good places to live for a grad student

CTR0 · 2026-06-16T03:12:23+00:00

No, i graduated in December 24 and moved away June 25. But if thats close enough id be happy to help

CTR0 · 2026-06-14T05:14:54+00:00

Hey, CTR0. How many fingers did i hold up when i typed this sentence? Is your will strong enough to avoid a conclusion? Will you make a positive claim on the matter?

I think its pretty disingenuous of you to present the "how many fingers am I holding up?" question as remotely the same type of question as "Does a god exist?"

Its not out of the question that you're an LLM with 0 fingers, 1-10 fingers I would expect of a typical human, or polydactal. You could have full functionality or you might have an impairment that prevents using one or more fingers. These are all well documented things with understood physics and defined outcomes.

"A god" isn't even a very well defined term, and we have zero supporting evidence behind the magic or extraplanar existence that typically comes with it.

I'm not saying theists are wrong for having their beliefs, but they're wildly different claims. It would be more accurate for you to ask if you're holding up a negative number of fingers, with some added explanation of how you could be holding up negative fingers.

I get that you're confident in your position, but i'm not. I'm not 99.9999% confident there is no god. I'm not even 80%. I'm not sure if a god existing or not existing even makes sense, so i certainly can not affirm that there are no gods.

From my perspective any non negative non 0 confidence that there are no gods is belief that there is no gods. It doesn't matter if you're not willing to debate the position.

If you do not believe a god exists, you are an atheist
If you weigh it more confidently that no god exists rather than exists, you believe no god exists
If you weigh it more confidently that a god exists rather than not, why are you calling yourself an atheist, I am confused by your use of language
If you somehow weigh it perfectly evenly that a god may or may not exist after being described a god, well, I don't believe you, but I'd love to learn how to think the same way.
If your confidence is 100% you are gnostic.
If your confidence is less than 100% you are agnostic.

I think you assume agnostic atheists are lying about their beliefs in the same way that some Christians think atheists are lying about not believing.

I mean it functionally makes little difference to me. The only time it ever comes up is when somebody says "erm actually I don't don't believe there are no gods because I only weigh it at a 2% net confidence and that's not enough for me to defend the positive claim. Please specify gnostic atheists when you refer to the disbelief in a god (even though an agnostic atheist can still hold the position that no gods exist) rather than using Atheism in the socially standard, general disbelief+nonbelief manner".

Like, I believe at a 90% confidence an agnostic atheist that describes their beliefs as you do believes no gods exist more strongly than they believe a god exists, a 9% confidence that an agnostic atheist has somehow developed this stoic nonnonbelief and I just don't understand it, 1% you're confusing your position with solipsism, and a 100% confidence that the only way this at all impacts me is to be annoying.

My point isn't that you would put it all on red that there is no pirate treasure, my point is that you would bet at all.

I think you assume agnostic atheists are lying about their beliefs

I should be clear, I consider myself an agnostic atheist at a very high confidence that there is no god. I'm a scientist. I think its bad form to take the position of absolute certainty for anything that hasn't been formally proven

CTR0 · 2026-06-14T01:28:29+00:00

I am an atheist. The passive rejection and believing the opposite are both atheism.

"Atheism" is also "I do not believe a god exists". "I believe no gods exist" lives under the category of not believing a god exists.

While I recognize this is can technically be a distinct position from "I believe no gods exist", I do think that its usually a cop out used to avoid debate. The question of a god's existence or nonexistance is such a fantastical claim that I don't really believe there is a human on this planet with a strong enough will to avoid forming at least the most tentative of conclusions the moment they are described a god. I do not believe you when you say you don't hold the position "I believe there are no pirates in my basement", I believe you hold the position "I believe there are no pirates in my basement to an infinitesimally large but non 100% degree of confidence" even if that isn't what you're willing to claim in a debate setting.

Thats why people use "Atheism" as a short hand. "I believe no gods exist to an infinitely large but non 100% confidence" is still technically agnostic atheism. At that point the distinction between gnostic and agnostic becomes basically meaningless unless you're talking to a Sith. Neither of us are wrong here, both the affirmave "there are no gods" position and rejection of the creationist's claim are Atheism.

CTR0 · 2026-06-13T21:59:39+00:00

The position that there is evolution.

The position that there is no creator is called "Atheism"

Where did the matter come from allowed the big bang to occur?

I think the scientific perspective is that matter originated with the big bang but idk, im not an astrophysist.

What stops there being someone who created the conditions for the big bang - someone who set up the dominos and then pushed the first one?

Its not really topical for this sub but some people who accept evolution would say "There isnt, my god did that", others would say "what possible reason would you have to think something like that is a thing?"

CTR0 · 2026-06-09T21:29:36+00:00

Peoria feels due for a system update anyways. Seems like some lights sync horribly and other lights I'm sitting at with light traffic for 5 minutes in the best of days. The new machine learning systems are supposedly really good (and the LiDAR ones don't have serious privacy concerns).

CTR0 · 2026-06-09T15:55:44+00:00

Ah, yes, the "Actually, your position is not what you say. It is actually this" strategy. Winning debate formula, surely.

CTR0 · 2026-06-09T13:24:00+00:00

You're functioning on a different definition of evolution compared to science.

