I can tell where a laser is pointed on me without looking. Like if you blindfold me and got a laser pen and shined it on my arm, I can point to where it feels like it is with pretty good accuracy. It’s easier to detect motion than precise placement, and sensation wise it’s not touch or heat like you’d expect it’s more like raw proprioception.

Also it felt the same regardless of the color of laser we used which seems odd since you’d think higher frequency light would be easier to detect.

Tbf I haven’t done the experiment since I did it with my siblings when I was pretty young. Not sure if I can still do it, but my siblings and cousins couldn’t do it even back then.

I think I get what you’re saying, but if you’ve ever looked into particle life simulators, they are much less susceptible to the “going static” you talk about. The more properties that exist, even purely randomized, the more likely you’ll get extended chaotic behavior. (Also the current scientific outlook is that our universe is technically destined to “go flat” just like those scenarios you mentioned)

The real issue with your reasoning from a scientific standpoint is that we don’t know how many universes there are. Maybe there are an uncountably infinite number of universes holding every possible combination of physical rules. Then in these universes there would be infinite universes that evolve life like ours without needing a creator. You can’t say/prove/estimate the chances of a universe having life producing rules because you have no idea how many universes might exist at all.

Furthermore, the probability that we just happen to exist in one of the possible universes that is capable of harboring life like this is actually 100%. This is a fact because, if a universe couldn’t harbor life like ours, we wouldn’t exist in it.

Also on the note of random chance creating the complexity we see in life, have you heard the theory that life didn’t start on earth and actually might’ve started only a few million years after the big bang?

There was a period of time after the first stars had created the lighter elements (the ones life uses like carbon nitrogen oxygen) where the universe was much closer together, and with enough pressures/temperatures that the conditions for water to exist and remain in liquid form were prevalent.

We know from the old studies of trying to prove life could spontaneously emerge that if you add energy (like UV light from stars) to water and nitrogen and carbon, you do get organic compounds: amino acids, alcohol, ketones, etc. So the basic building blocks of life probably existed in relative abundance in parts of the universe at this time.

Now the universe would have been in this state for millions of years. A relatively dense, warm, wet universe for millions of years and have still larger than our galaxy. I’d imagine the chances of RNA forming viroid rings somewhere in a cloud that size are relatively high. And after that, well RNA + basic amino acids + energy + time is pretty much all you need to get evolution going.

That’s my favorite life starting theory, especially since it kind of fits better with our model of genome growth rate over time.

Anyway, the problem of not knowing how many universes there are/have-been/could-be is the real reason no one can actually say or “calculate the probability” of how likely a universe with life is. But I thought you might find it fascinating to learn that life could’ve started in much better conditions and a lot longer ago than you may have thought when you originally did your math.

Sidenote: if intelligent life must be created by some intelligent thing, where did that intelligent creator come from in your theory? Is there an infinite chain of creators creating universes? If not, if intelligent life can be created without needing a creator, then your main assertion must be false. If it does loop or go on forever, then the full set (universe) of these chained universes actually does either exist forever or loops indefinitely meaning it in total was not created by a creator, again contradicting your assumption that life must be created by a planned process.

I know the oc prompt was an unscientific belief that can’t be shaken, but I’m curious, what math makes you think the universe or just life was planned?

I was raised religious but when I first started programming and wrote my own evolutionary algorithm, I realized that life existing makes as much sense as entropy does. If a process can replicate itself efficiently will you have more or less of it later in time? If two replicators require the same resources, which is more likely to survive? It’s randomness that makes this process efficient.

So I thought that perhaps a god set the events in motion to create life by evolution, but then I learned about Conoways Game of Life and other cellular automata, and I wrote my own particle life simulations and I realized that life-like things can arise from almost any system of random rules. The only caveat seems to be that some form of “energy” must be conserved if you want to avoid the situations where the system dies completely or reach an unchanging equilibrium.

And now, as I’m learning about neural nets (specifically the more biologically plausible ones) and the structure of human brains, it all seems so natural that things would arise the way they have.

Given enough time and how vast the universe is, I’d be more surprised to find that sentient life hadn’t evolved naturally on at least a few of the sextillions of planets and other celestial bodies in the universe.

So I’m curious what math you’re basing your opinion on

Any change is a difference in between two states. Creation implies something changed.

