A Growing Community Called Randonauts Believe That Journeying To Random Locations Can Help Put Us in New Realities (theoutline.com) 134
A small but quickly growing online community believes that transforming randomly generated numbers into clusters of location data could help us tunnel out of reality. Their name for themselves: Randonauts. From a report: It's a sad truth that most of our lives are pretty boring, geographically speaking. Live in one place long enough and you will develop routines, walking the same streets and patronizing the same coffee shops and generally making it easy for a simulation, should one exist, to anticipate where you will be at any given time. Randonauts hope to use this tedium to their advantage, by introducing unpredictability. They argue that by devising methods that force us to diverge from our daily routines and instead send us to truly random locations we'd otherwise never think twice about, it just might be possible to cross over into somebody else's reality. "New information and causality can pull you out of the filter-bubble and change your life," writes The Fatum Project, the online team responsible for the technological and philosophical framework of the movement. Even if you don't buy into the dense thicket of theoretical quantum physics underpinning the logic of it all, going on a Randonaut-style adventure can be a lovely way to spend an afternoon.
According to the The Fatum Project, there's hard science behind all this. Building on research conducted by Princeton University's Engineering Anomalies Research Lab into whether human thought could influence real-world events, they hope that Randonauts will be able to leave their "reality tunnels" and discover new contexts, appreciate daily life in fresh ways, or even venture into parallel iterations of their own realities. Getting started is easy. Log into the Telegram messaging app and send the command "/getattractor" along with your location to @shangrila_bot (formerly, you could also message @Randonaut_bot). The bot will plot out thousands of nearby geolocation points using a quantum random number generator, and spit out the area with the highest concentration of points near you. Conversely, if computer-determined desolation is more your style, you can send the command "/getvoid" and through a similar process, the bot will send you a location where there are no randomly plotted points. On Reddit, Randonauts have reported finding things like an upside-down airplane; a llama, standing totally still; three identical black cats; a family of horses in a public park; and a bird that also refused to move. Under the auspices of "/getvoid," users have reported finding derelict locales, creepy signage, and other marks of decay. Think of it as geocaching by way of Marianne Williamson.
According to the The Fatum Project, there's hard science behind all this. Building on research conducted by Princeton University's Engineering Anomalies Research Lab into whether human thought could influence real-world events, they hope that Randonauts will be able to leave their "reality tunnels" and discover new contexts, appreciate daily life in fresh ways, or even venture into parallel iterations of their own realities. Getting started is easy. Log into the Telegram messaging app and send the command "/getattractor" along with your location to @shangrila_bot (formerly, you could also message @Randonaut_bot). The bot will plot out thousands of nearby geolocation points using a quantum random number generator, and spit out the area with the highest concentration of points near you. Conversely, if computer-determined desolation is more your style, you can send the command "/getvoid" and through a similar process, the bot will send you a location where there are no randomly plotted points. On Reddit, Randonauts have reported finding things like an upside-down airplane; a llama, standing totally still; three identical black cats; a family of horses in a public park; and a bird that also refused to move. Under the auspices of "/getvoid," users have reported finding derelict locales, creepy signage, and other marks of decay. Think of it as geocaching by way of Marianne Williamson.
Ahh, numerology (Score:5, Funny)
Back again so soon? I knew that would happen, because this date corresponds to the law of fives.
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Yup.
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Wandering down a random dark alley and getting mugged isn't boring. But most people wouldn't find that a desirable experience.
In general, dark alleys are a negligible proportion of the Earth's surface. It is vanishingly unlikely that a truly random selection would even put you in a city, much less a dark alley.
And no specification that you have go at night.
I'm mostly surprised that comment number one on this post is not xkcd. Randall Munroe proposed this years ago: https://xkcd.com/426/ [xkcd.com]
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Before we had children my wife and I would cut out a section of map that was in driving distance over a week end, toss a dart at it, and go to the nearest town or camp grounds. Eventually we just started picking places we hadn't already been.
I do miss those adventures and intend to return to them after we retire.
Re:Ahh, numerology (Score:5, Funny)
Sure. I like to drive down unfamiliar roads just to see where they go.
Did you ever think that you were going to break out of your reality and cross over into someone else's because of quantum bullshit? I didn't.
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Did you ever think that you were going to break out of your reality and cross over into someone else's because of quantum bullshit? I didn't.
How would you know if you had, in fact, done so?
