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The Associated Worlds
Offtopic / random
Irrelevant whatever.
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Morgrim Moon 01/28/2018 11:15 PM
Could modern eldrae build a new flat world if so inclined? Or are they still figuring out some tech?
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flat world?
23:58
like, a disk?
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Morgrim Moon 01/29/2018 7:30 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_ZBwXsIrkU possibly of interest to some people here: a song about how space colonalisation is a very long way away, but if we keep moving we'll get there. Very uplifting and hopeful in tone, picks up scifi as a method
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Ah this song. Big fan. (Good artist in general)
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Morgrim Moon 01/29/2018 7:48 AM
yeah, Sassafrass's norse mythology works are great and I'm sad I could only buy a copy of their CD, not their DVD.
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Ah, physics lectures.
12:24
WARNING for implied animal death! > I'm a horrible person because I've always wanted to see a bird explode from eating rice. This story came to...
12:24
WARNING for implied animal death! I'm a horrible person because I've always wanted to see a bird explode from eating rice. This story came to me third-hand so please don't hold me responsible for any errors, science was never really a favourite subject. There was a science teacher at my sister's high school who'd previously worked at another school which was incidentally situated next to a river. This teacher... well, they wrote a song about him for the revue at the end of the year. Over fifteen years later I still remember some of it and I wasn't even there. "Somethingorrather, broken glass, bromine gas all through the class..." He was banned from teaching in the main science block because it also happened to be the admin block and the staff really hated having to evacuate. He once blew up a microwave by putting a lightbulb in it, a display that every other science teacher had managed to do repeatedly with no casualties. He also tried to cool down a corked test tube full of gas by running it under a cold tap.
12:24
At any rate, when he was working at the previous school they did that experiment where you toss sodium or potassium (I think they were using sodium) into a bucket of water to make it bang. Only he decided, why go to the hassle of arranging a bucket, when there's a river right there? So instead he led the class out with a box of bits of sodium and declared, "watch this!" before throwing several pieces at the water. The ducks there are very, very used to people feeding them bread. So when a crazy man came out with a group of teenage girls and started throwing things at them, their immediate reaction was to dive in and do their best to shove all the other ducks out of the way in a mindless pursuit of that sweet, sweet chunk of probably-stale carbs. The result was... as you might imagine, and I was told that the school hurriedly arranged a couple of sessions of counseling for anyone in the class who needed it. I don't know how this guy remained a science teacher for so long, though I did get the impression that in between the episodes of complete chaos he was actually pretty good at his job.
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Ah, nice low-tech space railgun carrier.
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Nice I dunno what's purpose mostly Atomic Rocket compliant space craft...
14:39
Both need more fuel tanks
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That actually looks really nice... safe for „Not enough radiators“
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BluejayHurricane 01/30/2018 3:31 PM
And the radiators need to be at a better angle, too. This way, they are just radiating back onto the truss.
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@BluejayHurricane assuming both sides are radiating, and/or that is their full extention
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BluejayHurricane 01/30/2018 6:34 PM
Fair.
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I could see them folding back against the ship while under thrust to prevent less tortional damage. The radiators would be pretty long arms to work even a bit of inertia on them.
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and folding out in the first place to reduce interreflectance?
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yeah. if they radiate on both sides (which makes sense) you don't want half of your surface area pointing back at your ship.
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I got the impression those radiators were perpendicular to the main structure, so their thin edge faced inwards? Just from looking at that? (edited)
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agreed, Archon
21:56
so the base interreflectance is like 18% if i remember my CDE right
21:56
for 4 radiators that close
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The Transhumans In Space trope as used in popular culture. Space Opera is a time-honored genre with vast open space, but most characters are either aliens or …
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In retrospect... about time this was codified.
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It does seem so, indeed.
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 02/01/2018 2:50 AM
Samovars rock
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Pretty sure they use the undiluted stuff as a prison drug
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There's undiluted and then there's extra strong
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Once upon a time there was a NGE/Mass Effect crossover quest.
12:53
Except humanity died and Ramielim replaced us.
12:53
Now I suddenly want Ramielim species and ship pack for Stellaris.
12:54
Or, you know, just living crystals for whom ships are clumps of same crystals, with little subhives floating nearby.
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Predictive text writes a Star Trek episode:
14:00
"Space... what is the point of it? You have no idea. This is the Enterprise: a big circle with a porch. I'm the Captain Picard. Come with me!"
03:28
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7827 and that's nice math about biggest possible visible satellite (In percents of field of view)
One of the staples of SF art is images of alien worlds with satellites or planetary twins hanging low and huge in the daylight sky. This blog post brings he trope home by simulating what the Earth'...
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No comments?
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Well I commented on the blog post when I first saw it
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Ah, sorry.
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(Personally I'l like to execute my suggestion on the Pluto-Charon system)
16:56
it has the advantage of annoying the IAU and everyone else 😃
16:57
* first saw it, being when esr made the post. Not when I saw it here
19:36
What kind of people run racing aerospace fighter with full atmo of pure oxygen in the cabin due to, and I quote: >when you're in real danger of being left behind, and everyone else is spending as much on one thruster assembly as you are on the entire bloody program, sometimes you need to fool nature to have a chance at being successful
19:36
To eliminage nitrogen tank and piping.
19:37
Because regulations demand full atmospheric pressure in cocpit...
19:37
cockpit
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This is a page describing the presenters and other assorted personalities involved in The Grand Tour. The Presenters Collectively Big Guy, Little Guy: …
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Ah, it's that show which isn't top gear.
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Yeah, that's what happens when you punch your producer for the second time
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Oh that's what he did. I knew there was something.
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 02/04/2018 8:22 PM
He didn't punch his producer. He punched one of the assistants. His producer, Wilman, left the BBC with the rest of them.
20:22
Sure.
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For all your inadvisable vehicular needs.
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 02/04/2018 11:03 PM
Jezza , Hamster and Slow need to have that atomic powered car race
👍 2
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Tonight I read the live-tweeting of the Philadelphia police scanner, and wonder when it becomes more cost-effective in terms of maximal safety and minimal property damage to cancel the War on Terror and begin the War on Sportsball.
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Not very popular kind of action, is it?
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Which?
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Trying to shut down sports, to prevent related crime.
00:24
(Or even just preventing the crime too virgously)
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Well, I suppose being disinclined to punish the innocent to prevent the guilty, I wouldn't actually advocate doing that. On the other hand, when confronted by a bunch of folks whose response to their team winning is to go out and smash up their own city, the Admiral Cluster Bomb approach to riot control does start looking a bit better.
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Just a little.
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Gas them with muscle relaxant and let them drift into embrace of cold and sleep.
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Any response which includes "Gas them" is going to meet resistance from practically everyone.
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Morgrim Moon 02/05/2018 2:18 AM
'Drug them' has the same result with fewer connotations
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No, then you have 1984 overtones.
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Drug them with aerosol muscle relaxant and let Father Cold sort guilty.
02:19
The forces of nature are not justice, or law.
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You'll need lot less cleanup of gibblets than after more kinetic pacification.
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Just pick up the unconcious bodies. You're going to have to do it sooner or later.
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Ok, hit with aerosol muscle relaxant, stack somewhere warm, process in the order of regaining control of limbs.
02:20
No need for them to lose consciousness.
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Seems ... tolerable, as far as riot control goes.
02:21
I haven't seen a better plan.
02:22
Processing will be a bitch, but I don't think there was an alternative.
02:22
I mean, attacking with something discrimanate.
02:22
But that's kinda a bad plan with riots.
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Plus logs would get time to think about what they did and why they got drugged
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Yeah.
02:23
Probably won't cooperate very much though.
02:23
Since they'd be pissed at the end of that.
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There's a plus of not being able to physically protest while processing, because muscle relaxant, and regaining control of the limbs enough to move isn't regaining control of the limbs enough to fight.
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True True.
02:26
It's as good a plan as I've heard.
02:26
Riots are hard.
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But see Nord-Ost and fatal reactions to "less than letal" sleeping gas.
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Yeah, that's not good.
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And I'm going to sleep after night shift. Later
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Goodbye.
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No one even mentions FH demo? for shaaaaaame!
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Enderminion 02/06/2018 4:56 PM
^^
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Jade Nekotenshi 02/06/2018 6:43 PM
well, no, that part still doesn't work right.
18:44
oops wrong window
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I’m convinced that, were it not for the small matter of extinction, Dromaeosaur hatchlings would be competing with cats for “internet’s favourite animal” status. A little digital painting wot I done... and a reminder to Hollywood: dinosaurs were not monsters. 😉🦖
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Enderminion 02/09/2018 6:56 AM
that's a different movie
06:56
that's a sence from Indiana Jones
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Since I am in a rambly mood I shall ramble an idea people may find minimally interesting. (and then sue them for 42.567 trillion dollars in lost revenue if anyone uses it)
04:32
Started a run of the Bioshock series the other week, realized something
04:33
(aside from the obvious fact that Rapture is still gorgeous as hell)
04:34
What is the perfect bulk radiation shielding?
