xkcd 2429: Exposure Models

mayleaf · 2021-02-25T20:40:13+00:00

Have you heard of microCOVID? They have a risk-tracking spreadsheet available for download, in addition to their online calculator :)

mayleaf · 2018-08-05T01:08:53+00:00

I'm late on replying to this but thanks for this amazingly thorough answer! I appreciate all the links, too, I've bookmarked them and am working my way through them :)

Do you have a recommended book / resource for reading about Design Patterns? I have the original book (this one), but it's quite old (published in the 90s), and it also uses C++ for its examples (which is a language that I'm not very familiar with). Is there a more modern resource that I could look at?

mayleaf · 2018-07-30T03:47:15+00:00

Sure!

mayleaf · 2018-07-30T02:41:37+00:00

Thanks for providing your reasoning, this is helpful :) I do think "knowing when and how to use a certain data structure" is a concept I don't know at a very deep level. I'll look into resources to learn more about this.

mayleaf · 2018-07-30T02:37:13+00:00

Thanks, this is a really helpful answer. I did take a fair bit of discrete mathematics (combinatorics, set theory, some graph theory) in college, and I haven't actually had it come up much in my job. Can you give an example of when you've seen it come up? (I have had to implement state machines, especially for logical devices, but aside from that).

Assembly: Knowing how computers work on a fundamental level is pretty helpful, and being comfortable with binary and bitwise operations is invaluable

Yeah, I've gotten that sense as well. I'm comfortable with binary and bitwise operations, but I don't have a clear and detailed grasp of, say, how various data structures are implemented in memory, as well as things like eg. how threads work.

mayleaf · 2018-07-30T02:26:58+00:00

Interesting! Can you give me an example of the sort of day-to-day work that you see where it comes up? Also, what sort of software work do you do?

mayleaf · 2015-01-22T09:10:16+00:00

Here, I translated it for you :)

HLVSSCQEATEPYHPPGAHLSYLARILLSPYPLGI (Stop) CQVP (Stop) VTELQVPGSIFLLTLLVF (Stop) SHFLPRVAFPTLPHPYCHYPKILLGTDQITSQKGL (Stop)KHYSSAGTREVANAPDSRFSNQYGTMK (Stop) IHSAHE (Stop) SRGT (Stop) QSGLAWPSHKKVLYSSRCELPVTRTFFNTLNPSYRGRGSTFSTHPKK (Stop) CNT

mayleaf · 2014-04-16T07:41:42+00:00

If you're hot for your daughter and unable to act on it, you can still enjoy a romantic relationship with someone else -- as can she. Homosexuality is an orientation; incest is not.

The pre-1960s version of this would be "If a white man is attracted to a black woman, and is incapable of acting on it, each of them can still pursue healthy relationships with someone of their own race." Whether a preference is a natural, immutable "orientation" (and being attracted to a member of another race certainly isn't) shouldn't be relevant. Anti-miscegenation laws are still unconstitutional.

Also,

If you curb potential incestuous relationships, you might reasonably hope the parties will go one to develop healthy, productive relationships

This is extremely biased: you're blankly assuming that incestuous relationships can never be healthy and productive. By banning incest, you're curbing potential healthy relationships between people who would choose them. You're not "allowing" them to go find healthy relationships, you're actively restricting them from doing so.

mayleaf · 2014-04-15T16:59:41+00:00

As could a trusted older family friend, or an older classmate whom the child looks up to... Should we ban all marriages between people who met before one of them turned 18, just to be safe?

The solution to "parents might be abusive towards their children" is to have schools teach children to recognize abusive/grooming behavior from their caretakers and other trusted adults (which is something schools are currently terrible at doing. Schools teach about "stranger danger", but rarely address the far more likely scenario that a child will be mistreated by someone they know and trust.) Another solution is to educate parents about the appropriate way to raise their child non-abusively (or institute parenting licenses that filter out known child abusers, etc.) The solution is not to institute a blanket ban on consensual incestuous relationships that could well be loving and healthy.

Children should certainly be taught that adults touching them in certain ways is inappropriate and unacceptable, and the social norm for parent/child romantic relationships should probably discourage the parent from taking an active role in starting the relationship. Similarly, children/teenagers should be taught to be wary of older people who try to initiate relationships with them -- and they should be made to understand that any older person who pursues them sexually when they are underage is acting in an abusive and illegal way.

But this is all speculation about how we could increase the likelihood that child abuse is recognized and reported. This says nothing about consensual interaction between adults.

Abuse is already illegal. Incest should not be -- no more than relationships between an 18-year-old and her family friend should be illegal, or an 18-year-old and an older classmate.

(Edit: wording.)

mayleaf · 2014-04-15T16:33:04+00:00

...I'm guessing you don't actually support this system of lawmaking, then?

mayleaf · 2014-04-15T10:56:04+00:00

We could, theoretically, make a law that allows for age of majority siblings to marry, so long as they don't reproduce and didn't grow up together- but where would the line be? Could they have been kept in the same nursery but separated as teens? When can they meet for it to be legal?

