WhatsTheHoldup

What? There aren't any?

If I explained to you ghettos are horrific and violate human rights, because as one example among so many other issues we would likely agree on, they strip a people of their right to fair elections and representation in the determination of their future.

And that the fact that Palestinians have not been free to organize, form new political parties and campaign in safe and uncoerced elections is a direct violation of their rights and the party to answer and blame for this is the one occupying them and preventing this from happening...

What are we disagreeing about?

What I disagree with is that an election an entire generation before the present that people alive never voted in should not be held up to represent their current politics and beliefs as a nation.

If you think about a number line, multiplying 2 by -1 takes you to -2. Multiply it again by -1 and its back at 2.

If you think of the arrow from 0 to 2, all you did was rotate that arrow by 180 degrees to point along the negative axis and back again.

Multiplication by -1 is already a rotation of 180 degrees!

All were doing now is extending that concept to 90 degrees by imagining a second line perpendicular to the original number line.

Two 90 degree rotations need to get to -1 to complete the 180 degree rotation we already expect in normal multiplication.

Giving it the symbol i, this means definitionally i * i = -1. It has to because -1 flips us around the other way on the number line.

That means i is the square root of negative 1.

Any values that use i to store information, even time, could be called "imaginary time". Really it's just constantly oscillating between the real and imaginary spaces like a constantly spinning arrow.

Hamas is the official representative of Gaza. They were elected.

What makes you say this? Do you not realize this "election" happened all the way back in 2006?

Do you know how long ago that was? 19 years.

Do you know what the median age in Gaza was in 2020 (before this recent escalation in genocide)? 18 years old.

In my opinion 20 years per election might not be an ideal timescale for a democracy.

I'm trying to assume good faith so I'm confused why you'd argue that's adequate representation?

A particle is also a wave, a wave moves back and forth between -X and X passing 0 every time.

Now, when you measure this particle and it happens to be at zero, sometimes it moves towards X afterwards and sometimes it moves towards -X.

For the scientists however, all they can measure is that it's at 0 and half the time it randomly goes one way or the other with 50/50 probability.

To explain this, scientists imagine the particle has more than 0, but it has a secret momentum hidden into it telling it to deflect positively or negatively.

Imagine a circle instead of a line. Now instead of crossing zero, you rotate around 0 and hit a Y and -Y axis with X and -X unchanged.

That y axis that contains the hidden momentum of the particle is called "imaginary" because scientists love loaded terms that are unhelpful to understanding lol.

You can just not reply. It's weird you keep up typing replies to me and then get mad when I respond.

Do you need the last word that badly?

Your points are correct but I think you misunderstand what my analogy was intended to do. None of this makes it a bad analogy.

I don't disagree with you that reading opens the doors to so many other things than chess does.

I also never intended to imply chess is a transferable skill. Chess skill, for matters of this discussion, could be entirely useless outside of the specific context of a chess game.

The reason i made the analogy betwen learning to read and reading for fun is because I'm trying to illustrate the difference of 500 ELO chess and 2500 ELO chess.

If you play 500 ELO chess you DO NOT KNOW what 2500 ELO chess is, you could not explain the reasons behind a single move which is made in strategy, you can barely identify how to move your horse.

...it's not an actual apology, it's a rhetorical device. Was that not clear?

If we're giving each other mutual advice on phrasing, I'd remove this particular rhetorical device from your repertoire. Strawmanning me as being upset about some irrelevant thing and insincere apologizing for it is unproductive because now I either have to address the strawman or I could use my own rhetorical device by taking your apology literally and use it against you.

The setup I was given wasn't really a productive thing to build on, and that was just as clear as the phoniness in your apology.

I don't really understand why you feel the need to second guess my own assessment of my own mind.

I understand why you think I'm doing that, and it's probably related to the part lower down you admit you aren't really caring about what I say to you and what point I'm actually intending to make.

To once again clarify. At no point have I second guessed your own assessment of your own mind.

I simply pointed out that your assessment of the mind you **do not possess?? (one in which you have fully studied the thing) can't honestly be guessed at and this is an existing problem for everyone.

I'm not interested in an explanation either, just to be clear.

Then what are we doing here man? I'm responding for the sole purpose of explaining this point to you.

I think you need to consider why you're still responding here because all I have for you are more explanations until you understand this basic concept.

Each time you keep drawing comparisons that paint me as naïve and childlike. It's perhaps not intentional but the end result is tremendously insulting, hence why I'm not interested in further talk on the subject.

Since you mention you love logic puzzles how about that I instead of a comparison:

You are a prisoner in a room with 2 doors and 2 guards. One of the doors will guide you to freedom and behind the other is a hangman–you don't know which is which, but the guards do know.