However, if by transformation you mean that some property is conserved between all states, only when that’s true is creation a transformation.

If energy was not conserved, and some suddenly popped into existence that would be a change and creation but not necessarily a transformation (depending on your definition of transformation).

I recently realized that the concept of “before” is an assumption we try to place on the universe without any basis that it exists outside the universe.

Like we are used to deterministic phenomena. Effect follows cause, something followed from something else. But that’s only true from our perspective inside universe.

The universe might not change at all from an outside perspective. What if every moment exists simultaneously? Only from within a moment does the concept of before and after make sense, but outside the universe there’s no concept of before. Everything just is.

Maybe it’s a ring, maybe it’s a multidimensional volume containing all the possible moments that could ever happen, maybe it’s bounded “temporally” in certain directions, maybe all the moments chain together in a crazy space filling curve such that all possible moments/worlds would eventually be reached if you started in one and kept following the curve to the next. But nothing has to actually be changing. The paths don’t need to change, they didn’t need to be created or destroyed.

Point is that the “before” of the universe might not exist at all even if the timelines within it start and stop at defined points. We feel the need for things to have a reason because that’s what we’re used to experiencing, but we’re only used to that due to the rules within our part of existence.

The concept of “change” or “creation” or “time” might not exist at all outside our experience.

Iirc some of the stoics believed in a similar idea. They thought the world was deterministic and it simply happened over and over the exact same way every time.

On the note of energy not being created or destroyed. The energy in your brain doesn’t wait till the universe ends to leave. It continues moving as heat or chemical reactions when we die just like it did before. The order of the system it’s in breaks down, but all that energy keeps existing forever.

Since you emit energy as infrared light just by being warm, and infrared is capable of leaving the atmosphere. It is possible, that just by stepping outside, some of your energy has already left the planet and made it to other astronomical bodies in our solar system.

If we assume there is life on any of the moons or planets or asteroids nearby, who knows, maybe some of the energy that used to be part of you has already become part of a new, alien, life form.

If I don’t have a choice to leave or feel irrationally compelled to actually try to debate them 10.

It’s not a choice it’s a fucking curse. I don’t have to think, my mind will eventually start predicting what they say and eventually I want to gut myself because I can think of a hundred things to say and know that it won’t change their fucking minds.

Worse, mind reading is a fallacy. Sure predictions can be pretty accurate, but there’s no way to know for sure if those arguments will play out exactly as I think. But there’s real curse is that just because all the things I can think to say won’t change their mind, that doesn’t mean there isn’t something that will. I might just be too dumb to think of a good argument. So I rot as the conversation happens to me trying to think of anything that could make a difference.

Oh also yeah when they say horrible shit and your mind decides to go “here this is how their victims feel” that’s pretty fucking horrible too.

But if I get up or get upset or react strongly it’ll likely ruin any chance of me changing this person’s mind. Not that that chance existed in the first place.

Anyway, it isn’t difficult to see things from other people’s perspective but let me tell you I much prefer talking to psychopaths than delusional idiots.

I had a roommate who was full blown psychopath (and business major to boot lol) who, once he found out I could see things from his perspective, would debate politics with me in a completely candid manner. I once brought up “so you’d support slavery then?” And he deadass said “if it benefitted me then yes”

Fucked up, but the thing is, he’d listen to my arguments when they were logical. And he wasn’t sadistic, slightly narcissistic, but like he didn’t derive pleasure from other’s pain. Anyway the point is that when you talk to someone who is sane it doesn’t hurt even if they feel no empathy because you can start to understand why they think the way they do and it always feels like you can change their mind, and they don’t feel an active desire to hurt people.

Nazis typically aren’t that. Nazis are typically idiots who can’t face the real sources of pain in their life, so they direct their hatred of their lives and themselves to others. Same with manosphere incels, same with bigots of almost every kind. They want to hurt others, they want to break things, to be mad, because they’re hurt. But you can’t get them to see what they don’t want to see in the first place.

So you just feel bad for them, feel bad for others harmed by people like them, and hate yourself for feeling hatred for them because you get why they are doing it.

It isn’t fun and it’s not even fucking useful because it’s not like you being emotionally stressed out is helping anyone ever and you aren’t changing their minds.

Its a curse to feel irrationally compelled to talk to those who won’t listen because “maybe this time it’ll work” it doesn’t.

