AnarchoEngineer
@AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Some big black corn 5 days 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... 6 days 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 4 weeks 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? 5 weeks 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. 5 weeks 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. 5 weeks 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 1 month 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) 1 month 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 1 month 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. 1 month 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
- Comment on Intelligent Design 1 month ago:
Necrobumping this because @chloroken@lemmy.ml linked to it with a misleading description.
TL;DR: @chloroken@lemmy.ml purposefully misrepresented the argument in his link. I didn’t lie nor did he ever prove me wrong, nor was I talking out of my ass in this thread or the other. I share science I think is cool and I find all sorts of science cool even if the research is outside my main field of study. I’ll even admit when my claims are proven wrong or are less certain than I thought (which you can see if you read this full comment section about liver vitamin A).
I’m not “talking out of my ass” in this thread. (Read it btw I mention interesting science) I was doing the research, just like I said, for a personal project on trying to structure a Spiking Neural Net more similarly to human vision, just like I said. This lead me to look into visual processing in the brain and to the structure of the eye since the initial pre-processing of vision actually might start within the retina.
I never mentioned “cuttlefish” but I guess that’s the only cephalopod he thinks of because this was the initial theory of @chloroken@lemmy.ml.
Did you just see that other post about Cephalopod eye anatomy and write this?
I ask because you have a poor grasp of how evolution actually is when you say “evolution makes a mistake”. The truth is that our eyes are one of many layouts in the animal kingdom, it’s not some binary thing like you’re making it out to be.
This was in response to my casual comment about how evolution fucked up our eyes. Obviously evolution can’t really make mistakes because it isn’t conscious but it is the general consensus that our eyes are “inverted” because by the time it became an issue, the system was too complex to easily flip back around (the recurrent laryngeal nerve is another good example of this kind of “fuck up”).
Also obviously there are more kinds of eyes, I never said there weren’t nor did I mean to imply (or think I even accidentally implied) this was binary. Idk why chloroken got the impression that’s what I was saying…?
Anyway, I actually am (and was) doing graduate level research despite being an undergrad. And guess what: you don’t need to have a degree to learn things or read research papers.
I do not write bullshit for people to “be dazzled by the academic tone” (in fact I’ve heard I write to casually in my papers), I “write bullshit” because science is cool and I want to share what I’ve learned with others. Who cares what field of science it’s in, it’s fascinating no matter what.
Do science. Share what you learn. Tell people like @chloroken who just want to be mad at you to fuck off instead of engaging them like I have lol
Oh and to defend myself (and actually brag a little haha) as of now I’ve officially prototyped a real, novel, mechatronics system for use in prosthetics and augmented reality systems, and there’s now a paper in the works with my name first. Point is I don’t think it’s wrong to call myself an engineer. Especially to strangers on the internet who don’t need to know whether I’m a grad researcher or working for a company.
Also I’d go into more detail about my research (the federally funded ones not the hobby ones) but @chloroken@lemmy.ml seems like the kind of person who’d stalk/doxx me. So I really should be more careful about what I say about my personal life.
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 1 month ago:
I haven’t intentionally misrepresented myself in this comment section or the previous one or any others as far as I can think of.
I also have not lied.
So, what is the real reason for the aggression mate?
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 1 month ago:
Ah yes my wildest fantasy: to find out that the ideas I think are new and original have been studied well beyond my level of understanding by other people lol
I hope you’ve never worked in academia. You sound like you really like discouraging people from enjoying science unless they meet your arbitrary education standards.
Anyone can do science. Sure, sometimes people who don’t know a lot learn a little and think they know a lot, but you shouldn’t just shut them down. If someone has a passion for exploration you should encourage them to keep going, catch their mistakes sure, help them question their thought process, but remind them that making mistakes or thinking an idea is novel when it isn’t is something everyone does and they shouldn’t be ashamed for it.
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 1 month ago:
You’re right, we build on the backs of giants. The issue is, typically, anything I discover myself is typically very far below the level where new science can be done OR it is far enough above my current knowledge that I just don’t even know where I’d begin.
