Only if there is no easy and well known work-around which in the case of WSJ articles isn't the case. Without being hostile, I suggest you try reading and understanding the FAQ rather than just quoting.
Are paywalls ok?
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds
AFIAK other than an IA link there are no 'work arounds'.
I have been in true 'life or death' situations (in other words, I'm alive because others were slower or less able to draw their weapons and fire).
In those sorts of situations time truly does slow down. I replay those times endlessly in my dreams/nightmares but either way it seemed like both at the time and in my mental replaying of the events that time slowed down to a crawl.
During endless sessions with various mental health professionals it seems that people involved in car crashes have the same slowing down of time. Based on what I've learnt, the time differential boils down to muscle memory (much like a batter hits a fast ball) that can and does initiate a response before the brain processes the event and that the mind catches up afterwards and is able to replay the events in a somewhat coherent way.
I once found a loved one in grave condition, without a pulse. What followed was like a surreal movie that has its frames out of order. I remember a thought of surprise at basically flinging furniture out of the way. Very much a passenger in my body at that point. I began CPR. Muscle memory is right. I was not really conscious throughout most of it.
One of the few things that resembles a thought during the entire episode is something like "you cannot think about this right now if you do you will collapse". A jumble of eternal instants. It dragged on. And on. And on. Eventually, very eventually, the paramedics arrived. I had another thing resembling a thought. I can collapse now. I can look away now. I have no basically no memory until the next day when I saw her, awake, in the hospital.
I know the day and time it happened. I checked the logs after. The paramedics took less than 5 minutes to arrive. But it was outside the normal linearity of my experience. It doesn't fit between the day before and the day after. For a while, the jumbled movie would play in my head, involuntarily. I think I was trying to make sense of it, fit it in, when it really doesn't fit. Experiences and memories I couldn't easily process because I didn't really experience them consciously when they occurred? Maybe something like that. It went away with time, and does not bother me these days, but descriptions of PTSD do make a lot more sense to me now.
I remember a thought of surprise at basically flinging furniture out of the way. Very much a passenger in my body at that point.
This is a known phenomenon called an amygdala hijack.
This emotional brain activity processes information milliseconds earlier than the rational brain, so in case of a match, the amygdala acts before any possible direction from the neocortex can be received.
> I was not really conscious throughout most of it.
I disagree. hear me out. I think you were just using a non-linguistic mode of consciousness.
We are far too accustomed to thinking and being (and imagining that we are) made out of words, or things that can be put into words. But I have chosen to believe that this is merely one amongst various others ways to think.
Language is a tool. A human being is not made out of words (from a language). Nonetheless, a lot of what we imagine ourselves to be is made out of words (from a language).
Let's not keep on making the mistake that what we are is something that can be *completely* put into words.
Know the feeling of when you know what you want to say, but haven't yet decided the words to say that in (especially in foreign languages)? When it's something that you just have to do/think and not speak, you can resist putting it into words.
For example if you're thinking "I should go to the store and buy Christmas presents", it isn't really necessary to verbalize this with your inner voice, if you're not about to say that to anyone.
Personally I find this hard to do for more than a few moments; the habit of verbalizing is too automatic. Maybe those of us who say they have no inner voice are really good at this.
I guess the AI version would be to operate in a latent state instead of always doing the forward pass all the way to words.
Interesting! I have the same experience with the one time a group of teens attempted to mug me. I can remember the sneer on the kid's face as he cocked back and readied to punch me, I was holding textbooks under my right arm, standing 3/4 of the way toward the street on a brick sidewalk at a particular intersection in DC.
I guess that the story is already quite explicit as it is: simply recalling all that amount of details is a clear indicator of how much the time slowed down for the gp during the event.
> In those sorts of situations time truly does slow down. I replay those times endlessly in my dreams/nightmares but either way it seemed like both at the time and in my mental replaying of the events that time slowed down to a crawl.
Interestingly, in at least one measurable, quantitative sense, time does not slow down, not even subjectively:
> Using a hand-held device to measure speed of visual perception, participants experienced free fall for 31 m before landing safely in a net. We found no evidence of increased temporal resolution, in apparent conflict with the fact that participants retrospectively estimated their own fall to last 36% longer than others' falls.
One subjective thing I discovered in a decade of playing ice hockey is that it seems like there are people where time slows down during high intensity situations. Sadly I'm not one of them.
Maybe I'm just describing something obvious related to adrenaline or fight vs. flight. But I wonder if some people are just physiologically better wired for these situations. Would that make them better at sports or warfighting?
It also reminds me of birds and other animals that seem to effortlessly perform incredible feats at high speed. But to their frame of reference and perception of time, maybe the world is just very very slow moving.
