Shower thoughts

[kerbiloid]

Science = trying something another to get what you need, and repeating the same to keep getting it.

Then sharing your experience by speech or another signal system, and discussing it with your own split personality counterpart, and later with your group.

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Not sure what you mean, but if you apply the scientific method to *anything* you're doing science, be it warp travel, ghosts, or how prisms work.

This, you can do reproducible science on magic systems in video games. This might even be done before game is releases. 
Elder Scroll 3 Morrowind had an alchemy system who let you boost all your attributes like intelligence, raising intelligence increases your potion strength so you can make better fortify intelligence potions.
Its no limits outside the 2^31 or two billion for signed integers. People pointed this out before launch. 
And it worked as expected at release. an billion in intelligence, then raise wisdom, you could now make any spell, this would be expensive luckily your potions sold for 100x the money any merchant had. 
Do not boost speed by potions or make levitation potions you will have to wait weeks real time for them to wear off. 

Now this is even more important in online game, called metagaming and very common in MMO and PvP games. Many creators here has been rightfully been criticized for assuming flawless groups or that Pvp between groups of unkillable tanks is very boring. 

[SunlitZelkova]

17 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Not sure what you mean, but if you apply the scientific method to *anything* you're doing science, be it warp travel, ghosts, or how prisms work.

Some tout science as a means of seeing beyond “biased” human concepts of the world; geocentrism etc.

I’ve been building a world for a story and have been thinking about how perception might evolve in the far future. Toying with concepts like “could something replace science (by building off of it just as science built off of religion in some cases).”

My thinking behind this is somewhat related to a question I asked here a few months ago, asking if time was a nonsensical concept.

[SunlitZelkova]

Apocalyptic fiction and prophesying/theorizing, specifically in relation to human extinction, are many things, but I think one of them is a sort of fantasy thinking on the part of humans.

If human extinction has causes that can be identified and alleviated, it can be prevented. But realistically, what causes humans to go extinct will be factors that are multigenerational, spanning large enough time scales that no one can identify them and alleviate them.

It’s nice to think that real threats to humanity will conform to how we perceive threats and formulate action though.

[DDE]

19 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Apocalyptic fiction and prophesying/theorizing, specifically in relation to human extinction, are many things, but I think one of them is a sort of fantasy thinking on the part of humans.

If human extinction has causes that can be identified and alleviated, it can be prevented. But realistically, what causes humans to go extinct will be factors that are multigenerational, spanning large enough time scales that no one can identify them and alleviate them.

It’s nice to think that real threats to humanity will conform to how we perceive threats and formulate action though.

It's typical. We want evil to be distinct, recognizable, visible, and, ideally, personalized. These are all cognitive and emotional shortcuts.

[magnemoe]

On 12/18/2024 at 3:41 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

Some tout science as a means of seeing beyond “biased” human concepts of the world; geocentrism etc.

I’ve been building a world for a story and have been thinking about how perception might evolve in the far future. Toying with concepts like “could something replace science (by building off of it just as science built off of religion in some cases).”

My thinking behind this is somewhat related to a question I asked here a few months ago, asking if time was a nonsensical concept.

I say so many has tried, mostly ideologies, a bit religion but I say this is renaissance or later and its never worked well  as the scientific method works so well. It also works as well in other universes like metagaming in any game from KSP to WOW. 
You try various setups finds the one who works best and improve. With experience you can even calculate the optimum setup outside the game and it works then tested. 
Like we do with models of ships hull shape and the power to the propellers and you get the cruising speed, they did this pretty reliable  over 100 years ago, ships are expensive so you want them to work. 
Yes you had vibration issues the models back then could not handle as they was not designed for it. 

Second is data, think the reason  germ theory was not discovered back in ancient times was the lack of data, the only one collected was for taxation and perhaps some military stuff. 
People boiled water to make tea and all know drinking tea was safer than drinking river water, but boiling was the important part not the leafs outside the taste. 
 

 

[Nuke]

ive been playing the forever winter for the last week, and i realized that its really just the distant prequel to scorn. at least if you assume the euruskans win the war.

Edited January 7 by Nuke

[Mr. Kerbin]

Ceres > Eres > Dres

Tyson -> Tyso -> Tylo

 

[SunlitZelkova]

If the Soviet Union had produced its own answer to Lego during the 1970s, would the identities of the designers of the different pieces and sets be hidden to prevent their assassination at the hands of Danish intelligence agents?

