site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3009 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 6, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

On the news today (USA), during an inflation/possible interest rate hike story the reporter claimed that the cost of bread had gone up because of the war in Ukraine causing supply disruptions of wheat. Is this a major reason? My mental model has it as more a result of the broader macroeconomic situation.

Could be, but there are plenty of other things besides bread we use to calculate inflation.

I'm curious about trends in crop yields, food loss, and food waste.

I thought I knew the acronyms around here but apparently I don't because people say pmc all the time and I don't recognize it. What does pmc stand for?

Professional Managerial Class, I believe. It's middle managers, HR, academics, bureaucrats, people in that general stratum.

OK, that makes sense. Thank you

Is there any school of legal interpretation that is explicitly outcome-blind? It's really the only thing I want in a judge, but none of the main schools seem to believe in it.

By outcome-blind I specifically mean that there is no sense that a ruling should be decided differently just because the 'correct' legal reading would result in something absurd or horrible. It seems like there's always this tendency to say "but if we rule the way that is obviously correct, it causes problems xyz and we can't have that" even among textualists and literalists.

I'm thinking of the "An AR-15 is not technically a gun" kind of ruling, or the "EPA gets to regulate every puddle" kind of ruling, or any of the various "such a precedent would eliminate most of the executive branch" kind of rulings. Though I can't link specific examples as I'm in a hurry and on my phone.

It's hard to make legal interpretation truly outcome blind because even if we're talking about strict textualism, often the text of the law cares about outcomes in some way.

To take a random example that comes up in my line of work, here's 28 USC § 1404(a): "For the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought or to any district or division to which all parties have consented."

To interpret and apply this statute, the court has to care about what outcome is best for the "convenience of parties and witnesses" and "in the interest of justice." There's no way to apply this statute in an outcome-blind way because the text of the statute explicitly cares about outcomes.

Even when we're talking about laws that are less explicit in their reference to outcomes, it's hard to actually interpret those laws in a vacuum without understanding the context of outcomes. Let's say I argue that the 2nd amendment guarantees me the right to keep and bear a copy of my neighbor's house key, because a house key can be used as a weapon for the purpose of self defense. If we are naïve about outcomes this seems like a valid enough argument. But in practice, it's an absurd interpretation of the 2nd amendment to say it gives people the right to posses copies of their neighbors' house keys, and clearly the outcome of such an interpretation is contrary to the text and original intent of the 2nd amendment.

I mean, no school would be completely outcome blind because the whole point of having a school of legal interpretation is to determine what kind of outcome is correct. But I think I know what you are intending to ask with this question, and the answer would be textualism. Possibly originalism.

Textualism says to interpret the law based on the exact words of the law and nothing else. That includes utilitarian concerns about outcomes. If the way the law is written results in a "bad" outcome, then change the law.

Originalism is similar to textualism, but bases it on the text of the law as it was intended at the time the law was passed. This can lead to outcomes that go against the literal words of the law if the outcome would be an outcome that the lawmakers very likely did not intend, or specifically intended the opposite.

Like most people I had desires and aspirations as a child that I no longer have as an adult. I no longer care to eat hard candies or chew bubblegum, I prefer a prime rib steak to a pop tart, and I have no plans to be the first astronaut on Mars. With maturity comes the inevitable putting away of childish things.

Recently, however, I discovered there was one ridiculous, childish desire that deep down I still very much want.

I love Reese's peanut butter cups. When I was 8 or so I imagined that when I was an adult and had money I would buy so many peanut butter cups that you could fill bathtub with them, and eat them all. When I was 11 or so I realized that would be impractical, and imagined instead sitting in an airchair with boxes of Reese's cups stacked high enough to reach them without bending down, and eating as many as physically possible.

Friends, this dream still appeals to me greatly. I didn't realize how appealing it still was until last Christmas, when (after a several months of strict dieting) I allowed myself to cut loose for the holiday. My wife always buys me Reese's to put in my stocking each year, and this year had a big bag of Reese's minis. I ate the entire bag, 1,300 calories worth, within an hour.

And all I could think was that I wanted more.

I'm not planning on making my childhood dream a reality: but this knowledge weighs heavy on me. Each time I'm at Costco I find myself calculating the price of 5 or six cases of cups. Someday, perhaps all too soon, my willpower may fail me.

Which, honestly, wouldn't be so bad. I'd probably get sick, throw up, and if I'm lucky my brain will associate Reese's with nausea and I won't have to worry about this ever again. Worst case scenario, I think the maximum amount of weight you can gain in a day is fixed, (maybe two pounds?) so at least the damage would be limited.

All this preamble to say: do you have any childish dreams that deep down (or maybe not so deep) you'd still like to make a reality?

Have you tried the Reese’s pumpkins or eggs? They sell the pumpkins at Halloween and the pumpkins at Easter. They are like crack to me. They are ten times better than regular Reese’s cups and I already love those.

I think the maximum weight you can gain in a day is fixed [2 lb]

Is that true? A quick google tells me a pound is 3500 calories, so you’d have to eat 7,000 calories above your resting calorie intake to gain 2 pounds, which is a lot of food and probably an unpleasant feeling but not impossible. I used to eat 5,000 calories a day without thinking about it back when I was binge eating regularly and I’m not the tallest guy, im sure people could hit over 9,000 (lol) if they tried, though I don’t know if your body would start overriding the CICO thing at that point (maybe what you were implying?)

