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Everything posted by Nephil Thief
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Anyway now that I've opened my big mouth... Healthcare, education: yes. People in a technological society can't function without these. Torture: prohibited, period. I know there are ethical arguments against this. There are some things I will not budge on, ever. Voluntary euthanasia: bit of a story here... 1. Insurance companies could (and would) easily try to force people into it if they stood to make a profit. This is yet another reason IMO that for-profit medical systems are abhorrent. 2. Clinical depression, personal experience thereof. Wanting euthanasia doesn't mean it's the best choice for you. I don't believe people who are suffering, and cannot be helped, should be forced to endure. But I don't think life should be taken for granted either. This one is one of the few things I consider legitimately "shades of gray." Death penalty: originally I said only for crimes against humanity, on the simplistic premise that wannabe Hitlers and Stalins are too dangerous to keep alive, but really I'm not so sure. For others... well, of course I want serial killers etc. to be put to death, but wanting it on a gut level doesn't make it right. In any case though, I feel very strongly that the way capital punishment is handled in my country is absolutely wrong, regardless of whether it's socially necessary. (Side note: I've seen it pointed out that the terms "penalty" and "punishment" are euphemisms here, because the point of a punishment is to change someone's behavior. A criminal who is executed is not "punished," they are killed, and I can only see this being justified if said person is dangerous beyond any possibility of containment.) Abortion, beginning of human rights: I put down "birth." And no, I don't think it's wholly arbitrary, because it is the point at which a fetus stops effectively being an endoparasite. Nuclear weapons: I don't think warfare is ethical, period, and in particular I don't think total war against civilian populations is ethical. Doesn't matter if it's necessary; necessary evils are still, by definition, evil. Being forced to commit atrocities doesn't exempt you of responsibility.
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Okay, at risk of being flamed... [soapbox] No offense, but re abortion I'm more than a bit sickened by the idea of male-bodied people having any say in it at all. Our bodies cannot host a fetus, and we don't get to dictate anything to those whose bodies can. [/soapbox]
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Wow. This was unexpected. I kind of wish I could explain my responses, but I feel like that would start a flamefest and get the thread locked... So I'll hold off for now.
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Five Factor Personality Model
Nephil Thief replied to Punctuation rains from the heavens's topic in General
I'm going to avoid taking this test because I'll inevitably feel horrible about the results. (Which probably says more about my personality than the test would anyway... ) -
Hmm. What sounds typically trigger crashes on Win7? This is interesting because I found something similar with Wine, a while back. Spell related sounds (fireball whoosh, etc.) would freeze the game immediately when using the ALSA sound engine. More recent versions of Wine don't have that issue, but I've seen other glitches between sound and graphics; e.g. one where certain sounds cause the menu bar to fill up the entire window. Anyway if the same thing happens in Windows 7 and in Wine, I'm thinking it points to a BoE bug, not a Wine bug...
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The limit is in practice, not in theory, if the brain is Turing-complete. My remake re "rational thought" was comparing to other known logics. And I do have an example of a "thought" that a human could not think: a modern web browser. Executing Firefox in one's own head is pretty much impossible due to attention span limits. Doing it with pen and paper would probably be theoretically possible, but would also probably take a few thousand years. ... Or you could run it on your desktop computer. Just because we're unable to think something doesn't mean our tools are.
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Twentysomething USA, Northeast coast. I speak English, and have forgotten everything I knew of Latin. I really wish I knew more, but I've always been terrible with languages, and hate the process of learning them. Oy. Vague. "Always do the right thing, even if it doesn't make sense." Also I think it's theoretically possible to live an ethical life without decieving one's self, which ironically constitutes a leap of faith on my part. Not sure if those qualify as spiritual... Anyway, religion was not really a part of my upbringing. None and no. People treat me fairly most of the time, so I'm going to say "better off than most." And yes, that's always been the case. No. I have some very... controversial opinions on this stuff. Controversial to the point of getting me outright flamed by close friends. That's all I'm really going to say on it. I work in the IT department for a small company, and I'm a college dropout. Work is much more fun than college was.
