zlatiah

@zlatiah@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some things I can do as an apartment dweller to fight climate change/deal with the coming effects?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The idiom is “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order for a reason. Even if plastic recycling is difficult in the US, reducing and reusing are doable by just about anyone. This can be using less one-time plastics, eating less meat (make sure nutritionally balanced), drive less, reuse those shipping boxes for other stuff such as for paper waste, buying from local farmers (if you can afford it)… something along those lines

  For home, living in an apartment is actually one of the best things one can do for the climate, since living in an apartment in a city is much, much more energy efficient than living in a suburb… not to mention cutting down on car-related costs. For ppl living in a home, methinks AC is more of a boogeyman… having good home insulation is a much better solution (as a well-insulated home uses less energy!), and the best part is that it is bipartisan so red states would happily do it too. If renovation is not possible, stuff like blackout curtains, window blinds, … are cheap insulation options

  IMO these are still negligible effects on an individual level, but these are not nothing, and if everyone does these the world would be a much better place. For more meaningful actions, probably organizing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Easy Delivery Co. I'll just be a little car driving a kei truck around a mountain town.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Slay the Spire 2. I do NOT want to be infinitely killed, memory-wiped, and resurrected

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Correlation == Causation?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Serious: a Google data scientist has legitimately written a book on this topic lol. Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (see his Wikipedia page)

  The book didn’t age super well because they got the causation direction wrong; in terms of real-world implementation Google Trends turned out to be pretty bad at actually predicting flu

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could machines develop consciousness just like we did?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess so, if it is true that would mean current AI companies did some serious ethics fuck-ups…

  I’m giving current-generation AI the benefit of the doubt though. I personally don’t think the current transformer-based LLM designs can achieve consciousness (although I think machines in general can, just not the current model architectures)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could machines develop consciousness just like we did?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a really good question but far above Lemmy’s pay-grade man. Neuroscientists are very actively researching and doing debates on this topic (consciousness in AI)

  The main problem is that we don’t even have a consensus, fool-proof theory of consciousness… We can barely tell whether a lot of living creatures are conscious or not (think octopus with their distributed intelligence, plants with their chemical signaling, …), and if so, when in their development stage does consciousness arise. Machines are one step removed from even that; even if we give AI models the benefit of the doubt and say they can develop consciousness, how in the world are we supposed to measure it

  I found this highly-cited Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper (Seth, A.K., Bayne, T. Theories of consciousness. Nat Rev Neurosci 23, 439–452 (2022). doi.org/10.1038/s41583-022-00587-4) (try Internet Archive if you can’t access it) that might be of interest… If you follow the citation trails, there are a ton of new articles on debating consciousness in AI. Like this arxiv article on consciousness in AI

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would you rather be reincarnated into a world of magic or reborn as yourself (with your current knowledge fully intact)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I couldn’t imagine a single scenario where I wouldn’t choose to reborn as myself. IMO it is objectively the correct choice: more stable/safe world (compared to pre-industrial revolution with dangerous spells), and I’ll almost be guaranteed to do quite well in it given the status window and skill tree

  My intrusive thoughts tell me to choose world of magic and go kaboom though

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Learned Colemak-DH a year ago, yes. In fact my keyboard is not correctly labeled at all, so I have to blind type…

  Used to be able to do it on QWERTY too, but I might need a week to get back into it. I can semi-do it on my phone (QWERTY) but not very good at it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you evaluate having more pay vs an easier job?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it depends a lot on the person? Where someone is career-wise (more established folks may care less about money per se), whether the desperately need more money, etc… Also depends on the proportion of the two, a 3% raise that requires 20% more effort probably won’t be worth it for most people

  Myself, I don’t mind having a small but not insignificant raise over an easier job, but that’s largely because of my current life circumstances

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the weirdest thing in english?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally I definitely think it’s the pronunciation, which is… self explanatory. Other languages have weird grammar rules too, but even French pronunciation is more consistent 😭

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Short answer is mostly no. Long answer is nuanced, and depends on whether you are asking about the score or intelligence

  Changing the “IQ score” (I am assuming a genuine test like WAIS-V, or at least something highly g-loaded like the old SAT):

