And it took a lot of hard work by a lot of people to adopt new date standards to avoid that problem. Now it’s time to adopt new IP standards, and it’s going to take a lot of hard work by a lot of people.

I’m not saying planned obsolescence isn’t a thing (because it is), but that’s not the only reason. Making phones smaller, lighter, faster, and more feature-dense all mean that the phone has to be built with tighter manufacturing and operating tolerances. Faster chips are more prone to heat and vibration damage. Higher power requirements means the battery has a larger charge/discharge cycle. And unfortunately, tighter operating tolerances mean that they can fall out of those tolerances much more easily.

They get dropped, shaken, exposed to large environmental temperature swings, charged in wonky ways, exposed to hand oils and other kinds of dirt, and a slew of other evils. Older phones that didn’t have such tight tolerances could handle all that better. Old Nokia phones weren’t built to be indestructible, they are just such simple phones that there isn’t much to break; but there’s a reason people don’t use them much anymore. You can still get simple feature phones, but the fact remains that they don’t sell well, so not many are made, and the ones that are made don’t have a lot of time and money invested in them.

Now Voyager is an extremely simple computer, made with technology that has huge tolerances, in an environment that is mostly consistent and known ahead of time so the design can deliberately account for it, had lots of testing, didn’t have to take mass production into its design consideration, didn’t have to make cost trade-offs, and has a dedicated engineering team to keep it going. It is still impressive that it has lasted this long, but that is more a testament to the incredible work that was and is being put into it than to the technology behind it.

If I interpret your question correctly, you are basically asking what the practical difference is between interpreting a model as a reflection of reality and interpreting a model as merely a mathematical tool.

A mathematical model, at its core, is used to allow us to make testable predictions about our observations. Interpretations of that model into some kind of explanation about the fundamental nature of reality is more the realm of philosophy. That philosophy can loop back into producing more mathematical models, but the models themselves only describe behavior, not nature.

A model by nature is an analogy, and analogies are always reductionist. Like any analogy, if you poke it hard enough, it starts to fall apart. They make assumptions, they do their best to plug holes, they try to come as close as they can to mirroring the behavior of our observations, but they always fall short somewhere. Relativity and Quantum Chromodynamics are both good examples. Both are very, very good at describing behavior within certain boundaries, but fall completely apart when you step outside of them. (Both, to expand on the example, use constants that are impericaly determined, but we have no idea where they come from.)

The danger is in when you start to assume that a model of reality is reality itself, and you forget that it’s just a best guess of behaviors. Then you get statements like you first made. “Relativity assumes time is a dimension. The model for that works. Therefore time must be a dimension in reality. That must mean that not treating time as a dimension anywhere must be wrong.” That line of thinking, though, forgets that a model is only correct within the scope of the model itself. As soon as you introduce a new model, any assumptions made by other models are no longer relevant. That will pigeonhole your thinking and lead you to incorrect conclusions due to mixed analogies.

That is how you get statements like your first one. “Model A treats time like an illusion, but model B treats time like a dimension. Ergo, all dimensions are illusions .” That is mixing analogies.

Nope, you can do that with GPay, which is not the same as Google Pay, which is not the same as Google Wallet, but they all connect to the same account. Yay Google naming 😑.

“Google Pay” app is going away, but the “GPay” app is not, and you can use that for person to person transactions. Yay Google naming conventions.

Because Google is Google and can’t keep their own shit straight, there is a bit of confusion. “Google Pay” is going away, but “GPay” is not. You can still use the GPay app for person to person transactions. Google Wallet is used for things like tap-to-pay. Both apps link to the same underlying account.

I would be careful of confusing “reality” (whatever that is) with our model of reality. Relativity, which treats time as a dimension, is a good model that fits well with most of our observations. It’s not perfect, though, and it doesn’t fit well with some other observations. That’s how we know that it doesn’t fully match reality, and why we’re looking for a new model.

Paraphrasing the old saying: all models of the universe are wrong, but some are useful.

Time management is different for everyone, and when you’re on a deadline, or just dealing with a one-off situation, the extra research has no value.

Sometimes you don’t need to know how the clock works, you just need to know what time it is.

I’m not your Mary Tyler Moore.

They were very obviously making a joke based on the original picture

No thanks, I’m FIN.

Focusing on the general idea of the last statement of your first paragraph, I completely disagree. I would much rather have a smart evil person in charge over an evil idiot.

A smart evil person will, at the very least, work for their own self-preservation. They can be negotiated with, even reasoned with, because they know that some give and take is required to meet their own goals.

An evil idiot will just break everything and take everyone with them if they don’t get what they want simply because they don’t understand what it is they are breaking.

Correct. Infant botulism can result from bacteria in raw honey that is otherwise harmless to anyone with a developed immune system.

I suppose the question is which would use less energy: boiling to distill, or boiling just enough to bind the microplastics to the calcium and then filter the now easy-to-remove large particles.

That is a very drastic slippery slope fallacy. You’re claiming that if convicted criminals have rights, then crime will take over and run the country. You are incorrectly conflating the preservation of rights with the removal of deterrents.

By the way, which South American countries are communist? If you are thinking of Cuba (which is not South American), then they actually use the criminal justice system to suppress rights, which is what this thread is claiming will happen if the rights of the convicted are removed.

I’m not sure how you made the jump from “removing rights” to “removing punishments.” Even the U.S. constitution has explicitly protected rights for the convicted and we definitely still have prisons.

Yes. The hunters would gift their kills to the gatherers, and the gatherers would gift their findings to the hunters. The economic model is known as a “gift economy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#Social_and_economic_structure

There is no such thing as not having an “economic model.” As long as there are people with unmet needs and wants, there will be an economy, and that economy can be modeled and given a label.

I agree. Please read my last sentence.

The statement, however, indicated that they were more annoyed that a politician would change their stance because of poling numbers rather than because it’s the right thing to do. My point is that our political system is designed for just that. Politicians have always done what is best for themselves, and expecting different from any politician is naive. Our system is deliberately designed to allow people to put pressure on politicians to (try to) keep them from sacrificing the people they are supposed to govern for their own gain.

I was talking more to the general sentiment of the statement, not to these specific circumstances. Don’t blame a politician for bowing to political pressure from the people. That’s what they’re supposed to do to keep your vote. Allow them to change their policy, even if they don’t change their stance. Instead, blame the ones that double-down on harmful decisions because they don’t want to appear “weak.”

This is all theoretical, of course. Recent elections have shown that too many people are willing to be sacrificed to allow those in charge to appear “strong.”

Oh, no. A politician doing what the people want in order to save his job.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s better than the usual m.o. where the politician does whatever they want and screw the people. Yes, it would be nice if they did what you want from the get-go, but I will vote for the one that changes their stance due to popular pressure over one that “sticks to their guns” no matter who it’s hurting.

(I’m speaking in generalities here. Obviously Biden hasn’t changed his stance yet.)