This isn't 30 second latency we're talking about. When mars is furthest from earth, best case latency is a whopping 42 minutes. That means after you click a link, the very best case is that there are 42 minutes before you get a reply.

...And why does there need to be an NRA and not a NRPGA? Why did God give us the right to own rifles but did not give us the right to own rocket propelled grenades? After all, if you outlaw RPGs, only outlaws will have RPGs. And what about the NICBMA? To remind us that intercontinental ballistic missiles don't kill people, people kill people!

It's time to admit that your original statement was stupid.

Most of the U.S. population have no vote for most of the government. For example, only people in the districts of the two congresspeople mentioned in TFA could vote for them. The rest don't get a vote. These two could be literally brain dead and yet 98% of the population would have had no say in whether they got elected or not.

Also natural selection doesn't work the way you think it does. Government != parents.

Your comment is almost unintelligible. The irony of your declaration that the entire U.S. are idiots to be culled by natural selection is overwhelming.

...or work near them, or shop near them, or watch movies, or fly on planes, or ride trains. Where exactly is this place devoid of all idiots that you speak of?

That's not how vaccination works. No vaccination provides 100% immunity to 100% of recipients. Instead it relies on getting enough people vaccinated to make it difficult for the pathogen to find fertile ground. This is known as "herd immunity". If large swaths idiots refuse vaccination, that in turn puts the non-idiots at risk.

You are correct and a lot of people miss this fact, thinking they are saving themselves money by doing their own mechanic work, but this was not the point I was making.

Learning new concepts, such as the intracacies of how economies work prove to be extremely useful in cases well beyond economics. This is not peculiar to economics either but is true of all things where you must learn to think in a new and abstract way.

I know a lot about how quantum mechanic works. I'll never put this knowledge to direct work. But the concepts learned have proved useful anyway. I will never be an evolutionary biologist either, but understanding concepts which allow irreducibly complex things are built by evolution have proved to be useful conceptual tools.

This was the point I was trying to make. There's an indirect benefit to understanding new concepts.

It appears to me that he is presenting two scenarios: 1. You are not an angel investor and what you do doesn't net you money or, 2. your a successful angel investor but your scheme only works because investing works.

I don't think he misunderstands financial markets at all. This looks like a reading comprehension fail to me.

And you could have earned even more than that in the time it took you to learn all the stuff that allows you to make $100 in that amount of time.

I could have made thousands of dollars digging ditches in the time it took me to learn everything that I needed to know in order to make $100/hr, but that wouldn't have made it worth while in the long run.

I also could have made thousands of dollars in the time it took me to read some philosophy books that never netted me any money directly, but that wouldn't have made it worth it either.

Sometimes it is just worth it to learn a new concept or think in a way you hadn't thought before.

I hear this a lot from shoddy engineers (my field, but equally true in other fields) who can't be bothered to learn anything new unless it's on the company's dime because their time is somehow worth too much to take the time to learn more.

This pervasive attitude that only what makes you the most money in the here-and-now is all that's worth doing is a real problem.

Is it NASA that is crying wolf? TFS suggests only "rumors" of "major findings" and that NASA was downplaying those expectations.

I think you may find that the sentiment expressed by your hypothetical Indian in #2 is what eventually leads to the sentiment of your hypothetical American in #3.

Being willing to work overtime forces everyone to be willing to work overtime. Those who pressure you to do it pretend that it shows that you are "not lazy" and "dedicated" and therefore preferred. But really it means you are "more exploitable" and have a low opinion of your own worth.

In addition to this, if you work past closing time, you may imagine that upper management sees you as dedicated. In reality this is seen as an attempt to simply compensate for a lack of the skill necessary to actually complete by closing time.

Quitting at quitting time is not laziness, it's simply a refusal to compete in the race to the bottom.

It is important to distinguish between punishment for the sake of 1) retribution, 2) deterrent and 3) protection of others. A person's state of mind and health of mind definitely matter for the first one. There is no need to seek retribution on an insane person's actions, while it may still be wise to punish as a deterrent or at least incarcerate in order to protect others.

Also, the cause of a person's state of mind also can matter in some cases for 2 and 3. It is certainly possible that a "tumor" did it, for example, which means that when the tumor is excised, there is really no cause to keep punishing yet another victim of the tumor.

Yes to the third one.

No. As soon as we formed fixed civilizations, we changed what nature selects for.

This statement fails to distinguish between intelligence and knowledge. If the whole world were as intelligent as the most intelligent person ever we still couldn't put a robot on Mars without tapping into knowledge which we've obtained over centuries (including what we got from ancient Athenians).

This statement also fails to distinguish between average intelligence and extraordinary intelligence. The fraction of people today able to assemble a robot is embarrassingly tiny, let alone put one on another planet.

Lesson 1: blame the victim.