So, an appeal to tradition is all you have?

Just because it's a Buddhist practice, and it's ancient, that's all you need...?

The same can be said about any other religious practice.

You sound almost like a Christian preacher who could very well say,

"Well, the 20 centuries of Christianity, and all those priests and laypeople. I'm not sure if you consider all that they've said and written to be evidence, but I think you should."

You need reasons actually grounded in preferably personal practice.

That is, something treated like a scientific experiment performed on yourself, to see if following the steps affects you. Then, you look at the results others have attained.

And then you draw rational and logical conclusions based off of that cumulative data.

> So, an appeal to tradition is all you have?

Hmm, no, sorry if that's how it seemed. I mean the tens of thousands of books, talks, testimonials, etc, that make specific claims like attaining freedom from suffering using various specific strategies and meditation practices.

> You need reasons actually grounded in preferably personal practice.

My personal practice is a few thousand hours of meditation. It's obvious to me that the practice is working, but I can't say exactly what it's doing to my brain, and I can't prove it to anyone else (unless I would already appear odd on a brain scan)

> Given that all human behavior can (very likely) be reduced to mathematical equations

There is no scientific evidence whatsoever for this very bold claim.

I'll never use Chrome, given the increasingly-worrying directions Google is taking it.

Google has too much influence and power, and has become the new Microsoft in terms of browser monopolization.

That happened 8 years ago already.

At best, we can just hope that Greg has the same resilience as Linus ~ and that Greg's chosen successor also has the same grit

For those unfamiliar, Greg Kroah-Hartman is the maintainer of the Linux stable branch since 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Kroah-Hartman

His talks on youtube are also worth a watch. Comes across as very charismatic which I think is a win for *nix

Yes they are. The ones I have seen, he is also insanely honest in his assessment of stuff.

It's quite clear that during 2020, the case numbers flattened then declined once the lockdown restrictions reached a certain level. (I live in Melbourne so experienced it first hand). Other Australian cities and NZ have been able to contain outbreaks with short lockdowns, and have been able to keep the countries Covid-free, more than any other countries. There is no other plausible explanation for the suppression of the virus that was achieved in 2020.

(For what it's worth, with emergence of the delta strain, suppression measures are not working so well, and the government policies are having to adjust, which is starting to happen now in Victoria).

> Is there a control group?

Yes, almost every other region in the world. Compare our deaths per capita vs countries that took the approach you would have preferred.

It's not nearly so simple as being "tired" of your job.

You obviously have zero idea what burnout is, or what it feels like to be in such a position.

I'd argue that you obviously have the incredible privilege of never having experienced burnout.

So I suppose your solution is for people to just die of cold in the winter, and from the heat in summer?

Of course, because they want to monopolize growing and selling of it, just like they did with tobacco.

That's easily among some of the most disgusting things you could threaten someone with.

This seems illogical.

This boils everything down to brains, and discards the human individual, and how different human individuals react differently to the same things depending on their pre-existing understandings of their worlds.

So this statement cannot be true.

> This boils everything down to brains, and discards the human individual

The individual is the brain-in-a-body? There isn't a claim that all brains are identical.

Can you expand more on your distinction between talking about brains being bad and talking about individuals being good? Are you saying all brains are the same, and something else makes us different?