First of all this is not a paradox, unless you’re not explaining something, there are two yous past and future, if past self turns off the machine before seeing the numbers nothing happened, if he turns it off afterwards the information has already been transferred so nothing happens either.

I have a feeling you might have recently watched Primer and are thinking of a similar working tome machine, where the machine needs to be powered on from past until future. But if this situation happened in Primer it wouldn’t be a problem either because you’re not in the box after you leave it. It’s a bit weird, but if you imagine time as horizontal lines, the box allows you to travel diagonally, so you only exist inside the box in that timeline at the moment of exiting, before that you were in a different timeline, so if you exit the box, wait a while and turn it off you’re only preventing yourself from using the box again. In fact that’s one of the big reveals of the movie, except it’s said in passing by mentioning that the boxes are multi-use.

That reminds me of a few years back when Google removed it’s “Don’t be evil” slogan, someone commented that it was like the disturbed kid in class having a sign saying “Don’t kill everyone” quietly putting it away.

Your answer is intuitively correct, but unfortunately has a couple of flaws

Supercomputers once required large power plants to operate

They didn’t, not that much anyways, a Cray-1 used 115kW to produce 160 MFLOPS of calculations. And while 150kW is a LOT, it’s not in the “needs its own power plant to operate” category, since even a small coal power plant (the least efficient electricity generation method) would produce a couple of orders of magnitude more than that.

and now we carry around computing devices in out pockets that are more powerful than those supercomputers.

Indeed, our phones are in the Teraflops range for just a couple of watts.

There’s plenty of room to further shrink the computers,

Unfortunately there isn’t, we’ve reached the end of Moore’s law, processors can’t get any smaller because they require to block electrons from passing on given conditions, and if we built transistors smaller than the current ones electrons would be able to quantum leap across them making them useless.

There might be a revolution in computing by using light instead of electricity (which would completely and utterly revolutionize computers as we know them), but until that happens computers are as small as they’re going to get, or more specifically they’re as space efficient as they’re going to get, i.e. to have more processing power you will need more space.

Tell me you’re from the US without telling me you’re from the US.

Let’s have a hypothetical scenario, imagine there was a machine that could be used to murder people easily, even if that wasn’t their main purpose anyone could use it in a fit of rage to kill someone, in fact anyone could kill someone by accident with this machine. You would want this machine to be regulated, have people evaluated psychologically, and have them take classes and perform an exam to ensure they won’t kill anyone by accident.

Did you think guns? I meant cars. And asking if no one or only cops should have guns is like asking if no one or only bus drivers should be able to drive. There’s a midterm that most of the world has already reached, where we require people to go through some process to prove they can operate the death machine safely.

Yes, you shouldn’t drink hot water from the tap. I have a water dispenser, as in an equipment where you put a 20L mineral water bottle and you can pour either cold or hot water.

I don’t, my water dispenser has a tap for hot water. If I’m out of water in the dispenser I usually boil it in a pan. That being said heating water in the microwave is not an issue for me, as long as it’s just the water before adding the tea.

Just remap it to something more useful, Colemak remaps it to backspace.

As a US citizen you have right to work in most of those countries.

No you don’t, you need a visa to be able to work here, depending on your area of expertise companies might sponsor your visa.

I’ve lived in multiple places, so I’ll talk about all of them.

Brazil

I lived in two places there, essentially you can choose between public or private systems.

Under the private system you would book an appointment with whatever doctor you wanted, usually one or two weeks in advance, pay them (which is relatively expensive depending on the doctor), have the consultation, they might ask for some exams (some of which are paid, others included), possibly get a prescription (that you would have to pay for yourself), possibly go back for a follow up appointment (included in the price you already paid).

On the public system you book an appointment, wait some time (months in some places, days in others), have your consultation (if the doctor is in that day), possibly get a prescription (that you would likely get for free), possibly go back for a follow up appointment.

Ireland

There’s a public system, but you have to be below a certain income level to use it, otherwise you have to go through the private system. You have to register with your GP (most of which don’t have available spots), for anything you first need to contact your GP (which usually takes a week), and pay €60, explain your problem and if they choose to forward you to and specialist (even if you go and say I need to see a cardiologist they might say “no, you do not”, although that’s unlikely), then they send an email to the specialist who only then accepts that you book with them (usually for a week or so later), then you have to pay the specialist (which is usually >€300), they might ask for some exams (which you have to book and pay on your own, some blood work I did was €700), they might give you a prescription (which is paid but there’s a €80 cap on medicine per house per month, which is the only nice part of the whole system), and if you need a follow up it’s usually €150. If you have health insurance (or at least mine was like this) they give you back 50% of all your expenses up to a certain limit.