Bi intuitionistic logic is the latter category. I was expecting truth tables and instead had to add a ton of words to my vocabulary like “Heyting Algebra” and “Kripke Frame” etc. just to understand what the paper was saying (not that I do fully understand what the papers are saying lol)
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 1 month ago:
First, I said the “new things” were already discovered by dead guys. They’re new to me, not to the world. That’s the point of the comment.
Secondly, I am an engineering undergrad and I don’t think I ever claimed to be working with “ocular algorithms.” I had been experimenting with spiking neural networks and was replicating a research paper on using a two layer inhibition structure to recognize MNIST numbers.
That lead me to question how images were processed in the brain which lead me to read up on the structure of the eye (which you tried to call me out on previously) as well as the structure of the neocortex and the supposed function of each of the visual processing areas of the neocortex.
I’m sorry if I’m coming off as condescending or as “an intellectual giant” I’m a kid with ADHD and curiosity. I like explaining the cool things I’ve recently learned.
As for “what would happen if a professor for an undergrad lab you work at saw the way you write” they definitely already know. In fact my supervisor is pretty supportive of my random tangents into other kinds of science (so long as it doesn’t distract from the work I need to get done). Oh and remember how I said there might be an application for spiking neural nets in one of the grad students projects? My supervisor thinks so too! (though it’s not the one I was thinking of lol)
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 1 month ago:
Yeah I am an undergrad in engineering not math or physics or bio or anything like that. I just get curious and end up going down rabbit holes of niche science.
- Comment on We gotta be more encouraging 1 month ago:
Nothing kills my motivation more than discovering something new in math and then finding out some dead guy beat me to the punch by several centuries lol
Then again sometimes it’s worse when I expect there to be literature on a topic and then discovering there isn’t even a wiki page for it.
Hell, most recently it was bi-intuitionistic logic. Originally studied in the 40s by one German guy who took bad notes. Main body of work done by a single math grad in the 70s (Rauszer) culminating in her PhD. Turns out there were errors discovered in her proofs and it was proven inconsistent in 2001. Only for two relatively young mathematicians to clear up that there are two separate versions of bi-intuitionistic logic which are consistent. This discovery and proof are found a paper that was published only this fucking year.
I asked a simple question about dealing with uncertainty in a logical system and instead of finding a well studied foundation of knowledge I was yeeted to the bleeding edge of mathematics.
- Comment on Louvre security vs CVS 1 month ago:
Isn’t that the Walgreens w on the wall? Stop gaslighting us! /s
- Comment on Do xenomorphs, if prepared correctly, taste like shrimp? 1 month ago:
Considering people seem to correlate scarcity with value, yeah, big time.
I also doubt people would be willing to hunt/farm xenomorphs if they couldn’t get paid exorbitantly.
Oh and I’d imagine people who have that eccentric desire to be the top of the food chain would probably think it’s the best food ever. “You’re not a real man ™️ till you’ve eaten xenomorph meat” lol
Sidenote: I just had an idea for xenomorph farming:
- Find asteroid with enough gravity to keep the xenomorphs from yeeting themselves into space.
- Place egg.
- Add hosts.
- wait.
- Use robot to retrieve an egg and make sure it stays entirely sealed away with no chance of human contact.
- Throw another asteroid at the main one fast enough it liquifies both.
- Collect obliterated xenomorph parts and cook them as they enter collection to make sure they’re dead.
- sell to patrons for enough money to buy new asteroid and repeat the process.
- profit
- Eventually make a mistake and die a horrible death
- Comment on Do xenomorphs, if prepared correctly, taste like shrimp? 1 month ago:
My mind says it probably tastes like Living Rocks which have been described as tasting like iodine.
I’d imagine you’d have to cook xenomorph a while and possibly add lots of baking soda to death with the acid, but other than that I’d assume it’d taste like salty metal.
In fact, Fluoroantimonic Acid is one of the strongest acids ever—possibly worse than xenomorph blood—and it is basically just fluorine and antimony.
Antimony is relatively close to iodine on the periodic table, so I will assert it’s close enough that xenomorphs tasting like those stony sea sponges is accurate lol
- Comment on "United States" in French (États-Unis) would have made a very confusing acronym 1 month ago:
I decided to look into this because I was curious.
