Hacker News: noqc

New comment by noqc in "The road that killed Legend Jenkins was working as designed"

noqc — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 16:10:16 +0000

This is America, you can just call 345 feet a football field.

New comment by noqc in "Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England"

noqc — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 13:58:14 +0000

The form of government matters a lot, when evaluating its security apparatus. I feel a lot differently about the death penalty in America than in Iran too.

New comment by noqc in "Why are there so many rationalist cults?"

noqc — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 23:54:47 +0000

No, I really mean atheists that crave religion.

New comment by noqc in "Why are there so many rationalist cults?"

noqc — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 23:53:04 +0000

Same as it ever was, but with more of them, people are a little warier about their own, I think.

New comment by noqc in "Why are there so many rationalist cults?"

noqc — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 21:52:53 +0000

That's almost word for word what I said...

New comment by noqc in "Why are there so many rationalist cults?"

noqc — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 16:21:36 +0000

When I read the article in its entirety, I was pretty disappointed in its top-level introspection.

It seems to not be true, but I still maintain that it was obvious. Sometimes people don't pick the low-hanging fruit.

New comment by noqc in "Why are there so many rationalist cults?"

noqc — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 16:19:30 +0000

There are a lot of rationalists in this community. Pointing out that the entire thing is a cult attracts downvotes from people who wish to, for instance, avoid being identified with the offshoots.

New comment by noqc in "Why are there so many rationalist cults?"

noqc — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 15:16:32 +0000

Perhaps I will get downvoted to death again for saying so, but the obvious answer is because the name "rationalist" is structurally indistinguishable from the name "scientology" or "the illuminati". You attract people who are desperate for an authority to appeal to, but for whatever reason are no longer affiliated with the church of their youth. Even a rationalist movement which held nothing as dogma would attract people seeking dogma, and dogma would form.

The article begins by saying the rationalist community was "drawn together by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s blog post series The Sequences". Obviously the article intends to make the case that this is a cult, but it's already done with the argument at this point.

New comment by noqc in "At 17, Hannah Cairo solved a major math mystery"

noqc — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 17:24:34 +0000

probably add "in the negative", to that.

New comment by noqc in "Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided"

noqc — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 22:37:16 +0000

This system would make a lot more sense if the number of people you had to get to agree to a bill with a bunch of riders was more than 50%.

New comment by noqc in "Quantum Scientists Have Built a New Math of Cryptography"

noqc — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 17:40:44 +0000

>I expect better science writing from them.

based on what?

New comment by noqc in "How Tesla is proving doubters right on why its robotaxi service cannot scale"

noqc — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:31:10 +0000

> Musk is a clearly brilliant man

proof left as an exercise for the reader.

New comment by noqc in "NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester"

noqc — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 19:35:44 +0000

You are conflating civil law with international law. In a civil context, my right to self defense is very weak. If my neighbor is stockpiling weapons, and announcing his intention to kill me, I am obligated to trust the deterrent of the state. The state has the monopoly on force. I could easily be killed by this person, but they would be prosecuted by the state, and this system defends me quite well. It is only when my life is in active danger that I am allowed to take proactive measures. If the person shoots me in the leg and drops his gun and starts running away. I'm not allowed to pick it up and kill him in response. That's the state's job (There's no chance I would vote to convict this man if I was on a jury to be frank, but that's the principle).

This is very different from the interstate case. If a state shoots another state in the leg and runs away, the only way to establish a deterrent is to shoot back. There is no police force to do it for me. This is the main diffference between civil law and international law.

New comment by noqc in "NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester"

noqc — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:20:26 +0000

What point of mine do you think you are attacking? The parent comment said that these rights were being given up "in order to squash anti-war sentiment". This was wrong on two counts.

a) The rights were preserved, the assaulter walks free on account of the NYPD's misconduct. The rock throwers have zero cause to be upset, the law protected them from the police overreach successfully.

b) The student was not charged with "anti-war sentiment". He was charged with assault, for throwing rocks at people.

New comment by noqc in "Some arguments against a land value tax (2024)"

noqc — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 16:25:26 +0000

This is a deep misrepresentation of my core stance here. Claiming that you have the special sauce to finding the "Truth" is cult behavior. I'm saying neither that people, not groups of people suck.

In fact, my argument is roughly "Less wrong is a religion by analogy to the religions that it resembles, like Christianity".

Arguing "well by that logic Christianity is a religion", is unlikely to sway me.

New comment by noqc in "NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester"

noqc — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 16:16:55 +0000

Then you should read the article.

New comment by noqc in "Terence Tao: Game theory, politics and control of information"

noqc — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 22:05:55 +0000

Terry is saying to stop bugging mathematicians for theorems about misinformation.

New comment by noqc in "Meta shareholders look to haul CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg to court"

noqc — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 20:13:54 +0000

Breach of fiduciary duty is already extremely hard to prove when share prices are down. Mark has the added benefit of the doubt that arises from the fact that his incentives are fundamentally aligned with the company's incentives, given how much of his wealth is tied up in those shares.

New comment by noqc in "Preliminary report into Air India crash released"

noqc — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 02:28:26 +0000

Putting your phone in the fridge seems like a pretty crazy thing to do, but we do it sometimes. Plane crashes are very rare.

I don't fly a lot of planes, but I do know what muscle memory is like, and sometimes it misfires. Misfires are rare, but then, so are plane crashes.

The emergency fuel cutoff should not be a practiced maneuver.

New comment by noqc in "Preliminary report into Air India crash released"

noqc — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 02:24:12 +0000

You are right, I was remembering the description of turning the switches back on.