  • You can practice for them. This is actually a bad thing: IQ test is meant as a diagnostic tool, so practice effects make IQ tests less valid. I know most neuropsychs will discourage you from practicing the exam or taking the same test within 2~5 years after taking one
  • Childhood IQ tests are somewhat less accurate than their adult counterparts, so sometimes two officially administered psych tests issued at two timepoints can differ by a lot.
  • Some people have wildly differing scores on different subsections, quite common among Autistic people I believe. This defeats the whole premise of IQ itself and you will likely never get a very accurate aggregate estimate… but that does mean your score will change based on which test you take. For example, if you are a genius at quantitative reasoning (math intuition) but below-average at say processing speed, you’ll score much higher on old SAT or AGCT (where math is 1/3, no processing speed section) versus WAIS-V (which has no math sections, but does have processing speed)

  Changing “intelligence” itself. This mostly never changes. However, if you have external factors that clog your mental, removing them do indeed improve intelligence:

  • The single best way is to have good early childhood nutrition. This obviously can’t be changed…
  • Have good nutrition and good sleep, and not take substances (alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc…)
  • Resolve ongoing mental disorders. It is well-known that depression drops IQ by quite a bit, for example

  IQ has some white supremacist roots, so discussing about it is usually frowned upon… and even when used correctly, it is honestly much better used as a diagnostic tool. For example ADHD can get flagged on IQ tests very easily.

  Personally I think instead of trying to improve per-se, it is much better used as a tool for self-discovery especially if you have any weird neurological conditions. If you’re worried about accuracy, there are old-SAT, CORE, CAIT, AGCT (the one US Army used to use)… which are all essentially IQ tests.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
  I got too excited about this topic and wrote too much. TL;DR: combination of in-state tuition, US/EU adopting different economics theories, and USC just being really expensive

  ___ First of all, a lot of schools give discounts if you pay taxes. EU citizens benefit from reduced tuition at nearly all EU-universities. US also has a similar system called “in-state tuition”, but it only applies to people who study at public schools in the state where they live (a.k.a. pay taxes in). For example, UIUC (well-known for engineering, in Illinois) has an out-of-state tuition of $38,398-$46,498, but only $18,046-$23,426 for Illinois residents. Obviously this is still a lot, which leads to the main point: US and EU follow two very different takes on “who pays for college”. There is a major debate in economics (I think initiated by right-leaning economists) that reimbursing for university tuition is regressive, because you are paying for already well-off individuals (typically educated families send their kids to college) to further improve their earning potential. The counterargument is that university education improves the collective well-being of society and leads to positive externalities, so govts should still pay for university. This is also why nearly all countries provide free K9/K12 education, because no mainstream economists deny the positive externalities of early-life education But because of this ideological divergence… US universities opted for a strategy where governments mostly don’t reimburse college-level education. If the “customers” are footing the entire bill of course it would be more expensive. But it is technically a more progressive system, because underprivileged kids who defied the odds would get reimbursed by the government (such as Pell Grants) or by private foundations and can typically go to uni for almost no cost. EU in general opted for the other, more humanitarian approach, where everyone can afford to go to college, because the governments paid part of the bill. Personal opinion though, I don’t think the economics debate captured the full extent of what actually happened. For EU, yes the system is “more regressive” on paper, but you do end up getting more college-educated people which improves societal well-being. And the American system did indeed breed innovation! … but not necessarily in the “cheaper” direction. Some schools like Purdue University specialized into lowering tuition costs, a lot of others specialized into providing better “services” or “experiences” while massively jacking up their tuition costs because students can just do the student loan thing anyway Even within EU there are differences though: unless I misread it, KU Leuven (really good school in Belgium) tuition is only 1k € and under 10k € for non-EU citizens, which is half as expensive as TU Delft (Netherlands) (somewhere close to 20k € for non-EU I believe) And as a final note, USC is pretty expensive even by US standards. If I remember correctly, even LA folks kind of joke of it as the “rich-kids school”. A lot of the public University of California schools are much more affordable

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was there ever a solid or scientific answers to which came first chicken or the egg?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, it’s the egg. It has actually been definitely answered for almost 20 years that Wikipedia has a section on this