I'm reminded of something I once heard about a type of sea slug that follows another slug's trail and eventually overtakes and eats it. The whole thing happens at slug-speed but you can picture from the perspective of the slugs that they are in a high-speed life-or-death race
I experience what is known as 'Survivors Guilt' (in other words I wonder those exact same thoughts as you do except from the other side of lens with respect to the those that were 'able to / vs. not able to lens').
Those that can - survived, those that couldn't/didn't - died.
In terms of natural selection (for want of a better term) it often leaves me puzzling that very same thought late at night sometimes before I'm brought back to reality by the shrinks that relate it back to those that made the major league vs. those that faded into obscurity.
[Edit]: Sorry, the above comment makes war and death seem like a game of baseball which it very much isn't and trivializes the needless suffering of entire populations on behalf of the vagrancies of politicians across the globe.
I wonder this about Messi. Does he just have better perception of his own body as well as another sense of where the competition is in the field and how best to adapt his play in light of their changes.
Can he perceive time better which is why he's so good at soccer.
The experience of time has as much to do with focus and your capacity to take in information at a given moment. With sports, it is quite possible to play for many years and never gain enough skill to truly play well. When I have had a time slowdown experience, it has often come after a change of approach in which some aspect of the game that previously had been hidden to me is suddenly revealed. I'll never forget the time that I saw two defenders in front of me jumping up for a rebound and I was able to simultaneously see them and the trajectory of the ball and realize that they had jumped in the wrong direction and that I could easily swoop in and claim an easy offensive rebound that I wasn't even planning to go for. It was truly like bullet time in the matrix, but it was also a completely mundane event in a random pickup game with rather mediocre players (including me).
At the absolute highest level, the game plays you as much as you play it. I have the most experience with basketball, but I am certain what I'm going to say applies to other sports, including but not limited to soccer.
With a rhythmic sport like basketball, you can gain a huge advantage over most amateur players by simply learning to play with rhythm. If you can dribble rhythmically, then you free your mind up to focus on the game situation rather than the mechanics of dribbling. It becomes like improvising music. At your rhythm, the game has a pulse. In between beats of the pulse, aka your dribbles, you can analyze the situation and adapt your approach depending on the position of your teammates and the opposition. If your opponents are not playing in rhythm, then they are stagnant and it should be easy to get by them. Even if they are playing in rhythm, if you can play at a faster pace than they are, time effectively slows down for you relative to them because you can make more changes of direction than they can in a given unit of time. When you are at your best, you are simultaneously aggressive and completely passive. You are dictating the terms of engagement, but accepting whatever the game gives you, knowing that you will always have a good option (provided you have developed sufficient skills, which does take practice). This is what I mean when I say the game plays you. There is a reason why we describe great athletes as unconscious and they report having out of body experiences.
Just because you have never experienced this doesn't mean that you never will. I played basketball for more than 20 years before I had the above time slowdown experience. It only came after I had been focusing on rhythm while learning a musical instrument.
My experience with an attempted carjacking is like this. Even now there’s the crystal clear memory an ultra slow tap pause tap of a pistol on the window and the accomplices beelining to the passenger door.
Intellectually I know that it all went down in a few seconds but I have no access to a normal speed memory of the event. Only tapppppp delay taaaappp (and then flooring it and nimbly pivoting between accomplice one and two).
Last spring a moose charged me out of nowhere, then followed me through the woods, off trail and in deep snow, and charged me again. Each time I fell on my face in the deep snow and had to pick myself up and try to get behind cover. In my memory, I was moving excruciatingly slow. In reality I think I was moving as fast as I've ever moved in my life. It was almost like I was standing outside myself, observing and telling myself what to do.
When my car got T-boned at 60mph and rolled over two times I definitely experienced this slowing of time. I recalled the random factoid that people instinctively stiffen up during car accidents and tend to break their legs so I grabbed tightly to the steering wheel and allowed the rest of my body to go completely limp. Despite being over in a matter of seconds it felt as though I had ample time to analyze the situation and react. Despite not having a seatbelt on at the time I emerged with barely a scratch. The driver of the other car, which was going much slower, got out with a broken arm.
Since then people have told me that I only experience this slowed time in my memories and in reality there's no way I was reacting to the moment, but I'm not sure I completely believe them. It definitely felt like my brain was working in double-time, noticing and processing details that I'd never notice in normal situations.
I still clearly remember, 40 years ago(!), waiting to turn left across oncoming traffic, seeing in my rear view mirror the car behind me being rear-ended, and, looking forward, deciding I could just make a quick left turn. I particularly remember seeing what looked like plastic from the tail light flying away from that car.
