But to record a transfer with a list of transactions, you need at least two transactions, and you need to write both transactions atomically in the ledger. Otherwise you end up with the same problem.
You only need one single transaction. The value of each account is deduced from the list of transactions that happened with checkpoints (fancy caching) once in a while.
Or, are you old enough to have learned to reconcile a checkbook? Where you keep track of all the checks you write and what your balance should be, and then mark them as confirmed when they show up on your (monthly, because paper via usps) bank statements?
This is a checksum-like trick for manual record keeping, and isn't specifically relevant to the grandparent. It isn't required in digital world. The grandparent talks about having to write 2 separate transactions in 2 accounts in such a way that either both are successfully written, or none are written. This means that there must be transactionality between 2 services, regardless of balance being cached or not.
The point is that there is no such thing as "2 separate transactions in 2 accounts" in banking. There is one global ledger that contains transaction between all accounts - if you move money from account A to account B, you append one entry to the ledger that says that some sum of money moved from A to B. Then if you need to calculate an account balance, you look at all transactions in the ledger, filter by the account ID, and calculate the total. (You can then cache this result, for performance benefits, but this changes nothing about the way it works.)
This is really more like a CRDT than like transaction control.
It's also where Bitcoin took its inspiration from, the blockchain is just one big ledger with some hashing on top.
This is a good explanation for Bitcoin-type ledger, but as far as I understand, banks don't share a global ledger. In US they run settlements through FED, which is the closest thing to global ledger we got, but internally they keep their own separate ledgers. Fed sees settlements between banks, but allocation within a bank is done via internal transactions. If you wanted to give banks a transfer rail that allows them to communicate directly incurring liability, and later settle via FED, you would need to write a transaction in each bank's ledger.
The truth is, this does happen, but you want it to happen less. Banks accept certain amount of risk due to logistical limitations, but always seek ways to reduce it.
Tradeoff between availability and consistency. Not to error when accepting a transaction probably makes bank good money, but showing correct numbers all the time or handling transactions larger than entire account balance probably only ever helps poor people like me who anxiously check incoming transactions at the ATM and we don't make banks lots of money. So a queue of transactions to record doesn't sound like a problem, but idk I don't work at a bank
Accounts go over their overdraft limits all the time. Arranged overdrafts are simply the limit the bank promise to honour without punitive fees, not an absolute limit.
Honestly I have seen enough times purely savings/debit account goes negative a few dollars that what you describe is probably not a show-stopper :) Only if discrepancy is large enough then probably transaction gets flagged and a human steps in.
And the events include things like "refused because the destination account has ceased to exist", "refused because the currency is invalid", "refused because the amount has too many decimal digits", "refused because we are boycotting you", and so on. Anything can happen.
No, it's not. Electrolysis is extremely inefficient. There are some modern developments with advanced catalysts, but it's not something an average person can do.
From Pi-hole deployed on the closest edge pop, I'm seeing 32 ms roundtrip on average for ICMP pings. Definitely negligible compared to the time saved from _not_ loading a bunch of trackers and ads.
One slightly reasonable common argument I hear for reduced medical diagnostics is: “we don’t have the resources; it’d overwhelm the medical system”. While this may be the case for some tests, there are probably a great number of tests that could be scaled to be done yearly on the whole population.
> While this may be the case for some tests, there are probably a great number of tests that could be scaled to be done yearly on the whole population.
Isn't this already the case? Tests that are considered worth doing regularly even without extra symptoms are done regularly. E.g. mammograms and colonoscopies/stool tests.
(I'm ignoring your focus on "yearly" since really you care about "regularly" given that yearly is totally arbitrary and timing that makes sense is clearly dependent on the tests in question.)
No. Not all screenings/tests are done, even when it's super low cost and non-invasive. For example, one factor that is used to determine whether to screen for certain types of cancer is "Possible harms from follow-up procedures". [1] Another factor that is taken into account it the chances of a false positive. [1] Both of these factors are irrational, since more information is strictly optimal given a rational agent. They should not even merit consideration in choosing whether to undertake a screening (this information should only be used after a screening is done, to determine follow-up action).
In my opinion, the only justifiable factors are probably along the lines of:
- invasiveness (e.g. if it's non-invasive or minimal cost)
- benefit to the patient if detected
- cost relative to other screenings/actions that can be done for the patient
> For example, one factor that is used to determine whether to screen for certain types of cancer is "Possible harms from follow-up procedures". [1] Another factor that is taken into account it the chances of a false positive. [1] Both of these factors are irrational, since more information is strictly optimal given a rational agent.
