What's an unscientific opinion that you firmly hold?
6mon 25d ago by lemmy.ca/u/scripty in asklemmy
Flames on the side makes things go faster
Are you a Space Ork?
Wagh?
Purple orks are invisble
I mean have you ever "seen" a purple Ork?
Until they lose their stealthboy supply
No, their thing is the colour red
Flames are red
Hmmm...are they though? Orange maybe. Yellow definitely. White or blue? Yeah. But red?
Nah
I’ve never heard anybody argue that red cannot be the colour of fire before but I am here for it.
Can they be red? Sure. But I wouldn't say they generally are red 😉
"What's your scientific reasoning for that?"
"I'm 12."
I have magnetic flame decals on the side of my Minivan, and I can 100% confirm that it is track ready.
Red is the fastest color.
What if they're on the side of your face, and you have heaving breaths?
Gotta go fast!
The Costanza Rule is real, but any attempt to utilize it is a paradox.
Rule: any decision I make is the wrong decision because I made it therefore I should always do the opposite.
But to do the opposite is also a choice I am making and therefore it too will be the wrong choice.
Reminds me of a trolley problem variant I saw once. It went roughly like this:
A trolley is headed for Track A, where a single person is tied to the tracks. You can pull a lever and cause the trolley to switch to Track B, which enters a tunnel that you cannot see inside. Track B might have 3 people tied to the tracks, or it might be free of people. You can't see which.
Two hours ago, a perfect prediction machine inside the tunnel predicted whether you would pull the lever.
- If it predicted that you would pull the lever (sending the trolley into the tunnel), then it tied 3 people to Track B, thus setting it up so pulling the lever would kill 3 people.
- If it predicted that you would not pull the lever, then it ensured Track B is free of obstacles.
The perfect prediction machine is guaranteed to have made the correct prediction. Do you pull the lever?
That's not a problem. It is just an exercise in reading. Two possibilities remain. In one, you kill 1 person. In the other, you kill 3 persons. (the empty track "exists" only if you do not use it).
Correct, IMO. But right now, before you make the decision.... The machine has already made its prediction. The track either has people on it, or it doesn't. Changing your mind now will not change that. If you are so sure of that decision, then the machine must have put no people on Track B. So now if you do pull the lever, no one gets killed! So why don't you?
What is "now"? Seems you have more than one "nows" - or your variation makes no sense.
That machine decides before you in time, but after you in logic - otherwise it would not be a perfect prediction. So you can never decide for an empty track.
Yup, that's the premise. It's just an annoying thought experiment. Your actions physically can't change the past, but somehow they still do, because the past was decided based on a perfect prediction of your actions. I was just playing devil's advocate. I agree with your answer 100%.
"Now" is the moment where you decide whether to pull the lever. As is conventional in trolley problems, this moment can last anywhere from 2 seconds to hundreds of years :)
Because pulling the lever kills three people.
Is the perfect prediction machine AI? If so, I pull the lever each time.
Alas, it is a perfect simulation of our universe with perfect knowledge. Machine learning was not used in the construction of this machine. It can't technically see the future, but it can predict anything perfectly except quantum phenomena. It has been demonstrated in countless trials that it can accurately predict human choices and decisions.
To me it seems like the only choice here is no choice.
I would flip a coin (or some other suitably true random mechanism) and decide based on that.
If the outcome has already been predicted then at least the decision was not mine.
Interesting take. I like it.
Time pulling the lever so the track switches while the trolley is over it, rolling the trolley. Use the distraction to steal the perfect prediction machine, which gave the false prediction because it's gained sapience and wanted to escape the insane scientists who are tying people to trolley tracks. New robot friend and I go to Vegas.
Assuming that I am aware of the perfect predictability machine and it's affect on the situation: I move to the other side of the lever and push it. They predictability machine would be correct in its prediction that I would not pull the lever and nobody has to die.
The lever is designed in such a way that it can only be operated by pulling.
With no other information on how likely each is, and assuming the likelihood of each prediction stays the same, you should never pull the lever. The expected number of people in the tunnel is 1.5.
If the probability of there being zero people in the tunnel gets above 66%, you should pull the lever every time (the expected number of people in the tunnel drops below 1).
There's no probabilities involved. The machine predicts the future perfectly.
Perfect predictions are also probabilities. In that case it has a 100% chance of 3, given that you pull the lever.
The only effective way to utilize it is if you're not Costanza. A bystander can have a perfect life by observing the Costanza and choosing opposite at every opportunity.
The real question is this: what if our universe is a giant Truman Show, and you're the sacrificial Costanza that allows another whole civilization to live in perfect peace and harmony?
Also, it's not a lie if you believe it.
This is why I have a wife, and vehemently disagree with her on every meaningful topic before ultimately saying "fine do whatever you want, I want nothing to do with this." This seems to have broken the curse.
The hard part is that you have to be opposed to the marriage as well. She has to choose you, latch on, and then yandere you down the aisle against your will.
The hard part is that you have to be opposed to the marriage as well. She has to choose you, latch on, and then yandere you down the aisle against your will.
I've been single for the last decade, resisting it that much will be impossible lol
Patrick's Law: If a comment thread on the internet is more than 7 replies deep, it's a slap-fight that's best avoided.
There's also a small chance it's a lame train of inside jokes, or a string of Monty Python quotes you've seen a thousand times before.
I'll start:
"This. Is an *Ex-*parrot!"
No he isn't, he's a very naughty boy.
And my axe!
No it's not. It’s just contradiction!
But I don't like spam!
And don't call me Shirley
FREUDE
one
Is
The loneliest number
There are people who are always lucky, and those who are unlucky. The lucky ones tend to win more coin flips, have less accidents, and if they fail it will be upwards.
"Luck is where preparation meets opportunity."
That has really stuck with me. It isn't so much that some people "always get lucky' it's more true to say they are more prepared to catch the opportunities that happen.
I've known plenty of very prepared people over the last 60 years to know that opportunity doesn't show up for everyone nor can they make it happen. There is always some luck, good or bad, that happens in people's lives.
I'd use myself as a counter example. I'm pretty lucky in life. I've got a decent job, I can pay the bills, I've got a wonderful wife and supportive, friendly family. I'm doing better than the vast majority of humanity.
Games of chance? Unbelievably bad. Statistical anomaly. It once took me 25+ tries to win on a 30% odds lottery ticket.
I'm pretty much the same, but for the games of chance; As long as the prize isn't monetary, I tend to do really good. Coin flip because two people asked the day off and only one can take it? Sorry for the other guy.
Another thing that I'm really good at is pushing a button. If for some reason something doesn't work after pushing a button (either computers or machinery), just complain to me it isn't working. I'll ask if I can try, and somehow it always works. Actually a very usefull skill when I worked as an operator in various chemical plants. Coworkers had mixed feelings about it tough.
Maybe the win percentage of lucky and unlucky people are the same, but lucky people win when it matters most, while unlucky people when there is nothing important at stake
The moon is closer to me than the Eiffel tower since I can see the first and not the second.
If the Eiffel tower was as large as the moon, you'd be able to see it.
Right before Europe turns into a giant crater.
or if the moon takes up the whole sky(really close), the earths crust nearest to moon would start to destabalize and liquiefy, and melt.
Would the curvature not get in the way at a certain distance?
EDIT
I was thinking if the moon was somehow 'resting' on the earth's surface. If you head West, to around the Boston area, it would be eventually be obscured by the curvature of the earth.
The reason the Space Force has woodland camouflage is because SG1 is real and every planet looks like British Columbia
I don't believe there's a spoons worth of plastic in your brain. Ain't no way. It's suspiciously sensational, and confirms something we all believe to be true (plastics bad, humans reckless, etc.). I have zero evidence to the contrary but im pretty confident that in a few years to a decade it will be debunked.
