Signtist

@Signtist@bookwyr.me

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Teams status⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Caffeine’s great. I use it to keep my computer on if I’m out doing errands so I can check my emails and whatnot with a remote desktop through my phone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is so difficult to organize a strike⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, gotcha. Still, looks like a fun read - I’ll check it out. Thanks for taking the time to explain it!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is so difficult to organize a strike⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  So it’s just theoretical mathematics based on a given amount of assumed possible choices? Is there even a way to truly apply it to a real-world scenario as complicated as large-group human behavior?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can anyone confirm accuracy?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It gets the point across well enough, but there are some issues if you get deeper with it.

  First, the colors would swap back and forth much more often, blurring together into a single color at this scale, much like how small alternating black and white dots can be used to make us see a gray color. We can get around that issue by assuming that they’re just organized into groups by parent of origin, rather than being actual representation of the exact DNA order, though.

  Next, the proportion of colors is off, especially in the last generation. You’ll get different amounts of DNA from one progenitor to another, but it’s always pretty close to an equal split halved by generation, so the first 2 bears in the 3rd generation would be much closer to the proportions seen in the 3rd than they really are, and the bears in the 4th generation would all be 1/2 orange, 1/4 green, and 1/8 each of red and yellow.

  Finally, the first 2 bears of the 3rd generation seem to have been given the “missing” DNA from their red/yellow parent, with one having mostly red and a little yellow, and the other having mostly yellow with a little red. While this is technically possible, it’s no more likely than any other of the near-infinite variations 2 separate siblings could have instead. Someone using this as a way to understand inheritance may get the incorrect notion that one sibling inherits what DNA the previous sibling didn’t, when it’s instead completely random each time.

  Ultimately, this is a good way to introduce the concept of genetics and inheritance to someone who may be having trouble picturing it in their mind, but more information would need to be provided for them to truly understand it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is so difficult to organize a strike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I honestly know nothing about game theory, so I don’t doubt that there are aspects that account for irrational behavior like meaningless self sabotage, but I don’t recall the prisoner’s dilemma having allowing one of the prisoners to specifically choose to be imprisoned for the maximum sentence in exchange for the other prisoner to also be imprisoned that same amount. Is there a version that has that option, or something similar? Every version I’ve seen assumes they would never do something so completely against their own self-interest.

  One of the most common reasons for people not coming together I’ve seen is the classic “Sure, this makes it harder for everyone, but we can weather it so long as we know it’s harder for those damn (insert innocent group here)!” which of course only makes things unnecessarily harder for both groups, and only benefits their shared enemies. If that’s not something that game theory would cover, then I don’t know how well it would be able to be applied to our inability to organize effective resistance to an oppressive government.

  If it is something that’s covered, I’d love an example! I could use a bit of hope that we’ll rise up eventually.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon ruins christmas⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like Atheism, like all belief systems, empowered an asshole with self-righteous validation. Even if you bet on the right horse, it doesn’t mean everything you do is automatically justified; empathy is a higher order law.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good for him.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Flat earth isn’t the scam itself, it’s the hook. There are a million ways to get people into the conspiracy theory sphere, but once they’re hooked on one thing, they’re primed to believe everything else. It took less than a year from my mom to go from watching videos “asking questions” about science to spending a bunch of money on everything from silver supplements and ivermectin to 5g blockers and resonance machines.