Spain

I’m not too familiar with the options here because I have private insurance through my work and as you’ll see I’ve had no reason to look elsewhere, but I’ve been told the public system is fairly similar. Whenever I need an appointment I open my insurance app or call a doctor office and ask if they take my insurance, book an appointment (usually for a week or two in advance), go there, show my id and insurance card, go to the appointment, if they ask for some exams I do them, if they give me a prescription I take it to a pharmacy and pay it out of pocket (this is the only part I know public system exists and is somewhat better because you get the drugs for free, but since I don’t take any recurring prescriptions I haven’t bothered to check), if I need a follow up I book it and go back. Never had to pay one cent for anything other than medicine. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop and getting billed for all of the Dr appointments, but so far it hasn’t happened hahaha

I’m currently learning Catalan, doing Duolingo until I find some class (which there should be one in a couple of months). It’s relatively easy for me since I already speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese and understand almost everything in Italian.

Nope, just extra dimensional cause for creation, no higher purpose required, for all we know whenever two rocks collide in that scenario they create a universe.

Also no, you’re completely missing the point, if God is omnipotent he could have made humans to never suffer and still be free, in theory most Christians believe that Heaven is free of suffering, do you cease being yourself when you go to heaven then? Just because you or I can’t imagine a world where humans are free but can’t hurt one another doesn’t mean that’s beyond the realm of possibilities, and if your counter argument will be that then we wouldn’t really be free, I tell you that humans can’t explode someone by looking at them, so he already imposed some limitations on the amount of harm we could cause to each other, yet you don’t see this as less freedom because you just accepted that’s the natural state, I propose there could be a natural state where humans can’t cause harm to each other and are still free.

Yup, eventually believers reach the same stopping point but instead of saying “I don’t know” they go “God did it”, until science explains how that happened, so believers go to the next thing and say “well I don’t know how this happened, therefore God”. That is called “the God of the gaps” and it’s a terrible argument, it’s okay to admit we don’t know something.

And no, I’m not talking about Abraham, I’m talking about Jesus, the whole reason why Jesus is crucified is so that his blood can clean the sin of mankind. The basics of Christianism are the following tenets:

1. God can’t (or doesn’t want to) coexist with Sin
2. God requires blood sacrifices, usually animals, to purify Sin
3. God offered a loophole, by sacrificing an innocent person anyone can point at that sacrifice and say “I’m using this sacrifice to purify my sins”.
4. Because there are no Sinless humans he had to come down in human form to sacrifice himself so that he could charge the innocent blood price for the Sins of mankind

Otherwise why would God need to offer himself as sacrifice to purify sins? Couldn’t he just say “all sins are gone”? However you look at it he asks for a blood sacrifice, however he allows you to cash in his own blood sacrifice in its place, and if you don’t he sends you to Hell, very loving fellow.

No, you’re not, you cheated that’s the most fundamental thing not to do, that’s like saying “I’m a great cook, I would argue better than the majority of cooks, I only put rat poison in my food once!”, would you eat in the same restaurant where a cook intentionally put rat poison in your food once already?

I rarely get into these sorts of debaters because they’re almost always pointless, however a few of the things you said made me want to answer this.

You’re completely missing the point for the first argument, people can’t choose to fly or kill each other by staring, so if humans were created by God then any flaws in humanity, including but not limited to ability to suffer and cause suffering, is part of God’s design that he could have removed. In other words, if God gave people the option to cause harm knowing they would (omniscience, remember) then he’s directly responsible for everything bad that happens, it’s like a father that gives a sharp knife to a kid and tells him to go run and play with his friends. God could have prevented suffering to begin with, therefore the fact that it exists proves that suffering is part of his plan. If that’s the case then yes, you being bullied and your bully being in an abusive home is all done by design, which is very twisted if you think about it.

As for the second argument you admit that things exist outside our universe that can affect it, if that’s the case you don’t need God to create the Universe, we could be the result of a collision between two extra dimensional rocks. And that’s sort of the point of that argument, i.e. that you don’t need God to explain the beginning of the Universe because whatever question you have about the origin of the Universe can also be directed at God (e.g. and what caused that) and whatever answer you give using God can also be used for a non-God answer (e.g. extra dimensional causes)

Those two arguments are very biased. The first one is only a problem in Christianity, and like you said it’s a silly argument, God can be malicious and that solves that issue.

