AnarchoEngineer
@AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on The singular they is actually such a natural part of the English language, the people complaining about it almost certainly use it without noticing 6 days ago:
My English teacher back in highschool was very picky about using “they” like most people do. I can hear him say “you have to use FORMAL LANGUAGE” in my head still lol
If it’s an unknown person we were told to use “he or she” instead of “they” and “his or her” instead of “their” despite the fact that no one fucking talks that way when referring to an unknown individual.
Like even saying “everyone should bring their laptop to class” would be marked wrong because “everyone” is singular so the “correct” version is “everyone should bring his or her laptop to class” which imo is way more confusing
However, he was also fine with us using masculine singular pronouns when the gender of a person wasn’t known, which I guess is kind of the case in like Spanish and some other Latin languages but still, just really weird rules
- Submitted 1 week ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 16 comments
- Comment on Does smelling your food while you cook it make it taste bland? 1 week ago:
I never would’ve thought this was a thing. To be fair, I don’t get the “smell is a major factor in food taste” at all. I can taste things just as well with my nose plugged as I can without. (Possibly because allergies meant childhood me could rarely ever smell much at all)
Anyway this is fascinating, and I wonder if animals with even stronger senses of smell are fine with bland food because they get nose blind faster so basically all food is bland. Or, do they rely primarily on smell to the point that taste from the tongue just doesn’t really influence full taste as much as smell?
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
It’s not but you can make it one lol
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
Hey now chupacabras are much farther south and they’re actually aliens don’t you know /s
Anyway you telling me there’re no creepy stories from some cryptid or other where you live? What a shame. What stories do you tell on camping trips?
Also if you’re Canadian like your instance suggests, the First Nations people have their own it-goes-on-four-legs, and I’m wiling to bet the stories of wendigo are just as creepy as those for skinwalkers.
I don’t really believe the stories and you don’t have to either, but don’t go saying it’s “Americans” as if you don’t belong to that same continent with similar myths and legends. The native people of “turtle island” didn’t have the same borders we do today and neither did their stories and mythos
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
Can’t tell if you’re referring to the weed or the peyote, but I suppose both would likely do the trick lol
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
Gila Monsters definitely give some Australia vibes. They are kinda cute chonky reptiles even if they are venomous
Rattlesnakes are another fun venomous reptile, though they’re much more common and more likely to bite you than Gila Monsters. It’s always a bit of a scare when you’re hiking and suddenly hear a rattlesnake start warning you but you can’t even tell where it is. Like pick a lane buddy, either camouflage/hide yourself or try to tell me where you are so I can avoid accidentally stepping on you, don’t try to do both at the same time lol
Of course in the reptile cases, the animals rarely bite unless you’re actively antagonizing them, but still a bit scary to have
We’ve also got scorpions everywhere out west. If you ever come out to the Rocky Mountains or the deserts around them, bring a black light flash light out at night. You’ll be able to find a ton of the fluorescent green critters crawling around in the sagebrush. They only get about 3cm long, but they are “the most venomous scorpion in North America” haha I’ve never been stung and Ive caught several before, but the venom can cause full limb paralysis, can feel like “lightning” even a while after the initial sting, and there are a reported deaths from it
And we’ve actually got a ton of different stinging/biting wasps and bees and creepy vibrant colored things like mud daubers. Oh and those Velvet Ants which are nicknamed “cowkillers” because they’re bite is painful enough to kill a cow (it isn’t really of course)
Definitely not as much diversity as Australia, and most things here will leave you alone if you leave them alone, but there are plenty of things that will, at the very least, ruin your day if you’re not careful
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
It’s a joke post mate; I don’t believe in magic or skinwalkers. It’s just fun to hear the stories
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
The area I’m talking about is one that supposedly has a high concentration of skinwalkers. There are lots of creepy stories about skinwalkers across all of the nearby states, but that area near four corners is where the Navajo nation and Hopi and Ute reservations are.
Maybe it’s just mass psychosis or a pop phenomenon, but people who regularly spend time in that area from the natives to forest service to the national guardsmen running trainings out there, will warn you about traveling at night and not stopping for anything on the road especially if its an animal that looks off in some way
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
You purposefully omitted the last sentence specifying a gun gives you the option of a quicker death.
And I guess I’m overselling the walkers/witches/spirits a little bit. Most rangers and soldiers think guns are useful at least as deterrents if not fatal weapons. In fact usually the stories end with something along the lines of “and that’s why I keep a loaded shotgun within arms reach when I’m driving there” or something similar lol
But technically, yes, you’re right, guns are not necessarily vital.
