The problem was that I underestimated just what a vast gulf of time 15,000 years is. For one I was struggling to fill in all that time with events

Then don’t fill in all that time? You can leave periods open or unmentioned, you don’t need details everywhere.

for two I realized that this knowledge preserving group would have had to existed for way longer than I was originally envisioning

Depending on your depiction of Elves the effect is the same (provided the group is Elves) because they’re often predicted as just slower/more leisurely in their approach to life (although I’m not sure what you mean by the statement in the first place, because something being older than you intended doesn’t sound like an actual problem).

Not only would they be older than the Jewish religion, they would be older than ancient Sumer. In fact you could take the entire history of the beginning of the Sumerian empire to the present day and fit it into that span of time twice over.

You could, yes. Here’s the thing: history doesn’t have to happen. You are the worldbuilder, you can easily say there was a long period of nothing at times, or a period where record-keeping gets mixed-up/distorted/unreliable (but earlier periods still manage to maintain their connection more readily, this has happened several times in real life if you care a lot about realism).

In the end I had to invent empire C, which refurbished some of empire B’s infrastructure before collapsing themselves, as the actual origin for the knowledge keepers. And even with that I still had to move the timeline up by thousands of years.

That seems entirely like a ‘you’ decision. There’s nothing here that sounds like a problem long-lived species caused. You could’ve easily just said empire B lasted longer or managed to revitalize itself temporarily (as the Roman empire did and the Byzantine empire did many, many times) or any other number of solutions like a golden age, a period of upheaval and warfare with another empire that empire B ultimately wins, or you could just leave the entire extra period of time unmentioned/undetailed. None of this seems relevant to long-lived species though, since as a long-lived species you can just drag out their periods of history (a good ruler will be a good ruler for a lot more years and their nation is more resistant to change just because people with the ability to change (or not change) things stick around longer). That would even be very realistic for a long-lived species.

The problem with that is that it would really change the dynamic of how non-elf civilizations would develop. Unless the elves are extremely insular, and even then. How do you have a plotline involving the player characters needing to delve into an ancient tomb in order to discover whether or not the current ruling family are the legitimate heirs of the kingdom when you can just ask an elf? How does the world get into that situation in the first place when you can just ask an elf?

Do you trust any old man you meet on the street? If an old WW2 veteran suddenly starts yelling about how he met Hitler and totally knows the names of every member of his administration (thereby potentially allowing you to hunt down some war criminals), do you just believe him at his word? For one, senility can affect Elves just as easily as any other race, and the effect would possibly be way worse given they can be senile for much, much longer. For two, Elves don’t necessarily have a better memory than Humans. As time marches on, their memories can distort, be forgotten, and fade. For three, hostility and lies exist. Even if your kingdom is egalitarian and mixed races, individuals have their agendas. The word of a person is extremely tenuous, and you could easily have Elves saying opposite things. One Elf says the hero is the heir to the kingdom, but also this Elf happens to be a close family friend and has been for generations. Another Elf says the hero is not the heir, but also this Elf happens to be the godfather of the person who would be king otherwise. You can include any number of Elves and just split them into factions because popularity is fallacious and not real evidence.

And, as an alternative point to your earlier point, Elves being around and supportive would mean the empire lasts longer. The conditions for major upheaval like a succession crisis would be rarer specifically because an Elf could be around to make sure there’s no issues, thus solving your issue of needing an empire C… or on the other hand an Elf could make things a lot worse if they liked and people trusted them. Elves don’t have to be good-intentioned.

And a fourth point, Elves may not care/notice at all. If the Elves are insular and live in the woods they’re extremely unlikely to bother remembering the Human king, after all he only lives like a scant 100 years at most so why even know his name? Barely an associate. Even if there’s good relations, Elves could easily see Humans as ‘all the same’ i.e. it doesn’t matter who’s in charge and they’ll just support the least-likely to cause problems (even if that happens to be the wrong heir or someone who would be bad for the humans).

I could probably think of a lot of other ways to solve these issues, but point is when worldbuilding you can solve a lot of problems with a lot of different solutions. Yes, you can just get rid of long-lived species if you like. You can also modify the world to match the fact near-immortals exist and I don’t think it’s that hard. It’s your decision, ultimately, but there’s a lot of ways to solve it.