Edit: okay clearly I’m not in a very good place mentally right now, but I’m leaving this here. If anyone can relate, here’s some external reinforcement since you’ve likely said it to yourself and it doesn’t work: you do not need to feel compelled to feel bad for others constantly especially if it isn’t galvanizing you to take solid action to help. If your suffering stops you from functioning well enough to help anyone then it’s actually a bad thing to feel that empathy. So let yourself relax.

If you define “not normal” as “not having empathy” then your argument is vacuously true. Like “I’m a good person because I say I am”

If you define normal as the average of everyone then statistically you’re wrong about empathy. The Stanford Prison Experiment or basically any other social experiment that is now banned proves you wrong (hence they had to ban them because people do shitty things to each other just because).

A good one (which was banned for causing stress to the participants via some amount of empathy) I could name would be the [Milgram Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment. Most people will question their actions if they can directly see they are harming a stranger… unfortunately most people will also apparently hurt others even while hearing the victim scream and beg them to stop just because an authority figure tells them to keep going and that it’s all part of the plan.

I don’t think that people are sadistic or malicious by nature, but they sure as hell do not have strong empathy by default mate, and the prison experiment alone proves sadism is much more prevalent than you seem to think. As is the existence of the holocaust, the genocide in Gaza, all the other genocides, the existence of Guantanamo bay, the existence of capitalism in the first place, the need for a list of what is a war crime, war itself, etc.

The reason any of these happen is because people care more about the status quo or themselves than certain other people. Soldiers kill soldiers because their desire to live and not be shamed as a defector outweighs any pain they’ll cause others. Ergo, there is seemingly an endless supply of people who will choose themselves/self-interest over others, in contrast to your hope that universal empathy is the default.

You can feel bad for others and do shitty things just like you can be a psychopath and do kind things. Empathy doesn’t necessarily make someone good and the lack of it doesn’t make someone bad. Unless you define good and evil to mean that in which case there’s no shower thought just another definition of good and evil.

The claim that humans are always terrible by default is false, but claiming the polar opposite is also false.

Many people have empathy, but not all, and it varies in strength/quality from one person to another.

Many well adjusted people do not feel empathy. Many people are depresssed/over-stressed and not well adjusted because they have empathy.

As for PTSD, the ability (or inability) to adjust to or move on from traumatic experiences is not directly correlated to empathy.

Furthermore the ability to kill those who wish you (or those you care about) harm is evolutionarily advantageous. Anger and violence in response to stress and pain allows you to fight off predators/enemies/sources-of-pain. The majority of humanity feels these emotions.

When in a state of anger and pain it is harder for us to think about our actions. Your claim that someone with empathy will always feel conflicted about hurting others is therefore false.

Now most people with empathy might feel remorse but if their mind doesn’t put enough weight on that moment to remember it, there’s nothing for them to feel sorry for later. Does that mean they don’t feel empathy? Nope, they can still empathize with friends and family and characters on TV shows, they just don’t have a mind that catalogues their guilt. (There are unfortunately many people like this)

I do think many people cause significant pain to others. But out of ignorance not malice. And there in lies a major problem with empathy. If you don’t think someone is actually hurting you won’t feel empathy for them even if you feel empathy for others. So if you aren’t aware of the pain others might feel around you, you won’t experience empathic responses even if you might for other kinds of pain.

People might not be generally good or generally bad but we are typically stupid.

If you can convince someone that some person is “just faking it for attention” they won’t feel empathy. Now the reverse is also typically true: if you can convince a person with empathy that that someone else’s pain is real they’ll feel empathy. Unfortunately people don’t like being told they’re wrong or having to change viewpoint or listen to evidence rationally so there are many people you cannot convince to feel bad for certain other people.

Another thing to note is that many of the terms you’ve used are indefinite. What does well-adjusted mean? Psychopathy is prevalent in many fields and psychopaths can live healthy/stable lives. (Sadism and psychopathy are different btw) Are they well adjusted?

What does good mean? The greater good or empathy? Because those two do not agree on everything. How far does empathy need to go for someone to be good in your opinion? Are people who eat meat evil because they lack empathy for animals?

If there was a trolley problem-esque situation where you could save five lives but only if you killed a child with your bare hands, would your idea of a good person commit murder or let five people die because they couldn’t overcome their empathy?

