domain:houseofstrauss.com
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
They wouldn't accept cash? I mean, literally piles of Benjamins?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
LOL this is a non-answer, but at least it's funny. I'll give you that. ;P
roystgnr
2d ago
I don't think I understood any of this.
My apologies. I'll back up, if you're still curious.
Think of the function sin(x).
We can take a number, like x=π/3, and plug it into the function, and we get another number, in this case sin(π/3)=√3/2. (here π/3 is in radians, which when we start doing calculus turns out to be more natural than 60°) We can imagine doing that with every real number, and plotting every (x,y) on a plane, and we get a "sine wave" picture like this. That "plane" gets called ℝ×ℝ, or ℝ², because it's defined with 2 real number (ℝ) lines that form a cross intersecting at one point. It's a great picture! I can think about the function inputs as being the length of lines in one direction, outputs as the lengths of lines in another, derivatives as slopes of angled lines, etc.
But ... how about sin(i), where i=√-1? On the one hand, who cares, because it seems like √-1 shouldn't exist: there's no real number whose square is negative, and even when we found such numbers to be useful intermediate results in algebra problems we still decided to call them "imaginary" as opposed to the newly-named "real" numbers; you'd still expect to have a real number in the end. On the other hand, we soon found "complex numbers" (ℂ, all the numbers x+yi you can make by adding a real number x to an imaginary number yi) to also be useful in engineering problems (they represent oscillation a way similar to how positive numbers can represent growth and negative ones decay), and then we found them to be useful in physics problems (where a "quantum wave function" takes complex values), and at some point it's hard to ignore something as not "real" when it's at the foundation of our understanding of reality.
We can plot a collection of complex numbers on the "complex plane": for every complex number z=x+yi you just plot it as (x,y). One complex number can be described with two reals.
But how do we plot a function that takes complex number inputs and gives complex number outputs? We would need to plot it in ℂ×ℂ, two complex planes that form a cross intersecting at one point. "But two planes meet in a line, not a point", you might object, and that's true, in 3D. ℂ×ℂ only fits in 4D. If I wanted to clearly plot part of a real function y=f(x), I can plot each point as (x,y) in a square, but if I want to clearly plot part of a complex function f(x+yi)=u+vi, I need to be able to plot each point as (x,y,u,v) in a hypercube. I don't have any hypercubes lying around! I can't even visualize a hypercube.
So, we plot garbage like this instead. The xy plane there is the complex plane of inputs x+yi, and for each output u+vi=sin(x+yi), the height z of the red surface is u and the height z of the green surface is v. We plot (x,y,u) and (x,y,w) in the same cube and try to picture the true (x,y,u,w) from the result. Those two 2D surfaces twisting through 3D space are really two aspects of a single 2D surface twisting through 4D space. They're easier to understand if you use that web page to rotate them back and forth and turn them translucent, but still I can't picture the single surface in 4D that they represent. If I could actually visualize 4D then the plot of that single surface would fit in my head as naturally as that first "sine wave" plot did.
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.
I think here it depends on what you mean by "in a 4D space".
If my movements were naturally restricted to a 3D manifold (a "surface" is just a 2D manifold) curving through 4D space then you're probably exactly right. Let's back up to 2D. Imagine as an analog a 2D version of me, living on the surface of a globe. Open my eyes, and if light also follows the globe surface then in any unobstructed direction I look I see the back of my own head one globe-circumference away, but if I'm small enough compared to the globe then it feels almost like I'm in good old flat 2D space. Even if the globe is made of taffy and some 3D monster stretches spikes out of it, mushes parts of it together elsewhere to make a torus or worse, whatever. I can still move around any weird surface I'm stuck to so long as it's smooth enough, to any part of it I want to go to so long as it's it's connected. When I'm on the globe, or on any points of "positive curvature" on a more complicated surface, I might feel a little weird (there's more "room" inside a shape than you would expect from its boundary, so it might be like my skin is getting compressed or my innards stretched). Or, on points of "negative curvature" on a more complicated shape, I might feel like my skin was getting stretched or my innards compressed. But either way, if I was small enough compared to the curvature then I'd still be just a slightly squished-around version of me.