Yay teenaged adrenal gland! I made the turn and immediately pulled over. I was shaking.
The only other times I knew my life was at risk it was slow and embarrassing. Nothing like NickRandom's experience.
This mental dilation of time makes physical torture worse than murder. The pain turns sideways to time, occupying an infinitude of paralyzed desperation.
When people experience this I wonder if time really does slow down relative to your decision making -- you're able to make more decisions in the same amount of time or make a decision earlier -- or if you just perceive time to have been slower when you experience or recall it, perhaps because more or stronger memories are being created during that time.
Adrenalin experience have that effect. I had same time slow up in sports where I was in very little real danger, but in stress and subjective fear (white water kayaking and falling while climbing). And yes, also car crash.
I think there's also some effect if the flood of adrenaline and other chemicals causes your body and brain to essentially accelerate. Like a slowmo camera. Time didn't slow down, but you're acting and recording at a higher framerate for lack of a better analogy. So the recording (memory) feels like time slowed down.
While I applaud the release of the information, the sudden and massive release of meaningless drivel likely hides a few smoking guns amongst the +13k files.
It will take a dedicated person many years to go through all of the files and follow / research all of the mentions within mentions only to come up against the wall of [redacted] and then to file freedom of information requests that may or may not ever succeed and by that time the impact will be so diluted that we may never know the full truth of what happened on that day.
The whole time there remains the question about how many shots were fired and from where the ultimate answer to the question will remain shrouded in mystery. After all this time there is no valid reason to withold any documents and yet, many still are due to ‘National Security’ considerations.
What possible national security issues remain so many years afterwards?
My prediction: The Rich will continue to get richer and corporate profits will continue to skyrocket while the poor continue to get screwed over because the global economy is in recession while in fact the global elite continue to profit at the expense of the common man.
Ok, not much insight there (aka ‘same as it ever was’) but I am always fascinated about how easily human behaviour can be moulded, moderated and distracted simply by reducing the amount of crumbs left on the table to create infighting and disharmony instead of focusing attention on where the money is going and to who.
I mean, I get it - When the choice is between paying the bills and keeping a roof over your head or fighting for social justice and equality then the choice (on an individual level) is an easy one but I'm always disappointed that the populace are so easily distracted and divided by the creation of artificial scarcity and that they/we/us continue to fall for it every single time.
I don't know. When I was younger and worked menial jobs and lived in crappy places it was pretty easy for me to surf through two recessions by just adapting to where I was (true, I did live in a car for two months in 2008). Now I have more wealth, but also more bills. If my wife loses her job or I lose too many clients we will have a problem. I'm still better off than those guys in suits flinging themselves from the top of an office building.
And of the twice (now thrice) that it happened to yourself? Who profited? Was it yourself?
To quote your reply "If my wife loses her job or I lose too many clients we will have a problem." Ask yourself this - Cui bono? ("to whom is it a benefit?")
(I presume the 'guys flinging themselves from buildings’ refers to the Black Friday 1869 Stock Market crash?) [From Wikipedia] The crash was a consequence of an attempt by financier Jay Gould and railway magnate James Fisk to corner the gold market and drive up the price.
Perhaps it was a reference to the 1929 Wall Street Crash? If so perhaps a quote would help - "How can a very serious Stock Exchange collapse produce a serious setback to industry when industrial production is for the most part in a healthy and balanced condition?"
Consider both points and wonder whether or not the people like yourself are being played as pawns.
[Edit to update]: When I refer to the global elite I don't mean any particular race or religion because at the end of the day the only true global religion at this point in human history is who has the biggest bank balance. Consider this - Elon Musk's top position has now been displaced by the CEO of LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton). In every single recession the profits from luxury goods has increased. Ask yourself why.
From my laymen's perspective it seems most people lose out during a recession, across the socioeconomic spectrum. I think those who do manage to profit, despite what some of them may tell you, simply got lucky.
For what it's worth, I don't think this repeated boom/bust cycle is a good way to run the economy, but I am not convinced it's intentionally malicious. Nor am I convinced that concentrated wealth at rest really has much of an impact on anything at all (what really matters is the flow of cash, and this is where recessions can retard the arc of progress).
For all of its faults the economic system we find ourselves in actually has delivered on its promise of "growing the pie" which I suspect is why we continue to choose it. Even while living in a car I was able to obtain extremely cheap access to warm showers and a refrigerator--amenities that would be far out of reach of the homeless just 100 years ago.
It makes sense that Arnault has eclipsed Musk, luxury goods have a ridiculous profit margin and Elon has been wasting his wealth as of late.
