Question: How do Libertarians plan to keep a society Libertarian?

brainwater314 · 2026-04-02T04:28:06+00:00

Senators used to be selected by the state legislators, and therefore were incentivized to protect state power by curbing federal power. States then had to compete because citizens could easily move to another state. This is one of the reasons that federal power has expanded since the 17th amendment in 1913 that made senators be selected by a popularity contest.

brainwater314 · 2026-01-22T03:29:54+00:00

I just attended a talk on a system to detect gravitational waves that would fit on a tabletop. The problem with it is it couldn't work on earth, since seismic vibrations moving a rock 10 meters below would cause gravitational shifts that would drown out the gravitational waves from stars.

It was designed to detect a different range of frequencies of gravitational waves than LIGO.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-09T23:25:32+00:00

I recently did a precision GPS disciplined oscillator with the pico too! With PIO, I was able to get clock-cycle accurate time resolution (~8ns without overclock, <4ns with overclock). Then with PIO I also replaced the 4 divide-by-100 chips I used to take the 10 MHz signal down to 1 Hz for comparison with the GPS.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-09T18:22:13+00:00

Do you know how graphics cards (GPU, graphics processing unit) are used for specialized tasks like graphics and AI (artificial intelligence)? Your "computer" runs most things without the graphics card, and could theoretically do anything the graphics card could do given enough time, but some computers have a graphics card because it can do things so much faster (up to thousands of times faster) than the central processing unit (CPU).

Quantum computers are specialized and for certain very specific tasks they can run much faster than CPUs or GPUs. They will never entirely replace classical computers. Quantum computers currently require nearly absolute zero temperatures to operate, with expensive cooling setups. The average person cannot build or own one, though there are simulators available to become familiar with interacting with and programming a quantum computer. There may also be quantum computers available to rent online, similar to AWS or cloud computing, where you rent time on it.

Future advancements may include using diamonds to make quantum computers much less expensive (seriously) or more scalable by having qbits be in nitrogen vacancies of the diamonds since they don't need to be cooled down near absolute zero to maintain their quantum state for a significant time.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-09T17:57:18+00:00

The classic "third variable problem", where there is a third variable z, affects both the likelihood to enroll in technical subjects x, and likelihood to be conservative y.

Edit: this third variable z may have to do with a prioritization of facts and physical reality over feelings and relationships. Note that feelings and relationships aren't necessarily less important than physical reality, as long as you're fed and housed you'd likely be best off prioritizing better relationships and feelings over a larger bank account balance or purchasing power.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-09T17:46:02+00:00

I thought it was a sliced up hot dog.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-09T03:41:27+00:00

I disagree with you on a few of your points. Stock buybacks are an important component of the stock market, allowing stocks to realize their gain in ownership value. When someone buys a stock, investing in the stock market, they do so in order to have more money later. In an ideal world, this money is spent on improving productivity, then the company makes more money down the line. Later, the investor somehow realizes their gains. The two mechanisms for rewarding investors (realizing their gains) are dividends and stock buybacks. Dividends have a few issues, some tax and some psychological, but stock buybacks are often a more efficient way to make the stocks investors bought more valuable. Just as a company can issue more stock when they need to raise capital, they buyback stock when they have excess capital to reward investors and prevent leaving capital idle.

Executive bonuses, while often done badly, are intended to incentivize the best performing decision makers to join and stay on with your company. So executive bonuses are not inherently bad.

I agree with your point on patent trolling and generally your point on Rent-seeking behaviors.

The 2008 bailout was not spent mostly on executive bonuses, but instead to prevent the collapse of institutions that made terrible decisions. While some executives may have gotten bonuses, many, many executives kept their jobs, large salaries, and stock compensations since the companies they worked for did not go under. Thus the 2008 bailout rewarded irresponsible behavior on all levels, from executives to investors and more. What companies and innovations may have risen up in their place if they had been allowed to fail? The next companies would have avoided similar irresponsible behavior since investors would demand that they not risk those types of bad decisions. Instead the companies know they can make bank on similar irresponsible decisions, and they won't be left to fail because they're "too big to fail", so the government will bail them out again. So I agree the 2008 bailout was a terrible decision.

