#scientific certainty

[queenlucythevaliant]

So much of Christian faith is about sitting with tensions. Here's one:

God wants our minds and He created our ability to reason in His own image. He created through discoverable means. He inspires us towards science, philosophy, archeology, math. He wants our questions. He wants us to search Him out and to keep finding Him in creation, in logic, in study. If our faith is just based on dogma, it will be a rigid, fragile thing. We ought to be convinced of what we believe.

And yet you can't logic your way to God. You aren't going to be able to prove His existence scientifically, philosophically, archeologically, or mathematically. If you try, you'll either talk yourself out of faith or give yourself false certainty. If you try too fervently, there's a not-insignificant chance you'll basically end up overconfidently asserting an obviously bunk conspiracy theory, which is its own kind of dogma. In the end, faith is just faith. In the absence of proof, who do you say that Jesus is?

For me, at this stage of life, it all comes back to epistemology. God is the final Truth and the giver of all lesser truth. Study and reason can lead me closer to him, but at the end of the day I'm left with a binary choice. Is God who He says He is? Do I believe Him? Yes or no? And that choice is all just bold, unsubstantiated faith, baby.

#there's this fear in the back of my heart that if God is the arbiter of Truth he may just not be revealing key info ya know? #it comes back to a false certainty that I got from a former pastor #about what understanding the Bible does and doesn't promise us in eternity #i am having to learn to be okay with limited knowledge #not just in the moment (i can always learn more) but in eternity (there's a limit to what i can know) #and then i see a lot of people overcompensating in other ways #like. I've seen people say with conviction 'no you can totally prove that God exists scientifically ' #no you can't #otherwise we wouldn't need faith #there's certainly beautiful compelling evidence for God's existence and His character in science but dude I'm sorry #you're never gonna be able to prove it #and it frusterates me when some folks are like 'you totally can though' #God is immanant and transcendent #He's entirely obvious and yet entirely hidden #and yeah it frustrates and frightens me #and i end up playing both sides of this argument in different communities #which is an added frustration #Christianity is about learning the tension ya know? #pontifications and creations #all truth is god's truth #only thou art holy

[trickricksblog08]

Greenpeace co-founder, Dr. Patrick Moore: "There is no definitive scientific proof that CO2 is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the last 300 years."

"But there is certainty beyond a reasonable doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth, and that without its presence in the global atmosphere… this would be a dead planet."

🔥John McAfee🔥

#nothing can stop what is coming #when you know you know #no rest for the wicked #now we know #wwg1wga

[elucubrare]

What are your biggest turn-offs when reading/watching historical fiction or retellings of myths?

this is really complicated - i can put it in two boxes, both of which are packed very full.

disconnection from the material reality of the past

when characters display a very specifically modern mindset (about social issues especially, but other stuff too)

(I also get bothered by some kinds of modern language - I don't mind it when, idk, an author uses "sensible" with the modern connotation of "practical" and not the 18th century "emotional" or "empathetic", but "yeah" or "okay," or even, as i found out when someone used it in medieval fantasy, "holy shit" will get on my nerves.)

there are modern things where (made up example!) a character who's supposed to be a cook will talk about making caprese salad for a fancy restaurant in December, and someone snarking on the book will say "yeah, right, they should know better than to make something that depends on a fresh summer vegetable!" and even with greenhouses, that's pretty fair. and that's even more extreme in the past. it's 1650 in Verona, it's December, you cannot obtain fresh tomatoes. i don't think this means that people in the past were, necessarily, more emotionally or spiritually in tune with the cycle of the year, or the labor it took to get clothes, or furniture, or any other material item, and of course wealth can insulate people from some of that difficulty, but it does mean that the seasons had more direct impact on people's lives. It's possible to, for example, buy clothes ready-made, but for anything fancy, it's more likely that it'll be made to fit if it's new, or altered extensively and painstakingly if it's not. that means that tearing or staining a fancy dress isn't just an issue of looking bad - you can't just replace it, and you probably won't throw it out - you figure out how to reuse it. those concerns of access to material goods are just a lot closer to the surface of the world than they often are now.

my objections to modern attitudes about the world are not that people in the past 100% accepted the views of their contemporaries - there were always people who didn't, and it makes sense that a protagonist would be one of them. but people wouldn't phrase those objections in the same way that modern people would - say your main character doesn't want a woman accused of being a witch burned. "God's power is such that the Devil cannot give this woman the ability to sour milk" is most likely going to be more persuasive to the crowd than "witches aren't real." and sometimes that's rough - it's not super fun to read about a Roman with Roman attitudes about provincial wars, or slavery in the city, but I put something down because a Roman character said (in internal dialogue) that he was disgusted to see that a man had been tortured because "Romans simply didn't do that." Historical Romans did do that, routinely - a slave could not testify in a law court unless they had been tortured. Even with distasteful things like that, I'd much rather it just be glossed over than to have them say the "correct" modern thing. It just makes it feel too much like the theme park version of the culture.

Both of these are because of specific things I come to historical fiction for - I want that sense of alienation, the gulf of experience. I hate that most historical fiction (and fantasy set in semi-recognizable periods) characters don't really care about Honor, except as a joke, because I love when characters organize their lives around arcane rules and systems that cause tiny things to escalate into blood feud. I just think they're neat! I like it when people's worldviews are shaped by their lack of scientific certainty about what causes crops to fail! If I wanted to read about people who thought and acted like me, and had lives that were mostly similar to mine, only cooler, I'd just read contemporary fiction.

#my thoughts on...

[octuscle]

If a nerd in highschool suddenly gained muscular body, without an effect on his brains or mental state

How quickly would he actually, naturally change? Maybe the attention gives him an ego?

Or maybe the jocks want to be his friend

How much of a jock could the nerd become?

Project diary, entry 1 (Friday)

My name is Salomon Miller. I live in Providence, Connecticut and am a senior in high school. I wouldn't say I have any real hobbies, but I am interested in art history, architecture, astronomy and geology. And many other things. I read a lot and actually everything I can get my hands on. But my passion is sociology and political science. That's also one of the reasons why I'm writing this diary. Starting next semester, I will be studying at Stanford and have a full scholarship, which is linked to my participation in a project. The Department of Sociology will use my person to investigate the effects of serious physical changes on the psyche and behavior. I won't find out in advance what the physical changes are, but the changes were set in motion with the help of an injection that I received today.

My parents support me in the project. My father is a lawyer specializing in environmental law, my mother is a neurologist and psychiatrist. Neither of them understand why I chose to study sociology, but as they both studied at Stanford, they accept my plans. They don't have many options either, they are both in Europe for a long time. My mother has a research semester at the University Hospital of Heidelberg and my father is currently representing a client in a lengthy case at the European Court of Justice. I've known this situation since I was a child. I'm used to having our gardener or Consuela, our housekeeper, as my social contact. That's not meant in a negative way, I love my parents, even if our contact is often less intensive. This has taught me a certain independence, which I really appreciate.

Today is the Friday evening before the last weekend of the summer vacation. The date was chosen deliberately for the injection. This gives me until Monday morning to get used to the upcoming transformation. At the moment, I feel nothing more than a certain tiredness. Normally I would go for a long walk or read something. But I'm just exhausted and will go to bed early.

Project diary, entry 2 (Saturday)

I woke up at around 03:00 in the morning. I was scared to death. I was almost strangled by my pyjamas. I tried to rip the top off my body. I tore it completely to shreds. I was no longer wearing my pyjama bottoms, which were already lying in tatters in my bed. It was clear to me that the transformation had begun. And a look in the bathroom mirror gave me certainty. My whole body was twitching, just like I'd seen in a Hulk movie. Except I didn't turn green. But my muscles literally grew. In fact, little else has changed. I am still clearly me. Even though my neck was already wider than my head, which is why I almost suffocated in my pyjamas, this was still my face. My hairstyle unchanged. My eyesight was also the same. Fortunately, the head can't get any more muscular, the glasses still fit. My thoughts were running amok in my head, I can't describe the feeling, especially as the cramps didn't stop and the muscles continued to grow. I lay down on my bed and tried to relax. At around 04:30 the cramps subsided and I fell asleep again from exhaustion.

When I woke up at around 09:45, I was lying sticky and sweaty in a dried up puddle of semen. Obviously I had ejaculated once or several times. After getting up, I went to the bathroom to assess the change. According to the scales, I now weigh 120 kilograms (I assume that documentation in metric units is more scientific), my height is unchanged at 182 cm. What has actually changed is the length of my penis, which is now 18 cm when flaccid. I have not yet been able to measure the length when erect. In fact, I would have thought that the sight of a muscular man would somehow excite me. But my head has been working like crazy since I got up, I suppose my blood is needed in my brain and is not available for an erection. The shower was still an incredible experience. My body feels great. I had no idea what muscles felt like. However, I realized while showering that I had a problem: None of my clothes would fit me anymore. And my father is smaller than me and, like I was until yesterday, is also more of an ectomorph. My only hope was that José, our gardener, who is probably almost as muscular as me and about my height, had some of his clothes in the dirty laundry. He and Consuela both don't work at the weekend and I didn't want to invade his room.

