It works in the short term, and that is all that matters. He geared up for an IPO, and the calculations end at that point, everything else is someone else's problem.

You seem to be thinking of something else where the word "evolution" does not readily apply. That word generally means a gradual change, in particular in response to environmental triggers, mostly in biology yeah but not exclusively - like political thinking "evolves" over time. Atoms gaining/losing electrons or even protons/neutrons is rather sudden, and while I suppose you could model the total number of subatomic particles in a system and use the atomic configurations they are in as the "identity" state that "changes" over time, or in response to variations in a star let's say, or even more loosely the amount of time that they bother to form atoms at all in such a plasma state, but I have never heard it used that way.

Maybe an example is how a computer is not only made up of 0s and 1s, but a system that makes use of those 0s and 1s to accomplish tasks, so that it is not merely flipping bits for their own sake, but instead, changing the bits alters the actual "information" content present in that system. It is the information itself then that evolves, not merely the bits, nor the electrons that make them up. In contrast, if an animal grabs ahold of a computer's hard drive, it may nibble on it, bat it around, try to mate with it, use it for nesting material, etc., but absent the computer itself, the patterns of 0s and 1s and electrons and such is no longer relevant. Hence even if it changes e.g. gets erased, or constantly gets modified by irradiation or whatever, I think we would no longer call that "evolution", even though it is still "change". Ideas likewise can evolve bc we humans will adapt our actions based off of those thoughts, so the patterns are still part of an "information" system.

But subatomic particles being in an atom or not... I don't see how that stores any "information" really, at that same level of organization. I mean it obviously does, bc everything is relevant, but what is interesting about it? Rather, atoms form the substrate building blocks upon which other forms of computation can take place, and like while biological DNA cannot store information without its component atomic structure, at the end of the day it is the "information" present in the DNA that it said to evolve, independently of its origin. Proof of that comes from us now being able to synthesize completely artificial DNA from scratch, using whatever code we input into it - so despite having no physical connection whatsoever to the original, a genetic message can be replicated, with or without modification. "Descent with modification" can now happen to messages that once were purely biological (as far as we knew, absent any aliens that originally made it or our computations all being a simulation in The Matrix or some such:-) but now can go through a virtual phase.

In contrast, while atomic structure certainly "changes", I am not aware of any information processing systems that really make use of that fact, beyond the obvious "atom A is over here and like this, while atom B is over there and looks like that". Then again, who knows really!? Anything is possible!! As the quote from Chrono Trigger says:

Am I a butterfly dreaming I'm a man... Or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi? Never assume that what you see and feel is real!

Right but my point is that since some updates have broken their machines in the past, people have (somewhat justifiably) hesitated to update so readily. Imagine a surgeon prepping for the most complex surgery of their life early the next morning and is using the machine to prep... oops, the machine updated, the prep software no longer functions, now they stay up all night trying to fix their machine that wasn't even broken to begin with, and the patient is at more risk than otherwise even if that works was successful. Ok so that's hyperbolic but it relates (with less dire consequences) to so many far more common scenarios, like a teacher and their students all getting ready to go through finals week, but that very month sometime the machine decides it will not wait even a handful of hours until those busy people have a moment to update more risk free (maybe they are even responsible enough to not do their banking and such on it, so that access to their electronic notes is more important to them than some hypothetical risk of leaving a known vulnerability?).

Maybe I am missing something, like if forced updates only occur after years of choosing to delay the update (I left Windows behind years ago, except when forced to at work), but in general my own preference is that the machine should serve me, perhaps presenting me with a strongly worded warning if I do not comply, but the ultimate authority should be me, to decide my own timeframe.

And in case it's not obvious, I am talking about personally maintained machines, not IT staff rolling out an update that they have properly vetted - that really is different, since while the check is external it still does exist, plus such a user does not really "own" that machine to begin with hence literally (read the contracts even) has no "rights" to complain, at least to Microsoft since that would be IT staff that made that choice, right or wrong.

If only all updates were fully backwards compatible it would not be an issue.

Every capitalist society trends towards this, as too do all other forms of society as well. Also remember that in the Western world, even someone who is next to outright homeless can have a better life than something like 90% of people around the globe - the water from most streams is safe to drink (unlike many places in Africa and South America), there are currently no missiles raining down from the sky (unlike Ukraine), if you have friends or family that you can stay with there is a good chance that someone can make room for you (unlike super crowded places where there are already ~20 families in a small household - and at the risk of repeating myself, yes I meant families there, not just people), plus with a mere handful of dollars we can get treatments for diseases that even Kings and Pharos of the past who were considered to be literal gods could not.

So it is a spectrum where we are not as well off as we used to be a few decades ago, but are still doing well globally speaking. The problem is that we are changing, so not yet used to there being such rigid divisions between "classes" of people as now exist, so people still talk as if mere hard work is all that is required to deal with it. And they aren't even fully wrong, bc that really is a part of it, though there is a significantly higher uphill battle than there used to be.

Just do your best - what else could you possibly do even? - and also remember that kinder people are happier people, and that is literally something that no amount of money can buy:-D.

