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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: February 26th, 2026

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  • Careful: chmod -X also looks for any existing exec bits:

    $ umask 0
    $ >foo >bar
    $ ls -al foo bar
    -rw-rw-rw- 1 user group 0 Sep 10 00:00 bar
    -rw-rw-rw- 1 user group 0 Sep 10 00:00 foo
    $ chmod o+x foo
    $ ls -al foo bar
    -rw-rw-rw- 1 user group 0 Sep 10 00:00 bar
    -rw-rw-rwx 1 user group 0 Sep 10 00:00 foo
    $ chmod u=rwX,g=rX,o=rX foo bar
    $ ls -al foo bar
    -rw-r--r-- 1 user group 0 Sep 10 00:00 bar
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 user group 0 Sep 10 00:00 foo
    

  • I can choose to do a thing that I neither want nor have to do. I can also choose to not do a thing that I want or need to do. Can I prove that to you though? Does my desire to be contrarian countermand my free will? It very well might.

    I can rewind a video and watch it again. That is no different from your time travel example. I don’t think we can convincingly argue either way if a quantum field collapse will always happen the same way, even if we were to start save-scumming reality. I kind of hope we will never be able to.

    None of this precludes me from having free will in the present. I don’t even think I need quantum dice contently rolling around in my consciousness. Even if I am completely deterministic, I can still make choices. My brain is a computational device made of meat. I can only have so much faith in what a choice even means, but I sure think I know one when I see one.