Perhaps you would notice that various small things seemed suddenly a bit "off" compared to what you would expect -- some obvious fact you were certain you knew turns out now to be wrong, or that people seem to be suddenly acting strangely, and doing things that don't entirely make sense to you?
The fact that most everyone experiences some variation of that phenomenon might mean it's just a psychological effect of getting older and out-of-touch, or alternatively
Slipping into alternate realities (Score:2)
Did you ever think that you were going to break out of your reality and cross over into someone else's because of quantum bullshit? I didn't.
How would you know if you had, in fact, done so? Perhaps you would notice that various small things seemed suddenly a bit "off" compared to what you would expect -- some obvious fact you were certain you knew turns out now to be wrong, or that people seem to be suddenly acting strangely, and doing things that don't entirely make sense to you?
I've certainly been in places where googlemaps did not map the world as experienced.
Assuming that googlemaps correctly represented the reality I started from, I sometimes do slip into alternate universes.
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Assuming that googlemaps correctly represented the reality I started from, I sometimes do slip into alternate universes.
Maybe that's what's wrong with Apple Maps, their mapping data is right on, but not for the reality we live in. Pesky RDF must have corrupted it.
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I keep a state map around with highlights for the roads I've taken, and every now and then check in to find things I haven't seen yet and go there.
I'll also intentionally take a new route to/from work or the store now and then just for variety. Maybe it helps keep me a little sharper, maybe that's superstition.
As for the app with voids and attractors, I don't get that, unless the tool is somehow tracking where other people have actually gone or not gone? And then stuff like reality tunnels and popping into
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I thought you were going to say you cut out the pieces of the maps so you'd get lost and discover new places that way.
There's nothing like just following the roads instead of maps if you're in the right environment...until you really get lost I guess., but if it's only for a little while it's okay.
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Back again so soon? I knew that would happen, because this date corresponds to the law of fives.
Maybe they just discovered Timecube [wikipedia.org].
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Back again so soon? I knew that would happen, because this date corresponds to the law of fives.
Maybe they just discovered Timecube [wikipedia.org].
Or Cannabis... (Note: Auto-correct also suggested "Cannibal" -- hmm...)
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Nah, I think it's more like Zombo.com [zombo.com]
Anything is possible at Zombocom
Re:Ahh, numerology (Score:4, Interesting)
At first sight it has nothing to do with numerology. The idea appears to be that people get kind of locked into patterns in whatever they do,and in ways they have no control over. A completely random input allows them to get out of that pattern. There is no deeper message in that random input except that you didn't choose it at all. The equivalent in books would be to force yourself to buy and read a completely random book(and best read it completely too).
The method of using a random provocation is a technique in creative thinking and its value does not depend at all at some hidden message in the provocation.
Re: Ahh, numerology (Score:2)
But this isn't going to break them out of the matrix. It already has a system for handling entropy (aka randomness.) Think about it: Why is it that Schrodinger's cat is neither alive nor dead until observed? Nonsense, right? It's because the matrix doesn't need to make a decision about how anything plays out until somebody actually observes the outcome. The machines save a lot of energy that way. Duh.
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Oh you know as soon as the subject shifted to matrix stuff my eyes glazed over.
But if you want to know about Schrodinger's cat, I think the consensus by now is that within a period which can be estimated well, the mixed state of the cat decoheres into a classical either/or state.
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It also explains why physics behaves differently at very high and low energy states, [at least] three different physics models are used so as to save CPU time. But we don't notice the slowdowns anyway, since we're inside the simulation.
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A lot more than 3 states. Clearly messy legacy code. No surprise really.
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We are not inside a simulation. That sort of thinking is only confusing the mathematics of physics with the physical world. Just because you can represent some physical situation in some mathematics does not imply all the artefacts of that mathematics correspond to real events, properties, particles, etc. We use mathematics because it abstracts away from (what we hope are) insignificant details. The key is the abstraction, i.e., it isn't real.
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That doesn't mean it can't feel real to something of sufficient complexity to experience a sense of self-awareness and that you aren't such a thing.
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Why is it that Schrodinger's cat is neither alive nor dead until observed? Nonsense, right?
Yes it is nonsense: that was literally the entire point [wikipedia.org]!
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Schrodinger's cat is either alive or dead. Quantum effects do extend into the macroscopic world because there are too many macro events which cause the quantum wave form to collapse (if you believe in that sort of thing). No physicist believes otherwise except a few loonies. And Schrodinger used the argument to point out the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics at the time was bullshit.
