Videochat May 2020

[ScumCoder]

The #1 problem with current human civilization is that the overwhelming majority of people have utterly unrealistic expectations of scientific and technological progress, almost like in the late XIXth century. The exact cause of this is debatable; in my opinion it’s the recently emerged “science fashion” (by which I mean the trend to subscribe to various “scientific” social network channels, repost poorly written articles from them, and feel above the “intellectual majority” because of that, sincerely believing that those actions increase your education in any way, shape or form).

 

This is the root of all evil. Each and every attempt to raise awareness about one or another impending catastrophe smashes against mindless bleating that “science will solve that somehow”, because 95% of people do not know what the S-shaped curve is and thus completely fail at objectively perceiving the limits of what is realistically achievable.

 

22 hours ago, Gorilla said:

there is no motivation to try and expand mankind beyond our relatively limited earth.

We must focus on widening our horizons, instead of artificially curbing our appetites.

 

Clench your teeth, make a deep breath, and say out loud: “it is entirely possible that there is no physical possibility for humanity to reach other inhabitable planets”.

I understand that after reading/watching/playing a sh*tload of wanky sci-fi where interstellar travel is as easy as “punching it” it’s pleasant to be off in a dream world, musing about the dishes that will be on the menu of the Big Fucking Rocket’s restaurant, but the reality is much more prosy, boring, and cruel.

 

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In words of Donald Knuth: "Premature Optimization Is the Root of All Evil".

 

I’m losing the thread here. What are you even trying to say?

First, few things are as foolish as trying to apply programming principles to actual real life. It just does not work that way.

Second, even in the field of programming, you have to at least understand the actual meaning of the principle that you are trying to apply, which a lot of people fail at. For example, Knuth’s quote is nowadays almost universally perceived as “don’t even turn on your brain before starting to type the code, just write some unusable crap and then rewrite it from scratch, then do it again 10 times, it’s cool, it’s ‘extreme programming’, all the rage now”. Even though this is nothing to do whatsoever with what Knuth originally meant.

 

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Our biology drives us to survive and reproduce. And our brains try to rationalize ways to keep doing so.

We must hit the "rock bottom", before there is any real incentive to change.

 

Well, maybe the whole freaking point of humanity is that we are somewhat more complicated than a bunch of bacteria in a Petri dish, and don’t have to “hit the rock bottom” in order to start reacting? Because we have this thing called “intellect”, that (ostensibly) allows us to see problems coming and avoid them?..

[Goon the Frank]

This is my first time reading the comments on this site and that was a good, seemingly well-researched discussion on a topic I know almost nothing about and tend to avoid because it worries me (I know that's a poor habit). I give it 8/10: better than any youtube discussion but not as thorough as a month-long correspondence of essays might be.

 

Quote

you already gave me gold with the no good games after 2004 comment

Oh that was Im_CIA? I don't know if you still stand by that but I love the idea of saying "Yeah, they can never top this" and never looking back.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Goon the Frank
clarity (see edit history)

[Guldfisk]

On 5/9/2020 at 5:29 AM, Im_CIA said:

Well, it's all really just a bunch of half-baked ideas that I'm too lazy to quantify, which probably only make sense inside my head anyway.
Heh, "half-baked", that's a half-truth in and of itself.

 

I should apologize for making you think that I'm interested in any sort of formal debate. I'm just here to have fun and shoot the shit, Phillip K Dick style. Nothing I said can stand up to legitimate scrutiny, but I believe it anyway

"I might very well be wrong, but I will believe I'm right anyway for the sole purpose of not being wrong, because I don't like being wrong."

 

Delicious.

[Im_CIA]

3 hours ago, Guldfisk said:

"I might very well be wrong, but I will believe I'm right anyway for the sole purpose of not being wrong, because I don't like being wrong."

 

Delicious.

Ok, I agree, I'm wrong.
Now what?
Maybe I also believe that the Earth is flat, and that the moon is just the sun at night. I'm probably wrong there too, but the fact of the matter is that all of these things are completely inconsequential to my existence.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Im_CIA (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

On 5/16/2020 at 10:22 AM, Goon the Frank said:

8/10: better than any youtube discussion

Scribbles on the wall of a public lavatory are better than any youtube discussion...

[ScumCoder]

@Ross Scott Okay, I finally bit the bullet and watched the whole thing. This is what I have to say.

 

31:50

The reports of reinfection were caused by the fact that the majority of tests used pretty much everywhere (except in a couple of countries who have their own production lines) were counterfeit, and showed almost random results.

No amount of statistical research will help if it is based on reading coffee grounds.

 

53:52

<physics_101>

There are two ways to get rid of heat: phase change (melting/vaporization) and heat transfer.

In case you don’t want to refill some sort of consumable, you are stuck with heat transfer.

Heat transfer (in watts) is proportional to the temperature difference, area of the separation surface between two environments, and the properties of said separation surface. In case one or both environments are liquid or gaseous, another factor is the “refresh rate” of this liquid or gas.

 

Heat transfer (in watts) is fixed (determined by your computer).

Properties of the separation surface (i.e. radiator coating) are already as good as they get (it’s the manufacturer’s job).

Ergo, in order to minimize the temperature difference (read: CPU temperature), AND/OR minimize the air “refresh rate” (read: fan speed), you have to maximize the area of the separation surface.

</physics_101>

 

It’s as simple as that. There are no miracles in life. The only reason why hydraulic cooling exists is purely mechanical impossibility to install huge radiators directly on the heat-emitting elements, which necessitates one or another way of transferring heat from said elements to said huge radiators.

