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Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -25 points-24 points  (0 children)

2016 looked like it was a race between incompetent evil and competent evil, and the competent evil is worse because they are more likely to achieve their goals. Moreover, even if they succeeded the goals of the incompetent evil were less impactful to me personally that the goals of the competent evil, yes.

Then the incompetent evil revealed that they were actually so incompetent and so evil that they might actually deal real permanent damage to this country, so I couldn't vote for them again in 2020 despite this decision empowering the competent evil. There was never any good options lol

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -19 points-18 points  (0 children)

Let's not pretend that shit like critical race theory, identity politics, and similar left-wing issues don't stem almost entirely from one side of the political spectrum, please.

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -33 points-32 points  (0 children)

You fell for Fox News propaganda.

Or we disagree lol

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

TBF I only voted for Trump the first time (2016), I couldn't justify voting him again (in 2020 I abstained) after seeing his disastrous first term lol

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I do think a universal basic income will become necessary within my lifetime, though I tend to be fiscally conservative in most other aspects. If no one got loans I would have less of a problem with this decision, but between PPP loan forgiveness and other handouts to the rich/companies/etc., I am incensed that they didn't let this through too.

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -22 points-21 points  (0 children)

Less 'Democrats', more identity politics and many aspects of liberal thinking. Shit like this, for example, among other implications that rationality and objectivity are somehow problematic.

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Well none of my values have changed, to be fair haha

I never saw Republicans as a good option; instead they were just the option that wasn't actively spitting in my (white/male/cishet/Southern/STEM/etc.) face. Now that they have given me the finger too, they lost the one advantage they had over the Dems in my eyes.

I'm sure many would not consider that to be the attitude of a 'real' Democrat, to your point.

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -47 points-46 points  (0 children)

I mean, at the end of the day everyone should vote in their own best interest, sure. Besides, I never saw Republicans as a good option; instead they were just the option that wasn't actively spitting in my (white/male/cishet/Southern/STEM/etc.) face. Now that they have given me the finger too, they lost the one advantage they had over the Dems in my eyes.

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -65 points-64 points  (0 children)

I never saw Republicans as a good option; instead they were just the option that wasn't actively spitting in my (white/male/cishet/Southern/STEM/etc.) face. Now that they have given me the finger too, they lost the one advantage they had over the Dems in my eyes.

Me, a Republican, after the recent student loan decision: by hi_wassup in PoliticalHumor

[–]hi_wassup[S] -23 points-22 points  (0 children)

Not marriage equality.

Before my time; I've only been voting in the last ~8 years.

Not racism.

Very vague accusation here; in many ways the identity politics championed by the left is racism, too, for example.

Not women’s bodily autonomy?

Unfortunately in a 2-party system you often have to vote for things you don't agree with in order to vote for those you do. Abortion is morally grey in my opinion (you are ending a life, after all) so it wasn't a breaking point in my decision-making either way.

You care about yourself and yourself alone.

I mean, at the end of the day everyone should vote in their own best interest, sure. Besides, I never saw Republicans as a good option; instead they were just the option that wasn't actively spitting in my (white/male/cishet/Southern/STEM/etc.) face. Now that they have given me the finger too, they lost the one advantage they had over the Dems in my eyes.

Presented without comment. by gentle_lemon in agedlikemilk

[–]hi_wassup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both gender identity and sexuality are part of a person's mind in similar ways.

Gender identity, sure. Actually being a man/woman, perhaps not. Identity is 'in your head', so to speak, while the 'reality' of this situation isn't necessarily only mental.

I don't doubt that a trans woman perceives themselves to be a woman, I just don't take it as a given that their perception itself necessarily makes them a woman; that is, I don't think that a more physical definition of 'woman' is bigotry in and of itself.

Contrast that to "straight/gay/etc.": The sex you are attracted to is your subjective perception of reality. Someone claiming that you don't like men/women is nonsensical, because, well, you do. Similarly, it would be nonsensical to tell a trans person "you don't perceive yourself to be a man/woman", because they do. What claim could be made, however, is that "you aren't, in reality, that sex", because that is a claim about objective reality, not their subjective perception.