Your "bag of holding" example actually is a 3D manifold - locally I can move parts of my body in no more or fewer than the usual 3 dimensions: up/down, left/right, or forward/backward. But those things are only consistent locally - if I stick my arm 10 inches forward into the bag and then reach 10 inches up, it won't be in the same place as if I reach my other arm 10 inches up (outside the bag) and then 10 inches forward. This 3D manifold has geometry that can't exist in 3D space, but only embedded in a space with at least one more dimension.
But with the same one extra dimension, if my movements were unrestricted? Local senses like touch would get weird too. Imagine that 2D me, previously stuck to the globe like a flat sticker (though free to move parallel to the globe surface), suddenly peeled away into the air. I can still wiggle around in my accustomed two directions, but my orientation with respect to that third direction is at the whim of the breeze. On a globe I might be able to look or propel myself north/south vs east/west, but 2D me has no muscles that can turn his limbs up/down. Even if someone took pity and stuck me back on the globe so I could move around its surface again, if they stuck me on backwards then I'd be backwards for the rest of time; clockwise would seem to be counter-clockwise and vice-versa. 3D me in a true 4D space would be in the same boat; my arm has no way to reach hyperup/hyperdown.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
I'm perfectly fine with increasing cost and reducing utility in this situation. Yes credit cards are convenient, no I don't think the societal ills they unleash on the financial illiterate are worth the amount of convenience they provide. I like having them, and don't think we should get rid of the entire industry, but I'd be happy to make it significantly more inconvenient to use them if we could stop the predatory behavior.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
I am terrified of wasps and yellow jackets. But ticks are not to be underestimated - I say, out of maybe irrational fear, because I don't live and haven't lived in major tick-infested locations, but the idea that I could go hiking and end up with a life-changing inability to eat meat without even realizing is scary
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
Credit cards are truly evil. I mean, I use them. I've used them for 20+ years and never had a single finance charge or fee ever, while accruing thousands of dollars in cash back rewards. They paid for my Switch 2 in fact.
But they're still evil. The yawning gaping pit they represent, which I have to balance on the edge of every time I run up their balance each month (within my budget) and then pay off in full is nightmarish. Because there is nothing stopping me, besides 20 years of inflexible habit and discipline, from just YOLOing with the nearly $40k of available credit they make available to me.
I watch some of these Financial Audits, and people's minimums on all their cards is over the amount I manage to save each month. I'll watch someone my same age, my same income, and they are looking at 5-10 years of aggressively budgeting and paying off debt to get back to zero. Meanwhile my assets appreciated more than my annual salary the last few years. But in another timeline, with only slightly different choices early on, I could have been them.
Half these people, when asked about a specific credit account, just go "I don't know, they just gave me that card when I bought X". X could be a car, a new roof, a large plumbing job, etc, etc. Like in my driveway story below, fucking everything is trying to get you to sign up for a new credit card now. People unthinkingly just take them. "Yeah, more free money" they think.
As I've gotten older, my arrogance at being part of the Credit Card Master Race has waned. Fuck them.
Shrike
2d ago
I think I agree that a firearm has a lower entry point. However the drone might pose a greater threat at relatively similar skill levels, although it's possible that counter-drone tech advances and popularizes quickly enough to once again raise the skill level necessary to use a drone competently.