I don’t think that necessarily takes away from the grandeur of something. If you want something truly ancient and out-of-touch, you can easily just set it 15,000 years ago instead of 1,500 and no player will bat an eye or even notice, and the elves’ lifespan gives an easy ‘this is why they remember and are still more knowledgeable with this ancient civilization than other races’.

It’s also not any less awe-inspiring to have people who lived in an important time period. We still have living veterans of WW2, and WW2 is no less important or intriguing (as evidenced by the number of historian hobbyists who love to talk about all the details of WW2).

The biggest missed opportunity this century.

I hope they’ve gone further towards the old combat style and stealth gameplay. I never liked the new one of just being an ‘assassin’ by openly running through a fort and stabbing each enemy with spastic animations until their arbitrary and chonky healthbar depletes.

While true, it’s stupid that things are that way. They shouldn’t be able to hide behind the idea that “we’re not responsible for what our users publish, we’re more like a public forum” while also having total ownership over that content.

This comment has no relevance to anything. If it was trying to imply that Americans don’t avoid healthcare due to cost, in effect denying Americans healthcare, it’s totally inaccurate. There are thousands of American citizens all over the USA that cannot afford healthcare, and Americans routinely avoid getting needed healthcare just to make ends meet.

Even Americans with higher incomes avoid healthcare, and here is a link that mentions that specifically: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-care-costs-rising-americans/

Helldivers 2 uses nProtect GameGuard, which is a notorious kernel level anticheat. It is notorious for being problematic to uninstall and causing issues on systems it is installed in (such as straight up preventing some programs from running or causing them to crash and other terrible nonsense that should never happen). Combine that with the fact it’s ineffective and the game is PvE, and it’s nonsensical why it’s around.

Well, they said they would ‘discuss’ the crappy anticheat too, but so far nothing has been done about that either. I won’t hold my breath.

I hope for your personal consistency that you then are also okay with a woman in a hijab creating educational videos for youtube.

Yeah. That’s exactly what I was saying. You are correct, I am completely okay with that.

It is absolutely not okay for a teacher to tell unasked, or to tell children about the belief system / cult they are a part of.

I disagree. It’s perfectly fine for someone to give a sort of disclaimer as to what they believe in and other things like that. The issue is when they start preaching what they believe in without warning while supposedly teaching a different subject.

While it’s true that linear algebra and vectors are used in learning models, they’re not using the term correctly in a way that says they know something about the subject (at least, the modern subject). Concepts aren’t embedded as vectors. In older models (before the craze), concepts were manually embedded as numbers or a collection of numbers, which could be a vector (but could be something else as well), and the machine would learn by modifying weights. However, in current models (and by current, I mean at least more than a couple years), concepts are learnt by the machine (weights are still modified by the machine as well) and the machine makes its own connections between features presented to it.

For example, you give it a dataset of 10x10 pixel images (with text descriptions) and it reads that as 100 pixels split into 3 numbers (RGB) and then looks for connections between those numbers and in which pixels. It’s not identifying what a boob is, but knows that when an image has ‘boob’ in the text description then there’s a very high likelihood that there will be a circular collection of pixels with lots of red somewhere in the image that are also connected to other pixels that are often also lots of red. That’s me breaking down what a human would think given the same task/information, but the reality is the machine will come up with its own connections/concepts which are both often far better than humans (when the model works, at least) and far more ineffable to humans.

I was not expecting this amount of hate over this video when I clicked on this post. The video is… normal? I don’t see issues? This whole thread seems oddly anti-military, anti-tech, and anti-Mark Rober. Like, what, is this tech going to be used to murder children more effectively than bombing a school? Even if it is, why is Mark Rober at fault and actually a phony who’s just shelling out for fame/cash? I’m genuinely curious what I’m missing here.

No?

There are crazies in every religion, and even agnostics and atheists have their fair share of crazies that go too far. It’s also not a great idea to just not expose kids to religious folk (even if that was conceivable, which it’s not given how many people are religious) and it’s not a great idea to demand they keep it private. Preaching is too far, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a teacher to tell their students what the teacher believes in and to wear iconography like a necklace of Jesus on the cross. In fact, I would much rather they be extremely public about what they believe in rather than be silent about it.

@surely_not_a_bot will remember that

No different than someone calling a janitor a “sanitation engineer”. Fancy titles make people happy.

