shrugal @ shrugal @lemm.ee

Also [@shrugal@lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world/u/shrugal).

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2 yr. ago

Both honesty. AI can reduce accountability and increase the power small groups of people have over everyone else, but it can also go haywire.

We could at least make it a war crime.

I think capitalism can work fine if we limit the amount of stuff any one person can own. Having a few million $ seems fine to me, but everything above that leads to problems. I know this sounds like a very simple measure, but it would have huge implications.

This question is like catnip for Linux users, we just can't help it.

Fedora.

They have solid community and financial backings, they do tremendous work pushing the Linux desktop forward, it's close to vanilla and the sweet spot between stable and bleeding edge (aka "leading edge") for me personally.

For King and Kernel!

If it was anything more than physical, these things wouldn’t affect consciousness so easily.

We know that it changes perception and behavior, because those are the things we can measure. We have no idea if it affects consciousness, because we don't even know what that is.

[...] which suggests to me that consciousness must be nothing more than the effects of complex physical systems in our brains.

The problem I have with these studies is that they all test the functions of the brain and its hemispheres, and then argue what the produced consciousness(es) could look like based on some preconceived notion of what a consciousness can an cannot do. But who says that one consciousness cannot make two different choices simultaneously for example? Ofc it's the best we have right now and imo very interesting and important work, but it's still nothing like actually "detecting" consciousness and analyzing its properties. The sad truth is that we still have no f*cking clue.

I know that this all sounds very ominous, but that's kind of the point. Consciousness as I'd define it is not just the mechanical function of the brain, but the experience of being "present".

I'm an atheist through and through, but the one thing I'm unsure about is consciousness.

We basically made zero progress in figuring out what it physically is, how to test for it or how it is created, despite every single one of us experiencing it first-hand every day of our lives. That might be a sign that our physical understanding of reality is just not equipped to deal with this question.

On the other hand, if it has physical consequences then it must measurably interact with the physical world, and maybe it emerges from the complex interactions in the brain somehow. I personally just cannot imagine how the thing I'm subjectively experiencing as myself could ever arise from "dead" atoms and molecules.

Wait, you guys can click in grub?

That's true for grouping by gender as well, probably even more so. Genetic lottery means some will always be better at a given sport than others of the same gender putting in the same effort. But it's so engrained in our thinking that we don't even perceive it as a problem, instead we tell those with physical disadvantage that they were just not made for a certain sport.

So we are far from competing with perfect here, and being able to pick other attributes to group by should enable us create much more evenly matched groups. I mean, right now we just use one deciding factor for everything and call it a day. And that's before we get into the whole gender discussion.

Regarding the actual formulas, I think we just need to find good tradeoffs between fairness and practicality. Of course even a perfectly fair system will fail if it doesn't work in practice, but I think we can do much better than just using gender in pretty much all cases.

I like to do two kinds of comments:

• Summarize and explain larger parts of code at the top of classes and methods. What is their purpose, how do they tackle the problem, how should they be used, and so on.
• Add labels/subtitles to smaller chunks of code (maybe 4-10 lines) so people can quickly navigate them without having to read line by line. Stuff like "Loading data from X", "Converting from X to Y", "Handling case X". Occasionally I'll slip in a "because ..." to explain unusual or unexpected circumstances, e.g. an API doesn't follow expected standards or its own documentation. Chunks requiring more explanation than that should probably be extracted into separate methods.

There is no need to explain what every line of code is doing, coders can read the code itself for that. Instead focus on what part of the overall task a certain chunk of code is handling, and on things that might actually need explaining.

Imo we should get rid of the distinction by gender and just use weight classes, or whatever attributes are appropriate for a given sport.

Every temperature scale in our usual range is pretty arbitrary at the end of the day, but you have to admit that the fixpoints of Fahrenheit are particularly useless in everyday life.

World of Warcraft.

I bought it because a classmate told me about it and we planned to play together, but he had a level 60 character and didn't want to start a new one to level with me. So I played alone for the first 25 levels or so, and quit out of boredom. Then I told my brother about the game and we started again together. That lasted until about halfway through Legion (at least 10 years, with a few breaks ofc), when we both stopped playing. I've been trying to get back into it a few times since then, but it never really clicked again.

That's what you get when you use one existing word for a somewhat complex set of principles. It makes it easier to talk about it, because you don't have to learn new vocabulary or go through the list of requirements every time, but it also opens the door for misinterpretations. Imo it's good that we have a simple term for it, but we also have to educate people to make sure it doesn't lose its proper meaning.

It would be nice if the term "open source" could get some kind of legal protection. Like you can't call your product "cheese" if it doesn't have at least x% of actual cheese in it.

Pedantic, but the pretty light would still appear.

I feel like prayers being answered at a 50/50 rate could be exploited.

That's how they get you. People expect to be disgusted by every word, and then are positively surprised if it's "just" every 3rd sentence.

XKCD#1172 is very relevant here.

Medieval economy/politics/life sims like The Guild (aka Europa 1400).