crazydoggers

Yes I agree, it’s true that causally connected events maintain their ordering. However, there is no sense where one can say definitively that some set of spatially separated events happened simultaneously. And as each reference frame is valid it’s impossible to say that there is a correct “present”. If two events happens at the same time in one reference frame, you can’t then declare that they happened at the same time “in reality” as that’s not valid. The events also happened at different times “in reality” in other reference frames. And in fact, the two observers could meet and discuss that the events happened at different times.

The result is that some reference frames have other frames future and past events, so to the grandparent posts point, there is a real sense in which the future exists along with the past. No reference frame gets to say what the official “future” is, so it must already exist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

Love it. I like that curve ball last paragraph.. unexpected yet follows perfectly.

Increasing staffing doesn’t help. It’s a basic queuing problem. You would have to increase the size of the airports along with the staff.. meaning perhaps hundreds of separate lanes, hundreds of separate X-ray machines and belts etc etc.

At my local airport, all security lanes except for one for precheck, are well staffed and move as fast as the passengers allow. The space is already used maximally, however lines are exceedingly long. Switching the precheck lane to regular would have almost no effect on wait times.

Queuing theory is rather complex.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory

I don’t think it’s a gross misinterpretation. General relativity does show that what one observer would consider the future can exists as the present of another observer, and vice versa.

As time is part of the 4 dimensional Minkowski space, saying that the future, past and present don’t coexist would be like saying left doesn’t exists when you’re going right.

Love this vsauce video for some examples

https://youtu.be/fXW-QjBsruE?si=FmgmYH8BDWrkIcMJ

There’s still a lot of value in philosophy when we use it to think about how we structure and rationalize the world.

Even if science gives us ever better models of the underlying reality of the universe, there’s still the understanding of how we conceptualize that reality and what it means to us. Specifically in ways that don’t require religion or supernatural beings, nor in purely psychological means of perception or physiology.

I think of it as the study of the emergent properties of complex information processing. It can do things like help us talk about the minds of others, for example future AI, potential extraterrestrial intelligences, or even other terrestrial intelligences (dolphins, octopus, etc)

If you make it free, then everyone will choose the fastest one.. which means it will no longer be faster. So in order for time saving measures to work, you have to require selectivity.

Paying is an easy way to select for those who value it the most, which are the frequent fliers. If you’re a business traveler or otherwise someone who travels a lot, the price is small compared to the flights and the time saved is very large. That will be the inverse for those who need it least, the infrequent travelers.

Yes some people who travel infrequently will choose to pay for the faster line, but then they are also subsidizing the extra cost of staff to run the other systems.

The idea that this is meant to put tranches of society on display is ludicrous.

Knowing a number of people who have to travel a lot for work, I might even say that most of the poor shlubs in the precheck lines who have to travel monthly or more frequently are the real losers in the grand scheme. Traveling in flying sardine cans to make a living is no fun.

> The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious.

It’s a fascinating realization. It reminds me of the religious history of the Soviet Union. The Soviets attempted to “delete” religion, which instead of creating a rational secular society, instead pushed people into pseudoscience, occultism and superstition.

It may be that in a culture pushed away from orthodox religions, due in many cases to those religions often actually engaging in hate against certain groups, a kind of replacement religious system takes hold.

It is ironic, and sad that this was so quickly flagged.

It may be that, given something like 80-90% of humans on earth follow such religious institutions, we as a species have some genetic factors that make us intolerant of differing viewpoints. I can imagine such genetic factors could have played a role in social cohesion early in human evolution.

Emotionally charged topics shouldn’t be avoided, but we should all strive to have rational and compassionate conversations about such things.

I always like to introduce people to this rules of civil conversation during such exchanges.

https://therulesofcivilconversation.org/

Equally helpful to maintain conversations that are positive is to check out own biases and fallacies:

https://yourbias.is/

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Can you organize the data structures into classes or dataclasses?

You have a right to my private contract with someone? Because that’s what a settlement is. What you’re saying is that all contracts need to be made public? That seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

>> Sabotaging people’s private property is a criminal act.

> That's what happened here. Refusing to scan without ink is sabotage.

Breaking into someone’s office and physically damaging their property as in your example is different than a machine that disables itself. The machine can’t commit criminal acts. If you’re arguing that the CEO of HP commited a criminal act, that’s a stretch, as I have no idea what criminal law you’d say he broke. On top of which criminal cases have a much higher burden of proof, so civil litigation is likely to provide a better outcome.