Your entire argument here seems to require patients to be rational agents. They aren't.
> Your entire argument here seems to require patients to be rational agents.
Yes, my argument does rely on patients being rational agents.
> They aren't.
That may be true, but it's certainly paternalistic (in the formal, definitional sense) to act as if they are not rational agents and withhold information/reduce autonomy. This is a case of pure paternalism (again, in the formal philosophical sense).
Different ethical systems, of course, make different judgements on whether this behavior is moral. It's also up for debate whether this is a desirable feature of the medical system.
> That may be true, but it's certainly paternalistic (in the formal, definitional sense) to act as if they are not rational agents and withhold information. This is a case of pure paternalism (again, in the formal philosophical sense).
Call it whatever you want. Idealizing patients as rational agents instead of considering how they are in reality results in worse outcomes. If your goal is to actually help people, you should base your arguments on how things are in reality instead of some idealized dream world.
> If your goal is to actually help people, you should base your arguments on how things are in reality instead of some idealized dream world.
That's a fair position (you seem to be a utilitarian), and probably quite defensible. But, one could argue that patient choice is an important feature for our medical systems to have. I certainly want to be able to refuse medications that my doctor recommends (e.g. opioids) or seek alternate advice/second opinions. My cost-benefit analysis equation is probably not the same as my doctor.
To be clear, I'm not talking about an "idealized dream world", as you put it -- I'm talking about patient autonomy in the real world, even if it means allowing patients to make what seems like a suboptimal decision.
I made that point because I argue that patient autonomy is important. Further, I argue that in order to protect patient autonomy, information should not be withheld from the patient. Accordingly, the patient should be given everything necessary to enable them to make optimal choices as a rational agent. Not providing low-cost, minimally-invasive screen tests to the patient, under the premise that the patient is an irrational agent, reduces their autonomy insofar as it limits their decision-making capacity. I argue that there is no compelling justification to do this for low-cost, minimally-invasive screenings. Furthermore, assuming that the patient is rational and finding ways to advance the rational patient's well-being protects patient autonomy. Therefore, the only justifiable factors that should be considered when screening patients that preserve patient autonomy is what I stated here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31450997
Does the position seem clear now? I apologize if this line of reasoning was not clear earlier.
> Not providing low-cost, minimally-invasive screen tests to the patient, under the premise that the patient is an irrational agent, reduces their autonomy for no justifiable reason.
The reality that patients are irrational agents _is_ a justifiable reason.
> Therefore, the only justifiable factors that should be considered when screening patients that preserve patient autonomy...
Your position is clear. I disagree. I think given real constraints (economic, legal, psychology of patients/doctors/etc.) focusing on overall quality of outcomes makes most sense. You can disagree if you want, but don't pretend it's not justifiable.
edit: Besides all the tests are available to you. You can pay them if you'd like. Given they are low-cost (at least those you're focusing on here) it really isn't a burden on you to get the tests done yourself.
I think it’s very promising/exciting as a method of smoothing out the demand curves of the electric grid. Plus, it’s fairly straightforward to modify existing dams/hydro infrastructure to have this capacity.
Since some dams are already used as water reservoirs for drinking/agriculture, this could be quite viable if the desalination can be done cheaply and efficiently at scale (not sure if this is even possible on the scales required for this idea to make sense, though).
Pumped hydro has been extremely effective in Australia since the mid 1960's. There's currently a project to extend the capacity of the Snowy Hydro scheme to soak up this extra transient renewable capacity.
That's cool -- I didn't know that! Imo, the more effective and cheaply we can store energy and smooth out supply/demand curves, the more attractive solar and wind becomes.
Perhaps one way of encouraging a "greener" grid is to first encourage the development of cheap energy storage solutions, and then letting the market figure out the best way to utilize such storage (rather than the other way around). Might lead to more efficient/creative green energy solutions.
The anecdotes about the propagation of the mannerisms of Wittgenstein are a gem.
Here’s a particularly nice one about David Foster Wallace:
> James Wallace, who was a graduate student in
philosophy in 1959-1962, not only learned philosophy at Cornell but also picked up
a gesture of Wittgenstein. The gesture - hitting himself in the back of his head, to
indicate what a fool he was
was then passed on to his son, David Foster Wallace,
who eventually figured out its origin.
Fastmail. It just works and does everything I need, without bloat (I've got it on a custom domain). It also seems reasonably likely to last "a decade or two".
