domain:drrollergator.substack.com
cjet79
4m ago
It turns out that "imaginary" numbers are actually at the root of reality, and most functions we're interested in are rooted in analytic multivalued functions, visualizable in ℂ×ℂ. That's a 2-complex-dimension space, so it's 4-(real)-dimensional, so we're screwed. Best you can usually do is to switch back and forth between plots of output magnitude and phase (or between real and imaginary components of output), or plot magnitude as height along with phase as color. Fortunately we don't have to be able to visualize something to describe and compute with it, but I feel like it could have helped a lot.
I don't think I understood any of this.
The "bag of holding" trick is clever, it gets you the topology of a 3D manifold that can't be embedded in less than ℝ⁴, but to me it "feels" like a very fixed geometry - two parallel 3D spaces, with the "hole" of the bag's opening connecting them.
Its the simplest 4D space I could think of, but I think our touch perception would still work just fine on the most complex 4D space available. In an unobstructed 4D space your 3D senses would continue to work just fine, just as in an unobstructed 3D space your 2D sense of vision works just fine. Its when the space is obstructed that the lower dimensional perception becomes difficult or confusing. A wall obstructs 2D vision. But if there are no obstructions there isn't much to perceive either. In 3D outer space you can turn any direction and see infinite nothing (except the stars). In 4D outer space you'd be able to turn more as you twist into that 4th spacial dimension but you'd feel nothing different. You could do some visually weird things like phase your hands through your own body. But the actual sensation and mental model of you doing that wouldn't feel weird. You can sort of do it right now if you have a big enough beer gut, just press your hand into some soft tissue and move it out of the way, your hand is now where your body normally is. The only difference is that in 4D you wouldn't have the dual feedback of the skin pressing against each other.
I think the best spacial sense would work something like knowing the fluid shape of the area around you. Going back to fantasy, imagine a slime monster. A gelatinous round ball that can only feel its "skin". For a slime navigating any dimensional space is all the same. If you magically found yourself in a 4D space you might be best off acting a bit like a slime by closing your eyes and feeling your way around. Your eyes will lie, your touch won't.
Corvos
8m ago
Drones as sold aren’t destructive, surely? They need a gun or explosive to be attached to them, both of which are banned for being destructive.
Throwaway05
8m ago
Yes "gun culture" is more American, but my point is that the access to guns is there in most countries should you wish. Most gun control advocates don't realize this though.
I'm aware that isn't you but might have been OP.
Corvos
10m ago
You can do that of course. The big worry has always been people taking advantage - involuntary sending off to an asylum is a staple threat in Victorian literature for a reason.
Shrike
12m ago
You do if you know where to look.
Things will get worse on this front as the technology and expertise necessary to operate it (which is low, but there is an entry barrier) percolates through society.
Corvos
12m ago
I might just be falling for toxoplasma, true.
I've personally used an AR-pattern rifle to shoot predators in defense of livestock.
Very cool, care to tell more? The closest I’ve got is a friend using a BB rifle to fend off monkeys, which can get very vicious.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
17m ago
Perhaps the buried lede is that Egypt wants to do it themselves but don’t currently have the technical chops or funding to pull it off - especially if it would require pumping out water without making the whole thing collapse?
Shrike
18m ago
I’ve never seen posters here advocate for gun ownership to protect from wild animals
Worth noting that this is a very common use-case IRL, although the self-defense question is of course much more interesting and gets more "air time." I've personally used an AR-pattern rifle to shoot predators in defense of livestock.
Defending oneself against predators is very rare but it's enough of a problem in bear territory in North America that ammunition sellers will advertise ammunition as being relevant against bears. Mountain lions (and maybe wolves) are also a potential threat that might warrant a handgun in some places, but don't pose the same challenges that killing a bear does.
A big part of the problem with Western modernity is universal human rights, not in a “some people shouldn’t have rights hahahaha” shitposting way, but in the sense that some people struggle to function in modernity and must, for their benefit and the benefit of wider society, live with a lesser amount of both liberty and responsibility.
We understand this in some cases, people with down’s, late stage dementia, low-functioning autism. But those one or two cognitive steps above them have been granted, by the courts, almost absolute freedom. This was the second components of the emptying of the asylums.
Modernity is complex and confusing, I think Moldbug makes the point that plenty of people who would have been quite capable in historical situations struggle to function in their interactions with the modern state, modern employment market, modern social customs, subtext.
