ageedizzle

Yes, the way you described sounds like it should work too. Are you describing the ‘relational quantum mechanics’ interpretation?

I second this. Apps that use other services under the hood aren’t nearly as accurate, either.

Ah I see what you mean. Thanks for explaining.

I think one way to get around this is to frame changes in the double slit experiment as changes in physical state. Changes of physical state are of course changes in fact, but this framing avoids the regress problem because these facts are publicly accessible and viewable by all observers (there is no question of for who it is a fact for).

For example, if I turn on the tap, it is a fact for me that I turned on the tap, but it’s also a fact for everybody; anyone can come and see that the water’s running. There is no infinite regress. And as far as I’m aware the set-up is similar for the double-slit experiment: if you collapse a wave function through observation, I can come along and see what you’ve done. So this  change in state is publicly accessible: it’s not a change in state for anyone in particular.

Of course matters are a bit more complex than that because in some interpretations of quantum mechanics you could construct a technically possible in principle (though impossible in practice) scenario where I am in a superposition but you are not, so what wave forms appear to be collapsed is no longer publicly accessible information; these become facts to particular observers. There are ways of getting around this that avoid infinite regress but we don’t need to deal with them here. Because those scenarios are impossible under interpretations where observation is responsible for collapsing the wave function. If I can collapse superpositions just by observing them, then I could never be in a scenario where I’m in a superposition, because I’m always observing myself (at least peripherally)

Awesome! Piefed seems easier to use than lemmy so the barrier to entry seems lower, so I wonder if thats a contributing factor here. Either way though hopefully the growth continues!

Nice. And thanks for the script.

It’s good to know that most of these new users are coming from Reddit. I was worried that a lot of the growth of piefed users was just because people are switching over from lemmy (as is the case for me). That’s nice but lemmy users are already on the fediverse, so that scenario is nowhere near as exciting as a scenario where a whole bunch of new users are joining the fediverse for the first time.

Treating observation as fact-generating seems to force either an arbitrary stopping point or an infinite hierarchy of observers.

Can you explain? I don’t understand

That’s awesome. Is this growth mostly driven by Reddit outreach?

I know I’m preaching to the choir here but, in general Canada (with the exception of Quebec) consumes way too much American media. The whole world consumes a lot of American media, of course, but with our proximity and prior cultural similarities this is an especially insidious problem for us. Because the end result is the spreading of American culture and values at the expense of our own. For example it’s not uncommon to come across someone who knows more about American politics than Canadian politics, or who knows more about the NYC mayoral run (or something trendy like that) than the local elections happening in their own city. In this kind of information environment it’s not surprising that our politics would gradually become Americanized.

Fixing this problem is tricky, and any full solution will need to attack it from multiple angles. But part of the solution is having more Canadian spaces where we can talk about distinctly Canadian issues and share distinctly Canadian media (even if it’s something as trivial as Heated Rivalry or The Trailer Park Boys). And the fediverse is of course great for that. Lemmy.ca, mstdn.ca, piefed.ca, etc, these are all distinctly Canadian spaces. So let’s help these places grow by participating in them and sharing them with others. Let’s get more of our fellow Canadians in these Canadian spaces. The more popular these spaces are the less we will need to rely on American alternatives, and the less we rely on American alternatives the less influence America will have on our politics and culture more generally.

What kind of slander and misinformation are you talking about? (Genuine question)

I second this. That said, I understand why people get upset when people say this sort of thing. Because there is a long history in our culture of mental illnesses not being taken seriously, and people with legitimate mental illnesses might worry that you are accusing them of faking it (which is of course not the case).

But there is simply no denying that being mentally ill is trendy among young people at the moment. It was when I was in highschool and university, which was not too long ago, and it’s still trendy now. I think a lot of it is influenced by online trends. It started with Tumblr but has now spread to other platforms like Tik Tok etc. And its become a way of social signalling, of showing others that you’re a considerate person who cares about these sorts of issues.

The end result is a lot of people unscrupulously self diagnosing. Ir, even worse, going to private health clinics (illegal in most of Canada, where I’m from) who they know will just hand out ADHD diagnoses (and Adderall prescriptions) for a flat fee.

I was being hyperbolic but the point is the article didn’t point any real negativity towards the users of big tech, just the corporations or CEOs or whoever behind big tech

That was literally my point. Some people bought electric cars because the could, not because they wanted to effect any social change.

Okay. Then don’t really see the relevance here. OPs point was clearly about trying to effect social change.

Is activity pub only used on Linux desktop apps? Can’t a Mac or windows user participate in mastodon?

I wasn’t trying to suggest that they couldn’t.

Fediverse use and Linux are separate issues.

Literally speaking they are different projects, but they are also similar in that they are both open source projects, often both FOSS, so the underlying philosophy behind their development is the same

product of Facebook. Google has poured Fons of money into FOSS development. Should we shun these tools?

Shunning doomscrolling is not the same thing as categorically shunning everything that Google or Meta has ever output. I think its great they contribute to open source projects, I hope they do continue to do so

Op posted create a completely false us v them narrative that just isn’t there.

Personally speaking I didn’t find OPs post to be especially divisive, it I didn’t make me feel compelled to go harm some Windows users or anything like that, but your mileage may vary

Interesting article! Linux seems very techy to me so I never thought of it as being similar to Luddism but it makes perfect sense when you spell it out like that. Thanks for sharing!

Look, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you are treading into virtue signalling territory and your article has the superior tone of those who bought electric cars in the late 2010s

Except electric cars are hella expensive and linux is free. It is true that OP is making a moral judgement but I don’t think thats the same as ‘virtue signalling’. Open software is a morally charged topic. Some the main reasons why people like open software are moral reasons (the goods of collaboration without profit incentive, the harms of big tech, etc.). So bringing morality into the discussion seems appropriate.

Using Linux is not going to stop your doom-scrolling,

Linux itself might not prevent doomscrolling (though it can help a bit, since default Windows and MacOS settings are always trying to push news and other articles onto the user to plug their respective news aggregation services). But other FOSS software (like the ActivityPub protocol) can for sure make a very sizeable dent in the amount of doomscrolling in one’s life. I agree that OP could have done more to distinguish the Linux project from other FOSS projects, but I think the point still got across.

nor is using Linux by itself telling the big corpos anything at all.

Microsoft is a big corpo. If one of its biggest competitors were free and open source linux distributions with libreoffice suite installed would that not be telling it something? Same goes for Apple as well

Edit for typos

Well until very recently I had a shared laundry set-up, where I was sharing two laundry machines with everyone in my apartment building. That might explain why it’s all black. I don’t think its actually burning theres probably just a lot of gunk in the system

Okay this is a satisfying response, thank you. I’ll have to test that out with the white towels. I’ve never noticed that before but it makes perfect sense.

i see. But why?

Serious question. I know this may sound silly, but why does the lint change colour then? Like, if I dry a load of white clothing then why does the lint still come out black?

Something to consider: damage from drying machines is apparently one way we inadvertently injest microplastics (the synthetic materials in the clothing gets broken up and then is ingesting through the skin). Might be something worth avoiding for your baby (though the convenience of a dryer is still hard to argue with).

I know this question is intended as a joke but it has me thinking. What is lint, actually? If its from our clothing then why is it always the same colour? Like, why can I put in a load of white clothing but the lint is still black? Is the lint burnt? Or is lint a byproduct of laundry soap? Or is it both from our clothing and our laundry soap? I genuinely don’t know. I’ve never thought about it before