledge as new evidence arrives suggesting revisions or reformations of that knowledge, providing it fits with past data and new experiments designed to test this very thing

... Just for a start. I have learnt all of these things and more by simply being curious and wanting to know how the world works so that I might make it better for myself and everyone else.

I go deeper on many of these things examples of course, but the 10,000 foot view (or should that be the 1,000 foot view?) is, I think, a decent start.

_zenith · 2017-03-13T21:20:47+00:00

Learn. One need not get to a Bachelor's level in everything, just a base level of knowledge in how things work, based on peer-reviewed evidence, to check whether a claim matches up with the basic principles learnt.

Another question that's vital to ask, always, when assessing a claim: Who benefits, why, and how? Is the "why" and the "how" itself plausible, and are the "why" ans "who" consistent with the behaviour of that person in the past, and with current and future anticipated events?

The level of learning rises with the vitality of properly apprehending the claim and it's validity. Vitality can be defined as "what is the scope of outcomes if I am wrong about this?"

Yeah. This is hard work. But it's what it takes to be a properly informed member of society.

_zenith · 2017-03-13T20:50:42+00:00

Condensate, not constant

Basically when a bunch of atoms stop interacting with each other so much that they merge into one single quantum macro-object. They display the same wave-particle duality and other behaviours described by quantum mechanics but they are an object that is macro-sized, since they're comprised of many subcomponents (the other, grouped atoms)

_zenith · 2017-03-13T20:19:03+00:00

I'm not afraid of dying. I'm just annoyed! I live for novelty. Death is the end of all novelty. I won't ever get to find out how the world changes after I live. I really want to fly in space before I die, at the very least.

Since the concept of an afterlife is one so obviously concocted by human beings that are scared of dying, I'm as close to certain as I can be without it being metaphysical certainty that it does not exist and will not exist.

Just because I want something to be true doesn't make it so. I have lived my whole life to this principle. The universe sets the rules; I do the best, and make the best of what I can within them.

_zenith · 2017-03-13T02:41:09+00:00

That's not what they said. They implicitly said that more potency tends to be bad - which is true, because it induces tachyphylaxis, which is when the receptor gets stuck in the "on" position essentially, and gets destroyed (and eventually, hopefully, recycled). This causes long term tolerance, sometimes even permanently to some extent.

And sorry, medical professionals can sometimes - not always - have a pretty myopic view, particularly when they're not pharmacologically trained. They can end up with what amounts to "superstitious" viewpoints. Additionally, many will stop reading the literature when they leave school, and their views can get quite out of date.

_zenith · 2017-03-13T02:40:33+00:00

Exactly. You want ones with purely mu agonism. Having kappa agonism adds psychosis side effects, sigma adds seizure risk, delta adds respiratory depression.

The best would be high partial mu agonism, kappa weak reverse agonist, sigma antagonist, delta antagonist or weak partial agonist, partial ORL1 agonist, and TRPV-1 antagonist. This would be a strongly euphoric but non-tolerance inducing, non-respiratory depression inducing drug, with a high but present ceiling effect.

_zenith · 2017-03-13T02:38:26+00:00

Yeah, okay, I'll put together a list. I'll edit when I have more time, but for a start, dipipanone. It's based on the structure of methadone, but has a shorter duration, and much more euphoria. Or for semisynthetics, something like 6-MDDM.

_zenith · 2017-03-13T02:33:10+00:00

Hey, no worries. The person you're replying to was incorrect anyway, as it happens - heroin is no better or worse in terms of its risk of death on withdrawal. Some are worse, because they act more on gut tissue, which leads to greater dehydration from vomiting and diarrhoea, but heroin, while it causes bad effects on both, will not put most people in real danger of death from these effects unless they're already dehydrated and don't have access to any water to drink.

I'm both a chemistry nerd and an occasional user, so I have both theoretical and practical knowledge of these things, and as a result I know when something just isn't (or is) the case - from both sides (eg. people who have and haven't used). If you pay attention when having used heroin, and are aware of its pharmacology, you can actually feel each stage of its metabolism and consequent pharmacology kicking in, it's pretty neat

_zenith · 2017-03-12T07:05:44+00:00

I'm a pharmacologist. I know. There is nothing about all synthetic opioids that makes them worse. The fentanyls, you might have a point, but not all. Not by a long shot.

_zenith · 2017-03-12T06:52:34+00:00

I'm sorry but this just isn't true. Heroin is deacetylated to 6-monoacetylmorphine, which is significantly stronger than morphine. Also, this too is then metabolised to morphine-6-glucoronide, which is yet more potent.

_zenith · 2017-03-12T06:50:39+00:00

Being fully synthetic does not confer any more or less risks. It's always about the pharmacology.

_zenith · 2017-03-12T06:38:39+00:00

Sure, but it's a matter of priorities. Why back the least effective strategy?

