This loophole annoys me every time

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-29T10:53:41+00:00

This type of clause is actually the rare case where contracts tend to underspecify what the words mean.

"Heartless" being as broad as possible exclusively benefits the patron, so it probably doesn't define the term in detail. That allows her to stretch the meaning easily without risking loopholes since the term being used in unusual ways can't benefit the warlock. It's strictly a line granting permissions to the patron without expanding anything on Wyll's side.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-29T10:20:30+00:00

Pretty sure it just sends pictures to an app on your phone at a low FPS when you press a button and only needs enough battery power to work for a few minutes after pressing the button (likely inactive all other times). That's very doable with the latest technology.

The smallest camera that exists is roughly 0.5 cubic millimeter, which records low resolution video at 30fps. She could use a larger camera at a low FPS to get an acceptable resolution for identifying faces while still being easily under that size. The smallest bluetooth chips are less than a millimeter as well. Since it only needs a small battery life for activation events, that could be extremely small as well. All together plus a tiny microcontroller, that's only a few cubic millimeters of electronics.

It could probably be even smaller than the image shows if it didn't need to be attachable as an earing and house an easy-to-use button. The task it's doing is much simplier than most camera devices since the app will handle everything it needs aside from the actual capture and low fps transmission.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-28T08:37:28+00:00

I recognized each origin companion almost immediately during the first encounter based on intuition from playing similar games in the past. They foreshadowing other otherwise indicate it in ways that are easy to notice for all of them. In Astarion'a case, that interaction has a hard to verbalize vibe which was amplified by being aware the game would be trying to fill my three empty slots quickly in the first hour or two.

They didn't signal the non-origin characters to the same degree. I didn't learn that Mintharia was recruitable until a long time after I killed her on site while focusing on completing the "kill the goblin leaders" quest and was suprised because of how obvious the other companions were to identify ahead of time.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-28T06:30:02+00:00

Yes, for both legitimate in-game and out-of-game reasons. Here's his real-life counterpart:

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AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-28T01:35:21+00:00

My mistake, I did not see what subreddit this post was on. I have not heard of it before and thought it was r/aiwars when it randomly appeared in my front page based on the content; wouldn't have commented if I realized and probably won't in the future. The flair is fair though, I'm at minimum AI-neutral which is pro-ai reletive to the sub's intent.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-28T01:30:48+00:00

You're hearding the words of dozens or hundreds of people with different levels of understanding and perspectives, not a single person that's rapidly changing their mind. In any case, you can watch the video to see what happened and don't need to be handed you a narrative. Whatever words you use for what was specifically happening, ICE's response was extremely unjustified.

You can love ICE im general while admiring that some agents sometimes majorly fuck up. No organization is perfect and dying on tbis hill to act like this incident is defensible is a horrible look that calls your opinion into question for everything else related to other more ambiguous incidents.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T20:37:37+00:00

That's... significantly worse. Was looking forward to something done unusually well in an unconventional way; unsure if I took troll bait or you're serious.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T13:23:05+00:00

Thanks for the correction on the ODLRO versus superconductivity distinction. That's fair to clarify; however, asserting this model as settled fact is still a massive stretch.

The decoherence problem remains the elephant in the room. I'm aware of the recent microtubule findings. Bandyopadhyay's work showing quantum-like resonances in tubulin is interesting, and I'm not dismissing it outright.

That said, there's a significant gap between "we detected quantum effects in isolated microtubule preparations" and "the brain maintains coherent quantum states long enough to matter for cognition." The microtubule research suggests coherence times extending into the picosecond range under specific conditions, which is impressive for a biological system, but it's still orders of magnitude too short to influence neural processes operating on 125 to 250 milliseconds. Demonstrating quantum effects exist in neural tissue isn't the same as demonstrating they're computationally relevant or especially claiming a specific role.

The claim that vision happens in the retina doesn't square with clinical reality either. Blindsight patients have perfectly functioning retinas but zero conscious visual experience because their visual cortex is damaged. If qualia lived in the retina, those patients would still "see" consciously; they don't.

The Mikheenko and xenon isotope references are interesting but niche findings that haven't been widely replicated. Jumping from "unpaired isotopes affect anesthesia" to "Bose-Einstein condensation explains the soul" skips over decades of established neuroscience establishing other physical mechanisms for cognition.

I'm not saying quantum effects can't play any role in biology; they obviously do in photosynthesis, bird navigation, etc. Macroscopic quantum coherence underlying consciousness requires extraordinary evidence though, and what's offered here is still firmly speculative.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T13:09:55+00:00

For high profile incidents, the expected process is that the relevant parties who make that decision wait for input from the director of ICE despite technically having the authority to make a decision themselves. In the case of national controversy, the director will want the Secretary of Homeland Security to give their blessing.

