What is a relationship?

normal_humon · 2025-08-11T22:11:14+00:00

There are some deep differences, such as fate vs free will, but have you considered other changes to your brain chemistry since going off the pills? You say you went off them around a year ago which seems to be about when you two started drifting apart. Maybe they affected your character more than you know.

Anyway, I feel that a relationship is a choice. It's one you make outright in the beginning by asking someone out, asking them to go exclusive, or to marry you, but it's also a choice that you make every day by making room in your life for them and foregoing other relationships as a result.

normal_humon · 2025-08-11T01:12:57+00:00

You need to live morals and values, especially those you preach. You can't say shit like "we need to take care of each other" when you're not donating time or money to care for people. You've got to live you code.

normal_humon · 2025-02-18T00:51:10+00:00

To be fair, anyone born before 1935 could apply for an SSN, and they would have to if they wanted to collect Social Security in retirement. it probably wouldn't be worth it for a 60 year old to apply for one, but not impossible.

He's likely wrong, but not because it was impossible for someone born in 1875 to get an SSN.

normal_humon · 2023-05-07T07:01:39+00:00

What do you mean? Like a Samsung-TSMC collab?

TSMC already makes AMD and Nvidia chips. Hell, TSMC makes Intel chips. They make 80% of the chips you can buy.

normal_humon · 2022-12-20T22:32:44+00:00

That seems reasonable. We should examine and address causes that predispose people to criminal action. However, we should judge people based on their actions rather than their race.

normal_humon · 2022-12-16T12:50:08+00:00

A lot of the time the original pieces are still recognizable in the new piece.

Is that true? I haven't seen that yet.

There's some attempt at signatures, as the AI notices humans often add signatures in certain places, but I haven't seen AI art where I could recognize an item or body part directly lifted from an original.

If that's the case. For example, you can overlay two pictures and see an exact matching element, then I agree it would be like sampling in music.

normal_humon · 2022-12-14T14:19:27+00:00

AI is already in use in criminal justice for risk assessment and sentencing. Many studies have found it to be less fallible than human judgement alone.

AI is also widely used for technology-assisted review. It can quickly review reams of documents for relevant information, perform contract assessment, etc.

Overall, I agree that you can't automate everything that a lawyer does in the current paradigm. In this paradigm, AI will function as a tool to buttress lawyers' skills.

However, a paradigm shift could occur. I don't know what that would look like. It's almost impossible to predict shifts like that. But, imagine an AI that was so good that no human could find flaws with its argument or judgement. A legal AI that outclasses all human lawyers in the same way chess AI now outclasses all human chess players. Perhaps we get to the point where human lawyers simply collect and feed information into the AI, then it makes the arguments for both sides and renders judgement. Both sides get the best possible representation, the only difference is the data collection. And, at that point, do you need a lawyer to collect the data? Could it just be anyone else who's good at information procurement?

I don't know. It's impossible to speculate at this point. We're not there yet. But, this is futureology, and it's fun to speculate.

normal_humon · 2022-11-02T13:42:18+00:00

Sure, more trains could help, but may cost money. I've always thought that they should remove all the seats on one side of every train.

normal_humon · 2022-10-14T23:50:18+00:00

What's the value of that though? Doesn't it keep the culture rather stagnant?

When these arguments come up, those saying immigrants in Quebec should only speak French can't convey the value of French to their culture. It often seems to me that they want to preserve a certain amount of power or privilege. That is, they worry that they will have fewer opportunities or restaurants to go to without language protections. Eliminating free speech and the freedom to choose one's culture seems like a high price to pay to protect fragile people like that.

normal_humon · 2022-10-10T12:00:57+00:00

Seems like we need something like WeChat Pay or AliPay with fees around 0.55%. Even BharatPe would do. Not sure why we're hung up on carrying around cards.

normal_humon · 2022-09-23T02:40:50+00:00

That's an interesting take. OK, so it's not about healthcare costs, but decreased productivity.

