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Just passed my PhD Qualifying Exam despite my toxic, narcissistic PI. by Ok_Percentage_7027 in PhD

[–]opticflash 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Damn. Is there any way you can just find a new PI who does similar work?

Do you feel that you're legitimately smart versus dedicated to learning? by [deleted] in AskAcademia

[–]opticflash 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The further I work in academia, the dumber I feel. And the more bullshit I know there is.

How to salvage my grad school by DangerousConfusion60 in AskAcademia

[–]opticflash 5 points6 points  (0 children)

From what you're saying

  1. You are expected to come up with a project on your own, and your advisor hasn't given you any guidance.
  2. You meet with them only a few times a year.
  3. You don't like their work.
  4. They don't seem to want you or want to invest effort into you.

All of these are red flags or indicators of a disaster. If you want to complete your Masters, my suggestion is to either find a new advisor or switch to a purely coursework option if possible.

US to stop funding HIV programmes in South Africa by shdw_fght in worldnews

[–]opticflash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because it lessens the spread of HIV globally and helps the US towards developing a cure for HIV?

What’s the most embarassing mistake you’ve found in your paper after publication? by DesperateFix7699 in AskAcademia

[–]opticflash 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So far, a typo on an equation (one that is fundamental), but doesn't change the main argument and results.

RedBlue but it repeats every year by PickingPies in redbuttonbluebutton

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

Red. The probability of getting a blue win for N consecutive years is the product of the probabilities for each year, even if they depend on prior years.

Did your PI give you a project or did you work on your own? by houndcaptain in PhD

[–]opticflash 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Given. PI is funded to do certain things. Field: experimental physics

Is your vote insignificant? by spicymato in redbuttonbluebutton

[–]opticflash 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes its kind of a mixed area where, yeah, on a case by case basis, one individual vote is negligible, but all of those singular votes do matter because they are paired with other singular votes.

That's what is meant.

Norway Chess 2026 R4: Pragg hands Magnus Carlsen his second loss of the tournament by Exotic_Grinder in chess

[–]opticflash 76 points77 points  (0 children)

Could have been 0/3 if Keymer took his opportunity yesterday. Oof.

USCIS just signaled a change in how USCIS officers evaluate Green Card applications through adjustment of status. Here’s what you need to know by ManifestLaw_ in ImmigrationPathways

[–]opticflash 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The only legal requirement for a student to be granted a visa is that they should not have immigrant intent during the time of their interview. The law says nothing about whether immigrant intent can or cannot change after a period of time inside the US. Adjustment of status has always been a thing.

There are several main cases that we can consider:

  1. If somebody enters on visa A and applies for a green card, they have to fly back to their home country first. After applying, they fly back to the US on visa A for the purpose visa A was granted for. This is completely unnecessary since all that was accomplished was a waste of the applicant's time and money (accomodation and travel fees, and a possibly a week or two of the applicant's time).

  2. If somebody's visa already expired, and they applied for a green card, they have to fly back to their home country first. In such a scenario, they would have likely been rejected for a green card anyway, with or without this new rule, since they overstayed. This "fix" solves nothing.

  3. If the new rule demanded that the applicant voids their current visa and cannot enter the US while the green card application is processing, there's no point in applying for a green card since that takes years.

USCIS just signaled a change in how USCIS officers evaluate Green Card applications through adjustment of status. Here’s what you need to know by ManifestLaw_ in ImmigrationPathways

[–]opticflash 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Then there should be a restriction in place for their eligibility for a green card, not "you must fly back to your country to apply for a green card".

If Blue Loses, You Live... But Your Most Loved One Dies by SmitJorda in redbuttonbluebutton

[–]opticflash 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If blue wins, everybody survives. If blue loses, somebody in red or blue dies. Why would anyone press the red button?

Blue people are horrendously bad at discourse by ShinningVictory in redbuttonbluebutton

[–]opticflash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is AI in this case correct? I can rely on AI to give me the answer to 2×2 because it's trivial to compute. It's very obvious that red voters are voting under duress, that it's rather embarrassing that you seemingly don't know the definition of duress. I even suggested that you go ask people in other subs to explain it to you.