I was actually lucky and managed to find a pair of jeans, a jockstrap, a T-shirt and a pair of tennis socks in the laundry. Everything smelled very unpleasant and at first I thought about washing it first and then putting it on, but then decided against it. Instead, I went to the mall as I was to buy something new to wear. There is an expense account from the project, which is presumably intended for exactly these cases. Shopping really was an ordeal. As usual, I went to Macy's at Providence Place Mall first, but I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to find anything in my size there besides clothes for gym class. Then I went to Abercrombie & Fitch for the first time. The sales assistants literally pounced on me. The XXL T-shirts fitted reasonably well, my thighs were too big for the jeans, but shorts were fine. Fortunately, the weather forecast for the next few days is still very good.

Even though I was extremely focused on quickly working through my shopping list and getting back home, I didn't miss the effect I had on my body. Not only did the sales clerks pay much more attention to me, people turned to me, nodded appreciatively at me and greeted me. It all made me extremely uncomfortable. I was glad when I got home again.

Project diary, entry 3 (Sunday)

I'm not really a religious person, but I value the institution of the church as a culturally integrating entity. So I probably would have actually gone to church, but I would have been very uncomfortable in shorts and low-cut t-shirts that exposed my chest. So I spent the day making up my bed, doing the laundry and getting ready for the first day of school after the vacations. My story for teachers and classmates will be that I spent the summer in Europe with my parents and discovered my enthusiasm for the gym out of boredom. I have no idea whether this story will be accepted. As much as possible, I completed the course enrollment online. Because I really have no idea what I can do with this body, I signed up for boxing and wrestling. The alternative would have been football, but I have no experience at all with team and ball sports. Swimming used to be the sport I hated the least, but a few laps in our pool today have shown me that my body has become less streamlined. Although I have a lot more strength, my times are worse than usual.

I have signed up again for the astronomy and chess clubs. Apart from that, I thought it made sense to leave myself enough time to be able to react to unexpected events.

My first real test was my Sunday video conference with my parents. As I can't hide anything, I decided to take the offensive and had the conversation in nothing but my swimming trunks by the pool. Even though I had no real idea of my parents' reaction, I was actually taken aback. My mother scientifically dissected the situation and said that my body was probably more efficient now and therefore I would have a benefit gain. My father disagreed, as he assumed that a bulkier body had a worse ecological balance. In the beginning, I tried to approach this project as objectively as possible. But then I couldn't help but start crying. I was afraid of tomorrow. And my parents actually showed something like emotion and compassion.

Project diary, entry 4 (Monday)

I was expecting something like running the gauntlet. But the first day at school was actually relatively unproblematic. Most of my friends at least pretended to believe my story about my stay in Europe. The teachers were not surprised either and largely went straight back to business as usual. The only noticeable reaction came from the musclemen and jocks. I have the feeling that they never took their eyes off me. When there was eye contact, I received a respectful nod. Otherwise, I felt a bit like a foreign lion approaching a pride of lions. Every muscle of the alpha animals and their water carriers was tense and ready to strike if I got too close to their watering hole. I'm looking forward to my first PE lesson tomorrow.

Project diary, entry 6 (Tuesday)

While the morning was more of a triumph, the afternoon was a debacle. The subject matter in chemistry and physics suits me very well, everything is very interesting. There shouldn't be any significant challenges in Spanish lessons either. But the new Spanish teacher is also an advantage here. Based on her first impression, she probably thought I was a hollow nut. She didn't expect me to have already read Don Quixote in the original and in the contemporary Spanish transcription during the vacations.

I embarrassed myself to the bone in gym class. Of course, after my contrived lie, everyone assumed that I knew my way around the gym like the back of my hand. And I don't even know how to hold a barbell properly. Interestingly, no one laughed at me or anything. On the contrary, they all assumed that I'm extremely underchallenged and told me that I should just train for myself and that I should join them next week after I've learned the basics. But maybe that was just polite contempt.

In any case, I spent the whole afternoon and evening at home watching all the gym tutorials I could get hold of and reading everything I could find about bodybuilding, nutrition and supplements. That's why I skipped the first session of the chess club. But I had to prioritize.

Project diary, entry 7 (Wednesday)

Theory is good, practice is better. That's why I went straight to the gym this morning at 06:00. The school janitor who opened the door for me said appreciatively that my discipline was paying off. The big boys are always the first to arrive in the morning. If only he knew. But in fact I was lucky, I was alone on the training area until 07:00 and by then I had familiarized myself with most of the machines I had learned how they worked in theory and had also developed a feeling for the weights I was able to lift.

The second visitor to the gym after me was the quarterback of the football team. Stephen and I have been at the same school since first grade. Of course I know him. But of course he has no idea who I am. We've never had classes together and someone like me is of course a nobody to him. Or was a nobody to him. Now I was his biggest rival, the only classmate who had bigger biceps and a broader chest than him. And being the alpha male that he was, he sought conflict directly. As far as I know, the jocks and Himbo's call it "cock comparison". Wherever I trained, he did the same afterwards with more weight. After training, he waited for me in front of the shower and said that he had already heard about me. I was the Spanish exchange student. I looked at him questioningly. "Well, the one who had that book with the windmills and the crazy knight at school. The linebacker goes to your Spanish course. Clever to take Spanish as a Spaniard," he said. I shook his hand, introduced myself as Salomon and told him we were in the same kindergarten. He returned the offered hand with a fist bump and said that I must have mistaken him. He had never been to Spain. But I spoke very good English for a Spaniard.

I always prefer to spend my lunch break alone. I like to read or just relax. This time, however, Stephen waved me straight over to him and his boys. He introduced me as Sal and said I should tell him how I liked it in the USA. At first, I wanted to start comparing European democracies with the US, especially in light of the rise of populist tendencies. But then I didn't think that was a good idea and just said that I thought the USA was the greatest country in the world. Stephen gave me a fistbump and all his buddies followed suit. Before English class after lunch, my friend Frederick passed me and said somewhat reproachfully whether I would always eat with the football team now. I laughed and gave him a fist bump and said that I would only eat as long as my primate research project lasted.

Project diary, entry 8 (Friday)

Yesterday was a wild day! I went to wrestling practice. Everyone but me has taken wrestling as a sport since they were in high school. I'm the only one who had no experience at all. Sure, I looked at and read through everything I could find to prepare. But without any practical experience, I really made a fool of myself. Thank God the coach really understood me. He said that he was sorry that bodybuilding wasn't a school subject. And then he gave me tips on how to pose properly. Damn, when I stood in front of the mirror in just my underpants and he touched my muscles to get them in the right position, I got a boner. And he obviously noticed. He then hugged me from behind and massaged my nipples. It was a feeling I'd never experienced before. I started to moan. He pulled me close to him. I felt his hard-on against my ass. And then I had my first orgasm outside of my bathroom. I was so embarrassed. And it was so great! Since then, I've really just wanted to make my coach proud. I've spent every spare minute at the gym, signed up to the sports club to do more wrestling and spent a small fortune on sportswear. I'm afraid I have a real crush for the first time in my life.

Today I got a telling off from my friends from the astronomy club. I missed the meeting and no longer see them during school breaks. I admit it, I'm neglecting my old social environment. But I have to find my way in my new role. Or rather, I have to find this new role first. Tonight I have a date with a couple of guys from the sports club. We're going to the gym first and then want to watch football in the sports bar. I'm a bit excited because I've tended to spend my weekend evenings alone in front of the computer so far. Now I have to think about what I'm going to wear.

Project diary, entry 9 (Sunday)

Dude, I might be drunk. For the second night in a row. The weekend is one big party. Last night at the sports bar was great. It was a little hard at first to pretend I knew anything about football. But after one beer I didn't give a shit. At some point, someone bought me some booze. Because his team had won or something. I was completely out of it and had to puke at some point. I can't really remember, but I'm afraid I didn't hit the toilet bowl. One of the boys then took me home with him. I really wasn't able to find my way home. Apparently, at some point I invited the boys over for a pool party on Saturday. And it escalated a little bit. Fuck, I probably have to spend the rest of the day tidying and cleaning. But for now I'm going to bed. After I've thrown up.

Project diary, entry 10 (Monday)

I'm a bit embarrassed about my behavior at the weekend. When I woke up on Sunday, a few of the boys were still snoring by the pool. And a few of them were making breakfast on the barbecue. I didn't really get around to cleaning. And then I overslept today too. Consuela suddenly came into my room and asked if my parents knew what had happened here. I gave her 100 dollars from my emergency expense fund and asked her not to reveal anything. She and Raoul actually did a great job. When I got home from astronomy club late at night, everything was pretty tidy again. The two of them are real treasures!

Mondays are not sports days. History, English, math. I admit that math has never been my hobbyhorse. And my teacher has made no secret of the fact that he thinks I'm an overprivileged white boy. When I couldn't answer a question to his satisfaction today, he said something along the lines of "Muscleheads are just all airheads". The whole back row started throwing paper balls at the teacher and hooting in protest. I have never received such expressions of sympathy.

