Thorham

My user name is a miss spelling of Torham, the main character of the game Dungeon Master 2 (my avatar image is Torham's in game portrait).

Code that reads a fixed number of bytes, including seeking, and then parses the partial data, isn't complicated, regardless of what's being parsed. Also, writing quick and dirty code may seem like a good idea sometimes, but I've found that it leads to frustration almost every time.

But why did you think it was a good idea to read whole files one byte at a time? That's just about never useful.

I claim that reality is everything that exists regardless of what I know, think I know or don't know. If what I experience is a simulation, or an illusion, etc, then that is simply also part of reality because it exists. The fact that I don't know doesn't change that. Truth is a simple concept. I can indeed claim whatever I want, but that doesn't mean my claims are true, even if I truly believe those claims. Personal truths aren't necessarily actually true. Like I said before, it's just everything that exists. What we think exists and what really exists are potentially two entirely different things. This is the philosophy part of the forum What you're talking about is the practical side of things. With science we can do and make all kinds of stuff, but you won't get certain answers.

The easy answers to those questions are very obvious: You could say that it's true that reality exists (whatever that might be) and that reality is just everything that exists (whatever all that is), but that doesn't really lead anywhere. What I want to know is how not knowing what the truth and reality are makes these things subjective?

By conservative I don't mean minimal commenting, I mean not commenting obvious code. I don't like having so many comments that maintaining them becomes a second job.

The truth is what it is and reality is what it is regardless of what anyone thinks or believes they are. Thinking that something is true doesn't make it true. That matrix simulation is just another part of reality. Whether we know we're in such a simulation or not doesn't change that. It's our viewpoint that's subjective, not reality.

I'd say the opposite: Be conservative in your use of comments. Code should typically be reasonably self-descriptive.

Both truth and reality are objective. They simply are what they are regardless of what we can and can't know about them.

The real question is if time exists physically as 'stuff', or is an effect like evolution.

Undoubtedly experiments with people who claim to have said ability. Seems like all this proves is that the people who claim this don't have it. Doesn't mean it exists, of course.

Yes, we're absolutely better designers than evolution because evolution doesn't design anything.

Nice amount of speculation I could just as easily say that I'm a supernatural soul who controls their body through the nervous system from outside the body, who is also currently not scientifically detectable. And actually, it's something I find a whole lot more plausible simply because I find it likely that there's more to reality than meets the current scientific eye. Probably much more. That said, I sure hope I'm right...

Scientific nothing? No problem. Happens all the time. Isn't nothing to begin with. Absolute nothingness? Likely not a chance. Why does a creator being have to be supernatural at all? And also, what is supernatural anyway? Something that goes beyond ordinary nature as we know it?

I'm just saying that perhaps not all behavior in non-human animal species is evolution driven. Furthermore, is an overwhelmingly strong sex drive a requirement for adequate reproduction? Because if it's not, then why would a very strong sex drive be selected for? Then after that you have to ask yourself if all successful species have very strong sex drives. All in all, what I wrote doesn't seem as unreasonable as you make it out to be.

Because monkeys, or any other organisms with brains, are a bad metaphor for randomness seeing how they aren't random. If you're going to use a metaphor, use a good one.

For any possible character combination of a specific length to occur, you need unbiased randomness, otherwise it's possible that certain character sequences will simply never occur. Monkey brains, like human brains, are probably not good generators of randomness, and as such it's possible that a monkey will never type out Hamlet, or any other complete text.

Would that be because there's no advantage to marrying?

I'm the wrong guy to ask

While I hope neither, women should say: 'Screw society', and just do whatever the hell they want.

Is it relevant? They probably just do it because they're horny, evolutionary advantage or not.

You're supposed to have any ideological position you want, however, veganism is about avoiding all animal products as much as possible in order to contribute as little as possible to animal suffering and death. It's a misconception that it's a diet (for example, steaks from a steak tree would be perfectly vegan).

What do mass and massless actually really mean? Can't you just say that photons belong to a class of particles that behave one way, while things like protons are part of a class of particles that behave in another way? Just thinking out loud

Would be cool if the dreadful post editor could be replaced with a better one somehow.

Not every activity that animals (including humans as a species) engage in must necessarily have an evolutionary advantage.