Idiocracyâ
The true origin story.
2 Likes
A perfect way to end todayâs ARG round
3 Likes
Did he just murder-knife an interdimensionnal being?
2 Likes
Possibly. I was too busy pretending to be paper Mario.
Worth reading Flatland, Iâve got a copy somewhere. Itâs quite short and a mildly amusing satire of the British class system, on top of the mathematical stuff.
2 Likes
I have Flatland as an ebook now. 
Itâs funny that someone in 18xx already thought about abstract maths like that but had to hide it in fiction.
I remember reading about Flatland in Saganâs Cosmos and found it very well explained, it impressed me so much that I even told a physics teacher about it in the break (he was mega uninterested and shrugged me off).
When I then read about Dark Matter, I thought, oh, maybe thatâs just the matter of the 4D beings ânextâ to us, like our 3D mass is ânextâ to 2D Flatland matter. Alas that would be pretty hard for us to measure or prove.
2 Likes
I donât recall who shared this
The Universe is a hologram: Why Stephen Hawking's boldest theory could be right | BBC Science Focus Magazine but that seems to be a hip topic right now. I definitely like the scifi aspects of it.
If some being was able to switch off the universe, whatcha gunna do about it? Write in the Moon dust in big letters âexcuse us, could you please not?â 
Are there any suggestions at all? Iâm quite indifferent to a âproblemâ of that scale.
It seems to be quite common that humans have a sudden paranoid thought (doesnât mean full-on long-term clinical), I had friends tell me the clocks were always 12:34 or the street lamps blinked at them etc., but they forgot about that strange feeling soon. If youâre a scientist in such a mood and using sycophantic LLMs, then that could add up to a paranoia of being in a simulation or being watched or switched off. :-/
(I think the extremes of this âvariable settingâ in the human brain range from delusions (âevery little thing is a deep message to me!!â) down to repeating-the-same-mistakes (âI donât notice anything wrong!!â). Usually, this variable is configured in the middle, we overinterpret things a bit here and repeat mistakes a bit there, and then we notice it and change our behaviour.)
PS: When I read articles about quantum theory or string theory or any such cosmology, I make a test where I imagine that the author is an Australian aborigine. Would that make me believe it more or less? Would I understand the theory better or worse if I replaced its name by dreamtime? I openly admit I donât understand cosmological theories.
3 Likes
I think that one problem for the lay person when interpreting cosmological theories and quantum theory (for example) is that they are usually based on what the maths say, or allow. That is often then turned into imprecise language and it comes across as expostulating.
Plus thereâs the usual media trick of taking an answer to a question as a theory.
âAre we living in a simulationâ
âThereâs nothing ruling it out, but I donât think itâs likelyâ
âPHYCIST SAYS WE COULD BE LUVING IN A SIMULATIONâ
(I say usually as there are some that are straight up philosophical what ifs - and people outside the field donât always know which is which).
3 Likes
When faced with this kind of claim, I fall back on good old Bertrand Russell âExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidenceâ. Douglas Adams had his characters say they might consider the existence of God if someone gave them his phone number. To convince me of some grand puppetmaster waiting to pull the switch, youâll have to give me a lot more than phone numbers.
Just because there are things we donât know, doesnât mean you can fill the void with any nonsense mumbo-jumbo you like. Religions have been doing that for thousands of years. Give me incontrovertible proof.
5 Likes
3 Likes
2 Likes
Labotomy was always the way to go
2 Likes
2 Likes
My brain keeps fluffing up the letters and I keep reading it as âDr Nip Lipsmanâ
2 Likes
1 Like