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7 votes
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Why young men sound "less manly"
18 votes -
It's not just X. It's Y.
29 votes -
Swedish fisherman digging for worms stumbles upon cache of silver coins, beads, rings and pendants dating to the 12th century
36 votes -
An open letter to the University of California Regents requesting that standardized testing be re-introduced into admissions, >200 UC Professors signatures
40 votes -
CJ the X & Prof. C. Thi Nguyen | loosely-structured discussion on philosophy of Games, Metrics, Values
11 votes -
A Dialogue on Freedom
24 votes -
The high‑tech shipbuilding methods that helped Vikings dominate the seas
6 votes -
Spanish Civil War animated
6 votes -
"The reason I'm not an atheist is that I think the philosophical arguments against it are unanswerable"
34 votes -
Is British English actually better than American English?
I often hear that British English is better than American English, I've also heard people say that British English is "real english", but I'm not really sure why that is ? what makes it better in...
I often hear that British English is better than American English, I've also heard people say that British English is "real english", but I'm not really sure why that is ?
what makes it better in your opinion and what makes American English worse ?
personally, I'm indian and I find it much easier to understand American English.29 votes -
The VCs of BC (2015)
6 votes -
Everyone's got a proof when they explode
16 votes -
Swedish for "the", or: why I hate linguistics
8 votes -
What's the longest place name in continental Europe?
18 votes -
How do you preserve a 400 year old Swedish warship? Vasamuseet in Stockholm is tackling the continued challenge of maintaing the 17th century Vasa.
8 votes -
Iceland pushes Apple to add Icelandic language support
25 votes -
The 18th-century English fake news that helped spawn an American sea
10 votes -
Lost on the ice: The 1897 hydrogen balloon attempt to reach the North Pole
16 votes -
Kim Bowes on the economic lives of Rome's ninety percent
11 votes -
Enormous' cave hidden under medieval Pembroke castle could rewrite prehistory, researchers say
27 votes -
New search engine reveals if ancestors were in Nazi party
23 votes -
Why Portuguese is the most underestimated global language on Earth
19 votes -
Born into slavery, Adolf Ludvig Couschi Badin became part of the Swedish royal court and left a legacy of books and letters
9 votes -
Wit, unker, git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy
30 votes -
As an antidote to AI and online translation tools, a Cornell German professor gives her students a typewriter-only assignment once a semester
20 votes -
Over 200 years after being sunk by the British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson, one of Denmark's most famous warships has been discovered at the bottom of Copenhagen Harbor
15 votes -
Enjoying reading in the age of LLMs
I used to really value the art of essay writing. There seemed to be such a richness in the different ways people would construct arguments, structure those arguments, then deliver those arguments...
I used to really value the art of essay writing. There seemed to be such a richness in the different ways people would construct arguments, structure those arguments, then deliver those arguments stylistically, not just from the perspective of being persuaded as a reader but also from the perspective of seeing how a given writer thinks, relates to the living tradition of language, and understands the world conceptually. But it's basically lost most of its meaning to me in this age of LLMs. The reality is, LLMs are capable of writing texts that, if you gave them to a seasoned reader 5 years ago, they'd say it was well written and indicative of a truly thoughtful mind. Even if there currently exist certain tells with LLMs, those styles certainly existed in different ways in real human writing beforehand. Now, those perfectly reasonable set of styles are verboten and we have to dedicate half our deep focus to figuring out whether, or to what extent, an essay or article was written by AI. It's difficult to enjoy, let alone care, about essay writing and the writers behind them now.
I can still find value in books, though, because they were written in the past and I don't mind never reading any non-scientific book published after 2022 if it comes down to it.
23 votes -
[Steyr] AUG
13 votes -
Landslide: a ghost story
8 votes -
Tattooing in the American Civil War was a hedge against anonymous death
18 votes -
Why Scotland succeeded
21 votes -
Pope Leo calls universal healthcare a 'moral imperative'
56 votes -
Commonly misspelled words quiz
36 votes -
Erling Haaland donated a rare 16th-Century book of Viking sagas, worth £100,000, to be displayed in the library in the Norwegian town of Bryne, where he grew up
15 votes -
George Orwell’s opposition to totalitarianism was rooted in his support for freeing workers from poverty and exploitation
24 votes -
The Candlemakers' Petition by Frédéric Bastiat (1845)
13 votes -
The (illegal) nuclear reactor buried under Greenland
10 votes -
Determinism and Back To The Future
I've had a thought bouncing in my head today and I want to give it some air and let you folks at it to see where it takes on water. The theory is that there's a contradiction, or misalignment...
I've had a thought bouncing in my head today and I want to give it some air and let you folks at it to see where it takes on water.
The theory is that there's a contradiction, or misalignment maybe, between how most people feel about the philosophical concept of free will and how time travel and time loops are portrayed in media. Here's the premises I've landed on to arrive at that:
(1) The vast majority of people believe in some form of free will. (Fairly non contentious, I hope. A lot of resources back this up.)
(2) For free will to exist, if a person is repeatedly prompted to make some sort of decision under the exact same circumstances (time, place, people, etc) there must be a non-zero amount of times that they will arrive at a decision different from their initial one. For example... lets suppose you walk into the room and ask me what I want for dinner. I chew on some options for a moment then decide "chicken and rice". Then my memory is wiped and we repeat this over and over. After a few repeats of this I end up settling on a steak burrito instead. This is the only way free will could work imo because the opposite result, if given the same input you always arrive at the same output, is no different than determinism. Plus it implies, much like the time loop/travel media show, that from the start of the day we can know exactly where we will end up at the end if nothing is changed- which leaves no wiggle room for free will.
(3) The people in time travel / time loop media who are not your faithful protagonist or otherwise aware of the time based shenanigans going on always do the exact same thing every time (at least, in the ones I've seen). It's only the ones who are aware of how events have already unfolded who can make new decisions, everyone and everything else plays out the same.
Thus, virtually all media portray time travel/loops in a way that doesn't jive with how the vast majority of people perceive free will.
So, what do you think- Do you agree with the conclusion? Do you disagree on the definition of free will? Should I have gone with my alternate title? (12 Deterministic Monkeys starring Bruce Free Willis)
24 votes -
Mazed is a collection of the traditional tales of Cornwall, each with a map showing the tale's location
16 votes -
Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs
24 votes -
How far back in time can you understand English?
67 votes -
Stone Age boy in Sweden was buried in deerskin and a woodpecker headdress, archaeologists discover
11 votes -
'Exceptionally rare' Roman lead blocks found on farmland in Wales
20 votes -
Here's to the polypropylene makers
13 votes -
First contact with America
5 votes -
17th century Swedish Navy shipwreck buried underwater in central Stockholm for 400 years has suddenly become visible due to unusually low Baltic Sea levels
14 votes -
The complicated origin of the expression ‘peanut gallery’
12 votes -
Special preschools are helping the Sámi people in Finland to bring their almost-lost language back from the brink of extinction
11 votes -
Those who can, teach history
8 votes