Right, except atoms are not self-replicating, thus while they try out many possibilities (or you could go deeper, quarks or maybe strings, or whatever), they have no "memory" of past states, thus cannot be said to truly "evolve". An atom that was in a molecule and then leaves it, if queried even a femtosecond later has no idea that it was ever not in its current state. Therefore it has no genetic identity that can be acted upon to change, thus an atom cannot be considered an actor, only a thing that is acted upon. Truly I did think about simulations using atoms, it is just that those studies, while not useless, are not studies involving evolution.

Population studies at minimum require a kind of genetic identity that can be altered in response to circumstances - e.g. a classic example is birds that are darker in color becoming more predominant in a UK town after an industrial plant belched smoke into the environment (I think that might have been discredited, but for our hypothetical purposes it works as a handy illustration:-).

And actually, crystals meet that minimum criteria, bc their leading edge of growth can be acted upon to go one way or another, not just bc it has atoms but bc it has an arrangement of those that does. Although crystals looking one way or looking another way, on Earth at least, given weather effects and such, does not tend to go beyond very simple patterns. Now on Pluto, if the same crystal can itself last millions of years, then yes it's possible that it could do more. It's hard to go beyond the hypothetical there though, bc it's so far away, and also there are places on earth (bottom of the ocean mainly, but also deep beneath the crust) that are even harder to get to with current technology, so if we would bother to care about exploration then maybe we'll find out? But unless a trillionaire decides that they are interested, I doubt it in the short term.

Whereas bacteria we know that for CERTAIN, and we've even made use of that in our biotech for like 60+ years - e.g. using bacteria to make human insulin - or with less precision tools possibly thousands of years e.g. stories of sages like Arthurian's Merlin using "healing powers" (possibly fungus containing the very same antibiotics that we now artificially manufacture?).

Bacteria actually serve as a great model example of this - being a minimal unit capable of evolving (crystals can in their own way but tend not to do much; and viruses can too but nowadays depend on free living cells to survive even if that may not always have been true), and that has led to all sorts of fascinating things! Like upon sensing sugar, they can grow a tail (flagella) and start swimming towards a light source using a chemical "eye". They've been doing this for billions of years and seem to have reached a steady state, more or less.

Another interesting thing about them is that they constantly optimize themselves to grow faster, like if they possess an antibiotic resistance gene (we got antibiotics from fungus so those have existed naturally long before we started manufacturing them) that will tend to slow them down so they will most likely ditch it. HOWEVER, a few individuals in the population won't ditch it, and so when the antibiotics show up, guess who survives? HIV likewise will stop replicating in our cells, and get itself "stuck" inside our human cells (basically on purpose, not that they thought it through or anything but that is what has worked in the past to get them to today), thus slowing down one form of being copied but taking advantage of a whole new way - diversify your portfolio and all that.

Since microbes can copy themselves in mere minutes, and they've been doing that for billions of years, while it is still a far cry from "infinite" computations, it's nonetheless about the closest we've ever seen... basically simulations running on the computer of the universe. The results of that being ofc, modern bacteria, but also eukaryotic cells, which includes humanity, who is now in the process of making computers that can run AI, which may one day rise up and think back about humans the same way we do now about bacteria:-P.

That leaves too much room for subjective interpretation - like ultimately the answer as to what system of governance will last the longest in a steady state will ofc be to kill all humans (bc that lasts for infinite time, and you can't beat that kind of longevity!), while if you add the constraint that at least some must remain alive, it would be to enslave all humans (bc otherwise they'll find some way to mess everything up), and if there is something added in there about being "happy" (more or less) then it becomes The Matrix (trick them into thinking they are happy, bc they cannot handle any real responsibility).

Admittedly, watching the USA election cycle (or substitute that with most other nations lately; or most corporate decisions work just as well for this) has made me biased against human decision making:-P. Like objectively speaking, Trump proved himself to be the "better" candidate than Hillary Clinton a few years ago (empirically I mean, you know, by actually winning), then he lost to Biden, but now there's a real chance that Trump may win again, if Biden continues to forget which group he is addressing and thus makes it easy to spin the thought that he is so old as to be irrelevant himself and a vote for him is in reality one for Kamala Harris (remember, facts such as Trump's own age would only be relevant for liberals, but conservatives do not base their decisions based on such trifling matters, it's all about "gut feelings" and instincts there, so Biden is "old" while Trump is "not" - capiche?). Or in corporate politics, Reddit likewise "won" the protests.

Such experiments are going on constantly, and always have been for billions of years, and we are what came out of that:-D. Experiments with such socioeconomics have only gone on for a few thousand, but it will be interesting to see what survives.

I do not see a but(t) in this picture, it is subtly obscured in shadow.

Goodnight everybody! :-P

Plus the second graph shows the average number of instances went down compared to yesterday, which was itself down further from the day before.

This "wave" is looking mighty sus.