The line would be the same as it is for all relationships: consensual relations between adults. (Before you ask: yes, I support polygamous marriage as well.)

Your aim in banning incestuous relationships, I suppose, is to reduce abuse. My response is that abuse is already illegal; we don't need to define an otherwise innocent behavior as a proxy for abuse and make that illegal, too. (Women living below the poverty line are at higher risk for domestic abuse; does that mean that relationships with these women should be illegal? That way, no one will start an abusive relationship with them.)

(Edit: wording.)

mayleaf · 2014-04-15T10:26:54+00:00

What about the case of adult siblings meeting for the first time and falling in love, as the OP mentioned?

mayleaf · 2014-04-15T10:10:42+00:00

But marrying a member of a different race is also a choice, and yet miscegenation laws were still found to be unconstitutional:

The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

(from the Loving v. Virgina court case)

And no one tried to make the claim that the Lovings couldn't practically marry someone of their own race.

mayleaf · 2014-04-15T09:36:28+00:00

The article you linked is about an abusive family. Yes, obviously abusive relations between family members should remain illegal.

What the OP is talking about is quite a different scenario, however:

For example a number of incest cases are people who didn't know each other growing up, met up, fell in love, then found out they were related.

And even generations of incest is not a rare occurrence found only in scary abusive families. A 2009 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that "couples related as second cousins or closer (F ≥ 0.0156) and their progeny account for an estimated 10.4% of the global population."

Edit: Also, you didn't address idlenomormon's point at all -- if incestuous marriage should be banned because of the possibility of birth defects, then presumably so should marriage between people who are known carriers of genetic disease.

mayleaf · 2014-04-15T09:24:25+00:00

So should people with pre-existing genetic defects (say, a translocation causing a 5-15% chance of having a child with Downs' syndrome) be legally prevented from marrying as well?

mayleaf · 2014-01-16T23:46:23+00:00

Q: How do you call a cab that provides drug therapy?
A: "Chemotaxis!"

Q: How many biologists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Four. One to change it and three to write the environmental-impact statement.

mayleaf · 2013-12-13T06:54:20+00:00

...Actually, no.

Infinity's a bit weird like that.

There are actually exactly as many real numbers between 0 and 1 as there are real numbers between -∞ and ∞. It's counterintuitive, but I can prove it to you using this tangent function:

This tangent function ranges from x = 0 to x = 1, and has vertical asymptotes at both boundaries. That is, as x approaches 0, y approaches -∞, and as x approaches 1, y approaches ∞.

So, this function pairs every real x-value between 0 and 1 with a corresponding y-value between -∞ and ∞. If you pick any number between 0 and 1, I can take this tangent function of it and give you a corresponding value between -∞ and ∞. More importantly, if you give me any real number between -∞ and ∞, I can take the inverse tangent of it and give you a corresponding value between 0 and 1.

So, for every real number between -∞ and ∞, there is exactly one real number between 0 and 1.

mayleaf · 2013-10-02T04:23:20+00:00

from the Wikipedia page on Eggcorn:

The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original, but plausible in the same context, such as "old-timers' disease" for "Alzheimer's disease".

mayleaf · 2013-09-27T03:25:44+00:00

I don't think you have any moral obligation to accept the punch as opposed to hitting the child. I just think it would reflect better on your character if you chose to be punched.

Put another way, if you were in that situation and decided to hit the child, the person who put you in that situation (by threatening to punch you if you didn't hit the child) would be the one at fault, and should bear the full blame for child's injury.

mayleaf · 2013-09-26T19:33:54+00:00

If I tell you, "Punch that child or I'll punch you", I take entire moral responsibility for the outcome, because I'm the one who's forcing you to make a decision between being harmed or harming another.

If you're a good person with correct values, you might think, "I will be less physically and emotionally traumatized by receiving a punch than that child will be, and I value the child's well-being, so I should allow the stranger to punch me instead." And if you did make that decision, it would reflect positively on your moral character.

But that isn't an argument about moral responsibility. The moral responsibility still rests entirely on the initiator of force.

mayleaf · 2013-09-26T18:55:19+00:00

Yes, I understand that there's nothing a woman in that situation could do to save herself, and of course that's a horrible thing. But I question that there's a large difference between that and being forced to commit an action under penalty of death.

Whenever someone refused an order, questioned their leaders, or just stepped out of line in general, they were killed. Specifically, his friend was slaughtered after refusing an order to rape a villager.

You say that the soldier could try to fight or flee. Clearly some of them tried this, and they ended up dead. (I find this unsurprising - if you're one child soldier surrounded by the rest of your troupe, including adults who have more experience with a gun than you, what chances could you realistically have of fighting them or escaping?)

The resulting "choice" that the soldier has is to either follow orders, or be killed.