Sort of a grim answer to your question but I guess eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted was a childhood dream that I used to do, but I became very fat and my life revolves around food and I felt very pathetic. I am able to maintain a healthy weight now (though I still struggle with temptation every day)

Actually a lot of the dreams I had as a kid I do try to play out but with sanity and moderation- like I wanted to live in Japan so I recently stayed there for 3 months, I wanted to live in a castle so I stayed in one for a few weeks, things like that, which are fun and a nice way to honor your “inner child” in psych lingo

I pulled the two pounds thing out of thin air, but I remember looking it up at some point and finding that there was some kind of limit to the amount of fat you can gain in a day. That limit may very well be how much you can stomach. There might also be a bottleneck in the number of calories the gut can absorb at once. On the other hand, I don't think excess blood sugars ever get peed out, so presumably if you had more sugars than the body could convert to glycogen and fat in a day then you might have hyperglycemia? Which is not good for the body. On the other hand, you never hear about non-diabetics eating themselves into dangerous levels of hyperglycemia, so there's got to be some mechanism that prevents that.

Realistically though I think you have the right of it: even if you tried its extremely difficult to eat an extra 7,000 calories in a day.

The pumpkins are good, but my absolute favorite is Reese's easter bunnies. I don't know what it is, but they are fantastic. I also like the Reese's nutcrackers and "holiday lights" that come out around Christmas time, they have a good chocolate to peanut butter ratio.

Sorry if this is not the angle you were going for but: becoming rich My mature self thinks that of course one needs enough money to survive and to help your children thrive. And maybe some for retirement and so on. But I'm naturally very frugal and my wife is even more so, mainly we just don't like most things and the things we like aren't high in demand or do exist in abundance. We both have parents who will help us if we ever need it and our earning potential is probably quite good. But I still have this deep desire to have a high number, like a literal number of money. It is completely unrelated to spending any of it. It is some kind of continuation of the feeling of putting coins into a savings box as a child - somehow comforting - not because you want to buy something but probably more similar to the feeling people who collect something have? I'm not sure.

On a lighter note: I always liked Haribo jelly bears and I indulge into this want every so often till complete satisfaction. Sadly I must report that the association with nausea never lasts more than at maximum a few months so I'm not sure you could permanently cure your desire for Reese's peanut butter cups this way for good. On the upside I'm quite sure that gaining 2 lbs of weight from eating till nauseous once is quite ambitious - especially since if you try this feat in the morning you might not be able to eat anything till the evening. I think one would need to carefully construct ones consumption to actually gain 2 lbs of body fat from a single meal. :)

Every few months I buy a big bag of Haribo Tangfastics. The first five are bliss. After that, not so much. But I still finish them all and I never learn :P

Haribo Tangfastics

Man, Haribo: those apple rings were my forbidden fruit as a lad, in that my folks wouldn't buy them for me every time I saw them.

How are you listening to music? I've discovered it's hard for me to listen to the music on the background, e.g. while working or reading or anything else. Too distracting. I only can enjoy listening to music when that's the only thing I do, or when I do something that does not require any mental effort (like mowing the lawn). But that leaves me with not a lot of time to listen to any music, especially given I can also listen to audio-books when mowing etc. I'd like to listen to music more but somehow it doesn't work out. Any ideas what could I change?

Sometimes I'll play music when writing. But if the music has lyrics I prefer to listen to it when the writing is not labor-intensive -- more like the initial, stream-of-consciousness stuff that goes into the first draft of an essay. But instrumental music, like classical, goes with doing anything.

I listen to music if I'm doing some otherwise rote, mentally unengaging task, such as transcribing text from paper. I'm pretty sure music is distracting when I'm trying to do something that requires focus. The exception, however, is digital drawing; I always listen to music while drawing, and find it's actually an important part of the process.

I have been trying to appreciate music more, as well, by closing my eyes and making an effort to closely listen to entire albums without thinking about anything else. It's an interesting experience, to be sure.

I've found that what's distracting about music is the lyrics, not the music. So I'll play music with lyrics if I'm doing menial housework or something, but if I'm concentrating on something important I'll play soundtracks, orchestral, etc. Two Steps From Hell is a favorite of mine lately for that purpose.

One of the best ways is while driving. It doesn't require a lot of mental focus but it's otherwise very engaging, plus you can turn it up and listen through some halfway decent speakers instead of headphones. If you don't have a car then computer games are a good subsitute but that can be tricky to balance the audio if you're listening through the computer or you want to hear the game's sound effects but not the game's music, etc.

I listen while I'm running or biking. Also if I'm playing a game that's fairly mindless, like running dungeons in Diablo IV or something.

Does anyone have a good guide on OPSEC for running a pseudonymous online profile? And what do you think about Anatoly Karlin’s contention that AI will make the whole exercise futile?

