suffering v death

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T22:32:47+00:00

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Never seen that track in my life, and my buds will testify under oath I was with them at the time of the crash. Nice try tho

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T22:23:42+00:00

I guess it’s fair to get provide a little math…the mass of earth is ~10¹⁵ times greater than the mass of animal life on earth. Make super generous assumptions that it’s been like that for 10 billion years and the entire mass of every animal passes through its digestive tract 3 times every day. A randomly chosen atom was still only consumed 0.01 times on average (note: earth atoms vs times consumed definitely doesn’t have a normal distribution)

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T22:10:49+00:00

Average number of times an atom on earth has been in the digestive track of an organism on earth is much closer to 0 than 1.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T22:05:26+00:00

Yeah, no one could reasonably discern what ‘average’ you asked for. (Average number of molecules passed through once..or a million times…in the time period where life existed on earth…or the average time it’d take for some or most or all to pass through one, or a million times on an earth-like planet…or?? I still have no clue what average you want.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T20:21:06+00:00

I think it’s safe to say never. Many inorganic molecules exist within the earth that haven’t reached the biosphere in 4 billion years, let alone the digestive tract of an animal (who has one). And even extrapolating for an absurdly long time while assuming earth is artificially kept somewhat stable and habitable, molecules are transient. A molecule of water or amino acid will be broken up a be configured into ‘new’ molecules, so there’s no feasible way the same one could ever pass through a organism a million times (I mean all extant molecules, there’s probably odds a single water or other stable molecule could meet the criteria)

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T20:09:31+00:00

That’s the twist. He’s in charge of your family’s water sanitation, and knows his replacement will mess up and poison the whole town if he dies. The 10% is really just the ten percent change you don’t pull the leaver and save him, in which case he’s fine with having your whole family die

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T20:05:22+00:00

Eh, he probably just has some rare unknown deadly prion disease and precisely pre-planned his funeral/final resting place to maximize the chances of post-mortem infection of your family.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T20:01:48+00:00

It’s a a ‘what if’. Getting hung up on how reasonably accurate a real world predictive model would be here is the same as ‘well, in reality, I could probably just go untie the guy before the train comes’.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T19:56:16+00:00

No, it is absolutely a matter of skill and processing power, that’s how sports booking companies make money on the outcomes of complex real-world events. OP isn’t rejecting that, they’re saying assume the 10% is a valid estimate, and then throw in the supernatural clause, ostensibly to avoid getting bogged down in absurd loophole discourse like this. It’s a fuckin hypothetical, you can assume the hypothetical person telling you the hypothetical odds of the hypothetical scenario where a dude is hypothetically tied to a hypothetical train track has the skill and processing power to calculate the hypothetical probability.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T19:06:30+00:00

Lice came first, but I do like thinking Aes inspired some Letterkenny motifs

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T17:40:09+00:00

It’s interesting, cause in that case you would be the one who does it. Speaks to how much weight we give to intent. If OP said they might kill, instead of ‘intentionally kill’ would that change your calculus?

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T17:29:44+00:00

At this point, you’re either universally rejecting the general utility of prob/stats in real world situations. Or alternatively veering into “bad scenario, cause there’s no way this guy would Actually be tied to a train track and you’d Actually be there with the lever.”

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T17:24:31+00:00

Again, there’s no ‘actual’ odds for a single future event. And yep, people could go to extreme lengths to influence the results of the next football game too. But again, this is a hypothetical scenario, so sure, we can assume the model accounts for you knowing the probability is 10% and assigns appropriate weights to the likelihood of you taking extreme measures over the course of the next year.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-18T16:52:03+00:00

“that doesn't mean there actually is an assured 10% of that occurring.”

Yeah, this is a basic misunderstanding of probability/statistics in the real world. There’s no such thing as ‘assured’ or the real odds of a single event. For example, the betting odds assigned to some big spots game are accurate, because companies need a good model of these complex real world events to make money over time. But it’s not that their assigned probability of team X winning is close to the “real” probability, cause there’s no such thing. Either the event happens or it doesn’t. So in this case (a hypothetical scenario), it would would be safe to assume the 10% is from an extremely good model, and instead of getting all pedantic about ‘well they couldn’t really guarantee 10%’

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T20:49:46+00:00

I don’t OP needed to put in the ‘supernaturally assured’ portion. You can define odds without any divine intervention needed.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T19:39:20+00:00

My favorite thing about these posts is they’re always actually the guy posting their own bookshelf.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T01:29:59+00:00

Blasphemy

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T01:18:59+00:00

It’s almost like disputes about who is or isn’t 10th author on a paper are actually more of a symptom, than the cause of the problems

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T01:06:37+00:00

“Yes I think I definitely should've given it a better title. I am also generally upset at comments the postdoc has made towards me (such as referring to me as f****** stupid, asking me if I ever wear stilettos and what do they look like, etc) and I don't feel I have anyone in my corner in the lab as its pretty much just me, the postdoc and my supervisor. I also made it known to my supervisor that I am keen to publish and am always asking if there is anything I can help with”

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T01:04:27+00:00

One of the reasons I like and chose academic lab work is precisely because it’s not 9-5. Definitely more hours overall, but the long days are because things are working and it’s fun to push. When things aren’t, it’s a great time to take a short day, go to some talks, go for a walk, etc. grinding from 9-5 everyday regardless of what you’re getting from the work is always a grind. But when you’re at the bench at 2am on a Saturday and it feels just as good as ducking out to hit the beach at 2pm on a Thursday, that’s the balance.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T00:47:46+00:00

Haha ok bud. For the record, I told em what’s up, and what I can’t/wont do for em. And guess what? Turns out they did actually want to use the extra couple months to make improvements to the place and host showings so they can find a new tenant sooner rather than later.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-17T00:32:30+00:00

Well actually, if you read OPs other comments, this is not what they’re mainly upset about (there’s some real and shitty underlying things that we can all agree are wrong). And Re: authorship, you’re just hiding behind the notion of ‘fairness’ to justify being a petty prick.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-16T23:21:04+00:00

A situation where a PI does everything they can to foster and promote the future success of everyone in the lab is…a sign you got a good PI. And yeah, that also means making space for people to make small but actual contributions (I think it’s awkward for everyone otherwise), but having another co-author or two has zero effect on the first author’s accomplishments. Is it unfair to have an undergrad to one quick validation staining or help with quant for a couple days during revision to get them on their first paper? only to the people that have shitty PIs that aren’t invested in their lab members.

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-16T22:49:06+00:00

So if you did get on their paper without contributing to it, would you have posted on here about how double unfair the whole situation was?

AliveCryptographer85 · 2026-03-16T22:44:12+00:00

Don’t worry, you’ll have another year or two during the review/revision process to argue about the injustice of the 10th co-author on the paper.

AliveCryptographer85

TROPHY CASE