glaz
guesswho
1yr ago
I definitely recognize the behavior in your story, but my reaction is less that it's a rejection of someone being annoying, and more the rejection of an inconvenient argument by fixating on the single least-defensible sentence or part of a sentence in the entire post, while ignoring the rest.
I feel like the very basic design feature of
quoted text
ends up encouraging this behavior a lot. It's such a convenient and coherent way to reply to a post that many people (myself included) use it as the primary organizational scheme for their replies to comments. But it carries a great danger of making it feel natural to pick out individual sentences and only reply to those, either taking them out of context of the overall argument or else only engaging with the weakest or less-central parts of the argument.
And it doesn't help when people (laudably!) like to write very long and engaged posts that cover a lot of ground, making it harder to hold everything about it in your head and respond to the whole gestalt at once, and easier to glaze over and skim stuff until you see a sentence that pops out at you.
I do this myself more than I want to, it's a bad habit that's easy to fall into. And I feel like a lot of people do it when responding to me, and it gets frustrating. It is especially harmful when people are trying to talk across the aisle on some issue, because they ussually have a pre-cached response to at least one sentence in the other side's comment, and firing that off in response to a single quoted sentence really feels like contributing!
But, yeah, I think it limits discussion and is pretty bad for the health of the site.
Interesting thought experiment, let me see how would actual atheists react at these "provocations."
A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls
Why is bashing Darwin who never claimed to be atheist supposed to trigger atheists?
This would be seen as creationist talking point from bygone Bush era, equating communism and evolution. Reaction of atheist, even Marxist atheist, would be bewilderment and perhaps despair at their opponents ignorance, rather than murderous rage.
A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby
Margaret Sanger never identified herself as atheist either, no idea why is you see her as some atheist idol, and today she is revered by few people, least of all modern progressives.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair was fiery atheist activist well known all over America - in her time. Now she is completely forgotten.
Atheist reaction at this scene would be: WTF? What is it supposed to mean (except celebrating racism)?
The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
Atheist reaction would be something between "this is weird" and "this is cool".
Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.
Atheist contemplating this scene would perhaps feel impermanence of all things, in mono no aware sense.
You see that none of these provocations are very provoking, none would be seen by atheists as blasphemous and insulting like Christians see satanic statue.
Thinking about it, I cannot imagine something that would provoke atheists like blaspheming Jesus and celebrating Satan provokes Christians. This is something that disproves your claim that atheism is "just another religion".
If true, what is holy book of atheism, what are temples of atheism, who is the "prophet of atheism" whose dissing would turn atheists into murderous mob screaming for vengeance?
edit: links fixed
FeepingCreature
1yr ago
Desecrating any of these
Atheist point of order: you cannot desecrate them, because they are not sacred.
The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
Honestly, I believe many atheists would consider that "fucking awesome".
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
Baphomet Has Fallen
How much good faith is required for an American state government respecting a religion's symbols?
The Satanic Temple, specifically the Satanic Temple of Iowa, put a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, following the letter of the law allowing religious symbols. Thing is, it's explicitly an atheistic (or rather "non-theistic") religion; they have as much belief in the reality of Baphomet as they do the Flying Spaghetti Monster (mHNAty). They use literary symbols and provocative symbols to promote science and promote humanist atheist goals of tolerance and justice. It was designed to provoke a response, and it has; a Christian broke it. Deseret News reports that:
Jason Benell, the president of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, described the “targeting” of the display as “encouraged by legislators.” He wrote in a news release, “This is unacceptable. When our leaders make it permissible to destroy religious — or non-religious — displays they find religiously objectionable, they are abdicating their responsibility to safeguard the freedom of expression of the citizens they represent.”
The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights of atheists to display a pagan idol they don't even believe in, which mocks people of genuine Christian faith with a dark symbol drawn from mythology.
Take that to its logical conclusion.
A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. I can think of a few:
- A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls
- A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby
- The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
- Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.
Desecrating any of these would bear the same fourth-degree criminal mischief charges, with up to a year in prison and a $2,560 fine, and exposure to lawsuits by the artists and owners of the symbols.
But aside from the turnabout, I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes, and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I tried to read the whole thing, I really did, but my eyes glazed over around the time you tried to use Jewish advocacy as the type specimen for wokeness.