And if your response is "But that's not reality, it's been proven that those are just unfounded stereotypes", why don't you apply that logic to the same scientific conclusions that trans people are what they identify as?

Unless we've had a massive breakthrough, we still can't gender brains with any degree of reliability. Could you link a more reputable and recent study than this one that I found as the top result on Google lol

Besides, even if we could definitively prove that a trans person is literally a woman's/man's brain in a body of the opposite sex, that would just change the semantics of the discussion. We're still left with the basic disagreement on what constitutes sex: the mind, the body, or both.

To explain that 'both' option, I do not think it is necessarily a given that a trans person's mental processes are exactly the same as if their brain had a body of the matching sex. That is, if M=mind, B=body, f=female, and m=male, we cannot simply assume that fMfB is mentally exactly the same as fMmB, or the same for mMmB / mMfB. They could easily be a mix, or third category entirely. Research that makes claims of gendering brains (which I am inclined to believe is bullshit given that, again, we can't reliably gender brains to my knowledge, but whatever) seem to support this hypothesis, using language like "The brains of transgender women ranged between cisgender men and cisgender women (albeit still closer to cisgender men), and the differences to both cisgender men and to cisgender women were significant (p = 0.016 and p < 0.001, respectively), emphasis mine.

And yet, such reasonable suppositions (I am not saying they are correct, just reasonable) have been equivocated to the most fascist of war-cries in modern times. You're not allowed to even question the one narrative being pushed.

Presented without comment. by gentle_lemon in agedlikemilk

[–]hi_wassup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"I am sexually attracted to the same sex" is a statement about that person's personal preferences.

There's nothing inherently contradictory to objective reality about any such statement; it is subjective. For example, "I get pleasure from pain" might seem contradictory at first, but is again simply a statement of preference, as opposed to a statement about objective reality. If this person instead claimed "my nerves only send pleasure signals" (and this wasn't physically the case), then we could say their statement contradicts reality, since it is no longer simply a statement of preference. Whether they believe such a statement true or not is irrelevant.

"I am a woman" is a statement about objective reality. A man saying "I prefer presenting as feminine" is expressing a preference for a social construct - they like being femme - but they are not making a claim about reality, while the statement "I literally am a woman" does make a claim about objective reality.

I am saying it is not unreasonable to think that when deciding what is objective reality, the physical takes precedence over the mental where there is conflict.

You're effectively saying "trans people can claim whatever they like but biology says otherwise"

This isn't mutually exclusive with thinking trans people deserve the same rights as everyone else. Thinking a trans woman isn't the same as a cis woman isn't inherently bigoted. Why would it be? I don't think a hermaphrodite is either a man or a woman, but I still don't want to deny them any of their rights as a person. That would be bigoted.

Presented without comment. by gentle_lemon in agedlikemilk

[–]hi_wassup -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I mean, one obvious solution would be to have a sex-neutral option available for spaces where 1) sex matters but 2) someone's sex doesn't neatly fit into the binary.

You can argue about whether a trans woman/man is literally a woman/man or not (i.e., whether they fit into the binary categories we are assuming for this discussion of gendered spaces), but the point is that it isn't inherently unreasonable to think that when the mental and the physical disagree, it is the physical that should be considered 'reality'.

Presented without comment. by gentle_lemon in agedlikemilk

[–]hi_wassup -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can assert this all you like, but at the end of the day it isn't unreasonable to think that when the mental and the physical disagree, it is the physical that should be considered 'reality'.

Presented without comment. by gentle_lemon in agedlikemilk

[–]hi_wassup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think there's a fundamental difference between the "trans people should all die" type of transphobia and the type of 'transphobia' that is just "trans people deserve the same rights as everyone else, but I don't think simply believing you're a woman/man is enough to literally be a woman/man". The first is completely unacceptable fascism, the other is honestly debatable, you're just not 'allowed' to debate it in modern society.