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If the human brain is Turing-complete, then lifespan and memory are the only limits. But the devil is in the details. Those are some pretty hefty limits, because the brain is slow - neural impulses move at something like 50 mph. And our lifespans are pretty short. Memory is more vaguely defined with the brain. But our short-term memory is pretty shoddy too. Most people can IIRC recognize a maximum of 7 distinct objects at a glance, past that they have to count. And our attention spans are short... And brains do things that computers don't (e.g. deliberately introducing noise). Etc. Anyway what I'm getting at is that - as with digital computers - there are thoughts that are physically impossible for a human to think, due to the architectural limits of the brain. And we don't know what those are because we can't think them. Assuming the universe wasn't designed from day one to suit human cognitive needs, I see no reason to assume that a Theory of Everything must be human-comprehensible. So yeah, while I'm very dubious about IQ, I guess I basically agree with Goldengirl. Human "rationality," such as it is, occupies a tiny fraction of the modes and applications of logic that are possible. Edit: BTW someone else had this idea first, and wrote it into a book that I read recently: http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/ventus/thalience (I thought the book itself failed to break out of certain cliches, but hey, I should give credit where it's due.)
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I feel that's a bit inaccurate. QM rules are profoundly weird and unintuitive, but they're still rules (of a sort). An electron cannot have both a definite position and a definite velocity, period. (IIRC there is mathematical evidence that "hidden values" for position, velocity, etc. cannot exist.) Likewise you cannot pull a virtual particle out of the vacuum, and then make it stick around forever in violation of conservation of mass; you have to put some mass/energy into it or it will go back to not existing. (c.f. Hawking radiation.) 'Course I was only in physics for a couple years back in college (and sidestepped into IT instead of graduating), so take this as thou wilt.
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1. Free Will It's the Newtonian Mechanics of philosophy: a useful abstraction that is technically incorrect, but necessary in practice. Some people would call it an outright lie. To them I would say: do you factor in relativistic mass changes when calculating the kinetic energy of a baseball? Because if you use good old (1/2)mv^2, then by that definition, you're lying to yourself. (On the other hand, as with Newtonian mechanics, relying on the concept of free will everywhere is a terrible idea.) 2. How should we gain knowledge? Logic, empirical evidence, whatever; but make sure other people, with different ideas, vet your work. If you want to get technical we can't really be certain of anything. Senses can be decieved, logic can be distorted by ingrained biases. I've seen people use this as a basis for saying that there is no reality external to our senses, we live in a "shared subjective reality" or somesuch. IMO this is a failure to acknowledge that distrusting all your senses by default is basically solipsism - if you can't trust your senses at all, you can't even trust that other people exist. Is it possible that I'm a Boltzmann Brain floating in a sea of hallucinations? Sure. But if I assume that, I might as well throw away everything. Given two equally likely assumptions, one of which can only be harmful and the other generally helpful, you might as well take the helpful one. 3. Abstract Notions I don't think it even makes sense to talk of non-physical things existing, except as useful illusions/abstractions/whatever (see again Newtonian mechanics). No, numbers aren't real, nor concepts like monetary value, etc. I can't even say what they actually are physically. Certain patterns of neurons firing? But they're useful, so we keep them. 4-5. Ethics My views on these are wildly inconsistent at the best of times, but personally I've developed a deep suspicion of ethical viewpoints that are internally consistent. I'm going to let this one pass, I think. 6. The Mind I'm quite sure it's physical. 7. The Meaning of Life (and the Universe and Everything) IMO the question is absurd. It's like asking what an atom "means," or a person, or a planet, only even bigger and more ridiculous.
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@Sylae, personally I'd argue against assuming malice and stupidity when ignorance, rationalization, and fear might suffice. i.e. Ignorance: I was brought up with the idea that persecuting certain people was okay, and was never seriously motivated to question that ingrained belief. Rationalization: If I'm unfairly persecuting someone, that would mean I was a bad person, and I cannot possibly be a bad person (because my intentions are good, I've done good things by people before, whatever). Fear: If I'm doing the wrong thing, and therefore a bad person, I deserve bad things done to me. Between those I think there's a lot incentive for essentially kind-hearted people to behave in a totally messed up fashion. That said I'm coming at this from pretty different different situation, so I might not quite get it.