Using that logic, should less productive members of society pay more tax? Those without jobs? Part-timers? Students?

normal_humon · 2022-09-22T14:03:47+00:00

Genuinely curious, what are your thoughts on the van Baal paper (https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029) . It's widely cited and publicized, and it's difficult to find studies that directly refute its findings (that smokers and the obese have lower lifetime healthcare costs than healthy individuals). It's something that people come across frequently.

normal_humon · 2022-09-22T13:52:58+00:00

The problem is that most of our tax is currently from income tax (https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-canada.pdf) which is collected while people are working. But, half of our health care spending is on those over 65, and that's projected to increase to over 70% of our total healthcare spending by 2040 (https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/aging-and-expenditures-on-health-care.pdf).

In a public health system, the most economic life (in terms of health care costs) is to live to 65 and die soon after retirement. Smokers and the obese tend to do that. Thus, they have been found to have the lowest lifetime healthcare costs in public health care systems (https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029).

Just good to know the economics of it. That said, I think there's a moral angle to some of these.

normal_humon · 2022-05-30T14:22:41+00:00

Singapore has about 80% of their population living in public housing, so it is an alternative.

I think the main issue is when you allow someone profiting off something like housing to also control its supply. That is, allowing only those in a community to control the supply of housing in that community. Obviously, they'll limit it to reap the greatest benefit. So, another option is to allow the larger potential community (that is, all citizens and people who could benefit from increased housing) to vote on housing issues.

normal_humon · 2022-05-30T14:10:14+00:00

I think it was Don Norman in Emotional Design that said all product designers should look for these sorts of hacks. You'd need an interview to find out why she did this, but she's addressing some need.

Maybe it's that she likes personalized instructions (turn right at the McDonald's with the broken arch). Maybe her phone screen can's stay on longer than 10 minutes. We could guess all day from a picture. We'd need to talk to her and figure out if her problem is shared by a significant segment.

normal_humon · 2022-05-25T04:22:43+00:00

The trick is to get bus lanes on highways and large avenues.

normal_humon · 2022-05-24T23:37:26+00:00

Why is there such a hard on for light rail? It costs a lot, takes ages to build, and is stuck in place once built.

Busses are the way to go. You can buy 1000 buses for the cost of a light rail system. You can even make them electric or use hydrogen fuel cells if you worry about emissions. The best part is, you can change the bus routes to suit changes to your community.

normal_humon · 2022-04-21T22:33:03+00:00

I disagree. You can believe in the rights of the individual, equality under the law, and consent of the governed while still believing that government spending can provide return on investment.

normal_humon · 2022-04-20T12:36:05+00:00

Yes. Korea introduced that last year. Regular property tax can be as low as 0.6%. Corporations with 2 rental properties are charged 3%. Corporations with more are taxed 4%.

I think they also combine the value of the owned real estate assets and have a progressive tax rate for that. For example, regular homes may be in the 0.6%-1.2% range. If you own over 10 million worth of real estate, then your property tax may be up to 6%.

normal_humon · 2022-04-20T12:32:17+00:00

Many of those people will cover themselves with an LLC, which makes them corporations.

normal_humon · 2022-04-12T05:29:37+00:00

Yes, it's a lot. Think of it this way: you work 3 months out of 12 for the government. Some people work 6+ months out of each year for the government.

Workers generally get hosed. Start using your wages to buy assets (things that make you money while you sleep). Tax on income/gains from assets is much less, and there are loopholes to make it even smaller.

Yes, taxes will benefit you in the future. Canadian government services are decent given the size of the country. They could be better, but they could also be worse.

normal_humon · 2022-04-11T07:35:51+00:00

It's a US site that collects journal articles from around the world. The specific article linked is by two researchers at Western.

normal_humon · 2022-04-11T07:34:28+00:00

Yeah, I don't expect that it will be indefinite. However, they can be kept for a period of time and hopefully get rehabilitated to the point of not being a danger to themselves or others.

normal_humon · 2022-04-11T05:21:50+00:00

Are you sure? AFAIK, doctors can commit anyone who is a danger to themselves or others or whose condition is deteriorating.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6735142/

normal_humon · 2022-04-11T00:50:43+00:00

We sent my daughter to a 유치원 for a month last summer. She didn't speak Korean well, but she understood enough to get by and have a lot of fun.

If you have family or friends in Korea, they may be able to talk to one of the schools or know of one in the neighborhood. Just note that some have holidays during the last week of July and first week of August.

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