04:34
Water. Lots and lots and lots of water
04:35
Therefore: it is entirely plausible to place one's space station where everything went wrong inside of a giant water tank full of water life
04:37
Also a civilization that builds something like this has a decent chance of trying to make it look pretty (and anyone who dissagrees with the statement "Rapture is pretty" goes up against the wall right after the Sirius Cybernetics corp)
04:38
Thererfore: Bioshock in SPAAAAAAAAAACE is totally plausible, and not in any way a rip off of anything else. (we are going to ignrore that little thing called "system shock")
04:39
(also Prey 2017)
04:39
(which was great btw)
04:40
Sometimes I wish I drank so I had a good excuse for subjecting people to this kind of rambling
04:41
technical note: one good place for such a waterlogged station would be near a gas giant
04:41
crazy rad levels
04:42
ice moons nearby to source the water
04:42
easy to setup why the station is relatively isolated so the writer can make everything go to hell
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MarcusAurelius 02/15/2018 7:25 AM
other than water being very heavy, I don’t see any major problems with this
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True
07:36
but you also get an excelent heatsink
07:36
and growth medium
07:36
and one of the generally most useful chemicals in the universe
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Most physical rad shielding is always heavy, I have to point out @MarcusAurelius
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yeah; if it protects from rads, it's heavy, so it may as well be water.
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MarcusAurelius 02/15/2018 7:38 AM
oh I know, but the way I read it it sounded like he was planning significantly more water than strictly necessary for rad shielding
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(you can also turn the station into a resort)
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[I am not an economist or an expert on this topic. This is my attempt to figure out what economists and experts think so I can understand the issue, and I’m writing it down to speed your goin…
11:03
Suprisingly not terrible.
11:04
I suppose that shouldn't be so suprising coming from Scott, but this topic normally is 150% stupid blathering
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hey @MarcusAurelius , you speak latin a bit, right? does that mean anything?
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MarcusAurelius 02/21/2018 6:53 PM
Some of those are words
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Good to know.
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MarcusAurelius 02/21/2018 6:53 PM
What is that from?
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It's a teaser for the new build of Cultist Simulator.
18:54
Which is a great game, but there is a lot of hidden lore.
18:55
So I was wondering if that card had any meaning. Or if it was just gibberish.
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MarcusAurelius 02/21/2018 6:59 PM
“In” can mean “In, into, onto, against” or a variety of things depending on the case of the object and the context “Imus” is “we go”, “Nocte” is “by night” “te” by itself is “you” as the DO or object of most prepositions, the rest is gibberish, I tried running it through a dictionary in a variety of combos and nothing
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Sure. Thanks for looking, anyway.
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MarcusAurelius 02/21/2018 7:00 PM
Oh, and “et” is “and” (edited)
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Bit nervous about Stellaris Cherryh.
17:26
Even though I already played hyperlanes only most of the time
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that comes out tonight, doesn't it?
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It’s already out. I’m playing it now. 😃
17:55
I'm still at work
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I've heard and seen a lot of good about Stellaris (and from people who's preferences I know). BUt I've also heard a large number of complaints that it is empty and stupid in the late-mid to end game.
18:08
are those complaints true?
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MarcusAurelius 02/22/2018 6:08 PM
Yep
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Mostly I want Alpha Centauri again.
💯 3
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MarcusAurelius 02/22/2018 6:09 PM
As a game it’s lacking in a lot of places, especially mid game content. Where it shines is as immersive experience with emergent stories
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ah
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MarcusAurelius 02/22/2018 6:10 PM
And combat is still not balanced at all, unless Cherryh fixed it (edited)
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I find that strategy games tend to annoy me with how they don't provide constructs for late game. For example Railroad Tycoon 3's system works greate for the first few years handling individual trains. But in the mid and late game I want to work in routes with N trains assigned to a given route
18:12
and the lack of proper late-game UI often results in a mess trying to manage everything
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what I like about Stellaris is how it tends to get better with every update
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or maybe I'm just not finding the right strategy/4x games 😄
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MarcusAurelius 02/22/2018 6:13 PM
True. And there is quite a bit of late game stuff
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yeah, it's the -mid- game that is the struggle
18:13
and Paradox is working on it
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AC isn't too bad. Even if I wish I could group up a CV + escorts and move them as a single unit
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AC was also made in the 95, wasn't it?
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and then rain FLAMING DEATH FROM THE AIR
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but yeah, I'd really like a proper... even just a remaster of it, frankly
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Jan 31 1999
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i still keep a zip drive of the game on my comp though
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'tis available on GoG
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MarcusAurelius 02/22/2018 6:17 PM
I have to say this though about stellaris: the sense of awe and wonder you get on the first play through is something I haven’t felt since KSP
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 02/22/2018 6:17 PM
i think i've bought Alpha Centauri 4 times now
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Alas I have bought it only twice
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Twice here.
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^ note that the above is how you know that a game is good. When people don't talk about whether they bought it or not; but how many times they have
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no DRM, so that one cd copy i have can copy endlessly
18:38
I dont' have the expansion pack though
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2:24am....... just made myself quit Alpha Centauri
02:25
(really shouldn't have thought of it the other day)
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Finally not failing horribly on the librarian difficulty
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I have installed more memory. I shall sweep all before me. Like... a great wind! A Great Memorizing Wind!
14:33
FEAR ME!
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So, Fallen Angels of Multiversum.
08:04
Mad Turn of the Century Russian Fantasy Cyberpunk that I reread twice and now can't really go and start third time.
08:06
It starts with random person uploading memory, about his youth, by a system called M-modem "Mnemosyne"
08:07
Scene Change. A director of megacorp uses mil-spec ornitopter to penetrate corp's defense screen in an attempt to surprise his head of security.
08:07
Director really wants to surprise HoS, but no luck so far.
08:09
Then they talk a little about complication with data leak in ecological department, that's about to be silenced.
08:12
Back to Random Memory Uploadee, he flashbacks about colossal oil leak on Black Sea's beaches due to torpedo attack by Turkey sub flotilia on bunch of tankers, allegedly miscommunication in the middle of maneuvers.
08:13
First mentions of Fracture.
08:13
Gah. no, Don't want to read and review this.
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...I cannot make sense of this.
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Thing that pisses me off about people debating post-scarcity: they are apparently INCAPABLE of envisioning that a society that wealthy is not inhabited by baseline humans. You don't get to limit things to the oh-so-conveinent desires or some monk who has taken a vow of not having anything.
22:05
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7887 (some of the comments, not the OP)
There's a lot of buzz about Iain Banks's Culture universe lately, what with Elon Musk naming his drone ships in Banksian style and a TV series in the works. I enjoyed the Culture books too, but the...
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ah, yes
22:07
I read that thanks to following up to do a refutation of a complaint on Winchel Chung's post on G+ (edited)
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for their claims of such lofty goals they really do have minds measured in planck lengths
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[realized my comment said exactly the opposite of what I wanted, hence, edited]
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I'm pretty sure the Culture explanation is that the Minds have deliberately set up a Culture culture that keeps the ambitions of the human-level sophs limited to easy-to-satisfy trivia. If they started asking for Orbital-sized estates, GCU-level private starships, or Dyson spheres to power their pet projects, the wheels would come off the post-scarcity wagon pretty damn fast.
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Well of course
11:09
non-pathetic ambition breaks "post-scarcity" withiin minutes
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Yeah, Post-scarity is unfortenately rather relative.
11:37
Though on the other hand, with how easy FTL travel is, the Minds probably would have few issues pushing that exponential curve of development upwards for quite a while before the curve starts flattening out.
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This is true: they should do that instead of fooling around with post-scarcity crap
11:38
everyone would be better off with a little honesty
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Eh, I mean, it's also... Working on a good metaphor, please stand by (edited)
11:40
Like, Post-scarity is always relative to demand. And demand by itself can theoreticaly scale up indefinitely. Basicaly, if its the tail of offer being chassed by demand, the tail's gonna run out of velocity at some point. So goes the argument of a finite amount of mass-energy within a (temporarely) finite amount of space-time. So at least by theory, you might be interested in capping the demand end.
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And the best cap we have is drumroll....... prices
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See Strugatsky, Monday starts on Friday
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* and the best cap that anyone could have even in theory
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Or just fixing the bloody stupid reward function in our brains that doesn't know what maximum effective progressive asymptote is.
11:42
Fact is, because we're keyed to seek absolute maximum of reward now, demand is always going to scale behind offer, chocking off the post-scarity state at some point. See the example of making cars cheaper. People drive more, not less.
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that is utility function stuff: prices deal with the other end and work despite people failing
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But again, that's the sort of evolutionary Beta feature a responsible transspeciecist might get interested in fixing at some point.
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Cars are two demands: Status and transportation. Primarily. The tinkering is the third... (edited)
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I think there may be some confusion here: post-scarcity and "non-price", heh, economies are orthogonal.
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s/Primary/Primarily (edited)
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In the 'verse, for example, "post-scarcity" is basically economist's jargon for "price levels have fallen to a point minuscule relative to income".
📌 1
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Also, interesting question: How do we define "post-scarity" here anyway? If we're discussing this within an Eldraeverse context for example, IP seems to be a thing.
11:46
Like, Gate Tech for example is not post-scarity, seeing as one of the Big Hypercorps is monopolizing it.
11:46
(Okay, that is a borderline example due to the required ressources, but the point stands.)
