In a former life I was a cognitive neuroscience researcher.

This reads like a piece written by someone who heard a neuroscientist take issue with the "brain as computer" metaphor, but didn't quite grasp what it was all about.

The "brain is not a computer" meme has to do with the fact that the brain does not process information in the same way as a digital computer. It is not saying that the brain is not a symbol-processing/computational system.

This is why European universities are _extremely_ worthwhile, especially if you're a US student.

Great point. I was thinking of returning to finish my degree at $US_PRIVATE_COLLEGE, where tuition is around $60k/year now. ETH and EPFL in Switzerland, about equally good, turn out to be, like, 1/3 the price, and those are at the expensive end. (You do need competence at French or German first.)

You're feeding a troll.

I'm not a troll, I'm seriously objecting to the idea that we should reject the concerns of a dying person as "technophobic", as if that's some kind of silver bullet in an argument in favor of technology. I've never heard anybody seriously say "technophobic" before and I found it rather shocking and naive.

Ah, I do apologize then. I misinterpreted your post.

What's the state of running linux natively on Mac these days?

It used to be much better (I run linux on my 2013 MBP, and used to run it on my 12" powerbook back in the day), but I think there's been some progress on the newer MBPs: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

I used to run Linux quite well on a 2013 MacBook Pro, then I got a new 2016 MacBook Pro through work, and ran into tons of issues and finally gave up running Linux on it and just use Linux on my home-built desktop. Issues included the keyboard not working out of the box, suspend not working quite right, issues with the dedicated+integrated GPUs, etc. I don't know the current state of Linux on recent MacBooks, but here are the two GitHub repos I had used: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux and https://gist.github.com/roadrunner2/1289542a748d9a104e7baec6...

The 2015 MBP runs amazingly well out of the box. The Touchbar generation not so much, but it's getting better.

> The amount of details, little "sprinkles" that average Mac and MacOS users take for granted is greatly underrated.

Especially those sprinkles that get stuck under the keys ;)

> Especially those sprinkles that get stuck under the keys ;)

Excuse me, wouldn't the sprinkles be the things that PC users take for granted?

>without an alarm I can sleep 12 hours.

This was the case for me until I started (a) going to bed shortly after dark and (b) leaving the blinds open.

An really incredible thing happened: I started feeling tired around dusk, and awake at dawn.

Note that it's best to avoid/limit screens and LED lights past dark.

> Oh wait, this is discussion, not an academic paper.

It's literally an academic discussion insofar as it's about the technicalities of an academic paper.

So yes, you really do need to support your arguments if you want them to be taken seriously.

>18 men and 18 women

This very much depends on statistical power. If the effect size is big enough, 36 participants can be plenty.

I suspect the effect sizes of sleep deprivation are probably quite large.

And this is completely irrelevant to the point at hand.

While agree with your general sentiment, you ought to point out that this very much depends on the algorithm in question. Things like decision trees/forests are quite observable.

Honest question: can you remove speed limiters on "track day"?

Some cars use their GPS to enable that yes. I think the Nissan GT-R does that.

It's from 2007: https://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-recognizes-t...