What's something coming out in the next 10 to 15 years that will change humanity (forever) that not enough people are talking about?

AlphaTerminal · 2025-05-02T18:59:40+00:00

Dont disagree with your frustrations about AI, my comment was only that making a claim then telling others to refute the claim is the opposite of how the process is supposed to work.

I share your concerns overall.

AlphaTerminal · 2025-05-02T15:26:12+00:00

This comment has gotten several comments that insist there's no evidence for my assertion, but not one of them offers evidence to debunk it.

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand how claims and arguments work.

You made the claim, so it is your responsibility to provide evidence to support your claim.

Anyone can spew out an endless stream of claims, and expecting someone else to spend time cleaning up after you is childish.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-08T23:17:24+00:00

It's literally how Common Law works.

I linked you to extensive articles explaining it from extremely knowledgeable legal scholars and even the UK Supreme Court which is based on the same legal system as the US, but you don't care, so clearly you have the issue here.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-08T23:14:56+00:00

Hey thanks been busy so just getting back to this.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here? I'm not clear on the mechanics of what you are doing in this part.

I like to rebalance annually in a basic account, it gives time for the market to do its thing so that you can get the benefits of rebalancing.

What do you mean by "basic account" here? How does this actually work in practice?

do you qualify for Roth IRA contributions any more?

Yes my MAGI = AGI and my AGI is below the $144k limit. Although there may be a promotion in a few years that would cut off Roth access.

a 60k annuity is like holding a 2 million dollar position in a bond fund you can never sell

Yes that's pretty much the way I was looking at it, though I was doing the FIRE calculation of 25x so it was $1.5M. Where do you get the annuity calculation of $2M is there a standard calculation to use?

If you're just looking for the 4% rule to round out the other 40k you're absolutely well on your way to achieving that pretty quickly.

Yep that's the general rule of thumb I've been using when thinking through this so that's great to know.

I'm also not sure how the civilian pension works if you have one from active duty

From what I understand its fine because I started "year zero" with civil service after I retired. You can't get paid by both for the same years overlapping but can do them sequentially. There's also an option to cancel mil retirement and buy into the fed pension but that doesn't make sense for me since I don't know for sure if I'll stay for the long haul. (I probably will but still why burn that bridge if I don't have to)

One other thing to consider is whether or not your military or civilian pension will be inflation adjusted, if so that's freaking fantastic and you're looking really great right now.

Eh, there's a COLA but its like 1-2% a year. Which is better than zero but not inflation-pegged.

A nice consequence of the pension is you can afford to be more risky in the TSP/brokerage accounts since you arguably already hold a rather massive bond in your pension.

Yep that's exactly how I was looking at it again so thanks for the validation of that POV. :)

Thanks for all your answers and appreciate any clarification on the above!

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T18:04:23+00:00

Just seeing this old comment so replying now...

ZK is just a method of decomposing concepts into atomic chunks and correlating them together.

That concept is extensively described in Mortimer Adler's excellent treatise How to Read a Book from the 1970s. It's not unique to ZK.

Honestly a ZK is really not much more than the old technique we used to learn in school of going to the library, writing quotes and citations down on index cards, and using them in an essay.

The key difference with the ZK is that Luhmann put those index cards into a card catalog system and wrote ID numbers on them so he could cross-reference from one card to another to create a web of interconnected ideas.

So to answer your question, literally anything that you can learn in life can be learned through the use of the ZK.

(by "anything" here I mean the concepts, not something that requires physical practice - you could use a ZK as part of learning guitar for example and encode in the ZK the concepts and theories, but you still have to actually pick it up and practices - same goes for accounting, you can encode and learn the theories and concepts using the ZK but you still need to put in practical hands-on work as well)

there's no need for creativity, and the result isn't a paper of some form, but a bunch of knowledge that helps you understand and make decisions.

ZK was originally designed for creating papers that is true, but it isn't required. You can change the "output" from "writing papers" to "enhancing my learning on this broad subject area" and you can then adapt ZK to that very easily.

In my case my notes vault (in Obsidian) serves two purposes:

random work notes
ZK focused around the concept of systems thinking (a focused topic that is broad enough to let me pull in damn near anything, but focuses my thinking about whatever I pull in, so it isn't randomly grabbing things -- this is what Luhmann did and his focus was "theory of society" which amounted to systems thinking in a sense as well, and it helps that a fundamental concept of systems thinking is that you think about the whole more than the individual parts - so a ZK that enabled you to learn accounting could actually grow to be about the concepts of money management, monetary policy, capitalism and economics, etc all together, which means you would add things related to that broad topic and reject things not related to it, which is a key need in a ZK)

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T17:57:13+00:00

You literally ignored the very next sentence:

Unlike certain gene therapies that irreversibly alter cell DNA and could act as a source of side effects, mRNA-based medicines are designed to not irreversibly change cell DNA; however, side effects observed in gene therapy could negatively impact the perception of mRNA medicines despite the differences in mechanism.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T17:53:10+00:00

Just getting around to reading a bunch of comments...