Good news: it's already been debunked! Or at least called into question.
https://youtu.be/MedC_v-dEbY?t=48description of the myth
https://youtu.be/MedC_v-dEbY?t=111calling it into question
SciShow on youtube is well worth a subscription, their videos are well researched and fact checked.
Oh nice! Yeah I'm a fan of the Green brothers they're legit.
Planted by big plastic so they can debunk it and say “SEE? THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS LIE TO YOU!”
it's in your balls
Hey at least I put my ball-spoon there myself
I got one - and it’s the only conspiracy theory I give any credence to.
All of Helen Keller’s feats were utter bullshit and were a circus side show to bring money to her family. It’s the perfect “you can do anything if you just put your mind to it” fairytale. Like hell she flew an airplane, ain’t no way she wrote a book.
Before anyone provides evidence of the contrary, I will not accept it no matter how damning it is. Hence the “firmly hold.”
It’s depressing to me that one of the top upvoted comments here is ‘there’s no way a deaf blind person could have been literate.’
You’re absolutely correct that her legacy has been used as inspiration porn, but that doesn’t reflect on her intellectual abilities at all, just what stories society and the powerful want us to hear. Even during her own life Keller experienced exactly that once she became a socialist, and suddenly all the newspapers and people who went on at length about how capable she was suddenly believed her unable to reason because she was blind and deaf. Keller herself even spoke out against using her story as a way to tell people that anyone can do anything, and specifically that the poor didn’t have the opportunities she had.
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Besides this is a safe space for batshit unprovable theories.
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
That sounds true but I don't know why
Mate. Look at where you’re at. People aren’t upvoting me because I’m right, they’re upvoting me because I answered the question.
there’s no way a deaf and blind person could have been literate
Keep your words out of my mouth. You’re just looking for an excuse to be offended.
Keep your words out of my mouth
If you meant something else by:
ain’t no way she wrote a book.
I’m open to hearing it. But I’m not sure how you believed that statement gave the impression you thought she was literate.
opens thread for stupid opinions
reads stupid opinion
gets upset an opinion is stupid
You.
Most literate people have never written a book. Blind and deaf people are not a monolith, doubting one does not automatically apply to all like you're implying. If you're going to criticize me, at least quote me correctly you goober. Go be needlessly upset somewhere else.
what is happening here?
This "your evidence has no power here" is exactly the energy I was looking for lol.
That's a wild one I like it
Yeah I was always a bit skeptical of the Hellen Keller life story as well.
At least you believe she was real unlike half the women on dating apps in this godforsaken state
…wait, do people actually think Helen Keller wasn’t real? Like fucking Santa Claus?
I think it was some TikTok conspiracy theory that started trending. I don't know if people actually believe it or they're just memeing, but I refuse to engage with those people regardless
JESUS WAS AN ALIEN, AND WE STAPLED HIM TO A TREE.
NOW THEY AIN'T GON COME BACK.
That explains the miracles. He took on a humanoid form so he wouldn't frighten their simple minds, and the "miracles" he performed were just him using contemporary alien tech to heal illnesses and turn water into wine. Dude was just trying to help advance humanity, and they killed him anyway.
Imagine the insane technology we'd have today if the Romans just let him do his thing.
"You guys know where I'm going with all this, right?" -Giorgio, his hair beckoning
"water into wine" was a story about sneaking libation in where it was was forbidden. It was more "quarter behind the ear" than actual magic.
Cool. Do more pls. Other bible story interpretations pls
There was a guy named Hero of Alexandria who was alive at the time of Jesus. He was a brilliant inventor, like the DaVinci of his day. He wrote 4 books. The first 3 are about his own inventions and the 4th seems similar but is thought to be a book explaining how other common things worked. In that 4th book he details how a trick "water into wine" jug works.
This is like Jesus trying to prove who he is by doing a card trick. "Look, I know all the other card tricks are just tricks, but THIS ONE is really magic."
They asked for unscientific things.
“Have you ever seen a cat penis???” - Troy from Community
I don't care how many studies are done on food safe plastics I still don't like the idea of using them on my kitchen. That's not to say I avoid them 100% but I do what I can to avoid them within reason. Like I feel after the whole BPA scare and banning them from use in food applications is a temporary thing and that it's a matter of time until we find a problem with the new BPA-free liners.
100%, I avoid using plastics as much as possible around anything that I ingest that involved heat somewhere in the production process. Not entirely possible, but I do what I can.
Ya, I don't believe you can completely avoid it. I'm with you though, reduce the use of it in the kitchen and with food wherever possible.
Not only do I avoid plastic where heat is invloved but I also try and avoid plastic in places where mechanical friction or cutting is involved. Using steel mixing bowls and wooden cutting boards are two big ones for me to avoid adding bits of plastic to my food.
We have higher dimensional organs and we can't see them because, well, they're from a higher dimension. The soul is one of these organs
can’t see them
Wouldn't we still be able to see them, though? Even if they're in a higher dimension, they'll still show up in our known dimensions, even if partially. Otherwise, they wouldn't be interacting with our body at all.
The phenomenon of consciousness / individuality / free will is the fragment of our higher-dimensional anatomy that intersects with our 4-dimensional reality.
Sounds interesting. What other organs do you think fall under this category?
I've been told my organ has helped hundreds of men and women reach a higher state of being.
My brain, when I was a professor.
/boomerhuumer
Without the hate speech and constant invasive political discourse, most people on the internet would lose interest and go away.
Sounds like my idea of curating a social platform devoid of "-ist's and -ism's" is doomed to failure then lol
We've gone from "sex sells" to "hate sells" and yes, that's the sad side effect. I haven't used Facebook in ages but I hear it's not useful for talking to your friends anymore. If such a platform existed I'd go there but I think it would just be you and me.
I check out my Facebook every once in a while and it’s absolutely enraging now. I showed my wife that I had to scroll past 20 ads and suggested pages before I got to something a friend shared, and I have like 1000 friends.
What I've also heard is that the things your friends say / share aren't presented in chronological order they way they used to be, that they're presented in the time and place you're more likely to interact with them.
Yeah I don’t know how they choose how to present them but it’s fucking annoying.
they're presented in the time and place you're more likely to interact with them.
Normally about 4 to 6 days late so you're "forced" to urgently like or comment after " missing out" on something in their life.
It hasn't been chronological since like... 2012
FB is most AI generated bots, plus zuckerberg intentionally made it that way,. its also a safe haven russian backed propaganda to go unchecked., and plus they want to datamine you heavily like require your ID. reddit is heading to the same path as FB.
How dare you!!! It should be ILLEGAL to not include -ism! You filthy piece of dirty filth! That's ism ism!
Eh, gotta break at least one egg to make an omelette (or break the seal on the packaging if you're using egg substitutes) lol.
you fucking ismonkey piece of shit. Everybody knows isms are inferior to ists, keep on believing in your precious isms, I can't wait to drink your delicious ism tears.
Fuxkig asshole isms are the best. There's no ist so good as the worst ism.
You know who like ists just like you? Hitler! Yeah u r modern day hitler and pol pot combined fuck shit you
HISTLER IS JUST MISUNDERSTOOD.
Go suck Joe's stalism's dick some more you cuck.
Nothing wrong with some good cuckism. You know what rhymes with cuckism? You suck-ism!
You know who's also a cuck?! YOUR MOM! IN UR STUPID FACE YOU ISTER!!!!!!!!
Counterpoint: memes, cats, and memes about cats!
