I bought two Ventas well over a decade ago, and they still work as well as the day I bought them. They're an expensive initial investment, but IMO worth it over the long run.
They are also mechanically simple, so I trust that if they ever break, I will be able to repair them.
Eh, here it's more of a simplification than a myth as used in my comment. There are two effects:
1. We've reduced infant (and childhood) mortality. My comment isn't talking about this effect but it did drag down average life expectancy substantially. Including this effect life expectancy at birth in the stone age might have been as low as 20... but as you say the bimodality means this is a deceptive statistic when used this way.
2. We've made it so you on average live longer even if you survive childhood, my comment is really just about this part of the effect. It's still a simplification because saying "on average if you survive childhood you die at 40" isn't the same as "everyone dies at 40" but closer to "adults die at all ages in a reasonable smooth monotonic curve and 40 is about the average age they live to but some get lucky and live to 80 or whatever". But then "don't use ultrasonic dehumidifiers" is like this too, using one won't kill you at some specific age, it will just slightly increase your chance of death every year for the rest of your life however long that ends up being.
The number 40 was picked out of a hat, too. It should be right for some areas at some times just by coincidence though and since I was non-specific that makes me right ;)
The age 40 includes childhood mortality! It's difficult to get records from prehistoric humans for obvious reasons, but as early as Ancient Greece you had the upper class living about as long as we do now a days. A study of men of the time found the average life expectancy to be 71.3 years. [1]
And while the Bible includes plentiful mythological components, it also includes many historical and contemporary accounts. And this verse is certainly of the latter: "The length of our days is generally seventy years, or eighty years if one is strong, yet even the best of these years are filled with toil and sorrow, for they pass quickly and we fly away." That is part of the Old Testament (Psalms 90:10) that is believed to have been written somewhere from 1400-1200BC.
If you want more contemporary stuff that's completely indisputable you can also take random selections of people of renown. For instance the main Founding Fathers are a great example because they all were relatively young when their names become inexorably etched into history, yet their final life expectancy is again well into the 70s. The youngest major founding father to die was Hamilton, in a duel - at 49. Then Hancock died at 56 - likely of gout which can be caused by things like excessive indulgence. Next up was Washington who died at 67, probably more of the cure than the disease - he was leeched to the point of being pale as a ghost on his death bed. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Sam Adams, John Jay all lived to their 80s. John Adams made it to his 90s.
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I am not trying to claim these samples are representative. These were wealthy individuals who would be relatively immune to famine, war, and other such factors that could have a catastrophic effect on lower classes. But when speaking of life expectancy, I think we are implicitly asking the question 'how long could somebody reasonably expect to live xxxx years ago without access to modern medicine and technology.' And that's what this sampling of people answers.
Just a poor memory translation. Yeah, generally is incorrect - though I think the correct phrasing also implies an average age of natural death, rather than an upper bound. There were certainly plenty of people living past 80. In the aforementioned study of Ancient Greeks, there were at least 3 centurions - Aristarchos, Democritos, and Gorgias. Granted 1400BC is a thousand years yet prior to that already ancient time, but life peaks seem to be relatively unmoving for humans, and so I don't see any major reason to think there would have been a major difference between 400BC and 1400BC.
And that's before mentioning the economics of funding a welfare state with a relatively static/shrinking tax base and growing, imported, welfare recipient class - the latter being practically unbounded in the case of illegal immigration.
I'd love to see sentiment analysis done based on time of day. I'm sure it's largely time zone differences, but I see a large variance in the types of opinions posted to hn in the morning versus the evening and I'd be curious to see it quantified.
Yeah, I see this constantly any time Europe is mentioned in a submission. Early European morning/day, regular discussions, but as the European afternoon/evening comes around, you start noticing a lot anti-union sentiment, discussions start to shift into over-regulation, and the typical boring anti-Europe/EU talking points.
“Regular” to who? Pro EU sentiment almost only comes from the EU, which is what you’re observing. Pro-US sentiment is relatively mixed (as is anti-US sentiment) in distribution.
Says who? But also, it doesn’t suggest what you imply. I could as easily conclude: “Oh wow, the people who actually experience the system like it that much? Awesome!”
Or one could conclude that the bots were posting at a time of day intending you as the reading target. As long as they post things that you are inclined to agree with, you'll feel positive reinforcement about an issue regardless of the actual popularity or even viability.
If it wasn't indiscriminate, then they intentionally killed and maimed kids.
It being indiscriminate would be the lesser evil out of these two options and it is unclear to me why you would prefer this interpretation of the events.
My view is based on the technicalities as I found them reported in mass media and directly from individuals in Lebanon at the time, which gave me the impression that the israelis went ahead and detonated the gadgets at the time they did because they suspected that Hezbollah was onto them, and that they had basically no idea where exactly these devices were at the time. To me this explains why they were detonated at the same time and not 'surgically', as state terrorists like to put it.
I can sympathise with the impulse to believe that the IDF is almost omniscient and able to organise a simultaneous attack against thousands of people individually, they sure want to promote such an image of themselves and put a lot of effort into doing so. But I don't believe it, in part because they have shown themselves to be quite unprofessional and sloppy, as well as lacking in strategic sophistication. Basically, I don't think they have enough disciplined personnel to pull something like that off, and instead they just broadcast a detonation signal to all the devices based on the suspicion that their operation might be revealed and countered.
The obvious solution in this scenario is.. to just buy a different hammer.
And in the case of AI, either review its output, or simply don't use it. No one has a gun to your head forcing you to use this product (and poorly at that).
It's quite telling that, even in this basic hypothetical, your first instinct is to gesture vaguely in the direction of governmental action, rather than expect any agency at the level of the individual.
>It's quite telling that, even in this basic hypothetical, your first instinct is to gesture vaguely in the direction of governmental action, rather than expect any agency at the level of the individual.
When "individuals" (which is a funny way to refer to the global generative AI zeitgeist currently in full binge-mode that is encouraging and enabling this kind of behavior) refuse to regulate themselves, they have to be encouraged through external pressures to do so. Industry is so far up it's own ass wrt AI that all it can see is shit, there is no chance in hell that they will self-regulate. They gladly and indiscriminately slurp up the digital effluent that is currently sliding out the colon of the generative AI super-organism.
And, of course, these "individuals" are more than happy to share the consequences with the rest of the world without sharing too much of the corn that they're digging out of the shit. It does not behoove the rest of the world to not protect it's self-interest, to minimize the consequences of foolish and irresponsible generative AI usage and to make sure it gets it's fare share of the semi-digested golden kernels
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