I’m sure it’s not quite fair to summarize the rest of your post as “ethnic favoritism is immoral, except when I like the people involved,” but you’re not making it easy. There’s so much Russell conjugation. And what do you even mean by “racism against Christians?” I think your argument would have been a lot more clear if you’d tabooed the words “racism” and “antiracism” rather than holding on to them as boo-lights.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
I was good at maths till 10th grade, but in the 11th, I began to struggle both because my ADHD made my eyes glaze over during calculus and trig, and in the case of the latter, I missed several introductory classes.
Basically had the same experience, thankfully did go to the best school available(in Russia there is an alternative way to get into, bypassing the SAT analogue), but picked up personal tutor gig as a side hustle and had to learn all of it anyway.
Offtopic question but how saturated is the personal tutor market in India? Here it is not all, almost any 95th percentile and higher can earn decent money from it, while working remotely, people most often just don't consider this an option.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1yr ago
I can do the problems in RPMs, it's not easy, but in general, I do what I did for the example you linked to, which is decompose the pattern into primitives, verbally reason through how each one evolves, and then get the answer.
I believe in the example linked, it's
Another trick I learned to help with my poor visuo-spatial imagination relates to the questions where you're shown multiple angles of a single die, then asked to say what a hidden side shows. If I have pen and paper, that's easy enough, but if not, I make a fist, and then imagine each aspect corresponds to a symbol, and then I can see the answer easily enough.
I would say that I'm a 99.999(9 or 99) wordcel, and about 75th percentile in terms of shape-rotating. I was good at maths till 10th grade, but in the 11th, I began to struggle both because my ADHD made my eyes glaze over during calculus and trig, and in the case of the latter, I missed several introductory classes. I remember seeing my personal tutor in maths raising an eyebrow and asking if that's how they taught me to solve trigonometric identities in class, breaking everything down into the smallest factors and then trying to make them cancel out, whereas the way the later questions were designed required you to memorize the equalities if you wanted to have any hope of solving them in a useful time span. I did better at stats and algebra.
I didn't really have much in the way of internet access at the time, I'm confident that with the quality of mathematical education found on YouTube and elsewhere, combined with the ADHD meds I was started on in med school, is have done much better. I'd certainly have killed to have access to GPT-4, I rely on it heavily for didactic purposes.
I'd certainly have gotten into a better med school!
At any rate, medicine is close to an ideal career in my particular case, the closest a typical doctor comes to using applied maths is figuring out drug dosages, and you're unlikely to need stats or calc at all unless you're doing research. 50% of it is rote-memorization, and ~50% is having the fluid intelligence to figure out the implications of the facts you memorized. Medicine is counter-intuitive enough with all the edge cases that you can't just work backwards and figure everything out from first principles.
I've only given a standardized IQ test once, for a job application, and I never saw the figures, but the recruiter told my girlfriend (who also happened to have applied!) that I scored very highly. I also scored >99% in the standardized aptitude tests (disguises IQ tests) many Indian students receive towards the end of schooling. I did a full RPM once through an app, and got a score of 130 IQ, but it wasn't proctored so the reader is welcome to weight that as they please. I know that I'm very strong verbally since I beat out about 2 million other people in an exam that measures aptitude in English in a standardized manner, being literally first, with a nice cheque that went towards a gaming pc and time on the podium with some very famous people. I remember being a little embarrassed that the cute girl who came second was far more academically illustrious than me, but a win's a win, she can cry on the pile of money she's likely sleeping on 🙏.
Back to medicine, as long as I have pharmaceutically enhanced diligence, I've yet to run into anything I simply can't understand, and I think I do a decent enough job at it. I managed to teach myself most of it, given that I was very depressed for most of my time in school, and we had about a year where classes were irregular due to political turmoil causing financial issues. But I passed whatever the GMC threw at me with flying colors, so I have a great deal more confidence and less conviction that I'm an impostor in a white lab coat these days haha.
This is a flaw of pretty much any poll or quiz, regardless of the nominal goal it seeks, the average person is an attention deficient idiot whose eyes glaze over the moment they spot a caveat in the wild, so everyone is forced to sacrifice clarity for the sake of just getting more responses.
I'm a Bayesian, and I implicitly consider what I think is the most likely/representative scenario. I think the odds of someone serving a shit-cake is far higher if they know they're in an environment where it's not going to make someone puke, and that informed my answer (a solid triple upvote because I'd be mildly tickled at the idea myself, combined with not considering it offensive or worthy of condemnation).
