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endoblast

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2 か月前議論

Vila 'There isn't a lock I can't open if I'm scared enough' Restal was one of the finest sci-fi characters on British telly. The caustic exchanges between him and Avon were priceless.

> Michael was asked whether Vila could cope living in a society stripped of all technology [..] His answer was entirely in character: "I'm sure he would survive. As long as he could make fire, keep warm and meet a young lady. He'd learn a lot about the trees on the planet, build a little hut. It would be wonderful."

I'm not sure that is entirely in character. There's a marvellous episode 'The City at the Edge of the World' where Vila is the main focus of the story. He is given more or less the very opportunity described above and he turned it down:

KERRIL Are you coming with me? VILA I can't. KERRIL Why not? It's a chance to be free. You saw that place, it's beautiful. VILA But there's nothing there worth stealing [..] a thief isn't what I am, it's WHO I am.

https://www.hermit.org/b7/Episodes/scripts/City-EOTW.html

Michael Keating also did a cameo in 'Micro Men' which can be watched on YouTube.

Rest in peace.

3 か月前議論

Consciousness and God both seem to have this property in common: they're real but not what we think they are.

Only when we have a decent theory of consciousness will we know what counts as evidence for whether a particular entity is conscious or not.

5 か月前議論

  When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte,
  As every child can tell,
  The House of Peers, throughout the war,
  Did nothing in particular,
  And did it very well;
  Yet Britain set the world ablaze
  In good King George's glorious days!

(from Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan)

Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regularly to converse and debate in a prestigious and historical chamber. Allow them only the power to veto or delay legislation.

Gilbert and Sullivan were satirising but I think their point stands. It is possible to do nothing and to do it very well. While they're busy doing nothing they're not interfering or messing everything else up, even though they probably could outside the chamber.

The fact that heriditary peers are being ejected means nothing beyond the fact that these nobles have lost their inherent power.

6 か月前議論

The temperature a few metres below ground level is consistently cool (approx. 15 celcius) year round.

Could this be made the basis of an efficient cooling system?

6 か月前議論

It's funny how every source of knowledge converges to the same thing: mass media. Telling you what to think and trying to influence your behaviour rather than trying to inform you.

Using facts, omitting facts or emphasising particular facts over others in order to mislead you. The scientific journals are now included with their anonymous editorials. Peer review is pretty much the same as fact-checking.

Contrast this with good fiction, which employs falsehoods to point towards the truth: truth which cannot easily be verified but which is our real bread and butter.

8 か月前議論

It's hard not to trust answers which are superhumanly plausible.

Imagine being offered a choice of two oracles. The first oracle would give you an answer that is inspiring yet mysterious and oblique. The second gives an answer that is guaranteed to be unoriginal but also highly, highly plausible. It also maintains a record of all the questions and makes them available to unknown persons.

9 か月前議論

I miss being able to spontaneously buy a ticket and travel off to see a friend in another town or city. I did quite a lot as a young man with the help of my 'young person's railcard'. The cost would be prohibitive nowadays because only tickets bought well in advance are cheap.

9 か月前議論

Relatedly, microdosing with lactulose (which is very cheap) has a probiotic effect.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8353095/

9 か月前議論

Yes. There are distinct male virtues, such as courage, nobility and authority. But if a man isn't honest then he's not worthy of consideration. Or, if you like, he hasn't yet matured into manhood.

This is why so much of totalitarianism is about getting men to repeat lies. Or why those check boxes 'I have read and understood the terms and conditions' are harmful.

11 か月前議論

>the heat is moved to the ground for storage

..or into a giant sand-filled barge which transports the thermal energy up north for the winter.

11 か月前議論

Doubling down and doubling down on some feeling (or lack of feeling) repeatedly isn't merely a strategy. It is the selling of ones's soul. There's no one left inside by the end of it, just a shell, with no creative power or freedom.

Don't envy them!

12 か月前議論

I think you've got it the wrong way around. All ideology is wrong, incorrect and fails in contact with reality. The true purpose of ideology (or 'the system') is to provide its adherents with the excuse they need to act badly. It could be relatively mild attempts to increase social status through hypocrisy and virtue-signalling. Or it could be to commit murder, torture and so on.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it:

Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.

What obscures matters is that evil tends to operate in layers with each layer deceived by the layer above it in the hierarchy (or below it, if you prefer a lowerarchy). So at the bottom there is a multitude of relatively decent people who don't want to kill and really do believe in the system.

12 か月前議論

I go for a decent walk most days and it doesn't require effort or get boring. It goes well with listening to headphones and relaxing the eyes on the horizon plus seeing a bit of nature and humanity in action.

This does me a lot of good however the only upper body exercise I get is playing the piano! I can't see myself joining a gym or doing press-ups reliably in the long-term. I need to find a suitable hobby which has upper body + other benefits while being fun/interesting and low-risk. Carrying logs has helped but we have enough firewood now.

12 か月前議論

Author is clearly not a happy bunny.

Some people may be motivated by a wish to escape other people, but many will want to go to space because it's so cool. In other words: for adventure, romance and blazing a trail for other people to follow.

Having the right spirit and the right motivation creates mental well-being, not material or social conditions. By those standards, medieval life was far worse than today, but I don't think the people then were less happy or less motivated than people today. Quite the reverse.

昨年議論

I'm not even a programmer, but I can tell that dates are ambiguous a lot of the time.

e.g. dd/mm/yyyy (British) and mm/dd/yyyy (USA) can be confused for the first twelve days of every month.

So, given the high volume of international communication, I think we should hand-write months in full, or at least as the first three letters (Jan, Feb, Mar, ..., Dec)

We should also abandon three-letter acronyms (but that's another story).

昨年議論

Thumb on white notes. 4th finger on black because it is weaker than 2,3. But these are rules of thumb(!)

昨年議論

The original reads easier in the voice of the cookie monster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shbgRyColvE

昨年議論

I used to think the same when people spoke of social media being addictive, but not any more. Drugs aren't autonomous either, however they clearly do remove some people's autonomy. I can well imagine now that a person could be addicted, particularly if he's grown up with it and has used it in the past to avoid facing his problems.

“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” ― Augustine of Hippo

(Not saying anybody around here is wicked just remembering a striking quote)

昨年議論

>tools that augment cognition when used intentionally can become parasitic when designed to maximize engagement at the expense of user agency

Wonderful definition, thank you. It has reach beyond software I think, into areas like harmful memes (mental parasites); even drug addiction.

昨年議論

Chemotherapy as I understand it works by killing rapidly-dividing cells (which is why your hair falls out).

Fenbendazole purportedly slows down cell division, allowing the immune system a chance to catch up with the cancer cells.

So they would seem to employ similar mechanisms. I hope more clinical trials are performed soon.