Wow thanks that is awesome, gotta remember that site. For rice I already found the 50lbs pack that also beats my local discount grocer (which is rare).

What pisses me off that amazon has made it’s “sort by cheapest” completely unusable. You find 100 pages of the exact same ultra-trashy product or something related or a replacement part or something.

I’ve recently read a comment saying the great Chinese firewall somehow “learns” that you are using a VPN. So people doing quick tests “yep VPN works” but then a little later it doesn’t work anymore. No clue if that is true though.

Don’t do it… since God is infallible any contradiction would negate all of existence!

Toilet Paper is a lie!

No clue but maybe you confused it with this one?
https://www.privacytools.io

Using IP laws to legislate this could also lead to disastrous consequences, like the monopolization of effective AI. If only those with billions in capital can make use of these tools, while free or open source models become illegal to distribute, it could mean a permanent power grab. If the capitalists end up controlling the “means of generation” and we the common folk can’t use it.

I imagine that theoretically you could have algorithms or machine learning to calibrate this. Like make test sounds so you see how the sound diffuses and then filter it out.

Propaganda model, double think, countless wars of aggression, disenfranchisement, now sliding into theocratic fascism. Looking down on China is part of it. They can’t see their own prison - therefor you must be wrong :D

Arthur Wesley after all also bought a muggle car and bewitched it.

Thanks! That is really my only impression, Arthur, even though an expert in Muggles, sees only amusement value in muggle tech. That’s why I’d think there isn’t really any significant trade possible. Wizards can just create anything with magic. Except maybe land. So the exchange rate would drop if you’d try to trade significantly more. Just my speculation of course :)

Huh, that’s weird. Try again? But surprisingly it’s also on web-archive

Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience offer systematic evidence that fictional works exert a surprisingly strong influence on readers and have the power to shape their opinions and worldviews.

Huh thanks, not that interested in the Potterverse specifically but that first bit is very interesting.

This is way too long lol. Did you read it? So do they trade with muggles?

Fascists believe in inequality based on identity. And most on lemmygrad agree that Russia is a far right regime.

It’s a question of math. Men have on average 60% more upper body strength and longer arms, so it’s rather easy for any man to murder almost any women with his bare hands. Obviously this lead to various social adaptations which maybe can be mathematically modeled through game theory. There are always exceptions but the vast majority, like 90% of domestic murders are committed by the male partner.

So here we are after thousands and thousands of years of evolution. Equating or simplifying this topic is a major tactic by the fascists (male supremacy).

I don’t know, I thought wizards can turn anything in pretty much anything. They have no “material needs”, which would explain why they overwhelmingly have no interest to really cooperate with the muggles. If there was any material advantage then it would have happened long ago. So if you’re worldbuilding you’d need to make some rules that muggles can give wizards something besides “useless gold” :D

Afaik muggles have no currency that would be a interest to wizards.

The error message says “.exe” and looks like a dot net namespace.

Hmm 😇 The afterlife might be a good way to make it up. Have you seen “The Good Place”?

I agree somewhat with that but: only if the starting conditions were completely random. Otherwise if you set the conditions to be similar to what we know about humanity, you’d have to anticipate both cooperation and competition and parasitic behavior leading to wars and atrocities. And that also assumes that they actually have a chance to grow up for the suffering to have any meaning. If you just turn it off your science experiment at some point you have invalidated the argument.

Either way when you’re playing god you’d have to morally justify yourself. Imagine you create a universe that eventually becomes an eternal hell where trillions of sentient beings are tortured through something like “I have no mouth but I must scream”.

You’d look at things like the holocaust or million other atrocities and say “this is fine”. Also you can’t assume they’d die out naturally in 5 billion years, they might colonize other planets and go on and on and on until you pull the switch. They might have created beautiful art and things and preserved much of their history for future generation and then poof all gone. What if they would find out? Would you say “I created them, therefor I own them and can do with my toys as I please”. Really?

My main argument would be that it would be incredibly unethical. And any intelligent civilization powerful enough to create a simulation like this would be more likely than not to be ethical, and if it was this unethical it is unlikely to exist for long. Those would be two potential reasons why the “infinite regress” in simulation theory is unlikely.

The Starmaker is an interesting exploration into simulation theory.