In that case, ok I guess?

To be clear, your post reads like a legitimate question, especially considering the community you’ve posted to. I appreciate a good shitpost, but I tend to interpret questions on asklemmy and nostupidquestions as serious.

I love ASOIAF, and honestly think GRRM is one of the (if not the) greatest fantasy writers of all time. He owes us nothing. He has created this fantastic universe, and a fantastic story. If anyone wants him to finish his life’s work, his epos, it’s him.

This kind of mentality that he somehow owes you to finish this story, and isn’t doing it because he “can’t be assed” is just so egocentric I don’t have words to describe it. Yes, I want him to finish it, probably just as much or more than you do. I also recognise that the man owes me nothing at all. He’s already given most of his life to this, and I’m enormously thankful for the universe, stories, and characters he’s already given us.

Based on how the question is phrased, it can be very open to interpretation.

I’ve thought all kinds of sick thoughts along the lines of “I could push this person in front of the arriving metro”, or “I’m holding a kitchen knife, if I were to stab the other person in the kitchen there’s nothing they could do about it”. When I was in the army, and we were at the shooting range, I could get thoughts about how easy it would be to shoot a whole load of people. Of course, I never consider doing those things. I’m talking about people I would lay down my life to protect, and I still get these thoughts.

I was very relieved when I read somewhere that this is fairly normal, and some researchers ascribed it to a protection mechanism: Their theory (which they provided some evidence for), was that be evoking these thoughts, your brain makes you more aware of acute potential dangers, so that you can act more carefully to avoid them. Basically, by becoming conscious that you could push/stab/shoot someone, you handle your movement/knife/firearm more carefully to avoid doing so by accident.

So: Have I thought about shooting someone? Plenty of times. Have I considered shooting someone? Never.

There’s a plethora of possibilities here, and as you say, they could be very “resource steered”. On a planet with absolutely massive reserves of easily available iron or aluminium, but basically no calcium oxide, reinforced concrete may never have been invented. Sure, based on the composition of the known universe, that’s highly unlikely, but it’s far from impossible.

I think we tend to forget how our society and technology is shaped by the materials available to us. A planet with a significantly different composition could quickly end up with drastically different technology. Regarding combustion engines: If their atmosphere has significantly less oxygen than ours, they would be so inefficient that they were abandoned early, while if their atmosphere has very high oxygen content the fuels could be regarded as too unsafe to work with, also leading to early abandonment.

If their crust, air, or water has significant acid content, they may never have gotten far with metal working (because everything just corrodes) and developed highly advanced polymers, ceramics, and glasses instead.

The list goes on and on…

This is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about. I’m sorry for the crap you experienced, and I think it’s good of you to be able to recognise the naive and/or positively loaded presuppositions people have for what they are. Honestly, I think it’s way too common that people will interpret others in the worst possible way, and see slights where none was intended. It looks like you’ve been able to do the opposite, and interpret others in the best possible way, and I think that makes the world a far better place!

First of all, to be perfectly clear, I have no intention of defending this person. As far as I can tell from your description, they’re probably a raging racist.

Regardless, I think the discussion around where the line between stupidity and racism goes is an interesting one. In my mind, racism requires malice: It requires that you actually see some group as less worth than others, or otherwise dislike or hate them. The counter-example (which I’ve actually met in the wild once) is a person that genuinely believes that some group is less adept in some way, but that still argues that they have the same inherent worth as others.

To put it bluntly, it’s not controversial to say that some people are smarter/taller/stronger/faster etc. than others, while still acknowledging that all human life has the same inherent value. Does it make someone a racist if they hold that stance, combined with a belief that <insert group> is less adept at <insert skill/property>? I would argue not, because (as previously stated) in my mind racism implies that you believe some people are inherently worth more than others, and that belief is not really tied to any measurable property. Basically, I think a true racist uses “they don’t have a soul/ are less intelligent / etc.” as a post-hoc justification for a hatred they already hold.

On one hand, I think what makes it so deeply racist is how genuine it is. It doesn’t sound like he’s saying it with an explicit intention to hurt, but just as a “matter of fact” that he thinks this.