The Navajo and Hopi and Utes and others have supposedly been defending themselves against these for much longer than guns have been in the Americas and possibly since before guns were even invented. However, afaik most strong good magic in their traditions is drawn from community. So if you’re a lone traveler who has neither a tribe that can help protect you (physically or magically) nor personal cultural knowledge of these evils, I’d argue a gun is probably the best substitute you’ve gonna get.
(Of course, just not traveling in skinwalker country at night alone in the first place would likely be the most effective method of survival lol)
- Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter. 2 weeks ago:
Clearly you’ve never spent time in the desert near Ship Rock at night. Never heard the stories told by the natives and the rangers and the soldiers. Never saw twisted shapes on four legs run backwards into the brush, living rot retreating from your headlights. Never heard the desert go completely silent, not the sound of coyotes or insects or wind, while you see shadows move in the starlight. Never seen things that look like deer but aren’t run as fast as your car on highway 191, taunting you, staring at you, trying to fool you into slowing down or stopping.
Not that a gun would do much good against them, but if your car breaks down just south of the state lines near four corners, some who know the area would say shooting yourself is a better death than the alternative…
- Comment on fediverse reference 😱😱😱 3 weeks ago:
This is giving “🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷Turkey mentioned!!! 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷💥💥” vibes
- Comment on If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is it considered a hostage situation? 3 weeks ago:
While I’m a big fan of philosophical pragmatism, I don’t think it applies here because if the identities are truly separate, it seems less likely you’d be able to treat this kind of mental illness.
It’s much easier to teach people better coping methods than it would be to go about trying to reunify identities since… well where would you even start?
As a testable hypothesis, truly separate personalities would not share all memories but a person presenting them as facades wouldn’t be able to keep the information separate perfectly. Chances are you would be able to design an experiment to trip them up.
- Comment on If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is it considered a hostage situation? 3 weeks ago:
This is a good shower thought. Probably a good idea to call a psychiatrist rather than a cop tho
Also I want to mention that “multiple personality disorder” is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder and there’s no real consensus that truly having multiple separate identities in the same brain is even possible.
Lost time (gaps in memory) and significant changes in personality over time are a thing, but the existence of separate identities seems most likely to be societal response, as in people just acting out the fantasy that they have different identities.
Acting like you have multiple personalities, especially using that kind of fantasy to deal with trauma or life, is still a real mental illness. It’s just not really “multiple personalities” as portrayed in media or pop culture
- Comment on Alternate Ending [Death Note] 4 weeks ago:
Well the name shown is the name you’d use to kill them, so if that were the case, it would imply that using their given name wouldn’t work.
If that was the case, it seems likely that Light would have killed enough people to have attempted to killed some eggs, in which event, he probably would have noticed that there are certain people he couldn’t kill and would have freaked out about it.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
A quick Google search pulled this up: Growing Living Rat Neurons to play… DOOM?
- Comment on I'm gonna need a walk-in shower soon enough 4 weeks ago:
“I know this defies the law of gravity but see, I never studied law” -Bugs Bunny
- Comment on Some big black corn 5 weeks ago:
Wait wtf? When did they add corn to the community icon? This is getting out of hand…
- Comment on It will be great, they said... 1 month ago:
It is definitely both.
The tie pattern is probably the most obvious artifact, but the lighting and focus being inconsistent is what kicks off the intuitive “this is definitely GenAI” sense
- Comment on The Sensory Biology of Plants 1 month ago:
Yes most definitely, I’d imagine most animals are conscious.
In fact my definition of sapience means several animals like crows and parrots and rats are capable of sapience.
- Comment on The Sensory Biology of Plants 1 month ago:
Personally, I’m more a fan of the binary/discrete idea. I tend to go with the following definitions:
- Animate: capable of responding to stimuli
- Sentient: capable of recognizing experiences and debating the next best action to take
- Conscious: aware of the delineation between self and not self -Sapient: capable of using abstract thinking and logic to solve problems without relying solely on memory or hardcoded actions
If you could prove that plants have the ability to choose to scream rather than it being a reflexive response, then they would be sentient. Like a tree “screaming” only when other trees are around to hear.
