well who pissed on your chips?

A couple things.

1. Lack of established religious authority. I’m sure there were spiritualists and weird cults in Britain too but they had a far harder job displacing the Anglican church which dominated. Same for the influence of Roman Catholicism etc

2. America is nowhere as far as the major world religions are concerned, which doesn’t sit well with the kind of self obsession that infects a new nation. So it’s quite tempting when prophets and cultists etc come along saying the New Revelation™ is that America is the new centre of God’s plan.

Do you actually feel conviction behind the claims and arguments, or is it more performative?

Yes. I think what happens in many difficult topics is people know how they feel but have never really thought through the detail. And because of that they backfill with black and white thinking that I think is bad for several reasons.

I) often even though I agree on the central issue, the black and white thinking contains overreactions that I disagree with that in themselves cause other problems. So I see value in developing an emotional black and white view into a nuanced dark grey / off-white view.

ii) black and white thinking leaves us ill equipped to understand others or find compromises

iii) although we all do it, relying on strong emotional convictions is fine for day to day life but leaves us out of practice articulating exactly why we think things should be a certain way and therefore vulnerable to articulate bad actors

I would never take a contrary view just to be annoying. And I generally only do it on moral issues, not matters of strong consensus that would veer into conspiracy. (E.g. practising reciting the evidence for why we understand the Holocaust is real is a useful historical skill but not the kind of thing I’m talking about)

In my experience it doesn’t matter how accessible the language becomes, most people find the precision required to make machines behave in a desirable way is exhausting or alien to them.

This isn’t any kind of failing though. I’ve come to see how organising modern businesses (with processes, regulations, standard etc) is a kind of “programming”. And there are many who are good at that (designing human processes to automate goals) where I completely flounder, even with the help of the ‘right’ training, books, coaching etc

I enjoy ‘free’ debate where I can be the devil’s advocate for unpopular opinions. Talk like this is more or less banned on Reddit. Lemmy is a much freer. I think the are sensible boundaries on certain topics where debate must not turn into advocacy. This takes nuance and good sense though. Completely dead on Reddit, still alive here. So carry on…

and never asked for, like “AI”.

I think, unfortunately, quite a lot of people have poor taste and don’t mind obvious AI slop, even enjoy it.

There are certain materials such as CSAM that people are not totally immune to. Most people will always find it repugnant, a minority will always be drawn to it. But there is a portion in the middle who do not ever think of it only because they are not exposed to it. Unrestrained sharing of it normalises it and the behaviours that come with it. There are some parallels with addictive drugs. Constraints on free speech are akin to banning cigarette advertising or making heroin illegal. Yes, in principle, everyone should be able to manage themselves well enough that anyone can take whatever they want. In reality, we democratically decide society is just healthier for everyone if certain things have constraints.

SW London zone 3

Time to work on tube, 20mins

Can bike if wanted to. there are lots of on-street electric bike hire options, to the extent don’t need to plan in advance there’s always one there.

Biking is safe, on main routes there are protected lanes. On others the traffic goes too slow to be much of a problem.

3 close friends live within 10 mins bike ride, 20 mins walk. I can drive but bike is much more convenient unless it’s tipping down

Gym 5 mins walk

Numerous great pubs within minutes walk

Parks, riverside walks

Many music venues, performances, artistic events local and within ten mins walk

Can get to West End in about half an hour, endless options, though they cost

There’s a large supermarket on the next road over though I tend to get delivery

I’ve also lived in a small town (<5000) on the outskirts of a larger UK town (300,000). And while life is ‘slower’ and in some senses more attractive there is far less to do. It takes ages getting anywhere unless driving. Some main bus routes to the villages are surprisingly frequent (6 an hour). But if you’re trying to go anywhere off the main route changing onto infrequent services takes forever. No local interest / hobby groups that interest me etc.

I much prefer the options on hand living in a nice part of London. It costs though. I wouldn’t settle in London for less than £85k. (I would accept less and less pleasant living if I was building my career as this pays off, but I’m past that now)

Gates Foundation has done some pretty good stuff…

Thanks. Yes, I’m managing to absorb it now.

Though the hardest part is getting an intuition about why the “algorithm 1” “algorithm 2” thinking happens at all when they’s a group of 100 people and everyone can see at least 99 blue eyed people. I get the induction, but why does anyone think ‘well algorithm 1 people would leave first night’ when there obviously can’t be anyone in this group. The only immediate question on everyone’s mind is “are there 99 blue eyed people (what I see) or 100 (me included)?”

It was indeed the Ustinov version

Brilliant, thanks :)

I’d be in 107 with an icepack over my eyes…

SPENGLER
I have a radical idea... The door swings both ways. We could reverse the particle flow through the gate...

RAY
How? 

SPENGLER
... we'll resize a table in Word 

VENKMAN
Excuse me, Egon.  You said resizing a table was bad...

RAY
[with realisation]
... resize the table...

VENKMAN 
You're going to endanger us.  You're going to endanger our client; the nice lady who paid us in advance before she turned into a dog

SPENGLER 
Not necessarily.  There's definitely a very slim chance we'll survive..

WINSTON
...

RAY
...

VENKMAN
I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it!  Let's do it! 

GOZER
The choice is made. The Traveller has come.

VENKMAN
We didn't choose anything?!!  I didn't think of an image, did you?

SPENGLER
No.

WINSTON
My mind's a total void!

[They all look at Ray]

RAY
I couldn't help it! It just popped in
there!

VENKMAN
What? What just popped in there?

Massive in the UK from 90s to 00s

Comparable record sales to Tupac / Nirvana / Oasis

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists

Spoiler >!test!<

Edit: nope

Same way it expands to two: When there are three blue eyes, then each of them guesses they might have brown or something and there could be only two blue on the island, in which case as described those two would have left on the second night.

I don’t think that’s right.

Let’s try it out:

Basic case: 1 brown, 1 blue. Day 1. Guru says I see someone with blue eyes, blue eye person immediately leaves. End

Next: 2 brown, 2 blue.
Day 1; Guru speaks. It doesn’t help anyone immediately because everyone can see a blue eyed person, so no one leaves first night.
Day 2; The next night, everyone knows this, that everyone else can see a blue eyed person. Which tells the blue eyed people that their eyes are not brown. (They now know no-one is looking at all brown eyes). So the 2 blue eyed people who now realise their eyes aren’t brown leave that night on day 2. The end

Next case: 3 brown, 3 blue (I’m arbitrarily making brown = blue, I don’t think it actually matters).
Day 1, guru speaks, no-one leaves.
Day 2 everyone now knows no-one is looking at all brown. So if anyone could see only 1 other person with blue eyes at this point, they would conclude they themselves have blue. I suppose if you were one of the three blue eyed people you wouldn’t know if the other blue eyed people were looking at 1 blue or more. No-one leaves that night.
Day 3 I suppose now everyone can conclude that no-one was looking at only 1 blue, everyone can see at least two blue. So if the other blue eyed people can see 2 blues that means you must have blue eyes. So all blue eyed people leave Day 3?

Hmm. Maybe I’ve talked my way round to it. Maybe this keeps going on, each day without departure eliminating anyone seeing that many blue eyes until you get to 100.

It just seems so utterly counterintuitive that everyone sits there for 99 nights unable to conclude anything?

Not true, I bitch about them more than ever

Still doesn’t work on Boost unfortunately. Known issue…