The truth is that a low-functioning psychotic with a gun (or a drone) does not pose a threat to society even if he poses a threat to individuals in society. It's intelligent and organized individuals that pose the threat to social stability, and guns and drones are a force-multiplier to that effort. Drones are to modern society what firearms were in an earlier: an extremely powerful tool – or weapon – that allows relatively under-equipped groups to reach parity with professional soldiers. The drone is to the tank what the musket was to the knight.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Honestly I don’t mind EA as much as some of the other mega studios. They put out some decently fun Star Wars games, BioWare was BioWare’s own fault apparently, Apex is okay, Split Fiction and It Takes Two are examples of creative games rare elsewhere, their bombed games rarely break my heart. I’d like them to be a little looser with owned but semi dormant IP, but that’s every big company.
quiet_NaN
2d ago
overtly anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic content
Out of genuine interest of someone who avoids most social media: how overtly antizionist and antisemitic content is trending on social media? And what kind? Classic Nazi stuff, caricatures of long-nosed Jews sitting on bags of money? Alleged IDF war crimes which may or may not be Hamas fabrications? "From the river to the sea", which denies Israel's right to exist? Narratives parallel to SecureSignals', e.g. that that most Jewish citizens are faithless towards their 'host' country and their true allegiance is to Israel?
FWIW, near-east related content I see on imgur is mostly critical of Israel, but mostly not what I would call "overtly antizionist". Mostly it emphasizes the horrors of Gaza, sometimes perhaps spreading wartime propaganda (e.g. "IDF snipers are deliberately headshotting kids in Gaza", which seems unlikely on priors). I do not recall reading memes which would advocate for Israel to be wiped of the map, or content which mentions Jews directly. But then again, imgur is a filter bubble full of elderly lefties.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
I mean, they already did this in the 2010s with Battlefiled One, did they not? I don’t think it will happen again for a bit. Their next game is maybe 50% likely to be another Bad Company or Vietnam era one, 30% it’s a Cold War one, 20% something else (maybe 10% space age and 10% a 90s/2000s confused middle)
Is there any way to have known, back in medieval times, that there were two massive continents across the Atlantic ocean?
I imagine since there were Vikings - and probably others - that reached them by then, there could be sources that at least describe the presence of land there. Though probably not about what kind of land and whether that is the same land mass as Asia probably nobody knew definitely by that time. In fact, one could imagine a world where Bering land bridge stayed above water - would it then indeed be Asia?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2d ago
To build on @Muninn's great explanation: Schizophrenia is in a way pattern matching in overdrive. What anti-psychotics do is dial the frequency in closer to the station that we call reality, but there is always still some fuzz. So a lot of people go on anti-psychotics for a while and because the fuzz is still there they don't really feel very different - or worse, they feel like they have traded the frankly fucking magical world they lived in for the grey lifeless slog all the zombies live in, because it has no effect on the symptoms like anhedonia.
And on top of that they also get to enjoy fun side effects like feeling dog tired all the time, constant headaches, weight gain despite constant vomiting, and the always delightful sensation of your muscles seizing of their own accord so you look like you have cerebral palsy because your jaw desperately wants to rest on your shoulder and your hands are doing their level best to retract into your elbows. On top of that, there is the widespread belief in the community that if you find yourself gurning you have been on anti-psychotics for too long and you are rolling the dice on involuntarily gurning for life.
faceh
2d ago
Sudan
Guess that one counts, definitely slipped my mind.
Kurdistan feels like cheating a bit, but good point.
Grant_us_eyes
2d ago
That you need a credit score to function in society as a whole should be illegal.
Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm very well aware of how and why credit score functions. I get it.
I was still very well put out when I had to go purchase a new car unexpectedly, only to have the guy who went to check my finances come out and stare at me like I was some lost crytpid and blurt out 'You have no credit score.'
Yes, because I grew up around adults who abused credit cards and paid the consequences and who had no desire to go down that road, thank you very much. Only to find out late that, gee whillickers, if you want to function as an adult in society for some things, you actually need a credit score, and for that, you need a credit card.
Why, yes, I'm still salty about that. How could you tell?
(And before you ask, all my previous vehicles were old, used, family hand-me-downs.)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
It’s a play for hearts and minds of current young Americans, and it’s probably working. Youth today probably don’t think of Saudi Arabia in the same breath as Iran, and that’s what they want.
