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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Opposition to genocide isn’t an option on the ballot, you can’t vote for it, especially not for president. And not voting sends a very clear message whether you intend it or not: “I don’t care”.

    Do you value minimizing harm? If you care most about genocide, Harris seems to be the least-worst option. But if you care more about ideological purity than harm reduction, you can vote for a non-serious candidate like Stein, or none at all. Nobody will ever solve this kind of problem at the ballot box, that isn’t how democracies work, but if letting things happen instead of exerting what little power you have eases your conscience, that’s your right. Doing so does mean a greater risk of a Trump presidency, especially if you live in a swing state.

    I would rather minimize harm, so I’m voting for Harris, and encourage others to do the same.







  • Knowledge is what happens when you’ve evaluated enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis that something is false. If you haven’t seen the evidence, but still think it’s true or false (you don’t lack belief), then you have a belief about it. As such, knowledge is a type of belief with extra justification.

    If I’ve reviewed enough evidence I’m comfortable saying I can reject the null hypothesis, that is I have a belief that it’s knowledge, I’ll call it as such. If I haven’t, I’ll couch my confidence in my belief accordingly.




  • I’ve been thinking about this for a minute, and I think a good standard here is making a list of (relatively) non-overlapping causes of death that have claimed over a billion human lives.

    Infectious disease is almost certainly at least one entry on this list, primarily secular war as well, starvation/famine probably a few times over, cancer and heart disease are probably distinct entries, and death attempting to grow/hunt food. I suspect deaths by religion could be on that list as well, but it’s the entry I’m least confident in.

    In every sense of the word, this is a bad list to be on, but I don’t think religion is near the biggest culprit on the list, even if you do a lot of special pleading, and group all deaths by religious cause together, but split each disease, war, etc up for some reason.




  • In my mind, the issue is that cars are incentivizing drivers to use high attention controls like touchscreens while driving. Actions that need to happen while driving, whether they’re directly vehicle operation, or something like air conditioning or media volume, should be simple low-attention controls, ideally with tactile feedback. Keep it simple for your brain, keep focus on the road.

    I have volume buttons, skip, jump backwards, and a numpad on my dash that interact with phone apps via Bluetooth. Maybe there’s a physical (or voice) control that can be added to the dash or wheel to interact with map/navigation apps. Using the touchscreen is dangerous, and a car shouldn’t provide a reason to do so. I’d rather solve the problem another way.

    But if a touchscreen is required to update the clock, or do Bluetooth pairing, that’s fine. There’s no reason to need to do those while driving.


  • I have a small (4-5") screen that has my clock, media information, which displays my backup camera feed if I’m in reverse, which I think is a modest improvement over the all-analog option, and a huge step up from the deathtrap touchscreen configuration. In my mind, the touchscreen is the point where it starts to drop off quickly, as it stands I don’t think I’d buy a car with a touchscreen that doesn’t lock it out while moving.


  • Smart switches are programmable, and can easily configure smart switches and lights. You can get a touch screen interface to home assistant, and do all of that on it, embed it on the wall. It doesn’t need to be an app on your phone.

    Voice is definitely easier and more convenient, with HA being more configurable and difficult.

    There are always going to be trade-offs in life, but you’re definitely getting convenience in exchange for privacy here