I was a tile installer in a previous life, and occasionally a customer would make the dreaded request to have an accent tile placed 'randomly' throughout a backsplash. They were never happy with the placement, and clearly had no understanding of randomness. Generally what they actually wanted was 'evenly distributed'.
I remember one particular customer kept changing the accent tiles and moving them until they converged upon a very specific pattern throughout the back splash except for one tile that was out of the pattern, that they kept 'wrong' out of some ego driven desire to justify their request for randomness.
I had a mushroom trip that made this all make sense (at the time). The gist of it was, there was never nothing. Nothing is a made up concept. It's deeply valuable, but there is no instance of any kind of nothing that actually exists. There is only "exists". The most basic form of existence is change. Even if there had been nothing, and something came from it, in order for something to come from it, there would first need to have been some change. So regardless of how it could have started, change has to be the first thing. But in my opinion, recursive cycles is a more likely explanation than a linear universe with a start and end that are both in 'nothing'.
I'm posting this nonsense tongue in cheek but.. I don't think it's completely wrong.
My favorite cyclic theory so far is probably Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology. In essence the universe keeps expanding exponentially which in the end becomes equivalent to a new big bang since the universe at that point will loose all notions of scale due to their being no more particles to drive scale. A much better explanation is given here https://youtu.be/FVDJJVoTx7s
once upone a time I asked myself what the heck do we mean by 'nothing' when asking "why is there something rather than nothing?"?
from wondering that, I concluded the same thing you did. that nothing is a made up concept; and I agree, it's super useful and it's ideal instead of real.
later on, I started to ponder what the heck does 'everything' really mean, and for now I think that 'everything' is just as made up as 'nothing'. hence, 'everything' doesn't exist in the same way 'something' (anything) exist. it's also just a very valuable made up concept.
there is no instance of everything, it's also an assumption.
Would like to mention the Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi. These books are very dense with interesting concepts. In one section, the people who live on Mars have a privacy organ that automatically blurs out all strangers unless they make an agreement to exchange information. There are 'agoras' where they are unprotected. The idea goes into the cultural ramifications of this, it's incredibly interesting reading, but does not hold your hand at all.
Consciousness may not have anything to do with AGI. Besides, we haven't as a species defined consciousness in a consistent and coherent way. It may be an illusion or a word game. AGI may end up being more like evolution, a non-conscious self optimizing process. Everyone is talking about AGI but we can't even define what we mean by any of these terms, so to put limits on how near or far away major discoveries might be is pointless.
Well there's no mechanical IPD adjustment, so if you have very wide or narrow set eyes, it will not work well for you. The LCD screen don't have the deeper blacks of the OLED screens of the rift. Frame rate is less. Other than that, I think it looks good.
Is this whole "question" really just a mental exercise, like the trolley problem? Surely the more salient question is how much senseless death could be prevented by the adoption of self driving technology, isn't it? This 'conundrum' almost seems to be intended to undercut trust in what could surely be a massive improvement to vehicle safety.
> Surely the more salient question is how much senseless death could be prevented by the adoption of self driving technology, isn't it?
Absolutely. However, when answering that question, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to thoughtfully consider this stuff.
Clearly, even flawed autonomous driving— if widely adopted— would save many lives. But I can’t think of many things that would slow that adoption more than a public perception of “killer robots” roaming the streets.
If we seriously want wide adoption, it’ll be hard to avoid addressing the qualitative perceptual difference between a death caused by a human driver and one caused by a machine that we’ve engineered.
There's quite a few differences. The terminal of the t and the a are similar, but the perfectly round bowls and O are much more like Futura. Helvetica (basically the font from CAH) also has a slight narrowing on vertical strokes. That g is weird as hell and just looks broken to me. The had to distinguish it from the google font...
I got a cease and desist for a extension that improved the look of Craigslist. I just ignored it, I've never had to talk to a lawyer or anything. But that's my situation, I understand that other people may feel differently. EFF offered to review my case, but I didn't wind up following up with that either. Might be an option for you.
Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) was a Northern District of California Court case in which the court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
For one thing, the extension author is not an active participant and cannot be considered to be trespassing. A user, maybe. But I don't think we'll see Slack banning users anytime soon.
The intent is clear. I don't know the details of those decisions but Blizzard has won cases and stopped people from distributing tools that access their services in ways they don't approve of.