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well that definition of PS is a sane, and just another way of saying "superbly wealthy"
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Or basicaly "your basic needs are superbly taken care off."
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it is also the one that PS advocates IRL retreat to when you start ripping apart the flaws in their theory
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You can always work for "more", but you don't need to work to get "something".
11:47
Or so, you can define Post-scarity as some form of "garuanteed basic income" first of all.
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That's not IP protection, through. It's a perfectly challengeable monopoly if anyone felt like investing that much capital.
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somehoe I don't think the Empire lets people patent physics
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No, but you can patent specific applications.
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about the only group I'd have any trust in letting them run an IP system
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Eh, there , that would be a definition of basic needs which encompasses things like "throwing a dinner party for a dozen every night, wearing three new suits a day, and having a nice house filled with gilded objets de wealth-porn".
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everyone else seems to go for maximum evil in minimum time
11:49
@Overmind bingo. "demand" is a meaningless term by itself.
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Post-scarcity, to be meaningful, applies to goods, not collections of goods. If you can get all you want with < epsilon effect on your P&L, it's a post-scarcity good.
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ooooooh
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We technically can go post-scarcity on food right now, with some improvements to distribution infrastructure.
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@NHO BUT THAT'S COMMUNISM!
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next time I have to deal with a PS-advocate I'll have to remember to mention that we are post scarcity already
11:51
when did they last pay for oxygeon?
11:51
*oxygen
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(For useful discussions, we invoke the hypothetical reasonable soph, of course. It is possible, nay probable, that there is someone out there in the 'verse who wants enough pig iron and nanocompiled steak to make them scarce goods again, but the exceptions aren't the case.)
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true
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For those curious about how IP works there, I just posted the short version on #general.
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so while it' infuriating vague to call a civilization 'post-scarcity' in general, we might say modern United States is Post-Scarcity on the arena of breathable air, and on education up through high school because it's provided by the state?
14:47
can we call ourselves Post-Scarcity on food if it's still worth making a line item in my monthly budget ?
14:48
or does that have to be true for every social-economic class in the nation ?
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On air, yes, unlike say, Mars. On education, no, because someone's still paying a fortune for it. It's just hidden from you. And on food - if one has to budget for it, it's definitely not post-scarcity.
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Basically, post-scarity of food means we all could eat a 5-star meal for breakfest.
15:04
With the quality of ingridients and quality of cooking that all implies.
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And in quantity enough to sate the most gratuitous gourmand.
15:05
Without noticing the expense.
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Yep.
15:08
Which actually seems like one of the toughest tasks at hand because biopolymers aren‘t easy to handle at high energies.
15:08
Definitely an infrastructure challenge.
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hmmmm. It seems like that would be a moving target though, because at some point you can start to say that "well, for zero noticeable cost, we can make quality of X star, but by including a small but noticeable cost, we can achieve X+Y stars on this food"
15:29
now, I guess a short answer is that my argument only holds in a culture where "using rare ingredients from the other side of the galaxy canmake food better just because the ingredients are harder to get".
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👍 1
🔫 1
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Shots fired.
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BluejayHurricane 03/05/2018 4:21 PM
Well, hopefully not, but I understand the sentiment.
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No, it‘s an (internet) saying @BluejayHurricane
16:23
Hollywood acts preachy will burried in their own scandals.
16:23
Though in hindsight, I can‘t agree with the guns bit.
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BluejayHurricane 03/05/2018 4:35 PM
Of course, but I couldn't resist the pun.
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I think they were talking more about MeToo when I saw it
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Cardassian state boy band
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Ever seen the Twilight Zone episode “The Trade-Ins?”
16:50
When I saw it, my first thought was “every faction in Eclipse Phase can use this as propaganda.”
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Morgrim Moon 03/13/2018 11:58 PM
I'm not sure if this is off topic or not, but Steven Hawking just died
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I got notifications about Steven Hawking's death on like four different discords with a half hour. I don't think the end of the world would travel this fast.
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MarcusAurelius 03/14/2018 12:04 AM
Do we have any details yet?
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Morgrim Moon 03/14/2018 12:05 AM
I think it would, given earthquake news now propergates faster than the shock front
00:05
All we know is he died in his sleep at home in bed
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Enderminion 03/14/2018 6:19 AM
RiP
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He beat the odds for over fifty years on his diagnosis to accomplish so much
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Yeah. He did quite well, considering his position.
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So, I found an active Transhumanist podcast, but it also has a Spiritualist bent.
10:18
First episode was about how Buddhist meditation could help one realize that AI is no threat and consumerism is unsustainable
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infinite groan
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Starting to think it might be worthwhile to start my own
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...Meditation is, excuse me, no garuantee AI will be no threat. That's good and proper engineering work.
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https://futurethinkers.org/ Was something about helping understand non-human thinking
Future Thinkers: podcasts & videos about evolving technology, society, and consciousness to create a more sustainable future for humankind.
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“The Second Law means that everything’s unsustainable. All the rest is just negotiating how much fun you’re allowed before you go.”
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For a moment I thought you were talking about robotics instead of thermodynamics
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MarcusAurelius 03/19/2018 5:20 PM
@Zarpaulek your mistaken version would also make sense from the robots perspective, if your cynical about the planning abilities of baseline meat-sophs
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Enderminion 03/19/2018 5:57 PM
fork bomb?
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Didn't Kovacs do that to someone in the book version of Altered Carbon?
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an AI Brothel I think
20:25
or something
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Nah, that was a virus. He used a “fork bomb” on one of the doctors at the chopshop
22:22
In the book
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Yeah, he tortured him by loading hundreds of instances into a simulspace.
01:11
Casually remarking that „it happens sometimes that the storage system draws a few extras“
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Ah, git rebase --interactive
03:27
Nothing like rewriting history
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And then there's git freebase:
14:48
git-freebase adds enthusiasm and a sense of flow to your commit messages.
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reads the instructions, starts giggling
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In my latest Stellaris game I tried to recreate the Vargr from Traveller (no wolf portrait)
08:20
08:22
One planet developed a troublesome Egalitarian faction so I spun them off as a vassal and from the looks of things a PMC took over the local government
08:22
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Enderminion 03/24/2018 1:41 PM
wouldn't Vargr be egalitarian since they can't really form government's?
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 03/24/2018 2:22 PM
The plural is important...they (in Canon) tend to form a lot of governments many of which are not long lived.
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Need to have an ethos that allows slavery for the Barbaric Despoilers civic
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Was either authoritarian or xenophobe
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Also, I got the impression most of their governments were more dictatorial than democratic
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It is fools like charles stross who can't account for little things like today's state of the art rockets
14:43
even when they have carte-blanche for far furute tech
14:43
(why do we let these people have any say in anything again?)
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Democracy.
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and I'm not even all the way through the rebuttal!
14:45
as I said in a post-scarcity discussion the other day:
14:45
>These supposedly hyper-wealthy societies barely even perform to the level of modern America. I’m only impressed in the sense that a Rube Goldberg machine is impressive in how ass-backwards it achieves its goal. Perhaps instead of writing science fiction these authors should go into lines of work more suited to their imaginative capacity. Maybe assembly line worker.
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@Enderminion Vargyr government canonically is based on charisma. Trouble is, it's not something that carries well outside of direct personal contact. It can, but not as effectively. Which is partially why you see vargyr states pop up, only to get replaced my some new group.
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Incidentally, the vassal I released seems to have suffered a slave revolution
18:00
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Enderminion 03/25/2018 7:28 PM
lol
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@Zarpaulek Vargr governments tend not to be democratic in form, but tend to be democratic in practice. The best summary of this I've seen is that humans care a lot about legitimacy, and less about charisma; whereas for Vargr, it's very much the other way around. The relevant upshot of which is that Vargr rarely think there's much point in democratic forms, inasmuch as if you don't have the charisma to keep your dudes following you, they'll all have found someone else to follow anyway by the time the election comes around. The upshot of which is that Vargr governments all tend to look like monarchies or dictatorships or small oligarchies, but in practice, leaders change whenever the leader fails to be sufficiently leader-y; which is arguably more democratic than most democracies.
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19:38
(This is something I've thought about a fair bit in my own worldbuilding context, inasmuch as one of the most important skillsets for an eldraeic runér is the ability to keep the people of your fief sufficiently impressed with your awesomeness as to deem you worth listening to. If you fail at that, then you may still have your formal powers, but other than those, you ain't leading no-one but jack and shit. And Jack left town.)
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Sounds a bit like H. Beam Piper’s Sword Worlds feudalism
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Yeah, I can see some similarities.
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I find it a bit hard to believe a feudal system can survive armed commoners
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Morgrim Moon 03/25/2018 7:43 PM
we've got historical evidence it could
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Then again they had robots and English yeomen were known for their mercenary work
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The trouble with a lot of representations of feudalism is that they only portray its degenerate form, in which the strong do as they please and the weak suffer what they must. (Game of Thrones, I'm looking at you.)
19:46
But what differentiates a feudalism from a slave state (say late Western Rome/early Dark Ages western Europe, when the authority of the Empire was collapsing and the latifundia were on the rise) is that rights and obligations run both ways, and that a liege actually had to hustle about keeping his vassals happy, even the small ones.