Between school and the astronomy club, I went to the optician and got some contact lenses. Glasses are just so annoying when you're doing sport. And then I went to the hairdresser. I like my haircut. My hair is longer at the nape of my neck than at the sides. I had a photo of Coach with me and said that I wanted to look like this. Hehehe, the hairdresser said that he couldn't take away my muscles. In fact, I'm bigger than Coach. The hairdresser also shaved my beard. I haven't even written that yet, I have the feeling that my beard and body hair are growing faster and thicker. A bush is growing under my armpits and in my pubic area...

The astronomy club was terribly exhausting. I wanted to concentrate on the Jupiter-Venus conjunction. We had the best conditions to observe it today. But the nerds were all just asking questions about what exactly it was like on vacation, how I trained, how I changed my diet. I prepared myself for these kinds of questions. But every one of my answers was scientifically dissected. If it goes on like this, I'd rather look at the stars alone.

Project diary, entry 11 (Thursday)

The last few days have been pretty exciting, which is why I didn't get around to writing the diary. After training on Tuesday I went to the showers. Not all the guys on the team do this, but I just don't feel comfortable in the sweat with a bit of Axe under my arms. I also urgently needed to clear my balls and cock of the hair that was growing and shave my chest. I still can't get used to how hairy I get. In any case, it all took longer than with the other boys and then I was alone with Chuck in the shower. And suddenly Chuck knelt in front of me and sucked my cock. Without warning. I had prepared myself for intercourse in theory and in practice.

In any case, I've been a bit confused ever since. I mean, I have a crush on Coach. And Coach also got a boner when he helped me pose. I mean, he must think I'm hot too. But Chuck says he's had a crush on me ever since he and I spent Friday night together. The night I don't remember. But I'm writing all mixed up...

The blowjob in the shower was definitely sooooo hot. Even though it didn't last long. Boy, I shot my load into Chuck's mouth like that. My cum was leaking out of both corners of his mouth. He French kissed me with my cum in his mouth. Dude, I'm getting hard just thinking about it. And then he grinned and said that edging wasn't really my thing. I had no idea what he meant. In any case, I kissed him again and started wanking his cock. I was far too excited to suck him off myself. Chuck moaned and started twitching. Then he pulled me against him and wedged his cock between our stomach muscles. And then blew his load. Bloody hell! I don't know how long we showered together and soaped each other up.

In any case, I then started to gain practical experience with sexual intercourse. Chuck spent the night with me the day before yesterday and yesterday. The first time we fucked was really awkward. Chuck also asked if I was still a virgin. I said no, of course. But I'm sure he realized that it was the first time I'd fucked someone. And also that I was being fucked. In bed and in the hot tub. The first time I blew him was Wednesday in the school bathroom. We both just had a lot of pressure on our balls before civics. Shit, I'd never thought about sex before, now I can't get sex out of my head.

Practice is coming up. I just jerked off to the idea of forming a sandwich with Coach and Chuck in the shower. That would be so hot!

Project diary, entry 12 (Sunday)

Shit, I love my life. The parties this weekend were so hot. I mean, sure I love Chuck, but my dick has too much energy for one man. And Chuck gets off on me fucking other men too. As long as he's the only one who gets to fuck me. It's a point of honor, of course!

Before I go to bed now, I went to the gym again. To burn off the alcohol. And prepare my muscles for a tough week. I have my first wrestling tournament next Friday. And I've promised Steph-bruh, the quarterback, that I'll drop by football training. The hollow nut still calls me wetback, but has now understood that I'm not Spanish or Latino. And then I have to chat with my mentor from Stanford again. I don't know if sociology is really my subject. Chuck wants to study business administration. He's hoping for an athletic scholarship. Maybe I'm up for that too.

Inspiration found @redneckmusclehead

#male tf #muscle tf #jock tf #nerd to jock #nerd to hunk

[evilscientist3]

so do you actually support ai "art" or is that part of the evil bit :| because um. yikes.

Let me preface this by saying: I think the cutting edge of AI as we know it sucks shit. ChatGPT spews worthless, insipid garbage as a rule, and frequently provides enticingly fluent and thoroughly wrong outputs whenever any objective fact comes into play. Image generators produce over-rendered, uncanny slop that often falls to pieces under the lightest scrutiny. There is little that could convince me to use any AI tool currently on the market, and I am notably more hostile to AI than many people I know in real life in this respect.

That being said, these problems are not inherent to AI. In two years, or a decade, perhaps they will be our equals in producing writing and images. I know a philosopher who is of the belief that one day, AI will simply be better than us - smarter, funnier, more likeable in conversation - I am far from convinced of this myself, but let us hope, if such a case arises, they don't get better at ratfucking and warmongering too.

Many of the inherent problems posed by AI are philosophical in nature. Would a sufficiently advanced AI be appreciably different to a conscious entity? Can their outputs be described as art? These are questions whose mere axioms could themselves be argued over in PhD theses ad infinitum. I am not particularly interested in these, for to be so on top of the myriad demands of my work would either drive me mad or kill me outright. Fortunately, their fractally debatable nature means that no watertight argument could be given to them by you, either, so we may declare ourselves in happy, clueless agreement on these topics so long as you are willing to confront their unconfrontability.

Thus, I would prefer to turn to the current material issues encountered in the creation and use of AI. These, too, are not inherent to their use, but I will provide a more careful treatment of them than a simple supposition that they will evaporate in coming years.

I would consider the principal material issues surrounding AI to lie in the replacement of human labourers and wanton generation of garbage content it facilitates, and the ethics of training it on datasets collected without contributors' consent. In the first case, it is prudent to recall the understanding of Luddites held by Marx - he says, in Ch. 15 of Das Kapital: "It took both time and experience before workers learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and therefore to transfer their attacks from the material instruments of production to the form of society which utilises those instruments." The Industrial Revolution's novel forms of production and subsequent societal consequences has mirrored the majority of advances in production since. As then, the commercial application of the new technology must be understood to be a product of capital. To resist the technology itself on these grounds is to melt an iceberg's tip, treating the vestigial symptom of a vast syndrome. The replacement of labourers is with certainty a pressing issue that warrants action, but such action must be considered and strategic, rather than a reflexive reaction to something new. As is clear in hindsight for the technology of two centuries ago, mere impedance of technological progression is not for the better.

The second case is one I find deeply alarming - the degradation of written content's reliability threatens all knowledge, extending to my field. Already, several scientific papers have drawn outrage in being seen to pass peer review despite blatant inclusion of AI outputs. I would be tempted to, as a joke to myself more than others, begin this response with "Certainly. Here is how you could respond to this question:" so as to mirror these charlatans, would it not without a doubt enrage a great many who don't know better than to fall for such a trick. This issue, however, is one I believe to be ephemeral - so pressing is it, that a response must be formulated by those who value understanding. And so are responses being formulated - major online information sources, such as Wikipedia and its sister projects, have written or are writing rules on their use. The journals will, in time, scramble to save their reputations and dignities, and do so thoroughly - academics have professional standings to lose, so keeping them from using LLMs is as simple as threatening those. Perhaps nothing will be done for your average Google search result - though this is far from certain - but it has always been the conventional wisdom that more than one site ought to be consulted in a search for information.

The third is one I am torn on. My first instinct is to condemn the training of AI on material gathered without consent. However, this becomes more and more problematic with scrutiny. Arguments against this focusing on plagiarism or direct theft are pretty much bunk - statistical models don't really work like that. Personal control of one's data, meanwhile, is a commendable right, but is difficult to ensure without merely extending the argument made by the proponents of copyright, which is widely understood to be a disastrous construct that for the most part harms small artists. In this respect, then, it falls into the larger camp of problems primarily caused by the capital wielding the technology.

Let me finish this by posing a hypothetical. Suppose AI does, as my philosopher friend believes, become smarter and more creative than us in a few years or decades; suppose in addition it may be said through whatever means to be entirely unobjectionable, ethically or otherwise. Under these circumstances, would I then go to a robot to commission art of my fursona? The answer from me is a resounding no. My reasoning is simple - it wouldn't feel right. So long as the robot remains capable of effortlessly and passionlessly producing pictures, it would feel like cheating. Rationally explaining this deserves no effort - my reasoning would be motivated by the conclusion, rather than vice versa. It is simply my personal taste not to get art I don't feel is real. It is vitally important, however, that I not mistake this feeling as evidence of any true inferiority - to suppose that effortlessness or pasionlessness invalidate art is to stray back into the field of messy philosophical questions. I am allowed, as are you, to possess personal tastes separate from the quality of things.

Summary: I don't like AI. However, most of the problems with AI which aren't "it's bad" (likely to be fixed over time) or abstract philosophical questions (too debatable to be used to make a judgement) are material issues caused by capitalism, just as communists have been saying about every similarly disruptive new technology for over a century. Other issues can likely be fixed over time, as with quality. From a non-rational standpoint, I dislike the idea of using AI even separated from current issues, but I recognise, and encourage you to recognise, that this is not evidence of an actual inherent inferiority of AI in the abstract. You are allowed to have preferences that aren't hastily rationalised over.

