domain:alethios.substack.com
My field is drone airspace management, so this is mostly a concern with drones using GPS to autopilot. In a recent region of interest, the difference between the WGS84 ellipsoid and the EGM geoid was about 100 feet of altitude. So if people weren't on the same page, there could be drones up each other's asses while they are supposed to be stratified by altitude. GPS is natively in the WGS84 ellipsoid system for altitude, but that doesn't mean your specific GPS system nor the things you have digesting that data and sending it along the chain aren't converting it to something else. I don't process raw GPS, so I can't personally attest to this "fact". Lots of people tell me their GPS outputs EGM or MSL.
Now, I'm not a pilot from the 50's, but I believe their analog instruments for altitude worked off of barometric pressure and were calibrated against MSL. I believe every increasingly sophisticated EGM geoid model is attempting to match more precisely the reference frame of observed MSL. Generally pilots think in MSL because if you ever look up the altitude of an airport, it's reported in MSL. But like I said, not a pilot, just my observations from the outside.
I have witnessed relentless confusion, to just not even having an awareness that there is a difference, between the WGS84 ellipsoid and MSL/EGM geoids. Especially, but not limited to, between the old world of manned aviation and the new world of drone aviation. When things like this happen I'm amazed it doesn't happen every fucking day from the shit I've seen. I don't know where the government is hiding all the competence.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2d ago
Progress doesn't exist. There is only degrees of survival and almost everything is a tradeoff.
Things that don't sustain themselves die. In the long run no other phenomenon really matters.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Before GPS (and to some extent still), pilots used barometric altimeters, which would be set based on local observations.
SnapDragon
2d ago
I hate dynamic programming, but it seems that you can't "jump ahead" when calculating prime numbers. This feels like computational irreducibility. The world in which this property exists, and the one in which it doesn't, are meaningfully different.
You can, actually. Testing whether a specific number is prime is actually pretty easy (disclaimer: there are subtleties here I won't go into), and doesn't require computing the numbers earlier than it. It's factoring a number which is apparently hard (although there are still much faster methods than iterating over the numbers before it). This is why RSA is practical: it's computationally very easy to search for 1000-digit prime numbers, but very hard to recover two of them after they've been multiplied together.
I think the rest of your questions veer more into spirituality, philosophy, and ethics than math, so I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask. I have all the spirituality of a wet fart. But I can tell you that the Collatz conjecture is not relevant when discussing the future of civilization. :)
naraburns
nihil supernum
3d ago
It just seems like pointless horniness.
But then again, I also don’t see the appeal of a strip club so maybe there’s a whole psychology of looking but not touching I don’t share.
Yeah, I don't know. But to try to steelman it, maybe--imagine you're an audience member at a beauty pageant or a fashion show. (Yeah, I don't get beauty pageants or fashion shows, either, but they're definitely a thing!) You see all the work these models have put into their poise, their dress, their movements, their facial expressions... so you cheer! Cheering is surely a thing at beauty pageants (I admit I'm assuming here). You're expressing your appreciation and admiration. Indeed, isn't it perfectly natural, even polite, to express your appreciation and admiration for someone like that?
Well, some people just... aren't that smooth with their cheering!
Or to take it up another level, have you ever deliberately tried to provoke a smile from someone? Maybe an angry child, or a grumpy friend? Maybe you took it as a kind of personal test, a self-imposed challenge of sorts... so maybe catcallers are thinking, maybe unrealistically, "I bet I can get a smile out of that girl." And in some cases, should they fail, they might feel ashamed by that, and lash out instead--"oh, too stuck up for a smile, girl?"
These are surely not the most artful approaches, I'm trying to steelman and I'm still not coming up with highly sympathetic actors, here, but I think there are many analogous behaviors out there. I don't really understand catcalling but there's a lot of irrational human behavior I don't understand (professional sports!) and most of it doesn't get you a dressing down from your local Bobby.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
"In theory" is doing a lot of work here, as is "may not always be true". In theory, the men commenting on that article would be flattered if a flamboyantly gay man publicly whistled and pointed out what a great ass they have. In practice, I'm routinely bombarded with images created by people trying to get me to give them my money, and I don't think the purveyors of these believe that I actually enjoy looking at them. Especially when they're advertising a good or service I couldn't make use of even if I wanted to. This is some all-star hairsplitting.
Pongalh
3d ago
Life for the sake of life
It's religious conservatives who believe every life has intrinsic value, though
roystgnr
3d ago
Would it have to loop, repeating the same chain of events forever, or is there an infinite sequence of events which never terminates, but still stays within a certain set of bounds?