19:49
Not saying there wasn't a pretty firm ruler/ruled distinction in place, but the English peasantry in particular were not at all shy about exerting their rights when they felt that the local lord wasn't keeping up his half of the bargain. (The continent was a worse place to be a peasant, admittedly, which probably has something to do with longbows. 😃 )
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The difference is that slaves are only cost-effective on monocultured plantations while tenant farmers can usually provide some income for their farm’s owners when growing food
19:51
So, you mostly had slaves around the Mediterranean where the climate suited plantations.
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 03/25/2018 11:30 PM
romanticized, but catches the high points: http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_normansaxon.htm
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Morgrim Moon 03/26/2018 5:40 AM
I like that this news channel is steadily shifting away from using 'average' as a descriptor for numbers, and towards using 'mean' and 'median' consistantly for numbers. Average is being kept for less quantifiable things, like "average experience"
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@john dougan(his grace/his grace) Well, England was constantly getting raided by Vikings, Saxons, and Scots so they mandated bow practice among their yeoman class. While in France the Vikings married into the royal family.
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Best Fermi paradox explanation yet:
23:41
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Congress just passed a blatantly unconstitutional bill that has already killed Craigslist personals https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/senate-sesta-online-sex-trafficking-bill.html
The Stop Enabling Sex-Trafficking Act has been vehemently opposed by sex workers.
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Superweapon of the day (brought to you by dim memories of particle physics and general tiredness) Coherent Neutron Packed Confined Grazer. You take some (A lot) of neutrons, cool them, arrange them in lattice, use that for slow light capture of gamma laser and shoot that at whatever you want
15:42
It's silly and does not work, most likely.
15:44
Generalization of idea of "Laser bullet" nee bomb-pumped laser, where instead of shooting laser or a shell at someone, you shot a shell at someone that shot laser(s), without targeting, but at the near-lightspeed
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Morgrim Moon 04/01/2018 6:07 AM
Beijing is making an ambitious attempt to create a social credit system, in a move designed to value and engineer better individual behaviour.
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It’s based on government “loyalty”, so yeah
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MarcusAurelius 04/01/2018 11:26 AM
Welcome to the state of the Chinese People* *only members of the Communist Party are people
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Morgrim Moon 04/03/2018 6:06 AM
"We could ban fishing off rocks, but that is very hard to enforce with such a long coastline. It's much better to encourage fishers to follow sensible safe practices. *points to local businesses loaning out free life jackets when you buy bait*" Ye gads. One of my local politicians is making sensible suggestions.
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well he will be thrown out of office in a hurry
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He's being bribed.
06:07
Or possibly likes fishing off rocks himself.
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MarcusAurelius 04/03/2018 10:16 PM
Just build a wall along the rocks. Keep the fish from stealing the jobs. That is the only reasonable solution
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Found this on Twitter http://www.cooperativecap.com
Imagine 1,000+ Detroiters coming together to invest in several small and medium-sized businesses, real estate properties, startups and Detroit investment opportunities collectively.
09:03
Most comments were “Silicon Valley bros have discovered taxes”, but a few pointed out that it’s focused on a city where their taxes haven’t been put to much good use
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I might be inclined to, ahem, speculate if people might feel a greater sense of ownership in their community and develop more useful projects if they invested it in themselves rather than being shaken down at gunpoint, but I'd better not. I'd probably exceed everyone's recommended daily allowance of sarcasm.
09:14
Meanwhile, taking a quick glance at Twitter, the truly adorable thing is the number of people sneering, mocking, and vomiting at the idea... right up until they find out the race of the owners/senior leadership, and then suddenly deciding that, actually, it's TEH GREATEST THING EVAR. I mean, IMO, it is a really good idea, but guys, could y'all try to be a little more subtly racist? Like maybe tone it down to something that the Grand Wizard in his robe and wizard hat wouldn't find unnecessarily overstated?
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I have a very high sarcasm tolerance. 😄
09:48
Unless that‘s escalating to ontological scything levels.
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@Overmind on the subject of ridiculous weapon systems here is one I came up with a number of years ago: Turret mounted. Treat it like a fixed (or vehicle mounted) flamethrower position. Minaturized NSWR system spewing concentrated death at anything in range
14:45
(when it comes to Mad Science you can't go wrong by starting at NSWR and building from there)
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MarcusAurelius 04/04/2018 2:47 PM
Better keep it unmanned... imagine how much fun friendlies around it will have after that thing takes a hit to the fuel tank.
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hey, my first version of this idea was man-portable
14:50
(why yes, it was an idea for an FPS weapon, why'd you ask?)
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MarcusAurelius 04/04/2018 2:52 PM
Dear author, I think this piece of art belongs in any hypothetical future Eldraeverse FPS game. From a mad scientist of some sort, probably
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I found a cute Zootopia fanfic that had me forming some odd connections https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12835994/1/The-Application
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what's it about?
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Judy proposes to Nick by writing up a job application
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Morgrim Moon 04/14/2018 9:40 AM
http://aiweirdness.com/post/172894792687/when-algorithms-surprise-us a post on neural networks, and how they solve the problem they're programmed with and not the problem you actually want, and this results in things like "if I delete the list then technically it isn't unsorted and I have solved the 'sort this list as quickly as possible problem'. Seems VERY relevant for Pervasions
Machine learning algorithms are not like other computer programs. In the usual sort of programming, a human programmer tells the computer exactly what to do. In machine learning, the human programmer merely gives the algorithm the problem to be s...
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Huh. Neat and interesting.
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I liked that article. And yes, it is pretty relevant.
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The adaptation gives better endurance to the Bajau people, known as sea nomads, by increasing spleen size and, in turn, boosting the number of oxygenated red blood cells when diving.
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Get Satellite Reign, cross-platform on Steam and DRM-free! Co-Op MultiplayerPlay the entirety of Satellite Reign with your friends in co-op multiplayer. Up to four players can each control their own agent, opening up a whole new level of strategi...
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lynati: “ ignescent: “ shelbyandvali: “ fenrir-kin: “ erisiana: “ ricca-raccoon: “ feckyeslife: “ THEY JUST KEEP JUMPING ON THE COUNTER. AND CRAWLING UP HER LEG. THIS IS THE GREATEST PROBLEM YOU COULD...
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Morgrim Moon 04/21/2018 9:39 PM
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Morgrim Moon 04/25/2018 12:18 AM
It would be nice if knowing the logical fallacy staring you in the face meant it stopped affecting you. When can we get psychedesign?
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when we're mature enough that the first person to get it doesn't turn all their friends into mind-slaves
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MarcusAurelius 04/25/2018 8:08 PM
But... I was just making them better friends.... we always agree... we never fight... what's wrong with that? (edited)
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Thank you, Starlight Glimmer.
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MarcusAurelius 04/25/2018 8:09 PM
huh?
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A page for describing Recap: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S6 E21 "Every Little Thing She Does". Twilight Sparkle tests the magical ability of …
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 04/25/2018 8:11 PM
"You'd all still be living your miserable lives thinking you're "better" than everypony else if it weren't for my magical abilities! I brought you friendship! I brought you equality! I created harmony!"
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Twilight Sparkle: What made you think that casting a spell on your friends to do your bidding was even remotely a good idea? Starlight Glimmer: Well, when you put it that way, it sounds really bad... Twilight Sparkle: That's because it is really bad!
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I present the freshest of dank memes:
12:16
Focuses more on taking over governments instead of forming a new one in a state of anarchy, but he has a point about diversification
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Or forming one wholesale in the space colony sense
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Incidentally, Offworld Trading Company is free to play this weekend.
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Free to play or Free to buy?
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FTP, 50% off to buy
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new expansion must be coming out?
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You can play it free for the rest of the weekend, then you need to pay
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already owns it, but might reinstall
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Hmm, the Jupiter's Forge DLC is also on sale.
17:05
As is the "Gold Edition" pack, only $27.
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What would you call the Nidavellir megastructure from Infinity Wars?
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Morgrim Moon 05/10/2018 6:49 AM
Got a broken laptop screen sitting around? If you haven’t already pilfered the LEDs and used the polarizing sheets for screen privacy filters, why not turn it into a unique table lamp? See if…
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Just a quick request: if there is to be MCU discussion, please to take it to #spoilers . I'm dreadfully behind and haven't seen anything from Phase 3 yet. 😦
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@Morgrim Moon The Eldrae would love that lamp.
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@Overmind ...Have the Eldrae ever chugged research probes with tangle channels or a wormhole kernel into a black hole and tried looking inside the Event horizon?
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Pretty sure that is sarcasm all the way down
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What gets me about the Flat Earthers, is they accept that Mars is round. Moon is round. Venus is round. But not the Earth? (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 05/15/2018 2:19 PM
Because the earth is special and full of humans who are special and are the center of the universe
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Honestly, I still feel that whole Flat Earth society is elaborate hoax, on par with Drop Bears, but more stupid
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Morgrim Moon 05/15/2018 7:05 PM
Drop bears have a practical purpose, or did originally; they're for teaching kids and city people to look up and not camp under gum trees.
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MarcusAurelius 05/15/2018 7:06 PM
I’d say scaring gullible tourists so that the Australian population can stay sane on their isle of death is also a practical purpose
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Morgrim Moon 05/15/2018 7:08 PM
true, but teaching people to avoid situations where a widowmaker gum tree drops ~half a metric tonne of wood on your head with under 2 seconds warning is more practical.
