People put up with what they have to put up with. Many millions of people have lived and suffered under totalitarian regimes with basically zero options to do anything about it. I think that's where we're headed and by the time a sufficient amount of people realise how bad their situation is, the moment to do anything about it will have long since passed. There will be no cavalry riding to the rescue this time.
Instead of discounting some of the results, can we alternate the value of the coin each toss? So on the first flip, heads is 0 and tails is 1, then on the next flip, heads is 1 and tails is 0.
That'll obtain the right average but won't have the same pairwise relations as an independent, unbiased coin.
That's probably easiest to see if you imagine approaching an infinitely biased coin (100% heads, 0% tails). Your strategy alternates between 0 and 1 almost always. The listed strategy throws away most flips but gives actualy unbiased results when a pair does pass.
Another way to look at it is from an entropy perspective. An unbiased, independent coin flip has 1 bit of entropy. A biased coin with, e.g., 99% heads has 0.0807 bits of entropy. On average, you need at least 12.377 such flips to emulate an unbiased, independent flip. Any strategy without some sort of rejection/continuation/... (like your proposal) is doomed to fail.
I haven't checked if their proposal is actually optimal. Empirically, it's suggestive of having room for improvement. I'm seeing something like 101 flips on average instead of 12.377 for that 99% bias example.
A general direction you could go is to use blocks greater than 2. For example, you flip the coin exactly 64 times, and discard the result unless there is exactly 1 tails and 63 heads. This happens about 22% of the time, so it's on average 290 flips to get a single sample. When you do get that sample, you convert the single tails' position within that 64 block into binary, and get a 6 bit number uniformly distributed 0-63, i.e. you get 6 bits of entropy. So on average 6/290=0.02 bits of entropy per flip, twice as good as using blocks of 2, though only a quarter as good as the theoretical upper bound.
I picked "block of 64 with only a single tails" since it was simple, and I'm sure a mathematician could figure out how to optimize it much more, but my general point is to agree that there's definitely ways to get closer to the theoretical upper bound you mentioned.
You know, the one where Germany is falling in stature on the international stage so it pulls itself up from it's bootstraps so it can once again rise up to an international superpower. I forget the title. I think they made a sequel.
I think that this proves that dividing by zero produces the set of all numbers, which is what it looks like to me when you graph this problem (y=1/x) using increasingly small positive and negative values for x. Smaller positive x values tend to positive infinity, smaller negative x values tend to negative infinity. When the x value reaches zero you have a vertical line from positive to negative infinity. ie dividing by zero corresponds to all numbers. That's how it appears to me. So 0/0=2 and it equals 3 etc. I admit this doesn't seem that useful.
This is alarming. Does anyone know what the current state of space weather protection/mitigation is for electricity grids in the west?
IIRC in 2012 the Earth missed a giant CME by one week, and had it hit Earth there would have been 80% casualties in the US (according to a US government committee), due to the fallout of failing electrical transformers. I'm not aware that this issue has been rectified - probably due to the magnitude of the task.
“IIRC in 2012 the Earth missed a giant CME by one week, and had it hit Earth there would have been 80% casualties in the US...”
By casualties do you mean injuries/deaths (to people)? Do you have a source? From what I could find, it would be really bad for infrastructure, but not something that would outright kill or injure most of the population.
It's not like predicting the weather, if that's what you're asking. The solar observatories watch the sun constantly, so we see when elections occur, but there is little to no warning before they happen.
I'm not so sure that the Dark Triad model is that useful. Reading about narcissistic personality disorder and anti social personality disorder will probably yield a better understanding of these cluster B types. Both are low in empathy and high in selfish behaviour, but they have very different aims and produce very different results. The narcissist main goal is to acquire narcissistic supply and is willing to feast on those closest to them to get it. Psychopaths main goal can be sex, money, power, control and they usually do not care at all for the admiration and opinions of others (with the obvious exception of narcissistic psychopaths).
Can anyone comment on the design of the cell, specifically why it is long and thin, which would work against the square cube law. Is a large surface to volume chosen for thermal reasons?
The cells are pressure vessels, so normal cube-square scaling laws don't apply. Instead you need to use pressure vessel scaling laws, which also account for the needed wall thickness.
Pressure vessel scaling laws say that all cylinders have the same mass efficiency, and making long thin cylinders is easier than making short squat cylinders.
As I understand it, something like a lead-acid battery using volumes of acid and volumes of reactants so a cube gives them more power with the same surface area. NiMH batteries use boundaries between states instead of acid. Therefore, you want long thin batteries of alternating materials to make them more efficient.
Or, to put it a different way, NiMH batteries require a large interior surface area, and so the square/cube law forces them to look longer and thinner as they get larger.
As per the article, these Nickel Hydrogen batteries are very different to NiMH
> Nickel-hydrogen batteries look and work unlike any other battery. They consist of a stack of electrodes inside a pressurized gas tank. The cathode is nickel hydroxide while the anode is hydrogen. When the battery is charging, a catalytic reaction generates hydrogen gas. During discharge, the hydrogen oxidizes and converts back to water.
