This is awesome! Portable identity management is one of the holy grails of federated services IMO, and this seems like an immediately usable Fediverse-applicable way to do it (as opposed to something like Solid Pods)

Yup. Determinism doesn’t actually change anything-- but it tricks people into thinking it does by giving them permission to remove all meaning from the world. You can accomplish the same thing by believing in nihilism.

Plus, if I’m wrong it doesn’t really matter and I never could have been right at this point in my life anyway.

It’s kind of like the free will version of Pascal’s Wager, amazing

deleted by creator

on a scale that’s grand enough to make the proverbial apple fall upward

Not necessarily. An apple teetering on the edge of a cliff requires no grand change in initial conditions to have two very different journeys. If “you” are a metaphysical entity capable of altering the signals in your physical brain, your brain could deterministically amplify and enact your will, like gravity does to the apple on the cliff. If you have a metaphysical existence, this is a pretty reasonable mechanism for it to work.

Why do people always stop one step too short?

If there is no free will, the concepts of justice, blame, etc. still survive funtionally intact. If “chemical you” commits a crime, “you” are only not responsible if “you” is a metaphysical entity separate from (and that cannot control) the chemical you. But there’s no evidence that “you” aren’t simply the “chemical you”, and therefore fully responsible for your crimes. If “you” are a metaphysical entity separate from the chemical you, then “you” do actually have free will.

This is only not true if the metaphysical you exists but cannot control the chemical you, which seems reasonable but like… you can move your arm right now, by willing it to be so. Either metaphysical you has free will, or your conscious experience is the chemical you. Either way, your conscious experience is either the same as or commands your physical form, and therefore is responsible for the actions that you take, and can be blamed and given justice.

Wow, that’s more than I thought!

Dice

[edge of pic] …your game

Determination

With enough tries, you will eventually roll a twenty

Cognitive Dissonance

He has a degree in statistics. But he will still roll a d20 five times at the game store and declare, “This rolls high. I’ll take it!”

Randomness

Trust in the oracular power of the dice

Sometimes in Life

You don’t know if you rolled the dice nicely

Of course

You can also just… empty the bags manually. Without buying the super expensive machine.

Johnny Cash has some amazing lyrics

Not my favorite, but it came to mind: “…live the dream with a time machine, you’ve been waiting forever. But you can make ever wait for you.” (Time Machine by Miracle Musical)

My actual favorite is probably “Often I am upset, that I cannot fall in love but I guess, this avoids the stress of falling out of it.” (This is Home by Cavetown)

Wendy’s chicken sandwiches are very good. I had one with a pretzel bun and it was amazing.

Hmm, true. It’s safer for you, but is it safer for everyone else unless they’re guaranteed to help?

And yet you choose to spread this information.

Anyways, this is a fascinating thought experiment, but it does have some holes similar to Pascal’s Wager. I propose Feather’s Mongoose: A hypothetical AI system that, if created, will punish anyone who attempted to create Roko’s Basilisk, and will ensure that it is not created. In fact, you could make this same hypothetical for an AI with any goal-- therefore, it’s not possible to know what the AI that is actually created would want you to do, and so every course of action is indeterminately damning or not.

STBSQL?

I’m surprised they aren’t using Matrix, considering it’s a Fediverse group.

In a way it’s like the concept of files and programs from the desktop world. Each type of content would have an agreed-upon structure and meaning, but is capable of being opened in different “apps” to view, edit, etc. In fact, you could literally implement it that way, which also allows you to do weird stuff like download content and save it on your own computer.

I’ve thought about this before, if every website had a data section with the raw data and a UI section that was capable of being swapped out. Like some sort of composable setup. I think it’s a really promising idea and I even think a prototype wouldn’t be too difficult to build. Although I do think that the context of where a post was made is important, and is carried intrinsically with the data in a screenshot.

Based