If the phase space of events requires a continuum to describe, then this sounds like a classic chaotic system: it never reaches the same state twice, but it also converges to and moves within the "chaotic attractor" subset of that space.
If the events come from a finite set, that's a problem. Even if you make the system stochastic or otherwise somehow set up an infinite sequence with no repeats, does it matter? At some point you'll have reached every point that you're ever going to reach. Personally, if the best utopia we can ever come up with is "you get to experience every bit of goodness possible before you're done, but there's only a googleplex or whatever of those", I'll be happy with that. Others' opinions may differ. When I first read the idea (in Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time) it was presented as existential horror; that dude is really good at introducing interesting ideas in depressing ways.
That's my whole answer; feel free to ignore the following digression.
The problem of coming up with an infinite utopia also reminds me of the biggest flaw in the excellent television series (spoilers)
(seriously, spoilers)
What if, instead,
Or maybe I'm just too much of a nerd, because
Maths is incredibly productive on net.
Ergo, it is immensely sensible to subsidize or invest in maths as a whole. The expected value from doing so is positive. Our entire society and civilization runs on mathematical advancements.
I have no quibbles with these points! I think what you should take away is that the distribution of potential practicality is far from uniform. There are fields that we can be very, very, very sure aren't practical. If we were horribly utilitarian about things, we could easily, um, "optimize" academic math without losing out on any future scientific progress.
Also, lest my motivations be misunderstood, I'm happy that we fund pure math for its own sake. I took a degree in it. I love it. I just don't want it to be funded under false pretenses.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
3d ago
They had two policewomen jog around with their camel toe's out (not joking, look at the photos). They do this for the same reason police in the US write tickets for people going 45 in a 30 instead of 90 in a 55. It's safer, easier, the person going a measly 45 is more likely to comply, and they just don't give a fuck.
Given that most 30mph limits exist for a reason (like "this is an urban street") whereas most 55mph limits in the US are a holdover from the oil crisis, I would (without further details) be much more worried about someone doing 45 in a 30 than 90 in a 55. And therefore I would support cops focussing on the former.
Pongalh
3d ago
The idea that your views on this stem from whether you've got kids or not is dubious. My father had a bunch of kids, who've now got kids who have their own kids, and his opinion is still the boomer holdover of there being too many people on earth. Like that 80s song by Genesis, "...too many people making too many problems."
TwiceHuman
3d ago
I think men and women are quite different.
I'd like to conclude something like "Women are more interested in rock stars and movie stars than in politicians", but I can't find any studies on the attractiveness of politicians. You know how some murderers in prison get fanmail from women? I don't think that happens as much to politicans. I have no evidence of this, but the game of politics is rather gross to me, and I can't imagine why a women would be attracted to a man who is playing a game which won't even allow him to be genuine for a moment.
As for that woman - it looks like a shit test to me. Women want to be targeted by high-value bold men while avoiding low-value bold men. Somebody who can break the rules because they're powerful awnd because they understand the rules well. So they speak nonsense, being brats, hoping that some high-value man comes around and puts them in their place. I think the whole "You can't handle a woman like me" thing is a taunt, they want to be handled. That said, this could also just be agreeableness/conformity, or the kind of mental illness which makes them side with everything weak on principle (except their own in-group, which is superior because it sides with the weak. Broken maternal instinct perhaps?). Politics has too many layers of deception, I'm afraid that a model which makes too much sense might actually be wrong. I stick to the evopsych view of "high value" since it doesn't have all these distorted layers
I tend to perceive progressive strains of liberalism as making the assumption that civilization as they know it is tge default state of humanity and you can’t really destroy it.
This is difficult to square with the constant neuroticism around reactionary enemies who seek to destroy this state or return everyone to a much worse status quo. There's always someone about to put y'all back in chains.
I recognize the quoted section describes a psychological tendency amongst some very sheltered leftists especially, but "you can't destroy what we have" doesn't really fit the hysteria shown by the references to The Handmaid's Tale or - of course - Weimar Germany and the Nazis.
Tanista
3d ago
If you're an anti-natalist who believes that life is inherently suffering this makes sense.
I'm not really sure why you'd be that bothered about it given your own experience. By your own account life can be very good. Seems like you got a good deal here.
Catcalling in theory has targets who would like the compliment, even though this may not always be true. No panhandler thinks his targets like being panhandled. Furthermore, the panhandler has a profit motive and incetives for annoying people are very different where a profit motive is involved.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3d ago
I guess I just never understood the appeal of catcalling — what do you think is gonna happen, she’s gonna decide that random horny construction worker #25 is so hot he deserves a handjob? It just seems like pointless horniness.
