In the infinite limit (or just large-ish x), the probability of at least one success, from nx attempts with 1/x odds on each attempt, will be 1 - ( 1 / e^n )
For x attempts, 1 - 1/e = 0.63212
For 2x attempts 1 - 1/e^2 = 0.86466
For 3x attempts 1 - 1/e^3 = 0.95021
And so on
Ironically, the even more basic error of probabilistic thinking that people so—painfully—commonly make ("It either happens or doesn't, so it's 50/50") would get closer to the right answer.
not intended to be replayed
I have flagrantly disregarded this advice in an attempt to uncover its secrets. I'm assuming there are still a bunch of patterns that remain obscure, but the ones I have picked up on allowed me to end day 60 with 5581 food just now. So I'm calling that good enough.
Rat Ruins:
Starts out rich but becomes depleted after repeat visits
Dragon Lake:
I don't think I've ever seen food here. Dragons not edible?
Goat Grove:
Good at the beginning, gradually runs down as time passes
Horse Hills:
A few random hours of each day (if there's a pattern I haven't spotted it) will return numbers in the 20s or 30s, small numbers otherwise
Tiger Forest:
Good in the last 2 or 3 hours of each day, small numbers otherwise
The rest:
Experimented with spending all day every day in any given territory - some broadly net-positive, some net-negative, but nothing seemed very exciting. Possibly they respond to more complicated conditions that I haven't yet tried
Combined strategy:
Alternate 14 hours in Goat Grove with 2 hours in Tiger Forest as a daily routine. When Goat Grove starts to drop off to single digits per hour (around day 12–14), switch to Horse Hills. At some point hit Rat Ruins for 10 hours or so.
Also, the guy is spamming his post about spamming applications into all the subreddits, which gives the whole thing a great meta twist, I wonder if he’s using AI for that too.
I'm pretty sure I saw what must be the same account, posting blatantly AI generated replies/answers across a ton of different subreddits, including at least some that explicitly disallow that.
Either that or someone else's bot was spamming AI answer comments while also spamming copycat "I applied to 1000 jobs with AI" posts.
Ah, perils of text-only communication and my own mild deficiency in social senses; didn't catch that it was a joke.
Has nonetheless got me thinking about whether some toasted oats would be a good addition to any of the recipes I already like. Lil bit of extra bulk and texture, some browned nutty notes—there's not nothing to that.
Not wishing to be rude but this feels like it's missing a section on the benefits of eating oatmeal sometimes.
There's a favourable comparison to the protein/fibre/arsenic content of white rice, but I don't eat a lot of white rice so I am left unclear on the motivation for substituting something I do eat with oatmeal.
I'm skeptical that continuity of personal identity is actually real, beyond a social consensus and a deeply held evolved instinct. I don't expect there are metaphysical markers that strictly delineate which person-moments are part of "the same" ongoing person through time. So hypothetical new scenarios like teleportation, brain emulation, clones built from brain scans (etc) are indeed challenging—they break apart things that have previously always gone together as a bundle.
Even so, physical continuity of the brain involved seems like a reasonable basis for that consensus. Or at very least some kind of casual connection between one person-moment and the next. Whereas "by pure blind chance I briefly occupied the same mental state as someone outside my light cone" still just seems confused.
This feels like you are, on some level, not thinking of consciousness as a thing that is fully and actually made of atoms. Instead talking about it like an immaterial soul that happens to currently be floating around in the vicinity of a particular set of atoms—but could in theory float off elsewhere to some other set of atoms that happens to be momentarily be arranged into a pattern that's similar enough to confuse the consciousness into attaching itself to to a different body.
In an atoms-first view of the world (where you have a brain made of physical stuff arranged a particular way such that it performs various conscious actions), I don't see a way to conceive of that consciousness ever relocating to a different brain; any more than you can relocate your digestion to a different stomach (even if someone else happens to have eaten all the same meals recently to make their gut contents exactly the same as yours).
I know someone who taught math to low-ability kids, and reported finding it difficult to persuade them otherwise. I assume some number of them carried on into adulthood still doing it.