If I cut myself my body will move away reflexively, it with scab over the wound. My immune system might “remember” some of the bacteria or viruses that get in and respond accordingly. But I don’t experience it as an action under my control. I’m not aware of all the work my body does in the background. I’m not sentient because my body can live on its own and respond to stimuli, I’m sentient because I am aware that stimuli exist and can choose how to react to some of them.
If you could prove that the tree as a whole or that part of a centralized control system in the tree could recognize the difference between itself and another plant or some mycorrhiza, and choose to respond to those encounters, then it would be conscious. But it seems more likely that the sharing of nutrients with others, the networking of the forest is not controlled by the tree but by the natural reflexive responses built into its genome.
Also, If something is conscious, then it will exhibit individuality. You should be able to identify changes in behavior due to the self referential systems required for the recognition of self. Plants and fungi grown in different circumstances should respond differently to the same circumstances.
If you taught a conscious fungus to play chess and then put it in a typical environment, you would expect to see it respond very differently than another member of its species who was not cursed with the knowledge of chess.
If a plant is conscious, you should be able to teach it to collaborate in ways that it normally would not, and again after placing it in a natural environment you should see it attempt those collaborations while it’s untrained peers would not.
Damn now I want to do some biology experiments…
- Comment on Cherry Flavour! 1 month ago:
This isn’t my field but like it shouldn’t be horrible to drink a little sip of this right? It’s just salts and amino acids and sugar, so I’d expect worst case scenario you majorly throw off your electrolyte balance and possibly give your kidneys and liver a lot of amino acids to get rid of. But that’d probably require drinking a significant amount yes?
Anyone with more bio knowledge want to correct or confirm this hypothesis?
- Comment on You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden 2 months ago:
“The tabloid’s CEO wants to sell your data but it can’t. You’re not helping.”
“What do you mean I’m not helping?”
“I mean you’re not helping Leon. Why is that?”
- Comment on [Discussion] Which anime has the most mysterious atmosphere? 2 months ago:
As in “what the fuck is even going on here?”: Serial Experiments Lain.
- Comment on Humans BY DEFAULT do not want to commit violence towards other humans, otherwise things like Killer's Remorse and PTSD would not exist. 2 months ago:
If you define “not normal” as “not having empathy” then your argument is vacuously true. Like “I’m a good person because I say I am”
If you define normal as the average of everyone then statistically you’re wrong about empathy. The Stanford Prison Experiment or basically any other social experiment that is now banned proves you wrong (hence they had to ban them because people do shitty things to each other just because).
A good one (which was banned for causing stress to the participants via some amount of empathy) I could name would be the [Milgram Experiment](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment. Most people will question their actions if they can directly see they are harming a stranger… unfortunately most people will also apparently hurt others even while hearing the victim scream and beg them to stop just because an authority figure tells them to keep going and that it’s all part of the plan.
I don’t think that people are sadistic or malicious by nature, but they sure as hell do not have strong empathy by default mate, and the prison experiment alone proves sadism is much more prevalent than you seem to think. As is the existence of the holocaust, the genocide in Gaza, all the other genocides, the existence of Guantanamo bay, the existence of capitalism in the first place, the need for a list of what is a war crime, war itself, etc.
The reason any of these happen is because people care more about the status quo or themselves than certain other people. Soldiers kill soldiers because their desire to live and not be shamed as a defector outweighs any pain they’ll cause others. Ergo, there is seemingly an endless supply of people who will choose themselves/self-interest over others, in contrast to your hope that universal empathy is the default.
You can feel bad for others and do shitty things just like you can be a psychopath and do kind things. Empathy doesn’t necessarily make someone good and the lack of it doesn’t make someone bad. Unless you define good and evil to mean that in which case there’s no shower thought just another definition of good and evil.
- Comment on Humans BY DEFAULT do not want to commit violence towards other humans, otherwise things like Killer's Remorse and PTSD would not exist. 2 months ago:
The claim that humans are always terrible by default is false, but claiming the polar opposite is also false.
Many people have empathy, but not all, and it varies in strength/quality from one person to another.
Many well adjusted people do not feel empathy. Many people are depresssed/over-stressed and not well adjusted because they have empathy.
As for PTSD, the ability (or inability) to adjust to or move on from traumatic experiences is not directly correlated to empathy.
Furthermore the ability to kill those who wish you (or those you care about) harm is evolutionarily advantageous. Anger and violence in response to stress and pain allows you to fight off predators/enemies/sources-of-pain. The majority of humanity feels these emotions.
When in a state of anger and pain it is harder for us to think about our actions. Your claim that someone with empathy will always feel conflicted about hurting others is therefore false.
