U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/u-s-now-says-all-online-gambling-illegal-not-just-sports-bets <comment><USER2> Sheldon Adelson = Big GOP money.

"Adelson's newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was the only major newspaper nationwide to endorse Trump.[42][43]

Adelson was also the largest donor to Trump's inaugural celebrations, with a $5 million donation to the celebrations.[44]" \-- Wikipedia

<comment><USER3> Well it has been a felony for years in Washington state. Not really a Trump stronghold.

"For Washington State residents, all gambling on the Internet is illegal, including all types of sports betting. "

[https://www.wsgc.wa.gov/about-us/frequently-asked- questions/...](https://www.wsgc.wa.gov/about-us/frequently-asked- questions/sports-wagering-faq)

edit: quote+link

<comment><USER4> Anti-gambling sentiment and related laws in US date back to the 19th century. But those laws didn't discriminate between various types of gambling, it was all illegal. Washington is one of the states that never relaxed it fully. To this day, casinos are only legal on reservations, for example.

[https://statelaws.findlaw.com/washington-law/washington- gamb...](https://statelaws.findlaw.com/washington-law/washington-gambling- laws.html)

So this all is separate from the Federal Wire Act, and the even more recent discussion on how to interpret it wrt online gambling.

<comment><USER3> Making all Internet gambling in WA a felony is a relatively recent thing. Passed by progressives for their political allies the Indian Tribes. (WA doesn't even get any share of the gaming proceeds.)

I know it is separate from the Federal Wire Act, but I present it as a counter to the commenters here that seem to believe restricting online gambling is some kind of a Trump/GOP thing.

Progressive democratic party politicians are more than happy to criminalize online gambling when powerful interest groups that give them money ask for it.

<comment><USER5> Great point. The real story here is regulatory capture and willing politicians. This is what makes money in politics the enemy of every voters on both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In contrast: "The Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for states to legalize sports betting, striking down a 1992 federal law that had prohibited most states from authorizing sports betting."

[https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/14/politics/sports-betting- ncaa-...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/14/politics/sports-betting-ncaa-supreme- court/index.html)

<comment><USER7> Am I understanding you right? You are not currently allowed to bet on the outcome of sporting events anywhere in the US? That's fascinating news to me

<comment><USER8> No, you are allowed. You just aren't allowed to online.

Many states now allow sports gambling, with many more on the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As it may be of interest, here's the related portion of the Wire Act:

Whoever being engaged in the business of betting or wagering knowingly uses a wire communication facility for the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce of bets or wagers or information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest, or for the transmission of a wire communication which entitles the recipient to receive money or credit as a result of bets or wagers, or for information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

18 U.S.C. § 1084(a) (codifying Pub. L. No. 87-216, § 2, 75 Stat. 491 (1961)).

From the 2011 DOJ opinion that stated that only sports bets were illegal[1]

1\. [https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/201...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/2011/09/31/state- lotteries-opinion.pdf)

<comment><USER10> By my most literal interpretation of this law my inlaws can now be arrested for our march madness bracket. This seems absurd that we've let even this level of ambiguity come to pass in a country that used to pride itself on personal liberty; especially when the law was paid for by clear corporate cronyism and special interests to benefit from its passage.

Can anyone legally versed tell me why I shouldn't be this incensed?

<comment><USER11> Well, clearly we can not infringe upon the personal liberty of the corporate person that is paying for this law to be enacted. That would be wrong, in today's 3/5ths equality between humans and corporate persons.

<comment><USER3> In WA it was the Indian Tribes that paid progressive Democrats to make Internet gambling a felony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congress could moot all of this by simply passing (or repealing existing law) a law that leaves the issues to the states in question. While online gambling poses issues when not all states adopt the same rules, just treat it like sales tax and require the vendor (and gambler) to obey the laws of the state of the gambler. Sure, there would be vendors and gamblers who don't obey this, but there are already gambling providers (bookies) and gamblers who aren't following state or federal law.

<comment><USER13> It has always perplexed me why there is a desire to deal with kind of thing at the federal level in the first place. States being able to decide these things for themselves is supposed to be what makes such a massive country stay functional.

<comment><USER14> Human hubris. If you're a federal lawmaker, and you know you make great laws, why wouldn't you want all 50 states to get the benefit of your wise decision- making?

In so far as the federal government can unilaterally expand its reach, it will tend to do so, if just because being part of the federal government makes you more likely to think things should be regulated at the federal level. The authors of the Constitution knew this, and drafted it to safeguard the rights of state governments. But "states's rights" has been a dirty word for quite some time.

<comment><USER15> More than hubris, the people paying you to write laws want to make sure they pay just one place and not 50 states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does this affect video game loot boxes, then?