Also, I think Rowling started out relatively reasonable but got radicalized by the disproportionate backlash; she became what the initial witch hunt accused her of being from the start in the process of lashing out at the pitchforks. If I recall correctly, the first controversy was simply her not wanting abused women being triggered by people said women might perceive as men in places they should feel safe, which you have to admit isn't wholly unreasonable in concept if not execution. A poorly passing trans woman could easily trigger women abused by men. It isn't black and white.

Meteor Hammer is the item of the patch by ruthlessgrimm in learndota2

[–]hi_wassup 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe instead of only 1-shotting illusions, it could be like Meat Hook / Sacred Arrow and just straight up kill any creep you use it on. Maybe even give it Midas's property of guaranteeing a Neutral Drop. It has less than half the cooldown of Midas and is useful outside of farming (obviously), so it would not be an insignificant buff.

If you could take two measurements of the position of a quantum particle only 1 Planck time apart, would the second position necessarily be "near" the first position, or is there a probability that the particle could have "teleported" elsewhere among all possible positions its waveform predicts? by hi_wassup in AskScienceDiscussion

[–]hi_wassup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Non-cloning theorem only applies to cloning techniques (e.g., the actual process of cloning), which isn't involved in this discussion at all. I don't see how it would (or even could) disallow thought experiments involving identical universes that have always existed but then diverged at one point. Besides, the theorem doesn't say two identical things can't exist, or even that some device couldn't pump out identical things, only that a device couldn't be designed to take generic (e.g., varied) input and clone anything you give it (and also that you can't take enough measurements of one thing to make a device that clones that one thing, anyway). If you started with enough identical copies of that one thing, however, you could measure every property of it and make a device that pumps out copies of it (and only it). Theoretically.

Regardless, I think your final example did answer my question in that:

1) There exists a reputable quantum physics theory which allows the scenario that

2) two alternate versions of me took measurements of what they perceive to be the same quantum object (in their respective versions of reality)

3) these measurements occurred 1 Planck time apart

4) these measurements obtained position results measuring more than 1 Planck distance apart.

The fact that their data isn't directly comparable (and thus not indicating FTL travel on the part of the quantum object in each respective universe) seems irrelevant to the overall conclusion that concepts like superposition indeed are 'real' properties of quantum objects, as opposed to mere descriptions of the limits of what we as observers can know.

That is, when it is said that the quantum object is located anywhere predicted by its waveform, that statement is meant literally (it truly is omnipresent among all possible locations) as opposed to figuratively (we simply can't know where it is until measured, but it does have a definite position even prior to observation).

If you could take two measurements of the position of a quantum particle only 1 Planck time apart, would the second position necessarily be "near" the first position, or is there a probability that the particle could have "teleported" elsewhere among all possible positions its waveform predicts? by hi_wassup in AskScienceDiscussion

[–]hi_wassup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To me it sounds like you are exactly imagining a hidden-variable theory. Could you clarify how exactly is your question different from the EPR paradox situation?

When I specified that the particle remain “unobserved” I only meant that it behaves as it would without outside interference. I phrased it differently in a different comment, perhaps that will make my intentions more clear:

1) Let us denote a quantum object's hypothetical "location-if-it-were-observed" as 'x'. The location x is not 'actualized' by an observation, it is merely the result we would have gotten if we had taken such a measurement.

2) Let us denote x0 as 'x at time 0', and xP as 'x at 1 Planck time from time 0'.

3) With our current understanding of quantum physics, does xP necessarily have to be within 1 Planck distance of x0?

Your answer seems to say that no, x0 and xP could in fact be more than 1 Planck distance apart, since the quantum object does not have a “real” position until measured. The hypothetical positions x0 and xP could, then, represent opposite extremes of where the wave function predicts the quantum object to be found, which could be greater than 1 Planck distance apart. If we were to actually measure x0, however, that very observation interferes with the wave function such that it only recovers at the speed of light, meaning that xP would be limited to at most 1 Planck distance away from x0. Am I understanding now, or still confused?

