MathWizard
Good things are good
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User ID: 164
MathWizard
Good things are good
2d ago
Okay that's a good point. The only viewing them 25% of the time adds some probabilistic volatility to things, but on average if someone gets away with 75% of their infractions then penalties ought to be four times as harsh to compensate, and at that point if they get harsh enough to guarantee someone last place you might as well just DQ them. It's not an ideal system, but it seems reasonable given the monitoring constraints.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2d ago
I feel like in a PvP setting the issues would be vastly worse. Being in a squad of 6 people and your teammates just stomp the enemies and carry you is kind of dissatisfying as you get rewards that it doesn't feel like you earned, but you still get the rewards. Getting killed by someone way stronger than you and you lose everything feels way worse, which is why most PvP games avoid strong meta-progression this way and only have small upgrades or let you get through them quickly and max out so the game can be balanced around a maxed out meta.
I've been playing 33 Immortals. It just came out, and is a multiplier roguelite thing sort of like a cross between Realm of the Mad God and Hades. 33 players get dropped into a map, and you shoot monsters and complete objectives, getting randomized upgrades along the way, fight a boss at the end, and then get meta-progression rewards.
I'm liking it a lot so far. It seems way less volatile and repetitive than Realm of the Mad God. Everyone starts a map at approximately the same time, so you're not dropped into a map where everyone is level 15 while you're level 1 trying to grow on your own. And the combat and dodging mechanics are a lot more modern and feel more satisfying and skillful than just pew pew pew. A match progresses naturally from wandering around getting loot, to fulfilling joint objectives in small groups (the chambers only admit 6 players at a time, but several pop up around the map), and then there are three larger objectives on the main map, and then everyone teleports to all fight the final boss together with all 33 (or whoever is left alive).
The fact that the game is balanced around so many people forces players of vastly different meta-progression states together, which can create some balance issues. On the dps side that's mostly fine because even if you're doing twice as much damage as someone else, the tougher enemies are balanced around being hit by lots of people, and the boss expects 33 people to wail on it, so it all kind of averages together. On the survival side it's a bit of an issue. I have not died once in the regular difficult mode since unlocking a shield perk that vastly increases my effective health.
That said, there are harder difficulty modes, but they take longer, largely because enemy healths do not scale with the number of surviving players, so if it's harder and half the people die then the objectives and final boss take twice as long to kill.
The majority of meta progress is in the form of achievements. You've got achievement blocks for each weapon, location, and several subcategories of things you can do. Each achievement gives you 10 xp towards your main level which increases your maximum health, and each block of achievement gives you some major unlock like new features, powering up the relevant weapon, or more stats or perk slots, alongside unlocking the next block of achievements (which take longer than the previous block, causing the meta-progress to slow down in a smooth way).
I suspect that the game will get stale eventually if they don't continue adding new content post release. I have 18 hours in it and suspect it'll stay fun for another 30-40. But I don't think it has enough content for hundreds of hours of replayability. Without that, the player base might drop off, which would be fatal to a game balanced around requiring 33 people to all queue up at the same time. Still, in its new state I have never run into matchmaking issues even when playing late at night, and it's a lot of fun.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2d ago
In a lot of competitions like this I think DQs are too harsh of a penalty. It seems like it would be a lot more fair if minor and pedantic mistakes were met with time penalties so that people who try hard and give it their best can still be rated and compare and have their speed and number of mistakes still get measured against each themselves and each other, rather than a binary "were you perfect or not?"
My sister in law takes her dogs to agility competitions and there have been events where literally nobody qualifies. What's even the point of having the event then? If someone is actively cheating then disqualifying them seems appropriate. If someone messes up slightly, or does something which if allowed to slide would give them an advantage, give them a large enough penalty that there's no way to possibly abuse it and enough incentive to work on fixing it in the future, while still letting them compete and get a score.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2d ago
The alternative is to change the system to have someone else take up the adversarial position that it DOES have some support. Clearly someone at some point did, otherwise the original prosecutor wouldn't have said what they said. They should have to make a case before a judge, likely with a prosecutor from another district or something taking up the adversarial position. It should not be possible for a single person to arbitrarily declare someone not guilty with absolutely no checks and balances to prevent them from abusing this power (and yes, this does generalize to Presidential pardons). Any time someone sort of can do this (like a Judge dismissing charges for a case with no apparent merits) it should be done publicly and procedurally with feedback mechanisms where they get in trouble if they break procedure and just do this arbitrarily when there obviously is merit.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3d ago
The difference being that, as far as I know, poor people in Victorian Britain were not subject to such levels of police state anarchy-tyranny as modern Britain. Being left to your own devices and ending up victimized by people stronger than you is one thing. Being actively and racially profiled by the police such that if you defend yourselves against people weaker than you, or even speak out against them, you get arrested is an entirely new level of victimization.