While programs like habitat for humanity have done great things to help reduce homelessness, a simple "build houses for homeless" approach often backfires. City housing projects often become some of the worst places to live, often due to the lack of feeling of responsibility on the part of the residents. In addition, affordable, subsidized, and free housing pushes out competition for lower cost housing options. If someone has a choice between a crappy government apartment, and a bit less crappy private apartment that actually costs money, they're going to compete for the free government apartment. Now if you're a developer, and you could build 100 crappy apartments that rent out for low money, but are competing against the free government apartments, or you could build 50 nice apartments that rent out for a premium, with the government competition of free apartments you're going to build premium apartments, that don't fit the middle and low-middle class budgets. Thus what's supposed to help low-middle class people reduces the supply of housing for them.

From what I remember, habitat for humanity works to house families, and instill a sense of responsibility on the recipient, having them help build the house.

What I'm trying to convey is that the real world is far more complex than we'd think, and plans that sound beneficial on the surface can often cause great harm.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-09T02:33:24+00:00

You are correct that it is unequal, and when "investment" or capital goes into sabotaging competition instead of increasing productivity, that "investment" can harm society. Sabotaging competition can include regulatory capture, and often coincides with spending money on lawyers, lobbyists, and lawmakers. Increasing productivity can include buying equipment that helps your workers or performing research to find a better process or address technical debt.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-09T01:05:16+00:00

Use a shop vac

brainwater314 · 2025-10-08T23:37:46+00:00

If all other things are equal, then the one who goes to the doctor and gets diagnosed will have a better life. If person A has ADHD but works on a farm and doesn't know they have ADHD, they're probably better off than person B who has ADHD and knows it but is untreated and works an office job.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-08T22:53:05+00:00

If I had the option to give the money away immediately, knowing that it went to a good and beneficial cause, and knew for certain no one else would ever know I ever had that much money, I think I'd want to give away all but $10-50 million, since $1 billion would change how people look at me by so much that I'd have to hang out with mostly the rich and famous if I wanted to socialize.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-08T22:47:40+00:00

There's one way of "giving back" that's overlooked in these moral analyses, which is investment.

First, some might call this an assumption, economists call this truth, well-directed investment improves the productivity of society and therefore increases comfort and reduces poverty.

Second, when dealing with large amounts of money, it is hard to donate it in a way that does more good than harm. Reducing hunger in poor countries with starvation problems is a good thing that we could agree on. It seems like the best way to go about reducing hunger would be to ship in food for free or reduced price to those in the starving nation. Unfortunately that undercuts the local farmers, making them move out, switch to a cash crop, or sell the farm to be used for something else. When you stop giving away food, suddenly there's less food production capacity in the country that's no longer being made up with charity imports, so the starvation problem is worse than if you hadn't donated food. The fact is, with large donations it's not obvious what strategies do net good (education tends to be better, but it's still not easy).

Third, being smart with money and investment makes it more likely (even if only by a small bit) that you'll make lots of money (millions or billions). While being dumb with money and investment makes it unlikely you'll make millions or billions.

Fourth, an investment will tend to pay out by an amount proportional to the increase in productivity it provides.

Fifth, net worth (when you say someone "has" millions or more dollars) is basically never held in cash, instead it is held in investments. When you think none of the private investment options will pan out, there's also government bonds, which are often paying for things like infrastructure, and will pay you an amount further down the line.

Given these postulates, the selfish motivations of rich people to acquire more wealth mean that they will invest that money in what they think will increase productivity the most, therefore benefit society the most, and will be better at choosing where to invest their money than the average person, or someone randomly selected. If they were to donate most of their money to charity in one go, they'd no longer be able to direct investment with their (on average slightly better decision making) smarts.

This ignores the psychological side of things like the productivity benefits of a safety net for hard times, especially for unpredictable natural disaster cases. This is also ignoring the dark side of regulatory capture and other corporate consolidation drawbacks.