These people don’t deserve to be slaves. They have value as people, and in our materially abundant and prosperous society they should be supported in finding their happiness. But, in their interests and those of wider society, they shouldn’t be as free as us either.
There must be a stage between liberty and being a total ward of the state. A half-freedom.
Goodhart's Law becomes an issue here, though. It's been common knowledge for at least a decade that leftists have been adding more and more letters to the whole "rainbow coalition" in a way that appears absurd to the outsiders in the more and more fine granularity with which it divides minorities and also groups disparate minorities together. As such, anyone motivated to appear as a leftist would know to use the proper absurdly-long acronyms for this, and so this signals a desire to appear leftist, rather than leftism itself.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
20m ago
If it's equivalent why don't I hear of drone gang wars, or drone robberies, or drone school shootings?
Shrike
25m ago
Yeah Gun rights are a peculiar American psychosis where, if guns were to come into existence today, the current status quo would just have a 0% chance of being the way they entered 2025 American Society.
This isn't true, and we know it's not true because we've had a chance to test it: the modern equivalent of guns (in terms of a destructive individual technology) is the small drone, and you can buy them from Walmart (or whatever your Australian equivalent is) with no background check of any sort the last time I checked and only very minimal and nominal regulations on their use.
Yes, certainly. But I don’t think that ‘some farmers have a rifle in the barn’ is what we’re talking about here. A Hassan wouldn’t be able to get a hunting rifle, and certainly wouldn’t be allowed to carry it into town or anything. There is essentially no probability that someone you meet is ‘packing’.
I made a post way back saying that lots of countries and England in particular are fine with sporting/hunting guns to some degree, but are absolutely rock-solid on forbidding personal weapons (with some unavoidable fuzziness in between).
My understanding of American gun rights supporters is that it’s the opposite: they feel it’s existentially important for their civilisation to allow people access to personal weapons specifically.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
34m ago
As a classic liberal, any kind of intolerance with an outgroup is very offensive to me.
And yet, divisions and categories exist, and are both useful and necessary.
It’s trying to make an entire group of people an outgroup, just as the illiberal left is trying to demonize Charlie Kirk because he was a Christian.
The illiberal left demonized Charlie Kirk because he was a Christian, sure. They considered him and Christians generally to be enemies. Christians do not generally consider Mormons to be enemies in this way, any more than they consider Jews to be enemies. Religious differences can exist without holy war.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
35m ago
Of course it's worth bearing in mind that Heroditus was called "the father of lies" since he's not the most reliable source
My impression is that description is unfair, and that he's been vindicated on many of his most outlandish-seeming claims
naraburns
nihil supernum
40m ago
Great writeup, thanks for sharing. As I have asked in the past,
How much of the history of "government" is the history of developing increasingly sophisticated methods for obfuscating the nature and extent of the bondage imposed on the "mass of men," not only for their own ultimate benefit, but for the benefit of all? And--to what extent might we as a people be slowly forgetting that, as we seek to "liberate" those masses, by continuing to give them the resources of life, while withdrawing (or declining to enforce) any guidance?
This is a very old problem. In Plato's Republic, he speaks occasionally of the lower castes in his ideal system, but the great bulk of the work is an obsessively detailed examination of the proper upbringing of the ruling class. Aristotle calls him out on this, suggesting that Plato's vision fails to adequately capture the breadth of human experience. Today, rather than frankly acknowledge the mental incapacity of the masses, we push free compulsory public education (substantially modeled on Plato's prescription!) as a way of supposedly "leveling the playing field," bringing everyone up to some minimum level of functioning (and insisting despite the evidence that everyone has basically the same potential to achieve and succeed).
Occasionally I meet people who are spending their retirement years caring for dependent adult children. Sometimes that responsibility falls to siblings instead, or even more distant relations. The ability and willingness to be a conservator for an adult of diminished capacity is not the stuff of romantic Hollywood aspiration (Love Actually notwithstanding!). Of course we talk about prisons and mental institutions and the government curtailing of important individual rights--because there's nothing any of us can do to fix the damage that liberal individualism has done to the institution of the family. There are all sorts of reasons why strong tribal ties might be undesirable, particularly in a Western liberal democracy, but as Thomas Sowell says--there are no solutions, only trade offs. The same forces that liberate some of us from the oppression of a tyrannical tribal chieftan also liberate the Hassans of the world from the moderating influence of tribal support.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
47m ago
It's also worth noting that there's a small chance that he was previously on medication, but desisted. The drugs don't always work, and an unfortunate number of patients quit them either due to a lack of efficacy or the side effects becoming unbearable.
