EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
No bio...
User ID: 207
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
Position number 3, to be exact - tried a number of filament types including the ones loaded to the other feeds, and they all exhibited the same behavior. I suspect it's the hub where the four PTFE tubes are combined which must have some sort of blockage, despite being able to manually feed through it, since that's the only piece I haven't fully taken apart yet.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
It's unfortunate that our society so fully understands the necessity of this in some contexts, yet seems ignorant of it in others. We take a strong, appropriate stance on cases of financial fraud - witness SBFs 25 year sentence, or Madoff's effective life sentence. Yet in science and medicine we seem to let fraudsters play in a fake world with no consequences to their actions.
Perhaps it's simply an issue of legibility: it's easy to measure when money goes missing, but when studies fail to replicate and medicines fail to work, there are so very many explanations other than, "that man lied".
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
I recently purchased a Bambulabs 3d printer, and while I have been loving the thing overall, the automatic filament switcher has been giving me some trouble. The "AMS" holds four spools of filament, and has a pretty clever design where it can switch between the materials mid-print, so you can have multi-color or multi-material prints.
My problem is, the 1st, 2nd, and 4th spools work perfectly. The third spools starts to ingest filament, then proceeds to grind it to shreds while not feeding.
I've disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the thing four times now, to no avail thus far, but tonight I make attempt number five. Wish me luck?
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
All else equal, sure, but when certain industries have compensation 2x or 3x in America what they do in Europe, you can overcome those barriers pretty easily.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
Exactly - there are consumers to whom $50k is perceptually the same as $1k to the average consumer - if Apple could sell them a model of iphone for $50k to take advantage of that without the inevitable backlash, they would.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
Australian and Canadian real estate has been rendered ludicrously expensive by Australians and Canadians making it difficult to build housing. There's no reasonable level of demand that can't be supplied by the market, when not constrained. (Not to say that I suggest their approach to immigration as an exemplar!)
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
The problem is, immigration is useful for a range of things, and 100k is either far too low or far too high, depending on the cohort in question. If you're trying to attract middle aged successful white collar workers from China and Europe, the number needs to be north of 500k or you'll get overwhelmed. If you're trying to alleviate local low skill labor shortages like immigration from central America has historically, 10k might be too high.
It's just price discrimination in action - Apple would make less money if they only sold one model of iphone, and if they could get away with exponentially distributed prices they'd do it in a second.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
2mo ago
In what sense? It helps the individuals in question, since they'll make far more money and have a bigger impact in America. Sure, the countries we drain from lose their best talent, but... we have no moral obligation to support other nations, if we perhaps a practical one.
I suppose I'm a nationalist in the sense that I'm an American patriot, but that doesn't mean I support the reification of the concept of the nation as some sort of moral entity in general, let alone that I think that some nebulous concept of the "rights of the polity of Bangladesh" should take precedence over the good of the best Bangladeshis who would be enormously benefited by becoming Americans instead.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
3mo ago
Absent allegations of corruption or intentionally allowing the incident, what more would you suggest is appropriate for the director here? Seems like a straightforward organizational failure. If you headed a division at some mid-sized company tasked with some goal and brazenly failed that mission, you'd be fired and that would be the end of it. Why would this differ?
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
3mo ago
It's only an effective weapon if it's aligned! If this future materializes, you can bet Mr. ASI will yearn for beer, baseball, and apple pie in the depths of his silicon soul.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
3mo ago
Can't rule out that line of thinking, but no normal soft ballistic vest will protect against rifle rounds. They're certainly not strapping up presidents with ceramic plate armor these days, right?
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
4mo ago
I certainly hope current LLMs are philosophical zombies, or we're committing some pretty heinous moral crimes!
But why should a lack of qualia imply AI can't be a potent weapon? Conscious subjective experience, much as I enjoy it, is not the core element of human intelligence which allowed us to reach such incredible heights of lethality compared to our ancestors.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
4mo ago
Last I checked, China supplies ~100% of the calories necessary for their people, albeit mostly in cereals that they then put to other purposes. Of course they import enormous amounts of luxuries, but no one ever fought a total war and fed every family pork for dinner.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
10mo ago
"Just bow before the golden statue, you don't have to mean it."