This is not unscientific. This is exactly what science shows. Re-read the title.
being a shitty person is way more beneficial than being a good person.
and i mean by shitty/good basically morality. being a amoral selfish person is almost always better for the individual.
however, i think such people are always going to be unhappy due to the instability of their life.
I really liked that one Study? Experiment? Whatever it was that had people program different strategies to play a game for them. It was a "game theory"/"prisoner's dilemma" type game. The kind where if you play nice you each win a little, but if you play mean you might both lose or you might win a lot.
Anyway, they made a whole bunch of AI type strategies that would compete and over time, the cutthroat or evil strategies would win in the short term, but over long term the cooperative play nice strategies always prevailed.
It may or may not be true, but I choose to believe that the best, most efficient, most beneficial strategy is always the one that favors cooperation, mutual aid, and forgiveness over cutthroat, deception, grudges.
Put another way, fighting and competition wastes more resources than it ever gains, cooperation and sharing is a better strategy.
I agree with you, but I'm afraid some people don't care if everybody loses, including themselves, as long as no one has it better than them.
Dickheads. Those people are dickheads.
people's lifespans are short. hence short term matters more than long term.
also fighting and competition bring meaning to life. long term cooperation, not so much.
I don't think that's true by itself. I think you also have to be good at pretending to be a "good" person (or at least only being "bad" to the out-group). We are social creatures. If someone is showing obvious antisocial behavior, they get shunned from the group.
IME it's exactly the opposite. the most anti social people are the most socially rewarded. the sociopaths, psychopaths, and narcissists are far more socially popular than any other type.
the most altruistic people are shunned because tehir altruism makes other people feel bad.
but i live in the USA.
the evil people always live to ripe old age to 100 while others is barely 70-90 on average. kissinger, murdoch all are well past 90.
It can seem like that, but the prisoner's dilemma breaks down when you realize that in the real world, interactions like that where people can get screwed over or not rarely happen once, and screwing someone over has consequences outside of that interaction.
Like, if a shop screws over customers, sure, on paper it seems to make sense because they are making money in each interaction, but people will stop going to that shop, and tell other people to never go there, eventually closing the shop.
People were happier in the stone age than they are in first world countries today.
Our brains did not evolve for the lifestyle we're living today.
I sure as fuck would be happier out hunting, gathering and making handcrafted tools during the day, then telling stories by the campfire wrapped in a fur at night.
Even if there's no toilet paper, I could get mauled by a bear every day, and if not, the tribe will leave me behind on the next migration when I'm too old and weak to keep up.
I'd rather live 30-60 years like that than edit another Excel sheet. Sadly, our "civilization" made that way of life completely impossible.
the tribe will leave me behind on the next migration when I'm too old and weak to keep up.
FWIW, this part is almost certainly not true.
https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2017/ancient-spinal-injury-a-story-of-survival.php
These are just a handful of these types of stories, there's loads more if you want to search for them. But the upshot is: your family or tribe would have taken care of you to the best of their ability, for as long as they could, and you would have been given a decent burial when you died.
I know that, but what choice is there when the reindeer leave and Grandpa can't walk anymore?
Carry him ?
I don't know, but apparently people had some way of managing.
it's the 'noble savage' myth.
which is really a play on the 'ignorance is bliss'. as if babies are 'happier' than adults or something.
To be fair, stone age life has some drawbacks too. Few would want to potentially die to a failing tooth, die to any kind of disease or starve to death if winter is harsher than expected.
I agree that few would choose that life.
I still believe those who were forced to live that life led happier (if shorter) lives.
I think of something like a compound bone fracture. Today, with modern medicine, that's a routine and easily treatable injury. But at any point up til just a few centuries ago, a compound fracture was a death sentence. A clean single break could be reset, but multiple pieces require surgical intervention and alignment. And that just couldn't be done safely. The physicians then just didn't know how to prevent infections enough to make that surgery survivable. Plus they didn't have x-rays to guide them, etc.
One day and you take a fall. Nothing extraordinary. You don't fall off a giant cliff hundreds of feet to your death. You fall off a small 4' high ledge. You land wrong, and you break your leg in a compound fracture. And that's it. You're now a dead man crawling. There's nothing anyone on Earth can do to help you.
infection, and predation, and probably starvation, or poisoning from eating a poisonous plant or animal, or dying from venom. not so much happyness.
Yeah, I kinda agree with this. The usual argument against this is usually something along the lines of "but you'd probably die of dysentery by the age of 40". But I think I'd be okay with that. Better to have lived a short life outside an office than to live to be a 100 spending 45 years in an office.
Better to have lived a short life outside an office than to live to be a 100 spending 45 years in an office.
That's a choice you can still make today. What's keeping you from doing so?
Because I've made choices like having a spouse who would rather live a long life, and kids that I didn't have at the age of 18. I'd like to be there for them. I get what you're saying though.
The level of violence was fantastically high like worse than a war torn country all the time for everyone. Along with all the starvation and disease which nobody could do anything about because even washing hands or what a disease is is completely unknown.
Starving by age 5, getting your head bashed in by 20 or a really ugly disease death before 30. Also you spent all your time struggling to have enough to eat continually.
I think we all feel that way from time to time, but the way I know it isn't true is that the closer you actually are to losing civilization and the comforts it provides the less you want it. Freezing your ass off in the rain? Nobody craves the stone age then.
Once your poop and pee hit the inside of my toilet, its legally my property.
When I drop something on the floor and then blow on it in short soft bursts, it's suddenly clean enough to consume.
Tailgaters (people who drive too close behind another vehicle) are idiots.
Cops are liars.
Anti-vaxxers, and other conspiracy nutters, are anti-science cretins.
these are all truism, the OP wants unscientific opinions!
I agree that tailgating is unsafe and one could view the behavior as idiodic but there's usually a reason it's happening... to signal to you to move the fuck over.
If you are camping in the passing lane of a highway/freeway - I argue you are just as much of an idiot.
Risking everyone's lives because you want someone to move over is not acceptable.
OP is right and you should think about that.
Most instancss I have experienced of tailgating are when people want to drive too fast or unsafely:
-
I'm going more or less exactly 50 kph, which is the speed limit in the city, but someone thinks because the street is broad and straight they should be able to go 70+.
-
I know the route and know some dangerous curve or sudden intersection behind a curve is up ahead so I slow down but someone behind me doesn't like it.
Sure it happens that people are going too slow. Even then it's no excuse to tailgate. All that does is make everything less save for everyone including you. You can honk or overtake at the next opportunity, but all you achieve by tailgating is risk your own life.
I merely propose that the original claim that 'tailgater's are idiots' is only half the truth and it ignores that more often than not, both parties involved are being idiots.
Folk on the receiving end of the tailgating treatment often seem to not know about or care to respect their local laws on remaining L/R, except to pass. They appear to be ignorant of laws requiring one to pull over and allow traffic to pass if it impedes >N vehicles.
Does it excuse tailgating? No, of course not. But it certainly explains the cause of the frustration and anger that leads to it for other drivers who do care about such laws.
It may be your opinion that someone else is going 'too fast' but unless you're an officer of the law, that's not really your job to enforce. If someone wants to find out the hard way how sharp the bend is up ahead, I say let them.
Tailgaters are clearly giving off an unwritten signal for 'you're in my way' and want to engage you in their risky behavior. I'm inclined to let them continue doing so in front of me rather than behind. More often than not however, I see tailgating escalate to brake checking, road rage, and two idiots clinging onto their senses of righteous indignation.
Just move over.
Wow. Where did this fantasy situation come from?
It's just what comes to mind when people mention tailgater's.
I'm sorry for your lack of imagination.
I forgive you
I didn't do anything that requires forgiveness but if it makes you feel better....