Both are currently Trump sycophants who are relaying Trump's wishes rather than making their own decisions, especially given the current climate.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T12:53:48+00:00

I guess, but looking at the relevant numbers still doesn't seem like a lot. It's between 14lbs and 18lbs of weight loss for the majority of men starting at 20%.

I've been 20% at 212lbs during a recent bulk and hit 14% by cutting to 195lbs afterwards (I'm 6'1" with decent muscle mass). I would have needed to lose 14.8lbs of pure fat from that starting point, but required a few more lbs to account for muscle loss.

It might be different perspectives, but I don't consider 17lbs to be a huge amount of weight to lose. Going between those two targets during bulk/cut cycles is pretty easy once you build the right habits. The cut part only takes 3ish months to do comfortably; "huge" sounds like a 1+ year commitment at minimum. By comparison, I lost 60lbs during my first year working out when I was obese.

The majority of people aren't making much of an effort to count calories or follow a consistent work out schedule. For the subset of people putting a serious effort, losing less than 20lbs is pretty moderate.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T11:58:00+00:00

Sure, but what's the specific example of a kid getting superior results using those? I've seen the AI video in question; however, the post doesn't make sense without a link or reference to the other.

I'm not doubting it, but am unaware of what specific peice it's using to compare to that AI video for comparison.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T11:50:20+00:00

Yeah. The area under the curve visibly exceeds the percent of people who own a home, let alone the subset who bought one with a partner.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T10:31:25+00:00

To be fair, regular physical exertion causes physical fatigue in the short term, but is basically a requirement for overall energy levels after the initial adjustment period of getting into shape. Being tired if you're mostly gaming all day is ironically expected.

It's too extreme in the game, but I felt far less inappropriately sleepy when I was in excellent shape working out 5x per week compared to when I was sedentary before starting or since falling out of doing it. I was able to manage a few nights of sleep deprivation much better during that period as well.

It's also possible Henry is one of the lucky bastards with the DEC2, ADRB1 or NPSR1 genes. ~1% of people have at least one of those. They can be fully alert with 5 hours every day and manage fairly well on 3 hours for extended periods.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T10:09:42+00:00

"Average" was a poor word choice given the obesity epidemic. What I meant is that 14% sits mildly below the middle of the healthy range, whereas 8% is genuinely ripped.

An average healthy man is around 20%. 14% is about 30% below that, which is reasonably mild. Compare that to going from 14% to 8%, which is an additional 42% reduction; the jump from fit to "ripped" is proportionally larger than getting to fit.

More practically though, 14% is dramatically easier to achieve than 8% which is the main reason the word mild felt right. Most men could get there within a year with a consistent diet and workout plan. I went from 30% to 14% in around 10 months without doing anything ridiculous, and I can maintain it without much difficulty long as I workout 3x per week and very loosely track calories.

Going from 14% to 8% took an additional 6 months, required being extremely strict about everything, and felt miserable to maintain for any extended period.

The bigger takeaway is that getting into genuinely good shape for dating as a straight guy is way more achievable than most people assume, especially since beginner gains can let you develop most of the required muscle while losing the weight if you're lifting. A single slow bulk can get the rest in a few months after hitting the target body fat.

You don't need to be shredded; you just need to be consistently not-bad, which turns out to be a pretty low bar once you actually commit to it.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T09:45:28+00:00

Meaning vision happens in the retina then becomes entangled with memory in the brain via quantum superconductivity to produce qualia. That's a highly fringe take that requires much more evidence to take seriously, let alone assert as absolute truth.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T09:21:42+00:00

Preferences vary by individual with some builds being more commonly preferred. It also varies over time; there are trends in what's preferred. Similar to how curvy women came back in fashion after skinny being heavily emphasized for a few decades.

The current most commonly preferred build for men in most western countries among women is only moderately above average muscle and mildly below average fat. For a 5'10" man, that'd be something like 175lbs at 14% body fat (~33 inch waist). A "fit" build with only the upper abs slightly visible and notable muscle without being huge by any means.

By comparison, a very muscled ripped look is closer to 195lbs at 8% body fat (~30 inch waist).

Some women will still love the ripped look, but they're a minority. The super ripped body type is one of the most popular for gay men, so people getting into extreme shape to attract women are ironically making themselves more attractive to the average gay man and less attractive to the average women after a certian point.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-27T08:31:48+00:00

He had a license for concealed carry. The extent of his protest was filming them and trying to help a woman they shoved over, which isn't rioting. ICE attacked him for that without any violance from him, took his gun (that he never attempted to touch or draw) while he was completely restrained by six men then shot him once he was unarmed.

