00_hum's comments

this is so weird because astroturfing is real, extremely prevalent, and people have pointed put “russian bots” on HNany times without being flagged or deleted. such a weird tging that you cant point it out

ok let me know when the us government can build and manage roads and railways and i will consider it!

false. effective tax rate was lower not higher

if we tax the super rich then the list of extremely powerful people will be one item long: politicians. i think its telling that they are going after rich conservative people rather than break up blackrock et al.

yeah, thats what i just did

crazy how the same people who say fake pictures can cause enough harm to warrant jail time also are fine with dissemination of religious materials, violence porn on netflix, all of which is causing way more harm. by a mile. its not the harm, its just you picking and choosing.

this is a false question because neither option is valid. pedos are born pedos and they see and feel attraction to kids every single day. they are just as likely to act on these desires with or without cp

what a fool you are. take for example the markets. the markets in NK are a thriving fixture of everyday life. they are also completely illegal. people cross the border into china frequently. there is a huge underground in NK but people who only consume american propaganda only learn about the NK police. there is more to the picture.

i read that book a couple years ago. the broad strokes tend to be accurate but obviously people understand north korea as much as they understand italy based on Italian tropes.

its amazing how long the corruption festered before planes started falling out of the sky.

this literally a perfect example. your idea of NK is based mostly on reporting that is biased, propaganda, etc. and here you are mocking people who doubt any of that. lol. im not saying NK is secretly good but i think you would discover a lot of things that you didnt know. especially regarding how things got the way they are.

it looks like she resigned as soon as she got cancer. crazy that it ended in such a similar way to so many ordinary people

i thought it was right wingers who dealt in conspiracies?

no, this is a result of corruption. plain and simple.

i remember when the first demo of minecraft was released on a forum thread. the handfull of people who tried it didnt think very highly of it. one would imagine they all would have been excited that the most popular game in history had been released… they were too stupid to see what was right in front of them.

im sure the same standard would apply if some other huge political news broke… like biden resigning. oh wait

how is this on HN but the assassination attempt wasnt? at least not until much later

the way people understand mood and suicide is completely wrong. i have had very unusual bipolar disorder symptoms in the past and it allowed me to experience extreme depression one day and then good mood the next day. i have experienced depression that is so bad that it was difficult to physically move. i remember not being able to stand up from being seated in a chair. this is what i consider to be basically the far side of the spectrum of symptoms — the worst that depression can be. its absolutely deadly because at this point you are effectively experiencing unbearable pain as well as, for some reason, having trouble moving. it hurts to think about the future. every moment is agony. people in this situation kill themselves to end the pain most of all and because they feel trapped. and also because in this state of mind you are unable to work, support yourself or even have relationships. but the real insight is whats next.

luckily i only experienced those lows for a period of time. and some days i would be lifted out of it and feel perfectly normal. this experience is what made me realize what almost nobody realizes: that there is no situation where a healthy person will feel the desire to kill themselves. this is because mood is an illusion. i would go from having this entire world view that my life is hopeless and being completely lost and almost instantly switch over to having lots of things on my mind and looking forward to many things and wanting to get on with life. having a normal mood involves being blind to negative things as much as being depressed involves seeing bad things that arent bad. the human mind is designed to translate sensory input into action by any means and when this system breaks down it weirdly feels painful and makes you want to kill yourself. i think the breakdown of this system can be isolated to a domain, concept or situation or be global. and i think that high stress can cause this effect through inflammatory dysregulation or some other stress pathology giving the incorrect impression that suicide is a reaction to stress. if there were a pill to stop the root cause of depression, nobody would ever kill themselves except for terminally ill people. and just because someone killed themself doesnt mean that their life was especially hard, hopeless or messed up or whatever. it just means they were sick. thats it. and yet every time theres a suicide, all people talk about are the circumstances surrounding the suicide even though they probably are indirectly involved at best!

when i was in those deep depressions i would connect the dots of all the things about my life into a causal web and would be convinced myself that it was the circumstances of my life were the reason i felt depressed. but then within hours that mental framework would disappear completely and i would feel fine. its an extremely powerful illusion. thats why the word trapped resonates so powerfully with people who have been through it. the illusion makes you feel trapped.

this realization has made me basically immune to depression. i recognize mood disfunction immediately now and i have coached myself to remember its an illusion. i am sure that i have experienced significant mood dysfunction in the past, and that most people have, and gotten lost in it simply because i didnt understand what was going on. i think that this is a huge component of the decision to commit suicide: people start experiencing pain, they think its intrinsic to their life situation, they get lost in it, and they would hold on if only they had some context. i wish there was a way to induce severe depression temporarily to show people what it is and educate them so they could not go into it completely blind when the time comes. that would really help people.

i drove for uber around 7 years ago. it was the first time that i experienced first-hand a mass delusion. more on that later though. at the time i had just read the first samples of GTP output from openai and i immediately understood that we were probably going to experience an explosion of AI progress. and it weighed on me because i was afraid that the economic disruption caused by the resulting automation would ruin my life. i remember sitting in my car thinking that its completely pointless because they are just going to automate ubers… so today is a funny day for me because this really is the death of human uber drivers in SF, even if generative AI isnt at play here. that day has come where people who need a job to tide them over for a few years wont be able to drive ubers. one less option.

driving an uber costs about 20 cents per mile accounting for everything including gas, maintenance, replacement, insurance. including tips you are often paid around a dollar per mile. its just dead simple math. the idea that ubers lose money is a mass delusion fueled by outrage culture, echo chambers and the media. i made tons of money doing it. im screaming into the void and it wont change anyones mind