“sanitation engineer”

Humans certainly don’t make new things out of nothing. They also take from different sources and combine them together to make something new, whether that’s direct inspiration or on a more abstract level through the brain.

Learning models aren’t generating art any more than GIMP or Photoshop is. It’s the person behind the tool that makes the art, not the tool. There’s certainly an art to prompt smithing.

I feel like a lot of people dismiss generated art simply because it’s new (and because as a byproduct is spits out dozens of junk pieces before getting anywhere good). I don’t see how it’s that different from someone using photo-editing software built with dozens of algorithms instead of a ‘pure’ drawing pad, or someone using a drawing pad instead of a pencil, or someone using a pencil instead of chalk. It’s a tool, and a great one at that in comparison to many digital tools for artists.

It’s to keep design space open and to minimize developer work.

Let’s say we decide to keep an overperforming gun. It does all the things. It has all the ammo, all the damage, all fire rate, all the reload speed. Now, all future weapons have to be made with that as a consideration. Why would players choose this new weapon, when there’s the old overperformer? The design space is being controlled and minimized by the overperformer. Players will complain if new weapons aren’t on the level of the overperformer.

Now, let’s say we have ten weapons with one clear overperformer. Now, we can either nerf a single weapon to bring it in line with the others, or buff nine weapons to attempt to bring them up to the level of the overperformer. Assuming the balance adjustments of each weapon are the same amount of work, that’s 9x the effort. However, if we assume we do this extra work to satisfy players, now we have ten overperforming guns and players find the game too easy, so now we also have to buff enemies to match. However, the game isn’t designed to handle these increase in difficulty. Players complain if we just add more health to enemies, so we have to do other things like increase enemy count, but adding more enemies increases performance issues. It’s a cascading problem.

I consider nerfs a necessary evil. It’s absurd to ask developers to always buff weapons and give them so much work when they could be developing actual additions to the game. Sometimes, a weapon really does need a nerf.

At this point you’re just ignoring whatever I say and I see no point in continuing this discussion. You haven’t responded to what I’ve said, you’ve just stated I’m wrong and to trust you on that because somewhere prior you said so. Good luck with convincing anyone that way.

You didn’t have to go looking - you could’ve just accepted it at face-value like other people do.

I could also walk off a cliff, doesn’t mean I should. Sources are important not just for what they say but how they say it, where they say it, and why they say it.

But they’re not. The other side is contradicting the rules of Maths. In a Maths test it would be marked as wrong. You can’t go into a Maths test and write “this is ambiguous” as an answer to a question.

…amongst people who have forgotten the rules of Maths. The Maths itself is never ambiguous (which is the claim many of them are making - that the Maths expression itself is ambiguous. In fact the article under discussion here makes that exact claim - that it’s written in an ambiguous way. No it isn’t! It’s written in the standard mathematical way, as per what is taught from textbooks). It’s like saying “I’ve forgotten the combination to my safe, and I’ve been unable to work it out, therefore the combination must be ambiguous”.

The side which obeys the rules of Maths is correct and the side which disobeys the rules of Maths is incorrect. That’s why the rules of Maths exist in the first place - only 1 answer can be correct (“ambiguity” people also keep claiming “both answers are correct”. Nope, one is correct and one is wrong).

Yes, that is your claim which you have yet to prove. You keep reiterating your point as if it is established fact, but you haven’t established it. That’s the whole argument.

Twice I said things about it and you said you didn’t believe my interpretation is correct, so I asked you what you think he’s saying. I’m not going to go round in circles with you just disagreeing with everything I say about it - just say what YOU think he says.

Literally just give me a direct quote. If you’re using it as supporting evidence, tell me how it supports you. If you can’t even do that, it’s not supporting evidence. I don’t know why you want me to analyze it, you’re the one who presented it as evidence. My analysis is irrelevant.

Thank you. I just commented to someone else last night, who had noticed the same thing, I am so tired of people quoting University people - this topic is NOT TAUGHT at university! It’s taught by high school teachers (I’ve taught this topic many times - I’m tutoring a student in it right now). Paradoxically, the first Youtube I saw to get it correct (in fact still the only one I’ve seen get it correct) was by a gamer! 😂 He took the algebra approach. i.e. rewrite this as 6/2a where a=1+2 (which I’ve also used before too. In fact I did an algebraic proof of it).

