Hacker News: contrapunter

New comment by contrapunter in "Why are toys such a bad business?"

contrapunter — Sat, 11 Jul 2020 14:02:31 +0000

>It also doesn't help that 80% of toys is cheap plastic tat

Yes. Amazing how many people are content to makes presents of such dross to their young friends and relations.

Alternative approach: get the adult versions.

e.g. don't buy the $20 binoculars endorsed as 'educational'; get $40 dollar binoculars which last much longer and are actually useful

e.g. don't buy a plastic spade, give a gardening trowel instead

etc.

New comment by contrapunter in "YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech"

contrapunter — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 00:10:31 +0000

If one man produces 1000+ hours of content then there's always going to be dodgy stuff when stuff is taken out of context.

('If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him' -- Cardinal Richelieu)

Black vs white IQ is an empirical rather than an ideological question, and a question best ignored, character and culture being more important than raw intelligence. However I'm not going to hang a man just because he failed to ignore it.

The fact that Molyneux is anti-Nazi ('overreaction') as well as anti-communist is very simply consistent with his libertarian philosophy.

New comment by contrapunter in "YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech"

contrapunter — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:38:29 +0000

Nah; I've listened to a number of his shows. He's a popular political commentator who is anti-communist/leftwing -- that's why they banned him.

New comment by contrapunter in "YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech"

contrapunter — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:15:13 +0000

Important to recognise that Stefan Molyneux is not far-right, whether or not the far-right are encouraged by his YT channel deletion. I would classify him as an atheist/libertarian.

New comment by contrapunter in "You can't tell people anything (2004)"

contrapunter — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 22:10:56 +0000

>> Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first

It seems as good a rational definition of faith as any.

New comment by contrapunter in "I Am Deleting the Blog"

contrapunter — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 13:04:49 +0000

>They exist, but the woke crowd is purging them hard now.

Yes, thereby creating tomorrow's woke crowd. Tomorrow's woke crowd will ultimately purge today's woke crowd. So we may as well just politely state our opinions because self-censoring and trying to be nice won't save us.

New comment by contrapunter in "Freedom of Speech: A Right for Everybody, or Only for Like-Minded People?"

contrapunter — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:41:56 +0000

Speech isn't free. It's a form of action and actions are constrained. As the West changes from a Christian to a post-Christian culture, one set of blasphemy laws are being replaced by another set. One set of words you can't say in public by another.

Thoughts, on the other hand, are sometimes free. That's one reason the promulgation of despair is continually attempted: to shut down free thought.

New comment by contrapunter in "536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)"

contrapunter — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 13:48:13 +0000

Don't disagree with the facts but the suffering of humans depends as much on the content of their thoughts as it does on material conditions. A civilisation at the apparent height of its power and security can eat itself from the inside and decline rapidly. A wealthy individual living a privileged life can be beset by anxiety, and so on. Both of these things are strongly affected by the ideas that predominate in a given era. These include subtle ideas which can't readily be identified and which nevertheless spread and cause harm. So those ideas are a relevant part of the environment when considering which was the worst year so far.

New comment by contrapunter in "The BBC Microcomputer User Guide"

contrapunter — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 12:43:11 +0000

The closing scene is priceless. Clive Sinclair defiantly drives into the future on his C5, without helmet or neck support, overtaken by lorries/juggernauts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM#t=1h21m38s

New comment by contrapunter in "Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression"

contrapunter — Sat, 23 May 2020 14:37:23 +0000

I've also heard private debt jubilee put forward as a solution. Don't know which (if either) is preferable.

New comment by contrapunter in "Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression"

contrapunter — Fri, 22 May 2020 16:58:56 +0000

Can anyone explain why banning credit/usury wouldn't help in the longer term?

New comment by contrapunter in "New nuclear reactor designs promise safe, clean electricity"

contrapunter — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 09:40:03 +0000

>How can you evaluate cost of managing basically forever (at the human scale) dangerous wastes?

I think we need to be optimists. Not 'glass is half full' optimists, or 'humans are perfect' optimists but 'progress is possible if we keep trying' optimists.

If we decide to be optimists then our wealth, technological capability and sense of responsibility will all continue to increase. Handling historical waste will become safer and cheaper. An exciting future university project, perhaps, with documentaries, museums and spin-offs abounding.

What it isn't possible to do is to prophesy the precise means by which it will happen.

We may build reactors that produce less and less waste or no waste at all. Nuclear engineers and physicists may figure out how to transmute harmful elements into safe ones. We may end up launching material directly into the Sun. Or we might just dig a better hole. Or something else. Or something else again.

The fact that we don't know in advance is not grounds for pessimism.

“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.” (Howard Zinn)

New comment by contrapunter in "The Nucleon, Ford's 1958 nuclear-powered concept car that never was"

contrapunter — Sat, 11 Apr 2020 03:53:57 +0000

Perhaps it would melt down through the tarmac. As the article states, 'Yeah, let that sink in for a moment.'

New comment by contrapunter in "Temporal circuit of brain activity supports human consciousness"

contrapunter — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 05:37:46 +0000

Science is a set of evolving traditions about how to fix errors and it relies on the consciousness/perception of individual scientists. Consciousness/perception is error-prone but it does seem intimately connected with the correction of error, too, as we strive towards better understanding. Aren't we compelled to trust it in this regard? That things will seem to be more like they really are, including consciousness itself?

New comment by contrapunter in "Temporal circuit of brain activity supports human consciousness"

contrapunter — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 05:07:15 +0000

Misleading in some respects, but overall helpful. Like a computer desktop.