<comment><USER17> While unsavory, I feel like loot boxes are closer to a raffle than what we typically consider gambling, and to treat them as gambling would open up a serious gray area.

<comment><USER18> How is a raffle not gambling out of interest?

<comment><USER19> How is insurance not gambling?

<comment><USER20> Insurance is the precise opposite of gambling; instead of concentrating reward, it distributes risk.

When you buy insurance you're not betting that something bad will happen to you, you're hedging your otherwise implicit bet that something bad _won't_ happen to you.

<comment><USER21> You're just rephrasing it. How about:

I'm betting State Farm $12 a month my apartment will burn down before I die or move out.

<comment><USER22> At the individual level, it seems a lot like gambling but insurance is not about individuals, it's about the pool.

You and a million other people give State Farm $12 so that in the event of fire or flood affecting a subset of the pool, there's enough money collected to pay out to make claimants whole.

There are no "winners" in the insurance game, only losses. If they have to pay you, you've already lost both the premiums you've already paid as well as what people or property were damaged (gambler's fallacy at work-- your entire neighborhood is smoldering and your family is dying painfully in the burn ward, but here's your insurance check, you winner!).

In your case, even if your apartment does burn down, it's not like you walk away with a windfall (unlike gambling). The adjuster is going to see to it you end up no better off than almost-exactly how you were before the fire. You don't "win" anything, and the meager payout you get can't always replace who or what you lost in the process.

Everybody involved also loses if more peoples' apartments go up in flames than there is money in reserve-- unlike with lotteries, where the payout is distributed equally amongst the claimants.

<comment><USER21> > At the individual level, it seems a lot like gambling but insurance is not > about individuals, it's about the pool.

How do you think casinos and bookies work? They spread their risk by setting lines and odds and taking a vig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Horse racing (parimutuel wagering) is specifically allowed in some states, such as Florida. In those states, it's legal to bet online on any horse race around the world. Twinspires (the company that owns Churchill Downs) lets you bet online, for example: [https://www.twinspires.com/](https://www.twinspires.com/)

<comment><USER24> In case anyone is wondering, interstate wagering on horse races is specifically allowed in federal law by the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978, so it's not affected by this reinterpretation of the Wire Act.

<comment><USER12> It's always funny (and often sad) to see the bills that have been passed exempting random industries and companies from violating laws like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What does this say about prediction markets? I wouldn't implicitly consider them gambling, just as the financial markets are not precisely gambling.

<comment><USER26> It's splitting hairs IMHO. Lots of things we find acceptable are basically gambling like the stock/bond/futures markets, insurance, and prediction markets.

Maybe a better answer is why we ban gambling at all. There are people who have a problem with it, but maybe a better solution is to get them help to break the cycle instead of banning it in some cases but not others.

<comment><USER27> I live in Australia, which has very relaxed gambling laws. I can walk into most pubs/bars in my city and find poker machines for example, as well as a sports/horse betting facility.

There are huge social consequences to gambling. If you look at an entire society you have some people that will have problems with it and some people that won't. You may fall into the "won't" pile but surely society benefits if we prevent a large number of our members from falling prey to addiction.

<comment><USER28> > surely society benefits if we prevent a large number of our members from > falling prey to addiction.

how does society benefit from prohibiting people from doing things that only hurt themselves?

<comment><USER29> It doesn't only hurt themselves. They are tax paying citizens and the government has an interest in their welfare. They may have dependents. Now Timmy can't go to college because Dad blew their savings. They get a divorce, now mom and dad are depressed and Timmy enters a life of crime (or, less hyperbolic; doesn't make as much taxable revenue as he could have otherwise.)

There are all sorts of laws which protect people from themselves, this is nothing new. See; seatbelt laws for an obvious and simple example.

<comment><USER28> > There are all sorts of laws which protect people from themselves, this is > nothing new. See; seatbelt laws for an obvious and simple example.

and they are all a grotesque overextension of state power. although seatbelt laws are actually not a good example; they protect people outside your vehicle as well.

I guess we just have different values. I don't want to be a revenue center for the state to optimize.

<comment><USER30> How do seatbealts protect people outside the vehicle?

<comment><USER28> see int_9h's post. in the event of a crash, unrestrained passengers can hit other people in the car or go through the windshield.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here's the updated opinion [1] referenced but not linked to in the article. They link to the old 2011 opinion [2] that said that only sports betting was covered.

[1] [https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/1121531/download](https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/1121531/download)

[2] [https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/201...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/2011/09/31/state- lotteries-opinion.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> This is unbelievably beneficial to newcomers to the sports betting industry.

This position will be reversed in a couple of years, and one can be perfectly poised to take advantage of it.

Now would be a good time to start development on a sports betting app.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been thinking of running a periodic contest in my MMO game. The one who can camp out for at least a minimum time span, the furthest out in space will win a prize. (Space, in the as-yet unimplemented design, would get deadlier by the square of distance from home base at coordinate 0,0) Prize entrants have to pay something like $1 and completely eschew non-cosmetic in-game purchases.

