IFR

Such a rule does run into the problem that different people have different preferences, and what is good for oneself does not necessarily serve others well. But one can do some mental acrobatics to contort the Golden Rule into something that makes sense, I suppose. But yes, anthropocentrism does indeed make life philosophies that venerate humans much more functional.

I find this an interesting takeaway. Life can only be sustained by the destruction and consumption of other life, and the avoidance of one's own destruction and consumption, which is a direct contradiction to the rule you state. To find that the meaning of life is a contradiction to the fundamental mechanism of life is a fascinatingly paradoxical view.

I love the books. I hate everything about that trailer. Seriously, why is it so hard to get writers to write an adaptation of the work itself, instead of aimlessly wandering into the shrubbery of "updating for a modern audience"? It always ends badly.

No. As Bethe pointed out, this is mathematically impossible. The curves were close based on very conservative estimations (eg the fusion cross-section for nitrogen was treated as unity, when it is in fact much lower than that). Also, temperatures in a fission bomb or a thermonuclear detonation reach hundreds of millions of degrees, which is three orders of magnitude less than the hundreds of billions of degrees required to establish a sustained nitrogen fusion chain reaction. @Deadlines? What Deadlines? Good video!

The mass defect and binding energy of fission and fusion is an interesting but a bit of a confusing subject. Why are the constituent parts of a fused helium atom larger than the helium atom, but on the other hand, the constituent parts of a uranium smaller than the uranium atom before the fission event? Both yield energy due to a mass defect. I think this video does a great job explaining these concepts. I also added another video on the strong nuclear force by the same person. He provides excellent explanations.

I'm not sure why you are bringing utilitarianism into this? I don't see how that has bearing on whether there is meaning to the process of "external stimulation -> neurochemical reaction-> interpretation of neurochemical reaction as happiness". For a solipsist, hunting people for sport (if such an interaction gave the stimulation resulting in their happiness) would, mathematically speaking, result in one relevant person being happy and one irrelevant person being unhappy, so it would be efficient. As an interesting aside, your argument for utilitarianism is itself solipsistic. To make madeleines to share with someone, in an effort to bring happiness to two individuals, one generally requires milk and eggs. In modern society, the production of milk and eggs is usually achieved by putting animals in extreme duress. Stores overstock these supplies so that they are always available for purchase at your convenience, which leads to waste and additional animals put in duress. Your utilitarianistic argument for bringing the temporary happiness of two people enjoying madeleines at the expense of the enduring suffering of many animals is only utilitarian in the sense that the happiness of the two people is relevant and the unhappiness of the many animals is irrelevant.

Yes. And Dune Messiah will only be made if Dune Part 2 is a success.

I'm not sure that it is? Whether there is really "meaning" or not in the objective sense doesn't change your personal network of senses that allow you to interface and interpret your experiences. I would say it's only bleak if you have the misfortune to have the collection of neuro-impulses that compel you to what is considered deviant behavior which would stigmatize you (eg kidnapping and eating children), or you're a victim of such behavior, or you're a victim of commonly accepted practices that are harmful to you (you are a pig, and people are willing to let you suffer for their pleasure). Or your own pleasure can only exist by the demand that its meaning be objective. Otherwise this take on life has no effect on the enjoyment of life.

Models like Phineas Gage persuade me to a materialist view on matters of the mind. Our brain merely provides the neurochemical signals stimulated by external experiences. That's the complete picture. Maybe the love and affection of your favorite pet gives you that happiness. Maybe paying someone to torture an animal so you can enjoy delicious hotdogs gives you happiness. Maybe raising your children well gives you happiness. Maybe the thrill of kidnapping children so you can torture them and make delicious hotdogs out of them makes you happy. I don't know if it's meaningful to ascribe meaning to happiness or life.

There probably is only so much of his career he wants to dedicate to Dune. He plans on making Messiah after this. Considering that the continuation of each succeeding entry is entirely predicated on the success of the preceding movie, that's a lot of time to make this series.

I didn't watch this movie and I won't. It gives me no end of pleasure to see the Lucasfilms-Disney machine stumble again as it churns out abomination after abomination. I did enjoy the Pitch Meeting though, which is free and I'm sure far more intelligent and entertaining than the movie itself.

I played The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante. Excellent game. If more games were like this and Disco Elysium and Pentiment, I would probably find games to be a very addictive hobby.

There isn't a uniform interpretation within the Copenhagen interpretation. The idea of some inherent conciousness-predicated mechanism determining the wavefunction was Eugene Wigner's interpretation, which was an extension of John von Neuman's own interpretation. Even Wigner didn't like the solipsism of this interpretation, and changed his view. Niels Bohr had a different interpretation. He proposed that the collapse is a consequence of any thermodynamically irreversible interaction with a classical environment. So in the Schrodinger's Cat example, no conscious observer is required, and whatever state the cat has been in (dead or alive) was determined a priori to a human observer opening the box. The following are the tenets of the Copenhagen interpretation (and even the tenets themselves are not strictly set): - The wavefunction includes all possible information about the quantum system. - Over time, quantum systems evolve smoothly in accordance to the Schrodinger equation unless a measurement is made. - Whenever a measurement is made, the quantum state "collapses" to an eigenstate of the operator associated with the observable being measured. - The value measured for an observable is the eigenvalue of the eigenstate to which the original quantum state has collapsed. - Incompatible observables (eg position and momentum) may not be simultaneously known with arbitrary great position. -The probability that a quantum state will collapse to a given eigenstate upon the measurement is determined by the square of the amount of that eigenstate present in the original state. -In the limit of a very large quantum numbers, the results of measurements of quantum observables must match the results of classical physics. -Every quantum system includes complementary wave-like and particle-like aspects; whether the system behaves like a wave or like a particle when measured is determined by the nature of the measurement. These tenets were taken from Fleisch. The enduring problem with the Copenhagen interpretation is that the term "measurement" is poorly defined. One can interpret that the entire cat in the box system is in superposition, and that a human observer "collapses" the wavefunction by "measuring" the system. One can also argue, as Bohr did, that the equipment within the box serves as a classical interaction and that collapses the wavefunction, entirely independent of any conscious observer. The point of Schrodinger's cat and Wigner's friend was to clearly indicate that measurement is poorly defined via the Copenhagen interpretation. Other interpretations have their own problem. Which invariably is a consequence of our minds being trained on the dualism of a classical experience and trying to somehow understand the non-dualism of a quantum experience. Of course, no interpretation is necessary in quantum mechanics. The results of quantum mechanics are indistinguishable whether you advocate the Copenhagen interpretation or many worlds, or some other interpretation.

