The "it is a simulation" idea is essentially religion for techno-freaks. All it does is defer or not answer the question "who made/runs the simulation?". As such, its value is at the same level of entirely conventional religion, i.e. none or negative.

Indeed. We should. In particular, we should face that humanity is making a mess of things and work on fixing that.

Yes to the first part, "it depends" to the second part. In particular, you can design a simulation so that being in a simulation _can_ be detected from the inside, just not with absolute certainty. Compare, e.g. how malware can detect running virtualized for some ideas.

And conversely, any non-secular perspective includes made-up crap, i.e. lies. Your point?

What it says is that should this be a simulation, it cannot be modelled theoretically from the inside. That is neither surprising, not particularly difficult to prove. It essentially is something that in most cases will follow from incompleteness. My expectation is that unless specifically designed to allow so, no simulation can be modelled fully by theory done on the inside.

Obviously, this result does neither prove not disprove that we are in a simulation.

"I am going to pretend I didn't understand how idioms work, nor common English vernacular so I can bitch about musk."

CS Lewis: "Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper... ...Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black."

I like that! We should start calling them that...

It's for "paid subscribers" only, like all of the 404 Media stuff that gets spammed here.

It's possible that the summary is missing an important qualification; but wouldn't it only be possible, even in principle, to conclude that something could or couldn't be a simulation on a specific type of computer rather than in general?

If, say, you were able to demonstrate that you had an actual RNG, not a pseudorandom number generator, you'd know that it isn't being simulated on a turing machine; because those do determinism only. However, in practice, we build computers with what we think are RNGs all the time; because connecting the deterministic finite state machine to a peripheral that's full of thermal noise or radioisotopes or lava lamps or whatever is a totally doable design decision. Were someone in one of our simulations to conclude that non-deterministic behavior falsified the simulation theory they'd simply be wrong; because (it appears) that the reality in which we construct our computers is a little stingy when it comes to things like infinite state storage; but reasonably helpful on high quality entropy.

In the case of this 'non-algorithmic understanding'; it sounds like you may be successfully demonstrating that the simulation would only be viable on a somewhat more exotic machine; but basically just one that has a lookup table attached that it can use to check whether an unprovable statement is true or not. I would not want to be the one stuck building such a device; but it doesn't sound any more exotic than quite a few of the various 'oracle machines' that are supposed, for purposes of theorizing about computability and complexity, to have a black box capable of solving certain classes of problem.

We even interact with a much humbler example of an analogous thing more or less all the time: the reason we bother with storage devices is that there's no way to know what a given series of bits "should" be. Absolutely trivial(assuming sufficient time and RAM) to go through all possibilities for what it might be; but no way to decide between the possibilities. So we suck it up and plug in our flash drive; then copy off the cat picture that we actually want. Essentially a block device is an oracle that answers the otherwise algorithmically impossible question of "what is the state of those n bits?".

I don't say this out of any particular affinity for, or belief in, 'simulationism'; and further acknowledge that the authors may have made a meaningful(but rather narrower) statement by formalizing certain requirements for what a simulator would be required to be capable of; I'm just unclear on how you could make the claim to have disproved simulation, in general, unless you managed to come up with something that could not be implemented as an oracle even in principle, which it doesn't sound like they have.

It does seem to at least suggest the possibility of excluding 'trivial' nesting of simulations: someone simulating us would appear to need hardware that we would not be able to implement under the rules we are provided; just as someone in a deterministic simulation wouldn't be able to implement an RNG, which we at least appear to be able to do(at least, if they are PRNGs, they hide their state somewhere very cryptic); so if there is anyone out there who thinks that it's totally possible that, like, the universe is just big 486s all the way down, man, it would appear that they are on thin ice theoretically, with at least some details suggesting that the simulator need be fundamentally more capable, rather than just bigger, than a system that can be implemented within the simulation; but my impression is that any serious consideration of trivially nested simulations had foundered purely on the size problem among all but the densest rocko's baselisk bros already.

I'm a little unclear on what anyone thought this elaboration was getting them; unless it was purely pessimism about the existence of any sort of untapped channel where cute but relatively crude steganography wouldn't be necessary or could be better-handled by any of the myriad excuses to send bits of encrypted information(altering the agreed-upon portions of encrypted JWTs returned by some auth endpoint or the like).