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It's chaotic numerology. Only by choosing random numbers can you free yourself from the tyranny of a deterministic universe!
Sounds like something travel agents invented.
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You're hitting closer to home than I expected. Numerology is the belief in hidden meanings in the numbers around us, while it is actually based on our natural ability to create meaning from random input. As a technique for experiencing new things and escaping the lock in of your thinking going to random locations makes sense but the belief behind this random navigation is the same as with numerology: people will make sense out of all the random novelty and ascribe it to glitches in the matrix. It's a belief
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It's an old concept, used to help force new insight and new approaches. The I Ching is mistakenly thought of as a method of divination, but really, it's just a way to look a life, and problems, and changes, in a different way in order to gain insight (and to some extent, serenity).
Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt even made a special deck of cards to i
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I've had exactly that discussion on I Ching!
Amazon needs the "buy random book" feature (Score:2)
That's a bot waiting to happen.
Not numerology... ignorance (Score:2)
This is once again the case of people not having the math, physics or an intuitive understanding of the observer effect - but still wanting to play science bingo.
And the word of the age is - "quantum".
A century ago they'd be taking radium baths. [listverse.com]
A century before that they'd be zapping their privates with galvanic chain belts [medicalbillingschool.org] to cure their "nervous debility".
hard science? (Score:2)
A wonderful experiment in confirmation bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow I go to a random location looking for something unusual and I find it! So what exactly is the accuracy of these "random" locations? Are they literally finding these things within inches of the location specified or just the "general area"?
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You're going to take the same old centralized roads, probably instructed by your centralized googlemaps, so you can end up in some guy's cornfield except it hasn't been in operation for several years and you're looking at dirt. OH WAIT RUSTED IRRIGATION EQUIPMENT. Look over there, it's a municipal water tank! And half a mile that way is a small power exchange station!
If you pick an urban area, you get directed to some warehouse docks autogarage district. Oh look self storage! CLIMATE CONTROLLED!
Obeying a ma
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Here's a possible experiment: go to five random places and look for weird stuff. Now go about your normal business in your usual places, but stop at five random times and look for weird stuff. Which strategy is more successful?
My guess is that going to random *places* is likely to be more successful, in which case finding weird things in random places wouldn't be purely confirmation bias. That wouldn't prove anything mystical is necessarily going on. It's pretty self-evident that you're going to be more
I'm 100% for this, go travel (Score:5, Insightful)
Want to improve your existence, go travel. Anywhere. Just go. Go for a random lat/long if you like. Go where no one goes. Go where everyone goes. Hit the tourist traps and the hole in the wall. Go cheap and go high roller.
Go travel. Enjoy the world while you are still on it.
Re:I'm 100% for this, go travel (Score:5, Funny)
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I spent three years in the middle of the ocean, courtesy of the US Navy. Ok, one year was in Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, but that's pretty random.
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Just don't wander off unprepared into the middle of nowhere. Particularly in Australia. Far too many tourists get lost and need a search party to find them.
Take water, food, a map, and tell someone where you're going.
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Australia is the last place I'd go anywhere randomly. The entire continent's ecosystem seems to take uncanny delight in being dangerous to humans. Would love to visit non-randomly someday though.
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Australia is the last place I'd go anywhere randomly. The entire continent's ecosystem seems to take uncanny delight in being dangerous to humans. Would love to visit non-randomly someday though.
Curiously, that's how most of the world regards the USA too - skunks, poison ivy, hurricanes, rattlesnakes and so on.
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Need t(ele/rans)porters to avoid long commutes. :P
But our RNG is part of the simulation (Score:3, Interesting)
If they aren't, and we do succeed in overwhelming he simulation, then that just causes a core dump of the simulation. Then the sim is either restarted with no perceptible time difference for us, or abandoned forever.
The only good that will come of this is enjoyable experiences by randomly traveling to new places.
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It depends on what you mean by simulation. If it's a deterministic simulation, say something like a cellular automaton, sure. But what if it's a stochastic simulation? Sure, our pseudorandom number generators are part of the simulation, but maybe a quantum random number generator gives us indirect access to the simulation's RNG, the one that determines whether an entangled photon is polarized this way or that.