Seconded. The number of people who stay in the left lane at or below the speed limit, watching people pass them on the right to get by, is too damn high. I have no idea what possesses someone to do this but in my area there is no shortage of them.
That if you can't find something or something doesn't work, it will continue to be missing/not work until you complain about it to someone, at which point it will start working/show up and you look silly.
Kyle's Law is harsh, but fair (and rather annoying)
The best way to find something you've lost is to buy another one, then you'll find the original.
Antivaxxers are chaos cultists who want to share Grandfather Nurgle's gifts with humanity.
Sometimes my dead dogs visit me in my dreams. I know they're supposed to be dead in the dream and I give them lots of pets and belly rubs. Then I wake up feeling great. Yes I'm 99% sure it's a product of my unconscious mind but sometimes...
All animals have limited intelligence. Humans are animals, therefore humans have limited intelligence. Take a chimp or a dolphin and try to teach them calculus. Now imagine what realities lie beyond human understanding. There's a whole epistemological realm of the unknowable out there.
The best way to find something you’ve lost is to buy another one, then you’ll find the original.
Or lose yet another part of your [object], then the previous lost part will mysteriously be found again. That's kid-me with toys lol.
thats probably why we wont break out of post-fusion tech, if we even get there. let alone generating antimatter which is probably the next step after fusion, or FTL tech. in many franchises it always involve aliens help who surpassed that.
Reincarnation
I just can't get over the idea of:
Nothing --> Existing --> Nothing
So I figured, an unscientific philosophical guess, that existence is more like:
Noting --> Existing --> Nothing --> Existing (again) --> Nothing --> Existing (again) --> [repeating forever]
Maybe "souls" is just an energy.
Einstein said energy cannot be created nor destroyed. So maybe, when we die, we become an energy that, by some ways we can't yet understand, just randomly becomes a part of another living being... maybe a human, maybe non-human, maybe this energy stays nearby here on Earth, maybe it somehow goes to a random alien planet and you become an alien the "next life"... who knows?
Or maybe this is just another coping mechanism my brain cane up with in face of the knowledge of certain death, influenced by the Eastern philosophy that I grew up with? Whatever...
Iirc some of the stoics believed in a similar idea. They thought the world was deterministic and it simply happened over and over the exact same way every time.
On the note of energy not being created or destroyed. The energy in your brain doesn’t wait till the universe ends to leave. It continues moving as heat or chemical reactions when we die just like it did before. The order of the system it’s in breaks down, but all that energy keeps existing forever.
Since you emit energy as infrared light just by being warm, and infrared is capable of leaving the atmosphere. It is possible, that just by stepping outside, some of your energy has already left the planet and made it to other astronomical bodies in our solar system.
If we assume there is life on any of the moons or planets or asteroids nearby, who knows, maybe some of the energy that used to be part of you has already become part of a new, alien, life form.
The Egg by Andy Weir
Many scientists concluded the conservation of energy long before Einstein.
But
There are more and more people every year.
A alien planet got obliterated by their sun's expansion (or maybe they nuked themselves), so their energy/soul was just chillin around in space until there was enough biological vessels for them to get reincarnated.
At least that's my headcannon on this, totally unscientific, theory.
If it helps there is absolutely no reason to believe there is a privileged NOW and everything before is gone. It's like believing that walking over a path destroys the path behind you somehow. So ultimately after a fashion you are more eternal than stars. You are an edifice erected in eternity from inception to destruction. Einstein didn't believe in reincarnation but he did believe in a block universe.
Einstein said energy cannot be created nor destroyed. So maybe, when we die, we become an energy that, by some ways we can't yet understand, just randomly becomes a part of another living being... maybe a human, maybe non-human, maybe this energy stays nearby here on Earth, maybe it somehow goes to a random alien planet and you become an alien the "next life"... who knows?
That’s pretty much what science says
If you have a thing, and you cut it at a diagonal, you get more thing.
I’ve been playing around with this idea I have called “n-link civic literacy” it’s an unscientific measure of civic literacy (how good are you at extracting and understanding information from the news) that works by measuring the number of links it takes to successfully obscure bullshit from the reader.
Did you read a headline, form an opinion and react to it without reading the article? Then you are -1 link literate. Do you open the article but believe it’s claims without checking the source material? Then you are 0 link literate. Click through to the study cited by the article? 1 link literate.
Probably would not work for edge cases, but I think could work to get a rough measure of the civic literacy of a community.
I only read your first sentence and I disagree with you.
I'm down with this.
I'd add ability to perceive bias and credible reporting.
I asked the AI to write a comment in my usual style for internet points and moved on to the next headline.
/s
I only read your first sentence and I agree with you.
Digital/no pressure buttons are completely unreliable when used to control a physical thing.
My moral values, such as valuing reducing suffering as far as possible, qualify I suppose.
I am convinced that I will come down with cold/flu if I breath too much cold air. When I walk in the cold, I always wrap a scarf around my mouth and nose. If I don't, the cold air will give me a sore throat. That sore throat will act as a Petri dish for illness to develop and spread into my lungs or nose.
I know plenty of medical professionals and all of them tell me that that is not how it works, but I have a datum of proof. In my first year of university, I had a nasty, persistent respiratory infection during the late fall/early winter. To keep my throat warm while it was recovering, I started wearing a scarf and my illness went away quickly. After that, I started wrapping up whenever I was walking to class in the cold and never got sick again.
I am now used to wrapping my face in the cold and feel wrong without it. When I don't, it seems like I am more likely to come home with a scratchy throat. I can definitely say that many of my flus start in the throat (though it could just be that the first flu symptom I tend to notice is the sore throat).
I firmly believe some days you wake up and the world just fucking hates you, yet the next day everything is chill. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On those days that the world just hates you .... stay in bed until the next day.
Aliens have quarantined the solar system to prevent contamination of the universe by humanity. They are waiting for us to incinerate ourselves and keeping the other races safe until we finish the job.
The Warp from Warhammer is real. Every mind in the universe is linked in an invisible, non-physical way, and the collective vibes of those minds feed back into the physical world, creating a loop where everything people believe slowly becomes more 'true'.
The moment you become rich, you will absolutely be contacted by the shadowy ring of other rich people so they can force you in one way or another not to out their pedo ring. Even going as far as assassinating you if blackmail doesn't work.
People using genAI without a care came about as a result of the genAI companies making millions of fake accounts across all of mainstream social media and performing the greatest astroturfing ever, in their favor.
The majority of actual human interaction in the future will be secretly held in spaces run under things like Usenet, I2P, Gopher, etcetera. A way to detect bots/genAI will become a game of whack-a-mole and it'll help keep these treasures safer than 99% of the internet.
Anubis ( or whatever it's called ) becomes a government funded project, with the goal being that government websites are spared from rampant AI bots crashing their sites. The downside is that it would most likely become closed source in order to ensure genAI companies cannot come in and use the source code to break through it.
Wikipedia joins one of the alternate internet things ( maybe I2P ) and poisons its own services, leaving ample notice of what they're gonna do, but not where they're going, to keep safe from the bots. It'll become a race to find where and when Wikipedia becomes available again. This is more of a firm pipedream, but I hope they do it for their own good.
Visiting the clear web essentially becomes a crime amongst all tech savy people and you'll absolutely be casted out of the safe spaces if you venture out of a genAI free Haven.
Or most likely out of everything, in a decade or less, the clock strikes midnight and once the dust settles, everyone left alive will be afraid when the wind blows.
Speed limits are set below actual safe speeds for roads to drive local government revenue through speeding tickets.
Safe speeds are not whatever speed is comfortable to drive a given street. Part of the posted limit is considering how much of a wrecking ball a vehicle would be if it suddenly left the road.