One of the guards always tells the truth and the other always lies. You don't know which one is the truth-teller or the liar either. However both guards know each other.

You have to choose and open one of these doors, but you can only ask a single question to one of the guards.

You ask both guards "are you interested in further talk on the subject?"

The first guard stays silent. The second guard says "Each time you keep drawing comparisons that paint me as naïve and childlike. It's perhaps not intentional but the end result is tremendously insulting, hence why I'm not interested in further talk on the subject." And then continues ranting for 4 more long paragraphs.

Which guard is lying and which one is telling the truth?

With regards to learning new things, the world of human experience is vast. I am not shutting the door on chess out of petulance. I do so knowing the journey I would need to take is incompatible with my own preferences for discovery and growth. To my mind it is a distilled competitive logic puzzle. I don't like logic puzzles of any complexity, and I particularly don't like pared down ones with no set dressing or storytelling.

Yep, no need to justify anything. I know i sound like a broken record here haha but you keep bringing up justifications for why you don't prioritize this hobby when what your priorities are was never really in question.

My point is still strictly about difference between learning X and doing X, and how the learner can't access the mind of the doer before they've finished learning.

I am actually quite happy to engage in puzzle solving - it's one of the things I do for a living. However there the puzzles are more cooperative and with many, many more facets to them. They can be solved in a huge number of ways and with a variety of different skills.

Thats got my interest piqued. In an abstract way or you literally solve recreational style puzzles for a living?

There's this show Ludwig about a puzzle solver who gets pulled into a murder investigation.

I'm explaining this because it seems you need it spelled out rather explicitly.

I don't need anything spelled out. I understand on my end, I'm trying to explain a basic concept to you (difference between thing and learning about thing) and it seems like the problem of why I'm not getting through isn't that you're aren't capable of understanding but you're not willing to concede I might have a point because we're now in an adversarial sort of context and you're just I think in "winning" mode from here on out and won't give me an inch.

Particularly as you seem to have rather strange ideas about who you're talking to. I'm nearly 40 and your comment about not recognising past versions of myself could not possibly be further from the truth. The various iterations of myself have been built atop the old ones. The eleven year old boy is still in there, as is the teenager, twenty-something, and the several versions of me from my 30s.

For example this. You obviously understand the difference between teenage your tastes and your tastes now, you just don't want to give it to me.

Which well, that's sort of how we're encouraged to act online anyway.

I don't necessarily know everything I like, but I've tried a great many things and have a firm understanding of what kinds of activities I dislike. I can also extrapolate fairly well, and it's not like chess is an obscure interest such as shin-kicking. The journey and destination both look rather dull to me, whereas many others do not. I cannot do everything in one lifetime and must choose. Chess has had its chance with me. It blew it. The same is true for gambling, as it happens. I have tried it in various forms and found it universally dull. I also don't enjoy ales, gloomy literature, tennis, or horror movies. There's much about those things I don't know and I intend to keep it that way in order to explore other potential interests. Things that I hopefully won't be bored by, or at least I enjoy some element of the journey.

Yeah I know, chess doesn't fit into your goals and you don't have an interest in the game at the current level you're playing at.

I understand you didnt like it haha. That was never unclear.

But why do you keep feeling the need to apologize to me? Don't self flagellate, just state what you believe without worrying about upsetting me, this is just about understanding a concept. Theres no emotion here. I think you are almost there and actually nailed the point you're just missing the nuance.

This is perfectly on the money here

Building an opinion around the game I actually played rather than some hypothetical higher level game feels like an extremely reasonable approach to me.

Fully correct. Build your opinion around the game you actually played, which unspoken but importantly in that implies you should leave room for potential different opinions on the game you haven't gotten to yet.

When a little kid says "I hate math" we don't want to take that as inate truth about them, it probably has more to do with their boring math teacher.

Get them into Minecraft, if they're into sports get them into learning stats for their favorite players.

I am super passionate about learning and what I've learned about the human brain is all it takes is for the right mindset and sometimes a thing just clicks. Not always, but trying to leave room for the myself I could grow into is a huge part of growth in general as a human.

You at 40 is not you at 30 which isn't you at 20. Accept my advice or not, you'll look back one day and I guarantee you won't recognize the person you once were.

At no point did I seek to judge it objectively.

That was exactly the reason for my response. :)

Your subjective opinion that "chess is unfun for you" ignores the objective lack of knowledge of what chess even is. I believe something is unfun for you, I just disagree that it's the game of chess you're describing.

What you are calling "chess" here is the basics. It's not the game Magnus Carlson plays.

I have played some chess at various points throughout my life. My subjective judgement is that it didn't grab me, unlike many, many other games. It might well have some divine beauty to it but the subjective barrier to entry is far too high. I also don't bother with TV shows that "get good in the second season" or endure multiple chapters of tedium before bailing on a book.