Similarly, I assume the woman euthanizing the puppies isn't being actively malicious, and if they ended up un-adopted in a shelter, most of them would be put down by other means. I imagine the researchers who made the poll were more curious about the visceral gut reaction to the idea of poor little puppies being stoned to death as opposed to trying to tease out more subtle moral considerations, and while I'm a fan of dogs in general, I don't think the scenario I envisioned is condemnable.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1yr ago
I am curious and confused why you have lumped “white people” in with Confederate history. Surely most white people in America were not Southern rebels, and there’s more to that culture than Robert E Lee? I realize that as a Southerner yourself it feels a bit more personal but… again, I really feel the Confederate issue doesn’t generalize. And part of it is just that Southern primary education more or less lies to its own people about this part of history. Not only do many texts outright lie about the causes of the Civil War, the South may have claimed that slavery would die out, but their actual actions reveal an active attempt at spreading it. A lot of these “reasonable complaints” just boil down to economic issues, made worse because the South didn’t want to take steps to rebalance their economy away from slavery. And they certainly didn’t want to treat Black people like the humans they are. That’s not something you can just glaze over.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1yr ago
By every conceivable human metric that isn't of the last 50 years, Israel has the absolute human right to completely glaze everything around them until they are happy and secure.
But they don't. They hold back. Always. For decades.
The problem with this statement is that while this would be fine using the human metrics of the past, the last 50 years actually took place in the last 50 years as opposed to during the Bronze age. If you actually want to adopt the standards of the Bronze Age then Israel simply does not exist, because the holocaust would have been just as fine by those standards as the proposed "glazing" of everything around them. It is solely due to the growing understanding of humanity that genocide is a great wrong that Israel and the Jewish people exist in the first place, and Israel demonstrating that they don't actually care about the evils of genocide, they just want to be wearing the boot rather than under it, is enough to make a lot of people reconsider their support. Don't forget the precedent your support of these actions sets either - even just advocating for the nuclear genocide of the Arab world is enough to permanently destroy your credibility when it comes to condemning racists or white nationalists, who are in many cases less extreme in their policy recommendations.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
1yr ago
it basically evaporates any amount of good will I had for them
I don't understand a lot of things in life - and thoughts like these rank among the top.
Israel is surrounded by people's who all basically want them destroyed. One group decided to invade them and kill (1000, 1200?) of them and take hostages. Said people store munitions in hospitals and schools.
By every conceivable human metric that isn't of the last 50 years, Israel has the absolute human right to completely glaze everything around them until they are happy and secure.
But they don't. They hold back. Always. For decades.
And you're upset they blew up a hospital ... Or didn't.
fuckduck9000
1yr ago
I am quite certain that guesswho is darwin, and I think it's reasonably likely they'll either admit it eventually or a solid consensus will emerge among the rest of the posters, including yourself
My eyes quickly glaze over any trans discussion, but I think there’s less than a 1% chance of guesswho being darwin, and you can quote me on that. He’s an antagonistic progressive, he's got progressive stylistic ticks, that’s basically the extent of the similarity. Other arguments include: as you say, darwin was prolific, why would he even use an alt, and keep it secret, after he did leave that time he was banned, just to make a few random comments. It's not parsimonious.
In any case, we've looked at five threads, and it seems to me that at in at least four of those threads, we're pretty far from Darwin being a high-quality contributor who got snippy with people who were rude to him
He did get a lot of AAQC. So you'll have to concede these aren't his best arguments, at least.
Would you agree that in those threads, we've seen him initiating with low-effort and highly inflammatory posts, and that other posters expend significant effort attempting to have a civil conversation without much success?
There’s low-effort, and there’s content-free. Strictly low-effort posts are only really bad if they express a very common idea (for the sub), imo. As to ‘inflammatory’, it is just a function of a commenter’s ideological distance. We need to tolerate inflammation, as it is a key aspect of the body's immune defenses.
...In other words, he doesn't actually endorse anything he wrote in that original comment. Nothing you described above was at all the argument he claims to be making, which is unsurprising since the argument he claims to have been making cannot be straightforwardly derived from what he actually wrote.
Disagree, he does endorse the interpretation partly with:
But I also think that the extreme version of this ideology - coercing private entities to host speech and actions they disagree with, making it functionally impossible for people to build private spaces with the people and discourse they prefer, limiting societies ability to condemn and ostracize bad or dangerous ideas - is just another form of tyranny and violent coercion all it's own.
