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atmavatar commented on Thousands of U.S. farmers have Parkinson's. They blame a deadly pesticide   mlive.com/news/2025/12/th... · Posted by u/bikenaga
stuffn · 2 days ago
Chevron Deference is used to bypass congressional and court scrutiny. I'm getting downvoted, particularly, because I do not believe people understand the extent of what Chevron Deference provides. I am not surprised. It's not mentioned often, it's often editorialized particularly by leftist media as a great boon to our society, and most people are unaffected by it.

Congress is expected to make laws. End of story. Chevron Deference allows them to reduce their own liability and burden by rubberstamping opinion into law. That is a tremendous problem. Congress' core directive is to protect our rights. Not restrict them. Industry plants have a much easier time infesting regulatory bodies through revolving door policies, regulatory bodies change with every administration, and regulatory bodies are not held to a standard of rigor that approaches 1/10th of the worst quality scientific journal. That is a major problem. The first thing any true tactical politician will do is move his or her favorite industry plants into regulatory bodies. Then, they can give "opinion" that aligns with the view of that person, which is then rubberstamped into law.

If we cannot expect congress to do their job our government has failed it's absolute simplest purpose. There are then much greater problems than whether turtles are choking on can holders.

atmavatar · 2 days ago
I trust the scientific expertise of a career bureaucrat holding a PhD more than a congresscritter that brings a snowball onto the Senate floor as "proof" climate change isn't real[1].

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-jim-inhofe-climate-change-i...

atmavatar commented on Thousands of U.S. farmers have Parkinson's. They blame a deadly pesticide   mlive.com/news/2025/12/th... · Posted by u/bikenaga
svara · 2 days ago
> you can assume they'll tend towards evil.

An unnecessarily cynical take. What this is implying is that, in the absence of any morals, evil provides a selective advantage.

And yet, pro-social behavior has evolved many times independently through natural selection.

atmavatar · 2 days ago
It's not that cynical when you consider that corporations exist precisely to shield owners and leadership from legal (and to a lesser extent) monetary responsibility.
atmavatar commented on Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class   nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us... · Posted by u/signa11
scoofy · 3 days ago
Society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they will never sit in. The problem is that we aren’t raising all of the kids right. It’s a societal problem in as much as it is a personal problem for folks unwilling and often unable to work with their kids on this stuff.

We aren’t a nation of nerds, I doubt we ever were, but nerds really ought to create a support system for each other. I understand why people care so much about which school district they are in. It’s as much about a culture of curiosity as test scores.

atmavatar · 3 days ago
> It’s a societal problem in as much as it is a personal problem for folks unwilling and often unable to work with their kids on this stuff.

Even that is multi-dimensional. Another big problem we have in the US is that there are groups of people who don't want their children to learn certain things that most well-educated people take for granted.

For example, it's pretty common to this day for some school districts around the country to skip over teaching evolution. It's also common to misrepresent the causes behind the civil war and gloss over the genocide of native populations.

Others could probably come up with additional examples.

atmavatar commented on Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds   theguardian.com/inequalit... · Posted by u/robtherobber
simianwords · 6 days ago
1) you are damn right that top 10% consume as much as bottom 50 or whatever. Let’s be clear that taxing this bunch of people even more will have disastrous consequences. I’m okay with it if it works out. Top 10% includes everyone pretty much in HN.

2)

a) PE is owned mostly by pension firms that the public has a huge stake in. Billionaires have stake mostly in their own companies rather than in PE firms.

b) AI investment for job displacement is necessary for overall prosperity and efficiency.

atmavatar · 6 days ago
> Let’s be clear that taxing this bunch of people even more will have disastrous consequences.

Clearly, it's a good thing that literally every US tax law passed in the last half-century has reduced taxes on the wealthy then.

I don't think anyone's asking to return to the pre-Reagan era where the top tax bracket was 90%, but rolling back some of the absurd tax cuts in the Bush and Trump eras only make sense, given how much they ratcheted up deficits while doing absolutely nothing to improve the economy.

atmavatar commented on Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?   martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald
atmavatar · 9 days ago
> Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?

I believe Betteridge's law of headlines [1] applies here:

No.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

atmavatar commented on US Supreme Court agrees to hear case challenging birthright citizenship   bbc.com/news/articles/c20... · Posted by u/1659447091
D13Fd · 12 days ago
Even if "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" has never made it to the Supreme Court, it's not an ambiguous phrase subject to multiple interpretations. The idea that some class of immigrants are outside the jurisdiction of the US even when they are physically in the country is not supportable.
atmavatar · 12 days ago
Precisely. The phrase is exclusively intended to handle both foreign and US diplomats.

