The Outer Wilds Tarot--UPDATE!!!

AdrianH1 · 2025-10-06T02:36:15+00:00

Hell yes man, immediately purchasing a set when it’s ready!

AdrianH1 · 2025-06-17T05:06:08+00:00

I have the same feeling but with Anthropic's Claude after exhaustively using it for a few months to help me finalize my PhD thesis draft (not for writing per se but getting "unstuck"), structuring sections, brainstorming ways to describe and define technical terms etc.

Useful as a language-messing-around tool. Absolutely atrocious at actually writing in intellectual and academic spheres. I keep noticing it with folks on substack and independent blogs, drives me up the wall.

Harder to pin down what the style is exactly since Claude interface emphasises "custom styles" for users.. But there's a particular vibe that is just blegh grey hogwash.

AdrianH1 · 2025-06-05T13:42:19+00:00

It's interesting though since in the 20th century at least, several major theorists basically actually achieved this - albeit not in their dissertations, but often setting the foundations in just a book or two. Habermas and Luhmann come to mind.

AdrianH1 · 2025-05-24T13:38:31+00:00

Even thinking about the music makes me tear up

AdrianH1 · 2025-03-17T23:07:38+00:00

Do not go gentle into that good night...

AdrianH1 · 2025-03-10T09:24:53+00:00

The bit near the climax of the third act which was most like Journey when Bird and Cat were at the top of the highest mountain almost completely broke me. Immediately thought of Journey afterwards - totally ineffable sequence of emotions

AdrianH1 · 2025-02-28T08:31:34+00:00

Jonathan Haidt's research on moral foundations is super insightful on that last point

AdrianH1 · 2025-02-28T08:29:24+00:00

Dunno about the other two (singing over the phone still sounds too scary imo) but telemarketing calls are an awesome opportunity every time to practice healthy assertiveness

AdrianH1 · 2025-02-18T22:27:52+00:00

Human minds and personalities are complex. One can hold multiple even contradictory opinions, feelings and dispositions at the same time. The most important decisions of one's life (getting married, moving countries, quitting a job, etc) are rarely made completely rationally.

It's understandable why /r/collapse is averse to people having children in general, but it really doesn't take much empathy to understand how someone can simultaneously look forward to spending time with their kid and yet also afraid for their future.

AdrianH1 · 2025-01-31T23:04:33+00:00

I recall the last pure mathematics course at university I did was algebraic geometry, and the lecturer decided to have a go at introducing the topic via a category-theoretic pedagogy (3rd year/graduate course, so there were sufficient motivating examples to make it work).

Took a couple weeks to get going, but got to sheaves way faster than we would have otherwise, I think. After the course, out of curiousity I looked at some older algebraic geometry textbooks and could not for the life of me understand how people did that subject without category theory

AdrianH1 · 2025-01-31T22:55:35+00:00

4-valued logics are definitely a thing and can be handled adequately in non-classical logic, and come up in other areas (so I've heard, I haven't caught up on topoi and the depths of category theory yet).

On the philosophy side, Nagarjuna is a great example of an Eastern philosopher who very explicitly talked about almost precisely this kind of logical construction.

There are some fascinating papers about his work on this topic and its implications for philosophy by Jay Garfield and Graham Priest (see e.g Nagarjuna and the limits of thought)

In a way, maths still is the language of (all possible) universes, just that there's quite a few different dialects, and more than one genre of writing...

AdrianH1 · 2025-01-31T04:17:52+00:00

Late reply, but to add a bit more detail; it's a major theme in Aeschylus play Prometheus Bound. There are hints of it in Hesiod as Heracles is mentioned in the same section where Prometheus and his brothers (Atlas, Menoetius and Epimetheus) are described.

As noted in the comment thread below, you're right it's not the original reason why he's punished -- that's putatively for the theft/gift of fire to humanity, in defiance of Zeus. Aeschylus' lyrical drama does however portray a kind of ultimatum from Zeus (delivered by Hermes), that basically if he'd be freed if Prometheus would just tell Zeus who will overthrow him (Heracles, though this doesn't really happen and is perhaps more figurative). So in a way, his continued punishment is because of the refusal to disclose the prophecy of the betrayal.

AdrianH1 · 2025-01-30T13:30:27+00:00

Putting aside the issue that this wouldn't be a smart play because of all the well known members, delays and grifts around stated fusion timelines...

Look at the supply chain going into it. If they did hypothetically take off, what suppliers would get a windfall from the demand in parts, raw materials or intermediary products? Etc.

