While the title of this post might as well be a thesaurus entry, my purpose here is to investigate the differences between these concepts and how they operate in different contexts. Mathematical equality The reader is almost certainly very familiar with the equals sign or = used in math. Many of us first encounter it…
Category: Society
I like nonsense the best
I have often said that my favorite way to sort objects is alphabetically by color name. For example, if your objects are colored red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, then you would put the blue one first, followed by green, then purple, red, and finally yellow. But why? Partly for humor. I think it’s funny…
Article share: ‘Bun in the oven’ is an ancient pregnancy metaphor. This historian says it has to go
October 31, 2023 NPR article by Selena Simmons-Duffin It’s a kind of cutesy little way of saying that someone is pregnant to say they have “a bun in the oven.” That metaphor is really old – it first appears in texts by Hippocrates about 2,000 years ago to describe the process of gestation. But if…
“Humility and a willingness to be corrected”
This phrase comes from a video by Erica “Gutsick Gibbon” on YouTube. In the video, she describes how important it is for scholars especially to put what they think the know out there for criticism because it’s the only way to learn and get better. On my About the Author page, I have the following…
Who is Neuro-sama?
Neuro-sama (aka Neuro Sama or Neurosama) is a female-presenting AI vtuber (virtual YouTuber) created by Vedal987. In late December 2022, Neuro debuted on Twitch playing the rhythm game osu! and interacting with the live chat using text-to-speech and an anime girl avatar. The avatar was one that was included with the Live2D software used to…
The decline and fall of young earth creationism
For most of human history, the age of the earth was unknown. Many believed it was created at some point in the past by supernatural forces, and others hypothesized that the earth always existed. Within the Abrahamic tradition, genealogical lists have been used to trace back to Adam and the date of creation as described…
Stories in ludology & narratology (part 1)
Ludology and narratology are the two sides of the coin that is the study of games (in the non-mathematical sense). Ludology is the study of game mechanics and rules, and narratology is the study of story and setting. Ludology is closer to math, while narratology is closer to literary analysis. Narratology of games is particularly…
Being misgendered as a cis person
I am a white cisgender heterosexual man. Between the ages of around 12 to 15 years old, I grew out my hair; by the time I cut it, it was past my shoulders. During this time I was also skinny and had no facial hair. There were a few times when I was misgendered by…
“AI ‘art’ is bad” is a bad argument
There are many good reasons to oppose AI generated images being disseminated or put forward as art. Nevertheless, one argument I see with surprising frequency is that the images generated by AI look bad. The biggest reason I think this is a bad argument is because it’s contingent upon current technological limitations. AI image generation…
The paradox of incentive
If something is incentivized too strongly, it becomes disincentivized. Extrinsic motivation has important social utility. It can both drive prosocial behavior and inhibit antisocial behavior. In many cases, extrinsic rewards are natural. Praise is a natural response to someone doing something we want them to do, for example, as is expressing anger towards someone for…
thoughts on mind 