#ask

[caeboa]

"Mmm? So you can finally see cute li'l me."

The pair / alternate side to my first Shinigami flower art, featuring our favourite puffy partner~! And true to her character here are some multi-faceted flower meanings for her. Blue flowers often stand for trust, inspiration and mystery, while purple can represent royalty, elegance or magic. For our crowned Mystery Labyrinth queen, a pretty fitting colour scheme. The first flower I included here was the Balloon Flower, a five pointed star like flower than comes primarily in blue hues. It's name comes from the way it puffs up before blooming, like a little balloon, much like our friendly death god! It has a vast amount of meanings from different cultures. In general gift meanings it means endless love, honesty and obedience, some things Shinigami says she'll offer her Master. In Victorian flower language it can symbolize the desire for a friend to return. In medieval Japan it meant magic and divination, as well as the five elements. In many places in Europe it meant the fives senses, and some it simply references a pentagram. The Columbine Flower, shown here in purple, pink and blue, with white petals in one layer and coloured pointed spurs behind each. In latin, the common name comes from the word for dove, for the white petals, though it's scientific name comes from eagle, for the talon like spurs. In Celtic belief, the flower is associated with portals between worlds. The Greeks meanwhile, attribute the flower to Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. Some interpretations associate the columbine with foolishness & innocence due to it's shape matching that of a jester's hat. Modern meanings link this flower to Strength & Wisdom, with blue for calm, pink for happiness, and purple for success, and given to show the determination to win! And Monkshood, sometimes called aconite, wolfsbane, devil's helmet, has more ominous meanings. "Beware, a deadly foe is near." It is highly poisonous and deeply entrenched in myth and legend. In Greek myth it has been said to come from the drips of the fangs of Cerberus, guardian of the underworld. Unsurprisingly it means death in many places, but also caution and misanthropy. Perhaps perfect for a death good sneering at humans who commit murder? Lastly, the roses in their various colours. Purple for fascination, enchantment or wonder, blue for mystery & the impossible, and black for death & certainty.

#master detective archives: rain code #shinigami #rain code #mdarc #mda:rc #flowers #my art #flower meaning #rain code shinigami

[taska-rokanh]

Befriending Spock Headcanons

My first Star Trek content! Spock is my favorite character by far and I feel like he needs some love. A lot of my Star Trek content will be romantic, but I feel like especially with Spock, it's necessary to explore the first steps of just becoming friends, because it's harder to break down his walls and he's not one to just act on attraction at first sight.

Warnings: none

Word count: 1.1 k

- People have very different, often very polarizing opinions on Commander Spock. You'd heard more than enough stories about how cold, calculating, unforgiving, and inhuman he was. 

- But when you met him, all you could think was that he was so cool.

- He was incredibly intelligent, capable of making smart and informed decisions regarding basically any situation that affected the ship in minutes, and always acted with absolute certainty. Despite that, he did not want a command of his own and readily accepted his own mistakes, readjusting accordingly. What was there not to admire?

- You tried your best to be friendly, but you knew it was a long shot. Not only was he a Vulcan, he was your commanding officer. You weren't sure how he regarded any sort of personal relationship, really.

- Still, you found yourself engaging him in light conversation in the halls, the mess hall, or the lift. You broke it off quickly if it didn't seem like he wanted to talk, which surprisingly was very infrequent. If you got him talking about science, or the history and philosophy of Vulcan, it was quite easy to get him to talk.

- Spock is... I'm not sure how he would describe it, but I suppose, pleasantly surprised to find someone that not only tolerates his discussion of such topics, but actively pursues them.

- Whether you know it or not, you've chosen the most effective method of breaking the ice.

- Spock encourages this by consulting you on data that is outside of the normal scope of your duties as often as possible. He enjoys being challenged, and surmises that you must, as well. You have a natural curiosity and a scientific mind, one that with proper training could even attain his level of authority in time. These discussions don't feel like replacement training sessions so much as informal academic chatter, though.

- Spock starts to show that he considers you a friend through verbal encouragement first. It's often very dry and hard to detect, but it's there.

- He once corrected you regarding a postulation you'd made when analyzing some data that was adjacent to your field. You said, "Oh, right, that makes more sense. Sorry, I'm a little stupid sometimes," out of habit, something that you knew you should probably grow out of.

- He looked at you, perplexed. "Ensign, you should not insult yourself for being unaware of a highly specialized piece of information that allowed me to see the facts in this particular light. Every scientist, no matter how intelligent, has their blind spots."

- You smiled at his encouragement before raising your eyebrow in doubt. "Even you?"

- Spock hesitated for a moment before considering his ineptitude in handling his friendship with his captain and now, it appeared, you as well. "Of course."

- You didn't believe him, but thought it was sweet of him to say so. "Thanks, Commander."

- "You may call me Mr. Spock, or Spock, if you prefer."

- "Sure thing, Mr. Spock."

- The Mr. gets dropped shortly after.

- Every smile you manage to get out of him is an absolute treasure, as it is very rare. Something tells me that the first smile he gives you would be in a situation in which you are distressed and he is trying to reassure you, perhaps he sustained a nasty injury and you are very concerned. The smile is fleeting and feels a little unnatural, but the effort he put into it was enough to convince you that he would recover. little did you know there was little effort expended--seeing your care for him, it was almost irresistible.

- Every smile you give him is treasured by him, though they are so much more frequent. It is true that humans smile with so little provocation, but it's still nice to know sometimes that he's the reason and not the butt of some joke (looking at you, Kirk and Bones)

- There are two facts about Vulcans that are very relevant to this situation: 1) Vulcans are touch telepaths, meaning that touch is very, incredibly personal and reserved for special situations (except for Sarek and Amanda cuz they're whores), and 2) Vulcans are, in fact, very emotional people.

- Keeping these facts in mind, there must be some way for Spock to express his feelings of appreciation and camaraderie for you, and it cannot be in the average human manner (handshakes, pats on the back, high fives)

- So instead, he takes a more vested interest in your wellbeing, asking if you've eaten, drank water, slept, etc. especially when you've come back from an away mission and are busy analyzing new data.

- You often seem to find each other following each of the Enterprise's adventures. These are often time-sensitive and life-threatening, and as a low-ranking science officer, often your only orders are to stay put and protect yourself. 

- The first time or two after you've become friends, you try to hide how shaken you are--you know you're fine, really. You just can't help that your reaction to coming down off the adrenaline high is to literally shake and sometimes cry a bit.

- However, Spock sees through what you're trying to do and reassures you that you are safe. "I know."

- "I intended to convey that you are safe to express any emotions you may currently be experiencing."

- Oh.

- You usually end up sitting with Spock somewhere, your quarters, your lab, the mess hall, the holodeck, shaking and crying before recovering after a bit. The emotional expression always makes Spock a bit uncomfortable--not because he's disgusted by it, but because he doesn't have/doesn't feel comfortable expressing the skills or the emotional intelligence needed to interact with them. 

- His simply being there is enough. You recover in 15 minutes or so and can carry on as before.

- "Have you considered consulting Dr. McCoy regarding the management of your anxiety surrounding these events? They seem to cause you a high degree of stress."

- You shrugged. "It's just my body's response, it doesn't bother me," you reassured him. "Besides, I've got you."

- The feeling of being needed in a way not associated with his intelligence or his duty was unexpectedly welcome.

- In time, he comes to take a more active role, bringing you food and water while you're working or offering to make a bit of progress on your work while you take a short rest--Vulcans don't require as much sleep as humans, after all.

- After a while of this, you mention to him that you feel that you could be a more proactive friend, when he takes so much time and effort to look out for you, and ask him what you could do.

- He looks at you, perplexed. "Your presence in my life is quite sufficient," he assures you. "Your companionship proves to be a gratifying part of my daily routine in any measure."

- He has no idea how sweet he can be.

#star trek #star trek tos #star trek aos #star trek the original series #star trek fanfiction #star trek headcanons #star trek spock #spock tos #spock aos #spock x reader #platonic spock

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET EIGHT - ROUND ONE - MATCH FOUR

"Moby Dick" (? - Gérard DuBois) / "Viva La Vida, Watermelons" (1954 - Frida Kahlo)

MOBY DICK: Herman Melville biographer Laurie Robertson-Lorant saw Ahab's hunt for Moby Dick as a metaphor for "man's search for meaning in a world of deceptive appearances and fatal delusions" and "the limitations of scientific knowledge and the impossibility of achieving certainty".

In this incredible painting the Whale is like a biblical angel, preparing to smite the hubris of an overly self-confident Humanity. (@welcome-to-the-night-gallery)

VIVA LA VIDA, WATERMELONS: [no additional commentary] (@gaysheep)

("Moby Dick" is an illustration by French artist Gérard DuBois.

"Viva la Vida, Watermelons" is an oil on masonite painting by Frida Kahlo. It measures 59.5 x 50.8 cm (23.4 x 20 in) and is held at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City. The painting was finished a few days before her death.)

