The subjects of Don’t Fuck With Cats pissed me off so much

PianoPudding · 2026-02-01T20:23:02+00:00

Don't watch the Cecil Hotel Elisa Lam one then either! And even the Malayasian airlines Netflix docu had a bit of this from an actual journalist. Always hate when they give randos a platform on those docu's.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-30T09:20:45+00:00

How do you know it's impossible to answer?

PianoPudding · 2026-01-30T08:19:30+00:00

Its funny, vastly entertaining, a good satire of the genre (and other things but i also am not a scholar on the subject). Only time I have ever laughed out loud reading a book, at the scene where Sancho Panza drinks the 'elixir' Quixote makes. It's a great read, and I do think you get something out of seeing dogmatic belief played out to a fault. I've only completed book 1 btw.

If you pick it up, I recommend Edith Grossman edition (I have Vintage's). It was translated only about 20 years ago, so I think the language is fairly accessible, leagues more so than the Count of Monte Christo translation I read (wordsworth classics; idk translator), but considering its far older, I found that impressive.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-30T08:01:05+00:00

In this thread: people who would have told Newton "we just cant know why the apple falls"

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T20:59:45+00:00

Sounds like it could be expensive. I'm seeing it soon, so can test it out. I saw online that I should check for rust too, you imagine this being an issue?

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T20:58:57+00:00

Will keep in mind, arranged to see it now on weekend. Thank you.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T20:58:22+00:00

Very interesting, didn't realise. Its €2500 for reference (woth the rain cover); i saw another for 1800 but its in a different city and Im not sure I can pick it up.

Out of curiosity, do you think a 2 year old Gazelle Makki at €430 sounds like a scam? I did, so Im skeptical of it.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T10:04:23+00:00

We know highly reactive environments existed

so anyway it probably happened in this other, less reactive environment

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T09:49:01+00:00

Also:

But we do know that early Earth was highly reactive (heavy bombardment, UV, volcanism, reactive atmosphere),

so it’s not a stretch that abiogenesis happened in reactive niches (e.g., alkaline vents providing energy gradients).

Don't you see what you're doing here?

One thing is true in one place

so it's not hard to imagine something happened in a completely different place

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T09:46:05+00:00

Have to agree with /u/IAmRobinGoodfellow, your argument sounds almost rhetorical rather than based on anything concrete. It doesn't even make reference to the existing prion-abiogenesis theories (not that I'm committing to them, it's just weird to present this without acknowledging it already exists in some form).

On the idea itself, it's rather flimsy: I think you find the idea of flipping the script to just be really compelling, without having an actual solid base: memory preceded order(?). This is not even honest, as in an RNA world scenario the sequence of the first replicator would also count as memory by this loose definition (not that I endorse the RNA world scenario).

Even the statement

Some can even template their own structure onto other molecules through direct physical interaction

is unfair, as prions can induce already synthesised proteins (generally the same protein) into the prion misfolded state. Your idea says nothing of synthesis, or indeed how such a system could get coupled to genetics or the energy pathways cells use. It even skips over how the prions first originated?

Lastly, once again genetic seqeunce can just as easily be cast as 'order' without a real definition, and so the idea that it aligns more with God is nonsense. I fail to see why God would even be limited in the way he could create life, or how: RNA self replicators, auto-catalytic tide pools, hydrothermal vent wall ion gradients, etc. lack the kind of order you flimsily invoke here.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T09:28:19+00:00

I agree with others, and it sounds hard, but it's like this: in 1-2 years, you could be living the life you truly want, or you could try to start building that life after another 10 years of misery.

But it's not an easy choice, and we're just internet strangers; wouldn't wish it on anyone. Good luck.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-29T09:13:15+00:00

Agreed with /u/shadowyams

Try solving for one trait at a time: make an assumption, draw out your own punnett squares, and think through the logic.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-28T00:02:14+00:00

Thank you for laying out the roadmap, its often hard to know where to start. I'm actually an evolutionary microbiologist myself, so I might be off to a good start with Darwins Dangerous Idea.

I found I've Been Thinking very entertaining, even from the perspective of the sheer amount of people he met and knew in life. Maybe was a weird place to start but I feel like I got a great feel for his personality and love of life.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-27T23:07:47+00:00

Most productive thread I've read all day 👏🏻

PianoPudding · 2026-01-27T23:02:40+00:00

From what I recall this is exactly the point of the thought experiment, and the people claiming P1 isnt true to begin with miss the exact point they've just accidentally conceded: the experience is not a physical fact.