This is getting into way too many details of one argument. Our fundamental disagreement is whether his behaviour here is bad. What is the rule, applicable to all commenters, that he broke ? “The defendant made a short comment that implied a certain argument, but then later only partially endorsed it, and in further clarifications it became clear that he endorsed another argument more”
The fact that he is incorrect from our pov, that ‘the only possible response to private censorship is nationalizing the platforms. That's it.’ is weak, is not for us to punish (through force).
You are using his own, extensive clarifications to catch him in a contradiction, when they put the lie to your other accusations, that he was just sniping, that he wasn’t engaging. Wouldn’t it be worse if he had not explained what he meant?
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
"Here's a bit what I scribbled out" is not a poem.
Well, yes--but what's to delineate "a bit what I scribbled out?" I still think this is a taboo-your-words problem. Is a haiku a poem? Well, whether it is a poem or not, you can still call it a haiku. You could also call a haiku an instance of "blank verse" (metered-but-not-rhymed) though this might be confusing since the tradition of blank verse arose quite separately from the tradition of haiku. "Free verse" is blank verse without the meter. We can describe all these things without the word "poem," if we want. So what words you use will depend a lot on what you're trying to do; the categories were made for man, not man for the categories.
One of my favorite poems is Phyllis McGinley's "The Doll House." She was certainly a poet; she wrote many metered-and-rhymed poems. I think this one is also a poem; I think it is a good poem. It has some rhyme, albeit only limited instances of meter. It would not quite be the same if you just converted it to prose.
After the children left it, after it stood
For a while in the attic,
Along with the badminton set, and the skis too good
To be given away, and the Peerless Automatic
Popcorn Machine that used to fly into rages,
And the Dr. Doolittle books, and the hamsters’ cages,
She brought it down once more
To a bedroom, empty now, on the second floor
And put the furniture in.
There was nothing much
That couldn’t be used again with a bit of repair.
It was all there,
Perfect and little and inviolate.
So, with the delicate touch
A jeweler learns, she mended the rocking chair,
Meticulously laundered
The gossamer parlor curtains, dusted the grate,
Glued the glazed turkey to the flowered plate,
And polished the Lilliput writing desk.
She squandered
One bold October day and half the night
Binding the carpets round with a ribbon border;
Till, to her grave delight
(With the kettle upon the stove, the mirror’s face
Scoured, the formal sofa set in its place),
She saw the dwelling decorous and in order.
It was a good house. It had been artfully built
By an idle carpenter once, when the times were duller.
The windows opened and closed. The knocker was gilt.
And every room was painted a suitable color
Or papered to scale
For the sake of the miniature Adam and Chippendale.
And there were proper hallways,
Closets, lights, and a staircase. (What had always
Pleased her most
Was the tiny, exact, mahogany newel post.)
And always, too, wryly she thought to herself,
Absently pinning
A drapery’s pleat, smoothing a cupboard shelf—
Always, from the beginning,
This outcome had been clear. Ah! She had known
Since the first clapboard was fitted, first rafter hung
(Yet not till now had known that she had known),
This was no daughters’ fortune but her own—
Something cautiously lent to the careless young
To dazzle their cronies with for a handful of years
Till the season came
When their toys diminished to programs and souvenirs,
To tousled orchids, diaries well in arrears,
Anonymous snapshots stuck round a mirror frame,
Or letters locked away.
Now seed of the past
Had fearfully flowered. Wholly her gift at last,
Here was her private estate, a peculiar treasure
Cut to her fancy’s measure.
Now there was none to trespass, no one to mock
The extravagance of her sewing or her spending
(The tablecloth stitched out of lace, the grandfather’s clock,
Stately upon the landing,
With its hands eternally pointing to ten past five).
Now all would thrive.
Over this house, most tranquil and complete,
Where no storm ever beat,
Whose innocent stair
No messenger ever climbed on quickened feet
With tidings either of rapture or despair,
She was sole mistress. Through the panes she was able
To peer at her world reduced to the size of dream
But pure and unaltering.
There stood the dinner table,
Invincibly agleam
With the undisheveled candles, the flowers that bloomed
Forever and forever,
The wine that never
Spilled on the cloth or sickened or was consumed.
