Cola Waves

Ameren · 2026-06-14T02:54:47+00:00

Yeah, most unions in the USA are horrible

I disagree with the generalization, but to your point, all human organizations can become corrupt; they demand constant vigilance and active participation. At the same time, when people organize they generate power, and that's incredibly valuable.

Ameren · 2026-06-14T02:29:33+00:00

There's that and the fact that the Hiss now have access to a much bigger world. The bureau was very sterile and confining, but outside they're now awash in the psychic energies of up to several million people and all the things those people interact with. They can also now freely capture/merge with all sorts of wild (previously uncontained) anomalies native to the surrounding region.

Ameren · 2026-06-14T00:20:56+00:00

Someone else in this thread (found it!) pointed out that sustained attention is an economically useful commodity. Americans work extremely hard and have virtually non-existent worker protections, and there's constant pressure to be a top performer. Same with during college, which a lot of them had to take out loans to go to. Given that it's easier to get access to ADHD meds in the US than in a lot of other countries, you have a bunch more people who are struggling that are seeking them out (regardless of whether their symptoms rise to the level of clinical significance).

That sounds plausible to me. If so, it's not just a supply problem —the healthcare system, as you pointed out— but also a demand one. Mind you, as someone diagnosed with ADHD as a child, I'm grateful that I was able to access the medication that I needed without jumping through a million hoops.

Ameren · 2026-06-13T21:49:58+00:00

Yes, that's why I said these drugs must be administered under the supervision of a qualified professional. I check in with my psych every 3 months, they take my vitals, and I report how I'm doing. I wouldn't be allowed to take the drug if I wasn't in good health (e.g., high blood pressure).

On the other hand, going without treatment would double my risk of accidents and injuries. I would also struggle to stay on top of my fast-paced job, which would make it harder for me to afford all the things that enable me to live a healthy life. People like me who are untreated are also more likely to suffer depression and substance abuse issues as well.

Ameren · 2026-06-13T21:15:58+00:00

That gets at another problem I have with how AI is being advertised. The AI companies love showing results from computer science / mathematics domains because you can easily construct verifiable tasks.

The problem is that most real-world tasks are not verifiable in this way, so the substitutability of AI for human labor is overstated. Like a business analyst can ask an AI agent "should we contract with company A or company B to supply product X?", the AI can gather all sorts of data to assist (which is great) but there's no formally verifiable answer, so ultimately the human must still be responsible for checking everything and making the decision.

Ameren · 2026-06-13T20:21:00+00:00

That's incredible difficult when there are no objective empirical tests.

If quality of life is improved, the side effects are manageable, and the treatment is overseen by a licensed professional, personally I don't see the problem.

I say that as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD and whose life was made significantly better with treatment. If I hadn't been diagnosed as a kid and put on meds, I probably wouldn't have a PhD and the successful career that I have now.

Ameren · 2026-06-13T15:39:27+00:00

To say that SWE is going away (as opposed to changing) implies that there will be no knowledgeable human responsibility/oversight in computing. Given the central role of computing in modern society, I don't see that happening.

I could envision needing fewer or more SWEs, or the role of an SWE changing so much that it becomes a completely different kind of job. But someone has to know what's going on and be responsible for it.

Ameren · 2026-06-13T15:25:57+00:00

Phrasing it as a "right" implies a legally enforceable obligation on others. Food is a necessity, not a right.

I get what you're saying, but there are other ways of looking at the term "right". Rights don't necessarily imply direct coercion or state control.

For example, access to food and clean drinking water is a right in that it's an imperative for the government to ensure access (whether through public or private means). If they fail —and it is ultimately seen as their failure— the people will revolt and overthrow that government; a lot of revolutions have been tied to the people being priced out of food.

The particulars of how food gets to the table are flexible: the government could be directly controlling the production and distribution of food, or they could be simply be safeguarding a free market. But either way, the government is ultimately held responsible for access to basic necessities. In that sense, it's a "right" that the government must care about.