  By most every definition of the dilemma it will be the egg which came first. The very first “egg” in our world came long before birds are a thing. If we are strictly talking about chicken eggs, since the modern chicken is a domesticated animal, strictly speaking the first true domesticated chicken came from two non-domestic chicken parents… which created a fertilized egg that became the first domesticated chicken.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What can be done to prevent more dangerous heatwaves in Europe?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Methinks this needs policy-level changes. There’s only so much we can do individually at this point

  Immediate terms: There’s nothing that can be done to curb the heatwave IMO, but there are ways to prevent danger. Namely, AC, cooling centers, public education on preventing heat-related injuries/deaths… Maybe govts can even temporarily reduce regulations/give subsidies on split-systems to help nudge some folks, but nothing much else can be done. One pet-idea I have is cooling centers, since I know Houston (which has extreme weathers) opens cooling/warming centers when the weather is too extreme; it is a very progressive implementation that benefits those who are underprivileged

  Slightly longer term: Trees/green spaces always help. Public transit systems always help. Some fairly sweeping changes in climate-related regulation (ease AC regulations, tighten car regulations, tax on pollution, etc), aimed at both reducing danger and improving the climate… or at least recuperate some “pollution tax” so the govt can use the money to plant more trees and build more trains. Also some European countries can do so much better at discouraging car use (or at least switch to EVs) given how good the train networks are; for countries without good train networks, build some

  Even longer term: Massive investments in green energy; if they are investing already, invest *more. But be practical… temporary solutions like nuclear are not everyone’s cup of tea but they help with the transition. Do better on international collaboration. Find ways to discourage international trading partners from over-polluting (probably a combination of tariffs and negotiations… not my specialty).

  Obligatory not an economist/political scientist, there are probably better ways to implement these than what I suggested

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you do if you lose an argument, but it turns out that you were actually right?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This has happened to me quite a few times before, and aside from ppl I know really well, the answer had always been no. I’m not good at arguing/debating anyways, so I’d just go “hehe I told you so” secretly

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is chess the most frustrating game to lose in?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t think it’d be more tilting than other games with ~50% win rates. Just one example, Tekken is also ~50% win rate that is nearly completely skill dependent, but on average it involves even higher amounts of adrenaline

  Personally the games I found the most tilting are perma-deaths: Minecraft/Terraria’s hardest difficulties, Noita… Losing a 10+ hr run after making one bad decision really gets you. I think I stopped playing this type of games for that reason

  Seriously though please don’t tilt. Tilting reduces the fun of the game and makes skill improvements in skill-dependent games slower

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anybody actually work from 09:00 to 17:00⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Kind-of. The funding source on paper mandates 7.6 hrs of work per day, so with lunch breaks it is almost exactly 09:00 - 17:00

  Depending on whom you ask academia may or may not be considered a real job though… and my hours may be nice, but the folks who do experiments rarely get the 9-5 as stated on paper, and there are other aspects of the job that are much more fucked up

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's say hypothetically I wanted to leave the US permanently;⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not technically an American but lived in America for a long time, also not eligible to claim citizenship anywhere. I hope I’d be somewhat qualified to speak on this

  There really aren’t that many countries which are a step up for an American IMO. Probably a good number of the EU/EEA countries, places like Canada/Australia/NZ, and mayyybe places like Singapore and a few more… Fewer if you have a strict limit on English, in that case maybe only places like UK & the Nordic countries; maybe also the Netherlands, but I’ve heard mixed information about language requirements there. This is a pretty short list, so I think you could probably have a passing knowledge of all of their basic immigration processes without spending that much time on it. But yeah you are right, for any expat/immigrant wannabe it usually goes like this:

  Winning the “life lottery” (ancestry, asylum, or a literal lottery like the US) -> “Buying” your way in via Golden visa -> Love knows no borders so marriage -> Workers visa, aka getting sponsored to work

  The first three obviously don’t apply to you or me TBH, so work sponsorship it is: either international transfer via a large international company (does that happen often for trades people?), or finding a job in your target country. I think others have mentioned this, but since you will likely be immigrating via work, secure a job first. Don’t even think about anything else without a solid job offer. I didn’t follow this advice myself and literally got screwed; I spent several hours learning German everyday during a really busy time of my life, wrecked my mental health along the way due to stress, and never ended up finding a job in Germany in the end… Don’t be like past me

  tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply

  Probably your biggest asset. Some countries like Canada and Australia/NZ publish their skill shortages, so if your skills are on them you’d be in very good luck. There are subreddits and discussion groups on these topics so I’d look into them

