SatanicNotMessianic

Honestly, I think we have it a lot easier than the theists in that regard. If someone dings my car, I find that my dog has cancer, or I lose my job, I don’t have to address the problem of evil. I don’t need to figure out how to square the idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god with misfortune. I don’t need to wonder if I am being punished or tested, and I don’t have to worry about prayers that aren’t being answered.

There are multiple non-theistic philosophies and religions that offer a framework for understanding and coping with negative events. Neither Buddhism nor Taoism have an explicit dependency on anything supernatural, especially in the schools and forms most popular in the West. The general idea is that we need to be less attached to certain outcomes and that our suffering arises more from our wanting the world to be how it isn’t.

There’s also a large number of non-theistic schools in Western philosophy that have taken their own various approaches to questions ranging from the meaning of life and the meaning of suffering to how to identify and pursue the good. There’s multiple schools of existentialism, of course, but I would even think that writings on the nature of justice (eg John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Peter Singer), the nature of the ego and human experience (eg Thomas Metzinger), and even works of film and literature can help approach an understanding, which is itself perhaps the best coping mechanism.

The question is how it affects their numbers. When a company like Facebook misses growth (or, god forbid, actually shrinks) the market punishes them for it.

That said, Zuck is not Elon. I’m more confident FB has a plan and isn’t just shooting from the hip. They likely have a model for some shrinkage and decided on $14 because X% of users are expected to accept targeting, Y% will abandon the platform (or decrease engagement), and Z% will pay. I bet they picked a number that would make Z small but not non-existent.

Transitional form between a centaur and a 50centaur.

The 90s are nothing. I remember a flock of seagulls from the 80s that are still flying around.

Except this isn’t a criticism of the scientific position…

We absolutely do not expect our instruments and our math to be reliable in the future. Literally everything about science is done with the understanding that we’re still figuring things out and that our tools and models will change as we learn more, and that we will learn more as our tools and models change. The problem isn’t posting a philosophical meme, the problem is that it’s a bit ass-backward.

Evolutionary ecology and multilevel selection theory have undergone massive changes just in the course of my career. I remember when the news that mitochondria and chloroplasts had their evolutionary origin as independent and then symbiotic organisms really started to penetrate public awareness. I remember when evolutionary developmental biology started to pick up steam. There’s far too many books about all of those kinds of things and new papers being written every day. That’s not even touching on the world-view changing developments in physics, material sciences, social sciences, and so on. We update our models as we learn - that is what learning is.

Do we really need ‘taken’ in quotes? I’m pretty sure everyone knows by now that stealing data doesn’t actually remove the data, and that identity theft doesn’t mean you no longer have a name.

Ultimately we’re running into the limiting factor being uptake. It’s not going to be a factor of how quickly new techniques get turned out, but rather how quickly they can be effectively applied by the available communities. It’s going to start with the new tech being overhyped and less than savvy managers demanding that the new product has X as a feature, and VCs running at it because of FOMO, and then the gap between promise and capability will run straight into the fact that no one knows what they’re doing with the new tech, especially when it comes to integrating with existing offerings.

It’s going to cause a demand shock.

Edit: If this is actionable, I would be interested in participating in a class action suit against Philips for materially altering a product’s functionality after purchase. This is like buying a normal car and being told a year later it was given a remote update and now can only use Ford (tm) brand gasoline which costs $10/gallon.

If you do have an existing investment in Hue products, I suggest reaching out to them to request a refund because your purchase was made under a different policy, and this policy change is going to render your products useless without consent on your part. If they’re going to force a significant change that compromises the functionality of what might be hundreds of dollars worth of equipment without permitting recourse for legacy users, they should have to accept returns on what essentially is now a product you did not purchase and would not have purchased.

I’m talking about that big green egg kamado grill in the background. Those things are great and go for $1500-2000.

Say what you want about that guy, but I’d be all up in his grill.

That was the update.

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