clean_anion
@clean_anion@programming.dev
- Comment on Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? 1 week ago:
I also agree that there is something that superficially seems to be supernatural. However, I believe that the reason things appear to be supernatural is because all supernatural-looking events (i.e. all correct predictions about a room) are being presented as supernatural despite random guesses accounting for a lot of these. Whether or not these events are actually supernatural may be checked by the experiment I proposed in another reply. Please do tell me your thoughts on that experiment.
- Comment on Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? 1 week ago:
Claims of the supernatural are a subset of correct claims. We can’t comment on the supernatural aspect if all we know is that a claim is correct. This is affirming the consequent.
- Comment on Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? 1 week ago:
This can be verified by asking people who have had near-death experiences whether or not they experienced something correct in their near-death experiences. Obviously, such experiences are traumatic, and multiple studies show that people can hallucinate due to the release of various neurotransmitters associated with the same.
We want to calculate the probability that someone manifested as a ghost given that they had an interesting near-death experience. We assume that anyone having a true supernatural experience experiences visions that are absolutely true. For each person, there are two possibilities (we’ll calculate the probability of each later).
The first possibility is that a person, in fact, experienced hallucinations. The second possibility is that a person experienced a ghostly manifestation.
Now, we further give people an objective multiple-choice quiz about the positions of various objects in an environment. To generate this quiz, we ask each person to choose the environment they believe themselves to have manifested in. We verify that they have never been to this environment before and did not have any method of knowing about this environment (e.g., if a subject saw a person going into a room and later gave an exact description of the person in the given room, it will be disregarded). We only test people who believe that they experienced a supernatural event. All options are framed in an equivalent manner and are presented in a randomized order to remove cognitive biases and implement double-blind protocols. We further use questions with non-obvious answers such that they differ from previous implementations (e.g., a vision of a surgery table with an overhead light is obvious, and by itself, not indicative of supernatural phenomena).
If the subject hallucinated, we assume that they have a random chance of predicting the positions of various objects. We now repeat this quiz a large number of times in accordance with the law of large numbers. If, after many repetitions, we find a sufficient deviation from the expected result (e.g., if each question had one correct answer and three incorrect answers, with the observed rate of correct answers being 50% instead of 25%), then we would have evidence supporting the existence of ghosts.
If, however, the results show no sufficient deviation from the expected results, then we would find that the probability of a perceived encounter being supernatural is approximately zero.
In this way, we can use scientific methods to test claims of ghost-like phenomena.
NOTE: If we only focus on the 25% of the cases as mentioned in the above example, we find that we are not focusing on the remaining 75% of the cases. Presenting only 25% of the cases, without giving any thought to the remaining 75% of the cases is an incorrect method of analysis as explained above.
- Comment on How do I properly and safely clean smartphone? 1 month ago:
99% isopropyl alcohol is ideal as a solvent or cleaning agent for industries that produce water sensitive items, therefore rapid evaporation and low water content is favorable. 99% USP IPA provides the lowest presence of water and in some forms is free from denaturants. Computer technicians, medical device manufacturers, printed circuit board manufacturers, and soldering and rework technicians prefer immediate evaporation for work with sensitive devices such as integrated circuit adapters, computer chips, and circuit boards. 99% IPA evaporates cleanly and minimizes residual substances. Rapid evaporation reduces shelf life but is more effective against sticky residues, grease, and grime than 70% concentrations. Because isopropanol is hygroscopic, acetone may yield better grime fighting results for inks or oils.
The URL you shared recommends using 99% IPA for electronics.
- Comment on Are hierarchies inherently bad in all aspects? or are there domains where heirarchies are good to have? 2 months ago:
Not all hierarchies are bad. For instance, in a judicial system, there need to be different tiers of courts as otherwise, if courts had universal authority and made conflicting decisions, it would complicate the law more so than it is already.
Similarly, in a large society that needs unity, if people make all decisions, the results would be catastrophic as most people don’t have the time or energy to focus on every mundane decision. In such a case, elected representatives becomes mandatory, creating a hierarchy.
Yet another example is cases where fast decision-making is required (e.g., to respond to an emergency). In such a case, there needs to be a central authority who holds others responsible and coordinates response.
Ultimately, if you consider a hierarchy where accountability is possible i.e. one party may have more power over the second than the second over first but the second still has some power over the first, then it makes accountability possible in hierarchies. Hierarchies are only wrong when the power gap increases, a small power gap is alright provided it doesn’t widen with time.
You could make the argument that a chain of accountability is better (X->Y->Z->X), but even such chains may include hierarchies (i.e. X itself is a hierarchy). Similarly, authority diffused among different people also suffers from potential shifting of blame. Truly neutral relations between different parties are impossible and ultimately, a power difference exists between any two parties, though it may be minute, and this power gap must be acknowledged.
In conclusion, there are a lot of disadvantages of hierarchies but there are some domains where hierarchies are good. There is no system of distribution of power that is without flaws.
- Comment on How do I install and use Orcaslicer on Tails OS? 2 months ago:
Enable Administrator password on the menu screen, create a persistent storage (if it doesn’t already exist), download the Flatpak file from the website, and run
torify flatpak install /path/to/file flatpak run io.github.softfever.OrcaSlicer
Using an AppImage is not a good idea because they have a tendency to give errors if proper software and version are not installed on Tails (on my Tails USB, this was because of GCC) unless you compile your own AppImage. Using Flatpak is better as it allows you to run software on your system even if the versions of GCC etc. are not up to date.
Please keep in mind that I have not confirmed whether this method is secure and would advise that you consider whether this is secure or not depending on your threat model.
- Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15 2 months ago:
The DKTB is a personal app. It is therefore assumed, that the User will not share it with other people, and that only the User can access and control their personal DKTB. Ultimately, this means that all attestations in a DKTB are expected to pertain to and only be presented by the same User. This is enforced by requiring the user to authenticate using biometry or PIN-code when using the app and only allowing the DKTB application to be installed on one device per user. (from the PDF)
This is a false assumption: PIN codes can be bypassed by sharing them with others. Devices can be faked unless using hardware attestation, which prohibits any modifications to the device which may be undertaken by those interested in rooting or installing a custom OS.
Users can initially acquire a DKTB on their smartphone or tablet via Google Play or the Apple App store. (from the PDF)
This method requires the use of a vanilla, unmodified device, effectively prohibiting modifications to devices that one might wish to alter.