It's technically possible that early-life microbiome differences from bypassing the birth canal could influence it, but the fact that the association disappears when siblings who were delivered differently are compared is suggestive.
I don't feel it's particularly controversial to think that Javascript shouldn't be a requirement to use the internet. This is one step towards making that the case.
From a normal browser (don't ask me what I mean by that), with its normal/default user agent, Google search does not work without Javascript. I think at all, any more, but at some point I had got rate limited of sorts, after using the search without Javascript for a little, I got a prompt to enable it.
'Awful' seems awfully subjective there. Can Skype even reasonably be grouped with Teamspeak? If all you want to do is quickly chat with a group, is Discord not actually far more annoying, all else equal?
Windows isn't beating out Linux in the desktop space because Linux is awful. Network effects are much more significant.
Not that I'd call myself a buff, but I don't think my knowledge of larger numbers makes 10^24 a small number in any absolute sense. Cryptographic keyspaces are deliberately designed to be unfathomly large, whereas the number of stars in the universe is simply an observational fact. The number of stars really is huge in a human sense, as much as that's worth anything. There are more stars than there are grains of sand, etc.
The fact that we exist to discuss these odds means that whatever the probability distribution, at least one instance of life has occurred. Not only that, but life arose and eventually led to intelligence at our level - something that appears to be rare even on our own planet, but achieved relatively quickly all things concerned (only a few hundred million years).
While the anthropic principle guarantees that we observe intelligence as we're defining it (since we include ourselves), I agree that doesn’t mean intelligence is inevitable or common. A more likely modelling in my opinion is that worlds of microbial life are abundant, worlds with complex multicellular life is rarer, and intelligent civilizations are rarer still. Given the distribution of intelligence levels on Earth, it seems unlikely that we simply passed every constraint while no other planet gets close. Also, if we observed a planet with humans as they were 100,000 years ago, would we even consider them intelligent life? Probably just as intelligent as modern-day humans if raised the same, but literally nowhere near our technological level.
When scientists evaluate whether soil can support certaing thing, they don’t treat each factor (like pH, moisture, nutrients, microbial conditions) as independent hurdles that must be overcome one by one. Instead, they see that multiple factors interact in complex ways. A deficiency in one area (e.g., nutrient content) can be mitigated by another factor (e.g., microbial activity enhancing nutrient cycling). If you extend this to conditions in which life might it arise, it suggests to me that planetary habitability may be more like a network of contributing conditions rather than a checklist -- actually much more difficult to caclulate?
Also, mostly as an aside, we also have the advantage of knowing that life and then intelligence arose relatively quickly once conditions stabilized - only a few hundred million years. n=1 but I think this is a promising indication on where any variables might lie.
I think you're broadly correct, although it's perhaps less applicable to games designed to hook you indefinitely.
I often think about film reviewers, and how the sheer volume of film they've watched means that their experiences are likely further removed from an average person's potential experience, than basically anyone else.
Much like how if you're an average person who doesn't really go to magic shows, the opinion of another random person on a magic show is probably going to be more appropriate for you than that of Penn and Teller, who've seen it all before.
Growing up, a close relation of mine was an economist, and certainly not of the Austrian school. As a teenager, I was basically ganged up on by a teacher and some kids when inflation was brought up in class. They seemingly had no concept of monetary inflation, and I was forced to swallow that it referred solely to prices going up. I obviously questioned him on this incident, and he outlined that the "prices are going up" phenomenon is price/consumer inflation, and that increases to the money supply are monetary inflation.
Historically, monetary inflation and consumer inflation coincided (Supply of X goes up -> X is devalued -> consumables are now charged at higher X), and so distinguishing between the two wasn't particularly pertinent.
The Roman Empire's observations that debasement of their coins resulted in the increase in prices, meant that the original conception of inflation really was as a monetary phenomenon, not just that prices are going up.
It's really only a relatively recent phenomenon, from the early 20th century, that you had dual definitions trying to occupy the same word, although the concept that price inflation could deviate from monetary inflation probably was starting to be understood with the establishment of price indices in the 19th century.