Now most people with empathy might feel remorse but if their mind doesn’t put enough weight on that moment to remember it, there’s nothing for them to feel sorry for later. Does that mean they don’t feel empathy? Nope, they can still empathize with friends and family and characters on TV shows, they just don’t have a mind that catalogues their guilt. (There are unfortunately many people like this)
I do think many people cause significant pain to others. But out of ignorance not malice. And there in lies a major problem with empathy. If you don’t think someone is actually hurting you won’t feel empathy for them even if you feel empathy for others. So if you aren’t aware of the pain others might feel around you, you won’t experience empathic responses even if you might for other kinds of pain.
People might not be generally good or generally bad but we are typically stupid.
If you can convince someone that some person is “just faking it for attention” they won’t feel empathy. Now the reverse is also typically true: if you can convince a person with empathy that that someone else’s pain is real they’ll feel empathy. Unfortunately people don’t like being told they’re wrong or having to change viewpoint or listen to evidence rationally so there are many people you cannot convince to feel bad for certain other people.
Another thing to note is that many of the terms you’ve used are indefinite. What does well-adjusted mean? Psychopathy is prevalent in many fields and psychopaths can live healthy/stable lives. (Sadism and psychopathy are different btw) Are they well adjusted?
What does good mean? The greater good or empathy? Because those two do not agree on everything. How far does empathy need to go for someone to be good in your opinion? Are people who eat meat evil because they lack empathy for animals?
If there was a trolley problem-esque situation where you could save five lives but only if you killed a child with your bare hands, would your idea of a good person commit murder or let five people die because they couldn’t overcome their empathy?
Lastly—and slightly unrelated—I’d like to note that I just had an odd thought: if you tried to logically dichotomize all actions into good or bad, you would need arithmetic to deal with the idea of a greater-good / utilitarianism. However by Gödel’s theorems, in any logical system in which arithmetic can be performed, there will be things that cannot be proven good or bad no matter how many axioms you add to the system. In other words it is actually by definition impossible to dichotomize actions into good or bad. Adding a third category won’t even fix it. Right? Any mathematician/logician/philosopher that can back me up or tell me I’m wrong?
- Comment on GET THAT BREAD 2 months ago:
Wait didn’t Reddit have its own .onion domain? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by the hypocrisy at this point lol
- Comment on Male Fantasies (by Nhim) 2 months ago:
- Megalomaniacal takeover of the world that ends with you being universally hated or basically being the maid for all humanity so you restart the fantasy because that ending sucks but the building cool shit and dramatic destruction of bad people / systems is fulfilling
- Thinking about living in a world where you can make cool science that won’t immediately be weaponized and instead will have fascinating impacts on society
- Exploring space
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 2 months ago:
Ah I think I know what this is about now. If you come from a country like Canada where “Engineer” is a protected designation, then I can understand you thinking it’s a lie and I apologize for that misunderstanding.
In America and my state specifically, the word “professional engineer” is protected and requires certification, but “engineer” does not. There were several people in the civil engineering firm in my hometown who were called engineers and only had highschool diplomas, but that didn’t change the fact they were experienced engineers and called engineers.
In other fields of engineering, like software engineering, you’ll find lots of people with the title of engineer without a degree.
I’m sorry that you felt mislead by me calling myself an engineer despite the fact I’m still in school and only an engineer by title for my research. But that was not an intentional deception, simply a discrepancy between our cultural definitions of the term/title.
Also, I have made it far and will likely continue to push on in academia (though I’d like to get out of this country before starting a PhD so that complicates things).
Anyway, I’m sorry that I’ve offended you and that my attempts to explain/defend myself have come off as petulant. I’ll stop engaging with your comments and you should feel free to block me if you don’t want to come across my posts and comments again.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to explain things more clearly/calmly sooner and for what it’s worth I’ll try to avoid calling myself an “engineer” without a qualifier stating I’m a student or researcher now that I know some places are more strict about the term.
- Comment on "What is the oldest country in the world that still exists?" is a Ship of Theseus problem. 2 months ago:
Where were the Egyptian cats supposed to go when Egypt fell / was conquered? The Ottoman and Roman Empires were prosperous, ergo they were the perfect societies for cats to enslave next lol
Kind of funny to think of cats thriving in so many countries that got repeatedly raided, conquered, and reestablished by multiple different empires and cultures. Everyone dies eventually but the cats stay haha