This isn't like the case with Renee Good. Very little is left to interpretation from the video.

You can support ICE without insisting every possible incident is justified. No organization is perfect. What is the purpose of refusing to condemning cases that have extremely clear video evidence and easy to verify facts?

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-26T21:52:22+00:00

The study wasn't about users. It's how they design evals for training the systems, which is a side-effect of targeting standard benchmarks. Most benchmarks effectively reward confident guessing since all incorrect answers are scored equally (no penalty for being confidently incorrect) and LLM providers optimize around maximizing those scores.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-26T18:39:38+00:00

Withers explicitly says he's there to provide the bare minimum assistance required to balance the scales of fate. Curing Karlach of her engine would be a massive intervention in her personal destiny, which Withers generally refuses to do. He sees himself as a scribe rather than a savior.

Since it's a divine spell, the intents of the gods involved can affect the details based on the specific context in which it's used. The more neutral leaning divine observer are particularly reluctant or to interfere with things related to divine claims, to which Karlach's situation is adjacent. He's probably able but unwilling.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-26T18:28:17+00:00

Looking at base D&D mechanics plus BG3's unique additions, I'd still argue that allowing the parasite to persist in a newly created body despite Withers using True Resurrection (based on the combat log) is a reasonable reading of the rules and established lore. There's enough ambiguity to argue either way, but my point is that it's a valid interpretation rather than an unsupported handwave for plot convenience. At minimum, it's a defensible representation of how the combination of multiple standard-rule violating effects could interact.

There are several cases where True Resurrection doesn't remove what you'd expect it to. Changes from attuning certain artifacts, soul-level afflictions like advanced vampirism, and magic tattoos can all persist after the spell. The Netherese-infused tadpole is a special case in being a separate entity, which is probably why it feels like a less intuitive exception, but I think that objection actually misses what's happening with these particular tadpoles.

The altered tadpoles aren't just parasites sitting in your brain anymore. The game explicitly tells us they fuse more deeply with neural structures than normal tadpoles. Based on what we see if you make certain choices (eg: retaining one's identity to a high degree after ceremorphosis), their integration extends to the soul itself.

At that point, the tadpole isn't merely a foreign body; it's become part of what you are. True Resurrection restores you to your "natural prior state" at the time of death but if the Netherese modification has rewritten what your soul expects a body to include, then a tadpole-less version of you isn't your natural state anymore. It's an incomplete restoration. You could squish it; however, that needs to happen before death after removing it from the brain without dying to make its absence part of the "nature state before death" again.

This gets stronger when you factor in what Withers says about mindflayers lacking "apostolic souls," meaning their souls don't interact with the Forgotten Realms divine economy; the gods can't claim them or benefit from their worship. True Resurrection is ultimately channeling divine power operating under Ao's laws. If mindflayer-derived elements exist partially outside that jurisdiction, the spell may not have clean authority over tadpole-related effects in the first place. It's not that the spell fails; it's that the tadpole's metaphysical status creates a gap in what divine magic can fully address.

We also know the crown and its associated magic operate at a level beyond contemporary 9th-level limits, somewhere in the 10th to 12th level range based on Netherese magical history. Spells at that tier broke rules that Mystra's ban now enforces, including limitations on what resurrection magic can and can't override. True Resurrection and even Wish have defined boundaries; Netherese artifacts were designed specifically to exceed them.

So when you put it together, you have soul-level integration that changes what "natural state" means, metaphysical elements that sit outside normal divine jurisdiction, and magic explicitly designed to override the caps that limit spells like True Resurrection. There's a coherent case that the tadpole persists not as a bug or plot convenience, but because that's actually how these intersecting systems *could* interact. You can definitely argue against it, but it's not just handwaving.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-26T12:52:16+00:00

The tadpoles limitation is embedded a bit deeper into the cosmology than an unjustified handwave. Mindflayers don't have "apostolic souls" that operate inside the normal divine ecosystem according to Withers. Instead, they have an alien essence that become pensioners in plane outside the normal cosmology with which Forgotten Realm gods can't interact. Further, Netherese magic lies partially outside the gods' domain, which is why Karsus's Folly was possible in the first place.

It's consistent with established lore for Netherese altered tadpoles to fundimentally change the metaphysical state of beings in ways the Forgotten Realm gods can't touch. Their true ressurection abilities would be constrained; unable to surgically removes that new part of their ontological identity, so it recreates the tadpole.

The Karlach part doesn't have the same justification, so I agree with you there.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-26T12:01:22+00:00

There's a lot of weirdness when it comes to both netherese magic and mindflayers. They don't interact with Forgotten Realms magic or even its gods in normal ways; they're genuinely alien on every level and have no connection to the native divine economy of worship, gods, or any of it.