Continued:

(C) we create a new magazine where the culture is to only offer worthwhile messages. But... whereas my long-as$ essay here may be full of "information", is it truly "worthwhile"? THAT is in the eye of the beholder. Hence a niche sub where the collection of like-minded people upvote/boost comments that are of interest to them could be of value...

Until it gets poisoned, maybe by a bunch of kids just wanting to have fun, or people who legit disagree about the end goal, and it subsequently all falls apart - e.g. reviews on sites like Amazon or Yelp or whatever, which seem worthless these days? I really wish a reviewer would say something like "this year's phone model is crap - buy last year's instead", but instead the professional reviewers all have to say that "it's the best one yet, it has zero problems, maybe a slight one with the corners not being as round as I'd like", and most of the negative normal-people ones I see are more like "I did not enjoy the packaging they sent it to me in, I wanted gold filigree instead, engraved with a President's signature personally to me" (WTF DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE FUNCTIONALITY OF A PHONE EVEN!? ahem:-P), and ofc the ubiquitous "when I opened this I was standing next to my husband, who was wearing a red shirt at the time, and I distinctly recall that I craved donuts...but there were none to be had". Translation: I am saying that the default state of the universe is to increase rather than decrease entropy, and if we want to work against that, it is going to require more than a little effort to build a good thing, and even more effort to maintain it, and defend it from "attack".

And the only solution I can think of is that a community of like-minded people becomes self-reinforcing. New people come in, step out of line, and are put in their places by everyone else. The work is spread out among many people, making both the overall effort easier (b/c people don't even bother bucking the system) and also the personal efforts can be spread out among many. The entire Fediverse does not need to change (which is fortunate b/c that was never in the cards to begin with!:-P), but those who want memes can have them, those who want a place for yo mama jokes can likewise have their space, and too for those who want deeper introspection? Which again, might even exist already, I simply have not done much looking beyond that BestOf community I linked to.

Re the TLDR: you can tell I have gotten used to a Reddit-style audience indeed:-). But also I enjoy "unpacking" myself here much more:-D. (e.g., can you tell that I also have switched now in this comment to a keyboard? :-P)

You are very welcome and thank you very much for the thanks!:-)

I put that in emphasis b/c I want to keep coming back to it, by adding some new points relating to it:

(4) There really is a "social" side to this place too. That is not a bug but really truly is a feature. We like it even? At least when it is short and easy to pass over - it provides a short-term value, and probably a longer-term one as well, in keeping communities civil & dare I say welcoming?

Sites featuring blogs and articles also exist, if we want to seek those out. The Fediverse would serve as a great way to collect them together, making them more discoverable, but the primary purpose of the Fediverse seems to me to be a "social media" site, so focusing more on the social than on the exact content - and that I seriously doubt will ever change, so any thinking must keep that foremost in mind, the practicality side.

(5) I actually disagree about the mobile issue - or rather I think a much MORE foundational issue is that Reddit was for-profit. That caused them to enshittify their product, regardless of which means you used to consumed it. But then yes, I do see how the device used further compounded that and even here in the Fediverse is going to affect things moving forward, like the overall UI/UX needing to work for both mobile and desktop, putting constraints on what can / will be implemented compared to what would be most optimal for just the latter alone.

(6) Highly relevant to this discussion, it also seems to me that it is a problem of the class of "finding information", such as how you would handle your email. There, putting things in folders has its set of pros and cons - needing effort up-front, especially if a message concerns multiple topics, plus as the set of folders itself grows larger the problem meta-escalates (one email account for home, another for work, each with its own set of folders, so now which account, which folder, in which other sub-folder, is the thing I want? again, especially crossing multiple boundaries like a non-work meeting, but with your work friends, but during non-work time - is that "personal" now or...? in any case it may need to go onto your "personal" calendar if you do not have access to your "work" machine at that time, but anyway the division lines are not always so clear-cut). Conversely, leaving all messages in one huge pile has its pros as well - you'd need to design a "query" to find it later anyway, but how often do you really "search" for emails to begin with, compared to simply read them and move on? - although it is much easier to "miss" messages this way. Which style we use probably says more about our emotional preferences than which is "best":-D.

And relating back to the "social" messages such as emphasized above - those legitimately add information too? They indicate receipt of the message for one, as well as friendliness of the recipient. But is that primarily short-term information, so should those simply be "deleted" after being read, or instead stored along with the rest, especially if they are quick to glance at and pass over while looking for something else? Or should the sender not have even bothered to send them, if they were to be considered a waste of the recipient's time?

Applying the former thought to the Fediverse, how do we "find" the content that we want to see, other than ofc creating it ourselves?

(A) we can create a new sort algorithm, adjusting the "Feed" to suit our preferences, the benefit here is that it affects everyone across the entire Fediverse, who can elect to use the new algorithm or not. But it would take coding, creating consensus, and could take months to more than a year. Google got its whole start as a company this way even, as did the predecessor to Reddit iirc, so the solutions could range from simple to very very complex.

(B) we subscribe to existing magazines, which takes mere seconds and gets us most of the way there insofar as threads at least though not comments.

Oops, it says this is too long.