1bluepixel

joined 1 year ago
[–] 1bluepixel 12 points 1 year ago

Don't know if this counts as an ending proper rather than a funny and very rare unintended effect. I doubt the devs planned for it or even realized it could happen.

[–] 1bluepixel 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I think simply put:

Morality is an inherent classification of right and wrong behaviors, often the result of tradition, upbringing, and/or society.

Ethics is a moral system at which one may arrive through philosophy and rational thought.

Ethics tends to define right and wrong in terms of its impact on human well-being, and not just as a inherent sense of right and wrong. As such, it may arrive at conclusions that feel "morally wrong" but actually perpetuate a greater well-being. (One example being utilitarianism.) This is also its danger, as one may argue oneself into a behavior which is rationally ethical but inherently harmful (e.g. eugenics).

The power of ethics is that it can be used to derive moral guidelines for new circumstances, such as AI or global ecological considerations. Such considerations can be derived from morality, but they have a tendency to not truly appreciate new variables and instead attempt to reduce new systems to familiar circumstances, thus often missing nuance.

I'd argue that ultimately, a sound ethical system must be derived from rational ethical thought, gently guided by sound morality as a safeguard against dangerous fallacies.

[–] 1bluepixel 160 points 1 year ago (58 children)

The easy, low-cost solution is to build freight rail. But no, that's communism and it doesn't get a tech billionaire their extra billion.

[–] 1bluepixel 121 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The news itself is great, but holy hell is this headline hyperbole. The medicine is a really great treatment and even preventive cure for kidney disease, which is a very common cause of death in old age for cats.

No, this isn't some miraculous treatment that will give all cats a longer lifespan. It's a great cure to a very common cause of death in cats. Not sure where the 30 years figure comes from.

[–] 1bluepixel 36 points 1 year ago

Science advances by testing the limit cases. You do it and you do it until one day you get an unexpected result. That result, and the subsequent understanding of why it happens, is what leads to Nobel Prizes.

[–] 1bluepixel 56 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I'm pretty sure every physicist in existence knows that. It's just a simple principle that's really hard to test, so actually testing it is pretty cool. Like dropping a steel ball and a feather on the Moon.

[–] 1bluepixel 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That's a really weird attitude. I come from a multicultural city where people speak their own language in public all the time and nobody presumes it has anything to do with them. Why would it?

[–] 1bluepixel 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Haha, I've caught plenty of Chinese speakers having what they presume are private conversations in my presence, and sometimes even about me. People just automatically assume non-Asians can't speak Chinese, even when these non-Asians live in China.

[–] 1bluepixel 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

I wouldn't say we speak in people's faces, but we make comments to each other about random stuff. I would never say something rude about somebody in their faces, but my spouse might go, "Can we go back to the hotel, I really need to take a shit" or something silly and unfiltered like that.

[–] 1bluepixel 55 points 1 year ago (24 children)

My spouse and I lived in a bunch of countries over the years. We speak Quebec French, English, and Spanish, as well as a smattering of Chinese, Bulgarian, Korean, and a few odds and ends here and there.

We basically speak whatever we think people around us won't understand. Very colloquial Quebec French in non-French-speaking countries, Chinese around white people, Bulgarian around non-white people, or even a cryptic mix of everything when we're not completely sure.

We figure anyone who understands is probably someone we want to know... Hasn't happened very often, but it does happen. So far we weren't saying anything overly embarrassing when we got caught, but we sure as hell have no filter between us because of this!

[–] 1bluepixel 85 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm guessing the only purpose of this is to show you have fuck-me money. Which sounds like it might work very, very well.

[–] 1bluepixel 5 points 1 year ago

Immortal Thor just launched last month, and given Al Ewing's track record, it promises to go down as a legendary run. His Immortal Hulk most definitely was.

John Michael Straczynski just started a run on Captain America and I have high hopes for that as well.

Other than that, it's not a recent launch and it's on hiatus right now, but The Department of Truth is already legendary and has been optioned for TV.

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