I used to think that time could flow backwards or stand still, then forwards again and we wouldn't notice since our brains get rewinded as well. To even perceive that change in direction in the flow of time you'd have to be a being outside of our known universe. But does that idea even make sense, if you take into account that time is relative? Could all relative flows of time still be reversed or slowed down at once or does that idea make absolutely no sense at all, since it's assuming there'd be another flow of time outside of our known concept of time to compare it to? If that makes any sense.
I thought they did it out of politeness. They excuse themselves for the higher effort readers have to make to comprehend their texts and for the aesthetically displeasing mistakes they might have made. It's also an indication that they are willing to improve and not just lazy.
My physics teacher explained the second law to us in that it means that all forms of energy will be turned to heat eventually. And you can never reverse that.
It's a very different message from the first one, but they sound similar.
Something around 16.67ms should be the smallest time unit it can deal with afaik. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with technical limitations. Maybe there was some weird policy by Nintendo, as they used to be quite imperialistic in enforcing certain rules/quality standards on their developers. I imagine it could have been that they just decided that developers mustn't use HSAs in their tracks because it'd distract too much from the sound effects. (God, how I miss Yamauchi and his genius) That's the most reasonable explanation other than just cultural differences that I can come up with.
Probably a cultural thing. European NES composers made use of them in their music, whereas Japanese ones almost exclusively used them for sound effects.
Edit: It's also important to make a distinction between ordinary arpeggios and HSAs (high speed arpeggios), which you seem to be referring to. Manabu Namiki is one of the few Japanese composers who made use of them anyway.
On a scale of 0 to 100 I'd rate the immorality of killing any human being 100, yourself 99, the average social animal 90, fish 84, the average insect 82, the average vegetable 4, the average bacteria 1 and the average mineral 0. I'm in comparission pretty radical when it comes to insects and vegetables, I guess. :)
Would it still be immoral even to eat the plants that are designed to be eaten? Some fruiting trees species owe their livelihood to to the fact that the seeds are indigestible but the fruits are damn tasty (and animal dung makes good fertilizer).
Probably not. It seems lots of plants rely on having parts of themselves eaten to procreate. Others don't seem to like being eaten, so they try to poison us. Or is it only a result of our always eating the least poisonous ones that some have grown to be less poisonous over time? It's a very difficult and unimportant, therefore ridiculous issue. I really think distinguishing between different plants goes a bit too far for now. We're still eating mass-produced meat and that's just one of the many problems that we have as a society atm. Worrying about certain issues too much often strikes me as some kind of escapism from other more important ones. (I say that because I know some really radical vegans who like to condemn other people for eating meat, but they have absolutely no idea of what else is going on in the world around us)
If you stop buying food that clearly comes from mass production facilities and encourage others to do the same, eat lots of vegetables and fruit and encourage others to do the same, support protests for making speculations on food commodities illegal, you're already making a big difference. If you're too extreme about it others will be more reluctant to follow your example, maybe they'd even think that the whole idea is ridiculous just because you're overdoing it. Rome wasn't built in a day and if you're trying to, you're going to look like a lunatic. Of course it's fine to go completely vegan if you want to, but I don't know if it's a good idea to expect others to do the same. Often taking an overly radical stance for a good cause can even turn out to be counterproductive.
No, it doesn't use the shortest path. It just uniformally uses the same path on all puzzles (fastest path to fill the whole picture for two players) and marks all the necessary squares on the way to solve it. At some pictures I had to insert a frame of no input or it would mess up due to lag.
Nothing spectacular and horrible coding, but at least it's something. To write something that finds the actual shortest fastest possible path probably isn't worth the effort.
And the problem with emulating a human solving these puzzles would probably be that there are some levels where you have to take guesses. A read from the screen feature wouldn't be necessary, as I've been able to find the relevant numbers in a RAM search (maybe you'd consider that to be cheating though?). Of course our posts above are from pre-lua times, so it wouldn't have been as easy back then. ;p
Maybe these are among our points of disagreement:
I think that whether an act is immoral is independant of the intention of the one committing that act. It's a property of the act itself. F.e. I think there are situations where you can act morally correct, but for the wrong (egoistic) reasons.
Maybe sentient was the wrong word to use. What I meant to say is they pick up signals and autonomously react to their environment. Some of their reactions could be interpreted as pain. I wouldn't go around telling everybody to stop eating plants because it's immoral, but since you've specifically addressed that point, I've felt the need to agree that it can't be perfectly moral either, as long as they aren't dead. That's a totally different magnitude of a moral violation though, to the point that it gets ridiculous to even talk about it. I wasn't the one to bring up that topic though, you were.
It's certainly immoral to kill animals. We can choose not to, but we do it anyway.
That argument makes no sense. There are tons of things that we can "choose not to", but doing it anyways doesn't automatically make it immoral.