And anyway, again, the proper venue for this, is to create better consumer protection laws in the first place. The judicial system isn’t going to magically police companies. We as the people have to hold them accountable and that means voting, lobbying etc, just as is being done with right to repair bills. The judicial system can compensate for harm, which hopefully will happen here, but it’s only part of the solution.

First the example you mention confuses civil and criminal proceeding. Sabotaging people’s private property is a criminal act. District attornies bring criminal cases, not civil.

The government could bring a civil suit as plantiff, (like the attorney general’s office) but the government would have to show its been harmed. Perhaps for instance through cost of printers used in government offices, or if some specific statute was violated.

Also regarding any settlement. If it’s class action it’s public. If it was from a private individual plantiff, then they have a right to privacy you can’t just ignore.

You can always bring your own case as long as you were not a party to the settlement. Though for it to be successful you’re probably going to have to show you suffered more than the average class member.

For instance you buy a dishwasher that is faulty. There’s a class action settlement, but for you, the dishwasher ruined your apartment and the neighbors downstairs. You can opt out and sue directly even if there’s been a class settlement.

If it’s class action, then you have to not have participated.

If you didn’t, then you can bring your own suit. But in order to bring a suit you’d have to show you’ve been harmed, so you’d have to have been a customer of one of these printers.

You can’t not allow settlements. The plantiff brings the case. You can’t tell a plantiff they are unable to withdraw their case, you’d be infringing on the rights of the plantiff.

Yes it works against the creation of precedent, but the court system is meant to provide a resolution of dispute between parties. The creation of precedent is a side effect of that process, not it’s primary goal.

Edit: And just to end on a note of positivity, the courts aren’t really the place to make changes like this anyhow, which is out of most people’s hands. Instead we can lobby our Congress people etc to make laws that can end these practices (which is where most of our consumer protections have come from).

Just today I was listening to Consider This on NPR (transcript [1]) about the increase of election worker harassment. It's quite scary the level things have gotten, with serious death threats, harassment, vandalism, even one election worker's dog being poisoned.

What we still haven't come to grips with is that the internet and the information age have made propaganda and the ability to sway large swaths of the "stupid" (which I would more accurately call the uninformed credulous) exceedingly easy. Network effects cause this mob behavior to accelerate much more rapidly than before.

In Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World [2], he starts his book with an account of what Dietrich here would call the "stupid", a taxi driver that begins to question Carl in earnest about all sorts of conspiracies.

Carl shows through this exchange that it's not that people are stupid. Often many of the credulous are very intelligent, and curious. But what has happened is that our society has failed to teach critical thinking across the board, and has also failed in its ability to democratize education in a way the reaches everyone equally.

Public schools have been a failure in teaching critical thinking. Teachers are not versed or required to have standards in critical thinking skills. Our society also lacks a focus on childhood mental health, so children the most at risk often can't even begin to benefit from school, and will continue down the same paths as their parents. And so we are left with a perpetual problem that continues generation to generation.

If we fix our education and mental health systems, I believe a lot of the worlds problems will follow.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/20/1183289840/election-workers-a...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Da...

You’re still arguing against me on a position I agree with. It’s very possible that the man died of these actions. Also I stated the actions were unethical. So why are you upset?

However, neither you or I have proof of that, which is the point. Because without it, without facts, people won’t learn and make better decisions. One side can always conjecture about things, as there’s no proof. Just like there was no proof provided in the article (even though we can make assumptions, that doesn’t make it fact, and is a dangerous road to follow even if we feel morally justified in doing so).

The point which you are avoiding is that the article does a very poor job making your case (as does your arguments here). As I agree with the premise that these things were unethical and dangerous, I take offense with an article that does a disservice to the topic for the purpose of clicks. I also take offense to your string of arguments, using morality posturing, and citing cases that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, trying to point out where the US court has fouled up, to prove that MUST have done so here, which does not follow. (This is a slippery slope and composition/division fallacy, ie.. because the court screwed up in your specific cases, it MUST be guilty in the other)

> You tried to “well actually” the acts this article is talking about

> you’re linking some dumb ass article about formatting arguments in a manner that doesn’t make you seem quite as wrong

My comment has always been about the quality of the article. And the link is not an article about formatting arguments, so I have to assume you didn’t actually read or check the link.

