Comments by "David Butler" (@davidbutler378) on "Lex Fridman" channel.

  1. With the heroes you've mentioned: choose some large number to multiply the number of heroes you admire and realize that's the number of heroes globally that we have. Choked, in most cases, by the elite holding the reigns of power.
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  2. The "all men are created equal" was about elites not a government's constituency. If the founders had literally believed the statement, women and black man would have the vote during Washington's presidency.
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  3. If like Brian Greene one is disposed to believe that only Science can determine whether something is true or not then your logic is based on emptiness. Denying the human ability to transcend is choosing Brian Greene's world of emptiness. There is more to being alive than Science.
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  4. A common Twitter tweet vitality is from animal lovers. Frankly, less than 5 cute pooches/kitties a day is good.
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  5. Cynics are cowards.
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  6. The nodes in Transformer sound a lot like Wolfram's atoms of space. Maybe designing Transformer points to how to start a standard model of Space/Time.
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  7. Individuals in this debate are privileged individuals not the unwashed. Individuals at the top of hierarchies. Those like myself don't count in this debate -- I'm not privileged. I only count in direct democracy which has never existed. Alex, try ties with color and patterns. David Butler
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  8. I suspect the just minted coder does a lot of hard coding whereas a more experienced coder juggles pieces of code in an app labyrinth of code design. How does that apply to language designers?
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  9. Love Steve Wolfram ideas.
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  10. Your desire to read books parallels my recent desire to consume podcasts from various sources which I have effectively exhausted. Hard bound texts often have only a forest of words to consume. Videos mix verbal/textual content with images and physical gestures of individuals tying elements of the video together. In my student days, there was text, unimaginative sketches and instructors almost devoid of personality. Never impressed by comics so science fiction was my refuge. Books, at that time, were almost completely text; an aspect of books I greatly disliked because I lacked the life experience to imagine what the book described.
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  11. Boy, do I dislike the reductionist mentality: it's a horse with blinders to keep it on the straight-and-narrow.
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  12. Is dimension emergent from Wolfram's unstructured space and is String theory's many dimensions just an emergent property of Wolfram's unstructured space? That is, will String theory be 'stuck' until someone can explain Wolfram's unstructured space can inflate? David Butler
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  13. The Bell curve book and Jensen paper controversy was not about g factor or IQ score. It was about perception of individual and common group capacity as human beings. Whenever there is a hierarchical judgement based on limited measures of capacity there is going to be a pushback. Measuring just intelligence without including other capacities invites pushback. A smarter approach to the Bell Curve chapter 10 would have been in placing IQ score in context with capacities separate from IQ. Then any racist claims would have sounded hollow. One capacity different from IQ is stamina.
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  14. I'm looking forward to seeing you as an academic vs Science podcaster. Neil deGrasse Tyson has my Yahoo email address - I don't do Gmail. I'd like you consider (as you do with that new U) advising in a new area. I'm considering Tyson in the Writer role in my current proposal to OECD. Tyson is flassy and I think you could keep him on track: Early days with contact with Tyson. David Butler
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  15. Unlike the dinosaurs, assuming the NASA rocket fails, the human race will rebound.
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  16. Orwell was wrong because, although a human being can be broken temporarily, spirit can not be broken. The source of spirit is before birth and continues beyond death and creates all that is admired in human beings. Even atheists know that.
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  17. Be careful about wanting to be a (drone) robot: longer existence is not necessarily good. Maybe dying is just a transition: can't say yes/no from personal experience - a gut instinct says there is a transition worth waiting for.
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  18. A society with warriors is really a state with some of it's population under command of that state. For example, the National Guard who can be used to help fight fires or fight in Iraq. Nothing wrong with having warriors but it matters what role they undertake. Are elected leaders or the entire adult population better decision makers on the number and roles of warriors? I lean toward the latter rather than.the former because our elected leaders seem to constantly make bad choices. However, just my opinion. David Butler
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  19. About shifting G factor to the right: another book then movie about that.
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  20. As I've tweeted, what fascinates me is the 8 versions of human that became one. With limited extra-planetary transport currently available to us, the next few generations will have to content themselves with single cell life. I've always preferred Star Trek over NASA.
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  21. Michael, now that you are self publisher, you may wish to emulate Medium before they became literature for a fee. That is, Open Source publisher ... say with ads.
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  22. There was a book then a movie which answers the question of whether to take the dumb/smart pill. It concerned a guy and the mouse that died. David Butler
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  23. I see the connection between dreams and creativity but I ignore the current dream especially if it's stressful because I want to see what the next dream will be - don't care what kind of dream it is as long that it is different. David Butler
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  24. Personally, I think the "Am I in a simulation" question is something you grow out of. However, if this is just something you are charmed into doing then I recommend the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series. Skynet has it's charms.
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  25. Assembly math with the origin of cell Genesis. Is fascinating.
