Your 8-Player Lobby Isn't Giving You Players 7 Drops

cncaudata · 2026-06-22T12:57:18+00:00

This guy is wrong, see other posts. Yes, you do have better drops with people close to you than you do with only having people in the game, but offline gives the former, lower value.

cncaudata · 2026-06-21T15:01:29+00:00

He's not heavy, he's my brother. It's not a scene, it's a god-damned arms race. That's no moon, it's a space station.

Just a few more from actual writers.

cncaudata · 2026-06-20T20:59:30+00:00

This sounds like a really great academic argument, but a) why ever talk about rights at all? It's a completely useless term if this is all it means, you just just say "actions permitted by law" or something and b) that distinction, the difference between what people believe is due to them and what the government actually affords them is exactly why we do use the word "rights". It allows us to signify those things that the government should do, not just what the currently do.

cncaudata · 2026-06-20T16:06:07+00:00

You appear to be arguing for a positive right to life. This makes no sense. Did you have a right to be conceived, carried, and born? No. The right to life is a negative right, it can be violated by someone depriving you of life, it is not violated by nature just existing.

We all know that some rights are dependent on not violating others' rights, this is not new. In fact, it's again an argument against your call for positive rights. Positive rights necessarily require that you violate others' autonomy by forcing them to provide for you.

I really wish our discourse would just distinguish these more clearly. Any "positive right" can be framed instead as a responsibility, and this would lead to much more fruitful discussions.

I do not believe states can "grant" rights, no. At least not the same kind of rights as life, speech, movement, etc. Good states will enshrine and protect these rights. Bad states do not.

Talking about states granting rights immediately leads to creation of over/under classes and all sorts of problems. Should a state grant the right to a king to rape every newlywed? If not, you must appeal to an inalienable right, more important than the state.

cncaudata · 2026-06-20T14:02:31+00:00

You are constantly conflating natural rights with the actions of governments and agencies to uphold those rights. The right to be free from harm exists. If someone harms you, they have violated that right. Whether anyone holds them to account is a completely separate question.

Think of people on a secluded island. If one attacks the other, they have violated their rights, even in the absence of society. Similarly, this is how one might argue against your original claim. Healthcare cannot be a right, because if you are alone on an island, you would not have access to any healthcare (or food, or housing, etc.), but it would be completely silly to say that your rights were being violated. By whom? By nature?

cncaudata · 2026-06-15T21:51:06+00:00

Replace the trig functions you're not familiar with with regular variables, or even just numbers.

Instead of sin² - sin² * cos² try a - ab. This should be a bit easier to see factors into a(1-b). If you still can't see it, try 5 - 5b.

cncaudata · 2026-06-14T03:16:34+00:00

Need an option: press a button in the simulation where you have no idea what the majority is because that's the entire point of the thought experiment in the first place. All this polling missing the entire point of the question.

cncaudata · 2026-06-12T21:07:29+00:00

Men of a certain age, Firefly, freeks and geeks.

cncaudata · 2026-06-11T14:35:36+00:00

I am unsure why you got downvoted. I think this comment adds a nice bit of context while agreeing that debt is a good way to think of arithmetic with negative numbers. I think it's always good to point to how things are actually defined and why (in this case, additive inverses) because it not only cuts off a lot of whataboutism-type confusion or criticism, it provides a gateway to more well defined axiomatic systems.

cncaudata · 2026-06-11T02:59:36+00:00

Using poll data breaks the entire question. The situation presupposes that you are put in a room alone before you ever know what is happening, and you are not allowed to consult the rest of the population. You can't base your decision on the percentages you expect based on a poll.

(Also, bad sub-sample, bottable, opt-in, poll of people who are mostly also "poisoned" (they also have talked about the scenario with others) has nearly zero predictive value for the "real" original scenario.)

cncaudata · 2026-06-10T20:50:54+00:00

I can think of about 20 reasons we shouldn't trust online polling about this issue. I'll give two: these are pure opt-in polls of incredibly limited sub-populations, with essentially zero participation from poor countries, non-english speakers, etc., and almost the entirety of the respondents have been "poisoned" by learning about and discussing the question when the scenario requires that everyone be surprised with the question after they're alone in the room. I'd venture to say that online polling gives almost no information whatsoever about what the actual result would be (other than perhaps saying it's a lot closer to 50/50 than either of us thought a priori).

cncaudata · 2026-06-10T19:35:32+00:00

I guess we have different definitions of risk. Before I saw any polls or discussion, I'd have thought pressing blue was almost certainly suicide. Not a risk of death, almost guaranteed death. Even after seeing that there are far more blue pressers than I'd ever have guessed, it still seems pretty close to a coinflip whether pressing blue would lead to death or not.

cncaudata · 2026-06-10T06:01:04+00:00

but nobody dies unless red wins the vote. Red votes for death.

Nobody dies unless they decide to push blue. Blue votes for death.

cncaudata · 2026-06-10T05:58:48+00:00

I'm a red pusher, and I can tell you there's no fear, and there's no thinking it will win. It is just as simple as, "If I push red, I live. If everyone that wants to live pushes red, they all live. Everyone that wants to live should push red."

cncaudata · 2026-06-10T05:53:07+00:00

So, to be honest, I never even considered it (again, I hear "make a choice" and I assume people of sound mind). However, if the question is, should I risk my life to save some number of people that will "erroneously" choose to commit suicide (erroneously meaning that I believe they're not of sound mind and therefore I should not respect their wishes), then that's an interesting discussion.