#art that fucks you up tournament #polls #atfyu polls #id in alt text #cw eye contact #cough

[jpitha]

Scientific Progress Goes Twang

"Why are we doing this again?" Del'rennian's tail flicked in worry.

"Because, if it works, it'll be really preem!" Rachel's voice was muffled under the machinery. Only her feet sticking out belied where she was in the room.

"Rach, that does not inspire the confidence you might think it does. I'm not a human, that doesn't work on me." Del's small hands were on her hips as she spoke with Rachel. Del'rennian grew up on a starbase that was equally populated with humans and K'laxi, so picking up their gestures and mannerisms was natural.

"Don't worry so much, Del. It's not like I'm modifying the main reactors. We'll be fine"

"No Rach, you're modifying one of the main batteries! You're messing with the weapons! I know how important weapons are to humans, you can't build anything without sticking a few exawatt lasers on it 'just in case.' I think your research telescopes have slug throwers on them even!"

Rachel slides out from under the weapons machinery. She's on a little board with wheels on it. Her face is smudged with... something. Del'rennian was pretty sure that human laser batteries didn't have oil, but maybe they did. "Del, this is the secondary battery, not the primary! I'm not an idiot."

Del's ears flicked. "That has not been determined with 100% certainty yet." Rach could hear the smile in her voice. She looked around the room. They were deep inside the battery, and were all alone. The lasers required only minimal maintenance and service after they were used. People would come once in a while to make sure everything was working, adjusting and collimating as necessary, but it's not like it needed a full time crew.

"Del'rennian, Rachel has explained to me what she is attempting, and I have given her provisional permission to install her modifications. Once we determine that nothing bad will happen, she will be allowed to test."

Del's ears rotated around, instinctively focusing on the source of the sound. Growing up on stations and starbases, Del knew that the AIs that humans put in charge of them were listening all the time, but she also knew that they mostly would wait for someone to query them before replying. It was a little unnerving when one decided to just jump in to a conversation. The AI that ran Reasonable Request was known to want to be a part of conversations and had a habit of butting in, but it was still odd. "You're telling me you're in on this nonsense, Request?"

"Yes Del'rennian. I think that Rachel's work could offer significant benefits to me in defense, as well as humanity as a whole. Ever since the convergence, we've had to increase our defences.

Del had to admit, Request had a point. Ever since the usurper Emperors Nick and Eastern did their little stunt to try and defeat Empress Raaden, things in human controlled space were much more... active than in decades previous. The influx of the Gren seemed to worry the K'laxi administrators more than she thought really was warranted, but they probably knew something she didn't.

Del sighed. She wasn't going to get anywhere with these two. A human designed AI was entirely too human to not go along with something that "seemed cool" when a human came up with the idea. "Fine. If you're okay with this Request, let's finish the install."

Two hours later, they were done. Del'rennian had to admit, it was more interesting that she thought it would be. She had never been that deep inside a laser battery, and it was - at the same time - much simpler and much more complicated than she expected. The actual laser part was incredibly simple. It was the power delivery that was complex. Rach's additions were made to assist with that.

As they put their tools away, Rach explained. "We've had wormhole generators for generations now and nobody has really done much with them. When the Others came over with their Flip drives, we were able to... er... borrow one and discover that while they concept was the same, the actual implementation was completely different! Theirs was more efficient, but ours was more accurate. Don't even get me started on the FlashWarp drives, I still have no idea how they work, and we've been warned against tinkering with them."

Without waiting to see what Del was going to say, she continued. "Anyway, it got me thinking. What if we used a wormhole generator to... boost the power delivery of the laser batteries! We could use a microscopic wormhole instead of superconductors and we'd be able to get a massive increase in power delivery in a much smaller package! With the generator that we installed, I should be able to increase the output of the laser by 3 or 4 times while making it smaller!"

Del'rennian's tail flicked. "Will it work?"

Rachel nodded. "Probably."

Request added. "Most likely."

Del crossed her hands over her ample chest. "So, when are we going to test it?"

Rachel looked around. "I don't see why we can't do it now. Request, what do you think?"

"I will query the commander."

They continued putting tools away for another three or four minutes when Request came back "The commander has approved a single firing of the secondary battery for testing purposes on my recommendation. She thinks it's 'a little strange' but I assured her that it was a routine test."

Del's fur bristles "Wait, you didn't ask the commander first?"

Rachel shrugs. "I asked Request. It's their body. I figured this was close to the same thing."

"But, you're messing with the weapons systems! What if the Gren attack?"

"We have the primary battery. Del, it'll be fine. Everything will work great. Request, please power up the battery for the test."

"Yes, Rachel. Powering up Secondary Battery."

While they watched, the laser battery powered on and warmed. Del felt rather than heard the emitter fold out of is storage blister on the side of the station. While she stood there, she heard a rising whine of capacitors charging and her fur began to stick out on it's own.

Wormhole generators are interesting things. They effectively punch a hole in space-time and allow things to pass between the two points instantaneously while the wormhole is open. For the majority of time that humans have used them, they have been used for spacecraft. Del couldn't remember a time when one was used in an atmosphere, or at least in a place that someone could hear them.

She had no idea that they made a noise.

When Reasonable Request fired the laser, the wormhole generator activated, punching a tiny hole in spacetime between the reactor and the laser. There was a noise that Del could only describe as a... twang.

Del'rennian and Rachel came to on the floor. Sirens were loud in her sensitive ears. As she sat up, her head pounded in protest. Rachel, who was closer to the laser, fared worse. Most of the hair on her head had flashed off, and she was unconscious on the floor.

"Request! Rachel is hurt!"

"Yes Del'rennian, I have already alerted the medical team. Quick Alert teams are on their way now, they'll be here in a few seconds. Are you hurt?"

"I don't know... I don't think so. My head hurts pretty badly though. Ugh, what happened."

"It appears that the secondary laser battery... linked away."

Del's eyes focused beyond Rachel. In the smoke and sparks of the room, she could see bare wires sticking out of the walls, mounting brackets sheared so cleanly as to shine like mirrors and a large empty space where the laser battery used to be.

As she marveled at what happened the Quick Alert team came in and rushed over to Rachel. They applied a heal pack to her and the Nanites within got to work. After a few seconds she groaned and tried to roll over. "No no, don't move yet. Let the Nanites do their work" One of the Alert team said as they touched Rachel's shoulder.

Del turned back to the door and saw Commander Hollister standing over her. "Del'rennian, kindly tell me what is going on here? I get a report of a wormhole generation inside my station and now my secondary laser battery is gone. What. Did. You. Do. "

Del stood up and shakily saluted. "I apologize Commander Hollister, Rachel was trying to... improve the performance of the laser batteries by installing a miniature wormhole generator." She intended to explain more, but that was as far as she got before she collapsed.

#humans are deathworlders #humans are space orcs #jpitha #sci fi writing #writing #humans and ai #humans and aliens #humans are space oddities #humans are space capybaras #Oops did I combine the K'laxiverse and Grenverse? #maybe I did #FlashWarp

[whitehotharlots]

Okay, fine, let’s define “wokeness” so you people will shut up about it

Wokeness is amorphous but not nebulous. Like all social phenomena, it exists only to the extent to which it is subject to formal description, and its purveyors are wont to resist any attempts at being pinned down by outsiders (I cannot, for example, think of a single philosopher associated with Postmodernism who did not reject the label--at least not at first). The difficulties with defining human phenomena are compounded greatly while the phenomenon in question is still unfolding, but that does not mean that earnest efforts toward definition cannot be undertaken. Wokeness most certainly exists. It deserves to be delineated, even if its vastness and dominance make it difficult to do so in a manner that everyone (or anyone) finds fully definitive. 

Wokeness should be understood as an immense and rapidly adopted change in the manner through which left-liberals adjudicate morality, righteousness, and even factuality. It applies not just to individual people but to nearly everything: broad social happenings, historical events, places, industries, and matters of scientific fact. It engenders contradictions at an hysterical pace, which actually strengthens the movement, due to the radicalism of its approaches.

Wokeness is best described as a form of Associationist Manicheanism. Whatever falls under its analytical purview is declared either good or bad (never both) not according to the beliefs and ideologies in question, nor to the material consequences thereof, but according to the conceptually recognized identity markers associated with whatever is being analyzed. There are good things and good people. There are bad things and bad people. Good things are good because they are good. Bad things are bad because they are bad. All other forms of adjudication--from direct empiricism, deductive and inductive logic, or even simple cause-and-effect--are subordinated within wokeness, if they are even acknowledged. 

The lack of ideological consistency and dismissal of material analysis naturally leads to a slew of obvious contradictions, which makes wokeness very difficult to pin down even as its presence becomes more and more undeniable. This provides an added bonus to the movement’s purveyors, as their wanton duplicity allows them to claim the lack of existence of something that’s happening right in front of them, an absence of belief in very the causes they champion. (”Why are you freaking out about this? It’s not even happening! And also it is happening and it’s good.”)