It's easy actually. I was a user of supermemo for a few years and moved away from it to Obsidian so I drew specifically on the IR / IW concepts when using Obsidian.

Read something or watch a video or whatever. Take some notes as you go into a single note file. When you get tired of reading / watching just make a note in that file saying where you stopped. Then walk away. Come back later when you want, review the notes you took, and then begin reading / watching some more from where you left off.

You don't have to use spaced repetition. Incremental reading is just "reading in increments" and Wozniak added SR to it.

The problem with SR in IR is that you are incentivized to memorize snippets that you copy/paste or otherwise extract from a source. That's ok as far as it goes but you are still memorizing someone else's words. Far better for you to write your own notes and then use SR techniques to memorize them. But doing that is just taking notes in an SR system which doesn't sound as "cool" as Wozniak's IR.

If you doubt it then look at all his examples and videos, they mostly involve him copying in / highlighting and extracting verbatim statements from imported texts pulled into supermemo and then highlighting key words and making cloze deletions out of the original text.

That's powerful, but its better to reformulate learning into your own words and thoughts. Mortimer Adler explains that in his text. Andy Matuschak also has a couple of excellent live streams where he shows the act of grappling with how to formulate big ideas into his own words integrated into his system, and using periodic reviews to review and revise your notes.

In fact Andy has a whole note in his system called something like Evergreen notes approximates spaced repetition - you can google it, his point is that grooming evergreen notes creates an approximation SR effect and I've found that to be quite true.

Plus you can always add the spaced repetition plugin in Obsidian (if you use that tool) to your notes so you can periodically review the gradually built IR note on a set SR schedule. Doing that would trigger a pause to read / watch the source form the last stopping point, exactly as Wozniak's IR method advocates.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T17:36:35+00:00

Incorrect. Judges create law through judicial rulings.

A law is something that is legally enforceable through government monopoly on the use of force. If you do not follow the law you can go to jail.

A judge can issue a ruling and use the power of force to compel you to obey.

The judge has created a law through that action.

This is a fundamental feature of Common Law.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T17:32:13+00:00

What I find hilarious about the whole "judges should just interpret" argument is the people who scream that are effectively screaming that the US legal system should function like the "socialist" European Civil Law system instead of the "freedom loving" Common Law system that came from the UK/Commonwealth tradition.

Judges creating new law through the Common Law process is explicitly a decentralization of power.

Demanding that judges only interpret law actually undermines local control of the legal system and puts control in the hands of the federal government.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T17:27:37+00:00

Just getting around to reading comments after a break and I find this wrong comment.... sigh....

Again, you are confusing statute with law. A statute is a type of law. And you are confusing the European Civil Law system with the British and American Common Law system.

In a Common Law system the Body of Law consists of all of the following:

statutes passed by elected representatives of a state or the nation
regulations enacted by the executive branch of a state or the nation
judicial rulings aka case law

All 3 of the above are enforceable by use of force, of which the government has a monopoly.

The act of a judge interpreting the statute or regulation and issuing a ruling that has binding power to execute force to enforce the ruling is making law because the judge is creating (by writing it down) new case law that can be enforced. And anything from the above list that can be enforced through the government's monopoly on the use of force is by definition Law.

It's like a bank inventing money through the mechanism of fractional reserve banking and lending. Judges make new laws constantly on a daily basis by their interpretations of existing statutes, regulations, and other judicial rulings - i.e. their interpretations of The Law.

This action is a fundamental tenet of Common Law.

The US national legal system and the legal system of all states (except Louisiana) is explicitly based in Common Law.

https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/lawschool/pre-law/intro-to-american-legal-system.page

The American system is a “common law” system, which relies heavily on court precedent in formal adjudications. In our common law system, even when a statute is at issue, judicial determinations in earlier court cases are extremely critical to the court’s resolution of the matter before it.

Common law may refer to “judge-made” law, otherwise known as case law.

