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Joined 17 days ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2025

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  • Phosphates were banned in dishwasher detergents in 2011, so most of the name brand companies switched to enzyme-based cleaners that use amylase and protease, which dissolve starches and proteins, respectively. And then some traditional detergent, which allows oil and water to mix, washes it all away.

    The nature of the enzymes are that as soon as they’ve broken up the starch or protein, they survive the reaction and can happily move onto the next starch or protein molecule. So if they’re overactive, without enough targets, then any portion of the dishes that are sensitive to that particular cleaner is going to get a higher “dose” of that cleaner working specifically at it.


  • If you have 2 apples, and then I give you 2 more, you don’t suddenly have 5 apples because we all decided 2+2=5.

    No, but some types of addition follow their own rules.

    Sometimes 1+1 is 2. One Apple plus one Apple is two apples.

    Sometimes 1+1 is 1. Two true statements joined together in conjunction are true.

    Sometimes 1+1 is 0. Two 180° rotations is the same as if you didn’t rotate the thing at all.

    If you don’t define what kind of addition you’re talking about, then it’s not precise enough to talk through what is or isn’t true.


  • I have a model of everything. Everything I am, my understanding of the world, it all fits together like a web. New ideas fit by their relationship to what I already know - maybe I’m missing nodes to fit it in and I can’t accept it

    Same, and I would add the clarification that I have a model for when and why people lie, tell the truth, or sincerely make false statements (mistake, having been lied to themselves, changed circumstances, etc.).

    So that information comes in through a filter of both the subject matter, the speaker, and my model of the speaker’s own expertise and motivations, and all of those factors mixed together.

    So as an example, let’s say my friend tells me that there’s a new Chinese restaurant in town that’s really good. I have to ask myself whether the friend’s taste in Chinese restaurants is reliable (and maybe I build that model based on proxies, like friend’s taste in restaurants in general, and how similar those tastes are with my own). But if it turns out that my friend is actually taking money to promote that restaurant, then the credibility of that recommendation plummets.











  • Predate rationalism? Modern rationalism and the scientific method came up in the 16th and 17th centuries, and was built on ancient foundations.

    Phlogiston theory was developed in the 17th century, and took about 100 years to gather the evidence to make it infeasible, after the discovery of oxygen.

    Luminiferous aether was disproved beginning in the late 19th century and the nail in the coffin happened by the early 20th, when Einstein’s theories really started taking off.

    Plate tectonics was entirely a 20th century theory, and became accepted in the second half of the 20th century, by people who might still be alive today.


  • Science is a process for learning knowledge, not a set of known facts (or theories/conjectures/hypotheses/etc.).

    Phlogiston theory was science. But ultimately it fell apart when the observations made it untenable.

    A belief in luminiferous aether was also science. It was disproved over time, and it took decades from the Michelson-Morley experiment to design robust enough studies and experiments to prove that the speed of light was the same regardless of Earth’s relative velocity.

    Plate tectonics wasn’t widely accepted until we had the tools to measure continental drift.

    So merely believing in something not provable doesn’t make something not science. No, science has a bunch of unknowns at any given time, and testing different ideas can be difficult to actually do.

    Hell, there are a lot of mathematical conjectures that are believed to be true but not proven. Might never be proven, either. But mathematics is still a rational, scientific discipline.