We're all going to get doxxed in the next 5 years, sure. It's going to be completely trivial - as Karlin says - to fingerprint writing style and have AI seamlessly connect all of your online writing. The only people who won't be so easily discovered are those who have zero lengthy writing that is scrape-able (ie. no significant writing under their real name on LinkedIn or Facebook, no documentation under their name, no research papers or dissertations, no articles of any kind under their byline, no PDF of internal feedback or commentary mistakenly uploaded to the corporate website, no high school essay that won third place in a public competition etc...). That's before we consider AI fingerprinting methods that automate a lot of current doxxing methods, eg. trawling countless forum pages for obscure details, username mentions, matching leaked email/password lists, location data and so on.

My guess is that if you're the relatively high verbal IQ kind of person who writes longform political content online, you probably have at least one of the above, or some other writing under your real name that has been or will be scraped at some point.

I’ve always questioned, for an average normal person who’s not working in some sort of opinion shaping job, how much would it matter? I have a tumblr, I left posts on hubski, Saidit and Reddit. But given that my job isn’t high powered or focused on shaping opinions, I can’t imagine any practical value in outing me.

I think most average people don't have radical political views. If they said something 10 years ago employers won't care unless it's a high profile or public facing role or your enemies specifically come after you. "Normies" don't have 2 million words written over 15 years on fringe conservative political discussion boards like some of us here, though.

In my case I'm skeptical my current employer would care and if they did, there are plenty of small eg. Israeli or Australian or Arab shops I could work for full of people who don't give a shit about "political correctness", but many people aren't so lucky.

But if you are using these websites to share your views, then you are engaged in shaping the opinions of others. Maybe you’re not being paid for it, but you’re still doing it—and if your opinions are racist or hateful, then you are thus contributing to a more inequitable society. Beyond this, even if you weren’t participating in public discourse, simply harboring toxic and harmful views cannot help but leak into your everyday interactions with others. That’s how implicit bias works.

This is why your average Joe ought understand that it is not the case that he is safe to spew toxicity and bigotry simply because he doesn’t have a five-figure-follower Twitter account. Hence the cancelling of the OK-sign truck driver, or that of Justine Sacco. I predict that once AI gets powerful enough to scan through petabytes of Amazon Alexa data or conversations surreptitiously recorded by TikTok for bigotry, it is precisely “average normal people” who will face a wave of cancellations. Once the current barriers of inconvenience that prevent general members of the public from being cancelled en masse crumble, all that pent-up energy will be released.

ETA: Actually, a potential counterargument against this vision of the future is that we don’t see people getting cancelled en masse currently based on voting records. Of course, counters against that counterargument include the arguments that many people are listed as unaffiliated, that being a registered Republican is still within the Overton Window, etc….

I’m not sure how well this would work, at least without considerable cunning on the part of the cancellers. Cancellation (political persecution let’s be honest) relies on the vast majority of people believing they’ll be okay if they just stay quiet. With the invention and deployment of a sufficiently powerful heresy detector, this no longer holds true. You can still make it work by going in waves - either randomly or increasing in severity - but do cancellation mobs have the coordination and self control to make that viable?

Cancellation (political persecution let’s be honest) relies on the vast majority of people believing they’ll be okay if they just stay quiet. With the invention and deployment of a sufficiently powerful heresy detector, this no longer holds true.

I might just be missing something obvious here, but I’m having trouble seeing why that would be the case. Even in a world with an anti-heresy detector in every smartphone, as long as you don’t do anything too egregious—say, make racial jokes with your buddies, or talk about how you think feminism is harmful, etc—then you have nothing to fear. This would especially be the case if there end up developing clear answers to what would get you cancelled, in contrast to today’s situation where cancellation thrives on ambiguous boundaries.

It seems like there should be ways to work around this, such as by having an LLM rephrase your text. This isn’t very good for long-form content, but good enough for a Twitter account where specific ideas are more important than style.

I guess you could do it from now on, but as I said I think for most of us that ship sailed a long time ago.

The only long-form corpus of text under my real name would be my research papers. I guess I'm glad they all got rewritten heavily by my professor.

On the other hand, I am skeptical purely because of how statistics work. Like seriously, I can't find a single paper on this shit, that isn't amateur hour.

It would not be so trivial to produce a low error model that produces high confidence matches unless you are so online with both your pseudonymous account and real account that one number reaches 0 and the other 1, purely out of large numbers.

Sometimes you really do run into the limits of information theory.

Yeah, there's a lot of text on the internet. With a pretty cursory Bayesian analysis, even with a 99.9% accuracy you're looking at a thousand false positives if you are combing through a million posts. Without some other thing to narrow it down, it seems reasonable that it'll not be possible from writing patterns alone.

Good point. On top of the difficulties of modeling such a thing. Unless said model has obscenely (I'm talking retardedly fucking insane moronic batshit crazy) high accuracy, there is always going to be plausible deniability behind false positives.

You will probably Light Yagami yourself with information you gave away about your personal life long before they can fingerprint your text.

You will probably Light Yagami yourself with information you gave away about your personal life long before they can fingerprint your text.

Sure, but the point is that these methods overlap and you can use a powerful LLM to parse high-likelihood text samples for shared details (or even things like shared interests, obscure facts, specific jargon), narrowing down your list of a thousand matches. Plus the passwords/emails thing is really important, most people reuse them (at least sometimes) and there are tons of leaked lists online, with that you can chain together pseudonymous identities (automatically, right now this is still extremely labor intensive so only happens with high-profile doxxings where suspicions already exist).