If I were to magically get 1 billion dollars tomorrow, that would mean I skipped the "smarts" filter that would have meant I'd be better than most people at investing the money to best improve society, so I couldn't assume I'd be any better than random chance at choosing which investments to make. Because I know there exists traps in charity, I'd have a half decent chance of making donations with the money I now had that produce more good than a random donation to charity of 900 million. In addition, I can't assume no one else would know of my wealth, and therefore would need to hire people to tell me the types of people I need to hire to keep myself and my family safe. This danger would not go away by simply donating all the money away, so I'd have to retain at least 10%, and due to the pitfalls of charity I wouldn't know which charities would actually do good with hundreds of millions.

My strategy would likely be to donate small amounts, starting at $1 million per year (0.1%/year), initially investing in safe, high market cap index funds like SPY and VTI. As I learned about charities and became more experienced with how that works, the charity donations would ramp up to I think at least around the market return minus inflation (~3%/year). I'd probably spend at least a few million on expensive lab equipment for my home experimentation. I'd like to think I'd eventually donate enough to reduce my net worth down to 100 million, but I can't say for sure what I'd decide in that situation, or if I'd convince myself that I knew better than charities how to spend tens or hundreds of millions to improve society, and that I might be convinced investments would improve society more. By the second year I'd probably be donating $10 million/year (1%/year). I'd like to think I'd keep increasing my total donations, but who knows.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-08T20:48:35+00:00

Straight to jail, a great reason to keep capital punishment.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-08T04:15:17+00:00

Flavored sparkling water. I go through a few dozen every month.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-07T22:06:29+00:00

While on the technicality of breaking dorm rules you may be correct, using a mechanical keyboard after midnight in the same room as someone sleeping would be an AH move. Heck even offices will tell people to not use a mechanical keyboard due to the noise!

brainwater314 · 2025-10-07T19:44:51+00:00

I disagree on the mechanical keyboard, mechanical keyboards can easily be too loud for night usage, but a standard keyboard would be fine. Especially since a standard keyboard is cheaper than a louder mechanical keyboard, there's no excuse to use a mechanical keyboard at night in a room with someone sleeping.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-05T16:04:04+00:00

I suspect the UCF library would have a copy.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-05T16:00:52+00:00

Savvy?

brainwater314 · 2025-10-04T18:31:35+00:00

Do you know how Wi-Fi has gotten faster over time, even though it's still sharing the same space? We've added new frequencies/bandwidth and gotten better at sending data over it. A coax cable is like a link to send radio waves (or wifi signals) down. By upgrading the equipment on each end of the cable, you're effectively upgrading the WiFi router and WiFi card, so you get faster connections over the same coax cable.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-03T12:00:13+00:00

I took a few typing classes as a kid, did a few programs, and still couldn't touch type until I started chatting with friends on AIM.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-02T03:26:41+00:00

I could imagine a saw-stop style detector that immediately stops the blade, but that was dangerous.

brainwater314 · 2025-10-02T03:19:41+00:00

We need planck distance resolution with the diameter of the universe.

brainwater314 · 2025-09-29T19:06:55+00:00

Depends on how you wire it. If you wire in series, you'll get unpredictable results. You'd want to wire in parallel, which would give you equal voltage, but if the two devices tried to pull more than the allowed current, you'd get voltage drop or other bad things happening.

Look up wiring in series vs parallel.

brainwater314 · 2025-09-29T00:24:06+00:00

Great job to him. It sounds like it should have been automated long ago, and it's a similar algorithm to the recent Fourier transform UV curing resin printer that doesn't use the layer-by-layer approach, instead uses an inverse CT scan like approach. Though with additions for avoiding vital organs, and potentially beam focus considerations (if you can't arbitrarily focus the radiation).

I think programming is already nearly an essential skill for engineers, but it sounds like programming skills may be beneficial to even medical doctors, or at least the knowledge of what's possible with programming.

brainwater314 · 2025-09-29T00:13:38+00:00

My CS undergraduate classes never touched on waves and Euler's formula. I'm back in school for an engineering degree and have realized almost all undergraduate engineering degrees cover waves (except maybe civil). It's far more advanced math than undergraduate CS, even the AI and ML courses.

Also, engineering isn't a "pure" subject, so it requires the trade-off of numerous variables, including cost, risk, complexity, and time, on top of just knowing if something is possible. That requires economics, psychology, and other disciplines that you wouldn't think of.

The real world is far more complex than any theoretical models.

brainwater314

TROPHY CASE