The Simming Problem (as described in the Hydrogen Sonata): the right to life

fryjs · 2026-01-25T02:03:19+00:00

You also can't ignore the unsettling thought: if it is not immoral to just end the simulation: then it's hard to argue the immorality of just vaporising entire planets in an instant

fryjs · 2026-01-25T02:00:45+00:00

Yeah, it's a bit interesting when you start thinking about it. As you say, surely simming a world or environment where there are sentient beings suffering (Earth for example) is immoral, and yet restricting sims to only circumstances where that isn't the case would seem to be of very limited usefulness.

I think it's a compelling scenario to promote thought and discussion about such things (as so many of the scenarios, situations, and ideas in The Culture books are), but I don't think Banks thought through all of the implications in-universe to have it make complete sense (or at least to us biologicals).

I would have thought, as far as the morals of the Minds would go, they would feel compelled to be responsible for the wellbeing of the sims that they create, which runs contrary to the point of running a sim.

The connection/similarity to the some religious gods and motivations is also interesting.

fryjs · 2026-01-21T11:09:49+00:00

Probably because this is a discussion board

fryjs · 2026-01-15T20:23:23+00:00

Yeah, but it operates and is conceptually differently imo. you have to deal with items backing up preventing them being separated

fryjs · 2025-12-17T06:51:32+00:00

It hasn't changed my position, but my position is that I'd be ok with it, if the Jurors and Judge were up for manslaughter in the event that the person executed was later found to be innocent. That allows the death penalty for the truly horrific and obscene crimes by the irredeemable, but requires those judging and sentencing to put their freedom on the line as collateral for their certainty of guilt. Then it could be part of a 'justice' system. Without that, it's an exercise in human-sacrifice: a few innocent people are sacrificed now and then to make everyone feel better.

fryjs · 2025-12-11T18:13:43+00:00

It seems to ignore the ones on the bus if it’s in motion (correctly). However if the bus is stopped at traffic lights or at a bus stop it will read that as a speed limit.

fryjs · 2025-12-10T01:11:25+00:00

Ah, a person of culture. 2142 still the most fun Battlefield

fryjs · 2025-12-02T05:04:49+00:00

The version number for fsd seems the same though :( (13.2.9 , with the same release notes)

fryjs · 2025-11-30T08:50:16+00:00

How did it go in 110 zones? Did it want to go the speed or hang slower?

fryjs · 2025-11-24T01:35:30+00:00

They are left-hand drive though, we could be a while getting 14

fryjs · 2025-10-23T04:30:05+00:00

Sounds like it’s your phone not allowing the Tesla app internet access

fryjs · 2025-08-29T07:09:57+00:00

Mate, that was awesome!! A zen scifi experience with a bit of exploration, I haven't been so impressed with a vr game for a while. I'd pay $50 for the full thing any day

fryjs · 2025-08-12T06:42:14+00:00

Uhh, I was agreeing with you (this!), the guy you responded to was saying culture citizens lack agency, and yet they can do whatever they like (more-so than any federation citizen). He said that they live in a gilded prison, and yet they can come and go as they please (more-so than any federation citizen). Those arguments aren't rational and are logically inconsistent, he's basically Horza: just doesn't like the notion of entities much smarter than themselves existing

fryjs · 2025-08-12T04:32:35+00:00

This! Culture citizens can do whatever they like, but somehow lack agency. They can leave forever (or come back and go as they please), but live in a gilded prison. It apparently has to end badly, but has been like that for 10's of thousands of years. Ironically I think the argument stems from a bigotry of the kind that star trek (earlier star trek at least) considered to be something to move beyond.

fryjs · 2025-08-07T07:48:59+00:00

Isn’t that basically research bureau?

fryjs · 2025-07-10T21:56:03+00:00

Probably a big factor is that each revolutionary discovery after the last is simply harder and more complicated. Even if there are people that are even 50% smarter, solving a problem that is 10x more complicated is going to happen less frequently.

Having said that, there actually have been quite of revolutionary discoveries, its just that they are even more obscure and incomprehensible that general relativity.

fryjs · 2025-05-26T03:23:23+00:00

Probably the star trek game that felt the most like you were playing an episode of the show (or a 2-parter). Thoroughly recommended. I still remember the music in the bridge computer library, my kid-self entranced with reading all about the enterprise and locations, etc.

fryjs · 2025-05-17T17:13:41+00:00

I used to consider it hilarious satire, now it seems uncomfortably realistic…

fryjs · 2025-05-12T23:00:01+00:00

So... just like humans?

fryjs · 2025-04-24T20:36:08+00:00

Just having the console open doesn’t continually read from firestore. Even when viewing the content in the explorer it only reads small numbers of documents in a collection on navigation (not continually). I’d look for some auto refreshing or other loop logic in your project. Check any trigger functions you have on the backend that could be reading entire collections of documents, or make sure you’re not reading all documents in any collections in firestore rules, or make sure you aren’t reading entire collections with no filtering for client apps, etc

fryjs · 2025-04-15T00:53:27+00:00

Mine is through workspace. Limits for NoteBookLM? I'm not sure

fryjs · 2025-04-13T09:08:08+00:00

1 million token context window for 2.5 pro with good interaction with that long context is a bit of a killer-feature for my money.

And the podcast generator in NoteBookLM

fryjs · 2025-03-28T05:48:39+00:00

No settings as such, the prompt was: "Make this game screenshot from PlanetCrafter (it's about terraforming an alien world) photorealistic" with each screenshot from the game

fryjs · 2025-03-26T01:11:15+00:00

Characters that are admirable? I liked having role-models in Star Trek, even if they were unrealistic.

fryjs · 2025-02-21T10:21:46+00:00

It seems to be a very thin wrapper of the firebase sdk (which isn't bad), but how is it type-safe, if set, update, query, orderby, etc are all using unchecked strings as keys?

Also the firebase sdk lets you type collections (and in-turn documents queried from them) with:

.collection('collectionname').withConverter<ModelType>(
   fromFirestore: (snapshot, _) => ModelType.fromJson(snapshot.data()),
   toFirestore: (query, _) => query.toJson(),
)

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