The Times lay on the doorsill, but it told
Daily the same unstirring report. The fire
Painted upon the hearth would not turn cold,
Or the constant hour change, or the heart tire
Of what it must pursue,
Or the guest depart, or anything here be old.
“Nor ever,” she whispered, “bid the spring adieu.”
And caught into this web of quietnesses
Where there was neither After nor Before,
She reached her hand to stroke the unwithering grasses
Beside the small and incorruptible door.
Having removed romance, deep bonds and love from sex as well as the stability of marriage we have created the grounds for bitter encounters
This particular kind of bitter encounter may have increased in frequency, but this isn't the only effect of the sexual revolution, it's worth considering things in total. The 'stability of marriage' could refer to no-fault divorce - many people, both anecdotally and in survey data, were trapped in unhappy, abusive, or sexless marriages before that. Also, marital rape was legal in the US prior to 1970. (not that my position is modern sexual norms are good)
Also, two events described seems more like central cases of sexual assault than miscommunication or awkwardness or 'bad sex' -
Nadia says Brand took her to a wall and kissed her and made a comment, something along the lines of: “I’ll keep you safe.” He then told her that “a friend” was already in the bedroom and that he wanted her to join them, according to Nadia.
“I’m like, no, that’s not happening, I don’t care, that’s not happening, we’re not doing that,” she says. “I tried to get away from him and I slipped away from the wall. And then I went to another wall that had a painting on it. A huge painting. And my bag got actually stuck underneath that, and it’s still on my arm. And at this point he’s grabbing at my underwear, pulling it to the side.”
Nadia alleges that she told Brand to get off her and that she wanted to leave, but he carried on. “I’m stuck underneath the painting and he’s pushing up against me,” she says. “He’s a lot taller than me. And he has that glazed look in his eye again. And I can’t move. And I told him, ‘Get off, get off.’” Nadia claims that Brand pushed her up against the wall and raped her, without a condom.
with text messages evidence
And
“I was screaming, and I was like, ‘What are you doing, stop, please, you’re my friend, I love you, please don’t do this, I don’t want to do this’ . . . I think he had his hands down my trousers but I was fighting so hard and I was screaming so hard, hoping that I could get through somehow.” She says: “I don’t know what the actual definition of ‘sexual assault’ is, but it feels like that. He didn’t rape me.”
She says she kept begging him to get off her and eventually he relented, at which point she says he “flipped” and was “super angry”. Phoebe says Brand was shouting “f*** you” and “you’re fired” and she says she fled Brand’s home in tears, stopping only to grab her shoes before running barefoot to her car.
It'd take a lot of creative misinterpretation on the part of this accuser to take an 'awkward encounter that went wrong' to this. It's possible, though, some people are very creative when they recount things.
I think another component of the phenomenon you describe, which is more common than actual rape, is that being aggressive and ignoring some signals to stop is a good strategy for success in casual sex. Part of the 'game' is women giving mixed or negative signals that the man needs to be a bit aggressive in pushing through to get what he wants, and if you do it well you'll often get a positive response. And when a guy is trained by repeated experience to do that, it encourages the kind of personality that, with a little random variation caused by miscommunication or bad judgement in the moment, can cross over into violating consent. The man's and woman' actions here are in large part instinctive, and (imo, I have little legible evidence though) those instincts are related to an evolutionary history where a lot of sex wasn't entirely consensual. So the whole thing's a mess.
I don't think just 'bad sex and rape-adjacent things happen' is a good reason to roll back the sexual revolution, tbh. There's just a lot more great or fine casual sex or fun serial monogamy than there are actively traumatic experiences, and the rate is comparable to other fun but dangerous activities that should be legal. You need to believe that the average case of 'fine' fling or longterm relationship that doesn't lead to children is bad, despite both parties enjoying it.
bolido_sentimental
2yr ago
Well, the real story behind this: the 4050CL that you can get online is as good as it gets these days, and it's a good pry bar that will meet any typical need.
But - my dad has been a glazier for right on 40 years, and I used to go help him on jobs sometimes, and when we'd meet other glaziers, builders, etc., it happened unusually frequently that they'd comment on his ancient RD4050 from before they discontinued it in the 2000s. And lots of times these old farts would pull out their own old banged-up 4050s, and start telling stories about how they'd bought this one in 1993, etc., etc. It was the damnedest thing. Old glaziers are like that about all kinds of tools, but the Red Devil 4050 is the one that stands out in my mind by name. Even now, I'll go back home and stand around in his workshop, and he'll pull out the 4050 and say, "Bet you ain't got one of these." I'll say, "Give me one then!" and he'll say, "I can't, you can't get 'em no more. The new ones ain't as good."