  The point of flat earth and related conspiracies is that they prey on people’s misunderstanding of science and mathematics (why Earth round if look flat?) to sow doubt in the collective understanding of reality as a whole. Once that happens, you can tell them anything isn’t what it seems and they’ll believe you, and sell them anything to fix it, and they’ll pay you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is a nostalgic gamer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  DK64. I see so much hate for it now, with people saying there are way too many collectibles, but those people fail to realize that back then most kids only had a few games that they just had to play over and over again if they wanted to play video games at all. To have a game that always had a new thing to collect even when you went to the same level for the 1000th time was a godsend.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Don't have kids⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, it only touches the gasketing, but it would probably still get some on the inner part of it you’d need to clean with a pipe cleaner or something, yeah.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Don't have kids⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, assuming you’re not allergic, just roll down the windows and drive it to a car wash. 15 minute $15 fix, just remember to roll the windows back up before it starts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, my wife will often respond with “I know you think I’m beautiful” which I think means the same thing. But that’s kinda the point - beauty isn’t objective. If someone can see you’re beautiful, that means you’re beautiful, because we’re the ones who made up the concept, so we get to decide what meets the cutoff. Now, yes, that means you can decide that you don’t meet the cutoff, but why do that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I almost got her with something similar a couple days ago, but she caught on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  10 years ago I told my girlfriend I’d get her to admit she’s beautiful one day. She’s my wife now, and I still haven’t managed it. I’m glad she’s going to therapy now to try to get a better self image, but I’d have kept trying for the rest of my life regardless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon's lil bro goes through his first break up⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Responsive doesn’t mean agreeable. But ultimately, if you’re part of a group where most of the members want to hate a certain other group for something they can’t change, and your disagreement isn’t likely to change the dynamics of that group to make them stop being hateful, then as I said earlier, it’s a sign you should leave that group.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon's lil bro goes through his first break up⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Haha, I knew you’d latch onto that. No, I don’t exclude people who I “don’t like,” I tell people who are looking for an experience different from how our group plays the game that they will likely have more fun elsewhere. If they want to give it a shot anyway, they can. But yeah, if they’re expecting a D&D game where it’s all combat all the time, they’ll be pretty bored with our political intrigue game. If they try to force it to be something it’s not, we’ll ask them to leave because of that choices they made, so that the game can continue.

  You want to call it hate? That’s fine - it is a form of judgement in the end, after all. But still, it’s based on the choices they decided to make, not something they can’t control. The most important thing about being in a group is being responsive to the wants of the members of the group. It’s called having a normal conversation with someone you’re hanging out with, with all the respect that comes with it. I obviously hate pedophiles if they choose to act upon their urges and ruin the life of a child. If they don’t, then I wouldn’t know about it, so I’d have no ability to judge them one way or another.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon's lil bro goes through his first break up⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  …really, bud? The argument you’re going to make is that all groups hate people?

  I’m in a baking group with some local people in my neighborhood. We make cookies and cakes to share with one another, and sometimes make things for people in the area who don’t have the time or money to afford a birthday cake or something. Yes, there are people who are included and excluded from our group - namely anyone who wants to join can join, and anyone who doesn’t, doesn’t have to. Sounds real hateful to you, I’m sure. I’m also in a D&D group - we exclude people who we don’t think are a good fit with our group cohesion, but we always do so with respect, leaving things on good terms. Who exactly do we hate?

  Now, I am also a part of hateful groups. For example, I hate Nazis because they chose to be hateful scumbags. I also hate billionaires because they chose to hoard wealth at the expense of everyone else’s wellbeing. I would never hate someone for something they can’t control, like their gender or race, though. As I said, the only thing you can judge people on are the actions and decisions they specifically made.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Library Apps are GOATed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been learning Japanese for free through the Mango languages app through my library. It’s great!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"influencers" are setting us back⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The issue is that anti-intellectualists think that the very concept of knowing more than them about any given topic is elitism.

  My conspiracy theorist mom would go on and on about how her spending an afternoon googling something put her ideas at a higher level than someone who got a degree studying it, and if I agreed with the person with the degree, then I was an idiot for not following her. She thought that right up until she died trying to treat her cancer with quack therapies.

  Regardless of whether we frame it as “I’m better than you because I know more than you,” the anti-intellectualists will still be framing it as “I’m better than you because my ‘gut feeling’ knows more than you.” It’s a competition to them, not because someone told them they were lesser, but because they already believed they were greater.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When you finally figure out it's all about genetics⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s both genetics and lifestyle for things like smoking. The classic analogy is that you’re like a cup being filled with water - if that water ever overflows, you get diagnosed with a multifactorial condition, be it diabetes, cancer, alcoholism, etc. Everyone is born with a certain amount of water in their hypothetical cup, and that represents your genetic predisposition to that condition, but then your lifestyle comes in, and certain decisions you make add additional water.

