That… is a good point

It obviously did matter when same-sex marriages were not legal for example (some countries still do this…), but in most parts of the developed world today… yeah. I guess it does feel a bit grandfatherer-in right now

Obviously things such as the medical system need to know what biological sex someone is, but they don’t have to tie into the legal system

Not really lol, both Japanese and Chinese heavily use standard 26-set alphabets nowadays

Japanese alphabets (Hiragana/Katakana) have their alphabet counterparts. Aside from L/R which is confusing (the R sound doesn’t exist in Japanese, and L is written as R), almost everything else intuitively makes sense. Chinese is almost always spelled out in Pinyin (which is in standard alphabets) for really young kids, and ppl predominantly use alphabetic keyboards for typing. If anything, the reverse is kind-of true in China, where kids are having struggle remembering how to write proper Chinese characters…

The weird pronunciations and grammar rules are probably more difficult IMO. But then difficult pronunciations and grammar rules exist in other Germanic/Romance languages too (try pronouncing a G in standard Dutch or an R in French or German!)

I think it’s close? Like 5-20 years close for commercially available robotics prosthetics systems (probably still need doctor’s prescriptions for it though)

• We already have pretty well-established prosthetics systems at the moment
• China and Japan (esp China) have some pretty exciting robotics breakthroughs, see the hilarious robotics Olympics from China recently
• However, China isn’t the best at manufacturing QC yet, so widespread deployment may take a few years from above

The Chinese side of the story is heavily censored and only has official reported numbers (likely tampered with, knowing China) and some propaganda pieces, but this is very much a Chinese national emergency as well. The Guardian’s latest reporting claimed that the Chinese officials reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, while Nepal’s numbers are 675 deaths and 2,498 missing

Maybe there are ulterior motives, but I think given the extent of the disaster, it is much more likely that China treated it as a top-priority national emergency, so might as well help out the neighbors with any extra manpower as well

My understanding is… Being popular (a.k.a. having lots of subscribers) requires someone to be entertaining and be good at self-promotion. Being entertaining is independent from being a good person. For the latter, I once saw a streamer say something along the lines that anyone who is willing to do that level of self-promotion likely self-selects for at least some level of narcissistic traits

… and a lot of their subscribers are relatively young and likely don’t care, probably

The idiom is “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order for a reason. Even if plastic recycling is difficult in the US, reducing and reusing are doable by just about anyone. This can be using less one-time plastics, eating less meat (make sure nutritionally balanced), drive less, reuse those shipping boxes for other stuff such as for paper waste, buying from local farmers (if you can afford it)… something along those lines

For home, living in an apartment is actually one of the best things one can do for the climate, since living in an apartment in a city is much, much more energy efficient than living in a suburb… not to mention cutting down on car-related costs. For ppl living in a home, methinks AC is more of a boogeyman… having good home insulation is a much better solution (as a well-insulated home uses less energy!), and the best part is that it is bipartisan so red states would happily do it too. If renovation is not possible, stuff like blackout curtains, window blinds, … are cheap insulation options

IMO these are still negligible effects on an individual level, but these are not nothing, and if everyone does these the world would be a much better place. For more meaningful actions, probably organizing

I guess so, if it is true that would mean current AI companies did some serious ethics fuck-ups…

I’m giving current-generation AI the benefit of the doubt though. I personally don’t think the current transformer-based LLM designs can achieve consciousness (although I think machines in general can, just not the current model architectures)

This is a really good question but far above Lemmy’s pay-grade man. Neuroscientists are very actively researching and doing debates on this topic (consciousness in AI)

The main problem is that we don’t even have a consensus, fool-proof theory of consciousness… We can barely tell whether a lot of living creatures are conscious or not (think octopus with their distributed intelligence, plants with their chemical signaling, …), and if so, when in their development stage does consciousness arise. Machines are one step removed from even that; even if we give AI models the benefit of the doubt and say they can develop consciousness, how in the world are we supposed to measure it

I found this highly-cited Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper (Seth, A.K., Bayne, T. Theories of consciousness. Nat Rev Neurosci 23, 439–452 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-022-00587-4) (try Internet Archive if you can’t access it) that might be of interest… If you follow the citation trails, there are a ton of new articles on debating consciousness in AI. Like this arxiv article on consciousness in AI