_zenith · 2017-03-12T06:37:29+00:00

Yup, as the saying goes, "the plural of anecdote is not data"

_zenith · 2017-03-12T01:26:48+00:00

ITER should be within 10. Construction is underway. Very conservative, yet expected to reach 10x break-even.

However, a lot of what made 7X take a long time was the simulation aspects, and those are mostly sorted now. Also, there's the new medium-temperature superconducting tapes, which make construction of the field magnets much simpler. 7X was too early to use them, as was ITER (well, not really, but given its conservatism it was/is), but I expect the next gen designs will use them. Much faster to construct, cheaper, easier to iterate on.

_zenith · 2017-03-11T22:38:54+00:00

Indeed, however the actual reaction vessel would be radioactive from neutron bombardment, and also would contain radioactive xenon, tritium, and other gaseous or otherwise difficult to contain byproducts. You are correct that they would cease to be actively produced, but nonetheless the reaction products that existed at the time would be released into the environment, and this would generally be regarded as a Bad Thing™. I am most definitely not anti-nuclear... just pragmatic :)

_zenith · 2017-03-11T22:29:46+00:00

Yeah the Wendelstein 7X is operating great, with "almost perfect" agreement of the shape and strength of the generated magnetic bottle wrt. that predicted by the theory and simulations, and very good plasma stability. Now, it was never designed to break even but rather to be a testbed for the viability of the stellarator design and so far this is going great. Plasma stability is the thing that needed to be solved for, and so far all signs are good that it has been solved. Now it should be able to be scaled up with confidence that it will continue to operate as expected.

_zenith · 2017-03-11T22:22:14+00:00

Yes, and these were among those to which I was meaning to refer :) however I still wouldn't want them in cars that can be wrapped around poles etc

_zenith · 2017-03-11T21:54:31+00:00

You can't with light water designs (the oldest and most prevalent kind due to conservatism and more political reasons), this is true, but newer ones are actually quite easy to throttle.

Anyways, I think vanadium flow batteries (or another liquid chemistry) will be the ticket for energy storage. Lithium is the wrong tech, it's built for low weight, but storage needn't be low weight - but it's what we know, so it's being used currently, and that's okay. Nuclear for base load in combination with solar, and flow batteries for peak, should be a universal solution.

This being said flywheel kinetic storage is also pretty interesting. Keeping my eyes on that. Flow batteries have the advantage of if you want more storage you just add a bigger tank, but flywheels have greater energy density (so, reduced footprint) and no semi-rare materials.

_zenith · 2017-03-11T21:50:37+00:00

Oh, definitely. Using nuclear for power in anything which has a highly plausible chance of loss of containment in its lifetime - and a car most certainly fits this description - is a very poor idea. I'm holding out hope for ultracapacitors for transportation. There is promising work in the field, moreso than for very high density batteries IMO. But, superbatteries would be nice also.

_zenith · 2017-03-11T21:25:45+00:00

Really, any energy generation can be a peaker if combined with storage... but I get what you mean. To some extent nuclear can be. It's not technically renewable, but is in such a long timescale that the question becomes somewhat meaningless (if we're talking about thorium, or breeder reactors, anyway. Or fusion, once that works - and it's looking promising of late, incidentally)

_zenith · 2017-03-08T20:53:49+00:00

Yup, having the "best" healthcare is not actually the "best" if barely anyone can actually use it because it's too expensive.

"Best" should be defined as "the largest benefit to the largest number" - it's the most straightforward definition, especially for health.

_zenith · 2017-03-07T05:34:50+00:00

Well guess what, if everyone has this opinion they end up eating each other (hopefully not literally, but figuratively)

Maybe try thinking a bit less tribally - we're going to need it...

_zenith · 2017-03-07T02:17:11+00:00

Let's be honest, its quadrillions

_zenith · 2017-03-07T01:35:24+00:00

Good point, and we did do this, because being a multi-mode laser the beam is not perfectly circular but rather slightly rectangular. However, since the beam is so incredibly bright, even the outer fringes are clearly visible to gauge the width and height of it, and you could even see the shape of the beam as it shot across the bay (this is harder to see at short range, as it is too bright).

We did then rotate it (90 deg and 180) so as to account for any possible error - quickly, as we wanted to leave before attracting too much attention, as this experiment would have been visible to every single person living there - but enough to properly see it for ourselves.

The laser is not a commercial handheld model but rather just a diode (attached to a driver PCB, by wires) friction mounted into a lathe-shaped copper housing. I would expect the angle of mounting to be very accurate, unless the diode itself was inaccurate somehow (but we did not observe such an error).

No problem, glad it's been interesting / of some help. Maybe try such a thing yourself? It's a pretty easy thing to do :) and not too expensive either. Such diode assemblies are around $200 for a high power one such as the one I used, but lower power (say 1W) would likely be perfectly adequate as well, and that would be of the order of around $80 ish.

_zenith

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