It is so deeply painful to witness in my lifetime how our nation's law makers have openly become so profoundly morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Readit Newssuperqd commented on US bill proposes jail time for people who download DeepSeek 404media.co/senator-hawle... · Posted by u/soundworlds
Nitpick: lots of text descriptions of visual patterns - this article could use at least 5 visual aid images.
superqd commented on Patience for after-hours work socializing is wearing thin wsj.com/lifestyle/careers... · Posted by u/lxm
I absolutely want to schmooze after work. With my family and friends.
This x 1000
superqd commented on Recreate the cavity-preventing GMO bacteria BCS3-L1 from precursor manifund.org/projects/rec... · Posted by u/flaque
The primary purpose of cleanings is not to prevent cavities. It's to remove the biofilm that exists at and below the gumline containing facultative anaerobes which cause periodontal disease. You can have gorgeous, cavity-free teeth that fall out because the supporting structures have been resorbed and destroyed by these anaerobes.
That is the main reason I go to the dentist is to prevent gum issues, which I have had once or twice.
superqd commented on Recreate the cavity-preventing GMO bacteria BCS3-L1 from precursor manifund.org/projects/rec... · Posted by u/flaque
superqd commented on Recreate the cavity-preventing GMO bacteria BCS3-L1 from precursor manifund.org/projects/rec... · Posted by u/flaque
So... is the existence, or non-existence, of a certain bacteria why some people never get cavities? I'm sure there can be multiple factors, but I'm 51 and never had a cavity, but don't really know the specifics of what might be different about the environment of my mouth that seems to discourage, or not encourage, the formation of cavities.
superqd commented on Natural language is the lazy user interface austinhenley.com/blog/nat... · Posted by u/azhenley
And yet it garnered millions of users within days. It has inspired people who don't do computers to feel like they can actually get amazing things done with computers. The pace of creative use cases discovered by non-tech types, with such a lazy interface, is nearly impossible to keep up with.
It has democratized what is possible with technology, when that technology was programmable with natural language, i.e., by just asking questions, or asking it to do things, in every day language. It meant people who didn't know how to build software could get software to do their bidding regardless.
superqd commented on Master’s degrees are the second biggest scam in higher education? slate.com/business/2021/0... · Posted by u/rustoo
This likely depends on the degree and the purpose for which you tried to obtain it.
Some online Masters degree programs are just scams preying on people's desire to improve their careers. They are successful because so many employer's won't pay or promote to certain positions without advanced degrees. So there is a real demand for degrees like MBAs.
For some degrees, the real value is the additional education you receive because of the increased complexity of the subject. Not everyone goes after these degrees for the same reason. For me, I went to grad school in physics not because I thought it would help my career, but because I wanted to learn more physics. I don't think this is the typical reason for which advanced degrees are sought anymore, but at least in some cases, like mine, master's degrees aren't scams, but a necessary part of deeper education into a specific area.
superqd commented on Low-carbohydrate diets and all-cause and cause-specific mortality ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... · Posted by u/spekcular
I'm also a physicist and I would first say that generally (except for some specific sub-fields) we are actually not well trained on experiments (like this) that require significant statistics.
In particular the law of large numbers applies (which you should know about as a physicist). I would argue that despite the noise in the reporting the conclusions from this study are likely much more significant than a tightly controlled randomized trial with a small group (~100 people).
Self reported questionnaires are certainly a well established method in these sort of studies and the short-comings are well understood, that does not mean their results are meaningless.
In particular, I would argue that many (most) people can give meaningful quantitative answers to their eating habits over several years as their habits rarely change. Certainly most people here would be able to answer approximately with how many meals per week they eat meat, how much vegetables they eat on average, how often they drink alcohol etc.. We are only interested in rough averages.
Regarding your argument that there are too many variables that can't be controlled for, ok lets hear them name at least 10 and make a valid statistical argument why they need to be controlled for in a sample size of ~80 000.
In this case, a "well established method" simply means common-place methodology, not necessarily a robust scientific protocol.
The problem is the humans. We are not reliable witnesses, even of our own pasts, and unless we are following very strict diets, most of us essentially follow a mostly random walk with our food intake across a narrow range of food groups (even caloric intake can be wildly inconsistent over time). I've met enough people who completely underestimate their consumption of desserts, e.g., that they mentally reduce the occurrence of such events in their personal historical narratives. That alone could put many from both low-carb vegans and low-carb meat eaters into the high-carb category.
Which is the point, the worst failure of this methodology is that there is no evidence that human memory, regarding food consumption, provides an accurate measure over long periods of time. If you cannot establish the trustworthiness of the most basic tool of your methodology, then almost by definition it's meaningless. The error in self reporting could be high enough such that the true classification of 80% of the low carb group is actually high carb. Or the vegan group could be nearly half high-carb, etc.
Without a thorough vetting of the accuracy of the instrumentation used in the research (FFQ in this case), we cannot know the margins of error. But we have apriori reasons for believing the accuracy to be significantly high. Adding more people to the group doesn't increase the accuracy in this case, it only increases the volume of the noise. Is the True Low Carb ratio of each group 10% or 90%? Who knows.
If we can't validate the accuracy of the tools, it makes the results essentially a random choice between the possible conclusions. It means they haven't disproven the null hypothesis.
Which is why I favor some form of sequestration of smaller populations of similar genetic makeup (multiple groups for each type of diet), etc. But that is mostly impractical.
The VAST majority of what is wrong with our society (political and obviously economic) can be traced to this. It's the expectation that every economic endeavor must show a return on investment - forever. That every entity must strive to optimize the bottom line every day of its existence. Optimizing for growth above all else crushes and consumes everything.
Increasing local manufacturing will only create more opportunities for people to be indentured to a company that literally hates their existence.
A company is forced to build here in the U.S. and people are supposed to rejoice they now have another option for their lives to simply be tolerated and disposable?