Zalack

IMO if the admins have obviously abandoned an instance it's worth de-federating regardless of activity level or political lean. It's a ticking time bomb for malicious links, spam, political trolling, and other bullshit.

Looking past the technobabble...

The implications of quantum mechanics just reframes what it means to not have free will.

In classical physics, given the exact same setup you make the exact same choice every time.

In Quantum mechanics, given the same exact setup, you make the same choice some percentage of the time.

One is you being an automaton while the other is you being a flipped coin. Neither of those really feel like free will.

Except.

We are looking at this through a kind of implied metaphor that the brain is some mechanism, separate from "us" that we are forced to think "through'. That the mechanisms of the brain are somehow distorting or restricting what the underlying self can do.

But there is no deeper "self". We are the brain. We are the chemical cascade bouncing around through the neurons. We are the kinetic billiard balls of classical physics and the probability curves of quantum mechanics. It doesn't matter if the universe is deterministic and we would always have the same response to the same input or if it's statistical and we just have a baked "likelihood" of that response.

The way we respond or the biases that inform that likelihood is still us making a choice, because we are that underlying mechanism. Whether it's deterministic or not it's just an implementation detail of free will, not a counterargument.

And often if you box yourself into an API before you start implementing, it comes out worse.

I always learn a lot about the problem space once I start coding, and use that knowledge to refine the API of my system as I work.

Its original mandate was investigating financial fraud. Presidential protection came later and has always been in addition to their original mandate.

Even though things seem shitty now. I think that, on average, humanity's story is one of self-improvement. This Good Place quote comes to mind:

What matters isn't if people are good or bad. What matters is if they are trying to be better today than they were yesterday.

I think humanity is trying to be better today than it was yesterday. Human history is a story of more and more types of people being given more and more rights. Of slowly putting down our rocks and spears and guns and trying to live together. Of learning to care for nature while holding the power to destroy it. We've had backslides, but overall we've come a long way from the Apes we once were.

I think humanity deserves the chance to keep trying to better itself. I hope we get to the point where we are good enough to give ourselves that chance. As another scene from Good Place put it:

Come on dummy, faster.

This reminded me of an old joke:

Two economists are walking down the street with their friend when they come across a fresh, streaming pile of dog shit. The first economist jokingly tells the other "I'll give you a million dollars if you eat that pile of dog shit". To his surprise, the second economist grabs it off the ground and eats it without hesitation. A deal is a deal so the first economist hands over a million dollars.

A few minutes later they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist, wanting to give his peer a taste of his own medicine, says he'll give the first economist a million dollars if he eats it. The first economist agrees and does so, winning him a million dollars.

Their friend, rather confused, asks what the point of all this was, the first economist gave the second economist a million dollars, and then the second economist gave it right back. All they've accomplished is to eat two piles of shit.

The two economists look rather taken aback. "Well sure," they say, "but we've grown the economy by two million dollars!"

I just want you to know that I hate your username.

I actually don't think that's the case for languages. Most languages start out from a desire to do some specific thing better than other languages rather than do everything.

I joined the Star Trek instance solely because I like startrek.website being in my handle.

IMO this is mainly a way to communicate talking points to his supporters. They want to start a lot of talk about Biden's "election Interference" to make it feel like this is something both sides do but only Trump is getting charged for.

The cool thing about Voyager is that it has a record of information about Earth, etched in gold, with instructions on how to read the data it contains back.

Even once it powers down, it's still on a mission. If millions of years from now intelligent alien life ever encounters it, they will know who we were and that we existed.

It's our handprint on the cosmic wall.

I can't tell if it's just cognitive bias on my part but I feel like the content and discussion has gotten even worse on Reddit since the protests.