Title Comment Comment Date Comment Link
Best Albums of the 00's

No, I haven't heard much new music lately. Wish I could hear the Haphics.

2/14/2009 View
Best Albums of the 00's

Totally worthless. I have no idea what you hear in it. To each his own.

2/14/2009 View
Best Albums of the 00's

It was banned for being more toxic than their toys.

2/13/2009 View
Best Rock Albums Ever (according to me)

All of those, with the possible exception of Exile on Main St. and Disappeared, just barely missed the cut here. The Buckley and the Wyatt actually were on the list at one point.

I'm not sure the Monk or the Galas would qualify for the genre on here, but maybe. I did include Hassell.

Those are all great albums you've listed, in the 7ish range for me (which corresponds to Scaruffi's 8ish range).

2/13/2009 View
lukeprog's paradigm shifts (chronological)

Yes, it's a problem of incentives. That is, of course, what caused the financial meltdown. Due to lax regulation, banks and loan officers had every incentive to give out loans that couldn't possibly be repaid. And of course, people taking out the loans had every incentive to take free money they knew they'd never pay back! Now it's all gone and the rest of us have to pay for it.

Representative democracy has perverse incentives for those in power. All their incentives are to do what is popular, what makes them look good - to get them re-elected. There are NO incentives to do what actually makes the world a better place. We could, for example, pay financial regulators in market-average index funds, such that they would have every incentive to keep the financial markets stable and prosperous. We could put it into the laws that the president gets his lifetime free health care plan revoked if X, Y, or Z. A system with bad incentives will produce bad results, no matter how good the PEOPLE you put into the systems are.

2/11/2009 View
lukeprog's paradigm shifts (chronological)

It's rather an amazing thought, isn't it, that we could actually just test what actually works, and then just do that?

The research actually can be done, and in many cases has been done, but politics is indifferent to facts. For example, one couldn't hope for more data than the world bank study of 124 banking crises around the world, but of course ALL our politicians are proposing the very solutions warned against by the authors of the study.

2/10/2009 View
Piero Scaruffi Notes

Huh. Looks like an old version of this page, or something.

2/10/2009 View
lukeprog's paradigm shifts (chronological)

Yes. It's hard to explain what I mean in just one sentence. This issue is a central point of a debate I'm currently having with a theist. A long way of saying what I'm trying to say is here.

2/10/2009 View
lukeprog's paradigm shifts (chronological)

I suppose we have to find the difference between ideology and theory. To me, "theory" sounds scientific. I have never known a politician who is scientific about the way he interprets the political world and finds the best solutions for problems. That is why I call it ideology. I want an ideology-free, scientific approach to political decision-making.

But that might be impossible right now. I'm not sure anybody really knows what kind of political system will work best - especially in a rapidly changing world. Political systems are too complex. At least in physics you can limit the variables and test for causal relations. Politics is about as far from physics as you could possibly get.

2/10/2009 View
2009 RELEASED albums ranked

Cool. Glad to see you will be ranking albums for this year.

1/23/2009 View
Favorite Writers

I tend to think simpler communication is better communication. I think the speeches have been improving.

1/21/2009 View
Best Rock Albums Ever (according to me)

Alchemy, to me, is both more diverse and more innovative. Alchemy hits me as one of the few radical breaking points in rock music - for which there are truly NO predecessors. It came out of nowhere. The self-titled album is basically an album that smooths out, mellows, and meditates on the first album's ideas.

1/21/2009 View
Favorite Writers

Precision is great for scientific papers, engineering instructions, computer manuals, etc. But inaugural speeches are 100% platitudes, which are better said in plain talk. That's my opinion, anyway. :)

1/21/2009 View
Favorite Writers

Chart: Reading Grade Level of Every Presidential Inauguration Speech.

1/20/2009 View
Favorite Writers

Yeah, I'm more interested in what contemporary neuroscience has to say than mystical guessing, however poetic. :)

But thanks for wanting to share what you enjoy.

1/20/2009 View