Julian Chastain

bog standard replyguy

[Thommy Come Lately @ThomLately]

The modern world is built to destroy the soul of a 6-year-old boy

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@JayDyer I have a question related to a recent debate you've done

[Mr. S.T.A.R. @favelaoverlord]

I was at the grocery store today when I came upon a girl scout dressed in her uniforms selling Krispy Kreme donuts for $3 each.

Approaching the stand, one of them greeted me perkily, asking if I would like to buy a donut to support research for breast cancer.

This piqued my interest - “how does buying these donuts support breast cancer research?” I inquired.

The little girl smiled and responded by saying that they sell the donuts at a $1.00 markup, so each donut sold equals one dollar for cancer research.

I thought about this for a few seconds and then pointed out that marking up the donuts was creating an inefficiency in the market, that exploiting the sense of guilt of passers-by they were distorting incentive structures and causing capital allocation inefficiencies.

I also pointed out that, objectively, raising money at the micro-level to pass along to some charity was an incredibly poor method of encouraging cancer research. Far more effective would be encouraging every citizen who stopped at her booth to spend that one dollar on the equity of a major drug producer, to provide them with the raw free capital to engage in drug exploration and to signal to the market the need for such drugs.

The little girl frowned and her eyes grew kind of blurry, she started muttering something about how they were just trying to help any way they can.

I, of course, expertly disarmed this by citing Ayn Rand: “It's simple to seek substitutes for competence – such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”

At this point the girl started crying and some woman, probably her mother, came up to me to ask what had happened.

I then proceeded to explain how her misguided attempts to teach her daughter empathy were actually her inculcating her in a bastardized anti-free market ideology, and how their entire schtick was a disgusting attempt to make themselves superior to their fellow citizens by virtue of charity.

Anyway, this woman asked me what the hell was wrong with mr, so realizing I was dealing with a profoundly irrational actor I quickly went back to shopping. She ended up finding a security guard who kicked me out of the store by threatening to call the cops (agents of the states violence), further demonstrating the irrational devotion of these statists to their genocidal ideology.

Anyway, the real lesson here is that people don’t care about the problems they claim to care about.

If that girl scout sincerely cared about breast cancer research she would have understood the importance of capital markets and economies of scale to drug development, or at least been open to learning about such things.

Even if her ignorance could be justified by juvenile naivety, the ignorance of her guardan was inexcusable.

Most people’s stated goals, concerns, and cares are actually a thin coat of paper over an internal set of desires and neuroses they are constantly trying to assuage. Taking their stated objectives at face value is a one-way ticket to disappointment.

Lesson in there.

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@LughSpear @davidbessis Another way to motivate this result is as extension of the broken calculator problem: how many buttons can be broken before you lose the ability to produce some numbers? This result proved all you need is an `EML` button and a `1` button, even for irrational or imaginary numbers

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@LughSpear @davidbessis I think it's a very beautiful result. You could argue there are more primitive ways to define computation (TMs, rule 110, lambda calculus, etc), but I do think this is the most primitive system that only uses math concepts a high schooler should know

[Kane 謝凱堯 @kane]

Waymo is so good at saving lives that if it were a new drug in trial, it would hit the bar for being unblinded and made immediately available to the control group for ethical reasons.

@MorePerfectUS would prefer to keep killing pedestrians.

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@dhruvmt2 @drummatick I believe this is the first approach that also permits defining transcendental constants like pi, which I think is genuinely new

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@rieszspieces If you can snuggle the concept of a limit into your code then you could express integrals as for loop

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@SwaDotDev Your approach is way too bloated. A competent engineer shouldn't need more than 10 lines if you don't count the number names

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@ZeroResearchCap @traits_reality @DanielW_Kiwi Nah he didn't, he posted one that missed edge cases

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@traits_reality @LibertyTemen @DanielW_Kiwi

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@traits_reality @DanielW_Kiwi Very bloated approach. The algorithm shouldn't take more than 10 lines if you don't include the names of the numbers

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@hitesh_ml The algorithm itself should take a competent engineer fewer than 10 lines and less than 15 minutes. The number names are annoying to all write out though

[Max @minordissent]

Christians will not stop losing until they get over their weird gay strawman of evolutionary biology.

If you take issue with materialism, the hard problem of consciousness or the even harder problem of existence itself is a FAR more persuasive avenue than your inability to grasp basic evolutionary theory.

In truth, there is zero incompatibility nor conflict between Thomistic Christianity and Darwinian theory, and everyone on both sides who thinks otherwise is just confused.

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@PhilosopherJoeC Furthering the glory of God. Pleasing the Lord. Bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Living in heaven. Loving God and loving your neighbor. All are synonymous

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@yacineMTB Study the gospels, understand the character of Christ. Then live your life like he's your boss and you work for him 24/7

[tea @dddestroy9ball]

this new trend of people being into christianity solely for the aesthetic is so funny this is probably like the highest tier of blasphemy possible you're going to hell bro

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@joshnaa2gez You can be saved while being in a false Church. But yes, if you worshipped the same eternal uncreated God that Christians do, then you'd be a Christian.

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@mjumpman42 @PhilosopherJoeC I disagree. I think Christ does explicitly excludes those who break God's laws. Additionally Paul directly warns against people coming with a "different gospel" than the one he preached. There can only be one true gospel, and it definitely wasn't revealed in 1820 AD

[Julian Chastain @Juliangchastain]

@NathanBozeman2 He believes people can go to heaven without being saved (he specifically lists infants in this category in the comments). "Saved" means something like "has assurance they are heaven-bound", but there are people who go to heaven without assurance (on his view)