this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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Programmer Humor

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[โ€“] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Approximation is an important tool for compressing information into useable forms. All labels are limited approximations too. Such compression is inevitably lossy, but that is a sacrifice for the sake of practicality. The important question is what level of compression is acceptable for a given context. If I describe the location of a chess piece on the board, I don't need to specify how far off-center on its square a given piece is, so a 0-7 offset along each of the two axes is enough for game purposes.

When it comes to gender, I think we all agree that [0, 1] is insufficient, but how do we determine what is sufficient? Do we argue that a 2-bit vector (masc, fem) is enough to describe {neither, fem, masc, both} for rough rounding, or do we need more detailed values along those axes, or perhaps a third axis too (or more)?

[โ€“] DeadMartyr@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 hours ago

This is a very nice and effective blurb, I'm saving this comment for future use

There's no awards/medals here but take this: ๐Ÿฅ‡

[โ€“] qaz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Maybe a byte using bitflags?