Tenaz
49m ago
A core LDS belief is that we should strive to grow, repent, increase in knowledge and accountability, and become more perfect through God's grace.
We believe in three kingdoms of heaven. Salvation gets you into the lowest. Higher kingdoms follow higher laws, and exaltation (the highest division of the highest kingdom) requires moral perfection, something which can only be attained through faith, repentance, and a covenant relationship with Christ that starts with baptism. The purpose of the LDS church is to facilitate that process of moral growth, and enable that covenant relationship.
Among many other things, living under covenants means living under a higher law, being more accountable for your actions and growing faster. If you fail to make these covenants, particularly if you know (or should know) that you should be making them, you won't have the same opportunity for growth in mortality; an opportunity which will never be repeated. In the end, since everyone will get access to those covenants, your literal membership in the LDS church (divorced from all other details related to that membership) is pretty irrelevant, but your moral virtue/capacity to keep those covenants determines which kingdom you end up in and which law you abide by forever.
In short, we won't be drinking coffee in heaven, and those who do so now may find themselves unable to quit later, after the opportunities of mortality are through. (Of course, coffee itself will probably be allowed there.)
Throwaway05
50m ago
Most countries allow for hunting rifles and such, no?
Throwaway05
50m ago
I mean I'm even thinking street buys - by definition not responsible (more or less). Even those guys are going get the ick from someone decompensated like that.
Usually people like this have negative symptoms that an average person can clue onto even if they are not sure what it is and that's not counting anything directly weird the dude might say.
BahRamYou
52m ago
Is there any way to have known, back in medieval times, that there were two massive continents across the Atlantic ocean?
I was just thinking about the popular image of Columbus. How he was this irrational madman, who believed in almost his own totally wrong calculations about the size of the Earth, when everyone already knew the true size and that he had no hope of making it all the way to India by sailing west. By pure dumb luck, he stumbled upon the New World and the rest is history. What a lucksack. Although some will admit that he was an excellent sailor, who had read widely in the astronomy and geography of his era, and carefully planned his route to use the trade winds.
If that continent didn't exist, it seems like it would substantially alter the Earth's climate. There would be nothing to stop the wind and tides from going all across the Pacific and Atlantic, so you'd have much stronger winds and storms. East Asia and West Africa would be absolutely rocked by massive storms. Instead of a useful express route, the trade winds might be way too strong to be used by ships of the time. Earth would wobble more, with it's mass much more uneven, causing a larger seasonal change. Whales could freely migrate from East Asia to Western Europe, but not much else could cross the distance. But maybe some artifacts like float all the way across by chance.
I don't know, I haven't really thought this through seriously. It's just fun to think about how that would affect the Earth's climate, and if it's possible for a gifted navigator of that time to actually realize that there must be something out there. Apparently the polynesians could find islands by looking for birds or clouds in the sky from long distances, so people really were interested in this sort of long distance exploration.
birb_cromble
55m ago
First they came for the crazy people
It may not be part of the quote, but it sure was part of the process.
In 19th century America, being a slave who did not want to be enslaved was considered to be a mental disorder called drapetomania. In modern society, this would mean that a desire to be a human and not property would cost you your right to bear arms.
Fast forward to the Soviet era, where disagreement with communist politics would lead to being diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia, because no sane person would object to the Glorious Dialectic. In modern society, having misgivings about liquidating the kulaks would cost you your right to bear arms.
As late as the 1960s, police arrested Clennon King for having the audacity to try and attend college while black and confined him to a mental institution. In modern society, this would have cost him his right to bear arms.
Where do you think the line is? Do you find any of those acceptable? If not, how do you prevent those abuses under the framework that you espouse above?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
55m ago
Your link is for 10% is broken.
Since there’s significant debate over the threshold for “mass shooting”, is it possible that statistic is using a pretty low minimum? I would expect the percentage involving psychosis to go up a lot with casualty count.
I also think there’s a categorical difference between spontaneous violence and ideological shootings.
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
It's not just the form but the content as well. Praying to Jesus drawing lessons from the gospels, putting up nativity scenes.
There are other options. Forms of internal exile, for example, which has a long history over the millennia. Multiplayer servers that pool cheaters together away from rule-abiding players are one example.
More options
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