How would the law distinguish something like that from "a game of chance?"

<comment><USER34> Why would it?

<comment><USER33> The game is designed to be mostly about the skill and resourcefulness of the players.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is the Justice Department still opened during the shutdown?

</comment><comment><USER36> The best "rule of law" that money can buy.

</comment><comment><USER37> On one side, I'm not liking this ruling as it's a weird reversal on freedoms.

On the other side, gambling acts as a one-way function on money, allowing laundering. So reducing the ability for laundering is a good thing.

Finally, gambling can easily destroy family finances so it's good policy to curb it on those grounds as well - requiring the gambler to visit an establishment means potentially less nets-eggs being broken to feed a habit.

</comment><comment><USER38> > A coalition backed by billionaire casino executive Sheldon Adelson lobbied > the Justice Department

Crony capitalism 101

<comment><USER39> The best democracy money can buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I see this as a bad thing, but I've still been able to place sports bets in the US online for years, and I logged into ACR today and played an hour of NL holdem, and my computer wasn't seized by the FBI.

No one has yet described the actual consequences of this, and as far as I can tell, there haven't been any.

<comment><USER41> Those offshore sites are scams. The scam is they take your money but if you ever win big you will never see it payed out (deposited in a real bank account belonging to you). You will then become one that post on forums on how you can't get your money out, until they finally close shop and run once enough people have been scammed.

<comment><USER42> That's already illegal regardless.

<comment> Delete-Prod-Log is ignition no longer to be accessed in the US?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Except for stocks, bonds, options, futures, and forex. Wall St is the only authorized online gambling establishment.

<comment><USER44> Also online, state-sponsored lotteries. I'd consider lotteries (in general, not just online) more significant in terms of taking wealth away from people who can least afford it, and for no inherent legitimate purpose. (Lotteries fund education, but there are better ways to do that.)

<comment><USER45> Lotteries are reverse solidarity: a lot of people pay to make 1 person rich.

Lotteries are my prime example when I want to highlight that humans don't act rationally

<comment><USER46> A possible explanation for why one would participate in a lottery:

What if $5 per week for the rest of their life doesn't impact an individual's standard of living, but $10 million would drastically improve it?

Does it then make (more) sense to participate?

<comment><USER47> Not in a strictly expected value sense, no. It's never going to be a rational choice from an financial point of view (i.e. there is always something else you can do with the $5 with better expected returns).

But if you get some other value out of it you place at least $5/wk utility on, sure. Maybe you get more utility out if it than a movie a month, or whatever.

<comment><USER48> I'll buy the occasional $10 scratcher, and then wait like a week to scratch it all off. The $10 is worth getting to ponder what I'll do with my massive windfall for that week!

Already maxing my ROTH and 401K so I figure it's like $80 a year well spent to entertain the phantasy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Does this include loot boxes?

</comment><comment><USER50> > A coalition backed by billionaire casino executive Sheldon Adelson lobbied > the Justice Department in 2017 to reconsider its 2011 decision that cleared > the way for states to allow online gambling.

Adelson was a major financial supporter of Trump and the GOP in 2016 vis-à-vis the Future 45 Super PAC. His wife was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This decision was bought and paid for.

<comment><USER51> All political decisions are bought and paid for, even progressive ones.

<comment><USER52> While true, I trust a union to be lobbying in favor of workers far more than I trust Walmart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> what about that predict it website that allows you to bet on politics? Is politics a sport?

<comment><USER54> University of Wellington (New Zealand) 'PredictIt', like the University of Iowa 'Iowa Electronic Markets', operates with the specific permission of the US federal regulatory agency (CFTC) that would otherwise regulate their tradable contracts. See for example:

[https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7047-14](https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7047-14)

<comment><USER55> > to operate a not-for-profit market for event contracts, and to offer event > contracts to U.S. persons, without registration as a designated contract > market, foreign board of trade, or swap execution facility, and without > registration of its operators.

My understanding is that they don't need to register as an exchange because of this. That doesn't necessarily absolve them of being a form of gambling, does it?

<comment><USER54> You would have to ask a lawyer! I presume the adequately-funded academic research projects have, and are comfortable their contract-trading won't be prosecuted as "bets or wagers" under the Wire Act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Regulatory capture at its best. Gambling is allowed only for the government and their favorite casinos.

> A coalition backed by billionaire casino executive Sheldon Adelson lobbied > the Justice Department in 2017 to reconsider its 2011 decision that cleared > the way for states to allow online gambling.

