CarbonIceDragon

@CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Believe It Or Not, Black Licorice⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  When I was a kid, a sibling and some friends of mine would occasionally play “jelly bean Russian roulette”, wherein we would get a number of jelly beans equal to the number of us playing, with one of them a black licorice, have one non-playing kid scramble them and “randomly” give one to each player, and then eat them eyes closed without seeing what the flavor was. Whoever got the licorice was the loser.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could you grind up a loaf of bread back into a flour and make a new loaf of bread?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve heard of some bakery somewhere doing “recycled bread”, where they supposedly take the leftover bread that didn’t sell that day, dry it out, grind it up, and mix it with fresh flour to make new bread, but I don’t know for sure if the story is real.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨purpose⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, has the system ever not eventually stabilized in another state? The fact that we have had extinctions, quite a lot of them even involving most species that have ever existed, and yet complex life and ecosystems still exist, would suggest that life will find a way to adapt around such a loss given time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨purpose⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  How many species of birds and bats eat just mosquitoes though, or a high enough percentage that they would go extinct rather than shift to rely more on their other prey species, even if at a smaller population? And are those particular species of birds and bats worth the consequences of having mosquitoes?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Couldn't be worse than what we have now...⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If he were a chicken, he’d probably care more about dealing with bird flu, even if for purely selfish reasons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flushing⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Avoiding flushing the water is even harder

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨pain plant⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Every second I’ve lived so far, I haven’t died, so if we simply take that pattern and extrapolate it for each future second…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The science is divided⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  But the reasoning given doesnt apply exclusively to horses. Suppose we follow the same chain that gets us “all horses are the same color”, but replace “horses” with “colors”, we would end up with the statement that all colors are the same color. Thus, this is not a counterexample, because black and brown are the same color.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Entropy? Never heard of it.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The argument is that there exist some use cases where we do not have a viable low carbon energy source yet (things like heavy farming equipment or aircraft), and one can effectively counteract the emissions of these things until we do develop one. Or alternatively, by the time that we eliminate all the high carbon energy, the heating effect already present may be well beyond what we desire the climate to be like, and returning it to a prior state would require not just not emitting carbon, but removing some of what is already there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Real⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Before bed I’ve heard, but right after waking? I thought light was good then for getting you more alert?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the difference between a hostage and a prisoner?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A hostage implies the purpose of holding that person is as leverage to extract some concession from someone, whereas a prisoner does not necessarily imply that intent and could be held for any reason?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Say it.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I hate to break it to people, but this universe is the one where people occasionally eat spiders.

  Consider: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are dwarf planets not considered planets but dwarf stars are considered stars?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I suspect that we might not use the term “dwarf planet”, were it not that the objects we initially created the category to describe were originally classed as planets. The category labelling is a bit arbitrary, we just discovered that what we now call dwarf planets are quite abundant and that there was a clear line that could be drawn to distinguish them from the rest of what we called planets, and so decided to draw that line between them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Professional father right here⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What if I want the reverse, shoes that have nice cushion to them but look like toe shoes?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibes based cooking⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I just grab whatever random spices I have that sound good and add a few shakes

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it wrong to not have a disabled child solely to avoid forcing the child to suffer their whole life?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Indeed, it’s not incoherent, at some level though I’d argue that morality is at it’s core simply a tool for deciding what actions one should take, and a system that both follows a utilitarian model and makes it extremely easy for someone’s life to be negative carries the implication that the world would be happier were you to just kill off the huge segment of the population who end up on the negative side. As this is completely contrary to our instincts about what we want morality to be, and completely impractical to act on, it is no longer a very useful tool if one assumes that.

  I do tend towards a variant of utilitarianism myself as it has a useful ability to weigh options that are both bad or both good, but for the reason above I tend to define “zero” as a complete lack of happiness/maximum of suffering, and being unhappy as having low happiness rather than negative (making a negative value impossible), though that carries it’s own implications that I know not everyone would agree with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it wrong to not have a disabled child solely to avoid forcing the child to suffer their whole life?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One could make the argument that suffering is more or less the opposite of happiness, and so that if you give the kid a good enough life, that cancels out the suffering and then some, but a lot depends on how exactly you define those things I guess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like just talking about the buying power of money or even the ability to effectively duplicate stuff is missing something: assuming your time travel actually allows you to change the past, and it doesn’t just end up in a situation where you can only fulfill a timeline that always existed, you can take technology to the past too.