Edited January 20 by SunlitZelkova

[ColdJ]

9 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

If the Soviet Union had produced its own answer to Lego during the 1970s, would the identities of the designers of the different pieces and sets be hidden to prevent their assassination at the hands of Danish intelligence agents?

Yes, but the agents would torture them first by making them walk bare foot over scattered LEGO bricks.

[Nuke]

that's got to be a violation of the geneva convention.

[adsii1970]

5 hours ago, Nuke said:

that's got to be a violation of the geneva convention.

No, that would be drinking the last cup of coffee and not starting a new pot. 

[ColdJ]

On 1/22/2025 at 12:04 AM, adsii1970 said:

No, that would be drinking the last cup of coffee and not starting a new pot. 

Forum is back and you are on it. This is a happy day.

[adsii1970]

12 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Forum is back and you are on it. This is a happy day.

Thanks. I took it hard when KSP2 crashed and burned. Then, the forum kept having all those stupid errors, which just made it even harder for me to want to do anything on the forum. Now I have a lot of catching up to do. 

[SunlitZelkova]

Space colonization for “stock” humans will not be possible, because of the following two reasons:

1. Humans are animals. They live in the wild. Humans may have created the opposing concepts of “civilization” and “barbarity” but these are really only in their heads. Skyscrapers are just a really complex version of the longhouse, and eventually one needs to leisurely stroll the forest. Building a Mars colony is essentially like locking people in a skyscraper for the rest of their life. It isn’t feasible from a behavioral perspective.

2. Space colonization requires the colonists to care deeply about the space society and take care of it, given it is entirely artificial and can implode if the atmospheric management guy decides to lock himself in his office and “end the world.” But by default, anyone who chooses to leave Earth for space permanently doesn’t care about society. Therefore sooner or later these latent traits will surface and result in destruction.

However, it may be possible for humans to colonize space by “modding” them. Most importantly, one would need to get rid of the pesky high consciousness. That way less than performing individuals can be evacuated, ideal breeding pairs can be combined at will, and individuals can be worked as needed without having to attend to “personal” needs. Much like other animals.

Of course, it would cost billions to conduct such research and may not even be physically possible. The solution?

Pretend you have invested this and found the solution, and declare people who undergo the “procedure” (really just a couple hours under anesthesia) to be unconscious. No one would be able to tell if they are conscious or not anyways, so there is no issue.

But because they are not conscious, there is no issue evacuating them or forcing them about even if they scream and kick. Because they aren’t really feeling it, or at least not like a (true?) human.

Yes it might be painful to watch, but it is for the greater good of the human race. All one needs to do is forget they are really conscious.

(C) Vault-Tec Corporation

———

What is this? An exercise in just how far the imagination can go to achieve a goal.

If this is what I, who doesn’t have an interest in Mars colonization, can come up with, I’m quite frightened to see what people who do want Mars colonization (or “survival of the human race”) at any cost can come up with.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

2. Space colonization requires the colonists to care deeply about the space society and take care of it, given it is entirely artificial and can implode if the atmospheric management guy decides to lock himself in his office and “end the world.” But by default, anyone who chooses to leave Earth for space permanently doesn’t care about society. Therefore sooner or later these latent traits will surface and result in destruction.

It's important to reflect on the sheer misanthropy of that statement.

This is the great dilemma of the social engineer. Those who want to build a oerfect society never seem to respect their, ahem, material - to the point where they severely underestimate it.

[ColdJ]

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Space colonization for “stock” humans will not be possible, because of the following two reasons:

I always find it sad what people are willing to do to others that they would never dream of doing to themselves.

"Let us take away free will, because I at the top still have free will and believe my way of ruling is better."

I believe that if traveling into space means you can no longer be Human, then it isn't worth it.

 

On a different note. I find myself worried that @kerbiloid may have passed away and that nobody has really noticed.

[Mr. Kerbin]

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Space colonization for “stock” humans will not be possible, because of the following two reasons:

1. Humans are animals. They live in the wild. Humans may have created the opposing concepts of “civilization” and “barbarity” but these are really only in their heads. Skyscrapers are just a really complex version of the longhouse, and eventually one needs to leisurely stroll the forest. Building a Mars colony is essentially like locking people in a skyscraper for the rest of their life. It isn’t feasible from a behavioral perspective.

2. Space colonization requires the colonists to care deeply about the space society and take care of it, given it is entirely artificial and can implode if the atmospheric management guy decides to lock himself in his office and “end the world.” But by default, anyone who chooses to leave Earth for space permanently doesn’t care about society. Therefore sooner or later these latent traits will surface and result in destruction.