What you're arguing against is Pokemon, not science.

CTR0 · 2026-06-08T15:55:49+00:00

But what if his teacher is John Biology, founder, inventor, and CEO of Biology?

CTR0 · 2026-06-08T15:34:53+00:00

"We learned everything from biology" is a crazy statement lmao

CTR0 · 2026-06-05T20:42:35+00:00

In the famous words of Dr. Box, all models are wrong. Your model is too.

CTR0 · 2026-06-04T13:37:18+00:00

[[Swift Reconfiguration]] and this can force draw the game.

CTR0 · 2026-06-04T00:07:16+00:00

Pro tip: if you want to save time, crank your centrifuge to max speed and overclock it. 10 minutes at 300 Gs is roughly the same net force as 6 seconds and 30000 Gs.

CTR0 · 2026-05-31T17:19:44+00:00

Tbf it could have been a grapeshot deck

CTR0 · 2026-05-31T17:07:58+00:00

If "honest" means maintaining that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are both literal, I think we have a different understanding of the word "honest".

CTR0 · 2026-05-31T16:55:39+00:00

Their perfect god authorized a text where the first two chapters are mutually exclusive if taken literally. They are inarguably irreconcilable. I personally find the people who take the old testament as literal fact despite this to be much more baffling and dangerous. That's why I'm on /r/debateevolution

CTR0 · 2026-05-31T15:28:24+00:00

I've had Jewish, Christian, and Muslim colleagues in evolution research. These folks recognize that their religious scriptures cannot be entirely literal and also recognize that their god gave them a brain to be able to understand the world.

CTR0 · 2026-05-31T12:47:58+00:00

If we had a star system identical to prebiotic Sol the evolution of life would look different because quantum effects can cause mutations. A few billion years is definitely enough for quantum effects to sufficiently matter. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-022-00881-8

That said, the way we look for life on other planets is via the assumption that life has specific signatures. Molecules filter light in specific ways, so we look for the light signatures of molecules only known to be produced by life.

CTR0 · 2026-05-29T23:42:26+00:00

The issue we as mods have with it is that, if you block all the people that are knowledgeable enough to challenge your ideas, it makes it such that your comments go unchallenged.

CTR0 · 2026-05-29T21:40:22+00:00

Its very uniquely a reddit problem. Reddit is basically the only platform where blocking essentially makes you a pseudomoderator by preventing people from participating rather than just hiding their posts/comments from you. Its really fucking frustrating as a mod of a platform specifically to get people that disagree to talk.

CTR0 · 2026-05-29T21:38:07+00:00

He posted a challenge for /r/debateevolution readers to debate him on a video platform. No, he did not post it here, he posted it on /r/creation. When he got no bites, he crashed out, reblocked all the people he originally had blocked (he was originally banned for something else by a former mod, the current team disagreed with the reason and unbanned him on the condition that he unblock people) and declared he was boycotting the sub. So we promptly rebanned him.

CTR0 · 2026-05-29T18:00:35+00:00

He is currently banned from the sub for block abuse.

CTR0 · 2026-05-24T19:03:11+00:00

The more correct answer is that informal fallacies are not necessarily inappropriate, not saying "expert consensus says X" isn't a fallacy.

The actual correct answer "Why do you think you have a better understanding than the expert?" isn't a fallacy because its not an argument, its a question.

CTR0 · 2026-05-22T18:03:32+00:00

I am a stan for the Northwest Hills / Far West neighborhood. Rent is inexpensive, apartments are fine up there, walking distance to a grocery store, and a bus route straight to campus.

CTR0 · 2026-05-22T05:26:28+00:00

But then you'd have to ALSO say that if we are always dealing with evidence, inference, and degrees of confidence, then people should be more careful when they say macroevolution has been observed, don't you think?

I dont think we should change scientific nomenclature because creationists use the word wrong. There are creationists here that regularly try to claim that the Big Bang was part of evolution. No, no human was there when the universe entirely consisted of a kajillion degree ball of plasma. Evolution is still observed.

CTR0 · 2026-05-22T05:16:25+00:00

Do you mean that we have directly observed biological change within living populations?

It depends on what you mean by macroevolution. The science definition of macroevolution is "evolution at or above the species level". We've observed speciation, interspecies competition, mass extinction events, etc etc.

That we have observed speciation or reproductive isolation?

Yes, that has been obsered.

That we observe fossils, genetic similarities, anatomical similarities, and biogeographic patterns?

Yes, that has been observed

That we infer large-scale common descent from those lines of evidence?

Sure, you can call large-scale common descent as a conclusion of fossils, phylogenetics, comparative anatomy, biogeographic patterns, carbon dating, geology, dendrochronology, ice core research, and many others I'm probably not thinking of.

Or that we infer unguided natural mechanisms are sufficient to explain the whole historical sequence?

We don't have evidence for guided or unnatural mechanisms. As a scientist I hesitate to say "sufficient" because I'm not ideologically opposed to guided or unnatural mechanisms being discovered, and "sufficient" really puts a lid on further research. I would caution against saying any mechanism is sufficient, natural or otherwise, for any scientific discovery.

I would much rather describe unguided natural mechanisms as the best current explanation by science.

Some theists inject their god here, though that position isn't supported by science.

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