California made $7 billion from their lottery last year alone. But you can't run one!</comment>


As the Twitter App Ecosystem Tightens, 12seconds Calls It Quits - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/10/04/12seconds-shutdown/

<comment><AUTHOR> Actual link to their page <http://12seconds.tv/></comment>


Mattermark and Quire: 2015 Startup Investing Survey - <AUTHOR> https://quire.com/survey

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! I'm from Quire. We teamed up with Mattermark to conduct the 2015 Startup Investing Survey in anticipation of the SEC finalizing Title III of the JOBS Act. Title III has the potential to allow anyone—not just accredited investors—to invest in startups. We hope the survey helps demonstrate demand for Title III, and provides us with insight into what the investing landscape would look like if anyone can invest in startups.

Check out our Medium post which provides a bit more background. [https://medium.com/by-quire/the-2015-startup-investing- surve...](https://medium.com/by-quire/the-2015-startup-investing- survey-9563107e5d50)

And stay tuned to see the results of the Survey.

</comment><comment><USER2> You're asking for free data with no intent to redistribute it or otherwise provide value back to the user? (And in the case of Mattermark, _profit_ from it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Minimaxir! We'll definitely be sharing the results in the coming weeks.</comment></comment>


Two twin brothers killed by 2 pandemics but 100 years apart – Covid-19 Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0csvZyz_Ds <comment><USER2> Tautology: 'two twins'.

Twins _always_ come in bunches of 2. The title should just be:

"Twin brothers killed by 2 pandemics but 100 years apart"</comment>


The Most Important Questions In Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/09/10/221019045/the-10-most-important-questions-in-science <comment><USER2> I would replace a couple of the anthropocentric ones with:

1) What is the nature of time, and how/why does our consciousness perceive it as such?

2) What's inside a black hole?

I also have a philosophical question that maybe has already been explored:

Are the laws of logic always true in every possible universe? Could there exist a universe where p|^p is not always true? One where the ratio of a circle's circumference and diameter is not equal to pi? I guess these things would be impossible to imagine, but is logic just a description of reality, or is reality an implementation of logical axioms?

<comment><USER3> 1) We perceive time as such because the future determines the past but not vice-versa (H(t|t-1)>0 and H(t-1|t)=0 in terms of entropy) -- thus our brain can at a given moment contain relatively complete information about past moments, but necessarily limited information about future moments. I think relativity gives a pretty good picture of the nature of time; it is a partial order. Quantum mechanics treats time very differently though, so there is almost certainly more to say. I think this is a good question to be asking.

2) There's something inside a block hole?

It's funny that you should use those two examples in your last question. The first one is true or false depending on the logic you use, and the second is physically false.

The first statement -- that (p or not p) is always true -- is true in Boolean logic but not always true in Constructive logic; in fact this is what separates these two forms of logic. My very rough understanding is that boolean logic best describes situations in which propositions like p are taken to mean "p is true", whereas in constructive logic p is taken to mean "p is provable".

The second statement -- that the ratio of a circle's circumference and diameter is equal to pi -- is false under general relativity. In fact, if you were to measure the circumference and diameter of a big circle around the sun, their ratio would be a little off due to the sun's gravity (I forget in which direction).

You ask whether the laws of logic are true in every possible universe. It depends entirely on what you mean by every possible universe. To really consider one possible universe, though (say the one where everything is made of cheese), we have to be able to reason about it. So if the laws of logic are not true in it (maybe the cheese is also not cheese), we can't really consider it to begin with. So yes, the laws of logic are true in every _possible_ universe, though for a rather boring reason.

<comment><USER4> Or in other words, every universe we can possibly think of has to have _some_ kind of internal logic, except maybe the Lovecraftian ones.

<comment><USER2> But do those internal logics have to be the same across universes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "What makes us human?" has nothing to do with science. It is a strictly philosophical question.

<comment><USER6> I disagree. Questions like how the human brain works and how we can think abstractly, and how/why humans are so much more intelligent than other animals. There isn't really anything philosophical about it.

<comment><USER7> I have no idea what the heck the author is talking about with that point. The question is either too simple, in that you can just itemize all the ways we are different (just so happens that "consciousness" \- #5 - would be a pretty big bullet point, though we can just generalize and say our DNA makes us human), or nonsensical. Case in point:

>how/why humans are so much more intelligent than other animals

Because we have three times more neurons than the closest competition. Why do we have so many neurons? Because there was a selective pressure acting upon our ancestors.

Furthermore, WE ARE ANIMALS. We have certain special traits unique to us, but every species has something special about it.

<comment><USER6> I get 1.7 to 2 times as many neurons as elephants, a little more for whales, and they don't seem even half as intelligent. Homo floresiensis had a brain considered small for a chimpanzee and was capable of making tools and lighting fires and very likely language. Meanwhile neanderthals had even bigger brains than us. The number of neurons alone isn't responsible for intelligence.