I do somewhat agree that the cuck label doesn't apply here due to class distinctions.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3d ago
Seems like a better solution would be to have much stricter requirements for conceding errors on behalf of someone other than yourself, requiring actual proof and not just a concession.
MathWizard
Good things are good
4d ago
I abandoned/paused my last attempt at coding my own videogame since I got bogged down in tons of pedantic technical details until I lost motivation for a few months. I am self taught at programming and have to look up every little feature if I've never used it before and it's annoying.
I heard some people talking about Vibe coding, making the entire thing without writing any code yourself, and figured I'd give it a try. I'm working with Google Gemini free tier, and it seems okay so far. The idea being I'm doing all of the actual game design decisions but it can implement them way faster than I can with approximately the same number of bugs (which in turn it can fix when I point them out). I am very impressed with its ability to make a workable prototype near instantly and put a bunch of placeholder stuff so I can test things bit by bit while having background stuff functioning, but am worried that its performance will degrade as the code increases. Has anyone else tried Vibe coding? Any recommendations?
(If it matters, the game is an Idle game somewhat similar to Increlution, so doesn't have fancy graphics or physics or stuff, and is mostly clicking on buttons in various menus)
MathWizard
Good things are good
5d ago
Oh no, a pink-haired woman. The horror, the horror. She seems a "security risk" in that she likely did not vote for Trump. Surprisingly, that does not make her a North Korean spy.
She seems a security risk in that she likely does not think the United States should exist as an independent sovereign entity, probably believes in nonsense like open borders, socialism, feminism, and that you should punch nazis (and anyone who voted for Trump is a Nazi). I know basically nothing about her other than her hairstyle and a couple tweets on her front page, but most of those are probably true. She's not a North Korean spy, but if the EU sends a message about how they desperately need the latest AI to solve climate change, she might leak them some advanced stuff that in turn makes its way to China. If they tell her about how the American public is being manipulated by "Russian spies" she might set up autonomous AI to go through and censor all conservatives off the internet. Or suppress news about ballot stuffing or minorities scamming the welfare system.
If an Islamic terrorist/spy sold a sob story about how Israel is oppressing them, would she be more sympathetic and protective of the Islamist or the Jews? Or the U.S. as an independent and sovereign nation which should continue to exist?
Having pink hair is not itself a crime. It's just a massive red flag that is strongly correlated with things we do/should care about and are actual security risks. Stereotypes exist for a reason.
MathWizard
Good things are good
7d ago
Hard disagree on the analogy to non-revenue admin jobs. In practice they are used to distribute societal spoils, but the "could technically be done better" is highly nontrivial. My understanding that the majority of corporate incompetence, mismanagement, inefficiencies lower in the chain, non-functional middle management jobs, dissatisfaction with working conditions especially by the more competent employees, etc, all derive in large part downstream from the incompetencies from these admin jobs. Essentially, the CEO is corruptly stealing from the investors by hiring incompetent admins that he likes rather than running a better business.
I do agree with your position on sports. I don't especially care for most sports, but I've heard some good arguments that they should be forced to be local. The sports teams should partition the country into regions, and you should only qualify to join a sports team if you live in that region and have lived there for a number of years that makes migrating for the purpose of changing sports teams completely infeasible (5-10 years might be sufficient). This is unmeritocratic, however sports have little reason to be a meritocracy, it's not as if someone running 20% faster actually does anything for society. They're there for the entertainment value, but having teams which are actually comprised of your local people is likely to inspire more pride and entertainment and give the fans more investment in their local sports team.
MathWizard
Good things are good
8d ago
I remember being just shocked at the backwards reasoning. Obviously there’s a true point about backwards incentives reducing trust in the claim. But Rush himself was just openly engaging in the reverse mindset.
There's also a slight utility maximizing thing here, similar to what I usually use to dismiss claims of us being simulations. Information only matters in-so-far as it can increase your expected utility.
Suppose we might live in two possible world: with probability p we live in world A which is normal and you have agency. With probability q we live in world B which temporarily looks like world A but in a couple years will collapse and nothing you do matters. Either everyone dies, or AI takes over and does whatever it wants good or bad in a way that you personally can't control, or it's a simulation and the matrix lords do whatever they want.