This is potentially true, and there is necessarily an element of critical thinking required when learning with an AI aid. But as we've seen in this very thread, people can easily be led astray by other forms of education (eg the belief that the Copenhagen Interepration suggests that "reality isn't fixed...until it is observed by a consciousness bearing entity", to quote Ser Scot). Admittedly, quantum mechanics and the various interpretations of the significance of the wave function are pretty confusing, but still, I'm going to say case in point.

I would say that of most people. But Isakaral Purst provides an excellent explanation. What you get with ChatGPT is the "textbook" answer. And depending on what you're after, that could be precisely what is needed. I suggest an exercise. Below is a link to the Copenhagen Interpretation. Maybe give it a read, and if there's anything that you find even mildly confusing or beyond you, copy that passage. Then go to ChatGPT and write: "Explain this passage:" into the prompt. Then paste the passage that you copied. I would particular focus on the sections "Principles" and "Nature of the wave function". Keep in mind if you paste a lot of text, then the explanation will be much broader. If you keep the amount of text you paste to 2-4 paragraphs you'll receive a much more detailed explanation. I would recommend GPT 4, since it's subject to much fewer problems of hallucinations, and it provides better, more thorough explanations. But I think ChatGPT itself may suffice for this exercise. If the initial explanation does not make sense to you, ask it to simplify the explanation until it does make sense to you. Feel free to ask it about particular parts of the explanation. Tell it to give you examples to clarify what it means. But be very careful about calculations. Those will almost certainly be wrong. It's improved with the Wolfram Alpha plugin, but that's not available to the original ChatGPT. Derivations have a better record, but definitely verify with those as well. It's a language model. Have fun! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation

This is indeed an inaccurate characterization of the copenhagen interpretation. Hopefully someone else will expound further. If not, I'll try to clear it up myself when I have more time.

That's a good video. I also highly recommend Godel's Proof by Nagel - it's an excellent book. Penrose is obviously a respectable figure, with many accomplishments in the mathematics of physics. And I quite enjoyed his book The Road to Reality, though I think it's functionally useless on its own, and can only serve as a fun hobby read for those who already have a background in the material it's trying to teach. But Penrose has many unconventional and controversial ideas, and his thoughts on these matters are far from the inviolable truth. Anyway, my thoughts on AI and its current benefits and potential future benefits have been made clear in my thread on this topic.

It's absolutely entertaining and satisfying to see the IMDb reviews for this latest season. The first season was mildly aggravating to me, because I found it to be an abysmal adaptation from the start (Cavill being the sole positive point). But many viewers were ecstatically raving about it, and the show had a score of above a 9 for a while. Fortunately, the even worse second season seemed to provide a sufficient shock to much of the audience, and it was gratifying for people to recognize that the writers were just dishing out nonsensical slop for them to "enjoy". With this new season, I get to relish the fact that now the majority opinion aligns with my own opinion of the show. Very nice.

Why spend time doing anything? It's fun to debate to a certain extent when you have free time. But I agree, it's not really an essential debate, so I usually pop in and discuss until I get bored and move on to something else. I don't think you can "win" these debates, but I do enjoy reading the retorts and exposing myself to different perspectives (especially those willing to defend a show like WoT, which I consider an atrocity in filmmaking). I would say "I guess we'll see." But I've already seen enough to confirm to myself that no matter what direction the story takes, the writers, in my opinion, have a fundamentally different take on Jordan's story than my take (ie they are wrong). And, frankly, they come off as clumsy writers. Well, Dave Hill seems to be the best of the lot, but I don't see him salvaging this wreck, unfortunately. But I guess you'll see.

I agree with Larry, this was well argued.

I think we're in agreement that the desirable outcome is equal opportunities for all. I will tell you frankly that my position on AA being discriminatory towards Asian-Americans is based on my memory of reading a few articles that addressed this and provided admission data that heavily indicated discrimination (I believe it was either the New York Times or Washington Post). I don't have time to hunt for the articles right now, however. If you can provide data to indicate that Asian-Americans are not discriminated against based on race, that would be effective in persuading me to your position in favoring AA.

I would call it racism. Removing opportunities from qualified Asian-Americans specifically because of their race is what I would call racism.

I agree. Fighting racism with racism literally doesn't make sense. Edit: in case my phrasing was confusing, my grammar was off. I meant "by systematically inculcating" or in other words codifying racism into the screening process. If that clears my meaning up.

Et al, You'll get no push back from me in raising the point that legacies and any other entrenched non-meritocracy based screening is a problem. I'll also grant that the motivation of the SC ruling was more than likely cynical and not for purposes of equitable treatment. Regardless, I do think there is merit in the discussion that fighting racism by systematically inculcated racism has its own problems. I suppose we'll see the consequences in the post-mortem studies performed over the next few years.

The upside is that if you're Asian-American, your chances of becoming a doctor just went way up, since schools are no longer allowed to racially discriminate against you.