  Go back to the beginning of civilization and give them current technology (or even the beginning of time, and found a new civilization there). Then do it again (or if you don’t, someone else will eventually) with the new tech developed off the existing stuff over time. Repeated ad nauseum, you end up with a situation where civilization has and since the beginning has always had, every single technology it is physically possible to create.

  You get the same kind of issues as “the singularity” (the concept where a super intelligent AI improves itself exponentially until it is as powerful as is possible to be). As such, our entire concept of markets and money and economy are likely completely obsolete, because find yourself in a universe populated by something as close as is physically possible to become to gods.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨JeSUS⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Dont I wish, but no, don’t even get scales…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨on topic⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Lemmy three day challenge

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do AI bros and other staunch AI defenders seem happy about the potential of killing off the creative industries?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m no AI bro, but I do think this concern is a bit overblown. The monetary value in art is not in simply having a picture of something, a whole infamous subset of “modern art” commands high prices despite being simple enough that virtually anybody could recreate it. A lot is simply in that people desire art created by a specific person, be it a painting that they made, or commissioning a still active artist to create something, or someone buying a band’s merch to support their work. AI simply does not have the same parasocial association to it. And of course, it doesn’t at all replicate the non-monetary value that creating something can give to someone.

  I can, at most, imagine it getting integrated into things like advertising where one really doesn’t care who created the work; but even then there’s probably still value in having a human artist review the result to be sure of it’s quality, and that kind of art tends to add the least cultural value anyway.

  That isn’t zero impact obviously, that kind of advertisement or corporate clip art or such does still pay people, but it’s a far cry from the end of creative human endeavor, or even people getting paid to be creative.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There was a time when everyone had common sense⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Im not sure Id consider that long enough to qualify as a wall of text, but Ive been accused of such before, so maybe my notion of what qualifies is different.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There was a time when everyone had common sense⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I see this sentiment a lot, but honestly I think it would actually do the reverse of what people suggest. “Common sense” isnt really some inherit knowledge that everyone not stupid knows, its actually just stuff that we expect everyone to have learned at some point, presumably in fairly early childhood. But learning stuff requires being taught, and its easy enough for something to just have never come up for someone when they were a kid, because there are so many things to know. Having an explicit warning somewhere is both another source of information in case someone just never got the memo and a prompt for someone unfamiliar with the danger, be it a kid or some ignorant adult, to potentially ask someone why that thing is dangerous. Obviously this is a bit of an extreme example since drinking unknown things is a foolish thing to do in general, but it makes more sense to just apply the labels when in doubt than spend effort making a judgement for every dangerous thing and potentially missing something. I’d bet that having warning labels on stuff actually slightly increases the amount of common sense in society.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There was a time when everyone had common sense⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe the previous generation of manual writers didn’t have the common sense to realize that a certain subset of people out there are stupid enough to drink the battery juice if you don’t warn them not to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The warning on PBS Nova is heartbreaking!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who did 3 years of a physics degree and then ended up crashing and burning at the basic quantum stuff until I ultimately quit, I sympathize with this wholeheartedly. Like its fascinating and all, and its great that some people are able to get it, but like, if I have to deal with a Schrödinger equation again I think I might scream.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SAD⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not necessarily, there can never be a last time if there is never a first time after all…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So is it "It just works" or "Shit just works"?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I always assumed that it was supposed to be ambiguous between them for humor purposes

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whimsy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is how the immortal snail gets you to let your guard down, nobody suspects that little thing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are implanted subdermal trackers in SciFi movies at all a realistic possibility?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Forget that, what powers them? Something that can be read with a close by scanner makes some since since I figure you could induce a current in one, but the kind you sometimes see in movies that constantly sends out a signal that some satellite can clearly track anywhere in the world, and do so for days, weeks, months or longer, would need one heck of a battery I’d imagine? And in a very small space too

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's right!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And if I refuse?