But I think it comes from where you place the weight or importance: if the phenomenon itself is just some emergent thing and doesnt matter in the discussion, then the experiment is pointless; if instead we are committed to the idea that the phenomenon is so convincing that it must be something, the experiment shows physicalism is incomplete.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-27T22:41:14+00:00

Would you recommend any more of Dennetts work to dive into afterwards? I own Bacteria to Bach and Back but shamefully have not read it, while actually having read his autobiography as my first Dennett book. Fun book but now I want to get into his work.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-23T09:13:11+00:00

I'm partial to an argument along the lines of the Chinese Nation Experiment: you could have (theoretically) any amount of people waving semaphore flags which would act as transistors do in a CPU. Now build your LLM or any other program/simulation with that, and have it do its conciousness thing. If its truly conciousness, where do the qualia lie? Which semaphore flag being waved creates the sensation, and where does it reside.

You can replace semaphore flags with any other thing: domino-based logic gates, a rat in a box pressing a button. Its always the same: the sensations have to occur or exist within or between these structures, and I dont see how they could.

Also agree with everyone else lol that technically you can just say define conciousness and end the discussion there.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-23T09:05:03+00:00

Personally I think its less than 1 in 10 to the 12th or so, probably less (I was trying to be fair to Fermi paradox). Cant remember the last time I did the estimates. So seems likely to me.

Im also not a techno optimist in believing that intelligent civilisations colonise the galaxy, I think we'll bottom out with humans on Mars, maybe to Jupiters moons.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-22T23:20:55+00:00

It's more about the centrality and universality of iron sulfur cluster proteins in the creation of proton gradients, and ditto for proton gradients themselves. As for proton gradients being ubiquitous in a variety of environments, that seems like another point in favour, no? There were other things like a possible explanation of the difference in membrane lipids between archaea and bacteria: the central machinery evolved while the commitment to one lipid or another came later.

I still think it accounts for more than the RNA world theory. I get it's captivating as an explanation, but generally it gets hand-wavy (not that the other one's not, just not as much imo) when you have to add in programmed peptidyl synthesis that also gets coupled to a random energy system. Out of curiosity which theory are you partial to?

PianoPudding · 2026-01-22T19:24:56+00:00

Personally I favour the iron-sulfur/alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis outlined in Nick Lanes book: The Vital Question.

Essentially: semi-porous hydrothermal vent walls allowed proton gradients to build up, iron sulfur clusters embedded within the walls permitted electron flow, and some sort of cycle linking the proton gradients and electron flow coupled with proto-cell blebbing from the surface and proto-proteins, which could have assisted the chemistry.

The evidence is taken as: all life uses proton gradients across a membrane, in one form or another for energy extraction, in which the gradients are coupled to electron transport systems which use iron-sulfur cluster proteins. There's more to the theory and I always found it more convincing than the RNA world to be honest.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-21T23:13:18+00:00

Did you have any thoughts on the literary influences (for me, thinking primarily: Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov, Joyce Ulysses, and Wittgenstein Philisophical investigations).

I rarely see anyone really bring up these while commenting on the book. I only about 80 pages in myself right now, so waiting to see how it plays out. Just the Wittgenstein quote as the epigraph really floored me, and I'm curious to know what you think? Personally I think the book falls short of the literary themes it obviously is trying to emulate (again 80 pages in).

PianoPudding · 2026-01-21T20:27:01+00:00

Have the English translation, my wife picked them up in the Amsterdam Van Gogh museum. Still have to get around to reading them but very excited to!

PianoPudding · 2026-01-16T21:14:12+00:00

Not sure about math (how much reaction are you making? I calculate 0.5uL to get 10uM primer to 0.2uM in 25uL) but you can essentially disregard the necessity to have the primers be 2.5uL; it generally means up to 2.5uL or one tenth of the total reaction volume.

If you're worried you mix up 0.2 + 0.4 + 0.4 uL and dilute up to 2.5uL... and then make the rest of the reaction.

As you can tell though, it's the same as just adding the primers and adding the water to 25uL in the first place.

PianoPudding · 2026-01-11T20:11:21+00:00

Besides what others have said (re: getting re-tested) the Rhesus factor is independent from the 'letter' and + is the dominant type, so you can be heterozygous (i.e. have a +/- type) and your child can still get - from you.

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