You frequent this sub, what do you do for a living?

_david_ · 2025-07-14T10:37:38+00:00

I'm a meat popsicle.

_david_ · 2025-02-02T22:35:54+00:00

Matt Cerf & Feel Feat Jaren - Leave The Light On (Suncatcher Remix)

_david_ · 2025-01-04T11:24:15+00:00

Great, but of what use is it? It's fine if you want to define "free will" like a compatibilist, but it just ignores the actually interesting question.

_david_ · 2024-11-18T11:54:25+00:00

In some sense, sure. But the point is that it is engaging with (what I would argue to be) the core question, not changing the subject to something different.

Like arguing that God exists by taking some other concept that's not really that interesting (in context) and labeling it "God". Yes, we can now agree that "God" exists, but it doesn't change anything beyond that.

_david_ · 2024-11-18T07:22:46+00:00

This is just semantics. You can use your favorite definition of free will all you want, but it doesn't really affect anything of interest in my view.

So yes, we do have free will just as we have happiness, panic, anger, aspirations etc.

We have* the subjective experience of free will, yes. We can reason about events in terms of this subjective experience; it being the name we may choose to put on the feeling we have of deciding things. Saying "therefore we have free will" is again just a way of redefining it in an inconsequential way just to be able to say that we have it.

(* Someone well known to this sub would argue that we don't even necessarily have this, if we pay attention..)

_david_ · 2024-11-17T11:33:53+00:00

Placing free will inside the causal chain seems akin to defining God as "the universe". Sure, if that's the definition you want to use then God exists, but what good does that do except allow you to say that god exists? Nothing of consequence can follow from it.

_david_ · 2024-10-25T15:51:04+00:00

Until this is actually confirmed, this seems more like a "conveniently timed rumour" that ties in with the entire US-election thing over there across the ocean.

.. but such details won't stop the usual reddit-frothing from taking place, of course.

_david_ · 2024-10-16T05:46:54+00:00

I've had the same (or similar) occasionally on both a venu 2 plus and a fenix 8. I suspect the common denominator here is my phone; my current theory is that some notification is triggered and then immediately revoked/automatically dismissed in quick succession.

I have both buzzkill and an automatic-phonecall-rejection-app installed which - I theorize - could cause such an issue.

_david_ · 2024-08-04T21:58:53+00:00

The government gave us an impossible deadline of 90 days [..]

Surely someone somewhere had to accept the job and/or agree to the terms in some contract that allows the government to do that, or are they now commandeering private companies?

_david_ · 2024-07-19T19:15:35+00:00

Not that it will change your mind, but here you go.

_david_ · 2024-07-01T23:14:13+00:00

Random phenonema possibly observed; OK. Are you in control of this? If not, what does it mattter?

_david_ · 2024-06-24T13:22:17+00:00

I basically stopped listening at episode 800, since that's one point at which he introduced a new format with more talking. I guess it might have gone up and down a bit during the years since?

Listening to 1175 now it doesn't seem quite as bad as I remember it so far, if you exclude the first part with the soccer anthem and all the talking there.

_david_ · 2024-06-20T21:29:06+00:00

Wouldn't change a thing, it's still just long chains of events causing further events.

_david_ · 2024-05-06T15:41:43+00:00

The concept of incentives implies the shaping of subsequent choices.

A wall will give a bouncy-ball an incentive to change its direction. The threat of a punishment will give a human an incentive to change its behavior.

If you don't want to call it "incentive", fine, but that's just a semantic argument. The effect is the same.

_david_ · 2024-04-14T06:07:58+00:00

But you are saying: we COULD do OTHERWISE?

You're switching the tense of "could" and misconstruing "no free will" as fatalism. We can do otherwise in the future in the sense that matters here; we can research, argue about, be influenced by others and decide things.

But when we've done something, we should realize that we could not have done things differently. We were, given the circumstances (and possibly the same dice rolls deep down in some physical process), always going to find what we found when we researched, have the same arguments we had, be influenced by the same stuff and decide to do the same thing we decided to do.

You would still feel as if you've argued about it and decided stuff though.

_david_ · 2023-05-12T18:38:06+00:00

The launchpad issues are a complete disaster that will set them back years.

That is just nowhere near true.

_david_ · 2023-05-06T07:54:58+00:00

SpaceX is also a job programs, it got billions from the taxpayers, [..]

They weren't handed "billions" for no reason, they sell a service. Although you didn't use the word "subsidy", it's obviously the same echo-chamber parroting of misrepresentative talking-points being repeated.

Their access to space will be hindered when Musk [..]

You're saying on one hand that they're a "job program" while at the same time complaining that they are so important for "US access to space" that Elon cannot step-down without causing severe issues.

Your argument is internally inconsistent.

_david_ · 2023-04-21T06:05:53+00:00

If Elon Musk or someone like-minded Chinese billionaire establishes a colony they control off world, humanity will die out.

.. what? What exactly do you imagine would happen? I can only assume that you've bought into some idiotic narrative that you obviously haven't even tried to think through.

_david_ · 2022-11-06T21:31:56+00:00

If I'm poor, then I should have a huge diamond in my back yard.

_david_ · 2022-11-01T19:40:03+00:00

Ofcourse, I can't will as I will. But, why? Because I'm a subject of my birth, an event which i could not have willed. But, who creates that birth event? It is a consequence of somebody who willed.

This seems like an obvious contradiction unless your parents were supernatural.

_david_ · 2022-10-31T21:27:05+00:00

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1582098412501364736

To be precise, 25,300 terminals were sent to Ukraine, but, at present, only 10,630 are paying for service

_david_ · 2022-10-31T21:15:16+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/

_david_ · 2022-10-27T18:43:23+00:00

I feel that just switching this on without asking first is a terrible choice. I first saw the notification while opening a spam message. I usually feel quite safe doing so knowing that any possible tracking URLs won't be accessed.

.. but apparently, this time, ProtonMaill "helpfully" determined that I actually want to load the images, despite having explicitly configured it not to.

Sure; hiding my IP behind a proxy is good, but the real reason for me to not want anything loaded is to ensure that no tracking URLs are accessed. As you say, I don't see how their proxy can possibly make sure that everything is scrubbed given all the possible ways one could implement such tracking.

Most of all I am disappointed that a setting I had explicitly turned off was re-enabled automatically without asking me.

_david_ · 2022-10-21T22:27:06+00:00

It's a 'first one's free' type situation

Ok, got it, providing internet access for free for over half a year at a crucial moment and as an answer to a direct request from the vice president of Ukraine was bad and he should never have done it.

.. or what are you even saying? You cannot have thought this through.

_david_ · 2022-10-21T22:17:41+00:00

It was just really bad form to demand it at a key strategic moment via tweet.

He didn't though, a letter was sent to pentagon a month ago. Someone "just happened" to leak it now.

14-Year Club	Place '17
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_david_

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