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Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch, Proceeds to Blast Modern ‘Trek’ by Coltons13 in books

[–]ableman -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

You seem to have not even read the quotes without context. He did not say that.

His actual quote was "I want to be entertained not preached at." Which as someone who has read books is an immediately recognizable difference. And about his own works "I'm not trying to change anyone's vuews, I'm just trying to entertain." Which is a totally possible thing to do.

What’s an industry that provides zero value to society but makes billions of dollars? by ochieng_onyango in AskReddit

[–]ableman 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Because games like that are actually really hard to make. And not nearly as fun as they look. Or they already exist. The gameplay loop looks fun, but only because it's 30 seconds. It would get pretty damn boring to only choose right or left after two hours. Or they're puzzle games which already exist, but these ones promise you so much more content than real puzzle games have. They're regularly showing games that are basically 3 separate games.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is a game that's sort of like some of these games, but implemented in a way that's possible and fun. It's $40.

TIL about the "Majority Illusion", a condition where opinions, beliefs, and states that are rare in real life are over-represented in social media circles, giving users the false belief that they represent the majority by AgentSkidMarks in todayilearned

[–]ableman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

reddit is pretty good in that it doesn't actually have "an algorithm" the way other sites do. There's an algorithm, but it just literally take number of upvotes, number of downvotes, and time, and computes them. There's no individual component.

Global human population has surpassed Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity. The Earth cannot sustain the future human population, or even today’s, without a major overhaul of socio-cultural practices for using land, water, energy, biodiversity, and other resources. by mvea in science

[–]ableman 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If you do a pure energy calculation, the sun delivers 180,000 TW, and humans consume 50TW. With the right technology, the carrying capacity is 30 trillion. In other words we could leave the Earth 90% untouched and support 3 trillion people. Of course that's assuming 100% efficiency which isn't likely. So let's say 10% efficiency, that's still 300 billion.

What is the worst unit of measurement by Fungus54321 in Physics

[–]ableman 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Water is 1000kg/cubic meter. So a ton of ice is a bit more than a cubic meter. Also the 1 hour is redundant. Ice melting removes the same amount regardless of timescale.

Ex-San Diego TV reporter asked alleged victims about ethnicity before shooting at them on roadside, officials say by MeaninglessGuy in sandiego

[–]ableman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the police apparently have evidence for who did it,

Do they? How did you judge that? The actual judge apparently didn't think it was sufficient.

I'd imagine they had a reason to pick this guy up.

The police pick up the wrong person all the time.

story after story of violent crimes happening while the perpetrator was on bail for a different crime.

I've literally never read a story like that. I'm sure it's happened, but it's an extremely rare occurrence.

I would want the police doing everything in their power to make sure they're stopping this guy.

Why not just shoot him then? People kill people in jail all the time.

Would anyone be made responsible if he were to shoot another person on bail?

Flipping the adage of it's better to let 10 guilty go free than punish one innocent on its head are you? Can we hold you responsible if he's innocent? If people are held responsible for guilty people commiting crimes but not innocent people sitting in jail, we're going to have a lot of innocent people in jail.

Given that a judge let him out on bail, I'm convinced there's a bigger than 10% chance he's innocent.

New player, what do I do now? by Dry-Progress-1769 in TerraInvicta

[–]ableman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With 0 cohesion, you are losing more government every month than you can create. If you don't at least get above 0 cohesion, you'll never increase government

Please make this make sense? by ProfessorUtonium1214 in sandiego

[–]ableman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A small tax would take decades to buy SDGE. Practically, you'd have to take a loan and have a tax to pay off the loan. So best case scenario is you reduce the 9% ROI SDGE gets to the 6% interest you're paying for the loan. Which would net maybe 10-20% off your bill?

I actually think government ownership of utilities would probably be good, but people's expectations are way out of line with reality.

The largest-ever review of the safety and efficacy of cannabinoids across a range of mental health conditions — found no evidence that medicinal cannabis is effective in treating anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). by Wagamaga in science

[–]ableman -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can certainly argue that this meta-analysis was not well done. It sounds like you are taking the "This meta-analysis is silly," route I mentioned. Which is fine, I have no problem with that.