However, it may be possible for humans to colonize space by “modding” them. Most importantly, one would need to get rid of the pesky high consciousness. That way less than performing individuals can be evacuated, ideal breeding pairs can be combined at will, and individuals can be worked as needed without having to attend to “personal” needs. Much like other animals.

Of course, it would cost billions to conduct such research and may not even be physically possible. The solution?

Pretend you have invested this and found the solution, and declare people who undergo the “procedure” (really just a couple hours under anesthesia) to be unconscious. No one would be able to tell if they are conscious or not anyways, so there is no issue.

But because they are not conscious, there is no issue evacuating them or forcing them about even if they scream and kick. Because they aren’t really feeling it, or at least not like a (true?) human.

Yes it might be painful to watch, but it is for the greater good of the human race. All one needs to do is forget they are really conscious.

(C) Vault-Tec Corporation

———

What is this? An exercise in just how far the imagination can go to achieve a goal.

If this is what I, who doesn’t have an interest in Mars colonization, can come up with, I’m quite frightened to see what people who do want Mars colonization (or “survival of the human race”) at any cost can come up with.

W h y????

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I always find it sad what people are willing to do to others that they would never dream of doing to themselves.

"Let us take away free will, because I at the top still have free will and believe my way of ruling is better."

I believe that if traveling into space means you can no longer be Human, then it isn't worth it.

On a different note. I find myself worried that @kerbiloid may have passed away and that nobody has really noticed.

This, now Homo Sapiens will obviously not be the final form.  First you fix most of the bugs, then you work on the features. One obvious one is diseases and the aging thing, fix that and other features and trow in pointed ears as its fitting.  
Not touching the mind outside of diseases and higher intelligence for very obvious reasons. 
Making elves is not an problem, fiddling with the mind and you might very easy loose stuff like creativity by making people more rational. Yes you do it gradually over some thousand years. 
Yes its crazy people but simple screenings keep them out.  Works better if you treat people decently. This works, also assume mental health will be some magnitude better long before we start modifying humans on an scale to get rid of heritable diseases. 

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, Mr. Kerbin said:

W h y????

I’ve finally gotten around to reading A City On Mars and I’m quite shocked at the attitude of a lot of pro-space colonization members of academia to the whole “society” part of people living on Mars.

The… dedication and compassion… I sense in advocates for that sort of thing is kind of scary. The authors of the book point out something important: when it comes to biology and to lesser extent, big-scale engineering, we just don’t know if space colonization is really possible.

But what if it isn’t? I do not sense that space colonization advocates know how to stop. I get the vibe that they will do anything to “spread consciousness” and “make life multiplanetary.”

I thought I’d get ahead of them and start thinking up ways to make that happen, so called “biological challenges” and “ethics” be darned. Because we need to save the human race! And life!

“Some of the greatest evils in history have been committed in the name of love”- Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon in Inferno (2016)

[DDE]

15 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I always find it sad what people are willing to do to others that they would never dream of doing to themselves.

"Let us take away free will, because I at the top still have free will and believe my way of ruling is better."

It's always a matter of time before the "benevolent overlords" start to mete out punishments for "diluting the genepool of the elite". The article below, well over a quarter of a century old, isn't a dig at the particular political alignment, but a demonstration of that general principle:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/from-the-archive-blog/2019/may/01/eugenics-founding-fathers-british-socialism-archive-1997

15 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I believe that if traveling into space means you can no longer be Human, then it isn't worth it.

To some, this transformation is actually more important than the destination. I think the Adeptus Mechanicus/Iron Hands are a reality already when it comes to at least some of the modern transhumanist crowd. But how much of that is a projection of the neuroticisms and maladjustments of modern-day high-achievers? How many utopias are just a "basement-dwelling nerd's" wish-fulfillment fantasy? And to wipe the slate clean, such fantasies tend to rely on either an apocalypse, or travelling to a new world.

[TheSaint]

On 2/9/2025 at 6:50 AM, ColdJ said:

On a different note. I find myself worried that @kerbiloid may have passed away and that nobody has really noticed.

[ColdJ]

@TheSaint

Glad someone else noticed and cares.

[FleshJeb]

@kerbiloidYou'd better not leave me alone with these boorish cretins.

[adsii1970]

Yeah, I have no idea what happened to @kerbiloid. With these pings adding up...  (the forum profile says the last visit was January 6th of this year).