thinkercharmercoderfarmer

@thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who was recently laid off if anyone wants to front the cash I’m currently available for cheap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, I’m glad you clarified. I think there are some magics that don’t have a specific requirement for belief, e.g. casting a spell on a non-believing target, or, depending on how broadly you define magic, gravity (in that, while we have robust theories about how gravity works, we still don’t have a broadly accepted theory about why gravity does what it does). But I do think it’s an interesting type of magic and it can absolutely be subjected to scientific testing. There are a lot of things in that category that aren’t traditionally called magic, like fiat currency, placebos, nation-states (for that matter, laws), human racial categorizations. The impact of belief on a fiat currency (or, belief in the value of that currency) is, I think, pretty well studied though I’m not enough of an economist to know what, if any, theoretical model predicts the fluctuation (or collapse) of a currency’s value.

  I’m curious to know what your take is on behavioral economics. It essentially tries to incorporate human fallibility into classical economics. Thaler’s concept of “nudging” is the kind of sleight-of-hand trick that a magician might use to create the illusion of choice.

  Also, I’m not a mathematician but they can’t be uniquely responsible for ignoring human fallibility with money. That’s a human problem and capitalists profit by exploiting that tendency, which is why econ (specifically, investments in economic research) tends to focus on research that enables capitalism. The same thing happens in chemistry, pharmaceuticals, anthropology, history, art. Any area of human endeavor can be distorted for personal gain. It just happens that the science of capital, particularly the jargon of economics, is useful for legitimizing and entrenching capitalistic nonsense. Mathematicians are (broadly speaking) more interested in scientific endeavor, at least as much as researchers in any other field.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think magic does get called technology, once we construct a sufficiently rigorous way to test its predictions and those predictions are validated. The first thing that comes to mind is the old folk remedy of using willow bark to treat fever. I don’t know if that specific treatment was ever described as “magic” per se, but for a broad swath of human history it was a rule: if fever, then willow bark. It was also used in a bunch of other remedies that didn’t work, and there were (still are) a ton of folk remedies for fever that either didn’t work or actively worsened the situation, but the combination of willow bark and fevers was eventually validated, salicin was identified as the active agent, and it became a technological commodity. Some magics, like homeopathy, have been scientifically _in_validated, and therefore get relegated to outside the domain of scientific inquiry. Some, like phrenology, gain broad acceptance within a scientific establishment before they are convincingly invalidated and discarded. Some, like astrology, are broadly scientifically rejected but still have a broad lay appeal for non-scientific reasons.

  I think the testing of any magical effect is the same as the testing of anything non-magical. The Chaos Magick Servitor sounds like a useful mental model for “learning a new thing”. If it is proven an effective therapy in clinical trials for apnea, is it no longer magic? I just don’t find the question of whether it’s magic an interesting one in that case. I still want to understand the underlying mechanisms, possibly by conducting trials on which skills can be taught via the “Chaos Magick Servitor” method vs. a control, call it the “Mundane Learning of a Brain Technique” method. You could control for faith by surveying participants before sorting them into groups and blinding testers until the test is complete. If faith in Chaos Magick, or the Servitor technique, is predictive of being able to control apnea via that method, I would expect strong believers in the “Chaos Magick Servitor” method to get better results than their non-believing cohorts, and relatively little difference between believers and non-believers in the control group. One potential downside is that I don’t really know of a good method for measuring “faith” other than self-reporting, but I think if the participant pool is large enough you could probably still get some convincing results as long as you’re content to measure effectiveness vs “self-reported faith” rather than “actual faith”. I don’t know that there’s a reliable way to know someone’s innermost heart so that might be the best you can do with our current technology.

