BlackEgret's recent activity

  1. Comment on I Don’t Believe in Aliens Anymore - Humanity must learn to find meaning without relying on gods or extraterrestrials. in ~science

    BlackEgret
    Link Parent
    I don't mean to say things like this are impossible, but it's at least a somewhat reasonable explanation for the lack of any aliens. I'm personally not convinced we'll do it, but you're right that...

    I don't mean to say things like this are impossible, but it's at least a somewhat reasonable explanation for the lack of any aliens.

    I'm personally not convinced we'll do it, but you're right that it's good to stay optimistic and keep trying to achieve it!

    3 votes

  2. Comment on I cannot recommend The Newsroom enough. in ~tv

    BlackEgret
    Link Parent
    Agreed. The Newsroom starts out pretending it's going to denounce all the inconsistencies that some political discourse has, and starts out strong, but then it drops the facade and ends up pretty...

    Agreed. The Newsroom starts out pretending it's going to denounce all the inconsistencies that some political discourse has, and starts out strong, but then it drops the facade and ends up pretty mundane. Maybe it's particularly hard to write scripts for the show's premise, I don't know. It could have been a lot more interesting and delved into deeper intrigue.

    Now I want to watch The Wire again.

    3 votes

  3. Comment on I Don’t Believe in Aliens Anymore - Humanity must learn to find meaning without relying on gods or extraterrestrials. in ~science

    BlackEgret
    Link Parent
    The point of my comment wasn't precisely about living on planets vs. living in artificial environments, though I agree that we very well might be able to do quite a lot like you say, assuming...

    The point of my comment wasn't precisely about living on planets vs. living in artificial environments, though I agree that we very well might be able to do quite a lot like you say, assuming there aren't more complications that make propagation unwieldy.

    My point, though, is that beyond living around this solar system, how would we fare upholding organized life outside of it? The logistics and resources that would need to go into ensuring our survival over the millennia, assuming light-speed travel, might already be its own set of problems. We already have problems not destroying our own organized existence in the one place we know it can thrive, due to all the complications caused by human psychology that have been inherited from our evolution.

    Compound all these issues over the amount of time it would take to encounter another organized life form out in space, and I'm sure it's justification enough for why we haven't had any aliens come on down to Earth. But who knows!

    4 votes

  4. Comment on I Don’t Believe in Aliens Anymore - Humanity must learn to find meaning without relying on gods or extraterrestrials. in ~science

    BlackEgret
    Link
    I don't know if we need to be the first. There are fairly common explanations people throw around like what other intelligent forms of life have developed and died out due to the general...

    I don't know if we need to be the first. There are fairly common explanations people throw around like what other intelligent forms of life have developed and died out due to the general inhospitability of the universe, or because their intelligence allowed them to destroy themselves for whatever reason, or that it's difficult to actually travel the universe due to its size or the lack of faster-than-light travel.

    It's certainly possible that life under whatever form it best survives in has developed before, or in parallel, across the universe, at least by my understanding. I don't find it surprising in the slightest, though, that none of it has made its way to us. Think about the difficulty we humans have with space travel. Human life is based on processes inherited from basic life forms that struggled to adapt to temperate conditions. I have difficulty seeing us expand organized human life to inhospitable planets, or to find the resources necessary to terraform other planets. I certainly don't expect us to colonize or even meaningfully explore beyond this solar system before organized human life collapses.

    I'd like to have a reference for at least literally anything in my comment, but eh.

    6 votes

  5. Comment on The Most Powerful Publishers in the World Don’t Give a Damn in ~tech

    BlackEgret
    Link
    The Algorithm™ suggested I watch a Hank Green video (I thought he only did those history videos) that I found somewhat interesting and nuanced. He kind of talks about how these tech companies who...

    The Algorithm™ suggested I watch a Hank Green video (I thought he only did those history videos) that I found somewhat interesting and nuanced. He kind of talks about how these tech companies who actually act as publishers act somewhat as governments of social spaces, and have a great deal of power with respect to what we can read.

    8 votes

  6. Comment on How do you go from "knowing" a programming language to actually making useful software? in ~comp

    BlackEgret
    Link
    Programming useful software can come in all shapes in sizes. You might be working on a code base to run some statistical analysis on something out of a CSV file, for example. Depending on how you...

    Programming useful software can come in all shapes in sizes. You might be working on a code base to run some statistical analysis on something out of a CSV file, for example. Depending on how you decide to implement that analysis, e.g. in Java or in Python or whatever, unless you plan on coding everything from scratch, there are many useful aspects of your code that will be taken from libraries. You might learn how to use an API for some service, and you will learn to resolve (hopefully) all the technical issues you face along the way.

    With a few other people, during our spare time, we decided to work on a project with a certain goal in mind. I won't get into that. To actually realize that project meant applying lots of technologies, and those who didn't know how to use them simply had to learn to use them by reading documentation and trying things out. It ranged from server development to databases, mobile development, using version control, building libraries from source, web development, applying software design patterns and modeling, and on and on.

    A single project that demands that you understand the technologies necessary to develop it can be enough to make you a well-rounded software developer. A programming language is one of the tools you use to access those technologies, so if you know one, you should feel confident launching yourself into a project, even without entirely knowing how to reach the end point. Find out what the project necessitates, and whenever you run into a wall, learn how to use the preexisting technologies that enable you to get over it. It might seem impossible, but if you arm yourself with enough documentation, anything is possible! ;)

    (Of course, despite this, there are infinitely more technologies I don't know how to use than I actually do, but I know it's possible for me to learn to use them when necessary.)

    3 votes

  7. Comment on The dehumanization of human resources in ~talk

    BlackEgret
    Link Parent
    You're referring to the human resources department, whose job it is to manage the human resources of whatever organization they work for.

    You're referring to the human resources department, whose job it is to manage the human resources of whatever organization they work for.

  8. Comment on Censorship 2.0: Shadowy forces controlling online conversations in ~tech

    BlackEgret
    Link Parent
    I see where you're coming from. The way I see it, though, I wouldn't wanna make a distinction between fun and high-stakes. If I think a population of people believes X, that might very well subtly...

    I see where you're coming from. The way I see it, though, I wouldn't wanna make a distinction between fun and high-stakes. If I think a population of people believes X, that might very well subtly influence my own views on whatever that is. Ultimately that probably makes up the bulk (citation needed :P) of how our opinions are influenced online, rather than the high-stakes headlines.

    2 votes