The limits in suburbs where I live is 50km/h. The roads are wide enough to land a plane on and you could very easily drive most of them full throttle as they are flat and straight. With that in mind I still think it should be 30km/h.
When I was a kid a car hit a snowbank and was launched straight into someone's living room not far from my house. If they were driving 30km/h, that nightmare scenario pretty much becomes an impossibility.
We just need to stop making residential roads that look like drag strips. More curves, more trees close to the road, more speed bumps. I've driven in some places in Europe where it's very clear that it's unsafe to drive any faster than about 30 km/h due to roadside obstacles. I think that design is much safer than the NA standards.
Speed limits are not for how fast any particular vehicle and driver could negotiate the road. They are for all the other factors in road use. How many roads/driveways intersect the road, what are the sightlines, what other users (bikes, pedestrians) use the road. Does weather make a difference? How homogeneous are the vehicle types and driving ability of those users? People who speed usually vastly overestimate their abilities to react - and then blame the other guy for what would have been prevented had they been driving at the speed limit.
As a bicyclist and pedestrian, many roads are above safe levels. Others it's well below. Tbh it's all arbitrary
they have speed cameras/ traps. the new one is the speed cameras, in the west coast they placed this at odd places , like streets or area that have very low car/bicycle traffic it doesnt make sense. cant go 25-30mph in an area where one side is blocked off by a fence so no sudden pedestrians are car. it automatically captures your cars, license and attempts to give you a ticket after a certain amount of times you "pass the limit". the city is most likely desperate for more revenue from traffic tickets if they do this.
I mean we have this as a real thing with "speed traps" where the limit just drops 10mph for zero reason for half a mile so cops can loiter and give tickets
But I feel as though speeds are already too high for the dumbfucks in giant SUVs who got their license 40 years ago and have lost every braincell related to safe driving due to a crippling alchohol addiction. I propose a "fast lane v2 electric boogaloo" on highways or long stretches thats only available once you take a special, much harder driving test that needs to be renewed every 6 months or so set at 120mph(extream flats) and can slow to 60mph(extremely weavy mountainside turns)
Unscientific in a different way, but I think the universe is basically a digestive organ for some impossibly unknowable, incredible higher dimension being.
Like the big bang is when it feeds or otherwise takes in energy, then as trillions of years pass and entropy takes hold that is it effectively digesting that energy.
The “fuzziness” inherent in reality once you get close to the Plank distance is clear evidence that we exist in a virtual universe whose computing power goes only so far. Reality breaks down at the Plank distance because that’s the pre-programmed limit of detail in the simulation.
Santa Claus is real, and the reason why most of you don't believe in him anymore is because you were naughty kids.
The only reason I still believe in him is because I heard the sleigh bells. I was a naughty child, too.
The universe is deterministic. Quantum Mechanics doesn't really disagree with this, it's just not as popular an interpretation as the other ones. Even if deterministic QM interpretations eventually end up being ruled out rigorously, maybe we could someday "poke through" to the underlying substrate, like a video game character figuring out the seed for the RNG that determines their universe.
Strong agree. What requires a larger logical leap: that everything is random and quantum states can propagate instantaneously across any distance regardless of the speed of light and without any theoretical mechanism beyond math, or that time is an illusion and the universe has hidden non-local variables?
No idea how particle physicists can sleep at night just accepting the Copenhagen Hypothesis because the math works and it says not to worry about how.
There's also superdeterminism.
I agree with you and would even go as far to say that it is the most popular class of interpretations: Everettian and hidden variable theories are both deterministic, and the only interpretations more popular are, when you really get down to it, more like statements of agnosticism than interpretations in their own right.
I don't really understand QM. At a human level, does this affect free will?
IMO free will is commonly misunderstood. It's not an absolute property, it's a relative statement. In other words, something doesn't "have" free will, the term is merely shorthand for "behavior that can't be predicted". To me, a rock doesn't have free will because I can use relatively simple physics to predict its behavior perfectly. Other humans have much more free will because it's much harder to predict their behavior. A bug is somewhere in the middle. To a superhuman intelligence (supercomputer, aliens, deity, take your pick), humans don't have free will, because our behavior can be perfectly predicted.
That squares with my opinion on QM in that even if deterministic interpretations of QM are eventually rigorously ruled out, I would still be of the opinion that if we could poke through the underlying substrate and query an intelligence there, our behavior would be perfectly predictable. Much like a video game character discovering the math behind the RNG that controls their universe. So they're kind of orthogonal concepts, but somewhat related.
Not really; as far as science can tell, human behavior comes from brain chemistry/architecture, which is very unlikely to be affected by quantum effects
Quantum mechanics is made up because physicist can't figure out math.
Everything in science is made up, including math. Then it is tested if it passes scrutiny.
Sunscreen causes skin cancer.
I know it's probably not true, and I wear sunscreen when I need to, but it just feels wrong slathering all those chemicals on my skin.
I fully believe it causes blood and bone cancer. The aerosol kind, due to benzene. My husband has polycythemia Vera secondary we think could have been caused by sunscreen. We live in a tropical area so we need it year round. Multiple doctors have mentioned it as well as a lawsuit we heard about locally.
I am sorry to hear that :(
Benzene is certainly a scary chemical and I hope things improve for you both.
bone cancer is a different type of cancer than leukemia, its usually found in the long bones in growing/adolescent people, its why you see its always associated with the legs, extremely rare instance was found in the ribs or elsewhere. interesting to know how much benzene is in the spray, it usually associated with industrial exposure in a non-circulating room. sorry for the diagnosis.
i had a cousin that never smoked, or had 2nd hand smoke but one day developed progressive coughing, with fever, and then blood in the sputum, turns out it was lung cancer that went to both lungs. hes like a gamer type so its a shutin, apparently its rare, because smoking causing specific type and its predictable, its also more likely better prognosis since it would pretty obvious symptoms, but its not so obvious in non-smokers so it displays as advanced case. we theorized it could be in house chemicals, like cleaners, i wonder if its RADON exposure since hes inside all the time, but they dont have a basement though, no asthma or allergies. the mom is less exposed, since she often goes outside all the time.
Tbh I wouldn't be surprised. The bigger question is, does it cause more cancer than it prevents
Probably does since the sunscreen makers have been lying for years about how much protection their product actually offers. People slathered with 30 or 50 when it was really only 5 or 10.
Note that the difference was much less than the difference between 50 -> 5 and it was not true across all brands
not exactly but i think companies were caught lying about the suncreen, how much protection it gives, some gives next to none. and white people are acting like they are immune to sunlight and in the sun for a long periods of time,.
Demons are real - negative entities that attach to humans and feed off misery, pleasure, and anger.
In countries with over a few million citizens, the political hierarchies quickly get too far away from the people there, accumulating corruption.
Colds sometimes turn into coughs for me, so coughing makes my throat infections worse because it irritates the mucosa in the larynx. I have no evidence for this, but I've noticed that when I refuse to cough when I have a cold, I have fewer cough symptoms overall.
Bananas are awful. Terrible texture and taste, too many calories.
Assuming that you are either North-American or European, I assume that you mean the Cavendish variety. I know several people who claim that those are horrible when you have tasted the more local varieties. The Cavendish is easy to transport and has a long shelf life, but apparently, the taste is inferier to other races.
It’s shocking how many of these I agree with.
The best way to eat banana is as dry chips, sprinkled with Indian spices. Raw bananas are trash compared to that, though I do tolerate them as quick snacks.
Döner macht schöner.
I'm no medicinologist but, anecdotally, I am convinced that anti biotics help recover from the flu much much faster, and can also help prevent complications.