  So, someone who was lucky enough to be born without much water can afford to pour as much as they want into their cup for their whole lives without it overflowing, while someone born with their cup nearly full from the start has to spend their whole life making sure not to add anything or it will probably overflow. It’s just one of the ways nature is unfair.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon's lil bro goes through his first break up⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know what the right choice is, but it’s pretty easy to see what the wrong choice is. If you hate other people simply for something they can’t change, it’s the wrong choice. The manosphere hates women, full stop. That’s unacceptable. The catholic church hates gay people, full stop. That’s also unacceptable. The current pope is making some changes that might redeem it, but for now it’s objectively a bad choice.

  What’s the right choice for a group to join? Is there even a right choice? Who knows, but if your group tries to tell you to hate someone for something other than a choice they decided to make, it’s a sign you should leave that group. The only thing you can judge people on are the actions and decisions they specifically made.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon's lil bro goes through his first break up⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course the manosphere gave him a sense of purpose. That’s what it was designed to do - to prey on men who don’t have enough of a support network, and sell them a false promise to improve their lives in exchange for them spreading hate and propaganda, which in turn attracts more men to the trap. It’s just a mix between an MLM and a cult. Having a sense of purpose and fulfillment doesn’t mean you made the right choice, it just means someone got you to believe you did.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When in Rome?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My mom died in early 2024, and my sister and I are still in a legal battle for her bank account against the cult she was a member of. Her bank account had my sister and I listed as beneficiaries, and the will made no mention of the cult that would override that, and yet the cult was still able to put a freeze on the accounts and fight us for over 2 years and $50k in legal fees so far, just because they made an unfounded claim to the money. If a bunch of idiots who think vaccines have tracking chips in them can do that, I imagine the government can do a lot more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FACT: Belle did NOT know the beast could turn into a human, she was fully prepared to bang him as is⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, the story of the ugly duckling is significantly older than Hollywood. The “looks don’t matter” archetype has always been “it’s okay if you look ugly now so long as you become beautiful in the end.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Troof⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s illegal to claim they consented because it’s impossible by the current societal understanding of what it means to consent for them to have consented. A 14 year old can understand what they want, which used to be good enough to be considered consent, but now that we know their brains aren’t finished developing yet, we don’t consider their ability to understand the repercussions of the decision to be on the same level as someone who’s fully an adult, and thus they are incapable of consent.

  It’s like how a 2 year old will want candy all the time, but you shouldn’t let them have it every time they want it because their brains aren’t developed enough for them to fully understand that it’s not good for them. You have to be capable of understanding the long-term implications of eating nothing but candy, and a 2 year old literally can’t do that. They might know it causes tooth decay and weight problems, but they don’t know exactly what that means because they lack the brain power to process the amount of background knowledge they would need to understand it.

  On the same note, a 14 year old might want to have sex, but they don’t understand all of the implications of it, even if they think they do. An 18 year old might not know the implications either, but we have to make a cutoff, and by 18 we assume enough people should be capable of consenting that we give the right to everybody. At 14, though, it’s likely that nobody that age can truly understand it enough to be considered capable of consent by the modern definition, and even if some can, the effort to parse it out just so some rock star can fuck the few that are capable of consenting is obviously not worth the effort.

  Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying that we need to somehow prevent 14 year olds from having sex with one another - while they still aren’t capable of understanding the implications of their actions, we can at least be reasonably certain that they both consent to the same lesser degree as one another. The issue is when one person has the higher mental capacity and the desire to take advantage of the lower capacity of their target to convince them to have sex, otherwise known as statutory rape, the topic of this discussion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨mindset⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  People acting in bad faith will misinterpret even well-specified statements if they think it will benefit their stance - we shouldn’t assume that being more specific in our language will allow us to win debates against people who have already decided that their own opinions are correct, and won’t listen to anyone saying otherwise. Those discussions will always devolve into the nonsensical associations you described. Instead, we need to be as specific as possible about what we know, while simultaneously leaving our statements open when there is information left to be gathered and added in, and we need to teach those who interact with us in good faith that that is the reason for leaving things unspecified.

