The visual techniques of TV—cuts, zooms, pans, and sudden noises—all activate the orient response.

Anecdote, but this form of rapid cutting is most assuredly alive and well. I saw a promotional ad for an upcoming MLB baseball game on TBS. In a mere 25 seconds, I counted over 35 different cuts, cuts between players, cuts between people in the studio, cut after cut after cut. It was strangely exhausting.

The thing about Newcomb's problem for me was always the distribution between the two boxes, one being $1,000,000 and the other being $1,000. I'd rather not risk losing $999,000 for a chance at an extra $1,000! I could just one-box for real, take the million, then put it in an index fund and wait for it to go up by 0.1%.

I do understand that the question really comes into play when the amounts vary and Omega's success rate is lower - if I could one-box for $500 and two-box for $1,500 total and Omega is wrong 25% of the time observed, that would be a different play.

I don’t want to spend ten years figuring this out.

A driving factor in my own philosophy around figuring out what to do with my life. Some people spend decades doing something or living with something they don't like, or even something more trivially correctable, like spending one weekend to clean up the basement vs. living with a cluttered mess for years on end.

Hmm. My family and I always let the ice cream sit for about 10 to 15 minutes to let it soften first. Interesting to see the wide range of opinions, wasn't even aware that wasn't a thing.

My thinking is that the more discussed threads would have more value to the user. Small threads with 1 or 2 replies are more likely to be people pointing out typos or just saying +1 to a particular passage.

Of course, there is a spectrum - deeply discussed threads are more likely to be angry back-and-forths that aren't very valuable.

Ooh, nice. I've been wanting this kind of discussion software for awhile. I do have a suggestion: maybe, when hovering over a highlighted passage, you could get some kind of indicator of how many child comments are under that section, and/or change the highlight contrast for threads that have more children, so we can tell which branches of the discussion got the most attention

Noted, thank you. This does raise my confidence in Alcor.

This doesn't really raise my confidence in Alcor, an organization that's supposed to keep bodies preserved for decades or centuries.

I can kind of see the original meme's point in the extremes. Consider a mechanic shop that has had very, very slow business for months and is in serious financial trouble. I can see the owners Moloching their way into "suggesting" that their technicians maybe don't fix it all the way. After all, what's the harm in having a few customers come back a little more often if it means maybe saving the business?

But this is only on the extremes.

Noted, thank you.