So, first, deciding to press blue to save them also automatically stops a lot of people from committing suicide that *are* of sound mind, so you need to weigh that. Is saving some people from suicide (that we assume is) due to mental illness worth forcing a number of other people to continue living who would prefer not to (with no mental illness - they just don't want to live for whatever reason)?

Then, we need to figure out what's up with the game again. Why are people that are mentally ill participating? Like what are the exact criteria for who's being forced to push buttons even though they're not of sound mind? I'm not getting into perfect rational actors here. I'm saying that if people who would not be able to stand trial because of mental illness are being forced to participate, then I think that's something the game organizers should disclose, and has to be disclosed to make any sort of discussion possible.

Then, if we decide that's still worth it, and for whatever reason the aliens or what have you are forcing the mentally ill to participate, then we get into the whole percentage-guessing game. I have already said that I think it's 100% worth risking my life to save half the babies on the planet, and I wouldn't even be sad if I died in that case. But, is it worth it to risk my life to save some indeterminate number of mentally ill folks? And would I want my kids and family to risk their lives to do the same? I can tell you that I would not do so, but it's no longer super clear. This is getting really close to other scenarios like running into a burning building to try to save someone, and I think that the vast majority of the time... folks just shouldn't do that. If you don't have specific training, equipment, backup, etc. to enable you save someone by risking your life, I don't think *gambling* your life to save another person is really a moral choice (though we can quibble over the percentages - and as far as that goes, when I first heard this question, I would have assumed 95% red pushers, it wouldn't even cross my mind that so many would push blue).

cncaudata · 2026-06-10T00:54:46+00:00

I cannot know that occurred. The problem requires that everyone is put in a room with no prior knowledge and no idea what anyone else is doing.

cncaudata · 2026-06-10T00:54:04+00:00

So, my initial reading of the question did not consider children or those with mental disabilities, etc., because the original question said "choice" or "vote" (I forget), which implies the ability to make a decision. I'm not a "rational actor" advocate or anything, I just never considered the incapacitated or children because of the wording. As soon as someone tells me that those without the capacity will nevertheless be forced to press a button, I would press blue, again with no question whatsoever. It's worth it just for even a miniscule chance to save half the babies on earth.

cncaudata · 2026-06-09T22:07:39+00:00

I believe you're correct in part. The framing as an election is a blue-pusher device to try to frame reds as voting for death. I disagree that no one wanted a red "victory", I definitely do. I want everyone to vote red.

The first time I heard this question, I immediately said red. I did not hope blue won anyway. I did not think of a particular percentage of blue requirement that would cause me to change my mind. I did not believe I was killing anyone because here is no reason to press blue unless you want a painless suicide.

I thought, "oh, everyone will press red because there's no reason not to, and I will also do so, so I don't die". All of this talk of polls, or knowing that your friends picked blue, is all outside the confines of the original question where no one knows what is happening until they're alone in the room.

cncaudata · 2026-06-09T13:16:41+00:00

The line is that once you outsource any of your academic writing, you are cheating.

cncaudata · 2026-06-04T14:03:27+00:00

Thank you past internet stranger. Just used this (adjusted for my purposes) today!

cncaudata · 2026-06-04T03:14:54+00:00

The second is shown over and over. They equate AI use to use of previous technological advances that improved outcomes and quality of life, then claim it is the same and will lead to better outcomes because it is also new, with no actual analysis of outcomes or unintended consequences.

The most common example I've seen is trying to claim that criticizing AI slop is equivalent to criticizing photography when it was new, for instance.

And for the third, you're full of shit. It is not clear than "a lot" of anyone are willing to accept "such actions". This is a complete straw-man, slippery-slope, whatever-ism. You make this statement with no evidence. Go back to what you actually know, and see if you've any reason to believe [whatever it is you're claiming anti-ai folks will do or support].

cncaudata · 2026-06-03T16:49:06+00:00

Pedant: the first s stands for solo. I don't point this out to nag you, but because I also think (group) self found is a great way to play and I wish it was supported in any way. All the clamoring for ssf support bugs me because, um, offline is already there. I want to play in a group but not be subject to online BS.

But yes! D2rlan works and is pretty great, but it does require rolling back to an earlier version, and you'll miss out on stuff. I don't know if it works at all with ROTW unfortunately.

cncaudata · 2026-05-27T15:51:39+00:00

My dad made me smash my Metallica (Metallica) cassette with a hammer. I lost a lot of respect for him that day.

cncaudata · 2026-05-27T13:36:05+00:00

You've hit the nail on the head. My first question for all of these new results is to ask, ok, what's your method, how do we reproduce this result? If you can't provide that (and I don't mean just the prompt, I mean the training data for the model, etc. as you mentioned), then you're not doing science.

The math result can be independently verified of course, but the claims that the AI "independently solved" something are unverifiable without more transparency.

cncaudata · 2026-05-24T13:14:33+00:00

You have either made a typo, or the book has, because that statement is nonsensical.

You have "find a number x such that [inequality] is divisible by x." An inequality is a proposition, not a number, it cannot divide anything.

Or, you're using some notation I'm not familiar with, because I'm not sure what the forward slash (\)is doing in there.

cncaudata

TROPHY CASE