McBeige

Inflating is such a cool idea, it'd work for any 3D shape I can think of.

If keeping air pressure is an issue, that might be resolved by making the sheet rigid once deployed. Are there UV curing resins that won't cure at all before being exposed to UV?

Speaking of sunlight, heating from the sun could be used to create the pressure for inflation. Or off-gassing from UV induced reactions.

It keeps getting recommended on HN - should there be a book club?

Ive been wanting a syntax-tree-viewer for months, to help me learn functional languages where figuring out what is even going on syntax-wise in the exmaples provided by tutorials keeps being an issue for me. Does anyone know of a way to see a syntax tree for any given snippet of code for any given language? I'd try Zed, but I'll have to wait for Linux support.

It's besides the point, but a slight correction: you wouldn't assume someone's preferred pronouns from details about their genitals (it'd be offensive to ask or try to check!), but from how they present them self - through gendered appearance or perhaps by just stating it.

Those two books came to me at a time when I was very receptive to and in need of their messages, and I'm still digesting them a year later. Very short, highly recommended to anyone who cares about: emotion, our place in the world, or cool futuristic societal and technology ideas. My favourite sci fi.

It's so weird. I think that sometimes, but I don't usually think about it. Most of the time it's just a short moment "awake" and aware that all of this is batshit absurd, then recognizing that there's nothing for me here up here except the view, then continue on with my life without remorse towards the next hill top or valley or whatever lies in wait for me. I think it used to give me vertigo, now I'm used to it. I feel tentatively okay about all this.

Is this an example of federation?

It works for me on Firefox on Android. The color wheel thing is sticky while the rest of the content is not. The wheel changes to illustrate each new example as they're scrolled past.

It's lightness and weight, as in Kundera's 'Unbearable Lightness of Being'.

Lightness is nice, it's comfortable, but vertigo inducing. So we also long for weight sometimes.

Adrian Chaikovsky's Children of Time explores similar topics. I recommend it, it's alright and the ideas are cool.

What type of discipline do you mean? The self discipline to behave in a way that enables you to live a good life? Or external discipline that makes you behave in a way (not necessarily a good way) out of fear of punishment?

Which of these are desirable?

Is it possible and efficient to instill the former using punishment?

I'm guessing it's irrational as in rational vs irrational numbers. Rational means a fraction of whole numbers, so irrational numbers are those which cannot be represented as such a fraction. A 1/4 turn is rational, a 1/pi turn is irrational.

I feel like the light has to be parallel for it to work, so sunlight is a better example than a table lamp. Although I can't imagine any rotation of a simple 3D lattice having a nonrepeating shadow. Perhaps a more complex 3D crystal is necessary?

Those additional lives are hypothetical and in the future, and maximizing the number of humans alive might not be the right thing to do. IMO this is one of the really juicy questions.

> You can't really boil down trolley problems into "Would you kill x or y?".

Thoughts on why you can't? I think you can and must.

Multi track drifting to maximize kill count?

My worst enemy is the side of me that constantly doubts and berates me. But I guess I should accept that it's just trying to protect me and I needed it in the past but now I need something else.

Nah it gets the train.

It's soooo sloooow. But yeah it's nicely done

If you were a monkey, would you sacrifice a billion humans to save a monkey?

Or equivalently, would you sacrifice a billion humans to save a robot that's twice as sentient as the average human?

That's just a description of normal life though. We must imagine trolleyphus happy.

Unless "eternal" means immortality, in which case it's even better than life!

The stuff of nightmares, or an encouragement of bravery to do the right thing regardless of the ambiguousnes and uncertainty?

A bit of both, for me.

A trolley problem is going uncontrollably down the tracks. Do you pull a lever to intentionally derail it, or let it pass without consequence? /s

I have no savings, but that's probably cheating. I know I'd sacrifice your life savings in a heartbeat, does that count? ;)

"you" are not the thoughts and emotions that happens to reside in some sack of meat. Or at least that's not a complete picture. In some sense "ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" should be taken literally. 100% individualism is not the only mode of being a person, and not the default or "best" mode.

These are mostly gut feelings and unfinished thoughts. I'm not sure about any parts of it except "it's not a complete picture". I'd love to hear any thoughts on this and reading recommendations are welcomed.

My gut reaction was to kill the rich person.

I justify it like this: a world where well-being is decided by wealth is unjust and undesirable, so trying to enjoy your privilege is a moral wrongdoing because it very directly prevents the spreading-out of wellbeing. This makes it equivalent to the littering problem (in mode, not scale), where I chose to kill the litterer.

I'm not confident, but that's how I rationalize it. I'd love to hear any thoughts on this.

That only makes sense if you think in terms of law to the detriment of morality.

Does responsibility play any role in morality?

But if you play the trolley game twice, surely you double your kill count across games?

Edit: misread your ? as !

Heck yeah it's my decision! I don't want to live in a world where decisions are made like this, but in this case we must accept our role as the lever puller. Or walk away I guess, but that's no different from actively condemning the litterless person.

Don't forget robots. Sentient robots are AT LEAST between cat and lobster, perhaps above human. Robot rights now!

I voted to speed it up. "I don't know everything so I remain cautious" is a mentality I applied for some problems, and not for others. In this case I thought the problem would be trivial/boring if considered from that mentality, so I instead made a choice between condemning someone to a 10 second life of 10/10 pain and condemning someone to a 5 second life of 5/10 pain.

You don't get to not choose.