The current paradigm assumes a uniform probability of mutation across all genes. But maybe there are mechanisms that say “keep this part of the genome under tighter control” and “make this other part of the genome more susceptible to mutation.”

That evolution is purely randomness + fitness landscape rather than that DNA guides the process at least somewhat. Don’t burn me alive guys

I once heard that dark matter is just the consequence of using approximations and then having equations not balance out further down the line. So we inject dark matter in there so that the math maths all right.

We’re like fingers who don’t know there’s a hand

This is a good answer. Bernardo Kastrup argues this; check out his very eloquently titled book Why Materialism is Baloney.

Yes. That wasn’t the best word choice; maybe “group” would have been better. I meant groups of people who are willing to take some level of risk. Imagine the categories are “low risk takers”, “medium risk takers”, and “high risk takers”.

Compared to A paying out $40, if you make B $50-n you’ll only get the high risk takers choosing B. If you make it $70-n you’ll get high and medium risk takers. If you make it $120-n you’ll get almost everybody.

If risk taking is a value between 0 and 1, the categories are groups of people inside certain intervals. For example, low could be [0, 1/3), medium could be [1/3, 2/3), and high could be [2/3, 1].

I once heard of an experiment in economics that offers insight into this.

Say you have 100 people. You give each of them one of two choices:

A : you get $40 unconditionally B: you get $70 - n, where n is the number of people who choose B

You end up getting, on average across experiments, n = 30.

If you move the numbers around (i.e, the $40 and the $70), you keep getting, on average, a number of people choosing B so that B pays out the same as A.

I think the interpretation is that people can be categorized by the amount of risk they’re willing to take. If you make B less risky, you’ll get a new category of people. If you make it more risky, you’ll lose categories.

Applied to traffic, opening up a new lane brings in new categories of people who are willing to risk the traffic.

Or something. Sorry I don’t remember it better and am too lazy to look it up. Pretty pretty cool though.

Maybe the point is to increase sass in AI

Top tips: consider cooperative living and take group classes for one of your hobbies

Like the Neil Peart of internet surfing!

Come to brasil where people are called champion, master, professor, doctor, or warrior.

Saying thanks to the cashier? “Thanks, doctor”

Edit: But Portuguese is gendered so I guess this doesn’t avoid the original problem… except in English it would

Aren’t some representations exactly what they would look like to us if one did appear? We’re not gonna see it in 4D but we’ll see the 3D representation of it being pushed through our space. Like in Flatland, the sphere pushed through 2D would be a point that grows as a circle, shrinks back down to a point, then disappears. They’ll never see a sphere and can’t imagine a sphere, but they would see the 2D representations of it.

Totally. If I hear a really good song sometimes I’ll do a hyper study over a period of time listening to every album, all collabs, the collaborator’s albums, and so on. Definitely did this more when I was younger. But when I hear that sound, it’s mission time.

“dO sTuPiD tHiNgS, WiN sTuPiD PriZeS”

Such a warmonger response.

Hope for whatever, or for nothing… or something. Sometimes what we hope for is stupid or will have unexpected consequences that will harm us. So, want less and accept more — work with what you got. But you still gotta give a push sometimes.

I saw this earlier and at first glance thought they were tiny cars, the point being that society should focus on smaller vehicles. Just saw it again and thought “wait…”

My friend was a pretty accomplished academic. Nothing like a mad genius or anything, but pretty excellent and capable. Wasn’t down with the rat-racey pressure to publish and oversell ideas. Left it all to go live in a small farm town. Last time we talked he seemed happy but it wasn’t the easy and smooth path of academia -> farm town, it was actually academia -> enormous existential crisis -> farm town.

I’m new here but I’m here precisely because of the enshittification of Reddit.

Honestly though, now that I think about it, a huge chunk of my digital experience has been enshittified. Technology and software that used to wow me still wows me at the surface but frustrates me at my core. Some UI elements and design seem outright hostile.

Maybe I’m just misremembering the past or was more patient back then. Reddit certainly has enshittified though.

Haha looks like it would be a red flag at first

A “friend” started a company and hired me. It was pretty fun for a year. Then it became pretty bad — real bad. I quit on the spot after a verbal abuse session where I demanded more respect and my “friend” / boss literally said “no.”

It’s been a little over a year since I quit. Lived in my car for some of it, otherwise took odd jobs here and there where I could rent a room temporarily.

I’m at the end of this insane journey — starting a new job in a couple months. It’s been rough but I still think it was the right decision. Curious to see myself in 6 months to a year.

Anyway, felt like this was somewhat similar to your case.