For any strategy you employ now before knowing which world you live in, the probably q does not matter. If your utility in world B is approximately constant with respect to your strategy, then you might as well act as if you're in world A and maximize your utility within that world. If there's a 40% chance we're all going to die in a few years and it either happens or doesn't outside your control, then might as well live for that 60%. I think this is a steelmanned version of the backwards reasoning. If you believe in capitalism so strongly that you think communism is equivalent to the end of civilization, or would kill you personally, or just be so bad that life is not worth living anymore, or would be equally incapable of solving global warming, then you might as well act as if you live in the world where it's not too bad for capitalism to solve.
Note that epistemically this is different from it actually affecting the probabilities p and q. It doesn't actually change how bad global warming is or how bad you ought to literally expect it to be. Just how bad it would be rational to treat it. If you are not a hero with a very high locus of control and are not going to step up and save the world from existential threats, then you might as well go about your life as if they don't exist and not worry too much about them.
MathWizard
Good things are good
9d ago
I would argue that the actual problem is the
racistsHBD-proponents
What is this about? Are people violently attacking ethnic minorities on the street HBD proponents? Because my understanding was that most racial violence was committed by genuine racists who have never heard of HBD, while the sort of nonviolent rational heuristics like UV light checks were the domain of the HBD proponents. This seems backwards to me.
MathWizard
Good things are good
9d ago
Seems like a major flaw in the underlying architecture. Every AI agent ought to have a finite budget, with sub-budgets for each task and/or time period, and require human approval to go over budget if a task is or is expected to take more than a normal task (so humans can still do things they know are going to be expensive).
MathWizard
Good things are good
9d ago
I had a dream where a conservative political group in a swing state made a very friendly and lefty coded propaganda piece seeming as if it's coming from the left, complaining about all of the terrible and unwoke policies of the current state government, arguing they were so bad it wasn't worth trying to fix, and concluding "it's time to move back to LA". Basically trying to psy-op the recent wave of California migrants they were afraid of into going away so they don't shift the state blue. I thought it was an interesting idea that I've never thought of before while awake but apparently was lingering in my subconscious.
MathWizard
Good things are good
11d ago
But it wasn't zero. And, I could be wrong since I'm not actually British, but to the best of my knowledge they were treated relatively normally and not faced with the levels of racism seen in the U.S. Or... maybe centuries is too far. But the past century, at least. I never used to hear about racial problems with minorities in Britain, though I suppose that is confounded with the low prevalence, it could be that the few minorities that were there were poorly treated.
Otherwise you're right. People are very good at telling good immigrants from bad ones. The state, unfortunately, is not.
Start with "anyone without a legal visa or immigration paperwork is immediately put back where they came from", or in the rare instance they seem like an actual legitimate refugee from an unsafe place you put them in the nearest European country or country adjacent to their home country as if they had merely crossed that border and not yours. Wherever they were before coming here, they go back as if they had never crossed your border.
That should address like 90% of the problem immediately, since the illegals are going to be the most greedy, selfish, uncaring, and unwilling to follow rules and wait in lines, and make up a substantial fraction of the population.
Then you adopt civic nationalism tests. Ensure they speak English, want to be British, are willing to swear loyalty to the Crown and set aside their old nation. Know what it even means to be British and have rights. Are not radical zealots for some religion or ideology incompatible with first world British values. Make sure they have some sort of skill or work ethic that makes them employable. Only let in people who pass the test.
Disqualify anyone from social services for the first five years. Maybe you help them with housing and job-finding program for the first month or two, but then they need to get a job and support themselves. Anyone who commits crimes or ends up unemployed is sent back as above.
All of this is legible to a state. The civic nationalism tests are probably going to end up subjective and a bit exploitable, but even something as simple as forcing people to state out loud "I don't want to bring Shariah Law to this country" is going to filter out a lot of people who would be too offended to say that out loud. And the English language requirement is not so easily cheated.
I think this is how Britain should handle it. I think this is how America should handle it. I think this is how basically every first world country should solve their immigration issues. We have a functioning society, we want cheap labor, immigration trades some amount of the former for some amount of the latter. Supply and demand dictate that the market price is massively in our favor and we can make whatever demands we want and still find people willing to fulfill the role. We can ask for anything we want that good, honest, hardworking people can fulfill, and they will continue to flood us with applications that we can pick and choose from.
MathWizard
Good things are good
11d ago
Why would you assume it's about race? There have been minorities in Britain for centuries. There have not been not been horrible and prolific murders and rapes in Britain like this. Nobody cared about minorities when they acted British and identified as British and cared about British people and their values.
