Drug use exists in other countries.

The use of drugs is not exactly confined in its impact to the immediate use, which is the theory behind why it was a crime in the first place. But the other bad effects can be made illegal separately. A lot of them already are, in the form of some variation of practising pharmacy without a licence. And if a huge pharmaceutical company creates a drug that has virtually no value other than to create addictions (and deducts all the research and marketing expenses on its taxes), then someone should be going to jail.

You can still say drugs are bad, which they are in many cases, but 'bad' does not necessarily mean something the criminal justice system should address. On top of which, a lot of the time it comes down to tastes in substance abuse. Alcohol is bad for all the same reasons, and compared to some drugs is worse.

Well, of course maths, programming, and natural languages are different, but all of them involve a symbolic language that models something and expresses that model. Kun seems to be focusing just on the differing degrees of precision these symbolic languages employ.

People tend to think of natural language as only a medium of communication, but it is also the way the human mind models whatever it perceives or imagines, and despite the fact we do that mostly instinctively, it is by far the hardest thing about language.

Programming is not math, it is language - a programming language is a language which defines, describes, and expresses an algorithm. Useful programs are frequently express something mathematical, but that is a function of the application, not programming itself.

Maths is just a whole lot of symbolic language. Learning maths is language learning, but it is also learning to describe things with precision and clarity and algorithmically. Some natural language learning is like that (e.g. advanced Latin grammar) and some is not (e.g. introductory conversational courses).

I suggest beta testing on politicians.

Does 'zap' mean stopping them? Maybe they're actually trying to help Rachel.

Evolution will favour adaptation. In some cases, there may only be one straighforward path to an adaptive solution, but there will sometimes be surprises.

Type 2 diabetes is 90% (or so) self-inflicted. Do you deny a remedy to the 10% innocent victims because of the weakness of character of the 90%?

I have to applaud Rogers for doing the right thing.

This may even be a first for them, seeing as they are one of the most evil corporations ever created.

It sounds like highly subjective inferences are unreliable and indistinguishable from background randomness.

Which has nothing to do with the placebo effect.

Those aren't "prejudices and preconceptions" any more.

Maybe they're just your prejudices and preconceptions.

When there's a statistically significant imbalance between the sexes, sometimes it's because of discrimination, and sometimes it's because there are actual statistically significant difference physical and psychological difference between men and women,.

They could distinguish between the two, of course, but that would require thinking.

Well, once the current dark age of bloated web pages with delusions of grandeur masquerading as 'apps' is over, the renaissance can start, and then we'll talk about it ending.

The problem is that the 'masses' are not the same as the original investors.

Society needs the 'masses' to get some of the wealth *despite* not having actually directly earned it themselves.

"A but B" includes "B". They didn't hide the "this is a little weird" part in any way.

Maybe people trained for something other than "what they love" because they knew right off the top that "what they love" wasn't a practical career choice. Lots of people would "love" to be professional musicians or athletes, but that's only a realistic possibility for a very select few.