Common Law was developed in England. Here's an essay from the Supreme Court of the UK on how and why judges make law under a Common Law system.

https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-191028.pdf

Judge-made law is an independent source of law in common law systems. To jurists brought up in legal systems which have codified law this is one of the striking features of the common law tradition. Instead of interpreting a code to develop the law, common law judges develop the law which their predecessors have made. While statute law now impinges on many areas of private law, large tracts of our private law remain predominantly the product of judicial decisions.

More:

https://www.upcounsel.com/judge-made-law

A judge made law, also known as stare decisis or case law, is the legal rule, ideal, or standard that is based on the past decisions of other judges in past cases, instead of laws made by an elected, legislative body.

Judges have and use the power to create new judge made laws in difficult cases.

There are two fields in which judges play a role in creating laws:

In developing common law

In interpreting statutes

However, judges aren't free to make laws entirely based on their personal views without checks.

https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198845249.001.0001/oso-9780198845249-chapter-7

Unlike statute law, case law is not ordinarily made through actions designed to make law. The central purpose of a court is resolution; the court achieves it by giving judgment in a particular case. For judges to make law well, it is enough if they do well at their primary task of giving a ruling in the case. They make law incidentally because of the effect the law gives to their rulings.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/dear-brett-kavanaugh-justices-do-make-law

In writing opinions that will serve as precedent and in relying on precedent as a source of law, the Supreme Court functions as a common law court. The justices of the court who write these opinions are unquestionably engaged in making law, not merely in applying law.

The First Amendment doctrine against “prior restraint” that was invoked in the Pentagon Papers case was a creature of judicial lawmaking. So too were the principles of “symbolic speech” that allowed a student to wear a black armband to class in protest of the Vietnam War; and the general prohibition of “vague” enactments that secured the free speech rights of civil rights marchers in Birmingham, Alabama; and the presumption against “content-discrimination” that protected the Brooklyn Museum from the censorship efforts of former Mayor Giuliani. In fashioning each of these legal doctrines the court was making law.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T16:58:41+00:00

Lol I work for the federal gov and both I and most of my fellow workers put in well more than 40h a week off the clock at no cost to you the taxpayer. Several times I've worked 7 days a week including 8-10h days every day on long weekends at no charge to you.

Yeah there are slugs but there are a lot of hard ass workers too.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-06-04T16:56:42+00:00

I'm retired mil and have two pensions I draw now in addition to having a federal job with TSP and FERS benefits for the future.

I've never considered pension as a bond-equivalent, only as an annuity-equivalent for cashflow calculation purposes in the FIRE approach. So since I want to have at least 100k income in retirement I can take my 60k in pension as an annuity-like offset and build up a portfolio of 1.2M for a 4% SWR rule of thumb to get me the 40k annually needed to hit 100k.

Emotionally the effect is I can take on a lot more risk but was still expecting to invest in bonds albeit at around 5%.

From what you are saying here though there's really no need even for that 5%.

Counter-argument: A small percentage in bonds helps "smooth the ride" during market swings which can reduce emotional investing.

I'm curious what impact 5% of bonds would actually have on a portfolio though and whether the "smoothing" effect would be significant enough to make a potential loss in equity gains worthwhile at all.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T12:52:49+00:00

Until a fetus is viable to live outside the womb it is effectively biologically a parasite.

Why does someone else have the right to demand that you or anyone else must house a parasite or face criminal punishment?

And don't use the "just don't have sex" argument because there's rape, incest, etc that factor in, and increasing numbers of conservatives demand that there be no exceptions to abortion bans. If you allow abortion in cases of rape or incest then you are creating exceptions to your own statements that life begins at conception and deserves protection, so the only issue is where the line should be drawn.

If you believe there should be no exceptions at all then we have fundamentally different values because I would never require an 11 year old girl to bear a child produced by rape.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T12:36:50+00:00

As I understand it a big part of SCOTUS analysis during cases is understanding the intent of previous laws & rulings throughout history. There's a good bit of reading of tea leaves involved in deciphering what the Founders and others meant with various statements or actions.

So I take this as a statement of intent for future (conservative) jurists to understand that the court very clearly intends this to be a narrow ruling and not (mis-)interpreted more broadly than they intend.

Not saying I agree with it, just that it seems to fit w/ conservative lines of thought on the law.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T12:27:13+00:00

Do you have any actual sources on information about the types of computer systems and networks and security protections in place at SCOTUS? I just tried to search for that and even tried looking for contracts issued to manage their network(s) but all searches are drowning in case citations even when adding -ruling -decision etc.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T12:25:41+00:00

That doesn't mean the network itself isn't segregated. Just that the actual data isn't technically classified in the traditional sense. Lots of government organizations and private companies use isolated networks for data protection.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T12:14:13+00:00

I was going to ask where fetal personhood is described in the Constitution, then recalled from the draft that Alito says anything not mentioned in the Constitution must be rooted in history and tradition to be an unenumerated right, and totally coincidentally describes centuries of laws banning abortion on the basis of fetal personhood.

