Moonchild's recent activity

  1. Comment on I just turned 29 last month, what are some things I should be thinking about before my 30s? in ~talk

    Moonchild
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    visible light also causes photoaging, which sunscreen can protect against somewhat

    because UV still gets through the clouds

    visible light also causes photoaging, which sunscreen can protect against somewhat

  2. Comment on Did Donald Trump's executive order just make everyone in the US female? in ~society

    Moonchild
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    no, it did not, and it is no more than pedantic sophistry to pretend it did

    no, it did not, and it is no more than pedantic sophistry to pretend it did

    4 votes
  3. Comment on US President Donald Trump to issue executive orders to end birthright citizenship, limit gender identity — incoming official in ~lgbt

    Moonchild
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    that's neither here nor there. trump's administration is not expressing a positive position, but a political position, and one which is intended to oppress

    that's neither here nor there. trump's administration is not expressing a positive position, but a political position, and one which is intended to oppress

    37 votes
  4. Comment on US Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization for the use of red no. 3 in food and ingested drugs in ~health

    Moonchild
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    i'm confused—i think turmeric is usually added for flavour? at least that's the only reason i use it. (contrariwise, ground turmeric has itself sometimes been dyed yellow with lead-based dye, but...

    tumeric used as a yellow dye in many curries

    i'm confused—i think turmeric is usually added for flavour? at least that's the only reason i use it. (contrariwise, ground turmeric has itself sometimes been dyed yellow with lead-based dye, but that is a separate problem)

    3 votes
  5. Comment on US Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization for the use of red no. 3 in food and ingested drugs in ~health

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    dye used in drug compounding is not always strictly cosmetic; it can also be used to quickly visually estimate if a mixture is uniform

    dye used in drug compounding is not always strictly cosmetic; it can also be used to quickly visually estimate if a mixture is uniform

    23 votes
  6. Comment on More than a dozen US states have passed new laws that led to restrictions on pornography. Now, the Supreme Court will weigh in. in ~society

    Moonchild
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    i would expect there are too many confounders to get a clear story edit: on a related note—this may be hearsay, but i heard of somebody a few years ago who wanted to do a study on porn but gave up...

    Seems like we have a good thirty years of data we could comb to establish whether this is true or not

    i would expect there are too many confounders to get a clear story

    edit: on a related note—this may be hearsay, but i heard of somebody a few years ago who wanted to do a study on porn but gave up when they simply could not find any boys who didn't watch it

    5 votes
  7. Comment on AI and ethics - CP in ~talk

    Moonchild
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    extrapolation and generalisation were always the point of ai

    extrapolation and generalisation were always the point of ai

    3 votes
  8. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~society

    Moonchild
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    i think the problem is that you are trying to take an average of a continuous quantity, but you can't really reason about that without calculus (and then measure theory i don't understand yet...

    Maybe it has to do with mph being a rate and adding and averaging rates is less intuitive?

    i think the problem is that you are trying to take an average of a continuous quantity, but you can't really reason about that without calculus (and then measure theory i don't understand yet ;-;), so if you don't know calculus, you're sol. you can sort of handwave that away for problems that look specifically like this (where speed is a piecewise constant function), but the whole question falls apart if you allow speed to vary continuously at all. you have a symbol-pushing intuition that 'average' means a+b+c/3—of course that leads you astray, because that formula only means anything for a discrete problem

    that makes me question whether it's even a good question. if we don't actually understand what a continuous average is, what are we to do? sibling says 'average speed is total distance over total time', but why is that and what does it mean? follows is my attempt at a better intuition (i don't know how good it is):

    what do we want an average (mean) to be? in general: an expected value. suppose a bag has a bunch of lottery tickets in it, each worth a different amount of money; if you take out a lottery ticket, you get the corresponding amount of money, and replace the ticket. the average (lottery tickets are discrete, so we know how to do this) of the ticket values is also the amount we expect to make when we draw out one ticket. it won't be perfect, but it will be a good estimate. now suppose we draw a lot of lottery tickets; the more we take, the better an estimate it will give of how much money we've made

    we'd like an average speed (whatever that means) to have a similar property. take any leg of the trip; it will cover some distance over some time, but suppose we only know one of those two. if we know only the distance of that leg, then the average speed should give us an estimate of the time it took us; and if we know only how long it took, then the average speed should give us an estimate of the distance. like with the lottery example, as we consider larger and larger legs (more time or distance), we should expect the estimate from the average speed to get better and better

    but with the lottery example, we can just keep on taking more and more lottery tickets forever, and expect the estimate to keep getting better and better (it's perfect 'at infinity'). in this case, the trip has a natural starting and stopping point; there's no leg of the trip that takes longer than 'the whole trip' or goes farther than 'the entire distance of the trip'. so we should expect the average speed to become perfect not at infinity, but at the whole trip—given the average speed, the overall time should give us a perfect estimate of the overall distance, and vice versa. but that also means the average speed is determined exactly by the overall time and the overall distance

    after that it's straightforward algebra (back to symbolpushing😔) to show that you'd have to make the trip back from B to A in no time at all to get your desired average, so it's impossible