Therefore, this phrase

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Water cooling still uses fans: you have the pumps, [water] goes through the radiator, and the radiator uses fans

is wrong. Not only can you completely get rid of fans by pumping water through huge enough radiator, but you can also achieve good passive cooling without even using water. In November 2016 I sent you a Scythe Ninja3 Rev В radiator, which was more than enough for me to cool my Haswell-E Core i7 CPU with fans staying completely still, i.e. in 100% passive mode. (Did you use it, by the way?).

 

Alas, this is impossible for gaming, because (1) GPUs produce an order of magnitude more heat than CPUs, and (2) it’s mechanically impossible to install anything like the aforementioned Scythe on a GPU. Therefore, water cooling.

 

55:17

You don’t have to “trust” passive cooling. Nothing stops you from attaching fans to the aforementioned huge radiator, then setting your BIOS in such a way that these fans will be turned off as long as the CPU temperature is sane. Then for 99% of time you’ll get a 99% silent PC (1% of noise is for water pump), and once a year, when you’ll be doing exceptionally heavy rendering on an exceptionally hot summer day, the fans will turn on.

 

55:25

It’s the polar opposite.

The absolute air humidity (water mass divided by air volume) is of no relevance to your well-being. What you (and mold) feel as “humidity” is relative humidity, which is the current absolute air humidity divided by maximum possible absolute air humidity at current temperature.

Therefore, humidity goes down when your air heats up. Your computer is making your room drier.

 

1:21:20

I noticed that when Americans talk about socialism in any (even remotely positive) way, they always ignore that the ultimate goal of USSR was not to [distribute something goods something something natural resources blah blah], but nurturing a new type of human.

The one which will spurn wordly blessings and reach for Gnosis.

The one which will consider dedicated work for his brethern the culmination of his existence.

The whole enormous apparatus of government propaganda was aimed at building an intensely anti-consumerist society, in which taking more than you need would be something disgusting and infinitely disgraceful, like coprophagia.

And it almost worked. (The reasons why it didn’t are a topic for a whole separate discussion, but it definitely was in no way impossible).

 

Point is, if you are looking at USSR trying to borrow something good from it, and first things that catch your eye are free medical care and education, free housing, controlled economy, protection of labour etc., then it’s like saying that a book is a great doorstop because it has proper size and weight.

 

Also I must say that reading the chat was almost physically painful. The sheer porridge that people have in their heads made my hair stand on end.

 

1:30:32

Chinese is one of the easiest languages in the world. It is much easier to learn than English.

• there are no tenses
• there are no articles
• the alphabet is 100% phonetic
• it has 2 orders of magnitude less phonetic combinations than English
• words have way more intuitive etymology
  Spoiler

  

   

• you can easily become fluent in Chinese without learning a single hieroglyph
• there are no compound words

…and so on. In fact, out of all languages on Earth, English was one of the worst possible candidates for becoming lingua franca, but here we are. (It doesn’t mean I don’t like it, mind you. Also I consider my own language a bad candidate as well).

 

4:00:00

Cells don’t get “toughened up” as they get older. It’s just that damage to the cell nucleus manifests itself when the cell divides. Therefore, the faster cells divide in a tissue, the more vulnerable this tissue is to radiation.

Cells start dividing slower as we grow up. Also, in different tissues the division rate is different, that’s why e.g. mucous membranes are more vulnerable to radiation than bones and nerves.

 

4:04:12

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- Is there a way to tell if you’ve received an e-mail, or it got caught in the spam filter?

- Yes, if I’ve received an e-mail, I just do a search for the e-mail address, or keywords to it.

I have conscientiously listened to this part about a dozen times, but still failed to understand what you meant.

 

This question bothers me too, for 5 or 6 years in fact. It wouldn’t be a problem if you were using a properly working mailbox – I could just patiently wait for an answer, like I usually do. But alas, you use Gmail, and Gmail is infamous for its brain-dead “spam” filtering that randomly and UTTERLY SILENTLY removes random e-mails that its obtuse algorithm doesn’t like.

 

If I were to propose a solution, I’d advise you to make a boilerplate text saying “thank you for your e-mail, I’ve read it, but unfortunately I can’t answer you right now, stay put”, then sending this text as reply to every e-mail you’ve read, every single one, as soon as you read it.

Such two-step replies have long since become standard anywhere there is no possibility to guarantee timely reply, from tech support to public authorities.

Edited May 22, 2020 by ScumCoder (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

On 5/22/2020 at 10:06 PM, ScumCoder said:

31:50

The reports of reinfection were caused by the fact that the majority of tests used pretty much everywhere (except in a couple of countries who have their own production lines) were counterfeit, and showed almost random results.

Okay, four months have passed and NOW we actually DO have confirmed reinfection cases:

 

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/

 

It still is in no way a reason to panic though, because:

1. There are over thirty million confirmed infections at the time of this writing, and just a dozen of confirmed reinfections. Statistically this is literally nothing.
2. The reason why these reinfections occurred is that there are three clades of COVID-19 ("Asian", "European" and "American"). The aforementioned dozen of people thought that they are "invincible" after surviving Covid, so they went traveling around the globe and contacted another clade (compared to what they had immunity from). So, unless you are traveling around the globe, your chances to get reinfected are even lower than 1 out of 3,000,000.
3. All these reinfections proceeded in extremely light forms and in some cases were discovered by pure accident, because the reinfected people didn't even know that they are reinfected (and it makes sense, considering that the immunity acquired from the first infection didn't go anywhere).

So, you can still rest easy on this front (so far).