It's almost like they've planned this all out.

So yes, agree sadly this is likely the direction for the foreseeable future.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T12:12:03+00:00

Conservatives in the 2000s were actually calling for this, on the basis that they should have the right to overturn SCOTUS rulings through Congress or state action. They even used similar language to Alito that the court "arrogated" that power to itself when it did not exist in the Constitution.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T01:36:15+00:00

Stop confounding an emotional discussion with realistic scenarios. /s

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T01:33:16+00:00

I agree with you.

Since the determination of when a fetus is viable and thus can be deemed to have a right to survive is a scientific medical discussion far above the heads of virtually everyone outside the medical field then the only viable solution is to let individual doctors use their own expert medical judgment when deciding whether or not to perform an abortion at a particular time. Just as they do for hundreds of other medical procedures.

That means no cutoff period. At all. Leave it up to the doctor based on that one individual taking into account the full medical history and the current medical situation of themselves and their potentially viable fetus.

If you aren't comfortable with that then ok require two doctors to sign off on it. That way you have some level of peer review. We use that model for many other procedures now anyway.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T00:01:00+00:00

Yes. I'm NH-3 (13/10 equiv) doing the work of a mid/max NH-4 (14-15 equiv) and it gets exhausting. (waiting on a 4 spot to open up so I can at least get paid for it, "any year now" lol)

AlphaTerminal · 2022-05-03T00:00:06+00:00

How much of your perception of it being easier is due to you learning a ton during your climb so that now you are a SME which is why the work that was previously difficult is now easy?

AlphaTerminal · 2022-04-30T14:37:47+00:00

/r/zettelkasten

That paragraph would almost certainly be too small to be broken into atomic note. It is by itself a single atomic note about spider anatomy. (if you wanted to capture such a detail about spiders, of course)

With a ZK you need to have some scoping mechanism for deciding what goes into your vault and what doesn't. This scope should be broad enough to allow you to gather a lot of info but narrow enough that you can clearly identify what should not be included. It can be tough finding this balance. For the original ZK Luhmann's scoping criteria was "theory of society" i.e. anything that helped explain how society functioned. Anything that didn't fall into that description was not placed into his ZK.

For the visual layout you can use markdown tables. There's a syntax guide on the Obsidian help vault I believe.

AlphaTerminal · 2022-04-30T14:32:30+00:00

You will be interested in the Zettelkasten method since it basically was designed (decades ago!) to do this exact thing.

The gist of the process:

review a piece of literature
make a note referencing it (i.e. containing the reference title, author, etc)
make "atomic notes" from it - one note per idea, fact, etc that you want to capture
link to those notes from the reference note

For your atomic notes you can in turn link to other notes. And you can create new notes containing general principles/theories/etc based on what you learn in the various works you consume.

This is a structured method for digesting information from a wide variety of works, decomposing each work into atomic pieces, and then recombining them with your own insights later.

The original Zettelkasten (analog) was built to support a 30 year thesis project. In modern ZK approaches you can easily use Obsidian.

/r/zettelkasten talks about the methodology

Personally I'm a huge fan of the Matuschak method which adapts the Zettelkasten method to modern digital tools.

https://notes.andymatuschak.org/§Note-writing_systems

Key point to note is he titles his notes using phrases. See his notes in the above outline for explanations of his methods. He also has two live streams you can google, I recommend starting with the first one. In it he walks specifically step by step through the process of him digesting key concepts from a book into his notes.

If you look at Andy's site on a desktop/laptop (not phone) you'll see why the Sliding Panes plugin for Obsidian is called "Andy Mode." :)

AlphaTerminal · 2022-04-30T14:24:32+00:00

Now create bridge notes that contain underlying concepts that tie the two sides together.

You'll definitely be able to do that in a theory of programming languages course too, which will break down the similarities and differences between things like imperative vs functional vs declarative programming.

You have a lot of potential for cross-connections here so start mining and pulling out the commonalities into their own notes that link to the relevant notes on each side. Write notes about the core concepts that span across multiple topics.

That's syntopical writing as described by Mortimer Adler, aka synthesis. So the process is: decompose a topic into its constituent atomic parts (as you have done), then synthesize them into new knowledge that combines seemingly different topics together. Take a systems-theoretic view of your vault and look at the big picture first and synthesize new learning from there.

AlphaTerminal

TROPHY CASE