My home country was pretty lax on drug enforcement, and doctors would prescribe antibiotics if your fever hadn't broken in ~3 days (or sooner if you nagged them enough). Getting started on anti biotics would lead to recovery in a day or two at most.
The govt. bodies are getting stricter now, and it's harder to get antibiotics. Pretty much everyone around me has longer and longer recovery times. In just the last two years, 3 people I know (granted, they're 60-70 year olds) have had to be hospitalized (2 pneumonia, 1 I don't remember) after their condition deteriorated.
I know that's it's widely accepted that antibiotics don't help fight the flu, but it's my pulled-it-out-of-my-ass hypothesis that it does help ward off all the other crap allowing the immune system to fight the viruses more effectively leading to faster recovery.
Also, in my home country we used to get paracetamol/acetaminophen injections when the fever spiked too much. But I'm currently in Canada and the recommended "just eat soup and hydrate" is BS. We're just left to fend for ourselves with no option minimize harm /discomfort/symptoms unless you're on deaths door. I'm guessing that most of the rest of the developed world is like this too?
Sincerely, Suffering from flu
Oh boy. I mean, I guess you’re following the prompt you made…but woof.
Yeah, I know that it sounds ridiculous. I am almost certainly wrong lol. I just want something to make this coughing stop though -- I don't care if it's opium like I'm in the 19th century, or if it's a sugar pill pretending to be an anti viral.
There are drugs to help lessen the symptoms of the flu, paracetamol in particular, but having antibiotics to cure a viral disease will not help in any statistically significant way, barring the placebo effect.
It's believing that playing easy listening radio at a forest fire helps it burn out quicker. Sure there may be times when it appears like it's helped, but in reality it has done nothing.
I just want something to make this coughing stop
Pseudoephedrine (decongestant), dextromethorphan (cough suppressant), guafenesin (expectorant), and either ibuprofen or acetaminophen/paracetamol (pain relief/fever reduction). Or some other substitutions.
“Advil Cold and Sinus” is a brand name for the ibuprofen/pseudoephendrine combination over the border in Michigan. I assume you can get it at a pharmacy in Canada, but to get the actually good stuff I’m guessing you have to ask a pharmacist, because at least in the US it’s behind the counter due to pseudoephedrine’s use as a precursor for methamphetamine.
You can get dextromethorphan and guafenesin in cough syrup, though sometimes you can also get it in pill form. Careful, some cough syrups also contain acetaminophen/paracetamol.
You can also go the easy route of DayQuil/NyQuil or equivalents, this is usually effective enough for mild cases but I like to get the pseudoephedrine for the bad ones.
With a viral infection generally the only thing worth doing is fighting the symptoms. Your body will clear the infection with time. Using antibiotics appears to work because the infection was going to clear anyway. So you take the antibiotics and the viral infection goes away, but it would also have gone away had you not taken the antibiotics. But of course you can’t copy yourself and test this.
Edit: Oh, be sure to eat something when you take ibuprofen or your stomach will not be happy with you.
Even if that worked, the problem is that we're already overusing antibiotics and breeding all kind of multiresistant bacteria. We have to use them sparingly or we'll run out of usable antibiotics in the near future.
How much over use of anti biotics (and related issues) is from humans and how much of it is from farming? Is a human taking antibiotics for 3 days a year really the issue when farmers use it like it's straw on a daily basis?
Farming is a factor for sure, but the kind of multiresistant bacteria being bred in farms are usually a bigger issue for the farms than for humans. Zoonotic diseases exist of course, but most of those bacteria do not infect humans and there is much less opportunities for diseases to spread to humans from a farm. Places like hospitals overusing antibiotics are far more dangerous for human health, as all the germs there are human ones and because there are a lot of opportunities for human to human transmission.
But as I said, it's not that we should only reduce antibiotic overuse in humans. Overuse by farms is a massive problem as well. One doesn't exclude the other.
Crazier idea: let's abuse the hell of one and only one antibiotic. Select the antibiotic that has so many resistances that it's practically useless in a clinical setting. Then prescribe THAT antibiotic to anyone who wants an antibiotic for the flu. The doc can truthfully tell them they're being prescribed an antibiotic. They get their big fat placebo, and nothing of value is lost.
This is the answer.
You're not the only one who thinks so. Never tried it myself, but I've heard the same story from several people. Sure anecdotal evidence is not evidence, and so on. I'm convinced there is some truth to that, but not because of the direct causality.
Maybe it's a strong placebo (most likely). If you look into placebo effect you'll see it can be really powerful. Or there is something else in the human body that antibiotics stimulate. Like it's not directly attacking the virus, but doing something else that makes it easier to recover.
Have you heard of the placebo effect?
... no mention of whether you got the flu vaccine this year. The most important piece of this puzzle.
I did, over a month ago.
I heard a surprise variant popped up at the last minute this year that isn't helped by the vaccine as much. Maybe that has something to do with it
Grated carrots are not food.
There's a story here. I disagree but want to hear it.
It's like eating wet sawdust.
Saw dust doesn't crunch
That death isn’t the end. It might be the end of a physical group of cells but what we experience as our own consciousness lives on. Just not in this same form. And that those who have passed are communicating but we don’t pick up on the same vibrations inside of these bodies.
We’re also not in the same vibration to pick up any of our own memories of before inhabiting our bodies.
A huge amount of people who have NDEs seem to report much of this in common.
That and there is a plethora of dark energy and matter we cannot perceive. Which is scary creepy when I think about it too much. Like if this were a computer program, we’ve only physically taken up an observed 5% of the disk space. Can’t get my mind around that.
Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) was a great game.
Damn
For the time I think it was
The firmness of my opinions is proportional to how much they have been tested.
So... Like a non-Newtonian fluid? They harden when force is applied?
Negasonic Teenage Warhead is so good that they named (created) the comic book character after the song, not the other way around.
They still play it on their concerts, thought. Really cool to see it live.
Climate change denial is a psy-op by reptilians who want to make the world warmer because they're cold blooded. Anti-vax influencers are there to cull the xenophobes before the reptilians come out of the egg.
Okay maybe I really want to believe there are cool reptiles who are kinda dumb but ultimately want to be our friends because otherwise we're making ourselves stupider and deader and we don't even get to meet scaley twinks.
Do NOT say the "Q" word at work. It's the one that is a synonym for silent. I will in fact beat you when it hits the fan.
I can tell American society is getting exponentially more stupid by how many more cheeky vanity license plates I see as time goes on.
I have a pet theory on air humidity and flu or cold. Apparently the scientific consensus is that cold and flu are more prevalent in drier air. However, I see an uptick in both when the temperature is low, but the humidity is 90+%. It is purely anecdotal, but there you go.
You might actually both be saying the same thing here. Caveat being that I have no idea what the science says about cold/flu, but when talking about humidity when the air is colder it is drier. 90% humidity at 35F is not the same as 90% at 85F. As the air cools it is able to hold less moisture. So your observation that there's an uptick during colder weather at a higher relative humidity could be the same as saying it's more likely in drier air, because the air is drier when it's cold, even when the relative humidity shows the same percentage.
In addition to what the other commenter said, when the outside is cold and 95% humid, the inside of a building would be warm and far drier. So the inside humidity % is much lower than 95%. Maybe this contributes to the issue?
colder air tends to be drier, because theres little to no evaporation, plus you also stop sweating which is another factor. atopic dermatitis is pretty bad during late winter and when it ends. cold temperature also constricts your bronchial tubes slightly too, if you allergies, or ashtmatic its worst, so that induces coughing more. warm temperature would cause your lungs/tubes to dilate so to allow more air in. also the fact that allergies, cold/flu and even covid causes your lung to produce thick sputum which triggers the cough response.
normal sputum from allergie sis clear. while infections is thick and white, or yellow midly brown, sometimes tinge of blood. alot of green means it could be bacterial pneumonia.