Ioper
2d ago
Or why not just straight up report whatever some state propaganda organ says?
Why would the Russian/Ukrainian/Isreali MoD ever lie? Or why would Hamas or any of constituting parts for that matter? Surely we can uncritically re report their press releases, often with barely acknowledging where said statements come from and that won't lead these organisations to try to use us to launder propaganda?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Look, I don’t know about inner circles or whatever, but on a practical basis if China had control over TikTok then if war ever actually was threatened (eg Taiwan, and I’m a doomer there) TikTok would become overnight one of the single most powerful and effective propaganda weapons ever known. Yes, it’s a national security threat. At the very least if the algorithm is in Oracle’s hands, it’s a lot easier for the US to take further steps if, for example, Israel actually became an opponent or whatever.
jake
2d ago
You believe the "godhead" is "one" in the "'scriptural' 'sense'" via the eisegetical interpretation your predecessors tore apart the scripture in service of making, not what Christians have held for most of 2,000 years.
The meaningful historic definition of Christian can be shorthanded as one who holds and espouses the beliefs found in the Nicene Creed. The LDS rejects this explicitly. You claim to be Christian because you believe in a figure you call Christ (cc. "LDE"), not because you believe in the same Christ as those of the Nicene Creed. This is a matter of historic distinction of groups. The grand intersection of Christianity with the macro of world history is those of the Nicene Creed. You are not in one measure the same as us but through equivocation. You may continue to equivocate, we are not the same. For the most visibly signaling theological distinction, the Catholic Church, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches have interdenominational recognition of the validity of baptisms; all deny the validity of Mormon baptism. Mormons recognize no baptisms but their own. I repeat, and your leaders affirm for "The Great Apostasy," we are not the same.
I am also disinterested in matters of indeed settled theology. The Church is a monarchy, and while there is the priesthood of the laity, they are not charged with authority on matters of doctrine. The reason for this may be seen in many places but no better in its crudeness than the strained-to-shattered readings Mormon elders use to justify their doctrine. Stepping on John 1, which makes explicit the consubstantial nature of the Logos and God, to convolute John 17 as "This means there's 3 gods actually." Or far worse in the first LDS link, 1 Cor. 15:35-41 as Paul's secret code about resurrected states of being. This isn't even strained as I can say of John 17 and it's not the childish misunderstanding of the third heaven mention of 2. Cor. 12; it is not possible to have arrived at this interpretation without willful malfeasance. He's talking about astronomical objects, also called heavenly bodies.
I suppose you would fully condemn the many wives God gave to David, too?
The Septuagint condemns him. Solomon was tested with the lechery of his father, he failed, his chalice was filled with iniquity as the sin was visited upon him fully, the kingdom fell. There's a lesson in this.
"LDS leaders pretended that God coincidentally told them to stop practicing polygamy just in time to avoid direct conflict with the army"
The Edmund-Tucker Act preceded the "revelation" and this is what Woodruff is quoted as verbatim:
I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me.
The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question
The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice
I saw exactly what would come to pass if there was not something done. I have had this spirit upon me for a long time. But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write.
Now I will tell you what was manifested to me and what the Son of God performed in this thing.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Genuinely kind of surprised that our site doesn’t support native latex.
the truth claims of the LDS and Nicene Christianity are cosmic, we can't use the same kind of empiricism on them, and so people who believe these things are important rely on their own epistemological standards for what's cosmically true: sacred texts, ancient creeds, community consensus, personal testimony -- all of which are vitally important both for Nicene Christians and the LDS.
That’s very key: There’s no way to empirically prove the theological assertions of either group. And, indeed, when the empirical evidence made it clear certain creeds of classic Christianity are false (e.g. the Earth is around 4 billion years old, not 6,000 years old, and the Earth rotates around the sun, not the sun around the Earth) the initial reaction was to threaten anyone who made those scientific claims with torture.