Even if it _was_ , that doesn't explain _how_ intelligence works or what the hell the brain is actually doing.

<comment><USER8> Still remember that when the question is formulated as "what makes us humans" it gets the theological note to it implying that we are special, "divinely better" or whatever. And that we're not. We're just one specific attempt of all evolutionary attempts that happened through the billions of years.

<comment><USER6> We're not special? We're not better? Are we really being politically correct for the sake of animals?

<comment><USER8> No, we are not "the chosen ones." We have the brains able to figure out more than other animals, but it was not predestined. And we are not the only ones "at the top of the evolution" either. Every animal you see is "at the top of the evolution" for its branch.

I know it's hard to believe for those who grew up in protestant environment with the false belief that "God gave us the Earth to use it as we will."

<comment><USER6> Humans certainly are "at the top of evolution". Though it depends greatly how you define "top of evolution". I mean in terms that we might go on to populate entire galaxies and survive long, long after the Earth has burned to a crisp and every other species is long dead. Or maybe you could define it in terms that we are capable of far, far more than any other animal.

If you define it as "merely manages to survive and reproduce in the present" then yes, everything alive is at "the top of evolution", since that is actually part of the definition of "alive".

Anyways I'm not sure it matters. How I came to exist doesn't change any of my goals. I'm still the same person whether I was put here by God or by random chance or by an evolutionary process.

<comment><USER8> > we might go on to populate entire galaxies and survive long

At the moment, we "might" only in Sci-Fi movies. The reality is completely different. Better look at how we really handle global warming or control nuclear weapons. Civilization we know is much more fragile that those who believe to be "chosen by deity" are able to recognize.

<comment><USER6> No country is stupid enough to use nuclear weapons, and it wouldn't make humans extinct in any case. And global warming couldn't even get as far as destroying civilization.

We only have to make it 30 or 40 more years anyways.

<comment><USER4> Wait, what? Last I heard, another 50 years of global warming and we're the source of a full-blown mass extinction, one that will probably include us. So you're saying all we have to do is survive long enough... to die out?

<comment><USER6> Full-blown mass extinction? How? As I understand it it's mainly coastal regions slowly flooding and weather changing. That's not collapsing civilization.

I'm saying we have 30-40 years until super-human AI. Though short of that there are still many other advances in technology we could make in that time that would change things completely.

<comment><USER4> > Full-blown mass extinction? How? As I understand it it's mainly coastal > regions slowly flooding and weather changing. That's not collapsing > civilization.

Mass extinction of _large sums of the life on this planet_. We might technically survive, but the ecosystem that supports us is _dying_ , and _quickly_ , and _we 're_ the ones killing it.

>I'm saying we have 30-40 years until super-human AI.

Ah, ok. Well, if that prediction turns out correct, then you should liquidate your bank accounts, because then it's 30-40 years until _we all die screaming_.

(Translation: futurist pls go.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to know if there's some fundamental limit that makes it impossible to achieve superconductivity at high temperatures in any material.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think #6, the question about sleep and dreams, is especially interesting.

On another NPR broadcast, I heard a researcher talk about how our bodies make up for sleep we lose. It's not like owing a debt to the bank and paying it back all at once, he said. If we go days without sleep and then crash, we won't quite cognitively recover from the lost sleeping time - even if we sleep for many more hours than usual.

One biological explanation, he said, is that the need to make up for many hours of lost sleeping time has not been a significant factor in evolution; modern humans are the first species that intentionally deprives itself of sleep for long periods of time.

I thought it was fascinating to think about the concept of humans evolving to go longer periods without sleep and to cognitively recover by "cashing in" on rest, so to speak.

I'm sorry that I can't remember the author's name to provide more concrete details; if anyone else also heard the talk, please share a link if possible.

<comment><USER7> It's a fascinating question, but I don't see why it is one of the "10 most important questions in science".

>modern humans are the first species that intentionally deprives itself of sleep for long periods of time.

Is that correct? It feels wrong. Plenty of species will endure all kinds of stresses when it comes to survival.

From the article: >Was Freud right about his theory that dreams are some sort of expression of repressed desires?

This one is easy. No. Dogs dream.

<comment><USER11> One reason it might be one of the 10 most important questions in science is that dreaming helps solve problems. When you sleep on a problem the mind magically presents an answer to the problem the next day. Aside from it's metaphorical implication that it's important to dream big, dreaming could literally help answer the other 9 questions.

I find it intriguing HN readers _don 't_ consider it important, actually.

<comment><USER7> >I find it intriguing HN readers don't consider it important, actually.

Understanding dreams (and consciousness) is really tied to understanding the human brain. I would consider that, in general, to be one of _the_ questions of science, not dreaming specifically.

