xamuel

48 ms·

481.
by xamuel 7y ago
New addition to every EULA: "XYZ Corp is a member of the Rand-Turing coalition, an industry cooperative dedicated to the philosophical belief that all human beings are robots. Based on this, every interaction you have with us will be a
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by xamuel 7y ago
This obsession with journal impact factor is toxic in academia. It's what allows parasitic publishing companies to continue to extract rents despite contributing nothing to science for decades. The majority of papers are envelope-pushe
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by xamuel 7y ago
If an antibiotic doesn't wipe out its target, then its target's numbers will be devastated in the short-term, but in the long-term, its target will evolve immunity to the antibiotic and ultimately recover. If you think about it, c
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by xamuel 7y ago
If you want a semi-historical platform to launch this hypothetical scenario from, Rudolf Hess would be a good example. He was imprisoned, along with other nazis, in a prison in West Berlin shortly after WWII. It was agreed that the differen
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by xamuel 7y ago
Kubrick doesn't always stick to the book. In the ending of Stephen King's "The Shining", the Overlook Hotel literally blows up in a giant explosion. I think most people can agree Stanley Kubrick did the right thing by le
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by xamuel 7y ago
No, not that another man was literally there, but that Bill (or the viewer) sees such an impression. Compare the Dr. Strangelove cover which shows the round table in the War Room [1]. If you squint, you'll realize what you're look
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by xamuel 7y ago
Kubrick films often have amazing optical illusions of the "once you see it, you can't unsee it" form. In EWS, it's the mask on the pillow. Watch the film enough and you'll suddenly realize what Bill really sees when
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by xamuel 7y ago
You're right, I see now I set up a bit of a strawman there, thanks for pointing that out. So what concrete action do you advocate as a result of your opinion? Increased access to birth control? Or are you saying it's just strictly
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by xamuel 7y ago
>the destruction of this world by overpopulation and selfishness Overpopulation is a meme. Many first-world countries today are literally seeking to import more immigrants because of under-population. Besides, humans are natural too. It&
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by xamuel 7y ago
I must be missing something, but isn't that a petty, arbitrary, and stupid "challenge"? Of course the person at the wedding should not have called the blind man a dog, but the response just lowers Al-Ma'arri to the same
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by xamuel 7y ago
Just speaking purely secularly without getting into religious issues: antinatalism seems like a position that leads to untenable ends if you just follow its logic. For example, if you're really strict about antinatalism, you should be
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by xamuel 7y ago
It's eye opening when you realize how cut-throat competition can be when it comes to blackhat SEO etc. If you've discovered some longtail goldmine and you're the #2 result when people search for it and it's making you mo
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by xamuel 7y ago
The decision to name it "Google+" was an epic blunder. You wouldn't ask a girl at a club if she's on "McDonalds+". You wouldn't ask a member of your church if they'd like to connect on "American
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by xamuel 7y ago
But all its success came from strong-arming people into using it, using the leverage Google had with all its other products. So it makes zero sense to compare it to a startup.
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by xamuel 7y ago
>And then the defense catches on And has to redo everything. It's whack-a-mole. Doesn't have to be powerful actors really, either. There are many less powerful actors who would love to get selected things removed from YouTube.
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by xamuel 7y ago
>how many 30s videos will randomly share 80% of their frames with a 90s video of an animal being abused? If a powerful actor wants the 30s video removed, and knows it would be removed if it shared 80% of its frames with a 90s video of an
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by xamuel 7y ago
That first link looks like a long-winded way of saying "LOL who knows". I did find its conclusion pretty interesting, where it was suggested that cinnamon ultimately comes from an ancient Chinese word for "spice". Now wh
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by xamuel 7y ago
Yeah, and it's interesting how in English "cinnamon" and "cannabis" both start with "c*nna". Almost as if they're both using a common root.
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by xamuel 7y ago
Something I didn't see mentioned in either of the older threads: some people speculate that the mention of "sweet cane" in Exodus 30:23 is actually a misinterpretation and that it should actually be "cannabis". The
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by xamuel 7y ago
Here's a simple example of a strategy that would be hard to obsolete: walk around campus scanning girls' faces. Cross-reference them with girls who have recently posted anything like "I'm so lonely I'll go out with
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by xamuel 7y ago
It could be civilization-destroyingly successful if it included tapping into social media databases combined with facial recognition software and AR glasses.
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by xamuel 7y ago
People would be less accepting of adtech if we called it what it is: mind control tech. If I were to, e.g., scientifically study which words and clothes optimize getting college girls to sleep with me, the outcry would be deafening. But if
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by xamuel 7y ago
Imagine if human beings could be vulnerable to such attacks. Someone sends you a video link, you watch it, you see weird shapes appearing and disappearing for a few minutes, then the next thing you know, you wake up in a bathtub full of ice
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by xamuel 7y ago
The scale is different, but the permanence is the same, and that's very profound because we tend to take it for granted that great works will no longer be lost like they were in the past. It's interesting to think about what will
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by xamuel 7y ago
>Back when copyright was purely a product of the written word the ultimate master information was also by definition included in every copy. Not strictly true. There is a difference between a copy of a Bach concerto and the original scor
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by xamuel 7y ago
Sure, I'll go move out into the country. And others like me will do the same. And then soon people will start whining about how expensive it is to join us, because of the low population density, and how we ought to replace our houses w
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by xamuel 7y ago
You're painting a picture of greedy homeowners restricting housing to make their investments go up. But there are other, more legitimate reasons for homeowners to resist turning every town into high-density mega-apartments. Some people
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by xamuel 7y ago
>I stupidly thought the goal of education was for everyone to learn, but I guess the process of education is to stratify the populace. Stratification is built in to the etymology of the word "graduate". Compare a "graduate
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by xamuel 7y ago
Let it run its full course, and humanism will lead to an unimaginably horrific dystopia. Think "Brave New World", by Aldous Huxley. The surest way to make a man stumble and fall is to puff him up with flattery and tell him how wis
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by xamuel 7y ago
>Surely 'having an open mind' about cold fusion is itself a "strong opinion" about cold fusion. A cynical reading might be: "30 researchers whose opinions on cold fusion were not strong enough for them to speak u

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