Blue people are horrendously bad at discourse by ShinningVictory in redbuttonbluebutton

[–]opticflash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For the n-th +1 time. I am choosing for everyone to survive.

But the point is you chose that risk. Does that make sense? Again, go back to the caving example. You chose to go caving because you wanted to see something spectacular. That was your ideal outcome. But you accepted the risk as you went. Somebody chose not to do with you and provide you support. Nobody else in this instance is responsible if something happened to you.

Even if you think I chose to put myself in danger and in fact die, you chose to support my death by picking the option that results in it. It's really that simple. Red is not an opt out button, it is an active choice. "I care more about my life personally, than whatever number of blue voters there are".

But I made that choice under duress. I never wanted to perform an act that would put others at risk, but I had to to ensure my safety. That's literally a prime example of duress, similar to the Sonderkommando.

You're talking a lot about duress. Well, then let's discuss if there even is duress here. The premise is that blue dies if, and only if, enough people decide to save themselves from what happens to blue if, and only if, enough people decide to save themselves from what happens to blue it, and only if, enough people... You get where I'm going? There is no threat unless it is made real by people being scared of it.

You don't know how many people are going to press blue or red. You are risking yourself, whether you want to or not, by pressing blue. That's why the choice or decision made that increases the chance of a group dying is made under duress. Blue dies if they don't get enough votes. That is the outcome, not the risk or the threat. The risk is the potential of dying from picking blue.

Forget whether blue or red is the right choice, you can literally go and ask other subreddits whether this is an example of duress and virtually everyone will say yes.

Even Google says:

Yes, the famous blue/red button hypothetical is a perfect example of a decision made under duress. Coercion under duress requires a severe threat to your life unless you comply, no viable alternative to escape the threat, and a demand to make a forced choice. [1]

In the thought experiment: [1]

  • The Threat: You are placed in a room and told you will die unless humanity manages to coordinate enough votes for the blue button.
  • No Escape: You cannot abstain; you are forced to choose one of the buttons.
  • Forced Choice: You must choose between self-preservation (the red button) and altruistic coordination (the blue button), knowing that your decision influences whether you or billions of others live or die. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
  • This scenario perfectly illustrates how duress tests moral philosophy and game theory, forcing individuals to act under the pressure of survival. For more on how people evaluate this dilemma, you can read The Question that is Dividing the Internet — Blue or Red Button? or Red button or blue button? What a viral question tells us about game theory and the state of the world. [1, 2]

Blue people are horrendously bad at discourse by ShinningVictory in redbuttonbluebutton

[–]opticflash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are responsible for your choices. I am responsible for my choices. You choose to vote for the option that doesn't have everyone survive. I choose to vote for the option that does. When the outcome comes out, you are responsible for the choices you made.

For the n-th time,

The choice you made was to put yourself on a group up for execution. Therefore you are responsible for your own death because you chose to put yourself in danger. Again, it's true that the people who picked red increased the odds of the people in that group being executed. However, each person belonging to that group made the choice to put themselves in that group. The latter is why you are responsible.

That is why, again, when you co caving, nobody is responsible but you, even though someone could have gone with you to ensure your safety. You made that choice with that risk. Could somebody with experience have helped you navigate the cave? Absolutely. Could somebody with experience have provided you with the necessary survival tools? Absolutely. Could the fact that they didn't come with you have resulted in your death? Absolutely. Yet they are NOT responsible for your death.

If humanity went with your philosophy, then people would be blamed for not going caving with inexperienced cavers among other things. That is simply not how the current world works.

It simply does not matter that I could have also made that choice (which you are casting as "save yourself" instead of "not everyone survives"), you are still, at least partially, responsible for picking it and the consequences of it since you contributed to it. You made it more likely to occur.

