You like Lain, rats, and silly catposting?? Do you wanna be frens?

I see a lot of hate against the concept of doing one's own research on the internet and it really bothers me. The problem is not doing one's own research. The scientists that wrote this paper also did their own research. All scientists (should) do their own research. That's inherent to science and that's part of what got humanity this far. The problem is that some people lack the capabilities to properly assess information sources and draw correct conclusions from them. So these people end up with incorrect beliefs. Of course they could just "trust the experts" instead, but how are they supposed to know which experts to trust if they're not good at assessing sources of information? Finding those experts is in itself a task that requires you to do your own research.

TL;DR: I think this hate on "doing your own research" is unjustified. People believing nonsense is a problem that is inescapable and inherent to humanity.

This cat

When people want to enter a bus, especially a crowded one, it makes a lot more sense to wait for the people who want to get out of the bus to leave first.

This one is so baffling to me, it's really changed my view of how stupid some people really are. What do they even expect, that the other passengers magically disappear? It's really not an abstract problem if the other passengers are trying to leave right in front of you. Trying to enter a bus is also not a rare situation, so you'd expect people to understand this at least after the first few times. Unbelievable.

I'm kind of dissatisfied with the answers here. As soon as you talk about actually drawing a line in the real world, the distinction between rational and irrational numbers stops making sense. In other words, the distinction between rational and irrational numbers is a concept that describes numbers to an accuracy that is impossible to achieve in real life. So you cannot draw a line with a clearly irrational length, but neither can you draw a line with a clearly rational length. You can only define theoretical mathematical constructs which can then be classified as rational or irrational, if applicable.

More mathematically phrased: in real life, your line to which you assign the length L will always have an inaccuracy of size x>0. But for any real L, the interval (L-x;L+x) contains both an infinite number of rational and an infinite number of irrational numbers. Note that this is independent of how small the value of x is. This is why I said that the accuracy, at which the concept of rational and irrational numbers make sense, is impossible to achieve in real life.

So I think your confusion stems from mixing the lengths we assign to objects in the real world with the lengths we can accurately compute for mathematical objects that we have created in our minds using axioms and definitions.

Of which sugars:

Soijaks have gone too far

Users be like "I'm encountering mostly promotional articles in my RSS feed"

My brother in christ, you curated the feed

Who's the guy on the left?

Yeah, but if you wanna act out the contents of the book and sell it as a movie, you need to buy the rights.

This blog post summarizes the science nicely: https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2023/10/30/a-conversation-about-the-science-of-willpower/ TL;DR: You can train your willpower. It does act like a limited resource [Edit: Science is inconclusive on this claim]. But most importantly, it is strongly affected by your sleep, nutrition and stress level.

I found that mindfulness meditation was helpful for me. Practically, you can achieve an effect that is similar to having strengthened willpower by organizing your life in such a way that you don't encounter many temptations in the first place.

Definitely no. In addition to the downsides you mentioned, I feel like the redditor's desire for karma is what causes these hiveminds/echo chambers and cliché comments that are so typical of many subreddits.

Edit: Thank you so much for the gold kind stranger!

It's ok. Thank you for trying.

Thanks, I needed that post. I'm in a similar boat. I get addicted to this stuff (YT, lemmy, reddit etc.) easily, and I've found that a moderate use is just not possible for me in the long run. It can't really coexist in my life with leisure activities that require me to sustain my attention for longer, like reading, practicing an instrument, or even just sitting down and listening to a good album intently.

What helps me a bit is putting all kinds of hindrances in place:

• storing my phone in a drawer and only taking it out when I want to do something specific
• not having my router always running, but only turning it on when I want to use the wifi for something specific
• browser extensions to block certain sites
• using screen time limits in the Android settings
• rooting my phone and blocking addictive sites in my hosts file (unfortunately I only found out afterwards that subdomains (*) like m.youtube.com aren't blocked by blocking the main sites like youtube.com and now I can't add them to the blacklist without much effort)
• (similar solutions for my laptop)

But none of that has worked as much as I'd like. It's a constant struggle and I'm still looking for a better solution.

Doing interesting stuff has somehow in my mind turned into work.

That's the worst part. Scroll too much and that state becomes your new baseline. Now anything that is less captivating and effortless than that feels difficult.

(*) I'm not sure if subdomain is the correct term here. If anyone knows, please correct me.

What's the name of the painting?

He means that the stories and information posted there are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted there as a fact.

It doesn't feel like sexual harassment to them because it's directed towards a straight male. Change the words to "stable girl" and everyone would call it creepy instead of funny (as they should, because it is). Don't try to reason with these people, it will just needlessly make you angry.

This is the way. I stopped playing the originals after X/Y, but some ROM hacks and fan games are so much fun.

It's a "Büromöbel" (office furniture) company.

Is this not just a (mildly oversimplified) framing of what psychologists call ego depletion [1]? This appears to be a well-replicated finding. I don't see any reason to call it "wildly incorrect".

[1] The strength model of self-control. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-18261-013

Edit: After some more research, it looks like the science is inconclusive on ego depletion. So I would not call it "well-replicated", but also not "wildly incorrect".

Epic post

Well maybe we should 'hack' his limbs off

Good post

In that case it actually makes sense because the main goal is to make an artificial entity appear intelligent to the player. This is not the same as calling all ML algorithms/models AI.

Thanks :3

Thanks, I didn't know that was an option. But these easier ways of blocking can be reversed within seconds, right? I need something that is difficult to undo.

Totally relate to that. I love discovering new things and reading many different people's thoughts on a topic, but every platform based around scrolling on a feed is too addictive to me. If I use them too much I can already start to feel some cognitive abilities decline after a few days. The slow pace of lemmy is really nice.

You might also be interested in curating an RSS feed for yourself if you haven't already.

Too real

One of my favorite games of the last years, and also fun to watch someone else play.

Honest question: if a person living in the west in the 21st century thinks they should have the right to take people of a different race as their own personal slaves, do you think there is no basis to call this person immoral? The best we can do is say that this person is incompatible with the time and place they are in?

I use the app Inoreader for that. No idea if it's the best, just the first one I tried and I'm happy with it.

Then you just subscribe to the feeds you are interested in. Almost every blog or news site has an RSS feed. Just make sure you don't subscribe to any that make dozens of posts per day, or you'll end up overwhelmed. My personal favorite feeds are the top 10 daily hacker news and a few youtubers I like.