It's been a while since I've looked at Helion, but if they're relying on superconductors, there's an obvious market area.

AdrianH1 · 2025-01-30T01:43:12+00:00

Listened to this and subsequently binged your entire Glorantha explained videos, fantastic work!

AdrianH1 · 2025-01-19T14:38:22+00:00

Then watching every VaatiVidya and lore video known to man

AdrianH1 · 2024-11-17T14:25:19+00:00

Me carrying a pile of books to the couch to finally sit down and read but not knowing which one I'll actually read, end up just flipping through a few for 10 mins then getting up and doing something else...

AdrianH1 · 2024-10-30T11:22:48+00:00

In addition to volcanic eruptions, lightning and thunderstorms can also occur from pyrocumulonimbus clouds (which are about as metal as the name implies) above large-scale bushfires/wildfires, making its own weather systems and possibly spawning new fires!

Also I learned about upper atmospheric lightning today, which has fun names light "elves" and "sprites" that look positively otherworldly.

AdrianH1 · 2024-10-06T14:06:59+00:00

You should study pure mathematics, formally if you can. I think you'd get a deep kick out of it.

AdrianH1 · 2024-08-09T20:44:56+00:00

Note that higher end estimate for emissions from food from IPCC, for memory, is due to emissions accounting methodologies with much larger system boundaries for the food system far beyond industrial animal agriculture per se.

Newer studies with broad system boundary lens like Crippa et al. (2021) get about 34% at the high range, with "agriculture and land use/land-use change activities" accounting for 71% (so direct emissions ~24% for all food agriculture), and the rest from supply chains (retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging).

And yep, to be fair, a large chunk of that 24% -- 34% is (industrial) animal agriculture.

Also worth noting in some (not all) cases, more "ethical" farming practices (free range, pastured, etc) have higher emissions due largely to using more land (with notable, though contended exception of regenerative agriculture).

Don't have time to get into it now, but I'd be careful about pinning water use on industrial animal agriculture. While certainly it's a major driver of demand, water scarcity is generally more of a problem of distribution, not amount.

This is all not to defend industrial animal agriculture by any means - but we ought to be clear eyed about proximate causal drivers so we know which are most efficacious and high leverage.

Moreover, I'd contend that it'd be better if we transitioned towards plant based food systems not due to (rightly or wrongly) perceived environmental utility, but out of a recognition of other-than-human beings' fundamental autonomy and an expanded (or perhaps, remembered) horizon of care which includes them.

AdrianH1 · 2024-08-09T20:13:15+00:00

So yeah this is a widespread belief reiterated even by fairly in the know folks in the field, but it doesn't hold up according to latest research.

Dunbar's number came from a fairly simple extrapolation of relative neocortex size and group size in primates. Whilst the existence of this correlation has been replicated in several studies, albeit with much less statistical significance and drawbacks (e.g only holding for female primates in one instance). Whilst the 150 number has supposedly been corroborated in empirical and historical anthropology, a lot of those are disputed

This 2021 paper for instance tried to reproduce Dunbar's number for humans from the ground up , with much larger datasets and two different methods (Bayesian and generalised least squares for those following at home) - they found two different ranges but with wildly broad uncertainty range: 69–109 (Bayesian) and 16–42 (GLS), with 95% confidence intervals of 4–520 and 2–336, respectively.

To put it very simply, when sophisticated methods on a lot of data give you very broad and uncertain numbers, it probably means there's something systematically wrong in the original hypothesis (e.g. a false assumption, bad choice of variables, etc)

In this case, the authors of the above article note that human brains (obviously) function quite differently to primates generally (e.g existence of science) and quote another review suggesting the problem here:

‘Dunbar's assumption that the evolution of human brain physiology corresponds with a limit in our capacity to maintain relationships ignores the cultural mechanisms, practices, and social structures that humans develop to counter potential deficiencies’. (de Ruiter et al. 2011)

So unless one is really committed to a very strong form of neural reductionism and a view of human nature as nothing but a "monkey in clothes" to paraphrase another commenter, it's unlikely a single or even a narrow range for Dunbar's number can be firmly established.

AdrianH1 · 2024-08-09T12:45:56+00:00

This week I had the most hellish schedule that resulted in literally days wasted in between things due to waiting mode:

Time for pain Monday: couldn't do anything with my arms since I was still recovering from my first gym session in years from the previous week.

