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ChrisjayHenn | 8 years ago | on: How Canada became an education superpower

In regards to your third paragraph, I would posit the opposite causality occurs as well - in a country where academia is seen as an honorable profession for morally upstanding people, people with integrity are more likely to pursue academics, and as a result there are fewer examples of dishonesty by these same experts [1]. Of course, this dynamic can cause a vicious cycle in any field, politics being a common example.

[1]https://www.nas.org/articles/Estimated_40_Percent_of_Scienti...

ChrisjayHenn | 8 years ago | on: How Canada became an education superpower

I think it's easier to be laid-back about immigration here because of how diffusely populated Canada is. I think for the 'cultural mosaic' model to work the different cultures need to feel they have the space to be themselves as well as have edges and margins where they can interact. That is probably a bit easier in a country with the geographic footprint of Canada.

ChrisjayHenn | 9 years ago | on: What makes a genius?

I still credit my academic achievements to my father reading 'Dune' to me as a child, because I was fascinated by the (paraphrased) introduction to one of the chapters: "Many comment on how quickly Paul Muad-dib learned, but they do not realize that his first lesson was in how to learn, and the first part of that lesson was believing he could learn... it is amazing how few people believe they can learn".

That book is probably the reason I treated learning as a learnable skill rather than an innate ability.

ChrisjayHenn | 9 years ago | on: What makes a genius?

I recently read about the 'schizotypic' brain type, which was described essentially as having a lower threshold to accept new ideas. I much prefer that term to telling people I'm 'on the schizophrenic spectrum'

The greater tendency towards neuroses I think everyone could do without, but learning meditation young and practicing it consistently seems an effective way of dealing with it.

ChrisjayHenn | 9 years ago | on: SpaceX to Send Privately Crewed Dragon Spacecraft Beyond the Moon Next Year

So it seems the big challenge with landing and taking off from the moon is carrying that much fuel. A robotic module on the moon that converts water, carbon and sunlight to rocket fuel should solve that problem.

Is anyone else imagining the mission is going to discretely drop such a module when it's in the moon's shadow or do I just have an overactive imagination?

ChrisjayHenn | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

The problem with the 'energy in-energy out' model is that energy is rarely what we need more of. Food cravings persist for the nutrient one needs most, not just the amount of energy needed. Eating less of a conventional diet does reduce the amount of energy one takes in, but also reduces intake of whatever nutrient the subject was craving in the first place. That's why compositional diets work better for so many people, if the subject gets all the nutrients they need, they won't feel the desire to eat more than that, and consequently won't take in more energy than they use.

TL;DR: Total energy in matters, but watching energy-to-vital-nutrient-ratios in one's food is a better way of ensuring the proper levels of both.

Edit: wording

ChrisjayHenn | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

I do think permaculture is the most advanced method of farming in that (when done right) it produces increasing yields year-over-year. If high-yield monoculture farming is an industrial approach to farming, permaculture is an information-age approach. But nobody's tried to automate the design work, and for good reason. It's not that that would be impossible - I think a sufficiently advanced sensor drone coupled with a sufficiently advanced machine learning algorithm could design a permaculture installation as well as a human. But then the question becomes, are the supply chain costs of creating the drone and the algorithm cheaper than educating the human and having them do the work, especially given the health benefits of light exercise like gardening? Nobody with the money to do it has tried that yet.

Some friends and I have been thinking that an ideal setting to advance this technology would be on a semitraditional farm, where the researchers spent a few hours a day working on the farm and a few hours thinking about how to automate their most time-consuming tasks. If we do manage that we'll be sure to put our results out there.

ChrisjayHenn | 9 years ago | on: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

The only bit i'd quibble with is becoming ineligible for other assistance programs - one concern pro-UBI economists raise is that if it replaces social programs, the cost of necessities like childcare and housing will just increase proportionally. There's a good argument to be made that certain social goods are actually better when there is no profit motive for the people providing it.

Aside from that, I really like your idea. Given the number of people who want to see a UBI, this might be one celebrity endorsement away from getting crowdfunded.

ChrisjayHenn | 9 years ago | on: World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind

I would think the idea has merit if rather than purpose-built rails, the existing rail infrastructure is retrofitted (and built out) to act as a storage mechanism with freight that already has to move anyway. If that's done though, a proof of concept would need to be built first. So I wish these guys all the best, despite the fact that the economics look kind of silly on the surface.
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