And I think writing styles are more unique than you think. Specific repeated spelling mistakes, specific repeated phrases, uncommon analogies or metaphors, weird punctuation quirks. And the size of the dataset for a regular user here (many hundreds of thousands of words, in quite a few cases) is likely enough for a model tuned on it to be really good at identifying the unique writing patterns of such a user.

Okay but where is the literature? Just show me theoretically it's possible. I would do the math that supports my side of the argument, but you know.. burden of proof.

The reasons discussed in the two comments above apply even with your new scenario. I don't think you understood the core of the arguments.

Also what you are saying can be done in the present, absent of a "powerful LLM". And no it can't be done automatically anytime soon because HTTP requests are not going to have a "fast takeoff" anytime soon.

Yeah, I guess in many cases there's probably a decade or decades of content to find, so there isn't really anything to do about it other than to make peace with the inevitable. It's a shame and I don't want it to happen, but the writing has been on the wall for 3+ years at least now.

Are private messages not meant to work on this site? :P

I get a 405 Method Not Allowed error when I try. I submitted a report about it ~3 days ago.

Same issue here. And I know the feature used to work.

If you’ve already reported it, Zorba probably knows.

So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Herzog's Citizen Knowledge. I haven't read far enough to say much, but some opposing intuitions have started to surface. How she deals with the independence of expertise will make or break the argument.

Her overall approach is insightful, so this may be a good read regardless.

The Expert System’s Brother by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s good fantasy/sci-fi that somehow avoids feeling like it was written in $current_year.

I finished Half a King today. One of the best books I've read in a long time.

Have you read Abercrombie’s main series?

No, what is it?

Nine novels and a short story collection, starting with The Blade Itself. They don’t start as polished as Half a King, but the first five are much better overall (and the rest are at least comparable).

Almost finished Eisel Mazard's No More Manifestos. The last few chapters have been criticising the American constitution for falling into tyranny (by the definitions provided by the founders) almost immediately, and asserting that people like John Adams quoted ancient republican/democratic sources selectively to bolster their image of being learned men. For example providing an almost totally different definition of "separation of powers" than was praised by Machiavelli or Polybius (Machiavelli's "separation of powers" was basically a non-Marxist version of class conflict where the poor, middle and rich are vying against each other for political power). Apparently even the beheaded King Charles claimed to be emulating Rome's mixed government so the bar for being a faithful inheritor of Rome was not very high.

I'm not sure how new that would be to anyone here, but I'm very interested in his discussion on what the Founding Fathers could have taken inspiration from and chose not to. Apparently Pasquale Paoli of the Corsican Republic was very popular in America at the time with a number of towns being named after him, and (before the French invaded) it was an example of a healthy republic springing seemingly out of nowhere in an area with no democratic tradition (earlier in the book the author cites the Mongolian revolution of 1990 as another example of this). The contention is that the American republic would become very unexceptional if it were admitted that a bunch of illiterate Corsicans could achieve the same thing. The mythology of true geniuses deeply learned in ancient political thought creating the American republic might have served the interests of the founders, but it misleadingly makes imitation of their achievement in areas of the world not gifted with a generation of geniuses seem like a near insurmountable hurdle, and makes writing a better constitution unthinkable for Americans today (unlike say the Swiss constitution which makes provisions for its own obsolescence).

King Charles

In his defense, he was engaging in a proud Roman tradition. Just not the one he thought he was!

The American decision to LARP as Romans is not even close to unique. I suppose this book probably goes after plenty of others, too. But criticism of the hegemon is what gets top billing.

For that matter, how different are the Swiss revision process and the American? Popular initiative vs. 2/3 of Congress. I don’t think that’s actually a big gap, and it would be even less if the US had adopted proportional representation. We’ve even ended up with similar amendments, such as vice bans, at similar times!

The Swiss were less likely to use constitutional revision on explicit powers of the government. Presumably, this follows from the very different dynamic between canton and federal. Instead, they’ve enshrined various left/labor causes. That reminds me more of California’s proposition system, which has its own drawbacks. I suspect this works for the Swiss because they have such a homogenous society and environment. If everyone is under relatively similar conditions, agreement is more likely. I would be curious to see how many of the Swiss amendments would also have passed under the US 2/3 scheme.

Just tried to read some newer Orson Scott Card stuff with Wakers and The Last Shadow. The Ender's Game series was great, but both of those books were pretty mediocre. Wakers starts with about 100 pages of nothing happening, followed by another few hundred of exploring a somewhat interesting set of powers in the most boring and inconsistent way possible. Not a great book. After that, I was less charitable towards The Last Shadow, and when it got boring I gave up immediately.

Just started Joe Abercrombie's Half a King which is much better so far.

It's a shame because I liked both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game, I remember reading when I was younger -- too young, I think, to understand much of it. I believe I gave up on the Ender series after Xenocide.

As for the sequel to Ender's Shadow, called Shadow of the Hegemon, I was hopeless to comprehend it. I remember it being nearly entirely about the various machinations of warring states, masses of soldiers led from here to there, what this genius kid might be thinking at this time, etc.. It lacked so much of the human drama which made the initial novels good.

I know a guy who was absolutely obsessed with OSC’s Pathfinder series. I never did get around to trying it, though.

