merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Shut up science!! 3 hours ago:
I think they mean they are putting their faith into the scientists performing the science
It’s not just the scientists, it’s the whole process. You trust that the journals are selecting articles based on their scientific merit. You trust that the journalists reporting on the stories are doing their best to accurately summarize the scientific articles, and that if they get it wrong they’ll issue a correction. You trust that when science makes it into textbooks that those textbooks are accurately summarizing and maybe simplifying the science in a fair way. You trust that teachers or professors who are explaining the science to their students are doing it faithfully and accurately.
The Alpha Wolf theory shows how that sort of thing breaks down. There was a scientific study, and at the time there was no reason to suspect it wasn’t legitimate. The scientist who did the study was accurately describing what he saw. The journal that published it had no reason to doubt it was good science. The peer reviewers did their job well. It just turned out that he was studying captive wolves, and that wolves in the wild didn’t behave the same way. Unfortunately, “wolves live in family units where the parents are in charge” isn’t as interesting a story, so while scientists have been trying to correct the record for a while, there are still people who have been taught by “science” or at least “the modern media and educational system with science at its base” that think that there are “alpha wolves” who take charge of a pack based on being strong and aggressive.
- Comment on Fresh dystopian hell from Samsung fridges with ads. 14 hours ago:
In theory a smart fridge could be useful.
If it automatically scanned everything you put inside, it could tell you what ingredients you had if you were planning a recipe. If you were at the store you could know what to buy. It could warn you before something reached its expiry date, or remind you what leftovers were still uneaten. Depending on how much you trusted it, it could learn what you always buy, and add them to your shopping list when you were running low, or even actually order them.
In theory this could reduce food spoilage and wastage, and could save you money in the long term. It requires trust though. Samsung is obviously mistreating users by showing them ads. But, it could be much worse. The fridge could order food that the user didn’t need, or if it ordered food Samsung could strike a deal with one company and always prefer their brands even when there were cheaper options. And, of course, Samsung could sell your buying habits to Google and Meta who would use it to more effectively target you with ads. Or, Samsung could cut a deal with insurance companies to tell them which users had unhealthy eating habits so the insurance company could deny coverage or hike rates.
The big issue here is section 1201 of the DMCA. If that didn’t exist, someone could open up a business installing a new, custom, privacy-centric OS on people’s fridges. But, with section 1201 in place, that’s illegal and you could be thrown in jail for performing that service. Even outside the US laws like that exist because the US insisted on them on condition that otherwise the US would force those countries to pay high tariffs. Of course, now the US is jacking up tariffs regardless. I have no idea why no country has yet repealed their equivalent of section 1201. Whichever country does it first will have a huge advantage.
- Comment on Shout out to my engineering homies. 2 days ago:
Sometimes, sometimes not. Many 401(k)s have restrictions not that “you can’t invest in X”, just “you must choose from the things offered by this account”.
- Comment on Shout out to my engineering homies. 2 days ago:
He got a job making $100k a year
$100k per year writing code at a defence contractor isn’t very much.
- Comment on same shit every day, on god 4 days ago:
A good example of how you can do amazing things with steam is looking at the very last of the steam locomotives. Before they switched to diesel or electric, the steam locomotives were engineering masterpieces. Yes, you still got the classic steam locomotive puffs of steam coming out of the locomotive, but they only let the steam go once they had extracted the maximum possible energy from it.
Here’s a good video going over the whole design.
- Comment on Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end 4 days ago:
Yeah, but nothing is perminant, (or permanent). All hierarchies are temporary because everything is temporary.
Aristotle discussed a then-current idea to redistribute all personal wealth above 5x the poorest citizen
People have come up with ideas since forever. I’m sure the first philosophy on the redistribution of wealth was “Unga bunga, bunga unga bunga!” The problem is putting those ideas into practice. So far, when people try to eliminate hierarchies, the result is that someone comes in and takes advantage of the people who don’t think there’s a hierarchy.
Humanity itself may be temporary, but it seems like the idea of hierarchies will outlive humanity.
- Comment on Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end 5 days ago:
Before there was money there was debt. Debt goes back thousands and thousands of years.
My neighbors, friends, family, all of us
That’s exactly why. You described a band, a tribe, a group. People not in that group are not in your band / tribe / group. So, you don’t really need to share your wealth with people from outside your group. Nobody can know and love 8 billion other people. Humans are still fundamentally apes, and that’s just not in our ape nature.