There's the very specific case of 'warrant canaries', for which there's some US case law around compelled speech vs. compelled nondisclosure that might given them better constitutional coverage vs. just ignoring gag orders; but even that is a matter of some uncertainty; and this sounds like it's both more expansive in terms of what jurisdictions could take a dim view of it and much more overt in just being an obfuscated disclosure.

Clearly if the obfuscation keeps you from getting caught that can work; but as a legal strategy this seems to be a straightforward "just flout the order" that would be relatively simple for any peevish feds to prosecute accordingly; quite possibly even providing a few extras to throw in because doing financial transfers to facilitate crime sometimes counts as an additional issue.

I just don't get how Google was found liable and Apple was not. Google had at least alternate store (Amazon) while Apple has had none. Google allowed sideloading so there was (and still is) a way to load apps not in the store while Apple doesn't allow sideloading. You can say Google suppressed the development of alternative app stores, but Apple never even had to suppress because there was simply no way to get them on the device.

Easy, you're looking at it wrong.

The market is not Apple vs. Google. it's Apple vs. Samsung, Nothing, Oppo, OnePlus, Nokia, Motorola, etc...

The Apple App Store only runs on Apple phones. Likewise, Apple phones only run Apple's OS.

Google provides Android OS to hardware manufacturers like Samsung, etc. Google also licenses things like the Play Store to those manufacturers under a different agreement.

For Apple, it's like buying a Tesla and wanting it with a V8. As Tesla makes the whole vehicle, they are allowed to offer just what they choose to offer.

For Google, they're selling effectively a crate motor to anyone who wants to use it. (Most manufacturers do this - you can get a Chevy big block motor and stick it in your Ford, if you wanted). But they then offer the transmission that goes with the motor with a different agreement - if you want the transmission you must agree to have things done a certain way in your car.

That's the key difference. Apple makes iOS for their phones, and everything on iOS is keyed to their hardware. You cannot get the App Store on a non-Apple phone. You cannot get iOS on a non-Apple phone. If you wanted a phone with a folding screen running iOS, you can't, because Apple doesn't make one (yet).

it's what makes the EU DMA a bit odd on Apple, since they're basically demanding the equivalent of Tesla to offer a V8 option if people want it.

Or perhaps folks become obese enough to get diabetes, which causes them to decide to get on the GLP-1 and lose the weight, but kidney function does not return.

Insulin is produced by the pancreas. Type 2 diabetes is caused by a general insensitivity to insulin by the cells - think of it as a producer and consumer. Type 1 is where your pancreas fails to produce insulin, type 2 is where your cells fail to absorb insulin.

GLP-1 can't really solve your cells being desensitized to insulin.

Anyhow perhaps the other solution is food is so expensive that people are eating less? And fast food is so freaking expensive that you're not indulging on Big Macs so you're eating cheaper foods and less of them. Eating less is one of the biggest ways to lose weight.

Mercury amalgams are generally safe, but making them does involve handling mercury and spills have happened. And no doubt the tools and such may simply be washed down the drain. It's why most dentists these days don't offer amalgams - they use plastic resins which also have the advantage that they don't stick out and match the color of the tooth.

Alas, most dental insurance only pay for the amalgams. And dentists prefer the composite because it's easier and safer on everyone so they don't even offer amalgams.

You can get routers that run OpenWRT out of the box. GL.inet uses OpenWRT as their base router OS. They have wonderful travel routers but also make regular home routers.

And they support WiFi 7 as well.

They even list which version of OpenWRT are used on their routers.
https://www.gl-inet.com/suppor...

(And their stuff is easily available on Amazon)

This is a good example of why no-fault divorce is terrible idea for society. It is expensive and wasteful. Getting divorced is generally the WRONG decision, unless there is actual abuse or infidelity, or criminal activity of some kind.

No fault divorce is what lets one partner (usually female) escape their abusive spouse (usually male). Before no-fault divorce, women generally couldn't get a divorce because they'd need permission from the man in order to do so, and if you're escaping abuse, the chances of that happening are basically nil.