On the other hand, that could also be a bit redeeming: If he honestly believes what he said (I can’t even make myself repeat it), but doesn’t hate black people for it, is he then truly racist or just deeply misinformed? To be fair, there’s a decent overlap between the two. I’m arguing from a “don’t attribute to malice what can accurately be explained by stupidity” standpoint.

This really makes me wonder what would make a black person want to join the Mormon church. Like… these people had to be pressured for decades into accepting that you even have a soul… and you what to join them?

While I get the joke, I feel obliged to point out that the military is one of the very few places this could potentially makes sense (not saying it does in this case): You can basically decide that the warehouse is responsible for holding emergency stock, not ordering materiel that is produced on-demand for daily use. Essentially, if it’s produced on-demand, why would you want to go via to warehouse to get it? There are plenty of reasons you could want that of course, but if we ignore those, then the rationale can make sense.

That’s why it shouldn’t be viewed as ignorant to ask questions that put a different spin on the problem, that potentially no one has asked yet. And why “this is the best explanation that we have at this time” is no reason to shut down conversation/speculation about it.

I don’t view you as ignorant, and it hasn’t been my intention to shut down the conversation. If that was your impression, I apologise. I was very honestly just trying to give my own best interpretation of what the common consensus is, and why it is the way it is. Asking questions is an unequivocally good thing, and I enjoy trying to answer them to the best of my (meagre) ability: It helps me gain new perspective.

How does anybody presume that the universe isn’t vastly bigger than what we’ve observed of it to date?

I’m honestly not quite sure, but I think it’s broadly accepted that the entire universe is far larger than the observable universe. From a more philosophical stance one could ask if anything outside the observable universe should really be considered part of “our universe” since, as far as we know, it is unreachable even for light (hence, unobservable).

As for estimating the size of the (entire) universe, I think they do that indirectly by estimating the age based on observing the cosmic microwave background, and then estimating the size based on the age and rate of inflation.

Of course, as with anything in natural science, everything is based on imperfect models that (I personally believe) will never more than asymptotically approach the true underlying reality. Thus, there’s always a possibility that anything we haven’t explicitly verified empirically will turn out to be completely wrong.

Someone once asked me how I would react if the second law of thermodynamics was proven to be wrong (I’m a theoretical chemist), and I responded that I see the second law as an extremely good model that’s been shown capable of representing a truckload (put mildly) of things accurately. A single counter-example doesn’t mean it suddenly becomes inapplicable to all the things we use it for today. The same things apply to Newton’s laws, and a bunch of other models that already have been proven wrong. The point is: I see no reason at all to believe our current astronomical models are the “actual truth”, but I do think they’re good models for the things that we’ve actually verified that they work for.

If “every point in the universe originated from the exact same point” then that origin point is somewhere in the center of the universe

This is where I’m disagreeing. Since space itself is expanding, every point “originated” where it currently sits, and has “expanded in place” so to speak. You can’t really imagine this as an expanding bubble (the balloon analogy was bad here), since a bubble necessarily expands into existing space. In our case, the bubble itself is the space.

tracing the trajectories of every point backwards should intersect somewhere very close to that point.

That’s where you get a problem. Space is expanding, so if you pick an arbitrary point in space, you’ll observe that the universe appears to be expanding out from that point. No matter where you are, and what direction you look, you will see that everything is moving away from you. Thus, if you reverse that process to “trace it backwards”, then no matter where you stand, you’ll see everything contracting towards you, and conclude that you are at the centre. For reference, Hubble agrees with this interpretation.

Saying “sometimes physics is mindboggling” in order to rationalize invalid leaps is not a strong argument.

I’m not trying to make any bombastic claims and hand-wave them away with “physics is hard”. I’m trying to give an accurate recollection of the current consensus based on my own understanding of it (which is rudimentary at best).

Honestly, if the concept of time breaks down when you look at t=0, then that only tells me that the idea of t=0 itself is invalid and needs to be abandoned.