Hmm.. I was perfectly fine at math till 10th grade, where I fell off harshly.
I blame this on my (at the time undiagnosed) ADHD, since my eyes would glaze over.
I also severely fucked myself by not paying attention during early trigonometry lessons, something my tutors failed to address.
I think in a world where I was taking Ritalin at the time, I'd have done much better.
I do like math much more now that I'm not forced to study it, I watch channels like 3Blue1Brown on the regular, and I occasionally use GPT-4 to teach myself statistics.
I am under the impression that the tenets of ML aren't that complicated, and while I have no natural affinity for it, when my happiness is at stake I can pop pills and grind. I have to do that for medicine as is!
Edit: The Indian math curriculum is far more rigorous than the US one is, without going into things like AP courses. While my calculus is only middling and my trig terrible (beyond the very basics), I googled the 12th grade US maths curriculum and I think I have most of it handled.
FistfullOfCrows
2yr ago
It's worse than that. The game ostensibly already existed, a Chinese mobile clone of their IP with all the bullshit already worked out. Existing engine, most of the skills are the same as the chinese clone. They jsut gave the chinese devs permission to completely use their IP instead. Then monetization loops glazed on top of that.
It's every bit as scummy as you can imagine.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
They can — just instead of sparsely populated Azov steppe battles will happen in Poltava (pop. 280k), or Zaporizhzhia proper (pop. around 700k). They repelled Russians from Kyiv back when American assistance was meager.
Kremlins shifted their course to freezing the conflict at the approximately current borders after their failed push to Kiev that was meant to facilitate regime change. And without western assistance they would be successful as they were 9 years ago. And American assistance was not meager if you look at it in all years from 2014.
He is a kleptocrat, alright, but calling him non-ideological is just demonstrably false at this point. You could have had doubts back in 2012, not now. Karlin is just as delusional as ever, just instead of "Kiev will fall in 2 days" he swung in the opposite direction.
But policies of his government that consists from his cronies aren't ideological nor specifically Russian nationalist. We can look at many aspects: immigration, internal federal policy, cultural and just politics where nationalist parties and organizations were outright banned. Even if he is in some way sincerely ideological it doesn't matter, because it doesn't affect his mishmash rhetoric and policy.
I lived in Russia for quite some time, I know Russian, so I think I have some understanding of what Russian nationalists really think. Are you Russian?
Yes, I am Russian and live in Russia currently. While Russian nationalist that are pro-Putin exist they are unknown to the mostly apolitical wide public and treated with disdain by politically active youth.
And Nazi Germany didn't go full war time economy until 1942.
People can be ideologically-driven psychopaths, and ineffective at the same time. And I assure you — if Strelkov came to power, economic efficiency would just drop. Because he would fire Nabiulina, actually competent banker, and would put someone like Glazyev in her stead, who is even less competent than Erdogan when it comes to monetary policy. But hey, at least he hates hohols.
There is wide gulf between full war-time economy proposed by Strelkov and current Vietnam level spending. Girkin wants to "liberate" whole Ukraine, with smaller goals kremlins need less commitment but still higher than current one. I am talking about not inefficiency but policies that are going against Russian nationalist or imperialist belief supposedly held by Putin.
Blimey
2yr ago
it can't fight alone
They can — just instead of sparsely populated Azov steppe battles will happen in Poltava (pop. 280k), or Zaporizhzhia proper (pop. around 700k). They repelled Russians from Kyiv back when American assistance was meager.
Putin isn't an imperialist, he isn't based right winger or actually communist shill, he is cleptocrat who wants to stay in power, that's all.
He is a kleptocrat, alright, but calling him non-ideological is just demonstrably false at this point. You could have had doubts back in 2012, not now. Karlin is just as delusional as ever, just instead of "Kiev will fall in 2 days" he swung in the opposite direction.
In Russia Russian nationalists that support the regime are generally laughed at for all the aforementioned reasons.
I lived in Russia for quite some time, I know Russian, so I think I have some understanding of what Russian nationalists really think. Are you Russian?
non-committal atlitude to the supposed fight against evil nazi Ukraine and Satanist NATO
And Nazi Germany didn't go full war time economy until 1942.