I couldn’t imagine a single scenario where I wouldn’t choose to reborn as myself. IMO it is objectively the correct choice: more stable/safe world (compared to pre-industrial revolution with dangerous spells), and I’ll almost be guaranteed to do quite well in it given the status window and skill tree

My intrusive thoughts tell me to choose world of magic and go kaboom though

Learned Colemak-DH a year ago, yes. In fact my keyboard is not correctly labeled at all, so I have to

Used to be able to do it on QWERTY too, but I might need a week to get back into it. I can semi-do it on my phone (QWERTY) but not very good at it

I think it depends a lot on the person? Where someone is career-wise (more established folks may care less about money per se), whether the desperately need more money, etc… Also depends on the proportion of the two, a 3% raise that requires 20% more effort probably won’t be worth it for most people

Myself, I don’t mind having a small but not insignificant raise over an easier job, but that’s largely because of my current life circumstances

Personally I definitely think it’s the pronunciation, which is… self explanatory. Other languages have weird grammar rules too, but even French pronunciation is more consistent 😭

Short answer is mostly no. Long answer is nuanced, and depends on whether you are asking about the score or intelligence

Changing the “IQ score” (I am assuming a genuine test like WAIS-V, or at least something highly g-loaded like the old SAT):

• You can practice for them. This is actually a bad thing: IQ test is meant as a diagnostic tool, so practice effects make IQ tests less valid. I know most neuropsychs will discourage you from practicing the exam or taking the same test within 2~5 years after taking one
• Childhood IQ tests are somewhat less accurate than their adult counterparts, so sometimes two officially administered psych tests issued at two timepoints can differ by a lot
• People usually score more accurately if they take the test in their native language, using norms from their country. Doesn’t affect most people, but some adult immigrants might benefit from this
• Some people have wildly differing scores on different subsections, quite common among Autistic people I believe. This defeats the whole premise of IQ itself and you will likely never get a very accurate aggregate estimate… but that does mean your score will change based on which test you take. For example, if you are a genius at quantitative reasoning (math intuition) but below-average at say processing speed, you’ll score much higher on old SAT or AGCT (where math is 1/3, no processing speed section) versus WAIS-V (which has no math sections, but does have processing speed)

Changing “intelligence” itself. This mostly never changes. However, if you have external factors that clog your mental, removing them do indeed improve intelligence:

• The single best way is to have good early childhood nutrition. This obviously can’t be changed…
• Have good nutrition and good sleep, and not take substances (alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc…)
• Resolve ongoing mental disorders. It is well-known that depression drops IQ by quite a bit, for example

IQ has some white supremacist roots, so discussing about it is usually frowned upon… and even when used correctly, it is honestly much better used as a diagnostic tool. For example ADHD can get flagged on IQ tests very easily.

Personally I think instead of trying to improve per-se, it is much better used as a tool for self-discovery especially if you have any weird neurological conditions. If you’re worried about accuracy or accidentally bombing an exam because you got too nervous with the psychologist, there are tests you can take at home such as old-SAT, CORE, CAIT, AGCT (the one US Army used to use)… which are all essentially IQ tests.

Purely from evolutionary biology & physiology: yes, it’s the egg. It has actually been fairly definitively answered for almost 20 years that Wikipedia has a section on this

By most definitions of the dilemma it will be the egg which came first. The very first “egg” in our world came long before birds are a thing. If we are strictly talking about chicken eggs, since the modern chicken is a domesticated animal, strictly speaking the first true domesticated chicken came from two non-domestic chicken parents… which created a fertilized egg that became the first domesticated chicken.

Methinks this needs policy-level changes. There’s only so much we can do individually at this point

Immediate terms: There’s nothing that can be done to curb the heatwave IMO, but there are ways to prevent danger. Namely, AC, cooling centers, public education on preventing heat-related injuries/deaths… Maybe govts can even temporarily reduce regulations/give subsidies on split-systems to help nudge some folks, but nothing much else can be done. One pet-idea I have is cooling centers, since I know Houston (which has extreme weathers) opens cooling/warming centers when the weather is too extreme; it is a very progressive implementation that benefits those who are underprivileged

Slightly longer term: Trees/green spaces always help. Public transit systems always help. Some fairly sweeping changes in climate-related regulation (ease AC regulations, tighten car regulations, tax on pollution, etc), aimed at both reducing danger and improving the climate… or at least recuperate some “pollution tax” so the govt can use the money to plant more trees and build more trains. Also some European countries can do so much better at discouraging car use (or at least switch to EVs) given how good the train networks are; for countries without good train networks, build some

Even longer term: Massive investments in green energy; if they are investing already, invest more. But be practical… temporary solutions like nuclear are not everyone’s cup of tea but they help with the transition. Do better on international collaboration. Find ways to discourage international trading partners from over-polluting (probably a combination of tariffs and negotiations… not my specialty).

