A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
I find it fascinating how we're so willing to ascribe thoughts, feelings, and motivations to inanimate objects or forces of nature and on the other hand we're so quick to remove all of those attributes from other groups of humans to justify horrible acts done to them.
We're hella cute. But pareidolia is seriously gonna be the end of us when the AI takes over π
It's already responsible for religion and all the nonsense it's spawned.
Even ascribing consciousness into others or ourselves is actually pretty stupid if you think about it.
Stemming from religion there's this idea that human "souls" are somehow special and exist on a plane outside reality. But that's not the case.
We are just semi-rigid blobs of mostly water that grew into weird shapes.
Woah woah there, who you calling a weird shape?
Yeah, round is arguably the most perfect shape
Because our collective we is composed of many different people. You have brilliant scientific minds and genius artistic people and everyone in between. At the same time you have very empathetic people and others who would not hesitate to hurt someone for their gain.
Diversity is both a blessing and a curse.
That is true, but people are capable of holding both views at the same time. Soldiers on the battlefield go out and do horrific things to enemy soldiers and civilians, and come home and are loving fathers and husbands who wouldn't hurt anyone. Or how many times have people been caught for horrible crimes and all their friends and neighbours say it isn't possible because they're the kindest and most helpful people they know.
This isn't a matter of "some people are capable and some are not". It's a case of "most people seem to be able to set aside someone else's humanity to do horrible things"
Or that everyone everywhere pictures a little robot the size of like Wall-e, when curiosity is really 10 feet long, 7 feet high, and 2,000 pounds.
That's exactly what @[email protected] was talking about. They cut off the feet of like 5 humans, just to measure the size of a damn robot.
Oh come on, humans aren't that unnecessarily cruel! We just cut the feet off several thousand peasants back in the day to determine the average length of human feet and then made a bunch of sticks that length so we don't have to be so cruel each time we wanted to measure something. We just had to do it that one time.
"Why cut their feet off instead of just measuring them?"
It was necessary for scientific rigor, so that others could go back and verify the final result. It's very important to be accurate using a measurement that is completely relatable to the average human. Funny enough, we later realized that about 300 randomly selected feet would generally get within 5% of the true average, so that makes it even better that we did do that because how else would we have discovered something like that?
"Wouldn't that just give an average for peasant feet in that region? For average human foot size, wouldn't you need to take feet from people who aren't peasants, like nobles, clergy, and scientists?"
Well, you see... Hmm. I guess to be completely accurate... That does sound right. Hmm.
You know, I've been hearing great things about the metric system! I mean, who really thinks in terms of how big their feet are anyways?
Probably the biggest and most important question in the world.
I dropped my phone the other day and started apologising to it for dropping it again.
Beautifully (tragically?) put. Well done. It's worth pondering...
I think maybe it's because when something lacks human qualities, we're more able to project our wishes onto it, whether that's its "personality" or "story" or "feelings", whatever. Maybe in a way it makes it feel predictable and "safer", like we know it somehow. It will behave the way it behaves regardless of the little projections we put on it that can sometimes be a remnant of our own egos.
...People, on the other hand, are much less predictable, and tend to highly dislike being projected upon. Maybe removing relatable qualities and generalizing groups of them is a selfish way of turning them into an "object" that "feels more predictable" and the one projecting feels like it satisfies their need for control, even though it dehumanizes others who are, in actuality, just like themselves.
I feel like it's a maladaptive way to simplify the complicated. The brain loves to simplify.
Empathy tends to be such a prevention AND a cure...
As the user experience designer, this βsingingβ of electronics, and other such devices has been prevalent for the last decade or so. Itβs an attempt to humanize the electronic devices we interact with every day. I question its effectiveness or validity, but, nonetheless, it has become extremely popular in both the medical device field and the field of home appliances. Buying an LG or a Samsung appliance, and it will, very annoyingly, play little songs when itβs done doing whatever it does.