I was being sarcastic. If you truly think highschool teachers who require almost no training in comparison to a Phd are more qualified… I have no interest in continuing this discussion. That’s simply absurd, professors study every part of mathematics (in aggregate), including the ‘highschool’ math, and are far more qualified than any highschool teacher who is not a Phd. This is true of any discipline taught in highschool, a physics professor is much better at understanding and detailing the minutiae of physics than a highschool physics teacher. To say a teacher knows more than someone who has literally spent years of their life studying and expanding the field when all the teacher has to do is teach the same (or similar) curriculum each and every year is… insane–especially when you’ve been holding up math textbooks as the ultimate solution and so, so many of them are written by professors.

I want to point out that your only two sources, both a screenshot of a textbook, (yes, those are your only sources. You’ve given 4, but one I’ve repeatedly asked about and you’ve refused to point out a direct quote that provides support for your argument, another I dismissed earlier and I assume you accepted that seeing as you did not respond to that point) does not state the reasoning behind its conclusion. To me that’s far worse than a professor who at least says why they’ve done something.

I’ve given 3 sources, all of which you dismiss simply because they’re not highschool textbooks… y’know, textbooks notorious for over-simplifying things and not giving the logic behind the answer. I could probably find some highschool textbooks that support weak juxtaposition if I searched, but again that’s a waste of money and time. You don’t seem keen on acknowledging any sort of ambiguity here and constantly state it goes against the rules of math, without ever providing a source that explains these rules and how they work so as to prove only strong juxtaposition makes sense/works. If you’re really so confident in strong juxtaposition being the only way mathematically, I expect you to have a mathematical proof for why weak juxtaposition would never work, one that has no flaws. Otherwise, at best you have a hypothesis.

I told you, in my thread - multiple ones. You haven’t provided any textbooks at all that have “weak juxtaposition”. i.e. you keep asking me for more evidence whilst never producing any of your own.

You seem to have missed the point. I’m holding you to your own standard, as you are the one that used evidence as an excuse for dismissal first without providing evidence for your own position.

I didn’t “just happen” to include the name of the textbook and page number - that was quite deliberate. Not sure why you don’t want to believe a screenshot, especially since you can’t quote any that have “weak juxtaposition” in the first place. BTW I just tried Googling it and it was the first hit. You’re welcome.

You seem to have missed the point. You’re providing a bad source and expecting the person you’re arguing against to do legwork. I never said I couldn’t find the source. I’m saying I shouldn’t have to go looking.

You don’t - the screenshots of the relevant pages are right there. You’re the one choosing not to believe what is there in black and white, in multiple textbooks.

You’ve provided a single textbook, first of all. Second of all, the argument is that both sides are valid and accepted depending on who you ask, even amongst educated echelons. The fact there exists textbooks that support strong juxtaposition does nothing to that argument.

But you want some evidence, so here’s an article from someone who writes textbooks speaking on the ambiguity. Again, the ambiguity exists and your claim that it doesn’t according to educated professors is unsubstantiated. There are of course professors who support strong juxtaposition, but there are also professors who support weak juxtaposition and professors that merely acknowledge the ambiguity exist. The rules of mathematics you claim are set in stone aren’t relevant (and aren’t as set in stone as you imagine) but that’s not entirely relevant. What is relevant is there is an argument and it’s not just uneducated folk mistaking the ‘truth’.

People who aren’t high school Maths teachers (the ones who actually teach this topic). Did you notice that neither The Distributive Law nor Terms are mentioned at any point whatsoever? That’s like saying “I don’t remember what I did at Xmas, so therefore it’s ambiguous whether Xmas ever happened at all, and anyone who says it definitely did is wrong”.

You are correct, I suppose a mathematics professor from Harvard (see my previous link for the relevant discussion of the ambiguity) isn’t at the high school level.

But wait, there’s more. Here’s another source from another mathematics professor. This one ‘supports’ weak juxtaposition but really mostly just points at the ambiguity. Which again, is what I’m going for, that the ambiguity exists and one side is not immediately justified/‘correct’.

So what do you think he is complaining about?

That’s a leading question and is completely unhelpful to the discussion. I asked you to point out where exactly, and with what wording, your position is supported in the provided text. Please do that.