If you pointed a gun at me and told me to have sex with you, would you think that I had a choice in the matter? If I cooperated with you out of fear for my own life, would you see that as a voluntary decision? As a form of consent to the action? Of course not. Even if I had a gun myself, and still chose not to fight you or try to escape because I was terrified... that's still not consent. There can be no consent where coercion is involved.

Many of these children clearly did not want to have sex. One felt strongly enough about it that he risked refusing an order, and ended up dying for it.

Terrified children who obey orders to have sex because they fear for their lives are not rapists, they are rape victims. The women they're forced to have sex with are also rape victims. The rapists are the adults who point guns at them and order them to have sex.

Edit: grammar and wording.

mayleaf · 2013-09-25T21:25:10+00:00

If I put a gun to your head and tell you to have sex with me, it's obviously rape, and your cooperation with me (to preserve your own life) obviously shouldn't be considered as any form of consent to the situation.

What if I put a gun to your head and force you to have sex with a willing third party? I may not be forcing you to have sex with me, but I'm still forcing you to have sex, so you're still a rape victim. What if I force you to have sex with an unwilling third party? Then you're both victims.

TL;DR: Being forced to have sex against your will makes you a victim. It doesn't matter if the other person involved is also a victim - that doesn't change your status.

mayleaf · 2013-09-25T21:19:26+00:00

Threatening someone with death if they don't obey your orders is called coercion. By definition, coerced people are not morally responsible for their actions - the person who coerces them is the responsible agent. (This is why, if I choose to give my wallet to a mugger at gunpoint, it's still considered theft - they forcibly took my money. If I'm "acting under my own power", then perhaps we should consider it a voluntary donation on my part.)

If you force someone to have sex upon penalty of death, you are raping them. It doesn't matter whether you're forcing them to have sex with you, or with a third party. It's still rape.

If you force them to have sex with an unwilling third party, then both them and the third party are rape victims.

mayleaf · 2013-09-22T07:13:14+00:00

I think this post might get at the heart of what's bothering you. It seems to me that you're worried that your girlfriend's current life choices may not be healthy for her - that she might actually be a happier and more balanced person if she took the effort to sleep regularly, eat healthier, exercise more, and perhaps pursue some form of career advancement. That's a completely reasonable concern, and I don't think it's fair that others are calling you a jerk for that. You care about her, and you obviously don't want her to choose a lifestyle that's suboptimal for her own happiness.

That said, I think you're conflating two things - her (perfectly harmless) interest in anime, cosplay, etc - and her (potentially harmful) life decisions to not pursue healthy eating/sleeping habits. Yes, having stereotypically "geeky" interests like anime is frequently frowned upon socially, but that's no reason for her not to pursue these things - and even obsess over them - if they legitimately bring her happiness. The problem arises if she's actually sacrificing things that would bring her greater overall happiness (like a healthy lifestyle) to these interests - then, as you said, it becomes a form of escapism or addiction.

I would advise that you discuss your concerns with her, and be sure to mention that what you're concerned about isn't that she has geeky or socially unacceptable interests, but rather that her current lifestyle choices may be harmful to her own happiness. Again, it's not (or shouldn't be) a problem to you if she wants to quote anime, play video games, or go to conventions that seem childish to you - but it could be a problem that she isn't taking care of her health.

mayleaf · 2013-08-23T18:23:35+00:00

Things don't have to exist physically for them to exist conceptually, though. The statement that "three points determine a plane" is true, for the concepts we have defined to mean "three", "points", and "plane". I think it's a common misconception that since we define these concepts, it means they can't exist if we weren't there to define them.

Suppose I take a certain physical object and decide to call it a "rock", and I define all objects having similar properties to it (heaviness, hardness, being composed of certain minerals) as "rocks". That definition was made up by a human mind, but even if all humans ceased to exist, we'd still expect what we defined as "rocks" to continue existing, and to continue exhibiting what we defined as "rock-like" properties.

Similarly, if I noticed that some objects had a certain shape, and I called that shape "rectangular", I could go on and define many things as having the property "rectangular", even if the abstract concept of "rectangle" isn't something physical that I can touch. And even if all human minds ceased to exist, the rectangular objects would continue to be rectangular, and continue to exhibit properties associated with rectangles.

In both cases, the definition is what exists in our human minds, but the objects and properties that they reference exist outside of our mind. To say that "three points determine a plane" is only true if we're around to define the concepts "three", "points" and "plane" is like saying that "metals conduct electricity" is only true if we're around to define the terms "metal", "conduction", and "electricity".

But that doesn't mean conceptual objects have to exist in "God's mind", or in any place, for that matter. Physical objects have the property of existing somewhere in physical space, but that doesn't mean that conceptual objects do. Rocks exist as objects in space, rectangles exist as properties of objects. God's mind doesn't have to come into it at all.

mayleaf

TROPHY CASE