Fair!

Once again I'm not here to convince you to play it or that it even would be fun if you did. Watch and play what you want. Just also recognize everything has a learning curve and that it is an error to misattribute frustrations in general along the learning curve with frustrstion towards the actual thing once it's been learnt.

You're now putting words in my mouth.

At what point did I state anything other than a subjective opinion?

"Chess doesn't feel like a gateway to other, more fun games, and if it's not a fun game for me, why would I pursue it?"

Right in here. You don't actually know if it's a fun game for you or not. You just know it's unfun to learn at your current level and don't see it getting more fun any time soon to he worth sticking with.

Happens to me with countless games and hobbies. I used the book analogy to explain how someone learning to pronounce and sound out words complaining that "reading isn't fun for me" isn't actually complaining about reading, they're complaining about learning to read. Those are different things.

In fact I went out of my way to make it abundantly clear that these are my opinions and not a judgement on the game as a whole.

You did. But there's an objectiveness hidden in the subjective opinion.

As an analogy, if I saw a child in a burning building I could say as a subjective opinion "I will save that child".

The problem is under pressure and actual flames of a fire, I can't know how I would act. Maybe I'd panic and wouldn't actually be able to do it, or maybe some switch would go off and I'd rush in.

The point is I don't know because I've never been in that emergency situation. I'm unqualified to make subjective statements about how I'd react to completely unfamiliar states of mind.

Maybe chess is unfun for you, maybe it's not. Insert ANY hobby in that statement, it's not about chess specifically.

Until you've learned the thing you can't even make subjective statements about yourself and how you'd act with knowledge you DONT HAVE.

If this thread is anything to go by, I wish I'd played even less chess than I already have. Sorry that I'm enjoying my hobbies wrong?

Why are apologizing lol?

You aren't enjoying your hobbies wrong, I just think you're thinking about them in the wrong way.

I think you mean "X is unfun to learn" instead of "X is unfun".

I think you admitted you don't know enough about X to say if it's fun one way or the other.

I have not enjoyed my limited experiences with chess. They have turned me off pursuing it further. The same is not true of many other games I've played. To me that makes chess subjectively worse than those other games.

That's okay I guess.

I could spend a few hours with no tutorial failing to learn Dwarf Fortress and just conclude the game is unfun and live my life that way perfectly fine.

Does it actually mean the games unfun for me? No, of course. It just means I'm preventing myself from giving a chance to things I misjudged.

I think that's a much worse comparison tbh.

There's no presumption that a game like chess must be fun, all I said is that we are unable to objectively judge whether chess is fun or not before we've learned the rules and memorized common openings.

However if the basics of it don't draw me in, and I see no ancillary value in learning how to play it to a higher level, why would I continue?

You shouldn't. No one's telling you to do things you don't like. I'm just saying don't accuse reading of being "unfun" because you hate learning grammer and punctuation.

If you say "i don't see the value in chess so it's not worth it struggling through the unfun part of learning the basics" then we have no issue. See the difference?

It's the basics you hate. You have no clue how you feel about chess cause you haven't really played it yet.

If I invested enough time I could perhaps find myself engaged enough in the bigger picture, care about the minutia, but why?

You're focusing on the wrong question.

If it is possible to invest enough time that it becomes fun, then why are you trying to insist that thing is inherently just unfun.

It's unfun at the level you're at, but the next level is a completely different game.

I'm not saying you have to go to the next level, just stop judging it based on the current level.

Less fun fact: When Disney put that movie up on Disney+ they for no justifiable reason started splicing and cutting the original version to add CGI to censor things out of the movie for "modern sensibilities" and then sold it as the same product without any warning.

I am much less afraid of the authoritarian who would ban 1984 from being read, and much more afraid of those authoritarians who take it to heart and take out all the "controversial" things and leave a completely declared and neutered 1984+ on the shelf.

I'm sure there's some elegant simplicity in

There is! It can get REALLY cool once you get just a bit inro it.

Chess doesn't feel like a gateway to other, more fun games, and if it's not a fun game for me, why would I pursue it? I'm fairly sure it doesn't build skills that translate to anything else.

If you've never learned how to read, then while you're learning it's difficult to imagine reading books for fun.

If I don't enjoy stumbling on pronunciations and having to look up the meaning of words, then how will I ever enjoy books?

Well books aren't about getting stuck in the pronunciation, you can only really start enjoying reading after you've already learned how and the built in rules and patterns are things you understand and can play with.

It's up to you whether to put in the effort to learn to read, but for someone who hasn't yet learned to say they "don't like reading". Sorry but you havent actually experienced what reading for fun actually is yet.