I definitely enjoyed that series. Wakers is pretty much just a much worse version of it.

I'm reading Time On The Cross. It's supposed to be a statistical economic analysis of the US Slavery system. It could probably be considered at least weak slavery apologism, in the vein of "it wasn't really all that bad". Not that I'm super into defending slavery, but the anti-slavery line has been so overdone by the modern Blue Team that I think it's in need of some defenders.

This seems to be a pattern in a number of historical subjects. Many things in the past were pretty bad, but if criticism of the bad things goes unchecked, then exactly how bad it actually is can get overstated and ridiculous exaggerations get spread by unethical grifters. You need at least some apologists or things get out of hand.

Just finished Lewis's The Great Divorce. It was a short read.

Before that I read Violence Unveiled, and I have to recommend it strongly to anyone interested in Girard's theories, or any Christians looking for a detailed explanation of the anthropological ramifications of the Crucifixion. Truly a masterpiece.

Are there any alternative systems to RNA/DNA that can pass on genetic information? I'm not talking about stuff that essentially just uses the central principle and structure of DNA with some of the specifics changed, like XNAs which just use a different sugar backbone, or Hachimoji DNA which just adds on extra base pairs, I'm talking about plausible hypothesised systems that are radically different to what we use now.

One of the most fascinating and out-there proposals I've come across is Graham Cairns-Smith's clay hypothesis, which posits that clay crystals were the first genetic material. The idea here is that crystal growth is a form of self-replication that "reproduces" its arrangement, and can even transmit defects. The pattern is then "passed along" when the crystal breaks (scission) and continues to grow independently from the original crystal. Eventually, a "genetic takeover" of sorts happens, where clay crystals that trap certain forms of molecules to their surface improve their replication and catalyse the formation of increasingly complex proto-organic molecules that eventually take over the original genetic substrate as the new genetic material.

Schulman, Yurke and Winfree in their paper "Robust self-replication of combinatorial information via crystal growth and scission" use the same principles to create a set of DNA "tiles" that replicate its sequence of tiles through crystal growth. Each tile has "sticky ends" that hybridise with each other, and under appropriate growth conditions, complementary sticky ends hybridise, while non-complementary sticky ends are unlikely to interact. The interaction of these sticky ends allows for accurate sequence replication during growth, and once crystal growth has propagated the sequence, these additional layers are then "cleaved" off through mechanical scission.

However, that's the only truly interesting and novel idea surrounding this I am aware of, and I'm not entirely sure if and how this system of replication could achieve a significant level of biological complexity (save for a "genetic takeover" that effectively replaces the original system). I can't help but feel there are probably more such systems that could be posited.

One thing unique to DNA/RNA is that they can be used in two distinct ways: directly copied or interpreted as instructions for building stuff. This is a pretty fundamental property because it allows constructing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) , with the cell corresponding to the program and the DNA corresponding to the text constant in the program that the cell uses to construct a copy of the cell and also copies and inserts directly. Also it avoids the issue of, how do you replicated a hammer without using a stronger hammer to disassemble it -- instructions for building a hammer don't possess the strength of a hammer and can be examined and replicated easily.

I'm not sure that something that doesn't have this duality can be a somewhat general purpose replicator, not by default at least, and I'd expect any good paper proposing some replicator mechanism to be aware of this.

As far as I can tell, no one has seriously tackled that question in full - I'm not aware of any paper for now that confidently advances a novel system explaining how an alternative replicator mechanism can be interpreted as instructions for building stuff. The way DNA/RNA is translated into building an organism is a fairly convoluted multi-step process and building such a system for any hypothetical replicator is probably very difficult.

Most of the papers I come across are at the very basic level of "how can a sequence of information robustly self-reproduce and transmit its characteristics in a way that Darwinian selection can operate on it", that additional layer of complexity surrounding translation is unfortunately not touched on (either because it's not part of their intention to create a general purpose replicator, or because they can't propose one).

This isn't physical, but consider game of life constructors and replicators. Machines in GOL are turing complete, and can also interact in various ways with their environment, so they can pretty much do anything - and one of 'anything' here is being a quine / selfreplicating. The 0E0P metacell seems cool.

I don't think the original question is fundamentally interesting, tbh - any system capable of universal computation tied to some sort of action will be capable of self-replicating in all sorts of bizzare ways, comparable to turing tarpits.

Hadn't heard about the 0E0P metacell before, reading about it now and it's certainly cool.

I don't think the original question is fundamentally interesting, tbh - any system capable of universal computation tied to some sort of action will be capable of self-replicating in all sorts of bizzare ways, comparable to turing tarpits.

I suppose the question was less "would there be other usable self-replication methods" - because the answer's almost certainly yes - and more "has anyone else posited one and would that specific system be capable of significant emergent complexity". The question was asked for completely trivial worldbuilding purposes where specific details are crucial - I have a tendency to get bogged down in detail analysis to an unreasonable degree.

You might be able to come up with some system of proteins that replicate and pass on genetic information. This was the original hypothesis before the genetic properties of DNA and RNA were discovered.

I have many video files on my windows desktop. How do I watch them in bed on my macbook? I'm guessing this is what a media server is for, is that right? If so, does anyone have recommendations?

Plex would let you watch them anywhere; phone, TV, those little smart speakers with screens.

