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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • abc and xyz make sense because they lie on opposite ends of the alphabet, so if you need more variables for either sets, there’s a lot more room to maneuver. If you’re looking for the history of these variables in the context of Cartesian coordinates, I’d start with looking at Descartes’ work. This whole system originated from him, so if he used xyz, then that must be where it came from.

    I’ve seen p and q used in various contexts. For example, they could be probability distributions (e.g. KL(p|q)), they could be two points. In these scenarios, we just use p because it’s the first letter of whatever they represent, and q comes after while looking similar so it suggests that they’re the same type of mathematical object.

    For indexing, it’s what we commonly use just because we call it an index. You’re not counting or tallying things. It’s a reference to a location in memory. But if you are counting, then c makes perfect sense and I’ve definitely used it in that context. I’ve also used t for indexing if that index represents time. But if there’s no other meaning associated with it, then it’s just an index, hence i.



  • It’s not that warm flat sodas appeal to me, but rather that carbonated drinks are painful to drink too quickly. If I have a paper straw, it’s also going to be accompanied by a meal, which takes time to eat. Also, if I’m getting a more interesting drink like a smoothie, slush, boba, etc, then I usually get something fairly large to enjoy over a long period of time.



  • I don’t think the example you give is a good one. Consent is always important. You don’t slap a dude’s ass without knowing ahead of time that they’re okay with it.

    But that aside, there are differences for sure, and I think the most important one is in starting and ending interactions. If you’re a man interacting a woman, you need to be aware of the safety concerns from the woman’s perspective. In almost all interactions, a man can easily leave with no concern for their safety, but it’s not so simple for women, so you’d want to pay closer attention to any signs of discomfort they’re giving off and end the interaction when appropriate, or not starting one if they’re giving “don’t approach me” vibes.






  • I can see the appeal. I’ve just had bad experiences with devices that use digital controls, and you necessarily need digital controls if you’re going to automate these things. Everything breaks eventually, but simpler devices can usually be easily fixed whereas anything that relies on specialized circuit boards are outside of my wheelhouse. I would be much more comfortable with owning one of these if they released information on how these circuits worked so that replacements can be made even if the company disappears.



  • This whole discussion you see above is part of the process of repeating a study. You can’t just do exactly what the previous study did and expect all the flaws to magically disappear. You need to first uncover the flaws, and more eyes and collaboration means a higher likelihood that the flaws get found, hence the importance of these discussions. Then you redesign the experiment to fix those flaws, and then you can run it again.