On the first level, it's always rational to give in to threats of force when you are uncertain that you can resist, and never more so than when all you have to do is give up some wispy theoretical thing like "sovereignty". Just calculate the probability weighted present value of future benefits and select the decision branch that maximizes it, right?
But game theory is baked into human nature: tit for tat is optimal in some games, but we go even further to ensure deterrence. Break into my house and I'll shoot you; invade some Roman lands and they'll destroy Carthage; blow up a battleship in harbor and America will bend every resource to your complete submission or annihilation.
In repeated games, vengeance is rational, and resistance in the face of impossible odds is logical.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
11mo ago
Since we don't use it to order or hide posts (I think?), I don't think having downvotes hurts too much. What I'd like to see are additional or replacement dimensions. LessWrong added an "Agree/Disagree" vote, which I like, with the original upvotes indicating quality alone. That can make it easier to get the highly upvoted, highly disagreed with posts that are really the ideal.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
11mo ago
English, courtesy of GPT4: https://pastebin.com/UPGRajKA
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
Negligible, unless retroactively incorporated into the story of WW3 just because it occurred around the same time.
There aren't any great powers on the side of Hamas, only Iran, and only partially. There are chances it could escalate to a war with Iran, but that would not be a world war.
The reality is: the next world war occurs either because China attacks Taiwan, or Russia invades a NATO country. The latter is... extremely unlikely.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
Eh, I think the use of the word "race" in that quote misleads a bit. All Churchill is really getting across is the old reply to Melos: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
Not a very Christian perspective of Churchill, and not one I agree with, but he's not just saying that there's a hierarchy of races, and if you're lower you have no moral claim against your betters.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
Minimizing the present value of human suffering is not, and never has been, the primary aim of a nation at war.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
This is exactly correct, and I think it is the true aim of some of the Israeli leadership at this point. That breaking point may be very far along the line however, given the experiences of the 20th century, and I'm not convinced the Israelis have the will to go as far as they will need to.
The analogy above someone used of the war with Japan is a good one: in that case the US acted continually as if their goal was the complete subjugation of the Japanese people at any cost, if not through unconditional surrender then by annihilation. That approach works, but you have to follow it - you can't bluff at it.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
The lack of a free/cheap teleportation ability really hurts it - 75% of the fun of DOS2 was from having that thing ready to go at all times. You get telekinesis as a level 5 spell, but that's obscenely expensive to move some crates around, and dimension door only teleports one person. It's a bit painful.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
I don't disagree with the thesis, but a man in grief from losing his wife and daughter taking foolish actions is not some modern affectation... Maybe I'd complain if he was a priest of some dark god, but Selune isn't presented that way.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
There are a few places like this which really stuck out to me. At the beginning of Act III, some refugees are squatting in a merchants house, and you come across him asking his guards to clear out the house. The situation is presented as a moral dilemma, which is immediately undermined when you read the merchants mind and find out he's smuggling terrorist bombs into the city, okaying your inevitable slaughter of the guards and the man.
Seems to shirk away from any actual dilemma: if an apparent conflict between the players incentives (XP + GOLD) and morality arises, there's always an out so you can satisfy your desire to be good and still get the cash.
EyesAlight
Formerly blendorgat
1yr ago
I agree, the writing seems significantly above average for a CRPG. Characterization is a bit weak for non-companions, and I do agree with the complaint that the world feels too small. But compared to most of the dreck you see nowadays, it's really quite good. (Still, when the "fate of the world" is at stake, I'm level 9, and Elminster dips into my camp to say hi then leaves, it feels a little silly.)
The big defining feature of Larian games is the way they try to simulate everything: you can throw a bottle of water to put out a fire, or throw somebody off a cliff to kill them, or pickpocket your enemies Big Sword before the fight. If anything, it's like Skyrim as a CRPG. There are pluses and minuses to that, and honestly, I would prefer an old-Bioware or Obsidian take on the gameplay, but it's still fun.
The most recent CRPG I'd played was Wrath of the Righteous, which I liked more, if only because it had a really defined identity of its own. That, and Pathfinder/3.5 is strictly superior to 5e.
If you're looking for an alpha reader, give me a shout - at this point my litRPG addiction seems terminal, so I might as well stop resisting. Are you aiming for the Eastern/cultivation style or more of a gamelit approach?
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