git-ssb was one of the inspirations for Radicle, we're big fans of the project and we've spoken to cel, the author of that project a few times. one of the most meaningful distinctions is visibility in the network, git-ssb repos are distributed through the Scuttlebutt social graph, while Radicle projects are seesed to the whole network. We've written a little on this in the FAQ, 4th question: http://radicle.xyz/docs/#faq
To this I say: what's wrong with the e-cigarette? Why NOT have your cake and eat it, too, if you actually can? There is no virtue in meaningless asceticism.
As a side note, that's not the case with e-cigarettes, the health risks are largely unknown and there appears to be a fair amount of variation in the chemical composition of the different brands. Here's a level-headed article about some of the early studies into e-cigarette health risks:
The very first time I saw an e-cigarette was an infomercial on tv. Its central message was "now you can smoke in a non-smoking environment," which rather pissed me off. E-cigarettes probably aren't particularly healthy--they're certainly not sufficiently clearly so that manufacturers will try to market them as such.
I quite enjoyed the parallel made between physics and economics and the subsequent case against such a comparison. There is a strong argument against a traditional notion of efficient markets here.
What do you think are some of the important milestones in between? We've gotten similar criticism before but it would be helpful to fill in those gaps. The piece was edited for length, hence the 'brief,' and we knew there would be quite a bit missing.
Editor-in-chief of avant.org here (& editor of said piece). Very surprised/pleased to see this link pop up while browsing the front page.
The author had a good deal of additional material that we cut down to form this brief survey, and I'm sure all of you have some great resources as well. If so, post them here. I'd love to share with our readers!
We are a (soon to be) non-profit that publishes critical, cross-disciplinary essays, frequently about science and technology. If that's your thing, consider finding us on twitter: @avantdotorg
Also, a few other pieces that have cropped up on HN before if you're so inclined:
I have a hard time believing doctors will be replaced in large numbers. The nature of their jobs may shift away from hypothesis generation but ultimately a human will be making the final diagnosis, choosing from several options that have been vetted algorithmically. Legally & practically a human needs to arbitrate that process, people would feel uncomfortable otherwise.
Why? what people do not understand about automation is that it doesn't need to be perfect - just good enough.
Doctors make mistakes all the time, if say you replace doctors diagnostic duties with say IBM Watson MD then as long as he's just as bad as your average doctor it won't matter.
The big open question in automation whether it's in transportation or medicine is liability, but that something that insurance companies can solve easily between them selves :)
Yeah, in a very limited set of circumstances, and still with a pretty significant miss rate.
But the day will come when the machines are near-perfect.
And people already trust computers more than they did in the 70s. Perhaps not if you ask them directly, but the reality is that they do, with many areas of their lives, and without a second thought.