Why do the debate organisers tolerate this? If the debate is X versus Y, why allow someone to say we should really be discussing Z? Imagine this in any other competitive arena like sport where during a match some team starts playing another sport entirely. There's nothing wrong with debating critical theory but not if that's not what's being debated. It should be an automatic fail, just as it would be if you're supposed to debating in a certain language and you refuse to do so. This just seems like deliberate sabotage/propaganda masquerading as sincere communication. As much fault lies with the organisers as with those who wish to deliberately pervert the debate.
The article explains it. Students like these formats bc they fit with their interests and politics, students graduate, the ones that were most active in debate become judges and reinforce that these topics will be rewarded
AMC series math contests have a bit of the same problem -- pushing the material format more and more toward memorizing extremely insider arcana over a meaningful survey of the field of study.
There is a fundamental weakness in the fascist-adjacent proscription of orthodoxy while forbidding anything that may challenge or question it. That is not liberalism, it is an echo chamber lacking contact and ability to deal with the whole world.
I also disapprove of the tendency to muzzle people with prior restraint because they raise controversial points because somehow "harmony" is more important than insightful and authentic discourse on topics of greater import because someone "might be offended" or "will encourage negative interactions". If only certain topics can be discussed while others cannot, that is a lack of freedom.
We should all have a healthy allergic reaction when things start being argued for and against via extremely general negative terms applied in a subjective way, i.e:
> "fascist-adjacent proscription of orthodoxy".
Every sport has rules, within which great skill can be demonstrated by being able to work within the rules, but in difficult and unexpected ways.
Debates with rules such as "remain relevant to the topic" or "make arguments for A over your opponents arguments for B", are legitimate competitions, that develop legitimately useful skills.
It is not "muzzling" to allow anyone to say whatever they want, but judge their achievements based on the rules of engagement that define a debate competition.
There are no police on a basketball court stopping players from throwing the ball wherever they want. They just won't get points for not putting the ball in the basket.
Forbiddance exists in that the judge can decide whom to vote for. Actually halting a debate midround because they broke some tenuous topic rule is a much more aggressive action
This absolutely happens. Running a K (kritik) is a risk because if the judge decides that you’re full of shit, they can basically just ignore your case. Your opponent can make an argument to throw the kritik out, and then you’re dead in the water
As a debate student that goes to dozens of tournaments a year, arguing about the same policy topic over and over can get very dry. When I was in high school debate, I found these diverse literatures exciting and stimulating, which made my passion for debate much stronger.
It seems like there should be a place for both: one where diverse literature and meta-debate is both accepted and maybe even the point (e.g. make the premise actual critical to the Ks), and another where you are expected to argue for or against a position you don’t agree with. I think there’s tremendous value in having to steelman positions you think are fundamentally bad/incorrect, but I think you’re also right that there’s potential growth value in looking into deeper and different theory systems entirely.
But I think it’s generally a bad thing all around for the Ks to infiltrate literally all debate and crowd out anything else (in the same way the speed-talking phenomenon was [is?] a fundamentally bad thing for debate).
> It seems like there should be a place for both: one where diverse literature and meta-debate is both accepted and maybe even the point (e.g. make the premise actual critical to the Ks), and another where you are expected to argue for or against a position you don’t agree with.
There are many regional circuits in this country where running a kritik is an instant loss.
Aside from that: debate and meta-debate are not meaningfully separable. If arguments are being made, then there will be an argument about how to evaluate the arguments.
Once you ask the question "what is fiat?" -- which becomes necessary far before any critical theory arrives on the scene -- the door is open to "perhaps pretending something happens and then evaluating the effects isn't the best way to test a resolution".
My basic thought about how academic debate should work:
1. Students should be allowed to choose their own arguments as often as possible.
2. Judges should try to be as impartial as possible and should evaluate student's arguments rather than impose their own opinion. (Pedagogic debate and non-pedagogic debate serve very different purposes. The emphasis on the student's performance rather than the judge's understanding of the world is motivated by pedagogic considerations, and obviously isn't how debates should be evaluated in the real world.)
3. The kids are fine. I promise that seeing a bit of critical theory isn't going to rot their brains.
I disagree about speed talking being apriori bad, but agree it has crowded out everything else on the national circuit.
The same is simpoy not true of critical theory in debate which has been around for a long time and is not the winning argument in anywhere near close to a majorit of rounds.
> As a debate student that goes to dozens of tournaments a year, arguing about the same policy topic over and over can get very dry.
That brings up a good point. We probably need to differentiate between a student debate as part of a class vs extracurricular debating.
Students participating in a classroom debate only get so many minutes of exposure; each is valuable. Tighter boundaries would seem to be called for there.
The purpose of a K is not to argue that you should be arguing about Z, it's to say, "X is based on this fundamental assumption, and that assumption is flawed in this way..."
A Neg team running a K has to link directly to the Aff's plan or argument, or they'll just 'no-link' it and move on.
On the K-Aff side, they need to convince the judge(s) that some fundamental assumption of the Topic itself is flawed, which you still have to directly engage with the Topic in order to do.
There is no such thing as a K debate which just says "I'm arguing about some unrelated thing instead".
Many tournaments (especially on the West Coast) and their organizers enjoy and encourage kritical debate. (That's what they did in high school -- Kritical debate was born in Policy Debate, and spread to other formats, so many coaches have that previous experience) Many on the East Coast ban it entirely, or heavily discourage it. At some level, there are almost two different leagues. The "tech" debaters even have their own championship, of sorts (NPDI).