I don't care much about horrible cartel killings in practice (though I do in a theoretical sense) because they're not happening around me. But if a cartel murdered the family next door to me, I would care very very much. And I would not care whatsoever what race the victims were, I would care about the proximity and the threat to me and my friends and family. And I would advocate radical anti-cartel policies that did whatever they needed to and broke whatever they had to in order to get me safe.
People are selfish much more than they're inherently racist. If people feel like they need to deport or ostracize everyone of a certain race because that is the only or the most effective way to protect themselves then they'll suck it up and accept being racist. The key to actually helping sympathetic and non-murderous minorities is to clearly and unambiguously differentiate them from the murderous one. If you have a sane and careful immigration policy which tests the temperament, reputation, and civic-mindedness of potential immigrants and only lets in ones that want to integrate into their new home and actually make it their home, then those immigrants will not stand out from the native population. They might visually be distinguishable, but nobody will care because their behavior and safety won't meaningfully differ from white people. If you let in one million sane and civilized immigrants and one million looters, scammers, and murderers of the same race then people will become racist to protect themselves from the 50% chance that any minority they meet might be a looter/scammer/murderer.
This can easily be seen by the fact that racism is targeted specifically towards minorities with high crime rates and not others. Nobody really goes around trying to harass or deport the Japanese minorities. This is not a coincidence. Fix the crime and the racism goes away for free.
After all, what comes after reclaiming your lands if not seizing theirs in kind?
Why does something have to come after? Most people just want their homes and their friends and family to be safe. Even if the most radical of the right might be true racists who want to conquer the world in the name of Whiteness, as soon as the majority of sane people feel safe the radical right who try to push for wars of conquest will lose their support and things will return to normal.
MathWizard
Good things are good
12d ago
Orders of magnitude. There's a world difference between being reckless and loose with the law and committing a couple of misdemeanors to make a more interesting video, versus stealing a few hundred thousand dollars and siccing corrupt police on anyone who tries to stop you. On a legal/moral framework the youtuber's case would be stronger if he actually followed the law the entire time. On a pragmatic level nobody would have noticed or cared if he wasn't a memer who makes viral videos that millions of people want to watch.
MathWizard
Good things are good
21d ago
Good on you. I am not a real writer. I've always kind of sort of wished I was better at writing because sometimes I have cool and interesting ideas for stories and then if I start writing my standards are way higher than my talents, I get frustrated, then I get bored and quit a week or two later.
I just started trying again since I had the idea of using AI to critique my work and offer suggestions. Its actual suggests for prose are always garbage, but its critiques of which parts of what I wrote are bad and why help me focus on how to improve beyond my own vague instincts of "this isn't satisfying but I'm not sure why."
I managed to write one chapter in three weeks (as a side project, again, not a real writer). I suspect I need to just write more and edit less until later. At least that's advice I've heard about writing, but I'm not entirely convinced. I don't think my main character has a sufficiently well-developed personality yet but I made a lot of progress on establishing him better by rewriting scenes over and over again until they felt more interesting.
Any advice?
MathWizard
Good things are good
23d ago
Okay but this conversation started specifically about people who are retiring because conditions are bad. If things are so bad that it's enough to make you quit, do this first and then you don't have to quit.
I don’t want to have a children because I myself am a manchild, and having a child would likely make both me and the child miserable (also my wife doesn't want children and it would probably make her miserable).
I get very excited about new things. I like new games, new stories, new ideas I have for a story I want to write or my own game I want to make. If it's long enough rarely follow through. If I don't have some sort of external thing forcing me to do a thing I don't want to do, like a teacher or a boss with expectations, then I won't. And even if I do I will get bored and slog through. My best writing I have ever done are a series of short stories where I sat down, I wrote it out in like 3 hours, and then finished it and walked away. Because I did it while it was new and fresh and exciting and then it was complete before the novelty had a chance to wear off.
I spend an ungodly amount of time in front of my computer playing games or browsing the internet. It's actually hurting my career and I am working on getting over that so I can man up and be a responsible adult. My entire life, my two dreams were to never grow up, and to fall in love and get married. I assumed that maybe someday I might want kids, but not any time soon.
I never grew up. I am happy playing my games and hanging out with my wife. I am mildly resentful of reality for requiring me to do real adult things instead of just getting everything for free, but understand on an intellectual and economic level that I have to do that, so I'll suck it up and be as much of an adult as reality forces upon me.
