I think maybe we read different articles. As I read it, Novak’s point was that North Korea isn’t really a bigger threat today than it has been for a while now, and starting a war with it would have some extremely negative and potentially very long-lasting reprecussions and kill a whole lot of people. His post points…

“a piece dedicated to persuading Americans to get behind a dictatorship”

I know this is several years late, but a lot of what you write resonates so much with me that I felt a need to reply. I don’t have any solutions or advice. I’m not quite bad enough right now to be suicidal. I was for a while — ironically while I *was* employed, because I just hated my job so much — now I have been…

Well for a start, Canadian citizens don’t generally need visas to visit the United States, and I’m not sure where it says that she filled one out wrong. In either case, my point is that the whole thing is unreasonable. There was no particular reason to refuse her entry. Arguing that technically the border agents had…

It *is* a pretty alarming story, yes.

Trump certainly encourages this kind of behaviour on the border. A reasonable person would realise that a freelance artist travelling to the States to promote her artwork is unlikely to either be a security risk, or some sort of danger to the U.S. economy, and would let her pass. There’s no reason to blame the artist…

Trump makes Dubya look like an intellectual titan and master statesman. Oh, for the days of (relative) dignity and respect that America received under his rule!

My thought is that people are finding things in video games that reality doesn’t give them, or that they see no way of finding in reality. We grow up expecting life to be an adventure, we want to do exciting things, creative things, joyful things. Some of us want to change the world. Then we become adults and find out…

Alternative suggestion: If we want more people to be employed when they have another option available, perhaps employment needs to be made more attractive. Or don’t we believe in the free market? If the price offered is too low, you don’t sell the product.

You probably didn’t carry this commenter for nine months, though, so why are you getting so high and mighty and judgey with them?

... Because they are being treated badly in an unfair way? Isn’t that usually a good reason to care? I mean, I don’t understand why you’re bragging about being apathetic or uncaring about other people. It’s unfortunately probably true that on average lots of people don’t care about the well-being of other human beings…

Because acceleration is so low with light-based propulsion, you need to keep it pointed at one spacecraft for a very long time to get up to a really useful speed. The advantage is precisely in being able to maintain that low acceleration for a very long time (and in not having to bring the heavy power source along…

Sometimes I feel that way about being born on Earth.

So much discussion of the ethics of AI — including AI that is more intelligent than a human — and yet zero discussion of the AI itself as an intelligent entity deserving of moral or ethical consideraton. Modern-day AIs may be just helpful or potentially dangerous tools, but if we’re explicitly discussing hypothetical…