You don't need any fancy third-party software. Folder-sharing functionality is built into Windows and Mac OS.

How good is Jake Paul as a boxer?

I saw that the YouTuber just beat a Nate Diaz last night by unanimous decision. Wikipedia lists him at 7-1. His previous victories don't seem to be over professional boxers, and his sole loss was delivered by an actual boxer. I'm sure he'd kick my ass if I were in the ring, but to what extent is he an actually competitive athlete, vs. an entertainer whose matches are artfully crafted to be an extremely lucrative performative dance by both participants?

It's so hard to judge because of the quality of his competition. He seems to have good power and good athleticism for his size; he does sometimes land his overhand right, and when he does, his opponents are hurt. However, his opponents are never good enough boxers to exploit his weaknesses in technique and inexperience.

You may find it instructive or interesting to watch an actual championship cruiserweight bout, such as this one from earlier this year between Chris Billam-Smith and Lawrence Okolie. Consider if Paul would be able to effectively mitigate Okolie's constant holding and spoiling, or whether he could withstand Billam-Smith's accurate, powerful punching. He's never had to face anything at this level, and I doubt that he'd be able to; but then, these are the best cruiserweights in the world. Okolie would certainly smother and overpower him, and I think there's no way he could prevent Billam-Smith from taking his head off.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9JsWrAQnrTQ

(or just the highlights: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3G-DOtO6FJw&t=1s)

I'm prepared to believe that Paul could hang in there for a while against a fighter like Blake Caparello: fading former fringe contender, KOs less than 50% of his opponents, has lost when he's stepped to higher class. That would be the real test for Paul, and it's what every real boxing fan would like to see; but I guess there's no reason for him to ever do it.

Jake Paul doesn't box. He participates in "fights" to garner money and views. If we're making comparisons on that scale, he's just as good as Floyd Mayweather or Mike Tyson.

How heritable is male infertility and what environmental factors affect it? My twin brother and I were conceived via in vitro fertilization because of some problem with my father's sperm, and now my brother and his wife are trying to conceive and are having difficulty and it's looking like the problem is my brother's sperm. It seems the problem has to do with the sperm's ability to get inside the egg.

My father is not completely infertile, because he conceived two daughters naturally, but they were conceived very far apart, so my parents were trying for a long time without success. My brother is also not infertile because his wife got pregnant before they were married, which she aborted. But now they've been trying for two years.

How concerned should I be? And what can I do about it? I'm not married, so I hopefully won't be having children any time soon, but I want to maximize my chances when I do start trying.

It doesn't make sense for infertility to be highly heritable, but father and son both having the same problem is highly concerning.

Throwaway for privacy reasons.

How big of a deal in the US is the womens soccer world cup which is currently happening, in comparison to the mens one last year?

I’ll answer not just for the US, but for the world:

The FIFA WWC, like professional women’s leagues and the Paralympics, is an exercise in charity and post-Christian generosity.

If the question is the magnitude of the WWC on a financial scale:

While there are indeed some supporters of female athletes, none of them watch for the quality of the game. Some are interested in the few celebrity athletes like Marta, Rapinoe, Morgan, etc.; some are interested in the teams because the badge on their shirt matches that worn by great male athletes; some enjoy watching their respective national teams in everything from table tennis to water polo. The sum total of those viewership demographics doesn’t even justify FIFA’s broadcasting fees and advertiser dollars; add to that the many women footballers who wish to self-identify as millionaires and there’s a negative value in the pot. But the men’s game makes money on such an exponential scale that FIFA can rob Peter to pay Pauline without anyone raising an eyebrow.

If the question is the magnitude of the WWC on a sporting scale:

The only reason anyone is genuinely interested in a women’s football team is because the great men of history got them interested by playing the game at a superhuman level, and virtually no one is genuinely interested… especially women.

If I take an interest in my club or my nation’s U21 or B Team, there is at least a cohesive interest there: one of those seemingly unimportant names could one day become a legend. If I take an interest in my club or my nation’s women’s team, I’m cheering for the badge and supporting the name only because the men's badge is upon them, just as I might look more fondly on Miller Lite because they put the badge on their can… “well, it doesn’t really mean anything, but I like the men’s team and want to incentivize great things coming to them in any way, shape, or form.”

Indeed, it seems the women footballers themselves don’t care about the quality of the game… just a few hours ago the USWNT were laughing and enjoying themselves after embarrassing their national colors on a (paltry; see above) global scale. They know the real issue is the culture war, and they’ve already won a bigger prize than any silly gold cup in that arena… they forced the hand of their national federation, stole money from the men’s team, and persuaded PMC women that the boys were being big meanies… all over a completely fabricated issue in which they were the liars and the men were the victims.

And that’s the bigger point. Most “supporters” (can you be a supporter if you never watch the thing you support?) of women’s football support the idea of women’s football rather than the game itself, as part of the timeless playground tug of war between boys and girls (and, on the girls’ side, the white knights). In light of that tug of war, the WWC even existing is such a victory that the argument could have ended right there, except that, of course, there will never be an end and we will always be expected to give up more and more resources into the bottomless pit of women’s sports because it makes the people whose hands grasp the wrists of those in power feel good.