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  26. About shooter games: very popular with younger (much younger than you) Steam players - I despise those games ... Especially, the survival enemy versions. However, I created a guide to deal with enemies: 'Robot lore'. Even the things we like to do have drawbacks so we adapt in order to continue what we like doing. This podcast is interesting. David Butler
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  27. The only way, long term, to be an effective criticizer of government is to be invisible to that government and mobile.
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  28. It's sometimes, for me, interesting to watch chess demonstrations but watching chess gets old for me because 64 squares seems like a tiny space. I like a game space spanning billions of cubes with fast travel doors. Something beyond classical computers ability to calculate. A thought.
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  29. It's more likely that overall intellectual potential increases over time with more favorable social conditions in the same way living conditions improve with more favorable social conditions. Bad aspects of things tend to have more prominence than good things.
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  30. About people who think the world revolves around them: that is common for the very young even as they move into 'practice adulthood' (i.e. 20s). Those who never realize how important other people are: sacrifice receiving the joy meant for them are to be pitied. Psychopaths, however, require close scrutiny.
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  31. The guards watching the guards (Lost TV series) problem is only a problem if everything is controlled centrally. Widely dispersed, appropriate knowledge and emphasis on competence deals with the problem.
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  32. So, no witch and the wardrobe?
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  33. McBeast shut up and enjoy making the podcast and let Fridman be Fridman. He is doing his thing and you enjoy doing yours.
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  34. 40-60k for an electric car/truck is not an amount many of us can find in our wallets.
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  35. About the Higgs confirmation: I've seen comments that the Higgs field is a minor player in explaining mas. No explanation, however, of what else explains mass in those comments. Maybe the Nobel prize for the Higgs confirmation should have waited a bit longer. David Butler
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  36. Neanderthals, on average, had larger brain cases than modern day humans but modern day brains are more complexly structured than Neanderthal brains.
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  37. Your discussion mixing free will, Consciousness and determinism reminds me of the TV series Devs (i.e. deus as in God) in which the series principals argued about free will and determinism. Ultimately, choices were made based on individual states-of-mind. The final series outcome suggested, to me, that free will and determinism are just opposite perspectives of the the same coin. The principals had just trapped themselves to making the outcome happen. Maybe it's better to focus beyond ourselves and let the outcome determine itself ... that is, do the best we can. Just a thought. David Butler
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  38. A better test than academia's favorite (i.e. don't have to think too hard) 'Turing test' is have a list of tasks that humans are good at and a list of what machines are good at and use items from both lists as part of the test. David Butler
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  39. This sounds a lot like Fermi's paradox - there is an online game that shows how negative that hypothesis is 'Grabby aliens doesn't sound fortunate for us earthers: Independence Day wouldn't likely go well for us. Good idea, however. David Butler
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  40. Mathematica or it's open source equivalents can make tough physics equations like Einstein's field equations easier to understand. Especially if you can view the ideas geometrically.
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  41. The recent switch in physics in putting Inflation before the Big Bang implies that Space is fundamental and Time, Matter and Energy are emergent. It, also, suggests Christ stuck out his pinky and the universe began. Also, means Multiverse theory is debunked. Luv to hear Steve Wolfram explain how I'm wrong. David Butler.
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  42. Wow, three stooges. Haven't given them any though in a very long time because American culture has evolved considerably since they did their movies. Never was impressed by the competitor: the marx bros.
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  43. Balaji may have found a path to true democracy without resorting to violence.
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  44. Wolfram, this structureless thing sounds like 'quantum type' space rather than 'macro perceived' space. So, since Inflation is supposed to happen before the down-graded Big Bang, how does this structureless space inflate prior to the Big Bang? David Nutler
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  45. Maybe a population majority of nations (i. e. list of nations whose sum of population exceeds 4 billion) have ethnicities connected to their source nation's populations. European, Asian and African ethnicities interested in a global not tribal welfare of each given ethnicity. Then internal horrors within a nation would be less palatable.
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  46. The answer to the dilemma that I posed in my last comment is a far better usage of our most fundament resource: human beings. The problem with the light bulb is current levels of centralization. A switch to more decentralization means we using ourselves in a different way.
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  47. The IQ controversy missed the point. The objective should tapping as many capacities of every individual as possible: maximize the advantages of a varied use of human capacities and minimize the disadvantages of specialized use of human capacities. A focus on a single capacity encourages narrow hierarchical specialization.
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  48. Good job, Michael, moving to electronic publishing. You may want to add reader feedback in the same vein as online games encourage feedback: of all varieties.
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  49. About race: current theory has 8 versions of human until the very recent millennia. The different human versions, to great extent, specialized in different Earth habitats and thus developed different survival skills. The 8 human versions merged to become current day Homo Sapiens. Race, effectively, emerged as the 8 human versions merged into one.
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  50. Konstantine's experience with school is vastly different than my native born experience with Boston schools. The intellectually gifted in the schools that I attended were very rare and useful for more challenged students on getting by scholastically. College was a shock to me because I discovered how far from special I was. I didn't learn about privilege until I was out of high school. That is when I decided how much I disliked privilege. David Butler
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