I find this a particularly interesting emergent cultural application of anthropomorphism to everyday objects. I wonder how it will progress over the next decade or so.
Uh I love the songs my dryer and dishwasher play when they're done. Its much better than just BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTT
When it's done? Fine.
Every time I turn it on, or off, or open the door, or think about using it for a second? No thank you. I don't need a tune for every action. I can very clearly see that you're on because the display is on. I know you're open because I'm standing right the fuck here.
I just need a singing rice cooker so I can go "Ganbatte Mr Rice Cooker San!" when he starts cooking and "Arigato Mr Rice Cooker San" when he is done.
OK well I have never seen one play a whole song every time you touch it. Mine just does a simple jingle when the cycle is over.
You're gonna miss the tune for when the display dies but the controller still works. It's actually there for user input feedback. It could've been anything else, but if it has to be there, it might as well be something pleasant. Picture an appliance that screamed every time you pushed a button.
Like Hitchhiker's Guide's sighing doors. :D
I prefer a simple signal, too. Maybe the whole βplay a song when the laundry is doneβ is a cultural thing.
I prefer a little deedle-eep to a horrid mechanical buzzer.
When the dishwasher spends an entire goddamn minute doing the same annoying chiptune, every single day... gimme back the buzzer.
For reference, it's a whole genre. Not to be confused with appliances that have speakers and bzzt or beep or play jingles or whatever, or for that matter also musical tesla coils, those are much more like speakers.
It's been a part of computer culture since pretty much forever, now kinda dying out because nothing is mechanical any more.
I had a 1541 that played Daisy Daisy
I've always actually liked NASA as a US government agency. Thing is they take the kind of scientist whose skills are intensely useful to the military industrial complex and let them do goofy shit like this that doesn't hurt anyone instead. Sure, sometimes some of their tech ends up useful to the military anyway and that's terrible, but to the people who think this is a waste of resources that could have been better spent fixing infrastructure or helping the poor I want to ask:
If we consider labor as a resource, do you think the actual experts in autonamous robotics, rocketry and atmospheric dispersion involved in landing a little box on Venus would be fixing pot holes or running homeless shelters without NASA? I think they would be much more likely to be working on some project to have an army of drones defoliate all of central Asia or something like that. I think it is cool and heartwarming that they successfully landed a little robot on Mars and care so much about it, but also many of these people have skills that are only useful for exactly this and like 25 different crimes against humanity, and letting them do this is not a waste of resources.
NASA represents 0.25% of the federal budget. A quarter of one percent.
We could have 57 NASAs for what we spend on one DoD. We could have nearly 100 for what we spend on one HHS.
NASA also has a ridiculously high ROI from their library of patents, too. Probably one of the highest.
This is kind of a bad way to look at it though...you can't really put a monetary value on what we get back from HHS or even really DoD. There's a lot of bad, but it's also what keeps America the economic powerhouse that it is, through all of our soft power and protecting global trade routes. We still put in far too much to both (although DoD could be one of the few functional example of trickle-down economics there is, since most spending stays domestic)
It's usually justified to make fun of STEMlords but scientists with highly specific skills are still a vital part of our societal whole (I choose to believe this for my own sake)
I said, I'd let you engineer "Happy Birthday" AFTER you finish your thermal dynamics research and designing the servo placement.
-and the engineers happily built shit while arguing about it all
It seems a better expenditure than flinging cars into outer space, but that's just me. π€·
I wonder if they pitch-corrected it so it plays correctly in the Martian atmosphere....
If that's not both sad and happy, then why am I reading this through tears?
If you like this and haven't seen "Good Night, Oppy" you should go do that right now.
Incoming copyright lawsuit in 3, 2, 1...
Maybe itβs not enforceable on other planets?
It was broadcast to Earth!
No free fun allowed!
Thanks, needed that.
the first ever song sung on Mars
A missed opportunity for a kazoo-quality Bowie cover.
"It's a godawful small affair..."