And where do you draw the line? Is killing flies immoral? Cockroaches? Bacteria? Worms?
It's only part of the argument. Here's the rest: Every higher life form has some certain dignity, especially social ones. They have feelings, so first of all you cause unnecessary suffering by killing them (not only to the killed animal if they are social animals). Some of them may be able to plan ahead, their lives thus having a purpose of their own. It's a moral crime to deny them that. What you are doing is degrade them into mere instruments/objects, so you can kill and eat them with a clear conscience. In dubio pro reo dictates that as long as it isn't proven they lack these capabilities, a porpuse of their own, etc (and it's reasonable to consider the possibility that they might have them), you can't just assume they haven't. Have you ever had a pet? Take a pig as a pet and prove that it doesn't have any emotions and that it isn't aware that tomorrow will be another day. I think you'd have a pretty hard time.
I personally draw the line with bacteria for now, but that's more or less arbitrary. I think it's beyond our scope for now. We aren't technologically advanced enough yet to simply let them be without some of them causing harm to us.
To most people childbirth is ugly and unaesthetic (especially when they see it in person). Not a good measurement of what is "moral" and "immoral".
It isn't. That wasn't an argument for why it's immoral. It's more like an argument for why we shouldn't kill animals regardless of whether it's morally alright.
Excuse me? Do you understand that some animals are carnivores, right? In other words, they cannot survive on anything else than other animals. How does acquiring food make it not "morally alright"?
There are animals that are forced to commit immoral acts to survive. If I'm forced to kill people to survive because, let's say somebody could just shut off my brain if I didn't, that doesn't make it morally alright. I'd still have a choice, as I'd still at all times be aware of the consequences of what I'd be doing. Those animals probably aren't, so you can make a case that they aren't "guilty". But that doesn't make the act on itself moral.
Some animals don't have the choice but to kill and eat meat, so that makes it moral for us who have the choice? I still don't get it. The act itself is immoral. Since these animals aren't capable of seeing it as such and/or aren't aware of any alternate choices, you can't blame them for it. The act itself stays inherently immoral though.
"The fittest" does not mean "the fittest individual". It means "the fittest group of individuals". And individual does not survive. A species does.
Great, we agree on that point then. Sometimes "the survival of the fittest" is interpreted differently though, advertising egoistic lines of thinking.
We really don't have to eat carrots at all either. Does that make eating carrots immoral?
Plants lack any form of a central/semi-central nervous system. They are sentient though, so it's still slightly immoral as well. That's way beyond our scope for now though. At one point in the distant future, I guess we should indeed stop eating them.
It's certainly immoral to kill animals. We can choose not to, but we do it anyway. But I think it should be a very low priority issue for now. Similar to how it's much easier to give up on bad habits if you are overall satisfied with your life, it will be easier for mankind to stop eating meat once we've gotten rid of all of our more immediate problems.
Killing animals is ugly and unaesthetic. We have to suppress the idea of it happening to be able to enjoy our meals properly. That might make it easier to suppress the idea that people are dying all across the world, and we could theoretically do something about it, as well. Isn't it tolerable to make inferior species suffer? That's a similar kind of thinking which has allowed us to tolerate the enslavement of black people f.e.
Edit: I'd like to add that "other animals do it as well, therefore it can't be that immoral" is really a very silly argument imo. Where does the presumption come from that everything animals naturally do must be morally alright? Especially if we just copy their behavior without thinking? Granted, some animals may lack the capacity to think about the moral consequences of their actions, so you can't really blame them as severely for acting immorally. Similarly, if criminals lack that capacity, they won't be punished as severely, but that doesn't make the act itself any more moral at all. You can't assume the least possible mental capacity and deduce your moral standards from that. We clearly should assume the highest possible one instead if we don't want to go back to the Dark Ages...
As long as we eat meat, we won't be able to get rid of the notion that life is naturally cruel, that it's all about the survival of the fittest, etc. (Basically it's "God wills it and amen" in a new disguise). That notion if applied in the context of our society may severely hamper our capacity to stand up against unjust practices or social inequalities that we don't agree with. If the masses think that way, any democracy will easily turn into a polyarchy or even a dictatorship. The courage to challenge the status quo is absolutely necessary for a working society. We don't just say "but it's completely natural!" and leave it at that. How are we supposed to advance as a society like that?
About the survival of the fittest, I'd have to say that mankind has certainly not survived because we're the fittest on our own, we're only doing so well because we're highly intelligent social animals, and as a group we are strong. There's absolutely nothing that prevents us from living alongside other social animals as cousins besides our egos and our mad fantasies of being a superior race/species (collective ego). Hopefully, we'll be able to recognize the importance of other species when we start colonizing our first planets. There's still hope. ;p