    5 votes
  9. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~society

  10. Comment on $1.22 billion Mega Millions jackpot won in California in ~finance

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    the annuity is better for people who are not financially educated or responsible; such people are likely to be very well represented among lottery winners i think it makes intuitive sense that you...

    the annuity is better for people who are not financially educated or responsible; such people are likely to be very well represented among lottery winners

    i think it makes intuitive sense that you could make more money from the lump sum; the annuity essentially relies on the government to manage your money for you, and even something like the s&p500 seems to be too risky for the government (but it's almost certainly not too risky for you)

    2 votes
  11. Comment on Canada Post strike update: Postal employees back to work in ~life

    Moonchild
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    the postal union says:

    the postal union says:

    CUPW will still challenge the constitutionality and the current application of section 107 by the Minister of Labour. Our challenges will be heard by the CIRB on January 13 and 14, 2025.

    4 votes
  12. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    to clarify—by continuous/discontinuous i mean the distributions, not the actual ranges. so it's not relevant that a length measurement could be any real number (if we assume that's actually true)

    to clarify—by continuous/discontinuous i mean the distributions, not the actual ranges. so it's not relevant that a length measurement could be any real number (if we assume that's actually true)

    1 vote
  13. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    there is uncertainty to spatial measurements though. and supposing there weren't, there would be particular lengths with a nonzero probability of being measured, indicating discontinuity. (time...

    there is uncertainty to spatial measurements though. and supposing there weren't, there would be particular lengths with a nonzero probability of being measured, indicating discontinuity. (time measurements/distributions tend to be discretised but with uncertainty too; that also suffices)

    4 votes
  14. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    banker's rounding means round to nearest, and if you have a tie, then you round to the nearest even number. so 1.49 -> 1; 1.5 -> 2; 2.5 -> 2; 3.5 -> 4. so the difference between round to nearest...

    banker's rounding means round to nearest, and if you have a tie, then you round to the nearest even number. so 1.49 -> 1; 1.5 -> 2; 2.5 -> 2; 3.5 -> 4. so the difference between round to nearest (with unspecified tiebreaker) and banker's rounding only matters if you've been on tildes for exactly x.5 years, but it is impossible for anything in the real world to be exactly x.5 years, so there's no need to specify how ties should be broken, so specifying it is redundant

    5 votes
  15. Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes

    Moonchild
    Link
    buh—time is continuous so the tie cases have zero measure! i protest this redundancy!

    Use banker’s rounding to the nearest whole number

    buh—time is continuous so the tie cases have zero measure! i protest this redundancy!

    5 votes
  16. Comment on What’s your “I didn’t know I needed that” item? in ~life

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    i would have assumed that if you didn't have a kettle you'd just use a pot?

    i would have assumed that if you didn't have a kettle you'd just use a pot?

    2 votes
  17. Comment on Canadian minister says Donald Trump was joking when he said Canada could become the 51st state in ~society

    Moonchild
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    the framing here is kinda icky but mostly whatever—the basic facts about the canada-us vs mexico-us border are true, and i can't really imagine a different tack that would produce a globally...

    the framing here is kinda icky but mostly whatever—the basic facts about the canada-us vs mexico-us border are true, and i can't really imagine a different tack that would produce a globally better outcome; this has a moderate chance of improving things moderately for canadians. but then ...

    Canadian officials have said there are plans to put more helicopters, drones and law enforcement officers at the border.

    why... i do hope this is just bluster

    2 votes
  18. Comment on What really happened after California raised its minimum wage to $20 for fast food workers in ~society

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    queueing theory strikes again!

    queueing theory strikes again!

    2 votes
  19. Comment on Civil cases against Donald Trump for trying to interfere with the 2020 US election can continue while he is president - analysis in ~society

    Moonchild
    Link
    i thought this might perhaps have been an analysis written by 161 authors and was excited to see that, but no; only two—scraper bug. (such high author counts are common in like physics and ai, and...

    i thought this might perhaps have been an analysis written by 161 authors and was excited to see that, but no; only two—scraper bug. (such high author counts are common in like physics and ai, and prospectively in mathematics, but i have no idea how that would work in law)

    2 votes
  20. Comment on The sham legacy of Richard Feynman in ~science

    Moonchild
    Link Parent
    it's not just an argument. it's a story—all arguments are stories; and some stories take 3 hours to tell

    it's not just an argument. it's a story—all arguments are stories; and some stories take 3 hours to tell

    8 votes