The unification and regulation of the French language came about in 1653 with the founding of the Académie Française and it actually took a while for the revolutionaries to pivot from “liberty of language” to “the only language in France should be French” English was already established by this time and the vowel shift was basically complete.
According to Wikipedia, Middle French died out in the 17th century while Middle English died out in the 15th. Ergo: Modern English predates Modern French
If we check back farther it seems the two languages developed similarly though the arbitrary divides for each age of language (old, middle, modern) seem to show with English being first by roughly a century.
Of course this is all arbitrary since language doesn’t evolve discretely. However the Wikipedia entries for the oldest Gallo-Romance (precursor to French) is from 842CE, whereas old English poetry dates as early as 650-700CE. Once again suggesting English predates French.
Now there is a difficulty here with French because it originates from Vulgar Latin which could be considered older than English, but I’m not sure many would call it French since lots of European languages branched from Vulgar Latin
As for silliness… yeah no arguments there lol
- Comment on "United States" in French (États-Unis) would have made a very confusing acronym 1 month ago:
I’ve always wondered why spanish speakers online use EEUU for the US. I once asked a friend of mine and he said “that’s just the way it is”; this is a much better explanation lol
- Comment on 2 months ago:
I wasn’t meaning that it’s just an evolutionary advantage for neurodivergents. I mean hell I know several neurodivergents with the opposite problem of being unable to keep themselves from eating.
I meant people in general might have the ability to tune out senses while being on a hunt or escaping danger etc. Being able to prioritize focus for the largest danger or the bigger stressor. Since we’re always stressed now days and the danger of starving isn’t likely to be as immediately detrimental as it used to be, some people’s bodies naturally tune down those urges to eat and drink.
And yeah I used to hike and camp a lot and when I did, I tended to feel hunger and thirst more often. Tend to feel calmer in general too. That seems to support my theory that it’s the constant stress of needing to be productive (and the stress of seeing the news and seeing the government drag people from their homes) that contributes to the dulling of our urges to eat or drink.
Out on fire camps in Nevada and California, 113F days will wreck you fast if you’re not downing water and Gatorade constantly. Good news, when in your in the middle of nowhere, only needing to do manual labor, there’s not much else to think about besides how beautiful the land is (before you get sick of it lol), not much to distract you from your body’s indicators.
Anyway, I doubt it has much to do with “drinking coke and other crap” Sure, if you get thirsty and the closest drink is always a Monster Energy, you’re likely not going to drink much else. But that’s not really the fault of the Monster Energy is it?
Hell, I don’t really drink soda at all, but both my sister and her husband drink energy drinks multiple times a day and eat much more snack/junk food than me and still I’d be willing to bet they remember to drink more water than I do.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Lots of neurodivergent people don’t have as clear signals as neurotypical people do. Some ADHD people, like me, don’t get the urge to eat. Even before getting diagnosed and medicated, I only really know it’s time to eat if I start feeling shaky.
I also don’t typically feel thirsty, but eventually my mouth will get dry or I’ll see my water bottle and think “ah yeah I should probably drink something”
I’d imagine lots of people have varying degrees of how strong their bodily urges are and how easily they can ignore them.
It also seems like it’d be evolutionarily advantageous for our ancestors to be able to tune out hunger and thirst when focused on a task. Since there’s always shit going on in the world and we’re always stressed to be “productive” constantly due to capitalism, I don’t think it’s all that surprising that many people (even those who are otherwise neurotypical) are distracted from the urge to eat or drink.
- Comment on Mid Career Marine Biology 2 months ago:
And now, introducing Mushu the educated whale who thinks he’s BETTER than you!
- Comment on mandela effect 2 months ago:
Fake: clearly the image is wrong because I remember the one on the left being correct
Gay: “mandildo effect” is definitely a Freudian slip
- Comment on If sexuality is a spectrum, does that mean one person is the gayest? 2 months ago:
“Everybody loves Barbados Slim; he’s the only man to ever win Olympic gold medals in both limbo and sex”