It’s a link outlining logical fallacies and biases, to help with better critical thinking skills, both in writing, and in evaluating content that we read / listen to / debate, etc.

Here’s a Wikipedia link instead, since you posted a number of Wikipedia links.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

I urge you to read through them, and note where your arguments and thinking are at fault. I do on a regular basis, and it’s helpful. The link I posted links to posters and card that can aid in remembering them.

Also worth reading, a discussion on the dangers of moral posturing in debate as discussed by Socrates.

https://qz.com/1599699/socrates-shows-why-moral-posturing-on...

And virtual signaling as discussed by Aristotle:

https://fee.org/articles/virtue-signaling-isnt-virtuous-and-...

  “Human societies require people who disagree to cooperate and trust each other. They must also allow for disagreement and productive discussion of competing views. Yet, virtue signaling undermines all of this.”

(not mentioning Socrates and Aristotle to prove something or lend weight, only to show these concerns on how we discuss moral and ethical topics go back a very long time)

I’d like to add a link to the following book that does handle issues like these in a thought provoking, informed and intelligent manner.

The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science https://a.co/d/3uUtnnE

I think you misunderstand my issue or the argument here.

You are arguing what? That spreading bacteria, even one that was believed to be benign, is a violation of personal rights? Well I agree with you 100%, and if that’s surprising, then the point has been missed.

The issue I have is an article that serves only the purpose of inflaming without informing. We can all claim moral outrage, and then point “look.. horrible things.. horrible people”. What purpose does that serve? It has become the standard of communication on social media. How does it serve this discussion to point out all the way the US government and the courts have failed us? Your list is tiny compared to the true scope. Ask any Native American.

Does that prove in this case a person was killed by the actions of spreading bacteria by light bulbs? Clearly it cannot. So then what’s the goal of the argument? Slippery slope fallacy? Appeals to emotion?

Instead give me an article with substance and facts, and nuanced discussion. Why were those choices made in the past. Did those people believe they were doing good, and not doing harm? What lead to that occurring? How to we prevent it from occurring again? How do we educate ourselves so we don’t make equally well intentioned but harmful decisions.

If an article claims a bacteria is pathogenic, and harmed people by its use, then I require it prove it to me. Otherwise it’s conjecture. If so, treat it as such, and say “let’s all look into this further”. If an article won’t, then it’s immediately suspect, and its conclusions can’t be trusted.

Moral outrage is no path towards truth, fairness, and equality. Those things require more from us. More from our discussions. Arguments appealing to emotion (even ones that are well researched linking to wikipedia) don’t help. The comparison to Covid discussion is apt, since many people linked to Wikipedia or other sources, citing all sorts of things, in order to bolster their logically incomplete, or entirely emotional arguments.

Imagine instead an article that said “possible benign bacteria used to study germ contamination”. Then went on to discuss the facts, facts such as opportunistic infections, or even questions about the case you brought up and wether that was a fair trial and if not, what evidence supports it not being (other than “US court bad corrupt”) and then, it asked my questions above.

The problem is that media today needs ad money to operate, and “pathogenic bacteria released on citizens” gets a LOT more clicks. And then the moral outrage that follows make everyone feel good, but doesn’t make the world a better more educated place.

If we don’t do better in our journalism, and in our discussions, then your list above is doomed to get longer and longer as time goes on.

For those interested in how to have better discussions, and write better articles, check out the following:

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

I agree. But what does that have to do with an article that presents unjustified assertions? The issue is that if you call something pathogenic, and make the case that people were harmed, then the article should support that which it doesn’t. Hence it’s click bait.

Let’s say I want people to take the Covid vaccine. Should I write articles with appeals to emotion, quotes from people writing books, and circumstantial evidence?

Or let’s say I want to point out that Covid vaccines carry risks. Should I write articles with appeals to emotion, quotes from people writing books, and circumstantial evidence?

Bad articles and bad science are not okay just because we agree with the assessment.

Well first you’re talking about a different situation than the article.

In addition, in the San Francisco case you link, it was not established that the bacteria caused the death you are referring to.

> The lower court ruled against them primarily because the bacteria used in the test was unproven to be responsible for Nevin's death. The Nevin family appealed the suit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to overturn lower court judgments

Again, blankets statements rather than facts don’t help discuss the issue. Nuance is best.

I for one think they should not have done any of these tests, and that they crossed clear ethical boundaries. But I’m not going to create misinformation, “beg the question”, appeal to emotion, or point to false cause to convince someone that it’s a wrong and immoral thing to do.