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MarcusAurelius 05/15/2018 7:09 PM
One protects the body, the other the soul. Priorities, I guess
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People here have been in favor of Stelaris in the past. It is currently on sale and I'm thinking of buying, but I am seeing many many complaints that the 2.0 version breaks everything. Thoughts/Recomendations?
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If you haven't played the version with multiple starting FTLs, you probably won't miss anything.
19:47
People were really salty about that for some reason
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THe complaints I was seeing were also about war weariness
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Okay yeah, never attack someone in a defensive pact.
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That has been fixed
19:48
War weariness
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@Xveers ahhhh, outdated bitching
19:49
I really hate it when this happens: A game with flaws gets a giant hate-fanbase that will make sure to tell you every reason why it is the worst thing ever.
19:49
(often while pretending that they are stalwart defenders of an unpopular opinion)
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Last few times I started wars against empires with defensive pacts I couldn't get my wargoals aside from capturing the systems I held at the end of the war and had claims on.
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A lot of people were/are salty about the removal of different FTL systems, but while the criticisms have some support, balancing the game across three radically different FTL drives would have been a cast iron bitch. So while I think the game has lost something wiht that, I totally understand the decision.
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trundles over to Steam
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I'm also in the apparent minority who played 1.0 and agrees that removing warp and wormholes was the right thing to do.
19:54
Though it's a bit of a pain in the ass when somebody between you and your auto-exploring science ships closes borders.
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now owns a license to Stellaris
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Morgrim Moon 05/17/2018 7:58 PM
I didn't enjoy it that much. I wanted to explore the science and events, but it's very hard to do that without neighbours constantly picking fights and I don't find Stellaris combat fun
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@Zarpaulek After a while, my friends and I played pre 2.0 with warp lanes only, just because it gave the game some more strategy to it. So for us, the loss wasn't the end of the world.
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I kind of have this idea on the relationship between the superhero genre and transhumanism. Though, it's kind of antagonistic.
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Oh? I mean, most mainstream fiction is a bit anti-transhumanism?
23:31
And I mean, as good as it is as an excuse for the protagonist to have powers, if everyone can do it, then the protagonist isn't special anymore.
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 05/19/2018 11:40 PM
The "Syndrome Rule"
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The which now?
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 05/19/2018 11:45 PM
The villain from "The Incredibles". (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 05/19/2018 11:46 PM
"If everybody is super, then no-one is"
23:53
If you haven't seen "The Incredibles", you probably should.
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But ... video formats...
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My primary issue was that superheroes rarely if ever get their powers willingly. Villains (like Syndrome) might, but rarely heroes.
08:05
Either they gain powers from an accident, or are born with them (itself an accident).
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Even Tony Stark only became Iron Man after he was captured and wounded, and he refuses to share the suit with anyone else.
08:06
I noted Steve Rogers was one of the few voluntary superheroes.
08:06
08:06
Sorry for the bad handwriting
08:08
The "Allergic to Nietzsche" comment originally came from the introduction to an RPG called "Base Raiders".
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This is very true. And of course, tinker-type heros rarely share thier tech, even when the worldbuilding makes it clear they could.
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Morgrim Moon 05/20/2018 8:28 AM
they often have an incident very early in their career that suggests to them why they shouldn't; Tony Stark had his with Stane, before that he was looking at whether bits of it could be ethically commercialised.
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I think Reed Richards allowed himself to get paid off by a bunch of businesses his inventions would have made obsolete or something
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Best cure for that would be for Dr Doom to buy out patents and do limited implementation in Latveria only
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Morgrim Moon 05/20/2018 8:38 AM
Reed Richards in canon is an absent minded dick who's bad at forethought; more likely he never stopped to consider HOW some of this stuff could be commercialised. He'd need a sensible business partner to do that side.
08:38
Which is the role Doom served until their falling out.
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The Reed Richards Is Useless trope as used in popular culture. The observation that in some genres, characters can have fantastic technology far beyond our …
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to play a bit of devils advocate o the "transhuman superheroics is hard" bit, what does the typical opening bank robbery scene look like if all the civilians in the bank have powers that gives them a credible threat to the robbers? Does every crime event escalate into a 30 person powered brawl? I suppose an equivilent question would be "in a world where more than half the civilians in the bank are carrying concealed pistols"
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Morgrim Moon 05/20/2018 10:50 AM
it doesn't seem to stop criminals in the USA. Possibly because 'the one who strikes first wins' is a big thing with guns, being armed means nothing if the other guy has drawn before you
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People usually aren't allowed to carry their guns into banks.
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Morgrim Moon 05/20/2018 10:52 AM
also I know bank robberies are a trope in fiction, but IRL most bank robbers went in after hours and drilled a hole in a wall, because getting away is next to impossible
10:52
that'd be even more pronounced in such a world
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See also: when house burgularies happen in the US vs England
10:53
US == when people aren't home UK == when people are home
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Morgrim Moon 05/20/2018 10:54 AM
really? The rate of carrying weapons in australia is extremely low, but house burglaries when people are home are exceptionally rare
10:54
or they're "sneak into the bedrooms while people are in the dining room and don't notice" sort
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Uh, no, most bank robberies are during daylight hours with hostages, especially now that security systems can summon cops in minutes.
10:55
Bank robbery is the crime of stealing money from a bank, while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch, as opposed to other bank-owned property, such as a tra...
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Morgrim Moon 05/20/2018 10:55 AM
the only time home invasions here aim for residents being around is when the crook is specifically going after car keys
10:56
"Violent takeover bank robberies that are often portrayed in the media are rare. The majority of bank robberies taking place today are so-called "note jobs." These are usually accomplished by simply passing a written note to the teller demanding money. The idea is to attract as little attention as possible. In most cases, other customers present in the bank during a robbery are unaware of what is occurring."
10:56
that does NOT look like 'with hostages'
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You're threatening the teller, they're a hostage.
10:58
"Drilling in" is impractical when the cops will arrive before you're even a tenth through the armor plating.
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I suppose then it becomes an arms race.
12:36
Between the augs of the bank robbers and the augs of the bank robbers.
12:36
Though, if you conduct a completely physical bank robbery in a hard-on transhuman age where a common bank customer can go Adam Jensen on you, you messed up somewhere along the way I think.
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nods. "Yeah. So what does the crime look like and how do you tell cool stories in that setting?"
13:22
(Assuming for the moment that we have it as a requirment from our studio execs that the cool stories must incorporate crime and it's defeat ) (edited)
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"We take Gerard Butler, wrap him in a Mo-cap suit and have him play a badass grizzled police android with a dozen missile drones on stand-by. We're also hiring Michael Bay as the director."
13:27
...Yeah okay, that was a cheap shot, but it's evening and I my brainpower is fluctuating, so sorry not sorry.
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For the ‘verse, the answer to what crime looks like is “Like an episode of Leverage , only with more shiny things, and complexity.”
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13:29
Because you have to be that good to get anywhere .
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“Prospect 33/1, getaway driver… getaway driver?” “Mm-hm.” “I understand why we’re reviewing these… work histories, but why are we interested in a getaway driver?” The senior ironmonger steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair; the other rolled his eyes. “Consider, my dear Sulcis, just what is involved in practicing the gentle art of getaway driving in this modern age. First, one must be a good enough hardware engineer to bypass the many and various safety systems on your flitter designed to prevent it from maneuvering in any of the ways which one might wish to maneuver during your getaway. Likewise, you must also be a good enough software engineer to write your own drive-manager for said flitter, which not only avoids the software safeties, but emulates them – and the rest of the optimal safe style – well enough to fool everyone into thinking that all’s well when you aren’t being pursued.
13:30
“And you must achieve all of this while bypassing the road-grid – which otherwise would simply order your flitter to lock its doors and deliver you to the constabulary – by either stealthing or spoofing. In the former case, you need to have written a drive-manager that can somehow deal with the unfortunate consequences of the road-grid perceiving you as an invisible hole – or rather, a motile obstruction to be cleared away by emergency response – and in the latter case, to pretend to be multiple vehicles without tripping a trouble-flag, and should you fail at that, handling the attempts to take remote control of your vehicle via the road-grid interface, or to switch to stealthing and disable the grid interface in mid-flight without tripping any of those safety systems. Either of these options is very likely to involve an uncomfortable amount of updating code on the fly without crashing. Literally, and literally. “Possibly while dodging flak, foam, and EMPs.” Sulcis frowned. “So they have to be good, but you could say the same about –” “For values of good equal to gods-kissed technical geniuses whom we want working for us only slightly more than MinTrans and the odocorps want them interrogated, patched, and probably shot, yes.”
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13:30
“Prospect 33/1, getaway driver… getaway driver?” “Mm-hm.” “I understand why we’re reviewing these… work histories, but why are we interested in a get…
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If you just think you can threaten people to rob a bank... well, you’re looking at a corpse of you, o foolish outworlder. Or more accurately, a slush of you that they’ll have to clean up with a mop.
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...How viable are wetwired weapons again?
13:32
I'm suddenly reminded of Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hammilton where your average-looking joy can have a dozen energy weapons and quantum-field shielding implanted in themselves.