I find soccer to be a silly sport because of the penalty kicks. It's like if, say, the NBA had a kind of free throw that was worth 50 points. I don't see how anyone takes it seriously. I find women's soccer to actually be more entertaining to watch than men's soccer because the women don't flop as much. The "quality of the game" in the sense of how skillfully the men can pass the ball to each other and take shots on goal doesn't mean much to me if the games are decided by referee decisions to a greater extent than any other major sport.

Not very. Liberals don’t care about sports, although they’ll girl power posture if women’s team USA is doing particularly well. Conservatives find the women’s soccer team annoying. Apolitical people like sports, but not women’s sports, and like team USA, but generally not soccer.

There are loads of liberals who care about sports. Just look at the big sport subreddits, for example.

For example I don't know if we've ever won before, and I don't care. Also true of mens soccer. I generally know who won the super bowl and have watched it a few times. It also makes the news when the baseball and hockey stuff (stanley cup and... ok don't know the name of the baseball.... world series?)

Liberals don’t care about sports

I know plenty of liberals who are sports fans. AOC and Bernie Sanders are both baseball fans, for example.

Which religion or culture do you think has the most satisfying solution to the Problem of Evil? Not just, “why does pain exist” but “why do diseases and catastrophes kill innocents”.

I don’t think Christianity nails it. A person is left either believing everything is God’s Will, or believing that a Perfect Being created Satan / disasters when he did not have to. It seems to me a much better alternative would be to state that there is a sovereign evil force, which does not originate from God, who is the cause of not just natural ills like disease and disaster but also ignorance, temptations, etc. This is more satisfying because we keep God purely good and wise, although we do this at the expense of his omnipotence. Ultimately any good explanation should be understood by a child, have a layer of complexity that an adult can appreciate, and allows a person to handle the existence of evil in an optimal way (either aversion or acceptance depending on scenario) while still loving God as before.

All of these problems can be mitigated if we relinquish the autistic-like need for the one deity to be omni-anything. Why should it be omniscient, omnipotent or omnibenevolent?

Because then it doesn't have a moral authority, and you're no better than Yazidis, who believe that Satan doused the fires of hell with his tears and escaped and now rules the world, so you'd better worship him if you know what's good for you.

Maybe I'm just weird but moral authority does not follow from being omni. Also, I'm really down for some greek/roman style polytheism.

If a being is all-knowing, said being must know the most moral thing to do in all possible situations. If a being is all-benevolent, everything said being tells you must be the thing that is best for you to know, and all advice the best advice for you to follow.

I don’t think Christianity nails it. A person is left either believing everything is God’s Will, or believing that a Perfect Being created Satan / disasters when he did not have to. It seems to me a much better alternative would be to state that there is a sovereign evil force, which does not originate from God, who is the cause of not just natural ills like disease and disaster but also ignorance, temptations, etc. This is more satisfying because we keep God purely good and wise, although we do this at the expense of his omnipotence.

Yes this is roughly the LDS position. There is the chaotic universe, full of preexisting matter, and then there is the space (I think within it) which God has organized. That force is not sovereign per se though--allowing it to have influence within the world suits God's purposes.

I think the idea of a benevolent God is an oversimplified one. Creating perfect souls is boring and they would all be boring and bland, tiny little perfect things. He already has a perfect thing of a completely different magnitude, himself. So he makes imperfect things, gives them agency, now they can do anything, help each other, hurt each other. Why does he tolerate all this suffering these imperfect creatures cause each other? Because he's the utility monster. He's such an enormous and ideal being that utility calculus has to switch to dual numbers: a > bε for any positive a and b, so the sum total of suffering happening in the universe is nothing compared to God quietly snorting when he reads something funny on 4chan.

The Problem of Evil isn’t just “why does evil exist” it’s “how to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of a benevolent, Omnigod (omnipotent/omniscient)”. I think it’s intractable and so it’s a good argument against the existence of said God.

A similar problem from a nondual perspective is why does the Universal Self experience itself as separate selves that go on to hurt each other? Darwinism explains most of this after the original dissociation, but that dissociation still needs an explanation. I’m not sure we’ll ever find it but I’m not sure it’s truly intractable either.

I think that any religion where the material world is just a present state and we are operating with limited information basically gets you there. I believe that death isn't the end and that a human life is just a part of an ongoing process, but from my limited vantage point I can't see the shape of the whole thing. From within that perspective it would be silly to assume that any given difficulty is "evil" even very sad difficulties like people being mean to me or loved ones dying. It's even questionable whether bad or evil things happen at all or they're just a trick of perspective. It's like how you could do a ton of burpees and then lay on the floor breathless in exquisite pain, but because it's part of a larger story about how you are doing something healthy and beneficial for yourself you find it good. But if you were just to be in that gasping state with your muscles aching but not knowing the whole story you would be terrified. Inhabiting the material world implies the limitations of matter which means our knowledge and perspective are finite, so we don't know the whole story which leaves room for fear, but that doesn't mean there's actually anything to be afraid of.

Yeah, there are beliefs which hold that. The problem is trying to keep good 'better' than evil. After all, if they are both equal and opposite forces, then we get the Balance View: evil is as necessary as good and part of the universe, too. You accept your evil side, not reject and fight it. There isn't any point in saying one is 'better' than the other, anymore than saying night or day is better, water or fire, winter or summer. Don't do bad things, but that's more along the lines of personal choice.