Lastly—and slightly unrelated—I’d like to note that I just had an odd thought: if you tried to logically dichotomize all actions into good or bad, you would need arithmetic to deal with the idea of a greater-good / utilitarianism. However by Gödel’s theorems, in any logical system in which arithmetic can be performed, there will be things that cannot be proven good or bad no matter how many axioms you add to the system. In other words it is actually by definition impossible to dichotomize actions into good or bad. Adding a third category won’t even fix it. Right? Any mathematician/logician/philosopher that can back me up or tell me I’m wrong?

Trying to resize encrypted partitions, sweating bullets because I feel like I’ll fuckup and lose everything.

(Yes I am aware I should backup my data I’m simply a poor idiot lol)

Where were the Egyptian cats supposed to go when Egypt fell / was conquered? The Ottoman and Roman Empires were prosperous, ergo they were the perfect societies for cats to enslave next lol

Kind of funny to think of cats thriving in so many countries that got repeatedly raided, conquered, and reestablished by multiple different empires and cultures. Everyone dies eventually but the cats stay haha

Considering people seem to correlate scarcity with value, yeah, big time.

I also doubt people would be willing to hunt/farm xenomorphs if they couldn’t get paid exorbitantly.

Oh and I’d imagine people who have that eccentric desire to be the top of the food chain would probably think it’s the best food ever. “You’re not a real man ™️ till you’ve eaten xenomorph meat” lol

Sidenote: I just had an idea for xenomorph farming:

1. Find asteroid with enough gravity to keep the xenomorphs from yeeting themselves into space.
2. Place egg.
3. Add hosts.
4. wait.
5. Use robot to retrieve an egg and make sure it stays entirely sealed away with no chance of human contact.
6. Throw another asteroid at the main one fast enough it liquifies both.
7. Collect obliterated xenomorph parts and cook them as they enter collection to make sure they’re dead.
8. sell to patrons for enough money to buy new asteroid and repeat the process.
9. profit
10. Eventually make a mistake and die a horrible death

My mind says it probably tastes like Living Rocks which have been described as tasting like iodine.

I’d imagine you’d have to cook xenomorph a while and possibly add lots of baking soda to deal with the acid, but other than that I’d assume it’d taste like salty metal.

In fact, Fluoroantimonic Acid is one of the strongest acids ever—possibly worse than xenomorph blood—and it is basically just fluorine and antimony.

Antimony is relatively close to iodine on the periodic table, so I will assert it’s close enough that xenomorphs tasting like those stony sea spongescucumbers is accurate lol

I decided to look into this because I was curious.

The unification and regulation of the French language came about in 1653 with the founding of the Académie Française and it actually took a while for the revolutionaries to pivot from “liberty of language” to “the only language in France should be French” English was already established by this time and the vowel shift was basically complete.

According to Wikipedia, Middle French died out in the 17th century while Middle English died out in the 15th. Ergo: Modern English predates Modern French

If we check back farther it seems the two languages developed similarly though the arbitrary divides for each age of language (old, middle, modern) seem to show with English being first by roughly a century.

Of course this is all arbitrary since language doesn’t evolve discretely. However the Wikipedia entries for the oldest Gallo-Romance (precursor to French) is from 842CE, whereas old English poetry dates as early as 650-700CE. Once again suggesting English predates French.

Now there is a difficulty here with French because it originates from Vulgar Latin which could be considered older than English, but I’m not sure many would call it French since lots of European languages branched from Vulgar Latin

As for silliness… yeah no arguments there lol

I’ve always wondered why spanish speakers online use EEUU for the US. I once asked a friend of mine and he said “that’s just the way it is”; this is a much better explanation lol

Not against Esperanto but creating a “universal language”and then making it gendered seems a little stupid.

It’s not as bad as other languages on this front, but if I remember correctly there’s still no agreed-upon gender neutral singular pronoun in Esperanto is there?

Mi forgesis, ke mi lernis ĉi tiun lingvon.

Probably nothing. To be fair I was using a different account before lemm.ee shutdown, so this account is relatively new.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple hexbear people recognize my username since I’ve argued with some of them repeatedly lol

We had heated debates about force fields in my kindergarten class during recess lol

You might be interested in the idea of World Federalism

“Everybody loves Barbados Slim; he’s the only man to ever win Olympic gold medals in both limbo and sex”