The second one is a bit trickier, because you’re making the same mistake you accuse others of making. There are two possibilities, either something can come from nothing, or it can’t. If stuff can come from nothing God is not needed to create the Universe (and while physics have been able to prove this, let’s look at the other possibility just in case). On the other hand if stuff can’t come from nothing then stuff must have always existed, otherwise you will get the problem of where the stuff that did that came from, and that applies to God too, so of you can ask “where did the Big Bang came from if there was nothing” you can also ask “where did God came from if there was nothing”, so in this scenario you also don’t need God, because if it can come from nothing then other stuff can also come from nothing so we’re in the other scenario.

Also those are two of the weakest arguments against God, and they specifically go after the Christian God of the gaps. Better arguments against the existence of God are usually about pointing at contradictions in the definition, similarly to how you said nothing can come from nothing but made an exception for God, another example is omniscience vs free will (if someone knows what you will do then you’re not free to do different), or omnipotence in itself (can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he can’t eat it?), and if we’re talking about the specific Christian deity the fact that he needs an innocent blood sacrifice to forgive people should be a clear indicator of the type of being you’re dealing with, and it’s not an all loving entity.

Yes, but most Europeans tend to underestimate how expensive medicine is in the USA, from personal experience here in Spain an ambulance ride to the hospital + consultation + x-ray is free for residents and costs €200 for tourists, whereas the same stuff in the USA can cost around $5000 even for residents.

As a general rule yeah you can, however the price for stuff if you’re not insured is very expensive, but it will likely still be much cheaper than the USA, and also if it’s not an emergency you might have trouble being able to get to a doctor. Let me give you an example, we were visiting Spain when my wife fell and twisted her ankle, we had to call an ambulance, she had an emergency consultation with an X-RAY (luckily she didn’t broke anything), and because we had forgotten our sanitary card we had to pay foreign prices, i.e. €200. That looks expensive to us because if we had brought that card it would have been free, but that same thing in the US could cost us $5000 so overall lot cheaper.

That being said, in Ireland for my wife to go to an Endocrinologist we had to:

• Register with a GP
• Book an appointment for that GP
• Pay that appointment
• Convince the GP you need to see an Endocrinologist. If he disagrees you won’t get to an Endocrinologist.
• The GP books the Endocrinologist appointment for you, or sends an email to the endocrinologist allowing you to book it
• You pay for the Endocrinologist appointment
• You go there and explain your symptoms, he’ll likely order blood exam and ask you to return on another day
• You book and pay the blood exams
• Do the blood exam
• Book and pay the return consultation to the endocrinologist

Overall cost was around €1000 and took us over a month to go through all of that. And again this might feel cheap for you, but to us feels expensive. And because of the initial requirement to register with the GP tourists can’t do it. Not sure how other countries work, in Spain we book stuff through our insurance and just show the insurance card and haven’t paid anything in over a year.

“Who goes there?” and “It’s only a model” could work without any more context. But I think I would go with “Oh, don’t be such a baby” even with context I think lots of people won’t immediately recognize this.

One of my favorite games is a hidden gem that I never see people mention. It’s called Out of Space and it’s a couch co-op game similar to Overcooked with two major differences, it’s less frenetic so you can play it to chill out, and it’s procedurally generated so you have lots of replayability. For me and my wife it’s the perfect game of “let’s play a round of something”, yet I never see it mentioned anywhere.

I would agree with you but I don’t think women are marginalised in my society.

Then you don’t agree with me, and you should look closer at your society, it’s easy to overlook how certain groups are marginalized if you’re not part of them. I recommend you read some posts in some women only communities (instead of trying to tell them how they should feel) to see the sort of thing they have to go through.

I get where you’re coming from, on paper our society treats women equally, there are no written rules or outlandish inequalities, and some of what feminist complain is not even real, such as the gender pay gap. However that’s not the same as saying there aren’t any inequalities nor that it’s even comparable. Yes, men do have issues in our society; Yes we need to address those; No, we shouldn’t laugh at me for opening up about their issues; Yes, men can have safe spaces where they talk about their issues without having women judge them for it. And all of that is the same for women, there are lots of ways in which our society treats women as inferior and if you can’t recognize that there’s really nothing else to tell you than “pay more attention”, but there’s no worse blind that those who don’t want to see, so I’m sure there’s nothing I can tell you that will make you stop and listen and look around, talk to your mom, sister, or some women you know and trust, listen to their stories about that time their boss slap their ass or their ex-boyfriend forced himself on them, or even the time the creepy guy started following them around.