The wokes believe that police and prisons should be abolished, but also that we need much stricter gun control and hate speech laws. They believe it a form of severe violence--perhaps even genocide--to not understand the identities of others as they understand themselves, but also that you face a moral obligation to understand yourself as they tell you to. They believe that outsiders should be subjected to brutal criticism regarding their very existence, but also that any disagreement is a form of violence. They think that violent street crime--up to and including rape--should be dealt with via the light hand of “restorative justice,” but also that vague accusations of causing discomfort should be enough to ruin a man’s life and career. They revel in victimhood but deplore fragility, embrace vague “ways of knowing” while demanding absolute clarity and unpassable evidentiary bars of from their ideological enemies, and regard truth as a white supremacist fiction while possessing unshakable certainty in their own worldview. 

There are many, many more examples. These are just ones from the top of my head. 

These contradictions are allowed to stand. They are never acknowledged, let alone addressed. This is because the woke believe there is only one, universal mechanism for (in)validating any belief, action, or assertion: determining its conceptual association with the pre-established Good or the pre-established Bad. They don’t start by asking “is this statement true” or “is this belief harmful.” They can tell everything they need to know by running a quick identity index of the person who made the statement or professed the belief. Sometimes, in the absence of obvious markers of race, gender, or sexuality (or in the case of those markers contradicting the desired (in)validation outcome), they will revert to aesthetic symbols or nominally ideological group affiliations. So, yes, a white Democrat man outweighs a black Republicanman , who outweighs a white Republican man, who is outweighed himself by a black Republican woman, etc, etc, but most issues play out according to partisan lines.

And that’s it. Seriously, that’s it. You can regard it as a bold new era of social progress or as a civilization-destroying scourge. Your opinion does not matter. The point is, this is all a very blunt and very radical sleight of hand in regards to how beliefs, actions, and statements are adjudicated. Its purveyors readily admit to this. Nothing written in this essay is in the least bit deniable. 

Of course, my analysis won’t matter for the reasons outlined above. I am a white (bad) man (bad) who has previously expressed reservations toward left-identitarian activism (very super double bad). Three Bad designations is too much to overcome, no matter how much I profess myself to be on the left or assure my readers I support that broad social goals that wokeness disingenuously claims to be striving toward. But even if I were a black trans woman who was born without legs, this essay would still be dismissed because it would be conceptually associated with the people who criticize wokeness, who are bad. I am bad and this piece is bad. That’s all there is to it. And that means I’m wrong, wokeness isn’t a real thing, but also it is a real thing and it’s so good and perfect that criticizing it makes you bad.  

[coochiequeens]

It’s one things when some tween with green hair parrots TRA talking points to show what a good ally they are but for a Professor of Anthropology of all things to say that their are no differences in the skeletons of men and women is extremely disturbing. So glad the students laughed.

An interaction at a TPUSA event between female collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines and University of Pittsburg professor Gabby Yearwood went viral earlier this week when Gaines made the simple claim that there are anatomical differences between men and women. 

“If you were to dig up two humans a hundred years from now, both man and woman, could you tell the difference strictly off of bones?” 

“No!” University of Pittsburg anthropology professor immediately responded. 

The audience erupted into laughter.

Once the audience erupted into laughter, the professor quickly defended his esteemed credentials, assuring everyone that he was the “expert in the room.”

“I’m just saying, I’ve got over 150 years of data, I’m just curious as to why I’m being laughed at,” Professor Yearwood said.

The TPUSA event, which took place at the University of Pittsburg, faced heavy backlash from students on campus. The event title was, “Saving Women’s Sports” and centered around the danger of allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports. 

Since being blindsided by her university’s unilateral decision to allow a transgender “woman,” Lia Thomas, into the female locker room (though he possessed all of the anatomical features of a male) and onto the woman’s team, Gaines has spoken out regarding the threat transgenderism poses to women’s sports. Gaines is now a fierce advocate for equality in female sports after finishing her final season having tied with Thomas at the NCAA Championships.

If any interaction perfectly displays the blatant propaganda that has infected college campuses, it is this one between a female athlete, Gaines, and a blindly obedient follower of progressive doctrine, Yearwood. Radical transgender ideology has corrupted academia so much that college professors are now denying basic scientific truths to justify the whims of gender theory. 

After being mocked for this absurdity, Yearwood tries to use his experience and education as a rationalization for his claims. But students in the audience do not need a Ph.D. to know how factually incorrect his outlandish statement was. 

The skeletal differences between men and women have been easily observed by medical professionals for quite some time. The main difference is in the pelvic bones. Women will have a broader sciatic notch and a raised auricular surface, while men have a narrower sciatic notch and a flat auricular surface. This is because women’s skeletal structures have different features for child-rearing.

Of course, this is just one anatomical difference between men and women. Any honest anthropologist will tell you that there are several physical differences among the two sexes. If archaeologists were to dig up a body that was hundreds of years old, they would be able to tell with essentially 100 percent certainty whether that person was a man or woman based on their bone structure and DNA sampling.

No matter what cosmetic surgeries are performed to make a person appear to be the opposite gender, they will always be the sex that their biological features indicate. Whims cannot dictate scientific reality.

#USA #Riley Gaines is speaking the truth #University of Pittsburg #Gabby Yearwood #Saving Women’s Sports

[itwashotwestayedinthewater]

i would legit never fuck a clone of myself (waste of time) but i would do a no-holds-barred all out physical fight. its a lot easier to find someone to have sex with than someone who you know with full certainty you can justifiably& scientifically beat the crap out of just to try uit

[mortimermcmirestinks]

I mean this in the most genuine way possible, why are you getting so hung up on the walrus vs fairy thing? You’ve gotten really rude for no reason over a dumb funny tumblr poll

[tone indicator for the whole post: sleepy, chill, a lot of shrugs and vague handwaves]

idk man. to your second thing, I'm not trying to be more rude than usual so I apologise if that's how it's coming across. also, I'm at least half doing a bit, and sometimes me Doing A Bit can come across weird in text

to your first thing, again, idk man, but I think part of it is that I tend to get kinda skittish around things where people, like... hmm. idk how to phrase it, but whenever people get really dismissive about the distinction between funny fantasy magic stuff and real-world stuff, it makes me kinda nervous, I guess?

like, I get really irritated about astrology and stuff. I feel like it's really important to be able to, like, keep a solid grip on what's actually really real -- like, with Goncharov stuff, everyone was being like "yeah goncharov is the greatest film ever", but when push comes to shove, people will admit that "yeah, this is a bit, we're doing a bit, Goncharov isn't a real movie", y'know? (some people refused to put down the bit, though, even when asked to (sometimes by people with mental health problems that were being triggered) and those people are assholes)

but for some reason with this walrus-fairy thing it seems to almost be going in the opposite direction? like as it becomes a bigger and bigger Bit, more and more people are coming out of the woodwork talking, basically, about how they just straight-up do not believe that science is real. and THAT makes me reeeeal antsy.

like, I know people mostly aren't thinking about it like this, and I'm overthinking it, but, like, think about it like this:

a fairy (in the way the question was originally intended by the OP, and the way that I am interpreting it, and to some degree I believe the way that most others are interpreting it) is an inherently magical creature; that is, a creature whose literal existence would mean that the basics of how we understand the physical world are wrong from from the foundation, and thus, all of science -- which is all built on that foundation -- is also wrong. this is not a case of "a new scientific discovery that builds on or recontextualises previous scientific history", this is a case of "the fundaments of science are incorrect in their base assumptions".

a walrus is literally just a regular animal. it's not a common animal in most parts of the world, but on a sliding scale of magical to nonmagical, a walrus is exactly as "mundane" as a squirrel, a dog, a cat, a bee, or, like, a car or a t-shirt (or a pine tree or a dollar bill or a sand dune or a cloud or the planet Venus...). walruses exist in our world and we know that they do -- not for absolute certain, because obviously nothing is absolutely certain, but as close to absolutely certain as it's possible to get about almost anything, so we can say that, in practical terms, it's an absolute certainty. I am more certain that walruses exist than I am certain that you, the person asking this question, exists.

if you live in a world where it's physically possible that a fairy can arrive on your doorstep, that means that literally every single element of our understanding of the physical nature of the world is fundamentally incorrect, and all of science needs to be thrown out immediately, because we can no longer rely on it safely -- which also means that every anti-science person from six-day-creationists to antivaxxers are, at a foundational level (if not in specifics), correct that Science Is Wrong.

if you live in a world where it's physically possible that a walrus can arrive on your doorstep... well, you live in that world, right now. is it likely? no. but would it mean that all of science is wrong? no. it would just be a strange situation.

like, this is obviously a dramatic overthink about a poll where most people are, let's be honest, not actually answering the posed question. the question that the vast vast majority of people are actually answering, based on what I've seen many many people say, is not "would you be more surprised if a fairy or a walrus came to your house", it's "would an imaginary sitcom character based on you be more surprised if a fairy or a walrus came to their imaginary sitcom house".

like, tons of people in the comments are talking about how the fairy is less surprising because of [insert Thing That Only Makes Sense As A Rationale Within A Narrative here], which means that they're not answering the question. which is also irritating, but in a kind of more minor way?