  To use your example, we have red cups and blue cups. Nobody knows anything about them, but then my friends and I all grab several blue cups and find that they’re all hot. We say “careful, the blue cups are hot” not because anyone should assume the red cups aren’t, but because we don’t currently know anything about the red cups. You can infer that the red cups are hot because they’re alongside the hot blue cups, or you can infer that the red cups aren’t hot because they’re a different color, both of which would be informed, potentially correct assumptions, but until someone touches a red cup, nobody knows one way or another. That is the point of using a combination of specificity and ambiguity - it allows people to quickly understand what you know, as well as what you don’t currently know, and allows space for new information to be added as we work together to figure out the truth of the situation.

  Bad actors will misinterpret statements regardless of their specificity, but our behavior is not focused on them; our behavior is intended to work well together with the good actors. Tailoring your statements to address people who have decided to be antagonistic doesn’t work, because people will always find ways to be antagonistic. Instead, tailor your statements so that people who have decided to listen with the intent to work together to come to an understanding will be able to do so most effectively.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨mindset⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, our world is constructed in certain ways, but that’s only because we decided to construct it that way. If we as individuals within that world decide to build a new construct, or to view the current construct in a different way, we can make bubbles that aren’t constructed in the same ways. Eventually those bubbles can coalesce into something large enough to rival the default construction. There’s no point in only seeing the world as we built it without also seeing that it can always be renovated.

  Most of your post centers around the question you posed: “what is the role of bounding this statement to half of the population if not to exclude it from the other half?” The simple answer is that we often only know our own experience and the experience of those we’re intimately familiar with. I’m a man, and I know many other men, as I spend most of my time around friends of the same gender. Like most men, I’m less close to women outside of those who are in my family and those I’ve dated. I can speak confidently about men in society in ways I simply can’t about women. Therefore, if I talk about something that I can tell affects many men, but I can’t reliably extrapolate that effect to women, I word my remark along the lines of “this affects men” not to exclude women, but to leave the discussion open for women to impart their own experiences that I’m unaware of.

  I pose my own question to you: why assume mentioning one party excludes the other when we have perfectly good language to do just that? If we want to exclude women, we can use words to exclude women. We would say “this affects men, not women” or “this affects men more than women.” I wholeheartedly believe that someone who doesn’t include women in their comment is doing so because they’re simply deciding not to comment on women. It need not be more complicated than that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨mindset⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Bud, what? Women constantly have to find relevancy in posts about men. It’s been the default for nearly every culture since the beginning of human history. The only double standard is the universal double standard that people like you couldn’t see this whole time, and is only just slightly starting to close.

  Any post you see without a woman complaining that it’s fallen on them to once again find relevancy in a post that isn’t about them is an example of them utilizing their own lived experience, rather than being outlined as the intended audience by the poster. So, yes, they’re following the mentality I described for most posts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨mindset⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t think that making a post about women means you’re excluding men. I feel like excluding should only be defined as an active attempt to prevent people from associating with the post, rather then a failure to include men and enbies and every other gender in existence in the body of the post.

  I feel like leftist spaces have gotten a bit too expectant that everything relevant to an individual must be explicitly stated to be as such, rather than encouraging people to simply find relevancy even in things that are not explicitly made for them. I’m a guy, and when I read this I felt a connection with it - I didn’t even think about how it only mentioned women, as if that should mean it can’t apply to me.

  I would rather instill a mindset in all people that would allow for situations where, for example, a man can find relevancy in a post about women, rather then try to get all people to only share content that specifically addresses who all is intended to be able to relate to it. A woman saying things are hard for women isn’t making any comments about whether or not it’s hard for men, just like a black guy saying black lives matter isn’t making any comments about whether or not all lives matter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨mindset⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a guy, but I was born with a hand anomaly that I was mercilessly teased about when I was a kid. I had this realization when I was in kindergarten, and it gave me the confidence to be who I want to be for the rest of my life. It is indeed a powerful mindset if you can actually believe it, though it does make you a bit of an outcast when the other kids realize teasing doesn’t work on you. Even the kids that don’t tease their peers will think you’re weird for not reacting to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨... right?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not really “turns out;” even our founding fathers understood that democracy isn’t flawless, and that one day we’d need another revolution. This is why the second amendment was added in the first place, they just didn’t anticipate how pacified we’d become as a people in 250 years. Not entirely our fault, of course - there’s a reason “violence is never the answer” was repeated to us ad nauseam for generations. I imagine many parties were held in various mansions when they realized we actually believed it.