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@Lilith: I've met people who tend to dismiss injustice with a comment along the lines of, "life's unfair, deal with it." My usual response is that the whole point of human civilization is to make life more fair. So yeah, I really like that idea, especially the "including themselves" part. OTOH I (personally) tend to shy away from anything outspokenly "anarcho" or "communist," mostly because of a) How we get there from here. From what I've read and heard it typically is supposed to involve revolution, which has an extensive record of not working. Also I have a vested interest in not winding up with my head on a pike, seeing people I love murdered before my eyes, etc. I know this isn't how all anarchist and communist outlooks work, but rationalization is universal; and "ends justify the means" thinking is common enough everywhere to make me a tad frightened when people talk about rapidly overthrowing the current social order, which brings me to Rhetoric. Some people more or less on my side of the political spectrum are prone to talk about "destroying the institutions" and such. I get that this refers to the institutions of oppression, the system rather than the institutions of any government. But if we're going to look into the language and what it implies... Well, whenever I see someone using terminology evocative of violence, I have to wonder why, even if that person claims to be the most anti-war, anti-statist pacifist ever. I guess I tend to think that the jargon is evocative of violence for the same reason that most curse words are evocative of sexism. Granted we're all influenced by bad ideas from time to time; but when the same terminology crops up again and again, I feel like some skepticism might be called for. tl;dr I'm a wimpo-socialist. (And I hope I haven't gone too far into political territory with this post.) Edit: and oh geeze I hope I don't look like I'm trying to intimidate you about your political viewpoints, because that was totally not my intent. Argh.
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I would say representative democracy/republic, with many, many caveats, e.g. - Stringent laws against jerrymandering and other such manipulations of the vote - Very stringent regulation of what kind of information may be classified - Likewise, utter prohibition of things like self-gagging gag orders (aka "super injunctions"), and classification of the fact that things are classified - Health care and higher education as rights, not monetary privileges - A reliable basic wellfare system, so that people can actually survive a stroke of bad luck - No provisions for the declaration of martial law under any circumstance There's more (I'm still working on it, honestly) but I think you get the idea. I believe that a working representative democracy is pretty much the best kind of realistic government you can hope for; but also that such systems need strong internal defenses against corruption, ideological takeover, and causes of civil unrest. But note that - I'm a fairly die-hard liberal - I'm still working out my own political beliefs so this is not necessarily set in stone.
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Games that let me mess around with the mechanics and add stuff. Mostly mechanics-related stuff. Most of the fun of Angband (IMO) comes from being able to do this. Being able to write one's own plots would also be cool, but I've yet to find a game engine that lets me do that easily. (But I'll create my wire-biotech-fu BoE scenario some day... Some day... Maybe when the game gets embedded Python scripting support. IOW, when I'm starting to turn bald.) As far as characters go, I used to enjoy putting myself in an RPG character's shoes, but that kind of ended when I figured out I could write. ... BTW, I have to throw in a word about the idea that moral ambiguity in games == progressive: I don't think the one necesssarily implies the other. Progress is (among other things) showing characters as flawed human beings, not making every single one a monster. IOW, I think there's a difference between not having any heroes and actually fighting the myth of heroism. Edit: granted that fantasy RPG "adventurers" tend to be fairly monstrous sorts, that particular issue has been beaten until dead and then some.
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Anything I can do to help with WxWidgets/Linux development?
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
That's all the province of either the widget toolkit or the window manager. X itself doesn't give you anything AFAIK (but I'm not a Linux desktop programmer so...) Sorry, I thought you meant something completely different there. I know barely anything right now about the guts of GUI toolkits. I think you should be able to extend a GTK window class (or whatever that is in GTK terminology). GTK is written in pure C though. Not sure how it handles inheritance. -
Anything I can do to help with WxWidgets/Linux development?
