skulblaka

Numbers are just an abstraction for physical properties. Aliens with no contact with earth will have no idea what our Arabic numerals mean, they won't recognize a 3 or a 7 as being numbers. But they will surely know what 3 means, as a trio, that it is one and one and one.

When we get into things that have units, like the speed of light for instance, things get a little muddy because we have no concise and effective way to define our units to an outside perspective. Sure, c may be equal to around 300 million meters per second, but what is a meter and what is a second to someone who has no reference to either? It's at this point that I think math becomes more of a reflection of ourselves. We define things in units and with relations to other objects and other units because we have that frame of reference, and by defining those units and using them in relation to other maths we've created this grand interconnecting web of mathematical axioms and theories and proofs and units that all refer to four other theories and axioms and units in their own definitions. But at the base of that web holding it all together are numerals. Two is two no matter what it is two of, and that is an illustration of physical properties of the universe irrespective of units or home culture. Two is two is two even if it's called dos or İki or दो.

I would argue that we, humanity, do not invent math any more than we invented gravity or atomic weights. We merely discover principles and relations between principles and define them to the best of our understanding.

Philosophy memes are cool, in fact I'd love to see more of those. Philosophy memes that incorrectly make fun of other branches of science, not so much. Let's get some Plato's Cave in here, or make fun of Freud saying one thing but meaning your mother. Let's not try to delegitimize other branches of science by pointing out solipsism.

To be fair though I do think it's fun to have conversation around this matter, like discussing Brain-in-a-vat theory, where you can just accuse your opponent of being increasingly less real as the discussion goes on. But in the modern age of mis- and dis-information, you have to be careful how you approach those subjects. In this particular example it seems like you're calling out the scientific method as Fake News, and while it's a bit funny, it's also a hot button topic for folks these days and will frequently be taken the wrong way because tons of idiots have ruined it for you long before you made this meme. Let's please not give people another reason to distrust hard science.

We gotta know what Ja Rule has to say about this.

Yeah it's not about Dems thinking anyone is infallible. Largely they're pretty clear about denouncing their own when it's deserved. It's about being presented a ballot where your options are a polished turd or a fresh smelly chili shart plopped into a bowl and poured on your head. There are no good choices to vote republican, and when presented with this dichotomy I'll vote blue every time until a better option is presented to me. Get better candidates and then we'll talk.

That said I don't disagree with the core of your statement here. The whole institution is rotten to the core. I'm just tired of people projecting hero-worship onto democratic voters. That's a republican thing. We don't really do that. You have to earn the respect of democrats. I voted for Biden because I couldn't stomach another round of Trump and was presented no other option, and I'll do it again if I have to. Doesn't mean I love him. Doesn't mean I even particularly like him, because I don't really, I think he sticks too close to the status quo. But he's by far the lesser of two evils.

The downvotes are probably from people conditioned from experience to be dealing with rabid trumptards that either won't or can't listen to any viewpoint. A majority of arguments that begin with "But Biden-" fall into that category. Dems will listen to and readily agree with legitimate criticism, it just has to be couched within an intelligent argument.

This might be a controversial opinion I guess, but honestly, if I'm going to be subjected to a world full of LLMs that I'm forced to interact with then I don't hate this way of going about it. At least they'll be more interesting to talk to than the current GPT models.

I won't be using Meta's products, naturally, but I'm sure everyone else will jump on this bandwagon as well. It just seems like one of those things that's going to propagate to everyone. Like athlete's foot, or the flu.

Clerics are the original All-Class Party. You can build a cleric to do damn near literally any role using different subclasses and spells. Heavy armor tank, heals, sneaky sneaky lockpicks, nearly naked full caster, you name it, there's a cleric of it. Get four of them in a room, call 'em the A-Men and get ready to break any semblance of balance over your knee. The Absolute is having a panic attack right now and doesn't even know why.

Thanks for the detailed response, seems like the main disconnect here was in my understanding of the phrase and concept in general vs other users' referring to the specific text.

I think I still take issue with the statement that it "doesn't exist", though, because it does. It may not be inevitable as Hardin writes but it is a societal problem that arises, and must be properly handled just like the other hundreds of myriad problems that have arisen over the growth of global society. Disregarding it as capitalist propaganda will leave you with a barren grazing ground, when the more correct solution is to analyze the causes and effects of the tragedy of the commons and plan around it.

My greatest ADHD superpower is being able to nuke my train of thought by forcing myself to think about song lyrics or character stat sheets for 5 minutes and being able to completely stay off my previous painful tangent nearly indefinitely

Once I'm not stuck panicking about it my ability to just flat ignore upcoming danger is legendary

Hi, uneducated rube here. Could you elaborate on that? Because at many times during my life I have seen objective evidence of what looks quite a lot like the tragedy of the commons. When something is considered a public responsibility without a specific owner someone will mistreat it to the point of uselessness in an extreme majority of cases. I observe this in college common areas, gas station air pumps, litter left in public areas, dog park cleanup stations, self-serve kiosks of all types from vending machines to car washes, and more.

I admit (and more than that, agree) that a situation can be created in which said tragedy of the commons can be avoided, but in my experience it would require a handler who is specifically responsible for the well being of the item in question. Either one who is paid to police the object, or one who has taken it upon themselves to police the object because they cannot function without it.

But the fact that you can assign a babysitter to prevent someone from ruining "the commons" doesn't mean the concept as a whole is moot. I also admit that a lot of the problems I encounter are uniquely American, and social culture in other places may help prevent commons tragedies like theft or defacement. But in my experience as an American the tragedy of the commons is a very real and living thing. If you give public access to an item and expect said public to take appropriate care of it, you'll more often than not be sorely disappointed, at nearly any location in our country.

Yet now I'm being told the entire concept was invented to push white supremacy and isn't real. Frankly that may be true because a ton of shit here was invented in service of white supremacy, but a broken clock is still right twice a day. Regardless what the original intention was I have a hard time saying outright that it's just wrong. And hell, white people are often the ones fucking up common items just like brown folks. I don't see a racial component to it at all, at least in the modern understanding. I have no doubt this was being used as racist propaganda at points within the last couple hundred years, because historically, America has been pretty goddamn racist - but these days I believe the understanding has evolved. At least mine did. This is the first I'm hearing about it being a racist thing, and not only that, but putting your foot in something and then blaming it on black folks is a classic American racist move right out of the playbook. So it makes perfect sense that this was something that was happening anyway, nearly everywhere by everyone, but could be conveniently blamed on a certain population as a way of saying "They're the reason you can't have nice things". Just like everything else racists have made up for the last 6,000 years and continue to do.

But, again, uneducated rube. I don't know much about this stuff beyond the common understanding of the phrase and what I've seen in my own lifetime to support it.

Hard disagree. The world would be a much better place if more people had this conversation more frequently. Covering your eyes and la-la-laing the problem away solves nothing, and in fact is the very reason why we are so screwed now.

We can act now, and maybe preserve humanity beyond the next 250 years. Or we can do nothing and guarantee the death of everyone. Make your choice.

I predict lots of stupid emoji spam, and frequent changing of the subject.

I completely agree that MLMs are a “scam” but they are legitimate businesses in the eyes of the law.

Then they shouldn't be. Problem solved, next question?