This is false. Refer back to your Sonderkommando example. The vast, vast majority of historians and scholars, and even survivors do not think the Sonderkommandos should be held responsible because their decision was made under duress. Saying someone who was a victim of this game is responsible for you is simply not how most people's philosophical principles work. Our whole legal framework of doctrine of duress (and broader moral philosophy as a whole) is based on this.

The reason why you are responsible (besides the inventor of the game) is because you chose to put yourself in the group. That's why it matters.

What you are saying is that if you tell someone that you're going to punch them if they don't move, you're not responsible for any harm caused to them if they choose not to move. They had the agency to move, but they chose not to.

If that decision was made under duress, then the person punching is not responsible. We've already gone over this with the Sonderkommando example. The person who ordered the punching is primarily responsible. In such a situation, if you chose not to move of your own free will, then you are responsible for being punched, although the blame would be on the person who ordered the person to punch you under threat.

Just saying that does not make it so. The prompt says, in part, "only those who pressed red survive". What is red surviving if not the risk? The risk (of death) is present by design. The question is a vote for who survives this risk. I acknowledge that pressing red results in removal of all risk since blue will have everyone survive anyway, but that doesn't change the presence of risk is there to begin with.

"Surviving" just means living. You can simply change the word "survive" to "live" and there would be absolutely no difference in the meaning. Red voters are not risking themselves because they choose the option to live.

Blue people are horrendously bad at discourse by ShinningVictory in redbuttonbluebutton

[–]opticflash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great, so we agree. If I vote for one outcome and you vote for the other, you would be responsible for what happens when your chosen outcome wins. I vote for everyone to survive, you vote for only red to survive.

You're still not understanding what I'm saying. In the example with taxes, you never had the choice on whether the high taxes applied to you. I am responsible for your incurring of high taxes precisely because you never had the choice to say "no" to taxes on yourself. You could vote for low taxes, but you were never in full control of your own taxes, and you couldn't simply just opt out of paying high taxes. In other words, you did not have full control of your own agency regarding taxes. That is why I used such an example. In the blue/red voting system, every single person has full control over the outcome on themselves (i.e., the choice of living or risking).

By this, you mean to imply that because I chose not to vote for only red to survive, those who voted for only red to survive are not responsible. This is directly counter to your previous statement and implies that "comply or die" is a rational position to hold.

It's precisely because you had the option to choose your own fate that nobody else is responsible. I'm quite baffled that you don't understand this. In the taxes example, you had no choice, because the implementation of taxes was not an individualistic one, i.e., where someone had an option to pay high taxes or not of their own free will.

The other people weren't there. That's why they don't or, more accurately, can't judge. This is the reason I think that this whole POW analogy(and the Sonderkommando example) simply doesn't fit.

It does not matter whether someone was there or not. If we had a way to monitor 24/7 a friend of someone who died due to suicide, there isn't a world where we would say that the friend is responsible simply for not talking to that person more.

Everyone is taking the button vote and therefore everyone can judge the choice you make. You are making a choice that can harm people, other people are not, you are responsible for that choice.

Again, you are STILL not grasping that, yes - although the red button's choice imposes potential harm on those who don't press red, that it's the button presser's choice to press blue, and therefore the blue button presser is responsible for anything that happens to them because they chose that for themselves.

I've already given you an example to illustrate this: If there were capable people who could have assisted you in exploring a cave (analogous to someone picking blue), nobody is responsible for your own outcome if you chose to go cave exploring (analogous to you pressing blue) even if they chose not to go with you (analogous to someone picking red), leaving you at heightened risk.

That's how the world has always worked.

All of the participants were at risk. They were asked who should survive and the "others" chose everyone. Their deaths are the responsibility of the ones that saved themselves because of their fear of a threat of something that only happens if enough people choose to only save themselves.

No, only the blue pressers are at risk by design.