It breaks down within our current models. You can of course always ask the question of “what happened before X”, and the answer today is that our current models can take us more or less arbitrarily close to a singularity (t=0), but not all the way there. There are several theories out there regarding what the “initial state” was.

Time didn’t just magically start at some random point before which time didn’t exist. And space didn’t just magically expand into 3 dimensions before which there was only 0. (…)

I’m not really saying it did. I’m saying that, as far as I know, we have no better model or understanding than that if we extrapolate to t=0, we get a singularity (0 D), that for some unknown reason “magically” started expanding into the 4 D space-time we inhabit today. The fact that this process violates pretty much every known law of nature really just means there’s something here we don’t understand yet. I believe it’s pretty well established that our current models more or less completely break down at around the Planck time (see the “in cosmology” section).

By the nature of the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe, everywhere is at the origin. That is, if we believe that the universe started out as a singularity, and that the expansion of space itself is what causes that singularity to grow, then every point in the universe originated from the exact same point, and that nothing has “moved”, in the sense that the point itself is expanding. Thus, every place is at the “origin”.

To use the balloon analogy: Draw a small dot on the balloon, that dot is the entire universe as a singularity. Now, inflate the balloon so the dot grows, and try to determine the “origin” of the dot. Of course, you could point to the centre of the dot, but I would argue that if the initial dot is infinitely small (a singularity) then every point on the expanded dot in fact originates from the exact same point.

This does cause a bit of a headache because we’re arguing that a zero-dimensional thing suddenly became 3-dimensional. I’m honestly not sure how astrophysicists reconcile that, but I seem to remember reading that they boil down to saying “we know what happened <some extremely short time> after the Big Bang, but we don’t really know anything about what happened at t=0” per my understanding, even the concept of time breaks down when you go to t=0, so it becomes impossible to get to t = 0 + h.

The right to be a pacifist is upheld by the people willing to use violence to uphold it.

Pacifism, in its most extreme form, is simply an unsustainable ideology, because you cannot oppose an adversary that is committed to subduing you with violence unless you are willing to use violence to stop them.

Fair enough, I guess my overall point was more that we’ve all at some point taken that first step of doing something that now feels mundane, but at the time felt like we were doing something very advanced.

Let’s be reasonable: We were all at some point at the stage where doing anything at all in the terminal made us feel like a god.

Exactly: These things are crap because they assume an idealised system where the only time you’ll be crossing a line is while your turn signal is on. Reality is much more messy, and requires that you actually read the road and traffic conditions, rather than blindly trusting the lines, which is what these systems try to annoy you into doing.

The stuff that beeps like hell if you touch a line? That’s just annoying as shit for a plethora of reasons. First that comes to mind is: Have you ever noticed how a lot of turns have worn-down lines on the inner edge of the turn, because the more comfortable and natural path cuts the corner a bit (especially prevalent on narrow roads)?

I think it’s cool that you like to plan/practice for survival situations, and I think I can give some pointers:

Regarding “water tight container”, I was thinking primarily for carrying water (e.g. bottles). You’re probably going to want at least 4.5 L of water capacity unless water is very abundant where you are.

Regarding tools: I would say your no. 1 priority is a good, big, slightly heavy multipurpose knife. Basically, something small enough to clean a fish, but big and heavy enough to cut down a tree. My personal favourite is one of these.

In general I think my major tip regarding all kinds of gear (especially clothes) is that you want to minimise the number of pieces of kit you’re carrying. You don’t need several pairs of shoes, you don’t need shorts, etc. to be perfectly clear: I have ONE set of kit that I use from +30 C to - 30 C. There is not a single piece of kit that I carry in summer which I don’t also carry in winter. So, some starters:

• If it’s not either wool or an outermost (shell) layer, you don’t need it.
• Your shell layer has one job: To keep the elements (water + wind) out. Its job is not to keep you warm. A jacket that you can only use in winter, because it’s too warm in summer, is not a jacket you need.
• Always think in layers. If it gets colder, add more. If it gets warmer, remove some. You should not be carrying one sweater for + 10 C, and another for - 10 C, you should instead be carrying an innermost layer for 20 C, and 2-3 progressively thicker layers that you add on top as the temperature drops.

