The chances stat is missing that NBA draft picks are not evenly distributed between high schools. Some high schools don't have a basketball team, most don't have teams good enough to produce NBA talent and a few have great basketball programs which will attract the best talent and produce more NBA players (ex. Oak Hill Academy has sent 33 players to the league).

Fair enough, but then the title is a bit misleading - being a high school star in of itself doesn't give you more than a dream of making the NBA. Being a star at one of the few schools with a great track record for producing draft picks is a different story!

Yes they've been doing lidar scans throughout central america to detect ancient Mayan pyramids and cities that are hidden under foliage. They've identified thousands of structures but other factors have limited their ability to unearth them (# of archaeologists, funding, politics).

Yes, lidar is great and all for what it does, and will definitely find us many new sites; but lidar just detects structures that cause raised areas (i.e. plants growing up and over the structures) rather than detecting structures hidden within a flat plane of fill-in medium like dirt/sand, the way Göbeklitepe was hidden. Lidar wouldn't have found Göbeklitepe.

That's really only an issue for technical topics. Stack Overflow would obviously be a much better source of quality training data for the kind of questions you presented.

But for most things outside of that Reddit is by far the best online source that actually represents answers you would get from real people. Questions like what is the nightlife like in x city don't have a single true answer and thrive due to Reddit's the diversity of thought.

> Stack Overflow would obviously be a much better source of quality training data for the kind of questions you presented.

I dont think we need a llm that only responds with "Your question was marked as a duplicate"

Owning a car gives me the freedom to do a ton of things I simply wouldn't be able to do if I relied on public transportation / ubers / rental cars:

- Last minute or long term road trips.

- Get my 3 kids to 3 different activities in different parts of the city after school.

- Pick up cheap furniture from Craigslist/ FB Marketplace as soon as it's posted.

- Camping

- Coach youth sports and transport all the necessary gear to practices/games/tournaments.

I vote pro public transportation every time and use it for day to day work commuting. But it's really not hard to imagine ways that personal car ownership equals freedom for a lot of people.

> But dollars, euros and yen are backed by nations’ respective treasuries. If someone invents a cryptocurrency, any value is based solely on convincing others it has value.

They lost me here. Most countries indeed have currency that is backed by their nation's respective treasuries. However, those treasuries are filled dollars, euros and yen. All fiat money no longer backed by gold or anything tangible and whose values are based solely convincing others they have value.

The notion that nation-state issued fiat currency is based “solely” on convincing others they have value is quite a reductive over-simplification. The existence of organized societies with some central government body has shown value, and the means of exchange amongst citizens and with citizens of other societies is backed in part by that value. It’s quite a bit more complex than you suggest.

The value of fiat currencies is "based solely convincing others they have value" - it is trust in the issuer.

You are arguing that trusting issuers has been societal valuable, which sure - historically it has been for the fiat currencies that still exist (if you ignore survivorship bias).

Not sure what handwaving "society is valuable and that value is what backs fiat currencies" even means in concrete terms. The government has the power to print as much fiat currency as they want (and they frequently do with intentional inflation targets). There is nothing that stops governments from printing more money except fear that it will damage trust in their currency, leading to devaluation.

* The value of fiat currencies is "based solely convincing others they have value" - it is trust in the issuer.*

You can continue to assert this, but that doesn’t make it true. And it is definitely not “hand waving” to make the observation that organizational structures provide value. Some more than others, depending on the context and time. Fiat currency arises out of the dominant current organization into nation-states, and the value is from the same root. It’s more or less an emergent property, not the directed efforts of some few elites to convince everyone else of the value. If and when this organization loses value, we’d likely see a similar devaluation of fiat currency. For example, a “mad max” apocalypse scenario.

The big difference is that states use force to convince people of the worth of their currencies: If you don’t pay taxes you will go to jail.

The reason people believe in the worth of cryptocurrencies is greed and fear of missing out.

No, the value of fiat money is backed by being the only means of paying taxes. If you do anything productive in America, you'll have to find dollars to pay taxes, or you'll go to jail.

I agree that we shouldn't accept a lower standard of proof. However, life in prison isn't absolute in the same the death penalty is. There's always a small chance of the evidence changing and the justice system being able to rectify the mistake. There have been several convictions overturned because witnesses changed their story or were later found to be not credible, sometimes decades later. Once the death penalty is carried out, there's no going back.

When you're new to a job everyone expects you to ask a million questions and not know what internal acronyms mean (although it would also be nice if they were documented). It'd be suspicious if a new employee didn't ask enough questions. It may be uncomfortable but you should never feel bad about it.

I personally start to struggle with this after the first year when the grace period to ask "stupid" questions is over.

Hi, project creator here.

With the huge increase in live virtual events I figured it'd be useful to organize them all in one place. Youtube, Instagram, Twitch and Facebook are full everyday with livestreams hosted by DJs, dance teachers, art teachers, etc. However, discovering that they exist and promoting them is tougher than it should be.

My brother and I built this side project to help people quickly find live events they're interested in. Check it out and discover what's going on live right now. Or if you're hosting an event, submit it to the site.

He's not arguing whether or not we should have property rights. The question is which is more important, property rights or human rights. There are times when these rights clash and we as a society have to pick one or the other.

For example, if a huge natural disaster (like hurricane Katrina) wipes out the livelihood of millions of people and the government hasn't provided aid yet. Should a person who is hungry and lost everything be able to go inside a store and take food? He has a human right to live but that store also has property rights over their products. Some (not all) conservatives would argue that the hungry person should be prosecuted for stealing, while most people on the left would argue the opposite.

That's correct. "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."

Technically all elections are state/local elections. We don't directly vote for anything at the federal level. Each state has full control over who which presidential candidate it sends its electoral college votes to. That's why states like Virginia can decide to send all of theirs to the winner of the national popular vote.

Thanks.