• Almacca@aussie.zone
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    1 hour ago

    My standard response to that kind of statement is ‘Good for you. Have a cookie.’

  • breecher@sh.itjust.works
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    17 hours ago

    This reads more like an anti-science meme. Things are complex, if you don’t understand them fine, but keeping yourself deliberately ignorant isn’t going to stop reality from being reality.

    • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      this is borderline.

      there’s a point where we can argue that the US has shit standards for food safety. and there’s arguing that chemicals names are scary.

      plus, he’s a bit of a weirdo with the Rocco’s Basilisk and his weird harry potter fanfiction

      • juliebean@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        i assure you, there is much weirder harry potter fanfiction out there. i once read a Hogwarts Castle/Giant Squid smut fic.

        Also, pretty sure a fellow named Roko came up with the basilisk, not Yudkowsky.

        • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          the Roko’s basilisk was from his forum, true, not directly his idea, but hes sort of related.

          he is just a guy that sometimes, I hear wierd stuff and then I am not surprised hes involved in that.

          That harry potter fan fic is weird, because instead of smut or shipping, it’s like what if Harry Potter was a humanist philosoper instead if a normal child with magic powers.

  • KingCake_Baby@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Sugar manufacturers lobbied for fats to take the blame for all of the serious health issues people have had in the last 60 years

  • Ameripol@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Is this the same guy who wrote the Harry Potter Rationalism fan-fic and started the ai worshipping cult?

    • juliebean@lemmy.zip
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      18 hours ago

      from my understanding, the ai cult initially sprang up on the forum he hosted (hosts? idk), but he didn’t exactly start it, any more than Queen Elizabeth II invented punk rock.

      but he did write the fanfic, and it’s honestly pretty good. low bar i know, but dude’s a better author than jowling ever was, and i definitely recommend it to anyone into HP fanfics.

      • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev
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        14 hours ago

        People are always praising that fanfic for some reason so I tried reading it a while back. If it’s the one I’m thinking of then hard disagree, the protagonist is a self-insert Mary Sue clearly written by a kid who thinks they’re the smartest person alive. One part that still sticks in my mind years later is their fundamental misunderstanding of how fiat currency works, it was some ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme like melting down wizard currency into pure gold to sell to non-wizard community then using that money to buy silver which they’d trade up to magic society gold coins. It was some years ago so I may be misremembering the details, but there should be a ton of issues that immediately jump out to you there.

        I trudged through and got as far as the first meeting with Malfoy where the author realized they were being too friendly with each other, but since Malfoy is supposed to be a bad guy they decided he should randomly blurt out something about how he wants to rape some girl.

        Maybe it’s just because I don’t have the context of other bad fanfics, but that’s a solid 0/10 from me.

        • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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          12 hours ago

          The get rich quick scheme I thought was well thought out, for the ‘in universe’ principles that had been laid out. One galleon converted to a lot of copper, so the mary sue could take gold from the muggle world, get it made into galleons in the wizard world, trade those for a metric shit ton of copper knuts, and then take those to the muggle world to be sold for a much larger sum of money than had been used to buy the gold.

          As long as you don’t expect it to work forever, it would be fine. The writing was terrible, but the character established all the nuts and bolts of the operation by ‘just asking’ questions to the diagetic narrator: pure gold was able to be made into galleons for a fee, banks would give you your money in knuts if you asked, and the prices would work for it.

          The writing was jank and the protagonist narrator insufferable, but the conclusions he drew did make sense for the world he had been placed in, as appropriate for a ‘rationalist’ critique of harry potter.

          Edit: the part where I just threw up was where the narrator had an immediate, perfectly-thought-out-but-the-writer-couldn’t-come-up-with-an-actual-thing when mcgonagoll threatened to alter his memory, but he had thought of a perfect solution to that years ago. It reminded me of terrible ttrpg players who just ad hoc added parts to their backstory so they could be mary sues in a collaborative game.

          • juliebean@lemmy.zip
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            3 hours ago

            regarding your edit, it was hardly a perfect solution. he just bit his lip real hard. that was his message to himself. i think it’s mentioned a few paragraphs before he tells mcgonnagall about it. it is in there, but it is easy to miss on the first read through, to be sure.

          • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev
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            11 hours ago

            If the coins are 100% gold or copper then you’re in one of two scenarios: the value of the coin is the scrap metal value, in which case swapping between gold and copper makes little difference; or, the mint buys your scrap gold and converts it in-house, pocketing the difference. A mint has no reason to convert your gold to significantly higher value coins for you, that only loses them their economic and political power in the form of currency control.

            The only way it would work is if you specifically build a world where everyone else is incredibly stupid just to make yourself seem smart.

            • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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              8 hours ago

              The whole basis of that scheme was the different relative exchange rates in the muggle and wizard world. There are I think 17 silver sickles to 1 gold galleon, but in the muggle world gold is more like 50 times the value of silver. The plan was to take a galleon to the muggle world, melt it down and sell the gold, use the proceeds to buy silver, bring that silver back to the wizard world and have it minted into 50 sickles, and trade those sickles for about 3 galleons.

              Like many scenes in HPMOR the author is mostly just roasting Rowling for lazy world building. He didn’t have to build a world where everyone else was stupid, the point is that Rowling’s wizarding world already fulfilled that requirement.

              • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev
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                8 hours ago

                Exploiting the difference in value of a commodity between communities is a valid way to make a living, traders have existed for a very long time, though if there’s little effort required the values will quickly align with each other. Turning it into an infinite money glitch by having a mint convert your raw material into coins is nonsense.