  Note that in Australia, allegedly the real job shortage can be quite different from the published list. This doesn’t hurt your chances of moving there per-se, but can make your life difficult after moving in, especially if you don’t have a large amount of savings

  Also, I’m not sure exactly what trades you are in (for the sake of privacy I prefer not to ask), but different countries may have different regulations. It is possible that you may not be allowed to work in the EU without local certifications for example. I don’t think it is an impasse per-se, but I’d definitely investigate this beforehand

  But anyways, if you are interested why not try and apply for a few jobs first? You never know :D

  Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)

  To be honest… that doesn’t sound very good. Comes without saying that most places expect workers to speak fluently or at least B1 in their native language (which is also required for immigration purposes for most countries), and the English-friendly places (such as Ireland) can have extremely high demand, which can cause other societal complications

  I am taking what you said at face value, since I have seen first-hand how much my boss (German) struggled with learning French and had to settle for learning Dutch instead lol. Nevertheless, for most people it isn’t that hard to at least get a passing conversation skill level in a target language in a few years especially with full immersion & government/employer-sponsored language classes, so I wouldn’t completely rule it out just yet! If you’re able to deal with other languages, there are lots of EU countries that have plenty of opportunities; maybe even some more developed parts of Africa would do as well

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When is the last time you had actual conversations with friends?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  … do parents count?? I don’t have too many friends, if any at all

  Otherwise I indirectly helped a coworker find a BF a few months ago. Yeah I guess that was it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do YOU consider Kanji difficult?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For the most part yeah. I think that’s unironically how I “cheated” my old JLPT exams and got way higher grades than I should. And really high-level Japanese (such as political news, debates, legal matter) are mostly Kanji, and by that point you’d fully understand all the non-Kanji parts anyways so

  But in real life you still have to actually say the words out loud…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do YOU consider Kanji difficult?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes… Until when you’d have to pronounce it 😭 And then there’s a ridiculous amount of Japanese names that seem to follow no rules whatsoever for their pronunciations. And then there’s online JP users who would put the weirdest pronunciations for Kanjis, sometimes they are so weird that they have to annotate the pronunciation themselves

  … Anyways, Japanese is difficult

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do YOU consider Kanji difficult?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Native Chinese speaker who is quite decent at Japanese and should in theory find Kanji quite easy, because of Chinese… YES

  Not that the other parts of the language is easy, I find the keigo system quite complex so

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Phone do you guys use?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  GrapheneOS on a Pixel 6a. Technically have a few Google apps, but they are only banking/governmental stuff and one gacha game (which I primarily play on a tablet anyway). Too lazy to set up Nextcloud myself, but I do have a VPS I rent… and I used to have a local RasPi running PiHole

  I am apparently a bit too uncomfortably close to the exact stereotype OP listed

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well… I might be a special case. Most folks I know don’t acquire languages that easily

  What does an “Average American” look like? I thought it would be whatever the stereotypes one would get from popular American TV shows… which is not very Asian all-things considered. But I guess the language plays a role too. This is something that is hard to grasp while I was in the US, but Americans as a whole do have a rather distinct English accent that is different from folks from say Britain, Australia, other places where English isn’t the primary language, etc…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, being in a country since 18 yrs old does something to you… Fun fact about the accent. Apparently most ppl I’ve met in the EU assumed I’m from the US, despite me not looking remotely like an average American

  US visa system is a bit… Interesting. Student visas also work for PhD programs, which can last a while. And after the study concludes there’s an option for ppl to extend it by 3 years (OPT). So one could be into their mid-30s and still be technically on a student visa in the US

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
  • Mandarin Chinese. Native, but actually not that good. Can’t speak Cantonese though
  • English, basically native-level fluency
  • Japanese. Somewhere between B2-C1 based on test results but that was a long time ago. I can probably get to C1 if/when I have the time to practice
  • French. Still actively learning, around A1 across the board

  I also have some passive knowledge of Dutch and German… But really passive though