Obligatory not an economist/political scientist, there are probably better ways to implement these than what I suggested

This has happened to me quite a few times before, and aside from ppl I know really well, the answer had always been no. I’m not good at arguing/debating anyways, so I’d just go “hehe I told you so” secretly

Don’t think it’d be more tilting than other games with ~50% win rates. Just one example, Tekken is also ~50% win rate that is nearly completely skill dependent, but on average it involves even higher amounts of adrenaline

Personally the games I found the most tilting are perma-deaths: Minecraft/Terraria’s hardest difficulties, Noita… Losing a 10+ hr run after making one bad decision really gets you. I think I stopped playing this type of games for that reason

Seriously though please don’t tilt. Tilting reduces the fun of the game and makes skill improvements in skill-dependent games slower

Kind-of. Researcher in EU, the funding source on paper mandates 7.6 hrs of work per day, so with lunch breaks it is almost exactly 09:00 - 17:00

Depending on whom you ask academia may or may not be considered a real job though… and my hours may be nice, but the folks who do experiments rarely get the 9-5 as stated on paper, and there are other aspects of the job that are much more fucked up

Not technically an American but lived in America for a long time, also not eligible to claim citizenship anywhere. I hope I’d be somewhat qualified to speak on this

There really aren’t that many countries which are a step up for an American IMO. Probably a good number of the EU/EEA countries, places like Canada/Australia/NZ, and mayyybe places like Singapore and a few more… Fewer if you have a strict limit on English, in that case maybe only places like UK & the Nordic countries; maybe also the Netherlands, but I’ve heard mixed information about language requirements there. This is a pretty short list, so I think you could probably have a passing knowledge of all of their basic immigration processes without spending that much time on it. But yeah you are right, for any expat/immigrant wannabe it usually goes like this:

Winning the “life lottery” (ancestry, asylum, or a literal lottery like the US) -> “Buying” your way in via Golden visa -> Love knows no borders so marriage -> Workers visa, aka getting sponsored to work

The first three obviously don’t apply to you or me TBH, so work sponsorship it is: either international transfer via a large international company (does that happen often for trades people?), or finding a job in your target country. I think others have mentioned this, but since you will likely be immigrating via work, secure a job first. Don’t even think about anything else without a solid job offer. I didn’t follow this advice myself and literally got screwed; I spent several hours learning German everyday during a really busy time of my life, wrecked my mental health along the way due to stress, and never ended up finding a job in Germany in the end… Don’t be like past me

tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply

Probably your biggest asset. Some countries like Canada and Australia/NZ publish their skill shortages, so if your skills are on them you’d be in very good luck. There are subreddits and discussion groups on these topics so I’d look into them

Note that in Australia, allegedly the real job shortage can be quite different from the published list. This doesn’t hurt your chances of moving there per-se, but can make your life difficult after moving in, especially if you don’t have a large amount of savings

Also, I’m not sure exactly what trades you are in (for the sake of privacy I prefer not to ask), but different countries may have different regulations. It is possible that you may not be allowed to work in the EU without local certifications for example. I don’t think it is an impasse per-se, but I’d definitely investigate this beforehand

But anyways, if you are interested why not try and apply for a few jobs first? You never know :D

Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)

To be honest… that doesn’t sound very good. Comes without saying that most places expect workers to speak fluently or at least B1 in their native language (which is also required for immigration purposes for most countries), and the English-friendly places (such as Ireland) can have extremely high demand, which can cause other societal complications

I am taking what you said at face value, since I have seen first-hand how much my boss (German) struggled with learning French and had to settle for learning Dutch instead lol. Nevertheless, for most people it isn’t that hard to at least get a passing conversation skill level in a target language in a few years especially with full immersion & government/employer-sponsored language classes, so I wouldn’t completely rule it out just yet! If you’re able to deal with other languages, there are lots of EU countries that have plenty of opportunities; maybe even some more developed parts of Africa would do as well