13:33
From nobody to Power Armor-facing down-nightmare on one neuronal command.
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[cyber-style bionic weapons] Technically, you can do some of it, but it’s not going to count as concealed by any means. High-energy power sources, etc., aren’t subtle. (edited)
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13:38
Also, in this setting, one of the bigger constraints on weapons design is heat dissipation. So unless you want to be walking around with a couple of thermal clips plugged into each arm, firing your fancy energy weapon is likely to be accompanied by the scent of delicious roasting long pork.
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No quick-extruding nanofibre heat dissipation fur?
13:40
I mean, I get that the Eldrae are probably open-carry or similiar equivalents, but considering how high-tehc these guys often are I also can't see an arm-mounted holdout/self-defense weapon, especialy of the highly efficient mass driver type, as something uncommon.
13:41
...Or you could use your omnitool effectors to go chuck throwing daggers, I guess that's also a potential alternative.
13:45
(Like, your wording implies you are going to get gibbed. Given this goes against people with guns, I'd expect the average guy to carry some form of heavy firepower that can be brought on target quickly.)
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That kind of heavy cybernetics isn’t much in favor for a variety of reasons, from fashion, to the pain in the ass it is to need to take a trip back into the vat to upgrade, to the difficulty of avoiding losing functionality elsewhere because bodies are kind of tightly packed. It’s by no means unknown, but it’s not usually considered the advantageous route.
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from fashion Are the Eldrae pro-aug or not? Like, if they have issues with minor cybernetic functionality upgrades to an appendage, that's almost borderline bio-conservative if you can't take that minor structural modification.
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(And the two maneuvers widely taught for “unarmed” PK-combat are the less-lethal pinch the carotid artery shut, and the most-lethal crush your heart in your chest.)
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13:48
Yeah, but they’re also pro-elegance.
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To be frank, I can't see what is particularly unelegant about something that's externaly invisible and at most indicatable by some more mass behind it.
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Also, if you’re looking for minimizing time-on-target, you don’t want to have to futz about with limb positioning. Get yourself a little hovering killdrone that can spin in place and whack the target before the meat can twitch.
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If your choise of weaponized arm is a bulky military-spec model (why whomever would install such a thing in an age where soldiers wear fully sealed hardsuits and spys go around by not being ivisbly hyper-combatants) yeah okay, unstylish, but otherwise... Get yourself a little hovering killdrone that can spin in place and whack the target before the meat can twitch. Okay yeah, that sounds like a sensible choise of personal "sidearm", so to speak.
13:52
(On the other hand, considering how heavily laticed Eldrae biomorphs are, I don't think meat latency is a particular issue...)
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(‘Scuse me a second while I switch machines.)
14:01
(Small will always tend to maneuver faster than big, by way of physical constraints, but most importantly, doesn't have to worry about getting in its own way.)
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14:02
On assorted other points:
14:06
1. Probably not going to be all that externally invisible. You'll need a firing port, for one thing, unless you like serious injury every time you shoot, plus access to reload, maintain, and whatever else you don't feel like a trip into the vat for. Plus whatever you do for thermal dissipation (and where quick-extrude nanofibers are concerned, that means you now have an arm with a bunch of red-hot wires puncturing it).
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14:07
And while you may still make it invisible to the Mk. 1 non-kinesics-trained eyeball, how many of those do you ezpect to meet on the way to the firefight?
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Are you telling me that access hatches and perfectly moulding biocatomic skin aren't viable tech in the Eldraeverse?
14:09
2.) Shouldn't counter-kinesis subegosoftware be a thing also then?
14:10
I'd expect something like this to be a technological cakewalk for an Eldraeverse civ: https://battlebeyondpodcast.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/sac_14_1.jpg?w=748&h=421
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2. Semiotically, unlike the traditional openly-carried sidearm which carries the message "I am a responsible citizen-shareholder who stands ready to protect your rights and my own", concealed weapons carry a message more along the lines of "I am an incompetent assassin or someone here to start some shit."
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14:12
3. Your arm is a tightly-packed mass of nanobiotechnological wonders. What capabilities are you willing to trade away?
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Depends on how much you can actually trade off, I suppose?
14:13
Most of the utility in a not-splitting arm is skin surface, or some limited bioreactor volume in the arms structural tissue.
14:14
Depending on your type of muscle fibre, the greatest possible trade-off might be strength, but that depends on whether CNT myomer is the end-all of things, and I suspect it is not.
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(Coincidentally, it happens to be assassins who use this sort of thing, by hiding a tiny single-shot derringer inside a finger-bone that's expected to be a dense diamondoid lattice, or suchlike. But that's intended to kill soft targets up close and personal, and won't do you any good in an actual firefight.)
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If there is any more utility, it implies structural alterations to the arm, and an ability to potentialy extrude internal mechanisms, which then already goes the way of implanted weaponry.
14:17
The biggest actual problem I can see as of now is that you can't mount a standard lathe.
14:18
Waveguides, system components et all would have to account for any changes to arm geometry, as would any clothing. (edited)
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On biomimetics: there's an arms race between sensors and stealth, and in this arena, sensors are winning. Fooling one sense is easy; foiling five is possible; faking out eighteen or so is a Very Hard Problem, despite the billions of esteyn the media industry throws at it every year.
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14:22
You're think too large. Nanocytes and nanosomes, that's where the action is.
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or some limited bioreactor volume in the arms structural tissue.
14:24
I think I wasn't. But that implies that the impact would be significant.
14:25
Given your elaboration on specialization vs generalisation, local Nanobionics would be for tissue maintenance and manipulation, mostly.
14:25
And I'd expect no need for many specialized nodes in the lower arm area.
14:32
Or, to precise that statement, no specialized nodes that have further impact beyond the arm area.
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Well, you're going to impair your strength (that fancy braided biomyomer), proprioception (interrupting the locicyte and communicyte grids), dexterity (both of the above), resistance to damage (replacing hardened bones, compatibility with skin weave) and self-repair (the grids and local artificial lymph nodes), if you're replacing skin you're going to need to replace and integrate some extremely enhanced bionano sensors to avoid degrading sensory acuity, there are some interface connection points engineered into the fingers, and that's just off the top of my head. If I was at home with my notes instead of halfway up a mountain right now, I could probably find a few more in my alpha baseline list.
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...Honestly, none of those sound like particular problems. Like, I get you don't want to have them for artistic choise reasons, but this is such... baseline bioengineering challenges for the most part it doesn't strike me as an issue.
14:35
They can biolattice all of that enhanced bionano into the normal body, but engineering it into a bionic prosthesis is somehow beyond their cheap purview? Seriously?
14:36
That honestly strains my WSOD a lot
14:37
I also suppose that for now, it's a "agree to disagree" situation. Personally, I think the argument chain is about done, we've made our points and can't convince each other. Ultimately, you are the author, thus the final Word of God falls to you and I shall defer to it. 😃
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By and large, there are issues if you want to fit m+n into the same volume as m, even before you start looking at capabilities. And, y'know, sure, throw enough money and effort at the problem, it's assuredly soluble. The question from their perspective is "is it worth solving"?
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14:41
And when they look at it, what they see is a way to expend all that money and effort in exchange for... a poorly-concealed gun they can't put down, in a social context where no-one would care or probably even notice if you just strapped one to your hip.
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14:43
(It also raises the question of why, if you're expecting a firefight, you're wandering around in a naked squishie, anyway, rather than putting on armor or wearing a combat clankie.)
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Why are you open-carrying if you don't expect a firefight?
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Because that is what you do as a responsible soph
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Because semiotics.
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Yeah, so....
14:50
(It also raises the question of why, if you're expecting a firefight, you're wandering around in a naked squishie, anyway, rather than putting on armor or wearing a combat clankie.)
14:51
People go about armed even when they don't nessecarily expect a firefight.
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difference between [expecting to be in a firefight] and [ready if one happens, and demonstrating that you are ready in needed]
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Yeah well, I was argueing for [ready if one happens] not [expecting to be in one]
14:52
No idea when that particular jump happened, but on my end it wasn't.
14:52
Anyway, I'm out for now. It was nice argueing with you @Overmind! 😃
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(Also, because sometimes unplanned firefights happen. But all but a statistically insignificant fraction of the trillion or so sidearms out there have never been fired in anger and probably never will be.)
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Or, to sum up for next time, semiotics and cultural habit work to ensure that people keep picking up their pistol along with their wallet and car keys, as it were. It's a low-effort thing for an epsilon probability, cultural stigma aside. I don't think they work to justify turning yourself into an inefficient combat cyborg just in case. (Analogy from here: plenty of women keep a pistol in their purse against the possibility of an attack, but very few if any join militias and train in the woods on weekends.)
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I just saw a website for a series of upcoming Warhammer and 40K novels for pre-teens https://warhammeradventures.com/
20:26
Granted, that's the same age group Animorphs was marketed towards, but our older siblings and parents weren't already familiar with that property and prepared to say "Oh Hel No!"
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Morgrim Moon 05/21/2018 8:44 PM
And I dislike the 'clensing' of the setting that's already been done to make it "parent friendly"
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I mean, on one hand you could be picky about where in the universe you're setting things, but then you end up with things like not being able to go to Cadia or the Medusa Cascade
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Morgrim Moon 05/22/2018 1:53 AM
Well, you CAN'T go to Cadia now :p
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...I honestly don't know what the guys developing that idea have been smoking.