Nor is it clear that our figuring out that we're in a simulation is necessarily a fault that woul
Nah (Score:4, Interesting)
You life isn't controlled by your actions, but rather your actions are controlled by your impressions. If you like jogging, regardless where you go, you'll still want to jog.
It's more than likely, that the people that are joining this radonaut movement, are simply people that don't do anything that THEY truly want to do, and as a result, blame the dullness of their lives on everything else. I'd also like to see their lives full of meaning. Instead of trying to 'break out of reality', maybe 'break out of dullness'? You can do that anywhere.
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Yeah, they should definitely stop trying to break out of reality and try to break in.
Other realities? Easy-peasey (Score:2)
I cross over into other realities every time I visit crazy Uncle Bob and we talk politics.
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"Who controls the screens you look at controls your reality." -- Timothy Leary
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"'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes." - My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult (probably quoting/sampling something else)
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Even in philosophy, "I think therefore I am" is a sarcastic commentary on our lack of ability to detect reality directly.
It is a logical mistake, and yet, it is the only possible foundation we have on which to build knowledge of our surroundings.
We know we don't really know, but there are still a minimum number of assumptions that we have to make to avoid abject nihilism.
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I wonder if your Uncle Bob was the same as my Uncle Bob? He had two heads--one was a Republican, the other a Democrat. The left-hand head was the Republican--rather odd, you might say, but I guess that wasn't the strangest thing about Uncle Bob. Anyway, they got into an argument one night about the New Deal, and when the left head finally fell asleep, the right head got a gun and shot him. Which didn't do the right head any good, of course; he died of blood loss the next day.
All of which goes to show: t
If RandoMnauts (Score:3)
If they called themselves RandoMnauts, then I might take them seriously. But "rando"... no, you just aren't being very mature.
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If they called themselves RandoMnauts, then I might take them seriously. But "rando"... no, you just aren't being very mature.
Agreed, "randomnauts" is better.
"Rando" sounds like a Valley Girl talking about some guy she met in a bar.
Psychogeography? (Score:2)
Uhh (Score:2)
Didn't Pokemon Go beat them to it?
The "that's so random" generation has grown up (Score:2)
Mark Twain said it better (Score:3)
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
It liberates the vandal to travel — you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction.
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Maybe that's why he wrote "The awful German language". Not to mention his comments about the French people, e.g. "There is nothing lower than the human race except the French." (quoted by Carl Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest)
I suspect you could support a lot of different points of view by quoting Twain.
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Mark Twain quotes about the French [twainquotes.com]
But I think that Americans are generally unable to find the thin line of Twain's irony in any of his writings.
People Get out of their basements (Score:2)
And find things.
News at 11
It's called Travelling ... (Score:2)
... and interacting with foreign culture. We don't need to invent yet another (new) word for this.
An echo chamber doesn't force growth; it only re-enforces the same [potential] myopic beliefs.
When you meet people with different environments and beliefs your perspectives are only "threatened" if you are insecure. By being forced to discuss your beliefs (whether they are based on Science or Intuition regardless -- you STILL have Faith in your Beliefs) helps you to not only understand others but also yourself
Did this once (Score:4, Interesting)
Took a vacation to Colorado. Rented a car and drove to places that looked interesting to me.
Did this for a week.
Best vacation ever.
Even opened my eyes to new things and ways of seeing things back at home. I encourage everyone to try this at least once.
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Nice. Colorado is a particularly good place to just go exploring at random, both because of the variety and the scenic nature of the backdrop. I moved out here 17 years ago, am still setting off down highways I haven't been on yet, and will recommend it to anyone who cares to listen.
Just roll a die! (Score:2)
Quantum (Score:3)
So, the same idea of travel that human civilization has had for thousands of years, but the word 'quantum' thrown in because for some people learning a new perspective wasn't enough of an incentive. I guess because a new perspective is so implausible you would need a whole new reality in order for one to exist.
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If it were quantum journeying, then you would be in more than one place at the same time.
I know its silly as hell (Score:2)
But I've had this exact feeling before. I know it isn't real but the feeling is there. I will go somewhere for a week or two and when I return I notice things that I 'think' are different from the way they were. In reality i know its just me noticing something as it is for the first time but the feeling remains.
Gurdjieff Would Approve (Score:2)
Gurdjieff ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) felt that much of the time people walk around in a daze, but that it was possible to work your way out of it and live better. Breaking out of your routine was a technique he recommended.