People can be ideologically-driven psychopaths, and ineffective at the same time. And I assure you — if Strelkov came to power, economic efficiency would just drop. Because he would fire Nabiulina, actually competent banker, and would put someone like Glazyev in her stead, who is even less competent than Erdogan when it comes to monetary policy. But hey, at least he hates hohols.
anti_dan
2yr ago
Do you really think rationalists are any better at "real-life tasks"?
I think I am better at picking up real life tasks than other people. For example, I am a better cook than most other cooks. I am a better gardener and landscaper than most of the people who do it professionally. I was a top tier football referee for a while. I learned how to be a glazier to exceed lifelong employees in a summer. I am top 10% at my actual paper job.
This IQ thing seems to translate pretty well for me.
cjet79
2yr ago
Implications of space travel on the economy/culture war etc.
This tickled the sci-fi nerd inside of me. But the realist part of me has to wonder "are we just too far away from meaningful space travel to get it before AI changes everything".
Dreams and how they are totally disregarded in modern technological societies. Almost every culture throughout the world placed a large significance on dreams - now we don't! Wonder why this is and how it could play into our neuroses.
Especially interesting when thinking back to early sci-fi. Asimov was pretty interested in dreams and AI. 'Do Androids dream of electric sheep' and 'i, robot'.
I have been pretty fascinated with my own dreams for a while. I sometimes get to go on elaborate sci fi and fantasy adventures all within the space of a night. I was at one point mining my dreams for story ideas. However, whenever I hear someone else talking about their dreams my eyes glaze over with boredom. Anything beyond one or two sentence summaries feels like a social faux pas to me.
There is a concept of a "dream world" which is different and separate from the "real world". I think ancient lives and cultures spent all their waking time heavily interacting with the "real world", a land of concepts / ideas must have been strange and foreign to their lived experiences. Meanwhile, in the modern world, we all interact with the internet, which might as well be a dream world. Its all taking place in our heads. And our connection with the "real world" has stagnated.
dasfoo
2yr ago
I should have noted that I’m mainly curious about the meta commentary on normies changing opinion on piracy.
Commercial interests seemed to have convinced the median online person that piracy is not ethical.
Let me throw in another possibility: Young people today are used to everything being easy to access. Piracy can insert a little bit of a learning curve. Us Gen Xers had to figure out the internet and we learned enough about how our computers work and how to configure our routers and tinker around with Napster/eMule/Limewire to figure out how to get the good quality files as opposed to the shitty files... Nowadays, kids just look at what's on Netflix and click. I have three teenage kids. I think only one of them would bother to figure out how to set up a Roku, which is comparatively easy. If I showed them how my torrent system works, their eyes would glaze over in seconds.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
2yr ago
I am not writing this to dismiss what you've just written or try to denigrate you, but my eyes have glazed over by the middle of the first paragraph. Can you explain what metaphysics are to someone who has studied only physics? If you asked me to give an example of metaphysics I would've replied with the principle of least action, but that's not what you meant, did you?
I may be a degenerate but at least I'm a cultured degenerate. I was a SSC reader from before the Culture War split, so technically I knew from the start but I only have cursory knowledge from that era, I rarely use Reddit and have no account there so I almost never lurked the main sub before the split. I occasionally read /r/themotte when I remembered, or when someone linked stuff in SSC/ACX comments or on DSL, also witnessing secondary splits of theschism and culturewarroundup.
At some point a year or two back I randomly checked on /r/themotte and saw the meta post heralding the exodus, I followed the link and have been lurking since. I was honestly surprised to see this place going strong, theschism and CWR have fared worse from what I've checked. With Reddit not being a viable discussion platform in this day and age, moving off-site was a great call.
Basically I've been lurking this place on-and-off for a long time and just decided to jump in at one point (kudos to whoever wrote "if in doubt, post" in the sidebar, it worked), I almost always lurk everywhere I go and am trying to break the habit. I still feel my brain physically fog up and my eyes glaze over when I read the pages-long debates people occasionally have here, so my low-IQ ass has little to contribute in comparison, but the first contact seems to have gone well so I'll keep trying.
Tangential but I was surprised to learn there are former rats/rat-adjacents among the /g/oons as well, I had the wildest deja-vu when someone made and posted a certain Chub card (SFW) a while ago.
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