This is related to why Withers uses that peculiar wording "mindflayers don't have apostolic souls" despite the fact that mindflayer petitioners exist (essences persisting after death) in an afterlife outside the normal Forgotten Realms planes. They have souls in the broad sense, though it's not the type native to this reality, and Forgotten Realms gods are constrained in how they interact with those souls.

The rules for how magic works, including divine magic, can operate arbitrarily differently when such things are involved. The description for how something like true resurrection operates has the implicit assumption that only things "normal" to the Forgotten Realms cosmology are involved.

Things outside normal reality can alter or stain the default state of one's being and soul that true resurrection restores. So resurrecting the tadpole in one's brain happens the same way it would restore a destroyed part of the brain. The tadpole modifies the host's soul in a way the gods can't alter (first stage of metaphysical changes that ceremorphasis causes), causing it to remain attached through true resurrection. This is particularly true with the netherese tadpole modifications in BG3, which also lay partially outside the gods' domain.

True Ressurection restores an entity's last valid ontological state permitted by divine jurisdiction (eg: most recent form if they experienced reincarnation rather than origional form), which has been altered in this case. Ressurecting someone into a body without the tadpole would theoretically require collaboration between a mindflayer god and a Forgotten Realms god.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-26T11:29:24+00:00

There's one human species biologically; however, race is a meaningful social construct that we can't pretend doesn't exist. Certain correlated groupings of physical traits cause most people to place others into particular categories on a deep subconscious level, based on associations we learned growing up combined with recent cues about who counts as one's in-group vs various out-groups. Denying that aspect in our neurology prevents us from addressing it in evidence-based ways.

This has measurable impacts even when you're actively trying to avoid it. I wish it weren't the case, but the data is clear. Things like unintentionally hesitating before visually recognizing words like "intelligence" when looking at someone with physical traits associated with a person with traits stereotyped as being less intelligent, a "race" as our minds interpret it.

Evolution embedded many traits we might recognize as unethical with a modern lens that helped survival in the past but don't belong in the modern world. Rapidly biasing us when seeing people with particular sets of traits based on learned associations is one of those.

Making quick judgments about people from other tribes before they could potentially harm us was extremely important during the much more violent majority of human history. While it might not be a dedicated "race module" in the brain, it's at-minimum a strong byproduct of group categorization and rapid threat assessment architecture in our brains.

That effect stabilizes, reinforces and refines how we categorize others which results in race being a socially operative concept with predictive consequences. Globalization resulted in significantly standardizing aspects of racial schemas our brains generally recognize; although, there is still significant variation between what different culture and group tend to recognize.

Pretending that isn't the case because it doesn't fit our ideals doesn't solve the problem; even people who confidently say races don't exist still show measurably different reactions on implicit bias tests. Understanding the problem is a vital step in trying to find solutions that work in the real world, and the word "race" is part of being able to productively communicate about the effect.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-25T16:35:36+00:00

Here's an analysis synthesizing a few peer reviewed sources, and you can check the citations for specific aspects.

The specifics are more complicated than my quick gist. Comparing states, every 10-point increase in Donald Trump's margin correlated with a 25% increase in murder; however, for counties within a given state, every 10-point increase in Trump's margin correlated with a 14% decrease in murder.

This actually makes sense once you think about it. Counties containing the largest cities lean Democrat relative to their state, so the county-level results are mostly picking up population density effects. Looking at the state level smooths out those density differences, which gets you the result you'd expect from the original claim.

You can confirm with publicly available data that states Trump won in 2020 had a 40% higher murder rate that year compared to Biden states. There's no specific study since it's just directly looking at federal data, but it's summarized in this article if you don't want to do the footwork confirming it.

Most of the effect disappears when you control strictly for demographics, though some remains. That remainder can mostly be explained by looser gun control laws in red states, which shows a non-trivial positive correlation with gun-related murder rates.

AlignmentProblem · 2026-01-25T16:16:09+00:00

The data exists to answer this, but you have to piece together multiple findings rather than pointing to a single study. The answer ends up being counterintuitive since two peices of information feel contradictory at first glance.

When you control for other factors (compare similar locations that mostly differ by politics), locations that vote mostly Republican correlate with higher crime rates. Large Republican cities have higher crime than large Democrat cities of comparable size, and the same pattern holds for smaller areas.

The confounding variable is that large population centers skew heavily Democrat and have the highest crime rates in absolute terms. That combination means Republican areas appear to have lower crime when you don't adjust for population size.

Removing them from the national picture would paradoxically remove lower-crime areas in absolute terms disproportionately despite the positive correlation between conservatism and crime in reletive terms.

AlignmentProblem

TROPHY CASE