There have always been powerful elites, but anyone who believes the elites possess more power over the proletariat now than in the past has not studied much history.
Furthermore the pool of elites, themselves, are more diversified and more likely to change from generation to generation than at any other time recorded.
So is it true that some with concentrated wealth may find it easier to weather a downturn than others without? Absolutely. Is it true that redistributing this wealth arbitrarily would systemically improve our society? Perhaps, but of this I am less sure.
We are still just scratching the surface of the potential global coordination modern communications technology can allow, I hope with time we can escape this local optimum we find ourselves in. Until then I see no point breathlessly railing against a system that while flawed is not without some merits and is assuredly keeping us at least pointed in the correct direction.
But I hadn't until that documentary. Summary of what I got out of it: once TV arrived, it was inevitable that someone figured out the best ways to influence people's opinions with that medium.
i.e. everything people are complaining about with social media is not new. Once TV was invented, there was way to influence elections more effectively, etc.
It was very interesting to see who were the analogs of "Elon/Trump/Kanye" in the 50's. i.e. how politicians, businessmen, and entertainers all vied for attention and control over ideas. And paid for it handsomely!
I guess the main idea is how money can be converted directly and deterministically into the opinions of the masses.
I'm sure this is all old hat to people who study media, but ironically the current reflection about social media seems mostly ignorant of this, i.e. ahistorical. I had to learn this from a 20-year-old documentary!
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(2) This is kind of dark, but it was clear through watching some of Kanye's unhinged interviews that he thinks of population influence as sort of an engineering feat. He admires objective metrics, aligned interests, power, etc.
He is amoral about it -- if trolling works, it works. It doesn't matter what it means.
He would love Bernays, or he probably knows 1000x more about him and his methods than any of us do.
He constantly talks about Elon and Trump because he admires how they control populations -- he says this explicitly. And Kanye is successful at it himself, so this is not an empty opinion. It's an interesting case of the mentally ill being more in touch with reality along one specific dimension than "normal people".
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(3) "It's not greed that drives the world, but envy" -- Charlie Munger
So to me those are all basically the same idea, and a bit depressing ...
And it works on me too. Because even if you don't have social media accounts or "keep up with the news" (I've been failing at this lately), I still think you're the "average of the 5 or 10 people closest to you". And those 5 or 10 people are influenced by these memes / media, etc. It does feel like a trap
It is not an accident that someone paid $44 B for Twitter ... Control over the zeitgeist is simply valuable.
I had a great middle school teacher who would always get us to talk about politics, around the Bush 92 era. She told us about this election being the one where the better looking guy won, because TV existed.
But it sounds like it was mostly an "accident" on both sides, or at least Nixon's, due to not understanding the new medium.
What Bernays did was more sophisticated IMO -- it was intentional "hacking" of public opinion, fueled by money. This includes helping to overthrow a democratically elected government in Guatemala (which BTW people told me about decades ago, but I failed to pay enough attention to)
I recently watched a documentary on this incident (but can't find it now) but here are some further links (with slightly more information that includes the various 'he-said-she-said' nuances).
I don't want to be 'that guy' buuuutttt can you turn down the hostility a few notches please?
I understand that HN is a multicultural place and that people across the globe express their opinions in different ways however, a quick look through your previous comments before deciding to down-vote or flag made me take a look at your previous comment history before deciding whether to down-vote or flag it.
We are all new to HN at some stage which is why I've taken the time to write this in an attempt to be kind, gentle and guiding.
An added advantage of using that approach is that as you drop off cargo (or use up food, water and fuel supplies for multi-day passenger trips) you can siphon off some of those cells to power the propulsion motors and thereby increase your effective range.
Indeed. Or you could arrange for waste (water, effluent, waste food) to be dropped down over a pre-selected area for ground crews to pick up). In other words something like thick mylar bags dropped via drogue chutes as the journey progressed with replacement mylar bags (or similar) carried on board. Just pure spit-balling a day after your reply but a mid-point replenishing stage for food and water (for the passenger flights) would make sense especially for something like an 'Across America' flights across the US diagonal from the Atlantic North-East side to Pacific South West side (eg depart Boston destination San Diego or New York to Los Angeles).
North to South because the air would go from colder to warmer rather than from warm air to colder air if done in the opposite direction and the reasons for a diagonal course is because it would cover a lot more 'interesting sights to see from the air' for a multi-day 'air cruise' type cruise (best way to explain that is a literal air-cruise as in a sea-cruise).
For a passenger trip it would have to be an extremely HNV costing (passenger cost/ticket price paid * weight able to be carried) but do-able for say 4 - 7 passengers but Cargo would be the way to go for the bread-and-butter stuff because A) The weights and destinations are pre-known and optimised and B) Going on a diagonal route would beat road and rail delivery speeds and provide some financing to the back-haul of getting the (now empty) air-ships back to the departure point.
