Update: this has been popping in and out of my head ever since I saw it, and I started learning Rust yesterday. They have won.

Oooh, I didn’t think of that. “Eat all you want without gaining weight with this one simple trick”

arXiv doesn’t have peer review as far as I know

This might just be the thing that makes me learn Rust

When people had analogue technology (radio/phonograph) there was no solid concept of the universe being a simulation

I’d argue that Neoplatonism is very close to the idea of the world being a simulation. “The One” is a creative power that made all things, itself being beyond existing. That neatly corresponds to the idea of a machine simulating us, as it itself is not simulated, but simulates.

Even Plato can be seen in that light. There exists a world of perfect forms, and this is but a projection = There is a reality the simulation is based on and computed. Our souls know everything in their pure states outside the bodies = The class is on the same level as all other data until you instantiate it.

Of course nobody talked about computers, but the general idea was there. The simulation theory could be seen as just fleshing out the technical details, but the architecture was there for a while. Not that I necessarily agree with either, I just think that the simulation theory is not really a new concept in its core.

Anarchism is a lack of hierarchy where nobody has power over another. If you get a job, you need to tell the state. You need to pay taxes to the state. If you buy something, the seller must have a bill to register the transaction with the state. If you want to give your property (like a house) to someone, you must tell the state. Every significant transaction between two induviduals needs to go through the state, otherwise that very state will use force (police) to punish you. We don’t live in a state of anarchy as thought of by political anarchism.

Even if the “state” is a cooperative project, it still lies above you in the hierarchy and has power over you, that’s why we don’t live in a state of anarchy.

When I got that message I just refreshed the page and tried logging in again and it worked.

I have the opposite situation, I had to willingly stop myself from typing :w while using Word. And I installed the vim extension in vscode, which leads to me typing :w when using someone else’s setup.

Same. Instant in the morning and a normal one with grounding beans in the afternoon.

It’s long been thought the only reason there’s been no WWIII is because countries that don’t necessarily like each other have created mutually beneficial trade deals together.

And then Russia decided to go to war regardless. I’m not sure whether this has shown us that war prevention based on mutual trade is an illusion, or that Russian economic difficulties prove that it works. Maybe time will tell, but in any case I’m not sure the dead will be happy that Russia’s economy will suffer.

I mean, it makes perfect sense that you’re not going to start a war for economic reasons if it’s worse than just trade, but what happens when someone decides that they want war for reasons other than economic. For example, country A has a lot of people with their main nationality in the bordering countries, and someone stirrs up nationalist sentiments and they want their country to ecompass all regions where their nationals live, regardless of economic benefits/drawbacks.

Democracy is very weak and that’s why it takes so much to keep it at place. One autocratic leader is enough to break it. We saw it in Germany before the war

It wasn’t “one autocratic leader” who broke democracy in Weimar Germany. Most of the judges, civil servants, parties and people were not happy with the transition from the German empire. Democracy breaks when nobody cares about it anymore. For Germany, this was most evident in the Prussian coup, when the state illegaly replaced the Prussian government, and nothing happened in response. This was taken to court and Prussia did have some success with it, but generally the deed was done. Imagine that during the next US elections it gets decided that California voted for the Republicans, and that goes through without much fuss. That is what causes democracies to fall, apathetic people and institutions, especially the latter. It’s the institutions that stand guard, like in 2019 when the Supreme Court declared Boris Johnson’s suspension of the parliament unlawful.

That’s not to say that democracy isn’t weakening globally, it’s just that this idea that Germany became a dictatorship because this one charismatic leader came and broke democracy is wrong. The Nazis, while not irrelevant in any sense, were not the main driving force behind Weimar Germany before 1933. The very reason Hitler became a chancellor was because the unelected conservative government thought that they could easily control him. The erosion of democracies happens in the institutions and people’s will, the autocratic leader just strikes the final blow.

Yeah, me too. Though I was taken on by the whole “radical liberal left being oversensitive” thing. I thought of women as equal, but the “femimazis” were extreme. I thought non-heterosexual and non-binary were a bit odd, but they can do what they want, why should I care, but I was the “LGBT propaganda” was too much. I thought people fleeing from wartorn regions deserved another chance, but the “sjws are just letting anyone and everyone in, and they can do whatever they want because otherwise it would be racism”.

I would call myself right wing, but practically all of my opinions were very far from it because my youtube overloaded brain thought that the “left” were just a bunch of idle people getting looking what to get offended by today. Only later at uni did I find out how overblown the whole “SJW” youtube thing was, and how much more insane and damaging the other extreme was.

And I believe that this is very much the case, people in school aren’t “right wing” because they carefully thought about life and society, but because all they hear about the “left” is this comically exaggerated notion that they’re touchy freaks who just want to scream how they’re oppressed by everything. Ironically, what got me out of the stupid right wing youtube company was left wing youtube with hour long videos exposing how that “SJW” narrative is just manipulation. But by the time they make one long detailed video exposing some false story, 1000 more of them pop out.

Honestly, the large portion of the internet is just poisonous, especially youtube. The sooner people learn to think and examine sources (use the internet), the better off we’re all be.

I don’t really see a problem with saying things like “my female friends” or “my female colleagues”, when it’s used as an adjective.