engineerguy (Bill Hammack) is a great channel where Bill explains all kinds of different things.

These are so cool! Do you have a link to buy?

Edit: Found them! These are crimpless solder sleeves. Crimpless Solder Sleeve Heat Shrink Variety Kit - 90 Piece

Print this out for him: https://xkcd.com/627/

Everyone should learn the basics of troubleshooting!

When trying to resolve a problem it’s really important to keep as many variables under control as possible so that you can find the root cause and fix it.

I see lots of people who try a bunch of things without isolating the issue first but can’t figure out what is wrong. Then because they messed with it so much it’s almost impossible to figure out.

This is important for car maintenance, home maintenance, electronics, computers. Just about everything that can break or stop working right in your life.

Relevant username?

Keith David makes a great Vice President too: https://saintsrow.fandom.com/wiki/Keith_David

It is undefined because the inverse of division is multiplication. If you multiply by zero, every answer is zero. If you try to invert that operation you can’t know which number was multiplied by zero to get zero because multiplying by zero doesn’t produce a unique answer for each operation.

Additionally, if you take the limit of 1/x as x approaches zero from the positive side the result approaches positive infinity. If you take the limit from the negative side it approaches negative infinity.

An interesting thing to think about is whether multiplication by zero really makes much sense in the concrete world. You can’t really have zero groups of something or some number of groups of zero. Zero groups of anything is still nothing. We can think of that abstractly once we have the abstract concept of numbers, but in the real world that idea is nonsense.

What is consciousness in this context though? What do you mean by “a bit of?” Are atoms only partially experiencing being atoms?

I don’t think this is true. Most philosophers agree to define consciousness as what it is like to be something, or the act of experiencing.

If you experience things, you are conscious.

Can you provide a panpsychist definition of consciousness? I had a hard time finding an actual definition in searching. I understand the idea that panpsychists believe that mind is a fundamental part of reality, but haven’t seen a solid definition of consciousness in that context.

Also are you on the Panexperientialism or Pancognitivism bandwagon? Or maybe both?

Edit: From plato.stanford.edu I found this, but it is attributed to analytic philosophy:

“something is conscious just in case there is something that it’s like to be it; that is to say, if it has some kind of experience, no matter how basic.”

This is the hottest question in theory of mind right now thanks to David Chalmers. It’s called the Hard Problem of Consciousness and it’s about connecting the reductionist view of the brain’s function with the first-person experience of consciousness.

I think that any explanation of consciousness completely from “the outside” will result in not being able to quantify the experience part of it. Any explanation completely from “the inside” will eventually run into the same issues as empiricism where it will be limited by subjectivity. I think that fundamentally we can’t rigorously combine these two views because they aren’t compatible. The starting points for each view carry different base assumptions.

Both may be true from within their perspectives but combining them is basically just stating that a subjective experience “maps” to a physical function. There isn’t any explanatory usefulness of mapping. It doesn’t explain why the subjective experience is there just that it happens when these other physical things happen. I’m not sure we’ll find an answer that truly resolves the hard problem, but we’re still trying.

I’m a personal fan of Daniel Dennett’s multiple drafts theory of consciousness. The biggest problem of defining consciousness is that the deeper you look into where it comes from the definitions we commonly use to describe consciousness fall apart.

It’s a collaborative effort between different parts of your brain and the environment. A lot of it we aren’t even aware of. At the same time we often generate explanations for our behavior after the fact so our experience of consciousness tends to be mostly a justification mechanism, not necessarily primarily a control mechanism.

For me Tunic perfectly captured that sense of wider and magic that I felt as a kid experiencing adventure games for the first time. Hyper Light Drifter and Outer Wilds gave me a bit of that as well. I highly recommend all three if you are looking for a similar experience.

Wholeheartedly second Chernobyl. It’s an amazing show.

It shows the party dynamics of the decision making process for disaster response and the infighting that results really well. Not too much everyday life stuff but there is a bit.

Why would we limit our hedging to non-world destroying scenarios? It seems we’re already on track for a mass extinction event anyway. The reason you hedge is exactly for the worst case.

Transmission losses prevent most of what you are suggesting. Across a continent, even with high voltage low loss power lines, you lose 35% to resistance. This doesn’t count the added loss from stepping down the voltage at various substations and transformers along the way. You can expect another 8-15% more reduction from that.

You’re suggesting that the amount of excess power from one side of the country could be enough to power the other side (while still meeting the demands locally) with 40-55% losses. Come on.

Not a strawman when you respond to “sometimes it’s night and solar doesn’t work” with “it’s daytime somewhere”. The natural assumption is that your intention was that day side power could be used on the night side.

Do you have anything to back up your idea that the US grid can or does actually supply power across the entire nation?

Why would anyone waste money on the worse option?

Why do people have diverse stock portfolios?

Hedging and diversification is important. Unforseen consequences and unknown future conditions can screw up your long term plans for 100% renewables. The more diverse our energy portfolio is, the unknowns become easier to weather.

That is the answer for why we build and research something that is more expensive and may divert resources away from better options. To argue that there is literally no place for energy development other than purely renewable is a difficult position to defend.

Your sandwich analogy is lacking because we’re talking about far future consequences of our decision. Maybe you plan to eat the sandwich a week from today. Which do you buy? You don’t have enough information to determine which will be better in a week. Do you pick the chain store’s because it’s full of preservatives? Do you decide to buy both in case one of them gets moldy just to make sure you have anything to eat?

The consequences of developing or not developing potential viable solutions to energy requirements can be far reaching. Completely dismissing alternative options is just not rational.

If you used sources to make your argument it’s not so hard to add them to your comment. Makes it just that much harder for people to call you out like what just happened.

Why not?