After all, is the phenomenon of dreams that much more interesting than, say, the phenomenon of memories and recollection, or emotional experience, or learning, or anything else brain-related?

<comment><USER11> It's not clear to me how one can make themselves dream.

You can stimulate memories and recollection, induce emotional experience, and can initiate learning with known ways that work, even if the understanding of how they work isn't fully developed.

Are there known ways to stimulate a dream?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Why do we dream?" doesn't seem like it ranks in the top 10.

<comment><USER13> more important than "where do we put our carbon". that's an engineering problem, at best.

<comment><USER14> It was a decent list until the absurd carbon question.

<comment><USER15> I think it is a very important question that may actually impact our survival in the planet beyond the other questions that are more to satisfy our own curiosity.

So I am not sure if you think the question is already solved or is it not actually a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _10\. How can we get more energy from the sun?_

I would love to see high efficiency[0] photo-voltaic cells in all sorts of consumer electronic devices. Imagine solar cells embedded in Gorilla glass on the back of your phone, camera, laptop etc. :)

[0] [http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/130614.html](http://sharp- world.com/corporate/news/130614.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> _3\. Are we alone in the universe?_

With regards to this question, I highly recommend [http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-well-never-meet- ali...](http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-well-never-meet-aliens.html)

He makes a compelling argument.

<comment><USER8> Still the argument "they have their ships therefore they don't need our Earth" is more than shaky. I concur with Hawking: we can definitely imagine aliens who wouldn't blink an eye before they won't care for life of humans, the same way we _eat_ other animals or simply destroy them as the side effect of doing something for us more important.

<comment><USER17> "You're getting warmer. Kip — I think they eat meat." \- Have Spacesuit—Will Travel

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's only one question in science: "How?"

</comment><comment><USER19> What is the meaning of Life, Universe and Everything?

</comment><comment><USER20> I would put "Does P = NP?" up there.

</comment><comment><USER21> what, no solvolysis of the norbornyl cation??

</comment><comment><USER22> I wanna know: how/why does the observer change the behavior of quantum systems?

<comment><USER23> From what I understand, there are two phenomena at play, often mixed together. The observer might interfere when it tries to measure (the observer effect, which is true to _any_ system), but there's also an inherent uncertainty on the way waves are measured (the uncertainty principle).

The observer effect is well-understood, there's nothing magical about it. For example, a multimeter acts a (very small) resistor, affecting the circuit it's measuring. Sometimes the error you introduce can be ignored, but get unmanageable when you try to measure really small systems, where things are more easily disturbed.

The uncertainty principle, on the other hand, is something else. There's a video that I think explains the uncertainty principle well, with a practical example (it's explaining why there's a limit to how many pulses you can send down a fiber optic and still be able to measure on the other side): [http://youtu.be/0OOmSyaoAt0?t=7m28s](http://youtu.be/0OOmSyaoAt0?t=7m28s)

<comment><USER24> Uncertainty principle is about shape, not measurement. Unless you mean "how you define the measured aspect of the system" .

Position and momentum are Fourier transforms of each other, and therefore their waveforms cannot both be confined to small range at the same time.

It is loosely analogous to the concept that a rectangle of area 1 can never have both side lengths less than 1.</comment></comment></comment>


Booking system for makeup artists and hair stylists - <AUTHOR> https://www.appearancer.com/start <comment><AUTHOR> Welcome!</comment>


Review: Motorola Droid Turbo 2 and Droid Maxx 2 are two sturdy Verizon smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/3003887/smartphones/review-motorola-droid-turbo-2-droid-maxx-2-android.html <comment><AUTHOR> Droid Turbo 2: Verizon-branded flagship with a microSD slot

The Turbo 2 looks and feels like it was derived from the acclaimed Moto X Pure Edition, and it resembles it with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The Turbo 2 is powered by the faster octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor. A microSD card slots supports up to 200GB of storage.

Turbo Maxx 2: Verizon joins the mid-priced frenzyalso with a microSD slot

The Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB storage squarely bracket the Maxx 2 in the midrange. The processor won't win benchmarks against flagship phones, but in tests it proved to be responsive, with quick app load times and smooth gestures and scrolling. A microSD slot expands storage up to 128GB, relieving the 16GB storage limit from the bulge of videos and music collections. The 5.5-inch display is clear and easy to read at a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels at 403 ppi. Given its strong drop test performance, including two teeth-rattling drops down concrete stairs, it is hard to believe that the phone is protected by just Gorilla Glass 3

Two sturdy co-branded Verizon-Motorola phones*

No one will complain about either phone's design or capability, and certainly not their shatterproof sturdiness. Verizon has priced them at the top end of each phones' category: the Droid Turbo 2 costs $649, the Maxx 2 $389. Built into the price may be a durability premium. Apple charges a $120 repair/replacement premium for a two-year Apple Care plan, plus $99 per incident to repair a broken screen, putting a real value on the durability of the Turbo 2 and Maxx 2.</comment>