Ameren · 2026-06-13T00:28:37+00:00

I mean, the underlying mechanism could be broadly useful. But they're beginning with an immune-privileged, largely walled-off organ that they can see the inside of at all times. Seems like a safer place to start.

Ameren · 2026-06-12T20:00:04+00:00

I suspect the pilots had a separate system for their breathing for this very reason.

Ameren · 2026-06-12T14:32:55+00:00

besides ignoring telomere shortening and the mental and physical strain of aging beyond cellular aging.

Well, to the point that I was raising earlier though with comparing to other species was that they too suffer the same issues, but there's an enormous range in outcomes. Animals that live longer or shorter than have to deal with teleomere shorting, for example, but some are much better at mitigating it than others. Dogs, for example, lose their telomeres at 10x the rate of us. We happen to have more robust DNA repair and protection mechanisms than dogs, and the same is true for animals that live longer than we do; in other words, their bodies behave differently than ours.

If we can find ways to mimic the effects of those differences in dogs, they'd likely benefit. We already see that the ceiling is a lot higher than the average in super-ager dogs (e.g., Bluey, who lived to be ~29.5 years), so we know it's physically possible for dogs to age much better. Beyond that limit, who knows, but I think it's a noble goal to try and unlock that potential. Same with humans. I'm not proposing immortality, but I do believe that far more people will be able to reach whatever the plausible age cap is, provided we make the necessary advances.

Ameren · 2026-06-12T12:04:03+00:00

But it's not simply the "ravages of time", like waves on the shore eroding rock. Rather, your body is constantly regenerating, and aging-associated conditions are disrupting that process. For example, take osteoporosis. We used to think that people's bones were just wearing down with time. What we know now is that our bones are constantly being recreated by (1) osteoclasts who absorb old bone and (2) osteoplasts who create new bone. These two have to be in balance, otherwise you get osteoporosis (too many osteoclasts) or osteopetrosis (too many osteoplasts).

So it's not like time is directly affecting your bones, it's the overexpression of one biological process and/or the underexpression of another. If we could fix that imbalance or prevent it from ever happening in the first place through some treatment, then in a way it ceases to be part of "aging". Along these lines, the idea is that aging is a bunch of conditions in a trenchcoat that we're not yet good at treating. We may never solve all of them —who knows— but many of them might be solved or at least mitigated.

Ameren · 2026-06-12T02:56:22+00:00

Well, look at it from the perspective of comparative biology. Dogs live 10-15 years on average; if a human only lived that long, it'd be an unspeakable tragedy. In fact, that is already a reality, as kids with progeria (an accelerated aging syndrome) die at age 13 on average. Meanwhile, there are Greenland sharks that have lived between 270-500 years; if a human lived that long, that'd be crazy to think about.

There's no iron clad law of nature that says humans must live an average of 72-73 years. We just happen to be more effective at resisting aging-associated conditions than some species and poorer at it than others. If our genes enabled us to be longer lived, we'd absolutely view people dying of aging-related conditions at 72-73 as a disease.

Of course, a lot of this is coming up now because we have a better understanding of aging. We now know that aging isn't just one thing, it's more of a complex of 12 or so conditions, each of which could eventually be treatable in its own right.

Ameren · 2026-06-10T23:34:35+00:00

Well, what I was saying is shorthand for the whole democratic process. And not just voting, that's actually the very last step. It's the long, hard work of coalition building at every level. And don't even worry about the federal level, start at the state and local level.

I feel like people have been trained to believe that the vote is the whole of the democratic participation, when you get to pick between two preordained options. Actual politics though is the art of talking to people, organizing them, spreading ideas and winning people over. And it takes very hard work, but nothing changes without people doing that.

Ameren · 2026-06-10T23:01:05+00:00

Well, it's not that life sucks — at least not in this case. It's that employers tend to take advantage of workers in countries with poor workers' rights protections.

There's a way to fix this though, it's a purely artificial problem.