But I'm not going to voluntarily be more of an adult than I am forced to. Theoretically, I understand that having children is good and necessary for the propagation of the human race. I respect and admire people who do it well. I am pronatalist in theory, and I think that intelligent and kind people similar to me ought to have more kids in particular in order to spread our genes and culture. However, I don't think I have it in me. I suspect that if I had kids it would inspire me to work harder and do more to care for them. But I suspect that I would get bored and tired and resentful. I imagine a future me coming home from work and doing a bunch of chores and then wanting to play video games with my remaining free time and oh hey the kid is bothering me about something stupid and I'm just tired and bored and dismiss them. I imagine a kid who's really into sports or hiking or something that I actively dislike and take a bunch of time. I imagine a better version of me who sucks it up and pretends to care about their hobbies but I don't actually and they can tell because I'm not good at pretending.
The more tired and bored I am the meaner I get. I'm normally chill and pleasant or goofy and silly, but if things start to annoy me or I get bored I kind of shut down and gradually become more and more selfish until I can escape and get back to my safe space at home. My wife's siblings are all starting to have kids, and I hope to be a fun and exciting Uncle who can do stuff and play games with them for a few hours and then go home and unwind and recharge my introvert energy. There's orders of magnitude of difference between being around kids several times a month and being around them hours every day. There is a nonzero probability that I would manage and my whole world would change the way it supposedly does and I would be a good parent. But I think there's a >50% chance that I would not. I don't think I'm ready for it, and I don't feel any more ready than I did 10 years ago. Maybe I'll change my mind in another 10-20 years, but unless AI manages to solve aging then it'll be too late by then.
I think the world we live in is fantastic and wonderful. Politics is shit, but it's always been shit. Technology is amazing, AI is going to make so much cool stuff as long as they can manage to avoid having it kill everyone. If you want kids, have kids. But only if you have the resolve to do what it takes to be a good parent. I don't think I do, and I don't want to roll those dice on an unsuspecting kid who doesn't deserve me at my worst.
MathWizard
Good things are good
23d ago
I think you completely and utterly missed my main point. As an individual, you can funge re-electibility with productivity by campaigning less. Therefore, if the situation is so bad that you're considering quitting, which gives you an automatic 0% re-election chance, any amount of this tradeoff is superior to resigning.
MathWizard
Good things are good
24d ago
Can't they just.... not do those things? Not to derail the discussion too far, but I've had similar thoughts about people who are suicidal due to optional aspects of their life such as their specific job. If you're willing to walk away from it all, why not first break all of the conventions and norms in the hope that it makes it better? What's the worst that can happen, you fail to get re-elected?
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Advertise less. If you're a popular and well-established candidate who is likely to win, then you can probably win with a lot less time spend collecting donations and spending them advertising yourself. This reduces your chances of re-election in exchange for more time to either spend on yourself or on your real policy work.
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Don't travel on the weekends. I assume this is based on wanting to meet and talk to people in your home district to either gather funds or votes and support. Again, this trades re-electibility for freedom.
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Don't do that. In this case, you might lose support from your greater political party (and the endorsements), but if you make good policy that aligns with their goals they'll still likely vote for it.
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Not really sure how to solve that, other than if you solve 1-3 then this is less of a big deal.
If you're willing to lose the job anyway, then you might as well do it ethically with lower chance of re-election since, worst case scenario, you don't get re-elected. I suppose if you're taking a more partisan perspective maybe running and losing to a candidate in the opposing party is worse than stepping down and being replaced by a newcomer from your own party. But I would think this would be made up for by actually being a better individual within your party while you have the opportunity.
MathWizard
Good things are good
25d ago
I was under the impression that it was cross-wiring in the brain due to feet and sexual organs being modeled in physically close proximity in the brain.
MathWizard
Good things are good
25d ago
As far as I'm aware it's the majority opinion. It's not universal, but it's the default assumption you should be optimizing for if you're trying to attract a man. Once you find a specific person and you're reasonably certain you're going to settle down with them long term you should optimize for their preferences. But if you're on the market it's generally a good idea to optimize for majority opinion. Or at least be aware when you're going against it. Especially for something like this which is unchangeable. If you wear stupid clothes that people hate and then realize it's turning everyone off, you can change your clothes. You can't change the past, so if you're going to permanently sabotage your desirability in the minds of 80%+ of men you should be aware of it and only do it if you think that's worth it.
I am not an expert in law, but my guess would be that if it doesn't do anything medical, and it doesn't diagnose anything medical then it probably doesn't trip any medical laws. It takes pictures. It's just a very fancy way of taking pictures inside your body, but not in a potentially damaging way like an X-Ray that has to be used for medical purposes in order to justify the risks.
Seems like that's their understanding too. If they want the AI to actually look through the photos and make medical conclusions based on them they need FDA approval (which they are working on getting). But if it's literally just taking images and giving them to you then it's just a really high tech camera.
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