Interesting. Looks like it can accept multiple variations on each answer. I was wondering about that

I’m not actually going to do it, but I like the system design

Hmm.

Rainbow tables…

Yeah. It does seem counterintuitive, but it’s a result of the uncertainty that what they see is what others do. So they have to communicate a number, and the only way they can is leaving or not each night to count up to it.

I thought about it more and concluded that if the guru had said “I see only blue and brown eyed people” then everyone (but her) could leave the island using the same logic, regardless of how many of each color there was (greater than zero of course because otherwise she wouldn’t see that color). Same for any number of colors too as long as she lists them all and makes it clear that’s all of them and doesn’t include herself.

Same way it expands to two: When there are three blue eyes, then each of them guesses they might have brown or something and there could be only two blue on the island, in which case as described those two would have left on the second night.

But they didn’t… So there must be three total. Same with 4, the 3 you can see would have left on night 3 if each of them saw the other two not leave on night 2…

Leaving or not is the only communication, and what the guru really did was start a timer. It has to start at 1 even though everyone can see that there’s more than one simply due to the constraints of the riddle - if the guru were allowed to say ‘I see at least 50 blue eyed people’ then it would start at 50 because there’s no other fixed reference available. Everyone knows there’s either 99 or 100, but they don’t know which of those it is, so need a way to count to there. They also think everyone else can see anything from 98 to 101 depending, so it’s not as straightforward as thinking the count could start at 99.

What does it mean?

I think if I tried that, it would only be a day or two before I went digging into the source code.

And even in those regions, at least some of the devices let you install the play store from the OEM’s store, so I’m sure most users do that if they can.

I find that really interesting - and can’t relate to it at all. I suppose if what I do counts as sensory seeking it goes in the opposite direction (I mean porn) but pain is definitely a pure negative for me that I do my best to avoid.

I think there might be something to the endorphin theory (and my apparent lack thereof)

Tradition.

Gas prices are also the only retail prices that include tenths of a penny - specifically 9/10, as in all gas prices look like $x.xx9 such as $3.059

I’m actually curious if you mean that literally - in another thread we came up with a theory that enjoying stuff like BDSM, etc and enjoying spicy food could actually be linked by how sensitive someone is to endorphins.
I’m likely not at all sensitive to them, so for me pain just doesn’t lead to pleasure (besides trivial things like scratching an itch)

I really hate this trend.

I like this theory, I wonder if liking spicy food is often correlated with enjoying activities like BDSM and tattoos and such.

I could just have roughly no response to endorphins - I know pain killers such as oxycodone do basically nothing for me (to the point that I don’t bother taking them when prescribed)

That would kinda explain a few things now that I think about it… Very interesting.

Exactly. That’s why I think the only useful definitions of free will are those that are weak enough to distinguish between the animal and the rock in a situation like that.

You’re right.

It would have to be multiple timelines or single consistent history. Of the two, I think multiple timelines is a little more likely.

Yeah, but I feel like if it were feasible to violate the condition we would have done it by now (besides the Casimir effect). That’s just an opinion of course, and I’m just an interested layperson, but I know physicists have been trying for at least a few decades.

I can think of a couple ways around that, the easiest is that I actually think time travel is impossible. (Like this for example)

If it’s not impossible, then single-timeline travel probably is, and all (backwards) travel would start a new timeline.

Short of that, maybe something ridiculous would have happened when the traveler “first” went back, like one of them tripping or whatever, and the handshake they agreed to try didn’t go as planned, and then “still” didn’t the traveler’s second time. Basically this.

I believe it’s impossible in the real universe.

Sure there are solutions of general relativity that contain time loops, but they require stuff like an infinitely long cylinder, or escaping a spinning black hole, or negative energy. I just don’t believe beings made of finite matter and with finite energy will ever be able to time travel (except into the future at various rates) and that’s the only kind of beings I think exist.

I think from a physics standpoint, strict free will is already an illusion and the only useful definitions of free will basically boil down to “choices can be made”, perhaps as far as “Slight differences in initial conditions can lead to different choices” (but somehow excluding random processes). That kind of definition doesn’t even require consciousness, and is compatible with a deterministic universe like ours seems mostly to be. Would also be compatible with the time traveler unwittingly doing everything as must happen, but still via individual choices.

Same. One of the first things I did (after rooting it) was find the kernel ‘files’ to make it stop at 79%. Battery life seems about the same as the first month I got it.

I also have a Wear OS watch (TicWatch Pro 3) that I manually charge to about 79% (with Tasker to alert me on the phone when it’s there) and it’s still using only around 30%/day after nearly 4 years.

Statements like that make me feel like an alien who just landed here: I believe you, but it’s so totally outside my experience that I genuinely can’t make sense of it.