It was, a little. Truth is I know the basic definition but I’ve yet to build up enough knowledge and intuition around them to really use them in my research. Thinks analytic vs bounded semigroup, L^\infty calculus, angular sectors and so on.
Dirichlet-to-Neumann
Karma: 242
The Holy Sepulchre has been administered by a Muslim family for centuries because the Ottomans empire was fed up with the different Christian denominations endless fights to pray in the sanctuary.
“I don’t know to what degree this represents their current views of Hamas. But whatever Israeli Jews think of Fatah, I believe they would much rather see Fatah in control of Palestine than Hamas. Any external organization facilitating negotiations would be wise to account for this. ”
That’s probably part of the problem too. If I remember correctly Hamas won the elections a decade or so ago and Israel+the Western governments helped Fatah to stay in power… meaning that right now there is not even a real government to negotiate with.
It’s exactly the problem, and the fact that the Hamas started the war just as Netanyahu was losing his grip to power is highly unlikely to be a coincidence.
The fact that Israel lead the best vaccine effort in the world but refused the easy PR move to give vaccine to Palestine is also significant.
I’m not sure the victims of, say, Pinochet really appreciate the “we are not expansionist, we are just helping overthrow your democratically elected government in order to maintain our influence on your county’s international and economic policy.” defense.
A few selected thoughts :
The number on the US invasion of Afghanistan may explain why it was such a failure. With 10^6 soldiers instead of 10^5 they would probably have been able to really secure the country.
I think a protracted war is unlikely because I expect the US to just give up on Taiwan.
Expansionism is something that grows on you. After China invades Taiwan, I guess they may become interested in securing some form of control over say Singapore, or Vietnam. The fact that they are not expansionist now does not mean they will not be expansionist then.
I think a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely to happen way before 2050.
My model is that what is called “left of center” in the USA is “far right, at least economically”* in Europe (and what the USA call “socialism” is “what everyone agrees with”.
*”economically” does a fair bit of work here—on issues like immigration for example the left right divide is the same as in the US.
That’s a good layman description—a semi group is basically the exponential of some linear operator. The problem is that I’m supposed to be a bit more than a layman.
I’m three years into my PhD. Still don’t really understand what a semi-group is (something something exponential). I can’t remember the formula for the exposants in Sobolev inequality but here it is just my fault for never learning it correctly.
True but putting them in Northern part of the world may also be a good idea. Right now looking for example at Google’s data centers map there seems to be a very small trend toward northern locations (at least in Europe), but it may just be a flux due to local financial incentives being more favorable in some countries.
I’m saying a war between China and the USA is a possible scenario (with <50% but >10% probability). The intensity of destruction would depend on how the war is fought, but conditionally on a drawn out war nuclear mutual destruction does not seem implausible to me.
It’s hopefully not the only scenario that prevent singularity though.
Well it was mostly meant as a joke. But here are my probabilities.
- China occupies Taiwan 90% - this is clearly a mid term goal of the current Chinese government.
- The USA defend Taiwan 30% (maybe 50% if the invasion happens in the near future). The USA may or may not hold their defense agreement—I think the later the invasion happens, the more likely it is that the USA just let Taiwan be invaded.
The war could be a quick win for China (they have home advantage). If it keep going for a few years, I still think China will win (the coronavirus crisis is strong evidence that western democracies in general would not be able to adapt quickly to an existential crisis). But a long wars would mean heavy destruction of infrastructure, and would surely increase dramatically the chances of a nuclear war.
I’d say something like 30% chances of a nuclear war, conditional on a drawn out war between the two superpower ?
Is refrigeration a big part of data centers energy costs ? This would mean the best places for solar energy are also the worst places for data centers...
An all out war between China and the USA over Taiwan has crippled the whole world.
Good news is AI alignment is not an issue anymore.
There are many different ways to look at democracy—one important historical point of view is that the point of democracy is not really to allow coordination to implement policies, but rather to make it impossible to coordinate to implement (unwanted) policies. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature !
In this sense democracy is not really defined by itself, but rather in opposition to what it is not (i.e. some kind of dictature).An other interesting point of view (probably historically the first) comes from Aristotle. I’ll try to explain it but I’m not an expert on classical political philosophy and English is not my native language so feel free to correct/add clarifications.
The main idea is that what makes humans different from animals is their capacity to engage in political activities (note that political here has a slightly different sense than it has today, both more and less restrictive). A democratic society is simply one where citizen can reach the perfection of their humanity by engaging in political action (which is not restricted to voting, campaigning and wielding power—a conversation about politic at a bar is political action in this sense).What I think is most interesting in both these viewpoints is that they don’t make claim on the efficiency of democracy as a coordination mechanism—in fact, they don’t care about efficiency and coordination at all.
If that were the case, don’t you think that animals that actually run faster than humans in dense forest would be more intelligent ?
I doubt this factor is really significant. A quick google search only yielded results for breast cancers, and glancing over at the abstracts I’m skeptical those studies are strong enough to prove a real effect for size (they seem to find an effect for BMI, but BMI affect more than just the number of cells in the body so it is not really significant for our discussion).
Also in the context of health benefit associated with transition this is irrelevant because transitioning will not change your body size...
Cancer and heart disease kill most people but kill mainly old people, so their impact on life expectancy is less significant per death than suicide or unintended injuries.
I don’t have stats but the link you give seems to be supporting my point : suicide and unintentional injuries amount to 10% of males death and at most 5% of female deaths.
Quick back of the envelope calculation : assuming average age of death by suicide/accident for males is 30, while “all other causes” average age of death is 80, you’d get a life expectation of $0.9\times 80 + 0.1\times 30= 75$ for males and $0,95\times 80+0,05\times 30=77,5$ for females.
You can play around with the number a bit, but the crux is that younger deaths weight a lot in the average and men tends to die a lot more at a young age due to suicide and riskier activities.
I’m totally not going to look for the relevant stats because I have papers to grade, but my prior is also that men are also more susceptible to heart diseases/cancers in part due to lifestyle choices (ie, eating more meat, smoking, drinking...).
I think lifestyle factors account for most of the difference, and that even if it not all the difference, the health risk associated with sex transition should outweigh any potential gains (I’m also very skeptical that hormone treatment+surgery could really help since they would not affect your basic genetic profile).(note that this discussion is only valid in the framework of longevity—I’m not discussing the short term potential benefits of transitioning in term of mental health).
A big part of the difference comes from human males taking part in riskier activities, having a higher suicide rate and generally a less healthy lifestyle. Those are statistically significant differences, but they don’t affect individual person. If you are a male, do some reasonable physical exercise and have good food habit while avoiding things that are obviously risky, a big part of the difference vannishes.
Also coming up with a clever idea is much more difficult than evaluating if a clever idea is good. For example It’s hard to find a proof for a theorem, but easy to check if a proof is correct. Likewise you can evaluate someone’s intelligence even if he is way more intelligent than you.