sorry, this is kinda rambly and got away from me a bit. basically the tldr here is that when you have hundreds of people saying "I would find it more normal for there to be magic than for there to be a strange animal" it makes me nervous because it reminds me, however unintentionally, of soft science denialism like astrology and crystal-healing people. basically this whole sitch is either like a very small microcosm of, like, science denialism or just uncomfortably close to that. for me.

oh, and for anyone who reads this and thinks that the huge wall of text means that I'm getting really pissed off: I'm naturally extremely talkative, this is me in my kinda default slightly-sleepy rambly mode, when I'm actively angry I tend to be pretty brief. that's why I wrote that tone indicator at the top after writing the rest of the post, I realised if I didn't clarify that I was chilling and shrugging people would think I was yelling and thrashing

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New proof for black hole spin

The supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy M87, made famous by the first picture of a black hole shadow, has yielded another first: the jet shooting out from the black hole has been confirmed to wobble, providing direct proof that the black hole is spinning. Super massive black holes, monsters up to billions of times heavier than the Sun that eat everything around them including light, are difficult to study because no information can escape from within. Theoretically, there are very few properties that we can even hope to measure. One property that might possibly be observed is spin, but due to the difficulties involved there have been no direct observations of black hole spin. Searching for evidence for black hole spin, an international team analyzed over two decades of observational data for the galaxy M87.  This galaxy located 55 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo harbors a black hole 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun, the same black hole which yielded the first image of a black hole shadow by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2019. The supermassive black hole in M87 is known to have an accretion disk, which feeds matter into the black hole, and a jet, in which matter is ejected from near the black hole at close to the speed of light. The team analyzed data for 170 time frames collected by the East Asian VLBI Network (EAVN), the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), the joint array of KVN and VERA (KaVA), and the East Asia to Italy Nearly Global (EATING) VLBI network. In total, more than 20 radio telescopes across the globe contributed to this study. The results show that gravitational interactions between the accretion disk and the black hole’s spin cause the base of the jet to wobble, or precess, much the same way that gravitational interactions within the Solar System cause the Earth to precess. The team successfully linked the dynamics of the jet with the central supermassive black hole, providing direct evidence that the black hole does in fact spin. The jet’s direction changes by about 10 degrees with a precession period of 11 years, matching theoretical supercomputer simulations conducted by ATERUI II at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). "We are thrilled by this significant finding," says Yuzhu Cui, lead author on the paper summarizing the research she started as a graduate student at NAOJ before moving to Zhejiang Lab as a postdoctoral researcher. "Since the misalignment between the black hole and the disk is relatively small and the precession period is around 11 years, accumulating high-resolution data tracing M87 structure over two decades and thorough analysis are essential to obtain this achievement.” "After the success of black hole imaging in this galaxy with the EHT, whether this black hole is spinning or not has been a central concern among scientists," explains Dr. Kazuhiro Hada from NAOJ. "Now anticipation has turned into certainty. This monster black hole is indeed spinning." “This is an exciting scientific milestone that was finally revealed through years of joint observations by the international researchers team from 45 institutions around the world, working together as one,” says Dr. Motoki Kino at Kogakuin University, the coordinator of the East Asian VLBI Network Active Galactic Nuclei Science Working Group. “Our observational data beautifully fitted to the simple sinusoidal curve bring us new advances in our understanding of black hole and jet system.”

TOP IMAGE...The black hole’s spin axis is assumed to align vertically. The jet’s direction is almost perpendicular to the disk. The misalignment between the black hole spin axis and the disk rotation axis triggers the precession of the disk and jet.  CREDIT Yuzhu Cui et al. 2023, Intouchable Lab@Openverse and Zhejiang Lab

LOWER IMAGE....Top panel: M87 jet structure at 43 GHz based on bi-yearly stacking data observed from 2013–2018. The white arrows indicate the jet position angle in each subplot. Bottom panel: Best fitted results based on the yearly stacked image from 2000–2022. The green and blue points were obtained from observations at 22 GHz and 43 GHz, respectively. The red line represents the best fit according to the precession model.  CREDIT Yuzhu Cui et al., 2023

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics

[joyfulapostate]

Growth is not betrayal.

A lot of value is placed on stasis in Christianity. From the forever of heaven to the expectation of unwavering faith, the ideal is to be unchangeable. But we are living beings and an integral part of being alive is growth. We have been growing and changing from the start and we will keep doing so. There is no need to “turn and become like children.” Becoming an adult is not a betrayal of childhood. Changing your mind based on new information is not betraying your former beliefs. It is honoring your ability to believe things without unnecessary constraints. If a system does not allow for growth and change, it does not serve living beings. Scientific knowledge, for example, is expected to be updated and changed based on new information. That’s good! That's how knowledge should work! The certainty of stasis may feel safe from the inside, but it is a betrayal of yourself as a living being.

#exchristian #exvangelical #exfundie #exfundamentalist #deconversion #deconstruction

[monocotyledons]

Soobin's MBTI and what it actually means

So Soobin went live today and retook the MBTI test, and he's an ISFP-A! Since he took the test live we actually have a record of his MBTI trait percentages, his responses, and even his thoughts on some of his responses. I thought it would be fun to do a little breakdown of his results and what they really mean from a personality psychology perspective! (Full disclosure: I am a research psychologist-in-training so I'll be applying what I know from my irl experiences.)

DISCLAIMERS: I don't know Soobin personally so all of my analyses will be based on his answers to the test as well as how he presents himself in public, such as lives, interviews, variety show appearances, etc. Also I am not affiliated with 16Personalities so I can't say with 100% certainty which test items are linked to which traits, and I don't know how their scoring system works, but I can make informed guesses based on my experiences with other personality tests.

Let's begin!

Prologue: The 16Personalities Franken-MBTI

For this case it's important that we talk about the version of the MBTI that Soobin took and how it works. He took the 16Personalities test, which is not the official version of the MBTI; that would be run by the Myers-Briggs Company (whose website is down as of this writing). The model of personality used by 16Personalities, called the NERIS model, is actually Frankenstein-ed from two different personality models - something they admit themselves in the theory section of their website:

With our NERIS® model, we’ve combined the best of both worlds. We use the acronym format introduced by Myers-Briggs for its simplicity and convenience, with an extra letter to accommodate five rather than four scales. However, unlike Myers-Briggs or other theories based on the Jungian model, we have not incorporated Jungian concepts such as cognitive functions, or their prioritization. Jungian concepts are very difficult to measure and validate scientifically, so we’ve instead chosen to rework and rebalance the dimensions of personality called the Big Five personality traits, a model that dominates modern psychological and social research.

Let's break down the two models used here.

The first is, of course, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, developed by Katharine Cook Briggs & Isabel Briggs Myers based on the work of Carl Jung. Classical MBTI is not based on personality traits but on cognitive functions, which are different ways of processing information around us: for example, the thinking function refers to the use of logical reasoning, while the feeling function refers to the use of value judgments. The goal of classical MBTI testing is to figure out which cognitive functions you use: which you default to, which helps your default, etc. This collection of cognitive functions is called a "stack," and your four-letter type tells you what the stack is made of.

The problem with cognitive functions is that they're virtually impossible to validate scientifically (even typologists can't agree on what a cognitive function is exactly), which is why they've fallen out of favor within mainstream research psychology. I don't know if the official MBTI test uses them (since their website is down I can't check), but plenty of unofficial MBTI tests don't, instead preferring the trait approach we're all familiar with. Are you introverted or extraverted? Are you a thinker or a feeler? etc.

This approach has its own issues (which I touch on a bit here), but it's the approach that 16Personalities also uses. Which brings me to the second model they use...

While the 16P test looks like MBTI, its content is actually based on the Five-Factor model, also known as the Big Five. The Big Five is actually a really good model with lots of scientific research to back it up, and (full disclosure!) it's my preferred model of personality. The premise behind the Big Five is that even though there are hundreds or even thousands of ways to describe human personality - just open a dictionary and look at how many words can be used to describe people - there are underlying patterns in our descriptions. For example, a person who is honest will most likely also be trustworthy. A person who is gregarious will most likely also be friendly. And so on.

By collecting real-world data from people in different cultures and using some special statistical techniques, researchers like Paul Costa & Robert McCrae were able to uncover these patterns as five personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. (More on those later.)

I want to emphasize here that none of these personality traits are inherently good or bad. They can be bad in extremes, but the vast majority of people don't fall on those extremes anyway, and being high or low in a certain trait has its advantages and disadvantages. Your score in a trait can be good for some things, but not for others.

In the 16P NERIS model, each letter in your type corresponds not to a classical MBTI function, but to a Big Five personality trait. To make up for the fact that the Big Five has (duh) five traits and MBTI only has four, a fifth letter in the type was added. The resulting test from this is what Soobin took today.

Soobin's results, a Big Five perspective

Here I'll be looking at Soobin's results for each of the 16P traits and discussing what they mean. I'll support this with his responses to the test items (credits to translatingTXT on twitter for saving all of them), as well as things he's done or said publicly in the past.