But then again, I also don’t see the appeal of a strip club so maybe there’s a whole psychology of looking but not touching I don’t share.
thejdizzler
3d ago
Have you read Children of Men or watched the movie? That’s the kind of society I think we would have this attitude was widespread.
You find life "viscerally" valuable, you find the fruits of your society enjoyable enough that you want to be alive for them. You clearly value your civilization and its continued existence. You just don't care if someone younger gets to or at least gets out before it all goes to hell.
I don't see why this would change anything about the pro-natalist/pro-civilization argument. Is it providing new information? This all seems like the prosecution's case being made for it.
People who benefit from a thing but refuse or are unable to care for its continued existence for whatever reason have always existed - usually people assume they're talking to people prosocial enough to not bite that bullet, invested enough in the common good to not benefit from doing so (what if you were twenty years younger and can't count on croaking before it gets really bad?) and agentic enough that they can impact the outcome if they're convinced. And it is also debatable if you can enjoy that standard of living without a concern for fertility.
The standard of living is good across the developed world, by definition, but there are also clear signs of strain due to the aging population. What if you're the one fucking up the math? Live a little too long, run out of money too soon before you croak? Assuming a safety net that isn't there? Your own logic should drive you to care.
Most people really don't think in thousand or even hundred year timescales. They think about what would stop them and their children from losing out on the sorts of fruits you enjoy and that's enough. Their grandchildren can run the same logic, ad infinitum.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3d ago
In essence, though, whether we're talking about catcalling, or panhandling, or various other things associated with homelessness, what we're really talking about is obnoxious behavior that occurs in public, and the right to be obnoxious in public.
I agree. I think in some of the conversation downthread this is getting teased out further. Actual physical contact is (generally) an easier line to draw; when it comes to things like offensive clothing, nauseating smells, vulgar music, horrifying imagery, etc. people often have very strong but not very consistent opinions about what should or shouldn't be allowed, and what constitutes an appropriate response or deterrent.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3d ago
With catcalling, it seems to me pretty unreasonable in 2025 to imagine catcalling might be welcome, so even if a given catcaller wishfully thinks it will be taken as flattery, British society has (arguably) reached a point where the only response to this is 'Give me a break, pal'
I think this is probably close to correct (obviously from these articles, there is a meaningful percentage of British society that presumably hasn't reached this point, as they still engage in catcalling), but is rather my point about being in psyop territory. Convincing everyone to believe that catcalling should be perceived as negative seems to be the actual goal of these "stings," not because it was democratically decided that catcalling is in fact negative, but because certain people genuinely don't like it and they don't want anyone else to like it, either, or be subjected to it as a result of others liking it.
As I suggest in my original post, I don't really understand catcalling and regard it as at best inconsiderate. But I also don't like it when the government and news media collude to nudge people's values around instead of having an honest conversation about controversial-but-not-to-everyone behaviors.
Goodguy
3d ago
That's a good point. Yeah, abstractly I don't care whether humanity survives in the long term or not, but in practice it would probably be very unpleasant to live in a society that is convinced that humanity is about to go extinct.
zPvQINBQvfFR
3d ago
Does it only matter to those people when they're relying on GPS coordinates or something like that, or to anybody trying to keep things at a certain attitude in general?
The latter would be surprising to me. Like, did pilots in the 1950s have to think very carefully about Earth's exact shape?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
I believe you're correct that it was him. Good recall. Truly a shame that no one saved that conversation.
Goodguy
3d ago
I don't think it would be prosocial to bring humans into the world just to pay my social security and wipe my ass.
Of course I would love for people to take care of me when I'm old, but to me that just doesn't seem like a good enough reason to bring new people into existence. It's very selfish. If I'm going to help bring new people into existence, I would probably like to do it for less selfish reasons than that.
I don’t see it that way simply because none of the actions they take are consistent with the idea that “reactionary enemies” are about to end civilization as they have known it. The same people refer to ICE as the Gestapo and to Alligator Auswitz and Palentir reading their social media posts also are mostly bitching on the Internet, and occasionally attending a weekend protest that doesn’t interfere with normal life at all. I think most of the “reactionary Nazi” stuff reads more like a psychological need for significance in their own times than the thought that these are actually threats to civilization. Even in Congress, the minority leader is Jewish and he’s not doing anything more than sending angry letters around. If they really believed in Trump’s Nazi party, it seems like you’d be doing a bit more than leaving tge equivalent of 1-star reviews on the internet.
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