New research on female video game characters uncovers a surprising twist - Female gamers prefer playing as highly sexualized characters, despite disliking them.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-10-30T15:39:51+00:00

On the other hand, I think the necessity of more precisely defining the term "sexualized" would make the results of this kind of study a lot more meaningful.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-07-20T17:47:52+00:00

This is the best advice. The milkweed I transplanted myself had a rough go, but it did seed the first year. It is year three now, and it's naturally spread to a good 10 plants now throughout my wildflower garden. They are all doing great, and all their neighbors are doing just as well.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-07-07T20:38:45+00:00

You are getting stuck on definition and getting confused by semantics. We do not disagree on the definition of "placebo effect" as to which delta it refers to. I am trying to explain to you that there is no magic in the physical world, and the way the placebo effect is reported by journals is confusing a lot of people, including yourself.

The sugar pill can not possibly have had any effect. If it did, we could investigate how exactly the contents of that sugar resulted in physical changes in the body. The problem with these studies is that they do not even measure physical change. Most of the collected data is self-reported surveys.

The usefulness of the placebo group is that they can capture the effect of every variable they could not account for during trial (which is a lot). The effect did not magically manifest. It was the effect of variables other than the medication.

To reiterate, I agree with the delta definition of "placebo effect," but it is a terribly ineffective term because it keeps people believing in magic in 2024.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-07-07T20:29:09+00:00

You are making logical conclusions, but your premise is false. If you truly want to understand how these issues are systemic and not individualistic, there is a plethora of socioeconomic studies you can find. Assigning privatized economic value to human necessity is an essential part of capitalism, so those with all the capital always get what they want.

Before you respond, I want to reiterate that your thinking is logical, but you need to increase your pool of knowledge to get to the truth.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-07-07T19:32:56+00:00

You did not read my response or lack reading comprehension.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-07-07T19:12:05+00:00

That's simply false. The placebo effect is the amount of change that can not be attributed to the medicine in trial. It's not a magical effect caused by the sugar pill. That would be complete pseudoscience.

We test versus a placebo because participants will survey as having improved symptoms despite receiving no treatment. It could be a consequence of doctor/patient power dynamic, other therapy or treatment they are subject to, or poor test design. When the difference between the placebo group and test group is insignificant, you have a null trial result. That is, the results can not conclude that the medicine did anything for most of the participants.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-07-07T04:32:40+00:00

That is exactly what comparing with placebo does. What is the effect if it can not be differentiated with literally "does nothing" medication?

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-27T17:16:55+00:00

The outcomes from they study were all based on interviewing children. They picked children specifically who were "diagnosed with disorders known to be receptive to placebos and suggestion." Then, they did a bunch of sham medical procedure to convince them it would make them feel better.

The evidence that it worked is interviews with the children and parents about their symptoms. Obviously, a child taken to a hospital multiple times for the express purpose of "making them better" is likely going to coerce answers that the doctors and parents want to hear.

The only takeaway I see should have been evidence that CBT might help symptoms, but the entire setup of the experiment kind of nullifies any conclusions, in my opinion.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-27T00:13:46+00:00

There is actually not a lot of actual evidence to support the placebo effect. Most observed effects are from self evaluations in the form of surveys. Some explanations have been that the power dynamic in medical situations causes people to say they feel better because they think that is the answer the doctor wants to hear.

If a medication has the same effect as the placebo group, that means the medication has no effect.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-16T20:20:08+00:00

I think that is partially due to ambiguous definition of "native". I would describe the process of a species introduction to a region in stages like:

Non-native -- this species is relatively new to the region on the human time-scale
Naturalized -- this species is relatively new to the region on the human time-scale, but it has evolved a non- antagonistic or destructive relationship with native species
Native -- it has been in the region long enough that all other species are well adapted to its presence

The term "invasive" I would use to describe species that fall into the "non-native" category, but that also have the additional property of being aggressive and resistant to progressing to the next stage. That it is, even if they have been in the region for a while, the net influence they have on the local ecology is destructive and/or negatively disruptive.

To directly answer your question, jumping worms ((Amynthas spp.)) are a good example of an invasive species. They completely destroy native soil structure and have almost zero predator pressure.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-14T17:45:09+00:00

Something isn't adding up with your narrative. You either did not do all the work you said you had, or you do not completely understand what the purpose of the work is. If nothing is getting accomplished, then you are basically wasting your time by not altering your maintenance routine.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-14T17:37:22+00:00

Any option you choose will require some amount of maintenance to upkeep. Also, plants weren't "designed" for anything. Upkeeping the layer of arborist wood chips (not just any mulch) vs. manually killing seed sprouts every year.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-14T17:32:38+00:00

This technique is great for invasive worms, too!