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40k for teens you mean?
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MarcusAurelius 05/22/2018 9:12 PM
PREteens. Teenagers are part of the core demographic of mainline 40k fiction (pretty much everything barring the miniatures) (edited)
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It specifically lists ages 8-12
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MarcusAurelius 05/22/2018 9:18 PM
8? Oh no
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Enderminion 05/22/2018 9:19 PM
oh dear god no
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MarcusAurelius 05/22/2018 9:20 PM
I found out about 40k at 13 and that stuff was still dark. And I didn’t even find the worst of it
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Happy Fun Times With Slannesh!
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MarcusAurelius 05/22/2018 9:24 PM
Ok kids definitely shouldn’t see that
21:24
There’s no fixing that
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Morgrim Moon 05/22/2018 11:51 PM
If people are exposed to 40k when they're too young to understand the Imperium is satirising facism, then you get situations where neonazis talk about how awesome it is that 40k "gets it" and Games Workshop has to put out a video reminding people those characters are not the good guys
23:52
Although it did lead to an entire plot where Gulliman called out the whole mess, that royally pissed off said bigots, which was pretty funny.
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Morgrim Moon 05/23/2018 6:31 AM
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/nasas-em-drive-is-a-magnetic-wtf-thruster/ So it looks like the EM-drive does not actually function as a propulsion drive, but is instead an incredibly sensitive instrument for measuring the Earth's magnetic field. So hey, it may actually be able to produce usable amounts of thrust for a microsat hanging out near the Sun or Jupiter, but not so great for navigating the solar system.
Test reveals that the magic space unicorns pushing the EM-drive are magnetic fields.
06:34
..okay, so nix on the microsat, looks like the cables would be measured on the kilometre scale
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It‘s worse @Morgrim Moon
07:21
The test assembly can be used to measure the earths magnetic field, not even the drive itself.
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Enderminion 05/23/2018 7:22 AM
and they thought they had shielding
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They did.
07:23
But it turns out, even that was insufficient.
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Morgrim Moon 05/23/2018 7:28 AM
the earth is a bloody big magnet and hard to shield against
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MarcusAurelius 05/23/2018 6:04 PM
When your test is sensitive enough that you have to account for wave action in a body of water 100s of miles away, it’ll capture just about anything
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Hey, didn’t the Eldrae space program launch from an inland area? https://twitter.com/paulmmcooper/status/998581449895874560?s=21
The Altai region of Central Asia seems at first to be a remote & peaceful place. But it also sits on the world's busiest flight path for space missions. Here used-up rockets regularly crash to earth, & local people are left to salvage what they can of the wreckage.
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MarcusAurelius 05/23/2018 11:21 PM
Space cowboys, yak edition?
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Yeah, but luckily, you don’t have to stage an Orion...
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MarcusAurelius 05/23/2018 11:33 PM
You’d better not stage an Orion
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„One propulsion unit magazine, away!“
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MarcusAurelius 05/24/2018 2:28 AM
Better hope those are toroidal magazines or something. Flying an asymmetric Orion in atmo doesn’t sound fun
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Among the many reasons they ended up using Orions (and other fun nucleonic rocket designs) in the first place was specifically to avoid throwing big chunks of rocket away. Rapacious agorists or not, one of the things that comes along with a long-to-indefinite lifespan is a certain tendency to avoid playing stupid nonsustainable games, because when the bill comes due? It's very likely to be you that it's being presented to.
02:33
Sustainability: it's just good business.
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MarcusAurelius 05/24/2018 2:34 AM
I think we all get it, we were just joking along
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Archaeologists working at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, Italy, uncovered the remains of a 30-year-old man who appears to have survived the initial eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., only to be killed when he was struck by a large slab of stone https://t.co/CgQFTssa6x
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14:10
Well, sometimes disaster movies ring true...
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squish
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More like
14:14
distant BOOOM!
14:15
feeeeeeeeuuuuwwww
14:15
squelsh
14:15
I probably got that cartoon flying noise wrong, but what-ev.
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I think it was less squishing and more of crashing and crunching combo.
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If someone is crushed by a rock and no one else is around to hear it does it make a sound?
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MarcusAurelius 05/29/2018 2:57 PM
Yes. Because there is no privileged frame of reference 😎
10:33
If you do magic, you can do magic right.
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Morgrim Moon 06/03/2018 4:42 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q I presume most people have seen this marble music machine before, but it strikes me as the sort of thing eldraeic culture would approve of tinkers building in their home workshops. Maybe comment that it's a little rough for a finished piece but a perfectly fine prototype
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Profs go full animusic irl?
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@Morgrim Moon It's also getting a rebuilt full of CNC-worked wood and lots of 3D-printing right now.
06:11
Though I suspect an Eldrae version of these intruments might just be worked entirely from partialy piezo-electric, motile diamond metamaterials Just Because We Can™
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<Sayaka> and Clarisse is still borrowing parts of my brain <Clarisse> I’ll be done in a moment. I’m working on planning our meet-up for later. <Clarisse> And this part isn’t technically in your brain, it’s near your spine. There’s not a lot of stuff actually in the brain itself. You need that space for the actual brain.
12:50
Fanfic for To The Stars got fun moments.
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What's this then?
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To The Stars is a Madoka Fanfic that is set 400 years later after a Tranhumanist Revolution has brought effective immortality, space travel, and body augments to the common people.
11:55
is on FanFiction.Net
11:56
would say more, but I have go focus on work now.
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Also, it's pretty good. Scary too, at times.
11:58
Oh, and massively complex.
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Hmmm, I wouldn't say it's massively complex, though it does rotate through several point of view characters to give the big picture
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Clarisse is the best girl, despite being sack of nanites, chips and cloned neural tissue near the spine of main character. (edited)
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Tactical Computer Mark II, as I recall.
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I've read TTS, I was just asking about the context for the quote, since I didn't recognise it.
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It's from "Machine in the Ghost / a tac!Clarisse Quest (for To The Stars, a PMMM fanfic)"
23:45
Everything have gone... badly, and now you and your girl stuck into the past and in universe that doesn't have Madokami
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Right. That sounds interesting.
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Conspiracies, Witches, runaway Wishes, QB, Oriko, and some situations that's just ... what???
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It has a tab.
23:50
Got anything to actually recommend?
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You mean, link to it?
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I found the link to that.
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THrough google.
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nothing more to rec now.
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But I always want new things to read.
23:53
Fair enough!
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Well, do you like super robots?
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I can't say I've had much to do with them.
23:54
[img] To Boldly Go... A Starfleet Quest [IMG] Admiral’s Log, Starfleet HQ, Stardate 20512 Today marks my first day serving in my new role as...
23:58
Cool!
23:58
I have a week off...
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Well, you may hit Biophage Crisis then.
23:58
If I underestimate your speed of reading, a bit more than that.
23:59
Biophage in different verse was called the Beast, but it's Star Trek
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Right.
00:00
I read quite fast?
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Well, it's quite enormous quest.
00:00
Hope your enjoy your week off.
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And when I decide to read a particular work, may for like 10 hours a day.
00:01
I finished PMAS in like two weeks?
00:01
Maybe three, but that was with classes?
00:01
But I will!
00:01
I mean... I have an essay to write and then exams, so it's not totally time off.
00:02
But it's pretty close!
00:02
Well, maybe four days of your time.
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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
00:02
Haven't touched that
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It's pretty good if you like OP people winning all the fight and then spending forever trying to deal with everyones trauma.
00:03
And succeding somewhat?
00:04
(I also might not spend every waking hour reading that quest)
00:05
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy Type-0 LP.
00:05
There's RPG bits, there's japanese bits, and then there's totally bonkers bits.
00:06
LP is called "Big Book of War Crimes" and it's fitting.
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MarcusAurelius 06/05/2018 10:29 AM
This one’s a little different, but my absolute favorite fanfic of all time: XSGCOM. The crazy bastard managed to almost seamlessly merge Stargate with classic!XCOM, and fix a lot of plot holes in the show in the process. It’s a pretty fascinating lead to see what is basically TV sci-fi but with actually competent military forces
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MarcusAurelius 06/05/2018 10:31 AM
The Tvtropes Page is the easiest single link to navigate from (you don’t have to scroll into the actual tropes):http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/XSGCOM
XSGCOM is a Crossover / Alternate Universe Fic with Stargate and XCOMnote Please note that the X-COM depicted here is the original X-COM, and not from …
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Hmm. I started reading that startfleet thing.
07:14
It's very ... abstract? Probably more interesting as a quest than as a piece of fiction.
07:14
I'm not sure how much I will read before getting bored.
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Yeah, it is not the easiest accessible piece of fiction...
07:15
But I have to say, the way it is written is better than the Expositron 9000 Model Weber it could be otherwise. (edited)
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I'm sorry, that last sentance is a little garbled.
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No, it is not
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Better its dense, abstract "throw you into the world" than extremely lengthy paragraphs breaking down the world at every corner.
07:17
I sort-of made that error, in some ways still do, so I'm speaking from a learning perspective there.
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Ah, yes. I see.