- Comment on Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end 5 days ago:
We have to usher in the collapse of [permanent hierarchies]
That would be nice, but is it realistic? It’s not just that humanity has always had hierarchies. It’s that it seems to be a feature of even the animal kingdom. It also seems like when people try to create a system without hierarchies, someone steps into the power vacuum. The end result is that things are even worse for the people at the bottom.
Maybe a better plan is to accept that human animals are going to end up having hierarchies, and instead of trying to completely eliminate them, instead aim to shrink them as much as possible while still maintaining a functional government that at least somewhat answers to the people at the bottom.
- Comment on Waiting for Capitalism to collapse, so we can get this over with so we can reverse climate change and have nice memes, technology and the good end 5 days ago:
If capitalism collapses, we’re most likely going back to feudalism, not ten-forward to Star Trek.
- Comment on Existential cowposting 6 days ago:
The problem is that they’re not doing anything illegal.
The bigger problem is that they have the power to keep anybody from passing new laws that would make what they’re doing illegal.
- Comment on I dunno 1 week ago:
I’ve done that, but that’s ugly.
- Comment on I dunno 1 week ago:
Also, you can use this for more than just arithmetic. The first thing in the list is the name of the function, and everything else is something that you pass to the function. So you could instead write
(plus 1 2 3 4)
Which would be like
plus(1, 2, 3, 4)in other kinds of programming languages. - Comment on I dunno 1 week ago:
So, if
2 5 8 5 - × +is “RPN” does that mean that the LISP version is Polish Notation? - Comment on I dunno 1 week ago:
Brackets and Orders, not that anybody calls “(” a bracket or “^” an “order”.
- Comment on I dunno 1 week ago:
You don’t necessarily have to do parentheses first. What matters is that the things inside the parentheses are a group that you can’t break apart. If you have
10÷2+3-2*(2+1)you can do the division first5+3-2*(2+1)then the addition outside the parentheses8-2*(2+1)It’s just that before you do the multiplication of the term outside the parentheses, you have to handle the parentheses group, so you get8-2*3->8-6->2 - Comment on I dunno 1 week ago:
I got really angry because the prettier code formatter insists on removing parentheses, making things less clear. Because it’s an “opinionated” formatter you can’t tell it not to do that without using ugly hacks.
Sure, logically there are times when you don’t need them. But, often it helps to explain what’s happening in the code when you can use parentheses to group certain things. It helps in particular when you want to use “&&” and “||” to say “do X only if Y fails”.
- Comment on I dunno 1 week ago:
Depends on the language.
- Comment on eat the rich and go to libraries 1 week ago:
Meanwhile authors, who you might imagine might be most upset at their books being “given away” by libraries, actually love libraries and are delighted to hear stories of people checking their books out.
- Comment on Seals the deal, once and for all. 1 week ago:
Asimov’s mysteries always hinged on the laws of robotics. It always seemed like a robot did something, but if the laws of robotics were in force that couldn’t have happened. But, it was always explained in a way that left the three laws intact.
The “I, Robot” movie abandoned the 3 laws of robotics when convenient to the plot. That takes away the entire tension that made Asimov’s stories interesting.
- Comment on Radon 1 week ago:
A lot of managers are pretty useless. Some degree of management is needed because you can’t just have 10,000 individual contributors all reporting directly to the CEO. But, a lot of managers get where they are by schmoozing, claiming credit, shifting blame, avoiding responsibility, etc.
- Comment on Radon 1 week ago:
Is this a war on being specific?
If a fisherman says “I operate the winch on a bowpicker tuna fishing boat”, is that a bullshit job?
If a middle-management yes-man who exists only to fluff his boss’ ego describes his job as “I encourage excellence” does that mean his job is no longer bullshit?
- Comment on Stop stressing my GPU and start hiring artists 2 weeks ago:
What was that?!
Flying saucer.
Oh.
- Comment on Stop stressing my GPU and start hiring artists 2 weeks ago:
Were you thinking “I can’t believe this is WoW” or “I can’t believe how good this looks?”
Because, I haven’t experienced the first one. To me, once I’m in the game, there really seems to be an amazing consistency in how things look. After a while things look “realistic” but in a “realistic for WoW” way. Like, obviously Orcs and Demons are not realistic, but the consistency is so strong that how things look, and move, and behave is so strong and predictable.