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
First off sorry for the slow response, last week was the work week from hell topped off with a head cold. I don't know, but a nagging voice in the back of my head tells me this might be impossible in X. @sylae: please be aware that GTK2 is no longer developed, and GTK3 is considered an internal Gnome3 library and subject to API breakage with every major release. Qt4 (or is it 5 now?) might be an option, but it is extremely huge. (And people wonder why the heck nobody uses Linux on the desktop.) -
What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
Ah, sorry about the assumption on my part then. -
What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
THANK YOU. I'm ignorant of a lot of Delphy's terminology, but I think I'm basically in agreement with her. (On a related note, the Rancom! blog is a great reminder of how much of a hypocrite I am.) Edit: but I did at least recognize a veiled justification for a hierarchy when I saw one... Yay me I guess. -
What have you been reading recently?
Nephil Thief replied to Emmisary of Immanence's topic in General
Ventus by Karl Schroeder. Possibly aka "Star Wars meets Star Trek meets LoTR, done right." The problem is it has the weaknesses of all of those as well as the strengths. Strong points: decent characters, good action scenes, plenty of "WOW!" moments. Weak points: the philosophical stuff felt more pretentious and technobabbly than anything else, though I'll give it points for not being as degrading and offensive as Dan Simmons. But the thing that really grated on me like crazy was the gender politics. Which is not good, because the failure of medieval social concepts is a major part of the plot! It goes like this basically. Men are by nature * aggressive, with a desire to fix (or reshape) the world * unaware of other people's feelings * fundamentally brutish and naive no matter how smart they are * need women for emotional consolation and guidance * more importantly, need women as an outlet for sexual energy and/or aggression and women are by nature * passive, with a desire to mediate and provide emotional counsel * aware of other people's feelings to the point of overthinking everything * fundamentally shrewd and conniving no matter how naive they are * need men for physical and emotional protection * need the aggression/sexual energy of men for some ill-defined reason Not sure what to call this complex, but it should be familiar. It's common in SF and especially fantasy literature; and from what I've seen, almost always espoused by men, and almost always treated as a Truth that cannot be denied. Ventus is a pretty mild example, compared to e.g. Dune or the Kvothe Kingkiller novels. But yeah, the rigidity of such ideas just makes me sad, in a way that even nihilism never quite manages. I counted two female characters in the novel who defied this framework. Both were definitely lost, unhappy sorts. Also, zero characters who were not cis/hetero, and almost all European names. Which is kind of surprising given the post-mortal post-AI interstellar civilization in the picture... tl;dr A novel purportedly about awareness is a bit too lacking in just that. Physician, heal thyself. -
Anything I can do to help with WxWidgets/Linux development?
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
Oy, this could turn into quite a task. Methinks I will attack it next weekend, when I have the time to throw some brainpower at it. No. Definitely not. X Window System only provides primitives, everything else is done with higher level widget toolkits; so if you want file dialogs, you have to make calls to GTK/Qt/Fltk/etc. so you might was well use one of those in the first place. -
Maybe? Not sure though. svchost is the Windows service host. IIRC most Windows services are DLL libraries, not standalone executables, and must be loaded into the svchost process to run. I've never seen 16 svchosts running at once though. That sounds weird, even for Windows 8. No idea what it might imply though.
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Anything I can do to help with WxWidgets/Linux development?
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
Celtic Minstrel: umm, how do I compile this (or try to)? I don't see any makefiles or related stuff, only an XCode project... -
Anything I can do to help with WxWidgets/Linux development?
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
https://gitorious.org/neoband (Google and the NSA already know who I am, so what the heck...) -
Anything I can do to help with WxWidgets/Linux development?
Nephil Thief replied to Nephil Thief's topic in Blades of Exile
Well thank you, I had never even heard of SFML until today... I'll take a look at the "osx" code tomorrow. Edit: Just curious though, why SFML? It looks painful to use for 2D stuff, with buttons and things that ought to be widgets. Re the dialogs, you mean they had graphics stuff stored in resource forks? Argh. Not sure what you mean about how windows work on Linux? Shouldn't SGML handle the abstractions needed for dealing with X11 vs. Quartz vs. whatever Windows uses? But I'll see what can be done. Hmm. How does SFML handle text fields exactly? I'm looking through the API docs but it seems the usual level of abstraction is much lower. Okay, thank you. In fact, I think I will take a look at the code tonight... I just finished installing SFML on my workstation, give me a minute. -
Thanks. I have been doing well. Extremely extremely busy, but well.
