SmoothOperator
@SmoothOperator@lemmy.world
- Comment on Painful to recover from 2 days ago:
Guess that depends on where you are. Many places in the world have very high social mobility along with solid welfare and pension systems.
Maybe somewhat less that 40 years ago, but certainly much better than the last thousand years overall.
- Comment on Painful to recover from 2 days ago:
It’s more that intelligence implies success rather than success implies intelligence.
Actual intelligence boosts chances for success, but it is not required for success.
- Comment on May want to learn how to spell before you have kids 2 days ago:
Maybe they’re not native speakers
- Comment on Protein folding is not solved yet 5 days ago:
I still do not see a theoretical framework which justifies claims as to the applicability of quantum computers to the protein folding problem.
The quantum phase estimation (QPE) algorithm which calculates ground states of molecules is theoretically predicted to have exponential speedup over classical methods on unstructured problems. Protein folding is a ground state problem.
Not saying it will be best in practice, but that’s at least a theoretical framework.
- Comment on New clean energy comes out. *look inside* It’s just boiling water again… 1 week ago:
- Comment on [Video] Can You Speedrun Subnautica on a Bike? 2 weeks ago:
But you don’t really control a treadmill - it sets a pace and you follow. It’s not like you can run faster and it will keep up, it’s the other way around.
- Comment on This oughta work 3 weeks ago:
Except their criminal system involves punishments like caning and executions, the latter applying to drug mules. It’s barbaric.
- Comment on Day 722 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 5 weeks ago:
On the contrary I feel like there was a purity to AC1. AC2 leaned too hard in the direction of busywork and history tourism, AC1 had an almost meditative focus on the assassinations.
I understand why the second game was more popular and has shaped the (imo poor) direction of the franchise. But the first game has always been my favourite.
- Comment on How do you distance yourself from your country when it doesn't represent your views anymore so you won't be viewed by the rest of the world as part of the problem? 1 month ago:
In my experience most people understand that it’s not the fault of every individual citizen that their state behaves a certain way, but at the same time the citizens of a country have a vastly larger influence on their state than the citizens outside that country.
So no, don’t distance yourself from your country. Distance yourself from your government or state. And work in a safe way to leverage whatever influence you have over your fellow citizens, your local or national systems, to hinder the bad guys and help the good guys.
- Comment on Differences of Opinion by Wendy Cope 2 months ago:
The meter doesn’t work :(
- Comment on What’s your favorite video game that most people didn’t like ?? 2 months ago:
The Mount and Blade games feel like such a janky mess, and I don’t know anyone else that likes or plays them. But I absolutely adore the combat gameplay, nowhere else do I feel that merge between tactical medieval warfare and intense personal combat.
All the strategy/diplomacy/trading/RPG stuff on top is fine, but only as a context for the combat gameplay.
- Comment on How would society look like with no companies at all and every single thing is free? 3 months ago:
Check out David Graeber’s book Debt - The First 5000 Years. He argues that waaay before money people lived in complex credit economies, and that money only happened when there was war, so that you could pay soldiers.
Also barter economies only happen when people who have been used to money don’t have access to money anymore. Didn’t happen before money, or at least there’s no evidence of it.
- Comment on I love when scientists mock each other 3 months ago:
Fair enough - sounds more like a problem with the specific study than with the quantum computer
- Comment on I love when scientists mock each other 3 months ago:
In a way, regular computers are also physics experiments. As are fridges and cars. When does an experiment graduate to being a technology?
- Comment on [deleted] 4 months ago:
No don’t
- Comment on Triangle 4 months ago:
It’s not kind for sure, completely agree. My point was more that even if it’s unkind, it’s not necessarily racism or bioessentialism.
I think we must be kind to individuals, but still acknowledge problems with groups. That does require a shift in mindset to not feel personally impacted by statements about a group you belong to, which is easier said than done.
- Comment on Triangle 4 months ago:
As I’m clearly in the wrong according to downvotes, could you elaborate on what I’m missing?