These types of arguments are why we had so much confusion, and lack of educated discussion around Covid and vaccines, the pros and cons of nuclear power, etc etc.

That’s not the issue at hand. The issue is an article claiming pathogenic material was tested on people.

An article talking about the ins and outs of IRB process approval would be much more informative, or going into detail about what is and is not ethical.

False or at best misleading statements of pathogenic biological tests on people bring us no nearer to actually talking intelligently about the issues or making better decisions.

But this wasn’t a biological experiment on the citizens, which is the issue. It was an experiment to test the spread of material in a subway system.

The article is claiming without support that this was pathogenic biological testing on people, which is not the case.

Let’s assume instead they used a harmless chemical tracer. Would that still count as a violation? What about releasing flour through ducts?

The issue with the article that makes it click bait is they are making a claim of “germ warfare”, insinuating that citizens were exposed to dangerous infectious agents which is simply untrue.

If the article approaches the subject honestly, and then question wether such action was ethical, even using a harmless substance, that would be one thing. But as it’s written, the article pushes misinformation, which is a shame, because it’s clearly an important subject.

Agree. Article contains misinformation and should be flagged. In fact the bacteria in question is often and readily consumed. Not to mention the fact that we are awash in bacteria all the time.

The source stating that the bacteria are considered pathogens, is selling his book. The link to the National Academy of Sciences is also broken.

Also most bacteria can be opportunistic pathogens, depending on the situation, even the ones in our gut.

So while the ethics can be deemed questionable, the article presents the situation as if harm was certainly done, when in the most likely case not a single person was adversely effected.

Yes. The whole AI space using questionable data sources for training is just a tempest in a teapot about to explode.

I just wanted to add, while I don’t agree with the assessment that copyright holders need to be protected from something like archive.org, i don’t think the parent comment deserved to be flagged, so I vouched for it. I think the question was raised in sincerity, and I think it offers a point of discussion for those not familiar with the issues.

I don’t think it’s helpful to flag things people disagree with, as long as they don’t attempt to spread misinformation, or trolling etc. The parent phrased the topic as a question, meaning I believe they were open to understanding.

I also think it’s relative to the topic posted, as we’re talking about either an attack on archive.org, or a massive recopying of archive data by an unknown.

Talking to people with opposing views is important. Let’s not just shut people down if we don’t agree with something, especially when someone is asking a question.

Same way a library does. The information is made available to anyone who wants it, the copyrights are maintained intact, and they don’t attempt to profit from the material.

Copyright law specifically allows for libraries and archives to make copies of copyrighted material.

Without such laws, without libraries, knowledge could not be guaranteed to be shared freely among the public, resulting in ever growing knowledge and education gaps between those with means and those without.

Edit: Since you asked for the legal ground, here it is specifically:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108

And here’s is further discussion by the copyright office itself:

https://www.copyright.gov/policy/section108/discussion-docum...

Congress and the copyright office have made it an important part of copyright law to protect archival, library and fair use doctrine.

You have to approach the movie like sitting down with a good book. Make a day around it! Brew some tea/coffee ahead of time, watch it when you are refreshed and can soak it in. And not just the plot.. but the art of what’s on the screen; how it’s shot. You’ll be rewarded in the end.

Also see this great PBS video watching it all unfold:

https://www.kqed.org/science/1949314/this-killer-fungus-turn...

Just to be clear, a password protected zip file should be an enormous blinking red light. 99% of the time, password protected zips are used to prevent virus scanners from scanning the content of the zip. Typically email providers like google will provide you with a warning that they have been unable to scan the file.

As for emails about contract jobs, even 15+ years ago these could be very targeted, specifying your company/resume etc. Now it will be getting even worse with chatGPT to write these emails in far less time and far more convincingly from non-native speakers.

Also note, unzipping files to look into them isn't automatically safe either... there are plenty of older CVEs where zip software had vulnerabilities allowing code execution, and a zero day is always possible. That's on top of the fact that zips can conceal file types of other software that might also have current CVEs.

Short story, and this should be followed by everyone in the tech community, never ever open attachments from anyone you don't know, and treat all attachments from people you do know as requiring scanning first. Not doing so puts your coworkers and your customers at risk. If you're accepting proposals for contract work, your process should always require one-on-one communication prior to accepting any attachments.