DreamerofDays

@DreamerofDays@kbin.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨the agent's argument in the matrix⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

  We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.

  That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…

  … nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.

  We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨the agent's argument in the matrix⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That seems like a convenient excuse for him to bear less, or none of, the guilt for his actions.

  Does Agent Smith have autonomy?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Math question: how do we get an irrational number pi from the ratio of circumference and the diameter of a circle?⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Another way of thinking about it:

  Numbers offer a sense of scale. As numbers go further left from the decimal, they get bigger and bigger. Likewise, as they go right from the decimal, they get smaller and smaller.

  If I’m looking with just my eyes, I can see big things without issue, but as things get smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, I can’t see the next smallest thing at all.

  But we know that smaller thing is there— I can use a magnifying glass and see things slightly smaller than I can unaided. With a microscope, I can see smaller still.

  So I can see the entirety of a leaf, know where it begins and ends, even though I can’t, unaided, see the details of all its cells. Likewise, you can see the entirety of the line you drew, it’s just that you lack precise enough tools to measure it with perfect accuracy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #2877: Fever⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Technically, if you’re visiting the Big Bang, aren’t you home already in space?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientific progress is declining due to bureaucratization of research. Scientific innovations should make ‘zero to one’ breakthroughs, instead making ‘one to many’ improvements to existing innovations⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is ignoring the seas of dross that have fallen away in the past. There have always been bad movies, and unoriginal movies, some of them doing quite well at the box office(used as a metric to show that people were showing up to see them). We don’t hold a lot of them in popular memory because we don’t watch them anymore, and what’s left from those eras are the movies of sufficient quality or resonance that we continue to watch them.

  The system has a number of issues that are well trod, and certain pitfalls which are inherent, but hanging a lack of quality or unoriginality entirely on capitalism is overselling it.

  I would posit that a lack of moderation, or a form of monomania is a bigger culprit here. Too much focus on the business side can stifle creativity, but too much focus on the creative side can result in sprawling, unfinished messes. With too much focus on safety we can be stigmatised from action, but with too much focus on action we can lose our humanity in favor of feeding the gears of progress.

  This accounts for the bean counters, but doesn’t grant them the power of being the one true reason for everything being bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stephen King calls on Elon Musk to change 'X' back to Twitter⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of the internet survives by pattern and habit. Pattern, habit, and the hope, founded or not, that things might get better with a site you’ve been using for years.