  In addition to surveying for current faith strength, you could additionally poll for faith-adjacent wants or beliefs, e.g. “In general, do you want your faith in Chaos Magick to be stronger, weaker, or stay the same?” This would give you an additional dimension: instead of just having high faith and low faith, you could have six groups: high-aspirational, high-avoidant, high-content, low-aspirational, low-avoidant, and low-content. If these groups show significant variation in how well they use the Chaos Magick Servitor method, that could illuminate how one’s current faith and their belief about what their faith “should” be affect the treatment. I’d also be curious to see if there would be any differences among the different faith groups in the control group. It could well be that low faith individuals show no benefit, or that they show more improvement with a more scientific sounding presentation of the same concept.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure what realness has to do with it. Magic tends to have some kind of theoretical framework to explain observable phenomena (god(s), the planets, “energies”, etc.) the same way scientific theories do, they even have some experimental frameworks (e.g. my church growing up had a cadre of old ladies who were touted as “good at praying” because they apparently had a good track record with the man upstairs. To my knowledge these claims were never validated in a properly controlled laboratory environment against a random sample of similar parishioners. They also happened to be voracious gossips who wielded private information as a weapon, which is a funny coincidence.) The phenomena that magic explains are “real” insofar as they are experiences that humans have, but the underpinning theories are often unfalsifiable and/or contradictory (“prayer works” and “god’s plan is unknowable and perfect, eternal and unchanging”). That’s what I mean about coherent theories and predictable results. I guess you could say that theories that make accurate predictions are “more real” but I don’t think it makes sense to think about the realness of a scientific theory. It’s either proven false or not proven false so far.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, yeah. We don’t have a unified theory of quantum gravity because at least one of our assumptions is off. Science is just figuring out precisely which assumptions are wrong and how wrong our they are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t all scientific fields rest on fundamental assumptions? I mean, just to pull an example at random, astronomers were hung up on the geocentric model of the universe for a long time before we came up with the heliocentric model, which in turn was ditched for the “no true frame of reference” model we now use. Having flawed assumptions doesn’t make it non-scientific, just incorrect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Magic is just science without the burden of coherent theories that predict reliable experimental outcomes, which covers a lot more than psychology. I’d say it’s more like humanity spitballing science-ish ideas and seeing which ones pan out, than any one branch of science specifically.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kinda Seems on Point Now⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  His performance on the late show was pretty solid too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWb3vCfK_jI

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meanwhile, on Facebook⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Messed up teeth can wreak havoc on your health, they just make you constantly sick all the time. It sucks. If I ever get my teeth fixed and it involves removing a bunch of them I probably won’t go this route, but I kinda get it. The dental equivalent of mounting your nemesis’ head on a pike.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EA insists it will "maintain creative control" and "creative freedom" if sale to consortium goes ahead⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lmao they are way ahead of you

  Electronic Arts confirmed it was entering an agreement to be acquired by a group of investors comprised Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners at the end of September. The PIF is run by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and the investment firm Affinity Partners was formed by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EA insists it will "maintain creative control" and "creative freedom" if sale to consortium goes ahead⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Considering the new owners are famed journalist murderer and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman and Presidential nepo-in-law Jared Kushner, I’m doubtful that respect for the creative process is high on the list of priorities. And yeah, EA already sucks but I imagine they’ll find lots of innovative ways to drive EA to new heights of terribleness.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Depression: Part Deux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Kinda. I definitely had hamburger helper back in the 80s, but kit meals were a luxury we could only sometimes afford. Necessity is often the mother of culinary invention but even among “the poor” there’s some variability in cash and time (and information availability) constraints, and things like hamburger helper (cheap but not the cheapest, but also quick and easy to make) have been a fixture alongside the true broke-ass “we need food and have basically zero money” recipes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fight me⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You inspired me

  I do not fear the motion of my feet.
  Though every step be toward the final bourn,
  I see no path to orderly retreat.
  
  The energy assigned in brief to me
  No art preserves, no science can reform.
  And so I boldly choose what is to be
  
  The range and purpose of my tiny mete.
  I will not, while I can, myself pre-mourn,
  But rage, rage against the rising of the heat.
  

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Depression: Part Deux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, I had forgotten how much I used to detest lima beans. Don’t think I’ve had them since I was a kid. I wonder if I’ll like them now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fight me⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pfft the absolute human hubris to hold up these entropic sleight-of-hand tricks as impressive. Nature abhors a refrigerator. Heaters are the ultimate power in the universe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Depression: Part Deux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A quick search says cheddar and blue cheeses for this type.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Depression: Part Deux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Usually not. I have not had the pleasure of this particular variety but in my experience it’s just plain old pasta and cheese and herbs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Depression: Part Deux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Grew up poor, didn’t know it. Lots of Mac 'n Cheese w/ hotdogs and canned vegetables. I remember the first time I had a fresh green bean, I was put off by the texture. Wasn’t used to vegetables with structure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Depression: Part Deux⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pasta and seasoning. And cheese I guess. Intended to me mixed with ground beef in order to stretch it into more meals. It’s not awful, just poor people food.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  the garden variety eugenicist shitheel kind. I always hope it’s just an edgy kid who got on the wrong forums and craves the attention, but they’re also doing pro-russia FUD, so there’s a small but depressingly real chance that this is their job.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Keep it to yourself. I don't care what you care about⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  LMAO I came in to the comments to ask “why are you even on social media then?” and I did not expect the answer to be “to advocate for eugenics”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How, and why, are there so many AI-generated videos of incredibly obscure/niche topics?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  First line of the pitch for n8n lol:

  Build with the precision of code or the speed of drag-n-drop.

  At least they’re upfront about the tradeoffs

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How, and why, are there so many AI-generated videos of incredibly obscure/niche topics?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You baryodorks just can’t take the L can you.