The Artificial Intelligence of the Public Intellectual - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2019/05/31/the-artificial-intelligence-of-the-public-intellectual/ <comment><USER2> >Their minds have hijacked the public trust, each one acting as the pinnacle of intellect, an individual example of brilliance to cut through all the dullness, before sacrificing the very rigor that put them there in order to maintain the illusion floated by the media, by them, even by us. The public intellectual once meant public action, a voice from the outside shifting the inside, but then it became personal, populated by self-serving insiders. The public intellectual thus became an extension — rather than an indictment — of the American Dream, the idea that one person, on their own, can achieve anything, including being the smartest person in the room as well as the richest.

>That includes online activists and writers like Mikki Kendall, who regularly leads discussions about feminism and race on Twitter; Bill McKibben, who cofounded 360.org, an online community of climate change activists; and YouTubers like Natalie Wynn, whose ContraPoints video essays respond to real questions from alt-right men. In both models, complex thought does not reside solely with the individual, but engages the community.

I do not like this article. It does not organize its criticisms well, and it is really hard to understand exactly why the author dislikes the individual intellectuals she calls out, and likes the others. For example, Peterson actively engages his audience, but doesn't get credit for it. The best guess I have for the author's position is trying to portray her left-of-center political as authoritative by appealing to higher abstractions; I honestly don't know. It is strange.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a certain degree of oxymoron in the term 'public intellectual'.

Reality is complex. Terrifyingly so. The academics I have the most respect for walk a tightrope in a state of barely contained vertigo. It is very difficult to make a strong point, almost impossible to make it both correct and understandable, and (IMO) definitely impossible to make the tightrope accessible for others to walk. To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition.

Ideally the person doing that simplification does so knowingly for the purpose of education. But that is entirely opaque to public view.

So it is no surprise that those who gain most recognition are those most willing to misrepresent the nuance of their field. Or to caricature the opponents of the viewpoint they wish to espouse. How do even informed members of the public tell? A PhD from Harvard as a shibboleth, sounds about right.

I'm not saying the public is dumb. Just that none of us have the expertise or the dedication or the time. We rely on tribal signalling. So we are primed for intellectual hucksterism.

<comment><USER4> > To make the point, all nuance needs to be stripped; ambiguity calcified into > surety; counterpoints strawmanned for easier demolition.

This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs. You can be _really, really_ sure about a quite complex and nuanced statement, or make helpful simplifications but then have to admit to some uncertainty, if only because your statement might be misinterpreted. More than anything, you can provide _clear, unambiguous, broadly available_ references to enable anyone who's actually relying on your claims to fact-check them.

Seeming more confident than you actually are is a common rhetorical trick, but one that we should be training the general public _not_ to fall for so easily. Because a bad actor can seem so much more confident, no matter how fringe their claims might be - it's a loser move! One can take pride in sticking to the minimally-necessary amounts of ambiguity and/or nuance, whatever those might be in any given context.

<comment><USER3> > This isn't really true, though. Rather, I think there are tradeoffs.

One might say I stripped all nuance (etc) to make my point.

I agree with your second paragraph. On your first: I have a long-standing beef with references, though. The selection of references, I think, is much more significant than the contents themselves. And it takes a lot of expertise to intuit the degree of selection bias. It takes ground knowledge of the things not selected. I think a part of this Dunning Kruger trap is the illusion one can fact check and verify an argument. So the very presence of references becomes the shibboleth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hacking at the ideas of others (whether rightly or wrongly) without presenting any superior alternatives seems shallow to me. A mediocre idea can still be the best idea in the room.

"Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"

<comment><USER6> "Hacking at the ideas of others (whether rightly or wrongly) without presenting any superior alternatives seems shallow to me."

This sounds like the idea some manager have of "don't bring me a problem unless you have a solution", which is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad way of managing.

<comment><USER7> I think that style of management is just fine if it's stated as "Don't bring me a problem unless you have a _proposed_ solution." By proposing a solution it starts a conversation about how to resolve the stated problem. Often times someone will just complain (rightly or wrongly) about an issue and then everyone just kind of stares at the floor for 5 seconds and then moves on.

<comment><USER8> The problem is information asymmetry. The problem is often due to information the decision makers don't have, while the proper solution requires information the complaintants don't have. This, it's only possible to propose a solution together.

<comment><USER9> Can't part of the solution be the research required to come up with an alternative?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is full of ad hominems and doesn't present any challenges to ideas. Rather poor in my opinion

</comment><comment><USER11> About 50 years ago, Time Magazine ran an article on somebody's list of the 100 leading intellectuals in America. I remember almost no names from the list, but do remember a definition from an official at Harvard, a dean perhaps: An intellectual is a scholar who is living beyond his scholarly means.