- Comment on Stop stressing my GPU and start hiring artists 2 weeks ago:
The trouble with photorealism is that you very easily stumble into the uncanny valley. In addition, something that often looks “photorealistic” today will look really dated in a few years.
If you go with artfully styled games, it can actually be much harder. You need to adopt a consistent artistic style and have that style be used by many different artists. Unlike with photorealism, there isn’t always going to be a reference available. You have to watch that over time, and as the scope of the game grows, the style remains consistent. But, when it’s done well, it can be amazing.
One of my favourites in terms of artful styling is the game Interstate '76. It came out at a time when full motion video cutscenes were the style of the day. You’d have low resolution graphics, and then come in with a VHS-quality cutscene with real actors and real sets. Then back into low resolution graphics. Interstate '76 chose an amazing artistic style, then did in-engine cutscenes, which kept the style consistent.
The other master of this, IMO, is World of Warcraft. It must be a gargantuan undertaking to have a game with that many different models and to have a consistent style for all of them, but they mostly do. They often do out-of-engine cutscenes, but their style is so consistent that their cutscenes just look like even more detailed shots from that same world.
- Comment on Feynman rules 3 weeks ago:
Why does gravity cause two things to attract? Why does the strong nuclear force hold protons together? Why is the speed of light 3 x 10^8 m/s and not half that, or 1000x as fast?
It’s often possible to figure out how certain initial values of the universe cause it to behave in certain ways. But, as for why those initial values are the ones that they are, that’s like asking about angels dancing on the head of a pin.
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
But we’re not talking about getting money in the future. We’re talking about getting full ownership of a house in the future, while being able to live in it for the full 50 years that it is being paid off.
The bank also isn’t talking about getting money in the future, they’re getting a steady revenue stream for 50 years.
So, I don’t see how this really applies to 50 year mortgages.
- Comment on Bank Workers, Rejoice! 3 weeks ago:
Poor timing? You bought at the absolute peak of something known as The United States Housing Bubble. Your experience is not typical. You’re one of the unlucky people who had the absolute worst timing possible.
The idea of using a home as part of your retirement should be a lie, but unfortunately for the vast majority of people it isn’t. The world would be much better off if people only got what they paid back when they sold their houses. But, the reality is that most people have been absurdly lucky and their homes have been going up faster than all but the best stocks on the stock market. You just happened to be someone who jumped on the ride at exactly the wrong time.
- Comment on Come the fuck on.... please? 4 weeks ago:
but it never spilled over into politics quite to this degree.
Sure. But, look at the media environment. From the founding of the US to the invention of radio, there were newspapers. Sure, there was a strong element of yellow journalism, but to print a newspaper you still needed a printing press so it wasn’t a free-for-all. Then with radio, and then TV in the 50s there were only a handful of sources of information for everybody to follow. It’s only really since the 2010s that the media environment has been a free-for-all with anybody able to put up their own podcast, or put up videos on YouTube, or have their own blog, or post on Twitter, or whatever.
Politicians used to be able to do backroom deals. Those used to get a bad name, but to a certain extent it was a good thing, because at least they were dealing, instead of causing things to come to a deadlock. Now, if anybody dares to talk to someone on “the other team”, they get raked over the coals.
Russia was found to be sponsoring the NRA
Sure, they spent some money, and had some success. But, they hardly needed to push. The NRA’s goals were already aligned with Russia’s. The NRA has over 5 million members, and they were hardly upset with the direction Russia was pushing.
the rise of evangelicals as a voting group seems to be a co-ordinated world-wide phenomenon.
Not to me. There doesn’t seem to be much coordination there. There are just grifters seeing an opportunity.
I’d argue that those same elites thrived more under stable economic growth than an unstable one
It’s hardly the first time that an elite and powerful group tried to use a movement or a politician to further their interests and then found out that they couldn’t control what they’d unleashed.
- Comment on Come the fuck on.... please? 4 weeks ago:
I think you’re overestimating the influence of Russia and China and underestimating the dysfunction in the US.
- Comment on Come the fuck on.... please? 4 weeks ago:
Civilization is doing pretty well outside the US. If the US disappeared tomorrow, the rest of the world would do significantly better. I don’t know how the world will deal with climate change, but without the US it would be easier to make progress. The tech firms blowing up the AI bubble, and invading our privacy are nearly all American. A lot of the private equity firms destroying the world are also American. If the US could hurry up and finish collapsing, the rest of the world’s civilization could just move on.