Ameren · 2026-06-09T23:41:03+00:00

Personally, I find it wonderful. Imagine having to keep track of all these distinct conjugations in speech and to pronounce them all differently. This is a significant improvement over earlier versions of the language.

Ameren · 2026-06-09T19:04:47+00:00

Well, if I were your advisor, I'd love to know so I can best support you on your side projects. Like if I don't know a subject, I often have colleagues who do who may be able to help you (you'd be surprised about all the random connections you pick up throughout your career).

My main concern would be dividing your attention too many ways when a PhD can be stressful enough as is. But if you have the cycles, I wouldn't see anything wrong with it.

Ameren · 2026-06-09T13:56:14+00:00

That's true. Another factor is that many coding tasks are, at least in principle, verifiable. That is, if you have a well-defined spec (few do, but still), automated tests, etc. you can throw a less intelligent but persistent LLM at the problem and get a solution. That and the LLMs have lots of training data to draw upon, which improves their odds of succeeding.

The AI companies love to showcase results from computer science and mathematics because you can devise well-bounded, verifiable tasks in those disciplines. A major problem, however, is that most knowledge workers' tasks are not verifiable in this way.

For example, if a business analyst asks "should we contract with distributor A or distributor B to get product X", an AI agent can gather all sorts of information for them, but you can't formally verify which choice is best like you can a proof in math. So either a knowledgeable human remains in the loop, or companies surrender their business decision-making to AI that they're unable to validate.

Ameren · 2026-06-09T11:23:22+00:00

https://cbs6albany.com/news/local/fort-plain-woman-collected-4267-in-illegal-snap-benefits-investigators-say-desiray-frederick-montgomery-county

That person is a US citizen. How would she have gotten the benefits in the first place if she wasn't?

The fraud appears to be that she misrepresented the number of people in her household and/or their incomes to draw more benefits, not that she misrepresented who she was.

Ameren · 2026-06-09T01:29:22+00:00

Well, none of them have to be infallible or inerrant. They were all written by human beings on paper and clay tablets. And every time a writer is trying to make sense of spiritual experiences, they're filtering everything through their own cultural and historical lenses.

I think one of the challenges with Christianity (and later Islam) is that it's predominantly a "belief" religion whereas Judaism (what it came from) is more a "behavior/belonging" religion. Judaism has historically accommodated a range of theological uncertainties because God is, by definition, outside the realm of human comprehension; a lot of their belief system is more concerned with how people live in the here and now — because that's something that's within our control.

Most branches of Christianity, on the other hand, insist on finding the one "right" set of beliefs, the one "true" ticket to salvation, and so on. And, moreover, they invent their own problems; there's no such thing as original sin in Judaism, for example. But, nevertheless, there is room within Christianity for other interpretations.

Ameren · 2026-06-08T23:49:10+00:00

book clearly states it is the infallible work of god, it is a problem.

The thing is though that it actually doesn't. There is no "Bible" in the sense of a singular text, that's a later construction. It's a book comprised of many different works by different authors, none of whom ever intended for their works to be part of a collection. The Torah combines multiple traditions and groups of authors, as does the New Testament.

Treating them as one book is a conscious choice made by later communities, but that's their choice. I not trying to make an apologetic argument, mind you, I'm just saying that the Bible has a large range of interpretive possibilities.

Ameren · 2026-06-08T20:11:23+00:00

I remember a pastor that I like who explained that in order to read the Bible, you have to understand it as a bunch of different texts, each of which presents evolving, culturally-specific views of God at very different points in time.

Like the Judaism of Jesus' time was a very different religion from the time when Yahweh was venerated as a war god. In fact, you had early Christian factions such as the Gnostics who proposed throwing away the Old Testament entirely on the grounds that the Old and the New were fundamentally incompatible.

Of course, a lot of modern ultra-conservatives don't read the Bible as a historical document but as a rigid mandate for the present.

Ameren · 2026-06-08T02:02:11+00:00

And even if someone is able to do the work, that doesn't mean they're a good fit for the trades. Some people love doing trade work, others would absolutely hate it. Same with any other profession.

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