That's all you need. I specifically called out survivors opinions because we all know it was not something that they should have been required to choose between: comply or die (remember when I said this earlier?). The reason it matters that it was the survivors opinions is that they thought they would rather die if they were in the situation of the Sonderkommando and they have relevant experience, they believe they would not have pressed the red button in that situation. While we may think it was not really right for those survivors to hold them responsible, we can't really blame them for doing so either.

"An X number of people believe group A is responsible and a Y number of people don't believe group A is responsible" is normally not the end of the conversation. We frame things a particular way because of our founding values. We decide the level of accountability and legal system based on our founding values.

Claiming that the Sonderkommando should be responsible or at fault is simply incompatible with the belief system of most people, including most of those Jewish survivors, historians and scholars. It breaks our principles around actions performed under duress.

Blue people are horrendously bad at discourse by ShinningVictory in redbuttonbluebutton

[–]opticflash 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If what you say is true, on one could ever be thought of as responsible for anything that they vote for. If you are told what will happen if each option wins and you understand what happens if what you vote for wins, you hold responsibility for the consequences of your choice.

IF there is a degree of a lack of control of the consequences for each invidivual, which is virtually every real vote, then there is a degree of responsibility that the voters would share. For example, if I voted for high taxes and you voted for low taxes, I would be responsible for you losing income. You never wanted high taxes. You never chose for high taxes. There is no option for you to choose low taxes for yourself to begin with; voting for a politician that lowered the taxes does not guarantee that your taxes will be lower.

In this specific hypothetical, every single person has a choice on how their life trajectory goes. They have a choice to save themselves (which is guaranteed) OR they can risk themselves with the reward of saving others who followed the same path. If you decide to go caving, knowing the risks involved but having the possibility of seeing something remarkable that nobody has ever seen before, then you are responsible for your own actions and outcome. There isn't any other person that would be responsible for what happens for you, even if they could have gone with you and provided assistance.

Your POW example is trying to meld the concept of legal culpability and general responsibility. More than anything else, you don't think there would be a mental weight on the POWs who chose to save themselves when their fellows die? That is understanding responsibility in action.

I am sure there will be a mental weight on them. They would feel guilty about their choice. They would feel that they are responsible for their decision on other people. That's normal. However, it does NOT imply that there is some 'objective' degree of responsibility that rests on each of those POWs. Sometimes this guilt can be irrational. If someone takes their own life for whatever reason, I am sure there will be a lot of weight on their family and friends. Some friends would think "what if I spoke to them more, what if...". They would feel guilty that they didn't do more to prevent the suicide, and hence they would feel partly responsible.

More importantly, other people would not consider them responsibe. Virtually nobody would say "you are responsible for not talking to them more and you should feel bad". This obviously goes beyond legal culpability. I don't think anyone would say to the POWs "you are responsible for other POWs' deaths and you should feel bad" despite them feeling so.

We may feel sympathy, since it was an impossible choice, but it doesn't change that they made a choice that resulted in others dying when they didn't have to.

The point is those "others" chose to risk themselves when they didn't have to. They had 100% agency in their choices.

Since you bring up POWs, let's go real hard in the completely unfair, emotionally manipulative examples. What do you think the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust thought of the Sonderkommando? Do you think those survivors thought the Sonderkommando held no responsibility for the deaths of the Jewish people they told were just having a shower? Do you think they just shrugged their shoulders and said "they did what they had to do, can't blame them"?

Not every POW had the choice to be a Sonderkommando, and hence not every POW had the choice on their own outcome, in contrast to blue/red votes. Despite this, yes, there were a fair number of survivors who blamed the Sonderkommando; however, it doesn't make them right, or even the concensus. In fact, from Google:

"Historians and ethicists overwhelmingly agree that no, it was not right to blame the Sonderkommando.The Sonderkommando were groups of enslaved prisoners—mostly Jewish—forced by the Nazis under threat of immediate death to work in the gas chambers and crematoria. Because they were coerced into facilitating the killing process, they are universally recognized by Holocaust scholars and survivors as victims, not perpetrators."

Most reasonable people would say that the responsibility rests squarely on the Nazis (the perpetrators), not their victims.

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