She was burned alive because she played with matches.

Technically, he is a terrorist, since he targeted a civilian for political or ideological reasons. Doesn’t change the fact that his victim was absolute scum.

Exactly, running the universe is hard work.

The most beneficial effect the murder had was that it got people talking about how much they hate the American health insurance system.

Drastically ahead of its time. As in, only one percent of citizens had a car back then. So apart from being war preparations, the Autobahn wasn’t a sensible project at this point in time.

Even more obvious in the book, where its mentioned that even the commander can’t afford to eat meat whenever he wants.

You can’t go and kill the guy at a point where you know he has events in his yet. (A person’s “yet” is what is known of their personal future). You have to attack him at a point where you he doesn’t have any events in his yet that you know about. This also means no killing Hitler before April 30th 1945.

Well, this line of thinking is what got me doing research on whether cats can be fed a vegan diet.

Vegan cats is such a weird hill to die on for vegans. Mostly, because it isn’t a hill. Hills give you tactical advantage. The position with the vegan cats is basically indefensible. I can’t say for sure that it’s impossible to feed cats a vegan diet that’s healthy for them.

I’ve googled ‘vegan cats’ and the first thing I found was an article from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/13/cats-may-get-health-benefits-from-vegan-diet-study-suggests. However, a problem I have with the article, and the study linked (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132) is that the methodology was for the pet owners to report the cats health status. I feel that this doesn’t produce a reliable result. The most important factor is that it’s not a controlled environment. The cats may be allowed outside, which means that they would supplement their diet through hunting. My standard for evidence is a study were the cats are fed a vegan diet in a controlled setting.

The second artice found (https://theconversation.com/is-it-really-safe-to-feed-your-cat-a-vegan-diet-213356) Also mentions the same study, which doesn’t meet my standard of evidence. (Cats are fed a vegan diet in a controlled setting where they can’t supplement their diet)

The third result (https://www.bluecross.org.uk/advice/cat/food-and-weight/can-cats-be-vegan) Says that cats can’t be vegan, but then says that some vegan cat foods do exist. No article link as to the veracity of claims.

The fourth result, from the university of Winchester, refers to the aforementioned study (https://www.winchester.ac.uk/news-and-events/press-centre/media-articles/vegan-diet-healthier-for-cats-than-meat-according-to-new-survey.php).

The fifth result, a site called Vegan Outreach (https://veganoutreach.org/vegan-diets-cats/) seems to provide a nuanced take, I skimmed the article, and their conclusion says that more research is needed. They mention another study which tested two vegan diets for cats found them lacking in key nutrients.

Sixth result is the study most of these articles refer to (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132).

Seventh is an article by PETA. I don’t consider these guys trustworthy.

Anyway, those are basically research notes from a short googling session.

Roko’s Basilisk hinges on the concept of acausal trade. Future events can cause past events if both actors can sufficiently predict each other. The obvious problem with acausal trade is that if you’re the actor B in the future, then you can’t change what the actor A in the past did. It’s A’s prediction of B’s action that causes A’s action, not B’s action. Meaning the AI in the future gains literally nothing by exacting petty vengeance on people who didn’t support their creation.

Another thing Roko’s Basilisk hinges on is that a copy of you is also you. If you don’t believe that, then torturing a simulated copy of you doesn’t need to bother you any more than if the AI tortured a random innocent person. On a related note, the AI may not be able to create a perfect copy of you. If you die before the AI is created, and nobody scans your brain (Brain scanners currently don’t exist), then the AI will only have the surviving historical records of you to reconstruct you. It may be able to create an imitation so convincing that any historian, and even people who knew you personally will say it’s you, but it won’t be you. Some pieces of you will be forever lost.

Then a singularity type superintelligence might not be possible. The idea behind the singularity is that once we build an AI, the AI will then improve itself, and then they will be able to improve itself faster, thus leading to an exponential growth in intelligence. The problem is that it basically assumes that the marginal effort of getting more intelligent grows slower than linearly. If the marginal difficulty grows as fast as the intelligence of the AI, then the AI will become more and more intelligent, but we won’t see an exponential increase in intelligence. My guess would be that we’d see a logistical growth of intelligence. As in, the AI will first become more and more intelligent, and then the growth will slow and eventually stagnate.