                That’s all still assuming the coins are made of pure gold/silver for some reason. And assuming the mint is willing to just make money for you in spite what I’ve already said.

                Edit: And that’s all if you ignore the fact alchemy, conjuration, and transfiguration exist in that universe so the entire thing is moot anyway. The angle they should have taken is that physical currency makes no sense in a world where you can just summon more, but I suppose that’s harder to turn into “I’m so much smarter than the entire world”.

                • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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                  8 hours ago

                  I mean if you actually read it, basically every point you made except transfiguration is addressed in the conversation Harry has with a goblin at Gringott’s. And transfiguration is addressed later in the book, it’s actually a really crucial plot point. Long story short, no, you can’t just summon more without the philosopher’s stone, which is exceedingly rare.

                  The angle taken, that from currency to time turners the setting is poorly constructed, is valid. Incidentally, HPMOR Harry suffers due to his “I’m so much smarter than everyone” hubris multiple times throughout the story. Once the story really gets going, Yudkowsky doesn’t really shy away from pointing out when Harry’s absolutist rationalism comes across as childish, impractical, or straight up unethical.

          • Natanael@infosec.pub
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            10 hours ago

            That’s just arbitrage

            It works until others realize there’s an arbitrary opportunity and prices equalize

        • lemming@sh.itjust.works
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          16 hours ago

          It’s interesting. I only read a bit so far and it is definitely right sometimes, but I think it often misses the point. For example complaining that the magic system doesn’t make sense is silly, since the magic is obviously trying to appear the same as in the original books (where it makes much less sense) while creating an impression that there might be some rules behind it and it being unintuitive and opaque is the whole point, since the rules are hard to find, else they would be found long ago.

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
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        10 hours ago

        Possibly the only thing more annoying than Yudkowsky are the anonymous online people who think they figured him out. Many of them are in these threads.

        https://hpmor.com/ for anyone else with delusions of literary grandeur.

    • fullsquare@awful.systems
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      7 hours ago

      this is about exactly what you can expect from a man whose approach to science is take a phenomenon -> think about it really, really hard -> just know how it works and have an answer (without checking if it’s correct or not, he already thinks he figured it out and won’t change opinion ever even in the face of contrary evidence)

  • Cruxifux@feddit.nl
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    21 hours ago

    If you eat more plants and animals and less breads and sugars you do lose weight and feel better. I’m no science guy but that does work. People over complicate this shit.

    • Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      I no longer trust anyone who talks about “plants” or “animals”. It turns out, every single plant or animal is doing something different!

      If it copies like a pasta, it’s copypasta!

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 hours ago

        fiber is so strange because it’s function is basically just to pass through you, and yet it’s so vital for the digestive system to function properly

        everyone keeps saying “oh dietary supplements are just pissing away money” but fibre supplements are the one supplement most people would benefit hugely from taking, just get some psyllium husk or whatever and enter toilet nirvana

      • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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        12 hours ago

        fruit sugars are prolly fine

        Fruits in general aren’t as good for you as general thinking have them. The majority have been bred to be so exaggerated in their sugar content that, as an example, you can’t feed pet primates fruit very often or they will get diabetes (without getting into the horrors that keeping primates as pets encompasses). You can quickly get an idea of this by searching for ‘wild strawberries vs grocery strawberries.’

        The fibrous parts of fruits is good, the ‘nutritional’ aspects of them are decent, but the absolute black-hole-mass of sugar on the one side of the teeter-totter is a pretty big negative for them.

    • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 hours ago

      This has been my experience. I find nutritional science incredibly boring, I’ve tried many times to get excited about it, but I just can’t seem to find an ‘in’ with it to make it my 2-week special interest and learn the basics properly.

      At this point the bar is “if you can’t explain in one sentence, written, what meal I can make for cheap in less than 1-2 min of active effort and no more than 10 min total prep/cooking time with no skills, effort or culinary knowledge that will be tasty to give me dopamine for the day and feed me for the entire day, I’m not interested”.

      I just eat bacon, pork sausages, eggs, and throw in some kale, spinach & watercress. I’ve cut out all bread, sweets, snacks and alcohol. It’s probably not healthy but fuck it we all gotta go sometime. Right now though, feels great, I lost a ton of weight. Hard not to overdo it on the salt added to eggs but I keep a close eye on it.

      The only negative I’ve noticed it as I often get hit with random low blood sugar fainting like symptoms after my 2nd-3rd coffee, later I realized I basically was consuming no sugar at all, so now I gulp down 4 red bulls a day with my elvanse for breakfast and the problem went away. MH got way better too.

      For dinner I have some frozen pizza or something like that that I can make without any effort or time, but lately it’s way way way too much effort to cook/eat.

      Wish there was some “nutri-slop 3000” type magic pill that just gave me all nutrients I need for the day so I wouldn’t have to worry about this shit.

      This is all meant with no offense to nutritionists/scientists, way I see it, y’all doing god’s work. Literally. If that lazy mfer bothered existing or got off his ass we wouldn’t be cursed with this shit fr.

      • TJA!@sh.itjust.works
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        18 hours ago

        I mean, there are these “complete meal” drinks, specifically for people like you who don’t really want to think about their next meal

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        You calling it elvanse makes me suspect you have access to maultaschen. Bürger vegan maultaschen (Typ 1) have macronutrients in the proportion suggested by nutritionists; taste good raw, sautéed, or in soup; cost <€2,50; and keep very well. Other varieties are possibly similar, but I don’t know if they can be eaten raw or how they keep.

        Plus, they’re a good base for taking elvanse.