- Comment on Works like 2 out of 7 times 4 months ago:
Half-asleep-sex can be amazing, there are different kinds of pleasure when your only half conscious.
- Comment on Triangle 4 months ago:
Because of the current cultural context, yes. Even when you add “overall.” But I’d be completely open to you elucidating that you are referring to some non-racist point.
If there’s been a history of people stating this about a group meaning every single member, then you need to assume that’s what they mean. I don’t think that’s the case with men.
Not saying one meaning must be assumed over the other, you’ll have to depend on cultural context to understand the deeper meaning.
Compare for example “men can’t give birth” vs. “men love sports”. The former clearly intends to say “all men”, the latter intends “the group overall”.
- Comment on Triangle 4 months ago:
One could understand “men are trash” as having the meaning “every single man is trash”, which would be in line with racism as you say. Or one could understand it as “the group overall is trash”, meaning any individual member isn’t necessarily trash.
The latter meaning is in some senses a matter of data - men are extremely overrepresented in e.g. violent crimes.
Which, again, doesn’t much about the individual man.
- Comment on I started playing WH40k Rogue Trader and I'm digging it, but I know virtually nothing of Warhammer. Any super basic world info I should know going in? 4 months ago:
The chaos factions are devoted to passion, life, knowledge and pleasure, and the Imperium are devoted to the corpse of a lying megalomaniac telling everyone they are forbidden from having a good time.
Anything else you hear is propaganda.
- Comment on Steam :: About the New York Attorney General lawsuit against Valve 5 months ago:
Is it fair to say they’re “doing nothing to stop it”? They have indeed been shutting banning users for this, according to themselves millions of them.
Not saying it’s enough, but it’s hardly nothing.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
It does, thanks for sharing. Wishing her good health!
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
Fascinating setup. Does she have sex with women outside your marriage, if I may be so forward?
- Comment on What is the definitive way to play certain games? 6 months ago:
Or you could embrace the vision, play on Hardcore with no map marker or compass, accept that travelling through war-torn lands is dangerous, feel the rush of galloping through the woods knowing a Cuman ambush could set you back 30 minutes, accepting that quests can fail, accepting that people will react to you stinking like blood and horse.
- Comment on Anon wants to talk about video games 6 months ago:
I tried to get into it a while ago, but it felt so half-cooked. This weird voice-over with the mispronounced words, the obscure tech tree and overall progression, I don’t know…
It felt like a lot more work to get into than Factorio or Satisfactory did back in the day, with a smaller payoff.
Am I missing something?
- Comment on thank you fb 6 months ago:
Is the Leviathan waking a good thing or a bad thing? It’s a biblical thing right? They seem to be critical of the secret world government’s strategy to freeze it to death with an artificial snow storm.
- Comment on I'm good, thanks 6 months ago:
Interesting framing. But without measurements there isn’t really a need for different interpretations, is there? If that’s what you mean by “in the middle of an experiment”.
I will happily agree that before measurement, it’s very useful to think of the system as existing in many states at the same time.
- Comment on I'm good, thanks 6 months ago:
I don’t know, Many Worlds always led to more confusion than Copenhagen for me. But I suppose that’s a matter of taste since they’re equivalent.
As per the relationship between measurement and entanglement, from an empiricist viewpoint all quantum mechanical terms are related to measurement. If entanglement didn’t affect the outcome of measurements, it wouldn’t exist.
Indeed, you can disentangle an entangled system, which of course will change the outcome of measurements - that’s how you know it’s been disentangled.
- Comment on I'm good, thanks 6 months ago:
Copenhagen interpretation doesn’t break down for quantum erasure. Upon measurement you collapse the total quantum state into a result where the two measurements are consistent, that’s simply what entanglement means.
The timing of experiments, and the choice of what to measure, are elements ultimately irrelevant to the above statement, as the quantum erasure experiment demonstrates.