So basically, any idea of “summer clothes” (in the sense I assume you mean) can probably go straight away. Wool socks, a thin wool t-shirt, and a pair of hard-shell trousers with good air openings are summer clothes, they just happen to also be winter clothes when combined with other layers.

I think my best tip to get a feel for this is to pack a kit with everything you think you need, then try to hike maybe 20 km / day for a day or two with that kit. My bet is that your kit will be halved (at least) after the first couple attempts, as you notice how much weight you can cut out.

Finally, I would say that the single piece of kit I have with the highest weight/utility ratio (besides a knife) is possibly my sleeping mat. A good sleeping mat is the difference between feeling alive or not after a night outside, and it weighs next to nothing for what it’s worth.

There are some basic initial conditions to consider before you can even start answering this:

1. What climate are you in?
2. What kind of terrain are you in? (Mountains, lowland forrest, jungle, coastal…?) 2a) Do you have the option to get to a new type of terrain / climate?
3. What kind of tools/materials do you have access to from the start (we’re talking, do you even have a hatchet/knife, jacket, backpack, water-tight container, etc., or is this a “the clothes on your back” situation?)

I have some experience in some of the worst survival conditions you can imagine (far sub-freezing coastal and mountain climate). In those conditions, your by-far first priority is heat and shelter. The cold will kill you in hours if you don’t know what you’re doing. Even in far better conditions, knowing how to survive just being outside (before you even consider food) is what will probably get most people in an unsupported survival situation.

Fact is: You can survive for a week or two without food, but most people would probably be so preoccupied and exhausted by just existing outside unsupported over more than a few days that they wouldn’t have the capacity to do anything more than exist. The first prerequisite for survival is to have enough experience and good enough routines when it comes to keeping yourself dry, warm, and rested, that you actually have leftover capacity to start thinking about things like finding food, moving to more advantageous terrain, making tools, improving your shelter, etc.

If this is a hobby to you, I could recommend trying to do some minimalistic camping. Learn how to build a good shelter, and how to make a fire with a fire steel (is that what it’s called in english?). You could start out with as much gear as you need, and cut down on gear as you get more comfortable. Figure out what you need to do to stay warm and dry, even if you’re outside for several days in the rain/sleet/snow. Maybe most importantly, you’ll get some experience on what different conditions are like when you’re outside in them constantly, and can’t go inside to fix and dry your gear.

Regarding food: My personal experience is that the most reliable source of food you can find is probably fish. Fishing requires very minimal gear and works year-round pretty much everywhere in the world. I’ve been on a couple self-sustained trips just living off the fish I caught (not more than a few days, but I caught enough that I didn’t go hungry). If I were in a long-term survival situation, the first thing I would need to know is probably how to preserve fish more efficiently than I do today. If you have fish and berries, you should be able to keep chugging along for a couple months, which should be enough time to start developing even more long-term solutions.

Bottom line: I think that in a situation like the one you describe (surviving unsupported outside of civilisation), most people would be done-for by exposure within a couple weeks. Some people would be able to survive past the first couple weeks before succumbing to starvation. If you’re able to make it more than the first couple months, that’s when you can even begin considering things like “what is a good farming strategy”. Of course, this is not considering the people that would survive off looting, occupying buildings, etc., only considering people that try to survive in the wilderness.

betting on all the outcomes equally isn’t going to probabilistically give you the payout equal to what you’d buy in.

Exactly. That’s why I’m differentiating between games of skill (i.e. sports) and purely statistical “casino games”. It’s possible to beat the house in sports betting, but only if you are genuinely better than the house at considering the odds. Of course, the house will always try to set the odds in their own favour, but it’s impossible for them to know the exact odds. Thus, a well informed player can, in principle, identify the games where the house has under-valued an outcome and exploit those.

This basically boils down to the fact that in a casino game, the probability of every possible outcome is known exactly, so the house can trivially set a payout that benefits them. In sports, it’s impossible to know the exact probability of a given outcome, so the house can make mistakes.