Are we sure about this? In the US the pedestrian death rate from cars in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 was 3.6, 2.6, 1.7, 1.4, and 2.0 per 100k.

Some cursory research turns up some interesting characteristics of the increase from 2010 to 2020.

• It was almost entirely in urban areas.

• Over 2/3 was on non-freeway arterials. Only about 1.4% was at intersections. (The percent of pedestrian deaths at intersections is around 16%)

• 90% was in darkness.

• It was adults. The rates for children continued to go down. For the years given above they were 2.7, 1.6, 0.8, 0.4, and 0.3 per 100k.

Cars did get heavier from 2010 to 2020 by about 4%. That would mean 4% more momentum at a given speed and 8% more kinetic energy but when dealing with getting hit by things that weigh a lot more than you do velocity is more important than momentum or kinetic energy [1], so I doubt that this was a significant factor.

Cars with shapes that are less safe did get more common, so that could be a part of it, but from where and when most of the increases were it seems there is a good chance that it is not so much that cars themselves but the behavior of drivers (and to a lesser extent) pedestrians that is mostly responsible.

Distracted driving due to phones, speeding, and reckless driving are all way up.

[1] Would you rather be hit by a Fiat 500x at 60 km/hr or the largest freight train ever constructed at 0.2 km/hr (since we usually don't talk about speeds that low to help visualize it at that speed it takes 18 seconds to go 1 meter)? The train would have 500 times the Fiat's momentum and 1.7 times the kinetic energy, but I'll definitely choose to be hit by the train. I'd even pick the train at 1 km/hr, where it has 2500 times the momentum and 42 times the kinetic energy. (Going the other way, a typical 9 mm bullet has 1/1500000th the momentum of that 0.2 km/hr train, and 1/87th the kinetic energy, but I'll the the train over the bullet).

Could the question mark in the HN version of the title be removed? It makes it read as a bit silly.

Boring as it is, this is the answer. It's just more religion.

  Church, cult, cult, church. So we'll get bored someplace else every Sunday. Does this really change our everyday lives?

> One is Black Lotus, a Burning Man camp led by alleged rapist Brent Dill, which developed a metaphysical system based on the tabletop roleplaying game Mage the Ascension.

What the actual f. This is such an insane thing to read and understand what it means that i might need to go and sit in silence for the rest of the day.

How did we get to this place with people going completely nuts like this?

I just tried a few things that are simple and a world model would probably get right. Eg

Question to GPT5: I am looking straight on to some objects. Looking parallel to the ground.

In front of me I have a milk bottle, to the right of that is a Coca-Cola bottle. To the right of that is a glass of water. And to the right of that there’s a cherry. Behind the cherry there’s a cactus and to the left of that there’s a peanut. Everything is spaced evenly. Can I see the peanut?

Answer (after choosing thinking mode)

No. The cactus is directly behind the cherry (front row order: milk, Coke, water, cherry). “To the left of that” puts the peanut behind the glass of water. Since you’re looking straight on, the glass sits in front and occludes the peanut.

It doesn’t consider transparency until you mention it, then apologises and says it didn’t think of transparency

I did initially encounter it on LessWrong and modified it slightly according to my preference. Did he coin the term? There are a lot of ideas (not inappropriately) presented without attribution in that context.

One of my favorites is efficient cross domain maximization