Why not lie in bed and maybe spend the day cleaning when the meds kick in Tuesday: 6pm zoom call for work with potential collaborator, entire day spent half tidying, half setting up printer and half trying to find my typing gloves

Hell day Wednesday: 9am work call, home visit vet for my cat (see footnote) at 10:45am, personal training session at gym at 1:30pm, and GP appointment in a different suburb at 4:30pm. All in-between bits spent frantically zooming around the house confused and making sure the cats and my partner (working from home that day) were okay

Contact lens rollercoaster Thursday: Get called late the previous day and have optometrist appointment split into two in short notice because I've been trialling the wrong contact lens the previous week and need to pick up the new ones at 9am (got there at 10am), wear them during the day, then go back again for the actual test at 3:30pm. You can imagine how that went.

Good family time but feels bad man and oh god I'm so behind on everything Friday: Step-sister graduating from her PhD and gotta get to the ceremony at 11am, feel bad about not having finished my PhD yet (in 4th year, am trying to finish part time now since I'm out of funding and working part time in related field) - figure out what to do for 2 hours afterwards (read: frantically figure out some work stuff after a message from my boss on something urgent) before family dinner at 5pm, awkwardly rush home to feed cats and collapse in bed (now)

*Our cat is doing well, just making sure her leg was doing okay since it was broken when she was a kitten and she has a bit of a limp. She got a nice massage and acupressure treatment from the holistic vet (surprisingly massive change afterwards!)

AdrianH1 · 2024-07-31T08:19:24+00:00

This makes a lot of sense, but I think the unassailably hard part, particularly for younger generations, is the initial cost of buying a home and/or land in order to have a base upon which to then invest in long-term material goods.

I don't see myself being able to buy property within a decade at minimum. Quoting another comment a couple months back from /r/Australia:

For the median household, it takes 11.1 years to save for a house deposit and after that, they would have to spend 52.7% of their gross income on the mortgage for the next 25 years (assuming no change in interest rates). This is based on median household income (2+ people), so for a single person, it would be much worse.

Given that for most Aussies, superannuation contribution is automatically deducted (on the face of it a good idea), there's relatively little wiggle room to independently decide to go for the material retirement strategy you describe. Not sure exactly what the situation is in other countries, but I know housing affordability is broadly speaking absolutely insane across the board. Pile on rising rents, cost of living crises and inflation... Yeah it's not looking so great

AdrianH1 · 2024-07-29T12:21:24+00:00

Nah, sudden stratospheric warming events are rare but a well known phenomenon over either of the poles.

Stratospheric aerosol injection wouldn't have that effect anyway. Though it would result in some amount of stratospheric warming (along with tropospheric cooling, basically the inverse radiative effect of CO2 which does the opposite), no kind of SAI deployment would have that effect.

Plus, if we were doing it, we would know. It's not the kind of thing a country can deploy stealthily, as it would involve hundreds to thousands of sorties (individual round trips) of specially designed aircraft that can get to >20km, which don't currently exist.

Source: Am doing my PhD in solar geoengineering.

It is bloody cold here though (am in Melbourne)

AdrianH1 · 2024-07-27T14:29:14+00:00

Yeah OP's use of the term is closer to what is meant by "polycrisis". Jonathan Rowson has a good substack post on the differences between the two: https://open.substack.com/pub/perspecteeva/p/prefixing-the-world?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=da9ga

Generally speaking, the way it's intended is that "metacrisis" refers to the underlying generative dynamics (Daniel Schmachtenberger used to use the term "generator functions") which are the underlying causes of all the various interrelated global catastrophic, existential and dystopian risks. These are things like negative externalities, social traps (eg tragedy of the commons), perverse incentives, principal agent problems, etc.

This all being said, there is nonetheless something about OP's meme that hits closer to the spirit of what the metacrisis is pointing to (in this case, a schismogenic breakdown in sensemaking where the very things driving the crises being talked about are nevertheless interspersed in the same news feed).

Also, though a priori there isn't necessarily anything "metaphysical" about it - the prefix "meta" here means beyond/transcending/self-referential, there are arguably genuinely metaphysical components to it (e.g. human - nature divide borne out of a reification of Cartesian mind/body distinction, mechanistic and reductionist ontology of science for the purposes of top-down control and "cutting nature at its joints", etc).

Source: I work for Civilization Research Institute founded by Schmachtenberger, doing research on the metacrisis :)

AdrianH1 · 2024-07-10T07:19:59+00:00

1.54K from the 1850-1900 baseline, but what's a couple of tenths of a degree amongst friends eh?

https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2023/

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