Honestly, public intellectual has always been an odd calling. Who would you define it? One who writes serious, scholarly books, yet also articles in the popular or semi-popular press? The difficulty might then be in judging whose serious books are serious.

</comment><comment><USER12> while it's important to criticize intellectuals on their positions, especially if they show ignorance on a topic they're debating and especially if they're tryng to position themselves as expert in the subject matter, it's a little unfair to expect them to come into life fully formed and knowledgeable about everything. as long as they're honest about it I think it's ok for debates to happen between people that aren't subject expert. how are they supposed to learn, alone in a cave?

<comment><USER13> the problem seems to be the publisher (which some researchers double as) framing it in a peer-consensus way when it's not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is a bait and switch. It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the public intellectual, when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author.

> Speaking of white audiences … here's where I mention the intellectual dark > web even though I would rather not. It's the place — online, outside the > academy, in pseudo-intellectual "free thought" mag Quillette — where > reactionary "intellectuals" flash their advanced degrees while claiming > their views are too edgy for the schools that graduated them. These are your > Petersons, your Sam Harrises, your Ben Shapiros, the white (non)thinkers, > usually men, tied in some vague way to academia

<comment><USER15> > This article is a bait and switch.

No, it's not.

> It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the > public intellectual,

Which it does.

> when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who > have different political opinions to the author.

But it's not, if by that you mean the particular "reactionary" figured mentioned in that paragraph, the criticism of whom in that paragraph is of he same tenor as that of public intellectuals of different political stripes in the paragraphs preceding and following that one (the next begins, "But it's not just the conservative public intellectuals who are slacking off..." Your thesis seems to be based entirely on taking that paragraph out of context and pretending it is the secret central point of the article, when it is clearly not, and comes off as the kind of knee jerk defense of those figures (particularly Peterson) common from certain corners of HN.

The actual central criticism of the article is made explicitly later, standardly enough in the two paragraph conclusion which also includes a resolution as well as a criticism; the main criticism being not focussed on any one political leaning, "The individuals who have since become symbols of thought — from the right (Christina Hoff Sommers) to the left (Roxane Gay) — are overrepresented in the media, contravening the original definition of their role as outsiders who spur public action against the insiders. In a capitalist system that promotes branded individualism at the expense of collective action, the public intellectual becomes a myth of impossible aspiration that not even it can live up to, which is the point — to keep selling a dream that is easier to buy than to engage in reality."

<comment><USER14> I don't know that much about Peterson, but from what I understand he would be aligned with believers in progress like Pinker, and therefore not "reactionary".

The article doesn't have to be perfectly balanced in criticism of different political groups of course, but if you can read it start to finish and think it doesn't have an obvious bias then I think you're deluding yourself. I picked an extract that seemed to me the post obviously politically focused, but if I wanted to choose a positive mention of a left-wing person, or a negative mention of a right-wing person, I could have chosen about forty different clauses.

<comment><USER16> > I don't know that much about Peterson, but from what I understand he would > be aligned with believers in progress like Pinker, and therefore not > "reactionary".

The belief in "progress" does not disqualify one from being a reactionary (and I don't mean to make any specific comment on Peterson or Pinker since I've only read critiques of certain aspects of their thought, so I don't feel qualified to judge them as wholes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Last month, a hyped debate between psychology professor Peterson and > philosopher Slavoj Žižek had the former spending his opening remarks > stumbling around Marxism, having only just read The Communist Manifesto for > the first time since high school. As Andray Domise wrote in Maclean's, "The > good professor hadn't done his homework."

This is a little bit harsh on Peterson because a lot of Marxists themselves haven't read Marx. You could say that the intellectual history of marxism (at least in the second half of the 20th century) is comprised of a large majority of "marxists" who haven't read his works and a small minority who have done so and who at least have a general idea of what marxism really is about (if it matters I do believe that Žižek has indeed read Marx and he knows what he's talking about).

<comment><USER18> nice whataboutism. fact remains peterson is clueless about marxism

<comment><USER2> Most of Peterson's experience with Marxism is through reading about it's effects (Gulag Archipelago, collecting soviet era propoganda), not reading about it's philosophy. The philosophy can be understood pretty easily from social context without having read the Manifesto.

<comment><USER19> The Communist Manifesto doesn't explain the philosophy of marxism in any meaningful way, it's about the goals of what we would today call a socialdemocratic party, with the important difference that back then such parties were actually intending to implement socialism after reaching said goals.

To have a bare minimum of an idea of what was Marx talking about, I'd recommend reading at least "Wage Labour and Capital". Judging from how many strawmans of Marx's take on Labour Theory of Value are out there, I'm fairly sure it can't be guessed from context.</comment></comment></comment></comment>