Posts by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #9yTa8PpLXYwXmqbuJk by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-08-25T05:21:11Z
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@natecull If you want a mathematical proof:Let CA and CB be the events where the coin predicts A and B, respectively.The coin's prediction is right if either CA and A both occur, or CB and B both occur. This has probability:P(CA)P(A) + P(CB)P(B)Now, P(CA) = P(CB) = 0.5, and P(B) = 1-P(A).Substitute these in:0.5P(A) + 0.5(1-P(A)) =0.5P(A) + 0.5 - 0.5P(A) =0.5I hope this convinces you, but the "It's a coin flip so of course it's 50%" thing was the reason I thought it was obvious.
(DIR) Post #9ypaQLXSj5VDGICC9Y by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-09-04T23:02:04Z
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The "spherical cow" joke reads very differently to physicists than to non-physicists. To a physicist, it's a joke about the simplifying assumptions they make in order to make problems in physics more tractable, and how absurd they would be applied to any other context. To non-physicists, it's a joke about how stupid physicists are.
(DIR) Post #9zEZmxuKKG3Lih9emO by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-09-16T23:19:36Z
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Headcanon: The reason that none of the buildings in the Myst games have bathrooms is that the D'ni would just go wherever they stood and then use a linking book to get rid of it.
(DIR) Post #A0Asas8ZeBMgLdpOvQ by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-09-27T22:51:13Z
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Of all the body's parts, the brain is in a unique position to distort our values in its favor. You can think that thinking is important, but you can't run that running is important or digest that digestion is important.
(DIR) Post #A0AsdjE1ErtHZmjkUC by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-08-17T21:50:00Z
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Skunks have to know how to identify threats but porcupines don't
(DIR) Post #A1i08GvgiYR6Bn45M8 by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-11-30T01:25:31Z
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Computer programmers often come up with "esoteric programming languages", which is to say, systems that are in theory capable of anything you can do with conventional languages, but are in some way deliberately bizarre, purely for amusement's sake.What's the equivalent of that in other fields? Do physicists invent deliberately bizarre theories with the same explanatory power as conventional ones? Do mathematicians come up with esoteric alternative axiom sets? If they do, can you tell?
(DIR) Post #A2PwGFoi4kIKd9Tocy by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-12-17T21:24:21Z
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The biggest lie in America: That people desire jobs. Being beholden to an employer is not a thing we desire. It's a compromise, a sacrifice we're willing to make for money. But it's taboo to admit this in many situations.
(DIR) Post #A2PwGGFeSZqTyi5Kca by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2020-12-17T22:04:41Z
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@Sandra Sometimes I feel like "work that satisfies your need to contribute to the community" and "work that pays money" are increasingly disjoint. Especially in software, where the most enduringly important work is often open-source work done by hobbyists, and the paid work is often downright antisocial in its aims.It almost seems inevitable. Any company that doesn't prioritize its own interests over the common good is going to be a competitive failure.
(DIR) Post #AMCmFHeAJ2R0gBFQjw by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2022-08-05T02:13:07Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
When cats carcinize, it will happen at first through boxes. A cat knows that boxes are safe, protective. Someday a cat will figure out how to carry a box on its back and be safe wherever it goes. That will be the start of hermit cats.
(DIR) Post #AN4Gs3Alx8D59PIshU by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2022-08-30T17:17:47Z
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I remember reading things in books as a child like "Here's how you can make a banjo out of a cigar box!", which assumes that cigar boxes are a familiar feature of one's environment, even though I had never seen one in my life. I kind of wonder what common features of my own childhood fill that role today.
(DIR) Post #AOeRVPVD7Svz7333fE by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2022-10-16T06:59:58Z
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@Sandra The novel Moby Dick devotes a chapter to considering the question of whether whales are fish, and concludes that they are. I've seen people poke fun at it for this, but his argument isn't "Whales fit the definition of 'fish' used in biology", but "Biologists don't own the word. Whalers and maritime law were calling whales 'fish' for centuries before a bunch of ivory-tower academics decided they were using it wrong."
(DIR) Post #AVSbtvenugNGKjWCvo by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2023-05-08T20:49:27Z
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@mousey @pluralistic (I remember seeing a historian talk about how in the Tragedy of the Commons has it exactly backwards. Actual common grazing lands have generally had a very good track record, because most people want to get along with their neighbors. When the land gets taken over by an individual owner who isn't part of that community? That's when it gets overgrazed.)
(DIR) Post #AWFFFnCd8cfrz5TkW0 by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2023-06-01T02:01:41Z
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@mcc I've seen it pointed out that the reason golf courses have water hazards and sand traps is that they're imitations of naturally occurring features of coastal Scotland. When the game was invented, they weren't laying out special courses for it, they were just like "This looks an interesting place for a round of golf, let's put a hole here and a tee there" and that was that.There's no reason why golfers can't just start doing that again. Except maybe legal reasons and safety reasons.
(DIR) Post #Aa2DYIuaxOfk7t17I0 by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2023-09-22T19:19:31Z
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@ParadeGrotesque @tezoatlipoca @cstross If cats have the power to summon Cthulhu, that's exactly how they use it.(I was going to phrase that as a counterfactual, but then I remembered that we don't really know what cats get up to when they're out)
(DIR) Post #AiZefkRJUAhyADrEMC by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2024-06-04T05:25:50Z
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@grickle He finally made the connection.
(DIR) Post #AlCK4NtwSScmomSs1A by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2024-08-21T11:45:09Z
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@MicroSFF The scariest thing about this story is the implication that there are people out there being given special powers, and every single one of them is the sort of person who would consent to it without knowing why
(DIR) Post #AmZvdb2uNkV2ByAl4y by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2024-09-30T00:07:59Z
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@mcc (That's pretty much the default for RSS readers, yeah. I don't know of one that just mixes together all the posts from everyone into a single feed. And now that you've drawn my attention to it, it seems kinda weird that these two tools that serve basically the same purpose, keeping up with posts from sources you follow, have completely disjoint conventions on this matter.)
(DIR) Post #AmZvdbJDP7Xl0XnmUq by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2024-09-30T00:15:31Z
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@mcc (I guess the difference is probably driven by the underlying tech? With RSS, you are literally looking at multiple separate feeds from different sources, embodied in separate files from separate URLs. The most straightforward way to implement a UI for that is to keep them separated there, too. Whereas the big social media sites are presumably just pulling everyone's posts from the same database. But federation probably complicates that?)
(DIR) Post #AqwOB6qn6ZUew5lnNI by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2025-02-07T16:17:25Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@th @quixoticgeek There are two sorts of people in the world: those who use Beyoncé for this and those who use Pokémon
(DIR) Post #B1b3Px3TZPNeriZBLs by CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social
2025-12-25T05:07:38Z
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@futurebird I'd get on the one that comes first because I don't fully trust the accuracy of those signs. If it says there's a train coming in five minutes, there *might* be a train coming in five minutes. But the one that just pulled in and opened its doors is definitely here.