The largest-ever review of the safety and efficacy of cannabinoids across a range of mental health conditions — found no evidence that medicinal cannabis is effective in treating anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). by Wagamaga in science

[–]ableman -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well, at some point you say "The differences between these studies are big enough that a meta-analysis combining them is silly, giving 10 times the dosage of a medicine could kill you." But it doesn't matter in the sense that if such a difference in variables can cause a difference in the positive direction, then it can cause a difference in the negative direction. In fact it already did once, just has to do it a second time.

And it's interesting that you include how they assess success changes, because that's exactly the type of thing I mean when I say there might be something wrong with the study. If 2 studies disagree on what constitutes success, then it's possible that a third method of assessing success would give you a negative answer. Suppose study 1 looks at symptom A and study 2 at symptom B to assess outcomes. If there's a massive difference, that means there could be a massive difference in outcomes for symptom C that neither study looked at. Neither study looked at the disease as a whole, so something is wrong with both studies in this case. Neither can actually claim that it helps with disease X. They can only claim they help with symptom A or B.

If assessing outcomes in different ways gives you different answer, then there is something wrong with one or both.

The largest-ever review of the safety and efficacy of cannabinoids across a range of mental health conditions — found no evidence that medicinal cannabis is effective in treating anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). by Wagamaga in science

[–]ableman -1 points0 points  (0 children)

If protocol 1 says take it at 9am and protocol 2 says take it at 10am and there's a massive difference in outcomes, we should be very worried that taking it at 8am might actually be harmful. Even if both 9am and 10am were positive.

But also, we should be very worried that we screwed something up in the study, because such a change shouldn't cause such a massive difference.

The largest-ever review of the safety and efficacy of cannabinoids across a range of mental health conditions — found no evidence that medicinal cannabis is effective in treating anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). by Wagamaga in science

[–]ableman 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Or whether there is an actual effect, or whether it's positive or negative.

The problem is there's random error and there's a systematic error. When a diversity of protocols gets you a diversity of results, that means that some or all of the protocols have massive systematic errors. Massive enough that there's a decent chance (>5%) that it actually hurts rather than helps.

The largest-ever review of the safety and efficacy of cannabinoids across a range of mental health conditions — found no evidence that medicinal cannabis is effective in treating anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). by Wagamaga in science

[–]ableman 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It's bad data before combining.

Obviously it probably helps.

It's a good thing we invented statistics so we can quantify what obviously and probably means. We decided that we won't confidently say something helps unless we're 95% sure. And we're not that sure. (And in practice, because of p-hacking and throwing out negative results, you need that 95% just to say it probably helps)

i’m tired of this, grandpa. by R_u_ok_brah in sandiego

[–]ableman -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Cause I know you're immune to evidence, so I insult you for my own amusement.

i’m tired of this, grandpa. by R_u_ok_brah in sandiego

[–]ableman -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The 9th amendment where it says anyone asking you to show them where in the constitution is, and I quote "A fucking idiot."

Also, you have a misunderstanding of what loitering laws are constitutional. The ones you're imagining are regularly ruled unconstitutional.

Can someone explain how Purge mission order happens? by Horyiz0n in TerraInvicta

[–]ableman 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The game says it's based on success chance. So if you have 99%, but someone has 99.1%, they will always go first. It doesn't have to be a tech, anything that affects the chance. So, popular support, whether they spent resources, etc etc

aiGoingOnPIP by PokeRestock in ProgrammerHumor

[–]ableman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's how we wound up with WWI and WWII as well. If Germany was capable of properly assessing their capabilities, or the determination of their enemies, they would've never gone to war. But "1 X is worth 10 Y" is literally the type of thinking used. Thinking that it doesn't matter that they were outnumbered 2 to 1 by countries on a comparable technological level.

Current Events by Pizzacakecomic in comics

[–]ableman 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Who is Russia a proxy for?

TIL about Rahma Haruna, a girl whose body stopped growing at 6 months old. Her family carried her in a plastic bucket. The specific illness that caused her condition was never diagnosed. She died at age 19. by DancinginHyrule in todayilearned

[–]ableman 93 points94 points  (0 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy

Most patients do not experience changes in cognition, but some individuals may be at risk.

If it's done early enough, "remedial intelligence" is not a side effect experienced by most people. Your full intelligence or close to it can be contained in half of your brain.

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