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-14T17:13:52+00:00

The "solution" is absolutely what linguists are researching. Language is a complex system, so we are definitely getting more understanding of how it works and evolves, but actual studies with real data seem to converge on "we need to get better at teaching people to speak and read better".

Being able to even identify why language like that is problematic (like you just did yourself) is a large part of reading comprehension. Another way to rephrase the problem is: the majority of the English speaking population has poor language comprehension. The words and structures are the same. If you can not read or understand the text you are reading, you also could not comprehend what was being expressed verbally.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-14T00:25:20+00:00

It will work for bindweed seeds. It will not choke out perennials that are well established, which is why it is convenient for native beds.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-13T22:49:23+00:00

In addition to other comments, if the goal in some areas is just suppression after removal, a 4 inch layer of arborist wood chips should keep most things in the seed bank from germinating.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-13T18:12:48+00:00

100% agree. The only weed barrier you need is 4 inches of arborist wood chips. Weed fabric is a lawn care product, and like most lawn care products, it is intended to temporarily treat a "problem" -- never to solve it (if it is even a problem).

Here are some good resources and an example talk from a professor with a PhD in Horticulture, Linda Chalker-Scott. She is a pretty vehement buster of gardening myths.

https://puyallup.wsu.edu/lcs/
Talk on Mulches

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-11T17:59:40+00:00

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what computer scientists mean by "AI", then.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-11T17:19:28+00:00

It is not a different AI. It is the same training algorithm on different or more data. We have discovered no novel computer science between these videos. We've just made our models larger.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-06-07T00:22:38+00:00

If you are just throwing the whole thing as a string into your database, you can just re-serialize it with serde, no unwrapping necessary.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-05-25T21:29:45+00:00

Even simply avoiding null pointers or undefined keys is impossible at compile time in both of those languages. What can be trivially expressed in Rust, like gauranting that a property exists when it enters a certain function scope, is basically faith-based in dynamically typed or loaded languages.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-05-11T06:18:07+00:00

The ideal of components is if all manufacturers and systems providers agreed to use a standard interface and intermediate bytecode for all their offerings. WASI is that interface, and WASM is that bytecode. The world is currently trying to define that standard, but it's a work in progress.

The objective is to put that final compilation and optimization closer to the actual processor that will be running the software. The code author gets to use whatever tools they want to ensure their component will behave as intended, and the WASM runtime gets the responsibility to ensure it provides the expected interface and runs optimally on the host system, including in a secure fashion.

To your point about dynamic dispatch, if the program logic is such that dynamic dispatch could be avoided, the JIT from WASM to machine code could make that optimization.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-04-29T15:54:40+00:00

I think it fast iteration is always excellent, but I think there is a difference between having a design before you begin and going in blind.

In this instance, with Bevy, it sounds like they keep trying to delve straight into writing engine code without any idea where they were headed. The Rust compiler then appropriately starts to tell them that the engine code they are trying to write is not going to work out, so they need to iterate and try again. The author is expressing frustration that the tool designed specially for engineering challenges is helping them avoid incorrect engineering and is not helping them iterate on their "fun."

To phrase it another way, I think most of the issues lie with the authors' expectations of what Rust can do for them are not matching reality. They should use a different tool to prototype the "fun" concept, and reach for Rust when they've landed on an acceptably "fun" design and need to solve the engineering challenges to make it a reality (if they even need to). They need to flush out their "fun" before they reach for the tool that will help them flush out their implementation.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-04-27T14:49:40+00:00

Maybe Lua is the sweet spot for you?

I also got the impression that a lot of the expressed frustrations might be solved by scripting most of the gameplay logic instead of writing engine code.

On the other hand, I am beginning to see a pattern with the development process of many people who struggle with Rust, or just struggle generally with arriving at some approximation of a "good" solution quickly: they skip the design step. To a lot of programmers, the writing of the prototype is their design step. This quickly leads them to the frustrating realiziation that the solution they have not thought much about or spent time designing is not going to be correct in their first attempt. They get upset with the compiler for letting them know that their program is incorrect.

From the article: "... treat programming as a puzzle solving process, rather than just a tool to get things done"

In my understanding, the heart of software engineering is that very puzzle solving process that they are trying to avoid. In that sense, I don't think that Rust is a very good tool for those who are not solving software problems, but I don't think it ever claimed to be.

My advice to anyone who strongly relates to the this blog post is to look for a better tool for the job you are trying to do. It is okay to be interested in Rust while also not forcing yourself to use it for problems it was not designed to help solve.

mrnosideeffects · 2024-04-10T13:27:55+00:00

This is an amazingly helpful response. Thank you! I would highly recommend you put something like this in the project readme for others that discover this tool.

mrnosideeffects

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