When I was a kid... (Score:2)
U P Me Poop (Score:2)
Calling The (Score:2)
Amazing Rando, for clarification
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Same location Different View (Score:2)
I'll believe it if 2 people go to the same location at the same time, but see something different.
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Of course they will. They will see each other.
Wow (Score:2)
What the hell have we become.
Geohashing (Score:2)
If you're making a post about going to a random location, might as well reannounce XKCD's Geohashing. Just as chaotic, except that anyone could calculate the location(s) with the necessary data.
Similar concept, without numerology.
In a simulation (Score:2)
Whenever someone brings up the whole "living in a simulation" thing I am reminded of this UCB skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Bad way to die (Score:2)
Too late (Score:2)
At least there will be a Mac Donalds/ Costa / etc there.
randomly generated numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
Map on the wall, dart
Ride in that direction until we got tired, or found a cool village. 20, 30, 40 miles or so.
Hotel or camp overnight, ride back on Sunday.
But this is obviously cooler because it uses computers and RNG, and our way just involved paper maps and actual bike riding.
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I enjoyed your story, and when you mentioned it was done on bicycles, I was even more intrigued.
I suspect dart throws aren't terribly random.
For a non-British person, what makes a village cool? Did you get to do this with lots of people, or just one other person, or yourself? What makes a good group size for randomly traversing England?
cave (Score:2)
From the article: "they hope that Randonauts will be able to leave their 'reality tunnels'"
Wait--you mean they're in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?
non skeptical bullshit there is no science (Score:2)
No there isn't. What they more or less did was fire bullet and then draw the target around them. The Princeton University's Engineering Anomalies Research Lab had ZERO hard science behind it search for linking event , random generated nubmers, and consciousness. The best we can say about it , and I agree with this quote is "Jahn's experiments at PEAR started from an idealistic
Re: non skeptical bullshit there is no science (Score:2)
"Boring is good" (Score:2)
Yours truly, Prof. Rincewind, Dep. Cruel and Unusual Geography.
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If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all. -- composer John Cage
So you have discovered the Tiki Tour (Score:2)
Hey if it gets people off the couch (Score:2)
And if they happen to prove we really do live in a simulation all the better.
Have someone else drive? (Score:2)
I had that feeling at least once when I fell asleep on the way home from school, & my mom drove somewhere I had never been before. I distinctly remember telling her I felt like we had driven through an interdimensional portal when I woke up (& wondered what would happen if we did not go back through wherever the portal was).
So perhaps sleeping while someone else drives you somewhere random would work even better than driving yourself?
Who can afford this? (Score:2)
Certain most ordinary working people cannot afford this in terms of money and/or time. We normals have two weeks vacation, and we need to make the best of it.
I suspect that only wealthy snot-nosed SJWs can afford this sort of thing.
Snake Oil is still selling well (Score:2)
He/She/Ve/Ze/It is writing an app (I'm sure there's gonna be MONEY TO BE PAID somewhere), because adding injury to insult is only lathering loads of cream on a cake that has already been glazed like a cheap donut.
Meanwhile incompetent journalists with NOTHING TO REPORT ON are spewing articles about how "AMAAAAAAZING" this rubb
Telegram only? (Score:2)
Sounds like fun, but is it really true that it can only be tried via Telegram - a Russian service with questionable security policies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)
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No, that's Pokemon Go...
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I mean, combining this with Pokemon Go might just finish those tasks about spinning pokestops you've never been to before.
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So, it's Geocaching but without the tupperware full of swag at the end? Sounds dull.
No, it's geohashing :
https://xkcd.com/426/ [xkcd.com]
http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashin... [xkcd.com]
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Geocaching works to get me to explore a little more of the world than I otherwise would. I was totally on board with this Randonaut business doing the same thing, until...
Now I know they're just trolling us.
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All the stunts had to be in ASCII art?
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I couldn't take the idea seriously for this reason - wacky physics aside, it's a self-defeating concept. Break out of the system with true random numbers generated by the physics of the same system? I think they'd be better off having members call out random digits in a round-robin system, since we should be able to assume that the human will that wants to break out of the system is most independent of influence from whatever is trying to keep us in.
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This was my second thought, after the randomness problem. [slashdot.org] If the universe is a simulation, we should avoid fucking with it, at least until it's all entropy'd out and there's not much to lose from crashing it or making ourselves annoying enough to get the attention of the big BOFH in the sky.