Keynes arguing that prices could rise independent of the monetary supply post-Great Depression increased the focus on consumer inflation. It was around the 1970s where inflation more commonly came to consumer inflation in academia. 'Stagflation' of the 1970s is probably the tipping point in usage.
To conclude: it's not really wrong to use inflation to refer to monetary inflation, as it's the original usage, but considering consumer inflation as 'inflation' is definitely more in fashion (especially in the US).
While it may be true that the Austrian school uses it like that, it's certainly not the case that they're the only ones. In fact, I suspect if you speak to anyone economically trained over a certain age, there would be a high chance of them defaulting to this.
Growing up, a close relation of mine was an economist, and certainly not of the Austrian school. As a teenager, I was basically ganged up on by a teacher and some kids when inflation was brought up in class. They seemingly had no concept of monetary inflation, and I was forced to swallow that it referred solely to prices going up. I obviously questioned him on this incident, and he outlined that the "prices are going up" phenomenon is price/consumer inflation, and that increases to the money supply are monetary inflation.
Historically, monetary inflation and consumer inflation coincided (Supply of X goes up -> X is devalued -> consumables are now charged at higher X), and so distinguishing between the two wasn't particularly pertinent.
The Roman Empire's observations that debasement of their coins resulted in the increase in prices, meant that the original conception of inflation really was as a monetary phenomenon, not just that prices are going up.
It's really only a relatively recent phenomenon, from the early 20th century, that you had dual definitions trying to occupy the same word, although the concept that price inflation could deviate from monetary inflation probably was starting to be understood with the establishment of price indices in the 19th century.
Keynes arguing that prices could rise independent of the monetary supply post-Great Depression increased the focus on consumer inflation. It was around the 1970s where inflation more commonly came to consumer inflation in academia. 'Stagflation' of the 1970s is probably the tipping point in usage.
To conclude: it's not really wrong to use inflation to refer to monetary inflation, as it's the original usage, but considering consumer inflation as 'inflation' is definitely more in fashion (especially in the US).
Conversely, I feel like Lost is massively in the opposite category. They did get their massive up-front commitment for 6 seasons while in season 2. The character and thematic arcs are probably some of the best I've seen in TV, while handling a massive ensemble cast.
The Wire was definitely a masterclass in this, as each season has dangling threads that seem so obviously picked up and driven in subsequent seasons, but nothing that's left dangling to an extent you're disappointed.
That said, it's also aided by primarily being a story about characters rather than plot.
I always thought Lost got a bad rap for that. It was actually a story about characters, but its fandom thought it was very much about plot. Hence the hate for the finale (which I thought was wonderful)
Lost SHOULD have been the opposite, but it instead just piled on new mysteries that were never answered except ‘Dallas’ Who Shot JR style- i.e. it’s just a dream (or in this case purgatory.)
I'm pretty sure it was Bobby Ewing who turned out not to be dead at the end of the season, whereas JR was really shot (just not killed). However my memories of 1980s soaps are somewhat hazy, like most people here I was more interested in things like Z80/6502 assembly code than big-haired women catfighting in ludicrous shoulder pads [0].
However, genuine thanks for the Lost finale spoiler, I never wanted to watch beyond season 2 anyway as it already became rather tedious.
Referring to the 'Who Shot JR' part was a mixup on my part- was pretty young at the time and not actively watching weekly so I forgot which was which...
Most companies certainly won't be using "commercial grade internet" in the way that term is usually used. That would usually be reserved for large enterprises, which really only covers a small part of the workforce in practice.
Many businesses don't bother even subscribing to a business package, because something like a static IP is unnecessary for them.
Further, the point regarding VPNs still stands -- think of the chaos it would cause for many people working from home (on residential connections). And that's just one example.
I don't find it plausible for an ISP to block this.
Actually, there is "commercial grade internet" at least in my country. The main difference is that it is several times more expensive, and in the office buildings the owner doesn't allow ISPs with cheaper "residential" plans.
Business, yes, that was the word I was looking for, thanks! So the ISP could just limit the residential packages, limit the business packages to actual businesses, and that's all.
"However, the association did not persist when using sibling controls, implying that this association is due to familial confounding by genetic and/or environmental factors." - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...