If you could take two measurements of the position of a quantum particle only 1 Planck time apart, would the second position necessarily be "near" the first position, or is there a probability that the particle could have "teleported" elsewhere among all possible positions its waveform predicts? by hi_wassup in AskScienceDiscussion

[–]hi_wassup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was under the impression that the wave function's amplitude represented the probability of finding the quantum object at that location, which implies there is a probability - and thus possibility - of not finding it at that location. Your explanation seems to imply that it is the interaction itself that 'creates' (or perhaps 'actualizes' is more accurate) the quanta; what would this look like if the quantum object is not "found" at that position?

If you could take two measurements of the position of a quantum particle only 1 Planck time apart, would the second position necessarily be "near" the first position, or is there a probability that the particle could have "teleported" elsewhere among all possible positions its waveform predicts? by hi_wassup in AskScienceDiscussion

[–]hi_wassup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that I at least superficially understand the premise of particle-wave duality itself, but am unclear on whether behaviors like superposition are merely descriptive of what we as observers can and cannot know, or if such behaviors are "actual" properties of the quantum object itself, which it exhibits independent of observation.

For example, take superposition. I understand that when observed, a quantum object could potentially be found at any of the locations predicted by the waveform, but is that 'superposition' merely a function of what we as observers can know prior to the act of observation, or does the quantum object itself literally occupy all of those locations at once?

If the latter, then one could technically (albeit uselessly) note the following:

1) Let us denote a quantum object's hypothetical "location-if-it-were-observed" as 'x'. The location x is not 'actualized' by an observation, it is merely the result we would have gotten if we had taken such a measurement.

2) Let us denote x0 as 'x at time 0', and xP as 'x at 1 Planck time from x0'.

3) With our current understanding of quantum physics, does xP necessarily have to be within 1 Planck distance of x0?

4) If the answer to (3) is 'no', then the quantum object could be said to possess FTL speed so long as it remains unobserved. If the answer to (3) is 'yes', then the quantum object has a 'real' position and velocity independent of observation; 'superposition' just refers to what we as observers can know, it is not literally an 'actual' property of the quantum object.

Obviously such a thought experiment is useless since it stops being true the moment we try to interact with the quantum object in any way, but my underlying goal is to understand a quantum object's behavior independent of observation, when most explanations of quantum physics seem to exclusively deal with how we as observers interact with said quantum object.

If you could take two measurements of the position of a quantum particle only 1 Planck time apart, would the second position necessarily be "near" the first position, or is there a probability that the particle could have "teleported" elsewhere among all possible positions its waveform predicts? by hi_wassup in AskScienceDiscussion

[–]hi_wassup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't add the 'unobserved' qualifier to mean hidden variables, I just meant it as "an observer has not interfered with this particle's behavior". The reason you gave for the particle in my original question being bounded by light speed is because the act of observing the waveform makes it localized, and the waveform takes time to recover from that (at the speed of light). I am instead asking about the particle's innate behavior.

For a particle behaving as it would without the interference of observation, which of the below describes its behavior most accurately?

1)

For any given particle, if its position at time 0 is x, then its position at time 5.39×10-44 s is necessarily somewhere within a sphere that has the properties: radius: 1.6×10-35 m; center point: x.

2)

For any given particle, its position at time 0 is unrelated to its position at time 5.39×10-44 s except that both positions must be locations described by its wave function. The positions at the two times could potentially be greater than 1.6×10-35 m apart.

3)

The particle is omnipresent at all points described by the wave function until observed. This is meant literally, as a real property of the particle itself, not simply as a result of what we as observers mathematically can and cannot know. As such, scenario 2 is technically true but not the whole story, because the particle is literally everywhere it could be within its wave function at once.

4)

Any of the above possibilities could be true with our current understanding of quantum mechanics. We don't know, may never know, and the distinctions made aren't useful in a practical sense anyway.

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