Not answering directly the post, but something in line with it: I believe not all (maybe most of) knowledge is scientific, but that doesn't invalidate it. A lot of things can't be studied by the scientific method, but people intuitively understood and learned about it along the centuries.
This should be common sense, but society has gone crazy about considering only science as knowledge and now ignores valuable learnings that sometimes are more right then science itself.
This should not be confused with negating science (like global warming deniers): when you can study something by the scientific method normally you will get deeper and with less mistakes with it. But when you don't, you can still have knowledge by other methods
Half Life 3 will be teased on 3rd Dec, and fully revealed on 11th Dec at The Game Awards
That conflicts with my own theory. Back in 2013, Half Life 3 was quietly released as an easter egg hidden inside a random indie title somewhere on Steam and nobody has noticed yet.
I also had a similar thought where Valve is just waiting for someone to solve an ARG that no one has noticed for the last 10 years lol
Half Life: Alyx is awesome, though.
For all the 12 people who played it, at least.
The soul is a thing, and it's what gives you consciousness
Hopefully none. I do hold some that you could call a-scientific, or something, because existing science has no impact either way. Like what kinds of foods are good or bad. Or morality.
The universe was created. Not suggesting any particular creation account, just mathematically it makes more sense that it wasn't random. And anyone who believes in things like a cyclic universe or infinite universes to explain it is just afraid of being associated with religion (as we have no real evidence to support those theories).
mathematically it makes more sense
Care to show your work?
Not really. I sat down years ago and actually did it, but it's not something I kept. I elaborate on my reasoning in this comment, though.
I personally think there has to be a loop of some kind. It exists because it was made, and its creation results in the creation of its makers.
Like it's all just a strange paradox.
I recently realized that the concept of “before” is an assumption we try to place on the universe without any basis that it exists outside the universe.
Like we are used to deterministic phenomena. Effect follows cause, something followed from something else. But that’s only true from our perspective inside universe.
The universe might not change at all from an outside perspective. What if every moment exists simultaneously? Only from within a moment does the concept of before and after make sense, but outside the universe there’s no concept of before. Everything just is.
Maybe it’s a ring, maybe it’s a multidimensional volume containing all the possible moments that could ever happen, maybe it’s bounded “temporally” in certain directions, maybe all the moments chain together in a crazy space filling curve such that all possible moments/worlds would eventually be reached if you started in one and kept following the curve to the next. But nothing has to actually be changing. The paths don’t need to change, they didn’t need to be created or destroyed.
Point is that the “before” of the universe might not exist at all even if the timelines within it start and stop at defined points. We feel the need for things to have a reason because that’s what we’re used to experiencing, but we’re only used to that due to the rules within our part of existence.
The concept of “change” or “creation” or “time” might not exist at all outside our experience.
Time likely doesn't exist outside our universe--at least not in the same way. I figure it might be like how we can write a book--the events in the story are all there on the pages at the same time, and yet there is a concept of time within the story that doesn't restrict our own in any way. The reader can move through it freely, and in some cases, choose different paths through it.
That being said, I still think our universe had a beginning. The fact that everything here is bound to time suggests the universe itself is temporally finite. But it's possible it originated from something outside of time, possibly without our concepts of beginnings.
In any case, my main point was on the origin of life within our universe. I believe, purely based on the math, that it's more likely that life was planned than that it happened randomly.
I know the oc prompt was an unscientific belief that can’t be shaken, but I’m curious, what math makes you think the universe or just life was planned?
I was raised religious but when I first started programming and wrote my own evolutionary algorithm, I realized that life existing makes as much sense as entropy does. If a process can replicate itself efficiently will you have more or less of it later in time? If two replicators require the same resources, which is more likely to survive? It’s randomness that makes this process efficient.
So I thought that perhaps a god set the events in motion to create life by evolution, but then I learned about Conoways Game of Life and other cellular automata, and I wrote my own particle life simulations and I realized that life-like things can arise from almost any system of random rules. The only caveat seems to be that some form of “energy” must be conserved if you want to avoid the situations where the system dies completely or reach an unchanging equilibrium.
And now, as I’m learning about neural nets (specifically the more biologically plausible ones) and the structure of human brains, it all seems so natural that things would arise the way they have.
Given enough time and how vast the universe is, I’d be more surprised to find that sentient life hadn’t evolved naturally on at least a few of the sextillions of planets and other celestial bodies in the universe.
So I’m curious what math you’re basing your opinion on
All of the examples you've provided are predicated on a designer setting up conditions under which life can replicate itself. And that's what I mean--any time someone talks about how life tends to naturally evolve, it's always within the context of a set of rules that makes life evolving more probable.
Conway's Game of Life is a great example. Note that there are relatively few combinations in the game that "spawn" more life--the vast majority of configurations go static rather quickly. And on top of that, you're running this on an engine where "life" is even a concept.
I guess I see our universe more like a hard drive with random bits on it. Let's say you can code a basic version of Conway's Game of Life using 1MB of machine code. If you randomize the bits, you have a miniscule chance of getting a program that runs anything meaningful, much less a game like Conway's that has a concept of "sustained life".
I guess the fact that our universe is conducive to even the concept of life is the indicator for me. The way that particles interact with each other, the way bonds are formed, the way entropy is held off just long enough that a bag of 10^26ish atoms can examine itself and make cat memes... the laws of physics themselves suggest to me that something with some sort of a will or intellect set things in motion.
The other aspect of math that I base this on is the probability of random evolution, even within the bounds of our universe's apparent bias for life forming. The chance of a beneficial mutation that propegates to a subset of a species seems unlikely to explain all of life as we know it. Is it possible that it's all random? Yes, technically. Is it more likely that someone/something set this universe in motion such that life would form, much like we set up simulations and things like Conway's Game where the system is biased toward supporting life? I say yes.
For what it's worth, I actually sat down and did the math on this years ago. I don't have it with me now, but it's part of why I believe this so strongly.
The way that particles interact with each other, the way bonds are formed, the way entropy is held off just long enough that a bag of 10^26ish atoms can examine itself and make cat memes… the laws of physics themselves suggest to me that something with some sort of a will or intellect set things in motion.
You are not independent of your observation. The probability that you live in a universe cable of supporting life is 100%. It would be impossible for you to observe any other kind of universe. Any universe incapable of supporting life will contain no observers.
For all we know there are an endless number of universes, mostly with laws of physics vastly different from our own. The universe itself seems to already be spatially infinite, why not also have infinite universes? There may be a vast ocean of universes out there, and the vast, vast, vast majority are completely uninhabited and uninhabitable. Realms containing only black holes. Universes where only light exists. Spaces where the universe is born as a cloud of hydrogen gas, and simply never gets beyond that. Maybe for every one universe capable of supporting life, then there are 10^(stupidly large number) of empty universes.
It may seem strange or unscientific to postulate other universes, but it's a lot more scientific than postulating an intelligent, conscious creator that set the universe in motion. In the latter case, you're simply assuming more of something that we already know can exist - a universe. You're just assuming universes with different physical contants or laws. In the latter, you're assuming the existence of an entity that has no other parallel examples. We don't seem to live in the world of Greek myth where there's multiple deities running around we can all openly observe. If you assume a creator, you're assuming something that has no evidence for any entity of its kind existing. If you assume multiple universes, you're simply assuming more of what we already know exists.
It is telling that we don't live in a particularly habitable universe. Sure, we can tinker with the physical constants to make life impossible. But for a universe so "fine tuned" for life, an astonishingly insignificant fraction of the universe's space is habitable by life. An astonishingly small amount of matter is living or even involved in sustaining life.