Diplomatically, embassies count as the soil of the country they represent and thus subject to the jurisdiction of said country. As a result, a child born to a foreign diplomat present in the US would not be granted citizenship. Similarly, a US ambassador (to Germany, for example) is treated as still subject to US jurisdiction, and by extension, any children of theirs would automatically become US citizens.

A person who entered the US illegally is still subject to US jurisdiction (or else they couldn't be violating US immigration law), so any children they have are citizens. The proper ways to address that are to a) prevent them from entering illegally in the first place, b) fix immigration law so they don't have to enter illegally, and/or c) add a constitutional amendment modifying the 14th amendment to explicitly deny citizenship to children born to parents who are here illegally.

atmavatar commented on The AI Backlash Is Here: Why Public Patience with Tech Giants Is Running Out   newsweek.com/ai-backlash-... · Posted by u/zerosizedweasle
lisper · 12 days ago
I don't think AI is comparable to cars. The problem with cars is that they necessarily use the commons. The more roads you build, the less space you have for trains, parks, housing, etc. AI isn't like that. I can continue to think for myself and look for ways to add value as a human even if everyone around me is using AI. And if that fails, if I can't find a way to compete with AI, if AI really is capable of doing everything that I can do as well as I can do it, why would I not want to use it?
atmavatar · 12 days ago
> AI isn't like that.

Tell that to anyone who was hoping to upgrade their RAM or build a new system in the near future.

Tell that to anyone who's seen a noticeable spike in electricity prices.

Tell that to anyone who's seen their company employ layoffs and/or hiring freezes because management is convinced AI can replace a significant portion of their staff.

AI, like any new technology, is going to cost resources and growing pains during its adoption. The important question which we'll only really know years or decades from now is whether it is a net positive.

atmavatar commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off   businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9
jkubicek · 15 days ago
> AI datacenter spending is massive, but if you add it all up, it doesn't cover half of a years worth of government spending.

I didn't check your math here, but if that's true, AI datacenter spending is a few orders of magnitude larger than I assumed. "massive" doesn't even begin to describe it

atmavatar · 15 days ago
The US federal budget in 2024 had outlays of 6.8 trillion dollars [1].

nVidia's current market cap (nearly all AI investment) is currently 4.4 trillion dollars [2][3].

While that's hardly an exact or exhaustive accounting of AI spending, I believe it does demonstrate that AI investment is clearly in the same order of magnitude as government spending, and it wouldn't surprise me if it's actually surpassed government spending for a full year, let alone half of one.

1. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61181

2. https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NVDA:NASDAQ

3. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/30/nvidias-market-cap-tops-4poi...

atmavatar commented on 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs   ft.com/content/beec76df-8... · Posted by u/mmarian
mritterhoff · 16 days ago
> because healthcare demand is unlimited.

How's that? Beyond some level of care I suspect demand drops of a cliff. No one goes to the doctor for the fun of it.

atmavatar · 16 days ago
I'm sure they're talking about necessary healthcare - e.g., cancer drugs, insulin, dialysis, heart surgery, etc.

When giving the option of parting ways with some more money or dying, virtually no one is going to choose the latter.

Unfortunately, the US healthcare system is set up to extract maximum capital from people who interact with it. Worse: it's not alone. For example, the reason food in the US has so much sugar, salt, and fat in it is that the food industry has carefully engineered processed foods to be more addictive so people will buy more of it.

We live in one of the most exploitative societies in the world, and it's only getting worse over time.

atmavatar commented on A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson   historynewsnetwork.org/ar... · Posted by u/Petiver
Atlas667 · 18 days ago
If you were to truly do a science of people would you not take into account all of the circumstances that person was in, in order to understand them?

You say: "One achieved it, but the other person in similar circumstances didn't achieve it"

Well how do their circumstances differ? Don't you think it's important how they differ? Actually, couldn't how they differ be the key?

Why, then, do you draw the line at an incomplete analysis? Maybe because it is convenient? Maybe because we'd rather not destroy our illusions of ourselves? Maybe its convenient not to understand others?

What is real in regards to ones self and others? There shouldn't be a loss of pride with understanding.

atmavatar · 17 days ago
A big hurdle to proper analysis is that people are unreliable narrators.

Let's take a person who made it rich betting big on bitcoin early on. Were they a savvy investor who made their own fortune, did they merely think it sounded cool and thought why not while bitcoin prices were so low that snatching them up was super cheap, did they rely on a tip or tips from friends/family, or was it some other reason?

If you come back and ask them years later after they've become worth 10^7 or better, how likely is the person who merely got lucky to admit it was dumb luck in an environment that lionizes the wealthy as self-made superhumans?

u/atmavatar

KarmaCake day915November 2, 2022View Original