If we don’t consider the Bible reliable, the claims that Jesus even existed are very flimsy, resting on a passage in Antiquities of the Jews that may not even be authentic, and may not be true even if authentic; I myself find the claim that Decius Mundus (to use another story in the Antiquities) was so lovesick for one Paulina that he would pay what would amount to over a million dollars in today’s money to be with her questionable, especially with how he supposedly got into bed with her.
If someone comes up to me and says “You’re going to Hell because you don’t have my particular form of Christianity”, my reaction is “yeah, that’s a pretty strong claim, what’s your evidence?”, at which point they open up their Bible so I retort with “that’s nice, but what’s your empirical evidence.” For centuries we were in the dark ages, with people slaughtering each other over what interpretation of the Bible is correct. Those religious wars only quieted down and life only improved for mankind when we started looking at actual real world empirical evidence and engaged in the scientific process.
I’m a big fan of Christianity. I’m opposed to any type of fundamentalism, whether it’s fundamentalist Christianity or narrow-minded illiberal “left-wing” thinking — for example, the notion supported by empirical evidence that someone with a high sex partner count is more likely to divorce someone than a virgin will is considered heresy by the illiberal left, and they will use shame and other non-empirical tactics to refute the notion because it goes against their creeds.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
I don’t understand any of this.
Stuff with boundary conditions is modeled by differential equations. Differential equations have wave-based solutions. Waves must be represented with 2 numbers, and one way to do this is to separate the “real” and “imaginary” components. If we treat these like (x,y) pairs, we can graph them on a plane just like any other pair of numbers. The set of all these complex numbers is denoted ℂ.
Royst is talking about a different (but similar?) class of equations which have solutions that require 4 numbers. To graph them, we’d need two simultaneous planes: ℂ×ℂ. So we’re out of luck unless we want to get cute with color.
Tenaz
2d ago
It could. It's not currently authorized in countries where it's legal, but it never really went away. We actually still practice it in the sense that, if a man's wife dies, he can remarry and be sealed eternally to the second woman too, provided she was previously single.
True, but our belief in a single authorized baptism is also accompanied by a belief that said baptism can be accepted even after death, so it’s not exclusionary as a complete package! And you really do need to include both, seems to me. It’s not as if this is the only very significant theological difference among Christian sects.
Well, qualified in one respect. It’s not as if we think that God ignores the prayers or genuine authentic intentions toward God of others. Functionally someone who confesses a sin to a Catholic priest, exercises faith in Christ, repents of their ways, is essentially forgiven (or will be) - just the priest didn’t actually serve an official role in it. So I guess I still don’t quite see it. Perhaps similar to how many Christian sects have walked back beliefs that the unbaptized can literally never enter heaven and won’t get a chance to, Mormons have also toned back the emphasis on how other sects are all extremely misled people. Early LDS history, (in)famously, was not quite the same - many especially older Mormons even thought of the Catholic Church as a somewhat devilish deception. So in that sense there’s an argument to be made that this distinction is no longer as true as it used to be.
4nji2
Provide disclaim disclaim watchers.
2d ago
I can't speak for US and what bars one had to meet in order to be granted franchise there, but in 1900-01 Lower House elections in the Austrian part of Austria Hungary, 6% of adults had the right to vote. Assuming the population average IQ was 100 and enfranchisement being totally correlated with IQ, this correspends to the cut-off being 123.
But another way to think about it, is taking the meme to mean the average voter should have 130 IQ. Thus one has to find L, such that integrate(x*exp(-((x-mu)/15)^2/2)/sqrt(2pi)/15,x,L,infinity)/integrate(exp(-((x-mu)/15)^2/2)/sqrt(2pi)/15,x,L,infinity)=130. mu being population average IQ, and L the IQ bound for franchise, such that the average voter has 130 IQ. I don't have a CAS at hand to calculate L myself.
Can I blame the lenders and the progressives?
In general this argument that political pressure has forced businessmen to be immoral is not very convincing for me. I hope to live in a society where generally businessmen have lines they won't cross, like openly defrauding the poor.
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