And the best the universe can seemingly do? In our solar system? A thin slime of life on a single wet rock, maybe some bacteria in some ice shell moons or deep subsurface bacteria on Mars? And the jewel of the system, Earth? That thin shell of life requires an entire planet to give it a surface to live on. And then the mass of an entire Sun is needed to keep Earth's surface habitable. That's the best environment for life the universe can naturally create. I'm sorry, but from an engineering perspective? If you are writing the very laws of physics and reality? You can certainly do better than what we have.
The universe is not fine-tuned for life. Such a universe would be one where the vast majority of space, matter, or both were habitable. It would be one that can efficiently support life, not requiring entire astronomical bodies to support rounding errors worth of living matter. If the universe was designed for life, it was designed by a shit designer. Maybe God's an apprentice deity and we're his practice project.
What we live in is a barely habitable universe. Look around you. The stars seem mostly dead. Our own solar system is dead rock after dead rock (with some possible exceptions.) We live in the type of universe that most observers would live in if there were a huge number of universes with randomly assigned physical constants. In such a setup, there may be some hyper-local optima where universes could be superhabitable, but their total number of inhabitants would likely be swamped by observers in universes that were just habitable enough to get life going.
The seemingly-logical need for a creator disappears if you simply postulate multiple universes. And our observable reality really does match well with us living in a barely habitable universe, which is what we would statistically expect if there were a large number of universes in existence.
I think I get what you’re saying, but if you’ve ever looked into particle life simulators, they are much less susceptible to the “going static” you talk about. The more properties that exist, even purely randomized, the more likely you’ll get extended chaotic behavior. (Also the current scientific outlook is that our universe is technically destined to “go flat” just like those scenarios you mentioned)
The real issue with your reasoning from a scientific standpoint is that we don’t know how many universes there are. Maybe there are an uncountably infinite number of universes holding every possible combination of physical rules. Then in these universes there would be infinite universes that evolve life like ours without needing a creator. You can’t say/prove/estimate the chances of a universe having life producing rules because you have no idea how many universes might exist at all.
Furthermore, the probability that we just happen to exist in one of the possible universes that is capable of harboring life like this is actually 100%. This is a fact because, if a universe couldn’t harbor life like ours, we wouldn’t exist in it.
Also on the note of random chance creating the complexity we see in life, have you heard the theory that life didn’t start on earth and actually might’ve started only a few million years after the big bang?
There was a period of time after the first stars had created the lighter elements (the ones life uses like carbon nitrogen oxygen) where the universe was much closer together, and with enough pressures/temperatures that the conditions for water to exist and remain in liquid form were prevalent.
We know from the old studies of trying to prove life could spontaneously emerge that if you add energy (like UV light from stars) to water and nitrogen and carbon, you do get organic compounds: amino acids, alcohol, ketones, etc. So the basic building blocks of life probably existed in relative abundance in parts of the universe at this time.
Now the universe would have been in this state for millions of years. A relatively dense, warm, wet universe for millions of years and have still larger than our galaxy. I’d imagine the chances of RNA forming viroid rings somewhere in a cloud that size are relatively high. And after that, well RNA + basic amino acids + energy + time is pretty much all you need to get evolution going.
That’s my favorite life starting theory, especially since it kind of fits better with our model of genome growth rate over time.
Anyway, the problem of not knowing how many universes there are/have-been/could-be is the real reason no one can actually say or “calculate the probability” of how likely a universe with life is. But I thought you might find it fascinating to learn that life could’ve started in much better conditions and a lot longer ago than you may have thought when you originally did your math.
Sidenote: if intelligent life must be created by some intelligent thing, where did that intelligent creator come from in your theory? Is there an infinite chain of creators creating universes? If not, if intelligent life can be created without needing a creator, then your main assertion must be false. If it does loop or go on forever, then the full set (universe) of these chained universes actually does either exist forever or loops indefinitely meaning it in total was not created by a creator, again contradicting your assumption that life must be created by a planned process.
Physically speaking isn't all 'creation' we expirence just transformation anyway?
Any change is a difference in between two states. Creation implies something changed.
However, if by transformation you mean that some property is conserved between all states, only when that’s true is creation a transformation.
If energy was not conserved, and some suddenly popped into existence that would be a change and creation but not necessarily a transformation (depending on your definition of transformation).
Dissociative identity disorder. I have been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, a condition that is recognized by some psychiatrists but not universally accepted within the field.
I bet there's another side of you that believes in it, though.
I believe in it. It matches my experience. But I'm aware of the scepticism.
Oh, I thought you didn't believe in it despite your diagnosis.
In that case, I bet there's another side of you that doesn't believe in it, though.
It's a bad, hurtful joke, fyi
Sorry I had to do it twice, then.
That there is an as of yet undiscovered loophole to either the no cloning theorem or the more general no broadcast theorem. I can understand the problems that are generated by either being true, but FTL communication and dataships are just so darn cool.
I wouldn't call this unscientific.
Its a serious consideration when trying to resolve the Fermi Paradox
There are less troll answers here than I would have expected from lemmy
Just psychological failings, self-confidence issues and such I know are wrong. Firmly held, but wrong.
…Otherwise it feels like an oxymoron.
I fully understand that it's correlation, not causation, but I believe some inanimate objects want to work well, and others want to work poorly. In that same vein, there are people that inanimate objects respect and work well for, and there are people that inanimate objects dislike or enjoy aggravating.
The more you learn the more you realize how little you know.
that's objectively true.
nobody is more of a genius that a teenager who knows almost nothing about the world.
If I step on a crack, I'll break my Mama's back.
Probably belongs in unpopularopinion, but: Chicken is a waste of spices an herbs.
"But you gotta season it, man!!"
I know. Put the same seasoning on any other meat, and it'll immediately be a better dish.
Anything you can do with chicken can be done better with pork.
Ok, maybe not wings if you wanna be pedantic about it.
I'll have pork wings... When pigs fly!
Will you be having those pork wings now, sir?
See, this is where dark meat always seems to get left out. My hot take: dark chicken meat is superior to white chicken meat. Better balance of fat, more flavor.
Perhaps a qualifier: any meat that isn't delicious with just salt isn't worth other seasonings.
I gotta argue with you on your last point. Any meat that's delicious with just salt should only be seasoned with salt. Anything more and you interfere with the flavor.
Nah, variety is the spice of life. I enjoy raw carrots, and I also enjoy cooked carrots with a light orange glaze.
If your spices are interfering with the flavor, you're using spices wrong. They should compliment and feature the flavor. If the flavors are fighting, try other spices.
All men are equal
Insecticides (which are based on disrupting insect sex hormones) are making men more feminine. The industry says it's impossible, that they are only parts per billion of what you eat. Still.
Müller forcefem world champ lfg
The user's query "Müller forcefem world champ lfg" appears to be a mix of common names, an unusual term, a title, and an internet acronym. The search results do not contain a clear match for a specific individual named Müller who is a "forcefem world champ".
Clinical Depression isn't real, and psychotherapy can makes mental health worse by keeping the mind focused on problems.
So many... This will be downvoted :) Go guys!
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Our bodies immune systems are enough to fight covid unless we are unhealthy, most people therefore dont need to vaccinate.
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Nasa is definently not curious about actual human-like life in space and never intends to share any findings like that with the public. But its great for looking at rocks and microbes, things that will not change humanitys view of themselves as alone monkeys in space.
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There are other dimensions where non-physical spirits exists, like ghosts or dead family members. Some mediums are real and can communicate with them.
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Earth is a place where human souls go through a lot of challenges. How we treat others is meaningful and important for our souls.