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨(serious) What would we be losing in a world where most people didn't own a car? Please read the OP before posting.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I’d be a good person to answer this. I’ve lived in Houston (needless to say, extremely car-friendly) without a car for almost 2 years; currently I’m living in a city that banned cars within its city center in 2015, but the rest of the country is still very pro-car and quite car-friendly

  A couple of things that cars benefit everyday life that would be difficult to do without a car. There’s probably more but these are the ones I can think of:

  • Accessibility to places that have difficulty justifying being served by public transit. These include poorer neighborhoods that are far away from city center, semi-rural natural preserves, extreme geographical difficulties, … Case in point, Houston has a lot of nature/green spaces that were 20-30 miles outside of the city center… good luck getting to these without a car (trust me, I tried once)
  • For certain physically disabled people, driving would be easier than walking/biking/public transit… Especially in particularly hilly cities, centuries-old cities where roads were paved no better than playgrounds, or sometimes both. This can be somewhat mitigated with good infrastructure projects, but cars are usually an easier solution
  • Car-free zones can get very crowded, very fast. This is usually a good thing in terms of urbanism… but some find it uncomfortable for various reasons. My current city is actually a rather extreme example: they are now considering banning bikes in the city center too, due to pedestrian injuries
  • I know cars are prone to needing repair, but with how the road network functions, personal vehicles can reduce a lot of dependencies on external factors such as public transit being functional. Case in point, two months ago NL’s national rail company became essentially non-operational due to extreme weather, which would be rather devastating if your only way of commuting to work relies on the train

  Also I think these two positive points associated with cars are actually quite doable without cars:

  • Hauling stuff from point A to point B: delivery companies and car-rentals exist for a reason! This is surprisingly doable even without owning a car (you are technically using someone else’s car in this case). Of course doing it without your own car will be more expensive… but we do have the logistics for it, especially if the entire society shifts to a car-free model
  • Not all rural areas need cars: some are actually quite doable by walking alone due to how small they are (I have a friend who lives in a rural American town like that: yes everyone drives, but everything is also 30-minutes on foot if you don’t mind walking). And there are quite a few parts of the world where rural towns are served by trains frequently
  • Road trips: scenic railways exist for a reason… and unlike point 1 I made, sightseeing trains actually do make money, so there is pretty good justification for building them
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come in American classrooms they make another language an elective. Why not teach our kids as many languages possible that way if we go somewhere we will kind of have uper hand?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of “scarce resources”? It’d be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don’t need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese…

  Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I’ve heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary… social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so… Even if the US wants to do it, it’s not that staightforward

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a culture/country that doesn't have sarcasm in its language?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess Japanese really doesn’t have in-your-face sarcasm now that I think about it…

  Now that you mentioned it, Japanese also has a rather interesting quirk of not having what most people would consider as “swear words”. Read it somewhere that Japanese does have swear words, but they tend to be quite tame, and the words themselves aren’t “taboo” (as compared to just about any swear word in English)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am looking for a Linux OS⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I play a lot of games over steam

  If my main concern is playing game with Steam, most mainstream Linux OSes should be fine. If I have to pick one… Linux Mint is very beginner-friendly, and I’ve heard great things about Bazzite too. SteamOS works flawlessly with Steam out of the box, but I don’t know how easy it is to set up by yourself

  If you happen to also like non-Steam games: a lot of them can be added as a custom application/game via your Steam Library, which does most of the heavy-lifting: you only have to specify which compatibility layer to use & sometimes do keymapping. Setting up wine on its own is not for the faint-hearted

  I personally use Arch because AUR (a user-uploaded repository, a lot of popular Linux OSes have their own versions) makes it easy to play a lot of FOSS games… but I can’t recommend Arch Linux for beginners

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How far do you wear your daily shoes out before bothering to replace them?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a small brand started by a few Chinese marathon runners, modelled exactly after HOKA. So it’s equally as comfortable at like 1/2-1/3 the price. Only available in China unfortunately…

  The main annoyance is that this pair doesn’t have much sideways support, so it’s easier to slip sideways. Probably not a worthwhile concern for most people of course

  Also… Durability isn’t a strong suit for HOKA shoes, so I’m not sure if I can really recommend them for daily drive regardless