this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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Programmer Humor

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[โ€“] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 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 10 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 9 hours ago

Maybe a byte using bitflags?