I started late into Cata and really got going in Mists and absolutely loved it. I think OP is having a "back in my day" nostalgic moment

"Try" is an issue. What if someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to burn off some steam by assaulting people?

Not thinking about ethics isn't the same as not having an ethical framework you most closely adhere to

The Tories pissed it all into the channel as far as I can tell

Me too. Every solo run I play is on B42 and I have to remind myself of all the cool features we're missing when I hop back into the game with friends

B42 is a beta branch like you say, you have to opt in to play it. The current version does do multiplayer, I'm currently running my own server for my friends on the current version

There are plenty of "private" servers that are technically open to anyone. Just follow the rules and enjoy the game.

You'll see a lot of "B42" or "build 42" being talked about. This is the most recent major update that is still in beta. It doesn't have multiplayer but does offer A LOT of new and improved features.

Fantastic game that gets so much deeper with every (infrequent) major update

It's definitely a contender, I'm not sure it's "much simpler" though. There is no simple option, it will likely be the most challenging linguistic problem the world has ever faced.

Assuming the periodic table will be the same is a huge leap. @themeatbridge@lemmy.world did a good job of explaining why in another comment. To paraphrase, our periodic table is limited to our perspective of the elements. There could be other even more accurate, and descriptive ways to fully encompass what an element is.

Maths already is a language of sorts, with logic built in. Whereas the periodic table is a technical description of elements.

To call it useless is just untrue. There are many possibilities, Crypto is just a black hole eating the hype and funding that would otherwise go into valuable tech

There are core concepts that are likely to be universally understood.

Maths is probably the best and most common example. If we imagine the symbols have been removed and we work under the assumption that we're manipulating objects we can show that 1 object + 1 object = 2 objects without any language necessary. From there we (aliens and humans) can work together to build a common foundation of understanding.

Don't get me wrong, this will not be easy and there will be problems we haven't thought of but there's a good chance that a spacefaring civilisation will know enough about mathematics to build a new common language.

I was going to say there's also the option of in-between but that is dependant on clothing, but you beat me to it 😅

You've convinced me that it's reasonable that it could effect the outcome. But in that case, we're averaging out a large variance in size, which as you said (and I agree) could change the outcome dramatically.

This was my original problem with the "anatomically correct" part of the statement. There is no "anatomically correct" male or female, only approximations. This effectively excludes people at the extremes of physical characteristics from these safety tests

so I'm making the fairly safe assumption they put dummies in various different seating arrangements

The source doesn't use data from crash test dummies but from real life crashes. So we can't take seating arrangements for granted if it could meaningfully effect the numbers.

The stats apparently originate from the US government, so it's going to be a pretty big sample size that should average out any differences in seating position.

The sample size is irrelevant if cultural factors exist that could skew the results. Cultural factors like men are more commonly taxi/Uber/bus drivers, men are more likely to drive with their partner as a passenger than the inverse, etc.

I don't think there are really any conclusive after stats as the product was only introduced to the market a couple of years ago

That's a fair point, I don't expect there would be enough data for anything conclusive.

there's a correlation with male safety improving with advances in the crash test process that aren't reflected equivalently with women's safety

That would be an interesting read. I'll have a look for it.