Mine is that some people don’t consider viruses alive. These people are fucking stupid because giruses exist as do virophages. Like yes unalive things literally hunting other unalive things totally makes sense.
The dwarves in the elder scrolls, the dwemer, were actually elves of average height. They were named dwarves by the native giants of Skyrim (I think? Might have been another part of Tamriel).
Also if I remember correctly, neither men nor elves are native to Tamriel. The only native playable races are the Khajit and the Argonians. Nords descended from the Atmorans, who came from the northernmost continent of Atmora.
Also if I remember correctly, neither men nor elves are native to Tamriel. The only native playable races are the Khajit and the Argonians.
This is one of those things in Elder Scrolls with conflicting sources and fan speculation. Like, there’s a theory that because of how ohmes furstocks look and the fact that they worship Azura that khajit are actually another colony of chimer that got changed somehow.
Aliveness isn’t a fact about reality, it’s a question about how big a circle we draw around things that exist and say “these are ‘alive’”. It’s a semantic discussion.
I have a lot of special interests and lots of facts, but since I’m going through a spaghetti western phase rn I’ll just share this quote from Sergio Leone:
This also fascinates me. According to our definition of life viruses are not actually alive. But by that same definition, fire is as “alive” as a virus.
I tend to agree. Fire isn’t alive. It does technically slot into a lot of our requirements though. Viruses aren’t really alive either. Without a host they just sit dormant until they either decay from the environment or eventually find a host. Without a host body they are incapable of acting. But barring harsh environmental circumstances, they can technically lie dormant for eternity. Something “alive” things cannot do.
But we can’t just define it like porn: “I know it when I see it.” That’s not an acceptable definition. Without getting into solipsism, and p-zombies, and blah blah blah; I’m alive. You’re alive. Cats are alive (and also extremely cool).
I don’t think LLMs are alive. I don’t even think they are intelligent in any capacity. But at what point does an AI become “alive?” How do we define that? A Turing test? If it passes a Turing test, it still doesn’t meet several of the requirements for “life” as currently defined. What then? Do we redefine “life”, or do we relegate a new form of life as “non-life”, to be used and abused? That seems horrifying.
I have no answers. It’s just something I find really interesting to think about.
The only portrait ever displayed in Tianmen Square besides Chairman Mao, was Josef Stalin, on the day of his death.
A cubic centimeter of white dwarf star material has about the same mass as five or six cars. A cubic centimeter of neutron star material has about the same mass as a large city.
“Lizard” is not a biologically consistent grouping. Some species of lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards.
Wait are snakes not a type of lizard??
No. Modern biology likes to classify groups based on ancestry. Any grouping which was based on a common ancestor of all known lizard species would also include snakes. Therefore, “lizard” is invalid in that sense, and only used informally.
Same with “reptile,” since birds also descend from the most recent common ancestor of all reptile species.
This is really hard to explain without a picture.
I like to think about how birds are dinosaurs and then watch a cute smol bird bouncing and dancing around and then think about how dinosaurs were probably really cute
Idk if this counts, but the speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light. So if the sun instantly vanished, it would take us the same amount of time to both see and feel the effect of its absence.
Is the speed of gravity altered by the medium of propagation?
