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There is no rule that the angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees. It only holds true in Euclidean geometry, which this is not.

Do you think them helpless peasants that require the intervention of big brother USA whenever there is trouble?

Even if Maduro’s government is using undemocratic means to maintain power, who the fuck are the US and EU to take stances on and decide what Venezuela needs?

Let the people of Venezuela decide for themselves. Fuck’s sake.

Our jackdaw regular will tear up things around it and throw them around when it gets frustrated (such as when it wants a treat without having to put in any effort).

It could simply be bold and really frustrated.

It isn’t “looking” that is meant by “observation”. “Observation” is meant to convey the idea that something (not necessarily sentient) is in some way interacting with an object in question such that the state(s) of the object affects the state(s) of the “observer” (and vice versa).

The word is rather misleading in that it might give the impression of a unidirectional type of interaction when it really is the establishment of a bidirectional relationship. The reason one says “I observe the electron” rather than “I am observed by the electron” is that we don’t typically attribute agency to electrons the way we do humans (for good reasons), but they are equally true.

Edit: a way of putting it is that the electron can only be said to be in a particular state if it matters in any way to the state of whomever says it. If I want to know what state an electon is in, it must appear to me in some state in order for me to get an answer. If I never interact with it, I can’t possibly get such an answer and the electron then behaves as if it was actually in more than one state at once, and all those states interfere with each other, and that looks like wavelike patterns in certain measurements.

Edit 2: just to be clear, I used an electron as an example, but it’s exactly the same for anything else we know of. Photons, bicycles, protons, and elephants are all like this, too. It’s just that the more fundamental particles you involve and the more you already know about many of them, the fewer the possible answers are for any measurement you could make.

Well I don’t know what you are referring to, but I’m not going to argue about your perception. I listened to the whole thing again (there are usually things that pass me by the first time, so I don’t mind doing that for the interesting episodes) and I don’t know how he could have done a better job at steering the conversation. He’s a podcast host; he needs to pick at the parts that are of particular interest to him and his audience in a limited amount of time, as well as keeping the level of technicality just right so as to be digestible.

For someone familiar with the topic, it’s natural to feel like they could have gone on about something at a more advanced level, and for someone entirely unfamiliar, it’s natural that they would want to linger on things they don’t quite get instead of moving on to something else.

Anyway, I’m not really going anywhere with this. Just curious about your perception since I tend to think of SC as someone quite smooth and approachable around people (unlike me). I guess even he can’t be smooth enough for everybody all the time.

I’m relistening to that episode now because I’m curious about what it is you perceived.

He interjects sometimes to help tie things together (“and this is interesting because of [earlier observation]”) or to adjust the level of technicality to suit his intended audience (“we’re allowed to use the word torus here”). Not all Mindscape guests have a solid feel for the podcast and default to giving popscience breakdowns with analogies and leaving out technical jargon, and so he has to set the bar a bit by explicitly allowing the introduction of technical terms and bringing together of complex related topics.

Don’t know if that’s what made you feel like he was trying to show off.

If you press it the same way again (“are you sure the function doesn’t exist?”), there is a high chance it will “rectify” its rectification.

I use LLMs for having things explained to me, too… but if you want to know how much salt to pour in that soup, try asking it about something niche and complicated you already know the answer to.

They can be useful in figuring out the correct terminology so that you can find the answer on your own, or for pointing some very very obvious mistakes in your understandings (but it will still miss most of them).

Please don’t use those things as answer machines.

Climate change denial is too common here. Our third (nearly second) largest political party is neofascist and “sceptical” of climate change. Lot’s of conspiracy theories and “alternative truths” floating around in that demographic.

Watching others having fun together oddly helps me a bit. I might binge a youtube channel like Corridor Crew, for example. Sometimes I even prefer being “a fly on the wall” because I don’t have to participate and be drained of energy. I also don’t have to worry about feeling rejected or offending anyone (and thus no “social hangover”).

I also want in on this rock. Mine isn’t nearly big enough.

Could it be to identify you as OP?

edit: probably not; there is a different marker for that.

A game can offer an experience that leaves the player feeling satisfied or at least content with how they spent their time. There is a large space of possible interactive experiences that extend far beyond the simple dichotomy of fun vs educational or productive.

A game can certainly be considered predatory if it exploits psychological vulnerabilities to hook someone on engaging gameplay that gives the player very little in return in terms of fulfillment or mental recovery. Whether or not it takes the opportunity to swindle the player on top of that is a matter of degree in severity. Wasting a player’s time (or worse, induce stress or other harmful mental states for no good reason) is not a particularly nice thing to do.