Introverted/Extraverted

In classical MBTI typology, introversion/extraversion actually refers to your orientation when processing information: an extraverted orientation uses the external world (such as real-world rules and norms) as a frame of reference, while an introverted orientation uses the internal world (such as your personal beliefs and interpretations). But in the modern sense - including in the Big Five - this trait refers to the kind of energy you seek in the environment. This includes sociability - the social environment that you seek - but it also includes how stimulating your environment is overall. Extraverts are generally energetic and like stimulating environments, and are also more prone to positive emotions like joy and excitement.

Soobin scored 74% Introverted, and he's an introvert through and through; he likes being by himself and doing his own thing, and he finds social situations exhausting. But I also think that he's a great example of personality traits being different from skills. Sure, Soobin's an introvert, but he's got really good social skills; his personality probably means that these skills don't come as naturally to him, but he's still capable of learning them. He probably learned a lot during his time as Music Bank MC, and he's not afraid to go up to people and talk to them for life advice. And even though leadership isn't something he prefers especially compared to an extravert (see his answer below), it's clear that the members respect him as a leader and seek him out for help.

Observant/Intuitive (Openness to Experience)

In classical MBTI, this aspect of personality is called Sensing vs. Intuition, and refers to your use of two different cognitive functions: sensing refers to reliance on the five senses for information, while intuition refers to reliance on inner meanings and hidden symbols. The NERIS model reworks this into Observant vs. Intuitive (neither of which start with S or N, I know) to better fit the Big Five trait that their version is based on: openness to experience.

The trait of openness reflects a person's attitude towards things that aren't necessarily grounded in day-to-day reality - the abstract, the unconventional, the creative. People high in openness enjoy abstract ideas and intellectual pursuits, are often creative and imaginative, and don't mind ambiguity. People low in openness prefer things that are conventional and concrete, want things to have straightforward utility and a clear message.

Soobin's score is 64% Observant ("observant" here meaning low openness) - generally he prefers conventional, but I think he's close enough to a 50% average to say that he isn't purely a practical guy. He is, after all, an idol - people high in openness are often drawn to artistic pursuits, which includes music and performance. He has mentioned being interested in artistic things, like wanting to play the electric guitar.

But while Soobin definitely has a level of artistic interest, he seems more content in enjoying what he knows rather than expanding, and he's pretty secure in what he likes and dislikes - and I think this is where his Observant score comes in. Like, this is a guy whose favorite song in his own discography was Our Summer for the longest time before it was dethroned by Skipping Stones. He's also mentioned that he only participates in songwriting when the topic interests him, but isn't necessarily invested in it as a craft:

"I participate in writing the lyrics if the theme interests me. The tracks in this album [Temptation] all have interesting themes, you'll see when you get the album and see the lyrics too. They all have topics that I personally think and imagine about my life, so I participated in the lyric writing this time." (The Name Chapter: Temptation Recording Behind the Scenes)

Thinking/Feeling (Agreeableness)

I struggle with interpreting this one because I'm not exactly sure what the NERIS version of this trait is trying to measure. In classical MBTI (as mentioned above), the thinking function is about processing the objective content of information (logic, truth value), while the feeling function is about processing its subjective content (e.g. how well it conforms to certain values). The version of T/F commonly seen in pop-psych is "head or heart" - do you make decisions based on just the facts or on your feelings? But psychological research shows that this is a false dichotomy - we rely on our emotions to help think through things, and they often provide us with useful information. Happiness tells us things are going well, fear and anxiety tell us something is threatening us, and so on.

Nevertheless, NERIS tries to incorporate elements of this together with the Big Five trait it's drawing from, agreeableness. While extraversion is about how well you fit into social situations, agreeableness is about how you treat people in them. People high in agreeableness try to live in social harmony by getting along with others and practicing virtues that make things easier for them. People low in agreeableness might come across as abrasive, but they're also less sensitive to hate from others and more willing to take actions that might be unpopular.

Soobin's score is a 54% Feeling ("feeling" here meaning high agreeableness), and here we see the limitations of trait-style MBTI. The dichotomous nature of a trait hides what's going on; Soobin uses Feeling on paper, but in reality he's in the middle. This should be more apparent when we look at his responses and how he acts around others.

His agreeable side seems to come out more often when it comes to his circle of loved ones: his friends and family, the members, and MOAs. He's not afraid to show kindness and gratitude towards them and is touched when they do the same for him. One of his motivations for being an idol is wanting to give love to fans and appreciate the love they give back, and he clearly treats the idol-fan relationship as a special one.

On the other hand, Soobin has no problem brushing off or even standing up to haters, and he's said that he has no intentions of trying to please people who dislike him. A person higher in agreeableness (or Feeling, in this case) would be a bit more concerned about trying to appease them.

This in-the-middle mix of agreeableness is, honestly, a pretty good thing to have in a leader or an idol. You need a healthy amount of it to express love for your members, your staff, and your fans. But you also need a thick skin to withstand unfounded criticism, as well as a tolerance for conflict even when it's socially unpleasant.

Judging/Prospecting (Conscientiousness)

In classical MBTI, this dimension is called Judging/Perceiving. It's not a pair of functions but instead a reference to help you figure out the functions in your stack: thinking and feeling are judging functions, sensing and intuition are perceiving functions. Like with S/N, NERIS renames this into Judging/Prospecting to better fit the Big Five trait it's drawing from, conscientiousness.

The trait of conscientiousness refers to one's ability to get things done and follow things through. People high in conscientiousness like to plan things in detail, are organized and goal-oriented, and generally finish what they start. People low in conscientiousness are more spontaneous and adaptable, dislike routine, and prefer to go with the flow.

Soobin's score is 86% Prospecting ("prospecting" here meaning low conscientiousness). I feel like this trait is harder to see for idols because they're always on company-mandated schedules of activities, but a really good example of this trait in action is his vacation in Japan vlog. Planning an itinerary doesn't come naturally to him, and he's okay with not following a strict sightseeing schedule so that he can relax more. For example, Soobin and his friend plan to go straight to an onsen on the second day of their trip, but they oversleep and have no problems changing their plans to just shopping and eating. They do get to the onsen eventually, but they're in no rush to. At one point in the video he even mentions his P trait as why planning is so hard for him (his score at the time was 96% P).

"This is my first time planning a trip abroad by myself. I boarded the plane myself, moved around, booked the hotel and planned everything myself. [...] Whenever I take an MBTI test I get like a 96% P, I didn't realize traveling was so hard." (15:47 - 16:39 of video)

This Weverse magazine quote also captures his spontaneous approach towards activities pretty well:

Assertive/Turbulent (Neuroticism)

This trait is exclusive to the NERIS model and was added to the four existing letters of MBTI to accommodate the additional trait of the Big Five. My biggest criticism of the NERIS model is that it treats A/T as an accessory to the other four traits instead of a trait of its own; ISFP-A and an ISFJ-A are treated as different types, but ISFP-A and ISFP-T are variations of the same type. It's not uncommon for people to leave out their A/T score when they talk about their 16Personalities results.

A/T is based on the Big Five trait of neuroticism, which is just as important as the other four - it predicts depression and anxiety disorders, for example. This trait reflects how we handle negative and stress-inducing events; people high in neuroticism feel stress easily, are prone to negative emotions like sadness and anxiety, and are more likely to self-criticize. People low in neuroticism might feel stress less, but might have a harder time registering risks and threats.

Soobin's score here is 65% assertive ("assertive" here meaning low neuroticism), again close to the average but with a leaning towards the low side. Again, this isn't an easy trait to observe in idols because a lot of the processes and actions associated with it are private and internal. But it does crop up from time to time, usually in per-performance nerves and jitters, but Soobin has mentioned that he's not the type who gets nervous easily. His answer here on how he handles stress also reflects this trait:

"I'm optimistic if you put it nicely, or some could say I'm shallow. So even if I get mad, I forget it quickly and easily. I believe that time will solve everything. So it's either the case gets resolved or my emotions die out, making me struggle less. I just think like that." (11:44 - 12:04 in video)

He's also not too critical of himself, which is pretty valuable in a profession where you're subjected to constant criticism as early are your trainee period. Not that Soobin is blind to his flaws; rather, he's not the type to get too worked up about them.

Final Thoughts

The major flaw of personality systems based on type (like classical MBTI and NERIS) is that the nuances of one's behavior are often lost in an easy-to-remember acronym that puts people into strict categories. The Big Five in its original form refers to the traits as continuums - you can be low, average, or high in a trait, often reflected as a percentile ranking based on how you compare to other test-takers - but even then, you don't see things like context or learned skills that may or may not match up with one's personality.

I've tried to untangle Soobin's personality here not just based on a catchy acronym type, but based on what those traits actually mean, how high or low they actually are, and on how they appear in context. I hope this little analysis will give a bit more insight not just on Soobin himself but also on how personality works!

—

tags for those interested: @goldennika @starburstfloat @mazeinthemoon @huenation

#soobin #txt soobin #tubatu #also sorry for any typos or incoherent bits i did not proofread this lol #feel free to ask questions and i can explain!