07:17
That makes sense.
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Also, you will hit sidestories soon, and they are wonderful
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Hence "expositron 9000 model Weber"
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Sure.
07:19
I think you're right about that.
15:50
The AI’s blindness is caused by shallow traps, a common problem for MCTS. It’s what makes MCTS a poor fit for Chess. A shallow trap is a branch in the game tree where the game will abruptly end in a small number of turns. If the random tree search doesn’t luckily stumble upon a trap during its random traversal, it can’t take it into account in its final decision. A skilled player will lead the game towards one of these traps, and the AI will blunder along, not realizing what’s happened until its too late. I almost feel bad for it when this happens. If you watch the memory usage and number of playouts, once it falls into a trap, you’ll see it using almost no memory while performing a ton of playouts. It’s desperately, frantically searching for a way out of the trap. But it’s too late, little AI.
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Morgrim Moon 06/13/2018 6:56 AM
https://deadcatwithaflamethrower.tumblr.com/post/174827146294/work-for-fame now this is an interesting idea: if a client wants you to work for 'exposure', drafting a time-delayed contract based on that. If their advertising gets you business, great! If it doesn't, they haven't filled their side of the contract and have to pay money
notesoftruth: “ esper-etherium: “ commandtower-solring-go: “ evisane: “ comradewodka: “ stfrancisofasses: “ gowns: “ “Anyone ever offer to pay you with “exposure”? My husband has….and now that he is a...
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Most independent artists don’t have the resources to quantify that kind of thing, or compel the client to pay up.
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I mean, doy. It's an amusing idea.
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There is spec work, where you get paid royalties instead of a lump sum up front, but it’s a gamble
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Highly amusing, in that it forces prime bullshitters to pay up
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Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the Empire occasionally do this sort of thing? http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2882
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On occasion, and usually with the concurrence of the Presidium when someone has turned out to be a bunch of reason-immune asshats and nothing but returning them to the stone age and hoping their next go at civilization works out better is left. Intentional genocide is, of course, very much illegal by all the laws of war. On the other hand, like we said back here ( https://eldraeverse.com/2014/05/04/trope-a-day-genocide-dilemma/ ), if people are dumb enough to keep attacking you until you've self-defensed them to death, that's not intentional genocide, now is it? That's just the polity-level version of suicide by cop.
Genocide Dilemma: The remarkably cynical view of the Conclave of Galactic Polities on this particular issue is that, yes, genocide is wrong and very, very illegal.  On the other hand, some species,…
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13:36
On the other hand, by far the majority of the Worlds' serious problem children are comfortably handled by wrapping an englobement grid around their planet(s) and letting them think happy-happy thoughts to themselves for the rest of ever, or at least until someone feels like peeking under the grid to see if they're ready to play nice. Or have blown themselves up in the interim, of course - dogmatic non-cooperators usually aren't all that good at cooperating with themselves, either.
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Y'know, what's going to sell people on teleportation/mindcasting/etc. isn't some great philosophical argument in favor of pattern identity over continuity identity. It's that it turns a three-hour commute into a three-second commute. At which point people suddenly get really good at ignoring the philosophical implications, just like they are at ignoring everything else that stands between them and anything really convenient. (This one is even quicker than the traditional reason why pattern identitarians will always win the argument in the long run: sooner or later, everyone who sustains their philosophical objections to backup technology will be dead.)
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Oh, yeah utterly.
01:05
People are super willing to ignore the philosophical implications if nothing bad actually happens (in line of sight) and it's convenient. (edited)
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Yep, see no evil, assume no evil, that's humans. ("But what if they don't transmit your soul!?" "Lady, after spending five hours stuck in traffic on I-40, I don't have a soul anyway.") (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 06/16/2018 1:55 AM
A chunk is getting over the early adoption suspicion, so when you see collegues not being any more soulless than usual looking chirpy at 9am that will help a LOT
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...You know, I just realized something: Soul adherents are the greatest hypocrites.
04:19
They explicitely belief that an intrinsique part of the human mind transcends the death of a body.
04:19
But they aren't ready to consider that that part might just be the mindstate data, transfered to a new body.
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Eh, I've heard that argument the other way around. Calling Transhumanists Dualists for thinking that the human mind can exist in a medium other than a meat-brain.
04:34
Since it give human thought a special position above other physical processes, I think.
04:34
That guy was never very clear on what exactly he thought cognition was, though.
04:34
Apart from meat-brains only.
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To be frank, I see zero problems in the entire thing. The human brain is physical, which means it can be emulated. The question of course is the required complexity.
04:38
I doubt that we'll be able to express mindstates as anything but vector and connectdome data for a good while, but I see no issues with uploading and emulating.
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But that's just an simulation, don't you know.
04:39
By drawing the analogy between simulations of chemical processes and simulations of cognitive processes, we can clearly see that there is no mind in a simulated entity.
04:39
Clearly.
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Morgrim Moon 06/16/2018 4:40 AM
Given that we keep discovering new bits of how information is transmitted in the brain, I think we're a LONG way off being able to emulate it
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Okay, so our reality is also a simulation, good to know @Archon !
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Morgrim Moon 06/16/2018 4:40 AM
Mostly because we don't know all the data that needs emulating
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I'm semi-optimistic.
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I have to put up with many foolish arguments in my classes.
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I'd expect animal uploads via destructive slice-scanning by the mid-21st century.
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Eh, I'm 50/50 on that.
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@Archon Throw that guy a pointer about simulation granularity.
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The Whole nematode thing isn't going to well, from what I hear.
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Morgrim Moon 06/16/2018 4:42 AM
I think we'll get there eventually, but so much of neurochemistry is currently a black box and treating anything to do with dodgy neurotransmitters is still firing a shotgun into the brain and praying, and it has such huge knock on effects, that I don't think we can ignore all of that process.
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(The argument isn't about simulation quality; it goes, because a simulated chemical reaction isn't a real chemical reaction, thus a simulated thought is not a real thought) (edited)
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Oh gosh, that classicism.
04:43
Christ, how qaint.
04:44
IMO that argument falls appart as soon as you raise the question whether you can exclude our reality as it isn't just another simulation.
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04:44
After all we have a system of information and information interactions, and that is all we can say.
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Alternatively, when was last time you noticed when site competently rewrote backend?
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Morgrim Moon 06/16/2018 4:45 AM
given the disproportionate number of programmers/computer adjucent people in here, perhaps a poor analogy
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It all happens because they are chronically incapable of defining what thought or intelligence is.
04:46
The course I just finished started by saying essentially "it's hard, so we'll ignore the question"
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MarcusAurelius 06/16/2018 4:46 AM
They have a point, in that like many simulations of more complicated chemical reactions, there are factors we don't know about yet so they're off from reality
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Again, not talking about simulation quality.
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MarcusAurelius 06/16/2018 4:47 AM
this would probably extend to early attempts at digitalizing intelligences
04:47
I know
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Talking about philosophical possiblity.
04:47
But you are right.
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MarcusAurelius 06/16/2018 4:47 AM
In that case there's no point in really arguing
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Though I feel, once we solve the nematode level stuff, it'll be easier to scale up.
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MarcusAurelius 06/16/2018 4:48 AM
they don't believe according to facts or a theory, they believe in a soul based on faith
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Though that might just be me ignorantly assuming most neurochemisty is similar.
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Faifth isn't a scientific methodic system.
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And a biologist can correct me on that.
04:49
It's not Faith it's Philosophy (edited)
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Physics, chemistry, biology and computer science are.
04:49
Hard, quantifiable facts proven to be true through repeat of the process.
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I also don't think they belive in a soul, at least not expicilty.
04:49
They just have a bad argument. (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 06/16/2018 4:50 AM
perhaps I misunderstood you then
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Morgrim Moon 06/16/2018 4:50 AM
I know from personal experience that, at least in some people, it's a lot more sensitive than I thought it would be; I can use my performance at Hexcells to make a fair estimate of my magnesium levels because my fucked up neurochemistry is actually sensisitve enough to that mineral to have a measurable impact.
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In my fictional universe, even if this entity that has never participated in the sensory inputs and physical discrete/continuous hybrid decision-making trees that formed the gestalt that called itself the original were somehow the same as the original... The original’s family would still insist on their fair share of the inheritance. (edited)
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A hive mind of clones could be considered the same person as the original if they were networked in at the time of death (though the SPQR-inspired Federation had a bad experience with distributed consciousness). Theoretically a gradual uploading replacing neurons with synthetic substrate might also work
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@Archon In fairness to them, it is sort-of a dualist position - it's just not Cartesian mind-body dualism, or particularly analogous to it, because it doesn't assert any non-physicalism. It just claims that the representation isn't identical to the represented. (For myself, I call it "information dualism", which is an excessively high-falutin' name for the realization that Vignettes of the Star Empire is the content of the book, not the specific ink and paper of a particular instance; or that when you move a file across drives - i.e., by copy-and-delete - you still have the file , for all that it's being stored in a completely different set of magnetic domains.)
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Yeah, that's a fair way to look at it.
07:26
But if you're going to be that reasonable, you can't use "they are dualists" as a way to shut down all possiblity of argument/borderline insult.
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Indeed.
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But that's a good way to put it, and the argument I'll use if I ever have to have that argument again.
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