I lost that when a family member looked me in the face and told me that flu shots are called “flu shots” because they aren’t actually vaccines. We are in a psychic war, and we are losing

AI. Back in the olden days when I first played The Talos Principle, I was convinved that AI would be cool and offer us fascinating insights into the mysteries of consciousness. I never expected… this

I’m too pedantic to let this slide. An em-dash — is a single dash, the width of an m. An en-dash – is a single dash the width of an n

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Hot take: he does have some good ideas. Like releasing the unredacted Epstein files, and not wasting more money on Israel

Just think it could stand to be more explicit. Some people, being stupid, wouldn’t be able to figure out that they may themselves be stupid based only on those laws

My go-to is to just beg them to play Kerbal Space Program

They argue that, if the moon landing could be done way back then, with modern technology, it should be possible to quickly get back to the moon.

In the 1960s, getting to the moon was the most important thing in the solar system. The Soviet Union and the US spent ungodly amounts of money and risked uncountable lives in this endeavor. We did the thing, and now we’ve done the thing. We aren’t willing to risk those lives or spend that money anymore. New missions have to be much, much cheaper and much, much safer.

Technology has definitely improved, but there is a physical limit to the amount of energy that you can pull out of a given mass of kerosene and liquid oxygen. Getting to space hasn’t gotten any lighter, and fuel mass has always been the biggest hurdle. Again, play KSP. It will brand the tyranny of the rocket equation into your soul.

They also argue NASA could have just reused the same designs as the Apollo missions if they actually went to the moon.

They could, in the same way that we could start sending children underground to mine for coal again

To summarise,

a) Been there, done that. Anything new will involve sending more mass than the Apollo missions had to deal with. Tyranny of the rocket equation: more mass means more fuel means more thrusters means more mass means more fuel…

b) I could do some research and come back, but there is no answer to this that will satisfy a moon landing denier, because any explanation would require a baseline understanding of chemistry and also trust in the institutions that examine these moon rocks.

c) The answer to a also applies here

I don’t need to learn to swim, I have thalassophobia. My plan if I ever fall into deep water is to die from a heart attack before I drown

They don’t have respect. They just talk on those cell phones, and listen to their tape cassettes…

Oh it’s free

My least favorite thing about Linux is that I can’t pirate it

My favorite thing about Christianity is how all the different sects pretend that every other sect isn’t actually Christian

I can count the number of streamers I’m a fan of on three fingers, and the number of Vtubers I can even name on one

I feel like it’s worth noting that anyone, including you, can be a stupid person, and acknowledging that fact does not exempt you from potentially being a stupid person

If it’s not important to the rest of the USA then why can’t you walk down the street without seeing it? Could it be that it simply doesnt matter to you, and you’re projecting your own indifference onto the rest of society?

I’m not sure this is quite analagous to neuralink’s monkey experiments. That said,

So is this different only because those are human neurons?

To my mind, a neuron is a neuron. The only difference between your brain and a monkey brain is, again, the number of neurons and the structures they form. I don’t see this as any different from monkey or rat or ant or entirely digital neurons.

Raises uncomfortable questions about consciousness. The only difference between these neurons and your own are the number of them and the structures they form. Of course it doesn’t know what it’s doing, but… Neither do our own neurons

If you think you have a point to make, don’t couch it in “devil’s advocate” bullshit. There were indeed huge chunks of ice being thrown. Blood were drawn. The cops are still the bastards in this situation, and I pray that nobody gets convicted

We simply don’t know if breaking this man’s arm in response to him expressing his disinterest in dying for Israel was justified or not

I’m going to push back a bit. Ending doesn’t necessitate death. A movie ends. You don’t need an end to have a beginning, either—the positive integers begin at 1. Your second sentence is begging the question. You assert that without death there couldn’t be endings, and change is a kind of ending, so without death there couldn’t be change. But plenty of things change without dying. I used to be a baby. My infancy ended without my infant death.

If we take OP’s question to include anything that could even metaphorically be compared to death, then there wouldn’t even be such a universe, because any instant in time could be described as the “death” of a prior instant in time

1. Boil them

2. Mash them

3. Stick them in a stew