If it helps to conceptualize, you can always replace subtraction and division with these equivalents without affecting the order:

a - b
= a + -b
= a + (-1*b)

and

a / b
= a * b^-1
= a * (1/b)

The standard order of operations is

1. Parentheses
2. Exponentiation
3. Multiplication and division
4. Addition and subtraction.

The operations on each row are equivalent, and are executed from left to right.

Are you assuming all addition operations come before all subtraction operations, regardless of order?

My a priori expectation of where [thing] would be before I knew where it was. (I.e.—if it’s unexpectedly close, it’s “here”; if it’s unexpectedly remote, it’s “there”.)

To flesh this out a bit more: suppose Pilate locks Jesus in Joseph of Arimathea’s specially-prepared tomb with the standard Geiger-counter-and-poison setup. After three days the counter has a 50% chance of triggering, leaving the tomb in a superposition of two states:

1. The Geiger counter is triggered, Jesus dies for our sins and is resurrected, and humanity is saved.

2. The Geiger counter isn’t triggered and Jesus’ bid to save humanity fails. But he realizes he can still prevent the rest of humanity from collapsing into a pure damned state: he miraculously changes the wave function of the cave’s contents to be identical to 1, including his own mental state.

After three days the tomb is opened, and a superposition of Jesus 1 and Jesus 2 emerges. Because the two states are indistinguishable, observing it doesn’t cause it to collapse into either pure state. The system remains in superposition until someone observes the fate of a “saved” soul.

Being in a superposition isn’t the same as being unknown or undecided. And I was mostly thinking of their state in the afterlife.

Fun fact: LLMs that strictly generate the most predictable output are seen as boring and vacuous by human readers, so programmers add a bit of randomization they call “temperature”.

It’s that unpredictable element that makes LLMs seem humanlike—not the predictable part that’s just functioning as a carrier signal.

Even if you don’t believe them, they obviously won’t be able to enjoy the vacation unless you avoid the circumstances they’re afraid of—so you might as well humor them.

A Timex-Sinclair 1000 in ’82.

I assume it’s because it reduces the possibility of other processes outside of the linked containers accessing the files (so security and stability).

• You’re effectively making the given name part of the surname and adding a number to act as the given name. I don’t see any advantage to that over normal naming practice.

• You’re suggesting that the child who shares the parent’s given name is somehow preferred over their siblings, inasmuch as they’re inheriting a tradition their siblings are excluded from.

We want people to think our home is not in whichever state they specialize in exploiting.

No one can really know what GNU stands for unless they can perform an infinite recursion in constant time.

So… a superego?

Scientists construct models from reality; engineers construct reality from models.

Seems more like engineers than scientists (strictly speaking).

Are there any games that accurately depict the activities of any kind of scientist?

Yeah—I was basing that claim on Joseph Henrich’s survey of expeditions in The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.

The world is littered with the unmarked graves of explorers from the Age of Exploration who had: D) every piece of equipment that money could buy and experience could suggest.

The ones who survived being stranded in remote environments did so not by virtue of their possessions or preparations, but by throwing themselves on the mercy of the local inhabitants.

It’s called a dummy pronoun.