May the depression be long lasting and heartfelt in the United States of AI.

Nextcloud includes one: https://nextcloud.com/groupware/

Get a room 😂

5% at the end of the decade is quite a pessimistic take 😉

Looking at the graph 1% was crossed mid/late 2021, while 2% was crossed mid 2024, so almost 3 years later. Now 3% is crossed a little more than a year later. Next year we would be likely to have crossed 4% and 5% should be no later than 2027, even if it doesn’t speed up much further.

I’m not sure I agree with the “no one claimed” part, because I think the proof is specifically targeting the claim that it is more likely than not that we are living in a simulation due to the “ease of scaling” if simulated realities are a thing. Which I think is one of the core premises of simulation theory.

In any case, I don’t think the reasoning only applied to “full scale” simulations. After all, let’s follow the thought experiment indeed and presume that quantum mechanics is indeed the result of some kind of “lazy evaluation” optimisation within a simulation. Unless you want to argue solipsism in addition to simulation theory, the simulation is still generating perceptions for every single conscious actor within the simulation, and the simulation therefore still needs to implement some kind of “theory of everything” to ensure all perceptions across actors are being generated consistently.

And ultimately, we still end up with the requirement that there is some kind of “higher order” universe whose existence is fundamentally unknowable and beyond our understanding. Presuming that such a universe exists and manages our universe seems to me to be a masked belief in creationism and therefore God, while trying very hard to avoid such words.

The irony is that the thought experiment started with “pesky weird behaviours” that we can’t explain. Making the assumption that our “parent universe” is somehow easier to explain is really just wishful thinking that’s as rational as wishing a God to be responsible for it all.

I’ll be straight here: I’m a deist, I do think that given sufficient thought on these matters, we must ultimately admit there is a deity, a higher power that we cannot understand. We may as well call it God, because even though it’s not a religious idea of God, it is fundamentally beyond our capacity to understand. I just think simulation theory is a bit of a roundabout way to get there as there are easier ways to reach the same conclusion :)

I wonder what you think of this news: https://phys.org/news/2025-10-mathematical-proof-debunks-idea-universe.html

It seems the nature of the universe is proven to be based on a non-algorithmic understanding of reality. Now intuitively that makes me think this also eliminates a pure materialistic view of reality, because if it were purely materialistic, that should theoretically be able to be modelled by an algorithm. But I wonder if I’m skipping a step in that case…

Well, consciousness was indeed out of scope for this post, but I will cover it in future posts. Spoiler alert: I do believe in a non-materialistic reality.

I think your position represents a paradox then. If you “choose” to act, that choice is either of your own volition, in which case it is an example of true free will, or it is predetermined in which case it isn’t a “real” choice. Both branches represent a contradiction with your position, no?

Regardless, since you don’t believe in free will, you are either covered by option 2 or 4, depending on whether free will is real or not. How you choose to act doesn’t affect whether it exists or what you believe to be true.

As a writer, I disagree. Writers often write thinking from the perspective of their characters. If something makes sense from the character’s perspective, they’ll write it. It’s not an endorsement by the writer, it just makes for a natural and believable progression and that’s why the book is better for it.

I can bet you King never decided that he should include such a scene because it would make the book better. He did it because he was writing from her perspective, and it popped into his mind as something that made sense for her to do.

It’s not a fantasy, not an endorsement, and not a post-rationalisation either. And knowing his writing style, upon reflection he probably felt it belonged for shock value alone. Writers do have a knack for pushing boundaries, and he’s certainly got a taste of it.

No worries, I understood that you were playing devil’s advocate somewhat. And indeed I don’t like it either, and fwiw, I’m not American either (European, so I don’t really have skin in this particular issue).

But when you say it’s a “rather valid decision with its motivations and reasons”, then yes, that’s basically what it means when I say it’s justified. But then you still have to ask the question as to who it is justified for. If you say it makes “sense on an economical and geopolitical level”, that’s well and good, but which economical and geopolitical level are we talking about? A deal such as this is unlikely to benefit the economy as a whole, so who are the beneficiaries? That’s the question of perspective. Probably this benefits Trump and his billionaire friends, hence why it’s justified from their perspective. But Average Joe, or the Argentinian equivalent, are unlikely to ever see a benefit from this.

I don’t understand why you’re getting downvoted. While I don’t share your conviction, I do admit it’s certainly a possibility.

The advantage of doing things that way is that code becomes much more portable. We may finally reach the goal of “write once, run anywhere”, because the AI may write all the platform specific code.

It does make a big assumption that the AI output is reliable enough though. At times people will want to tweak the output, so how are they gonna go about that? Maybe if the language is based on Markdown, you can inject snippets of code where necessary. But if you have to do that too often, such a language will lose its appeal.

There’s a lot of unknowns, but I see why it’s a tempting idea.

You know, as a full-time Linux user, I think I rather have game developers continue to create Windows executables.

Unlike most software, games have a tendency to be released, then supported for one or two years, and then abandoned. But meanwhile, operating systems and libraries move on.

If you have a native Linux build of a game from 10 years ago, good luck trying to run it on your modern system. With Windows builds, using Wine or Proton, you actually have better chances running games from 10 or even 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, thanks to Valve’s efforts, Windows builds have incentive to target Vulkan, they’re getting tested on Linux. That’s what we should focus on IMO, because those things make games better supported on Linux. Which platform the binary is compiled for is an implementation detail… and Win32 is actually the more stable target.