Recent comments in /f/Showerthoughts

TenWildBadgers t1_je74r4m wrote

Reply to There’s no way to truly hear a random song. by Glittering-Animator2

You want me to double down on that for you? Randomness doesn't exist, it is only a function of we as observing not having all the information.

Picture a normal, 6-sided die. I go to roll it. As the die rolls from my hand and clatters across the ground, everyrhing slows into bullet time, until it freezes, and you get information. Physics formulas, forces, mass, little inconsistencies of the dice's weight and density.

If you get enough information- the precise details of my throw, every air particle that bounces against it, and a truely impossible number of other details, you plug the math into a supercomputer and have it tell you what side the die will land on.

It isn't random, it just depends on factors we don't have the capacity to see or understand enough to predict it.

This is why computers' random number generators litterally just take a hyperspecific measurement of the time and use that as the input to an equation to give you the number you're looking for.

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tb5841 t1_je74bck wrote

Reply to comment by TenWildBadgers in Humans were only species with more than two genders by Clear_Constant_3709

There was a very interesting interview with someone on the radio a few months ago (Radio 4, UK) who had written a book about primates.

He said that idea of a dog having a gender (i.e. distinct from its sex) was ridiculous. But he told us about his observations of chimps that were born female yet followed all the typical male-chimp behaviours, joined in male friendship groups, etc. It really sounded like a female chimp that identified as male, from what he said.

Difficult to really know what was going on since - as you say - they can't communicate with us.

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