[Edit To Update]: Ughh! you can tell I'm not a pilot because cold air is better than hot air in terms of aircraft lifting capacities so South to North would be better and maybe a change of route from Miami to Seattle would also work out ok in terms of shipping ports that intersect with cruise ship ports.
[Double Edit, Sorry]: On second thoughts, North to South for passengers and South To North for cargo is better because cargo is low margin so would need the greater lifting capacity. Or not.... Like I said, pure spit-balling!
I was interested to read that there was a patent on 'non-round Compact Disks' but when you go to the actual patent application (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5844757) the patent states "...The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for reading and writing information on a stand alone magnetic card or disk typically adapted for use in standard three and one-half inch computer floppy disk drives." Note: I highlighted the magnetic part since Compact Disks are optical rather than magnetic. Not a patent lawyer but I'ld take my chances on not paying any royalty fees.
I guess that's why these days patents tend to be so broad and use language like "any and all means (present and future) of doing thing 'X' "
Normally it is best to email Dan to ask something like this but based on the comments in the x2944 post many considered it click-bait (either the article or the headline).
Considering that nobody vouched for it - maybe it is, maybe it isn't (I don't have domain knowledge sufficient to judge if it is or isn't).
Did none of the comments in the original submission not show why (at least some) thought it to be click-baity at the time of you posting this 'Ask HN'? That's not snark btw am just confused about your reasons/motivations were in posting this Ask HN.
Do you feel it an important enough breakthrough that it needs/deserves HN's input and or perusal? If so, again, email DanG and ask for it to be put into the 'second chance pool'.
Again, HTH but bear in mind that my words are just random guesses from some random internet forum user and are worth exactly double what you paid for 'em!
[Edit to Update:] I took a quick look at the original submission and although as said I'm not a domain expert but any news release that links back to
Data availability
The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
And
Code availability
The code that generated the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Makes it tough to validate the claims made especially when the original paper is behind a paywall. Maybe an internet archive link in the comments section would help so that others can read the full paper rather than just the abstract?
Thanks for the link. There are some real gems in there and also made for an interesting read as a non-cryptonite (in other words I have no dog in the fight, skin in the game etc).
"He only gave himself a 20 percent chance of success, but, in his mind, SBF needed extreme risk to maximize the expected value of his lifetime earnings—and, therefore, the good his earn-to-give strategy could do. The fact that he was, by his own lights, overwhelmingly likely to fail was beside the point."
I guess that the whole mess boils down to a few old chestnuts - #1) Don't bet money you can't afford to lose (investors) and also that #2) you can only run at the red-line in terms of pharmacology for so long before it bites you in the arse.
I'd take the "effective altruism" and long-termism stuff with a pinch of salt. Just seems like a way for wealthy people to justify hanging onto or acquiring boatloads of assets and saying "ah but it's for the good of humanity that I alone possess all this wealth"
I mean "effective altruism" is really just "I know things better than you. See the amount of money I have made is proof, therefore I'll make the decisions on how to spend the money on shaping the future of those peons I took the money from instead of them, you know, doing it themselves".
Good old wish to tell others how to live in a cozy fuzzy warm blanket of dogood. See also politician, dictator, clergy etc.
> I mean "effective altruism" is really just "I know things better than you.
No. It's rather "the marginal utility of this money for me is much less than it is for others". As far as effective altruism is imposing anything on anyone else, it's more of "It's immoral to spend money on things you don't need. You could be saving people's lives instead."
Note I'm not part of the movement. I'm using money to buy free time for myself.
Your interpretation is quit a bit more charitable than mine (pun not intended). I don't disagree with it and I guess it is really hard to judge motivations.
For me, the quota for benefit of the doubt has been mostly used up.
It's a shame a few really visible assholes are ruining the public's perception of what is otherwise very reasonable.
The bit about making as much money money as you can is not at all what effective altruism is about, but as usual nuance is the first thing to go when social or traditional media reports on something.
Effective Altruism is not the same as Earning to Give, and I really wish that the distinction was being made more clear.
You can embrace EA to, for instance, make the most of the $1,000 you give to charity every year. There's nothing nefarious about asking "Where does this money do the most good?"
Earning to Give is a becoming a bit of a nightmare though as it's turning out that a lot of people embracing and pushing Earn to Give aren't giving as much as they're keeping, and aren't earning as much as they're stealing.
Are paywalls ok? It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds
AFIAK other than an IA link there are no 'work arounds'.