A belief that has the evil and the good as parts of the universe, but the good is better or slightly stronger (see classical Hinduism where Vishnu is on the side of the devas and helps them to defeat the asuras) still has to grapple with "but why then does the good side tolerate the existence of evil?" and that comes right back to the Balance argument: it is a necessary part of the universe.

And if it's a necessary part, can you then call it evil?

I disagree with this conception of evil. Or rather I think there is a better conception available. IMO we want a formulation that answers “how do I feel about inexplicable suffering in a way that preserves an optimal state of mind, ie continues to encourage optimal behavior.” Just as an example, you want someone to pursue things which maximize happiness without ever being perturbed by the inevitability of random miseries, like the fact that his brother could have randomly been killed by a car, or his country could be affected by the plague. The best way to handle these random miseries is to not mind them, because you can do nothing to prevent them, or perhaps also to see them as metaphorical warning. This requires a simplified explanation of the world that answers why unfair evil occurs. If you say, “because evil is necessary”, this goes against the idea of a loving powerful God who created everything. If you say “evil balances good”, this disincentivizes the pursuit of Goodness. You want someone to continue to cling to the Good in spite of the fact that he could randomly die at any moment, and still believe God is Perfect despite the existence of evil.

A lot of the time when dating comes up, someone will say “go and join your local church”. At least in my case, I go to (Catholic) Mass on Sundays but it’s a church service not a social occasion so I don’t meet people.

What people seem to mean is “join a community centred around a church” which is a rather different thing. Can anyone give me some advice about what kind of groups / notices I ought to look for? I’m not in Europe or America which makes things a bit harder.

Take on a leadership position at a charity endeavor with the church which would appeal to women, e.g., something to do with kids. Ask your priest about opportunities or projects which could use some help and then take on more responsibility than just participation. Could be something as easy as organizing weekend spaghetti cooks or fish fries. I have never been catholic so I'm not sure about the particular catholic flavor of these things.

In the US there is a charity called Big Brothers Big Sisters which is about mentoring poor/urban youth. It's easy to move up to supervisory/organizing positions and this, in my experience, was an excellent way to meet quality young women. In pretty much any endeavor it's important to look your best and having authority/respect or at least the perception of authority/respect is a great door opener.

Could be something as easy as organizing weekend spaghetti cooks or fish fries. I have never been catholic so I'm not sure about the particular catholic flavor of these things.

OP is in Asia(I'm guessing Singapore or Nagasaki?) so it might be different there, but in much of the world Catholic parishes never have women and men cooking at the same time- either the entirely-male Knights of Columbus or equivalent handle putting it on(this is most common with events like a fish fry, where attendees pay directly for plates at a big batch meal), or the ladies of whatever volunteer society have a potluck. The main exceptions would be either ethnic parishes, where there might be some kind of parish-wide ethnic food fundraiser(these are probably less common in Asia) or cartoonishly wealthy parishes where individual parishioners are able to feed the entire crowd.

Just fyi, but I'm a german catholic and our local youth organisation Messdiener (literally "mass servants", when I was still a kid we would be obligated to help with the mass ~once per month per person) as well as the katholische Landjugend (literally "catholic rural youth", technically different but generally speaking was just the same people as the Messdiener) include both men and women, and does these kinds of things. From the things I remember off the top of my hat, the yearly 2-weeks camping trips had plenty of supervising adults of both sexes present and dating was rampant both between adults as well as the kids (sometimes even between the two groups if the age differential wasn't too big), likewise charity events like "72-hours of help" which usually involved building and/or repairing houses for charitable accommodation or for religious events.

But for both groups it would be very unusual to join only as an adult.

Your goal isn't necessarily to meet a girl, it could also be to meet her family. There are probably more single girls than guys in the church, and at a degree of remove many more. Many girls won't like a set up from family, skip those women.

Look for opportunities to volunteer. Time Talent and Treasure; the ones you happen to have give to the church. Work will cause you to interact with and get to know people.

Nothing gives you more credibility with a woman than the respect of others.

Catholic Church looking to meet women? Check their young adult groups, probably advertised in the bulletin which no one normally reads. You might also just be in the wrong parish- in the USA at least there are definitely parishes with young people and parishes without. You might also check to see what your diocese has on offer for non-parish based activities. I’m assuming you’re in a western-ish developed country because you’re asking about dating; most dioceses in wealthy countries have diocese-wide young adult events at least occasionally.

Thanks, I’ll try that.

Maybe it's a protestent thing, ours has a fellowship hour following service every Sunday. There's tea, coffee, pastries, fruit, sandwiches, etc., in the fellowship hall.

There are also bible study groups, and opportunities for volunteering in support of church activities.

Why can't it be a church service and a social occasion? Does anyone linger to chat? Is there a bulletin, worship guide or website that lists upcoming activities? Are there any organized activities for the feast days?

I've only lived in Europe and the US, my experience may not translate.

Thanks for the advice! I’ll have a look. It’s a big city church in Asia, with services every couple of hours. Possibly too big. I could look for something smaller and more local but I’m not really spoilt for choice. There are lots of missionaries from evangelical sects but that’s not really my kind of thing. Still, I’ll keep an eye out for such things at my church.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats