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evilmathmagician 2 points ago +2 / -0

The unquestionable nature of it has created a very exploitable thing both for victim credits and ideology

This is the important part of it, to me. I blame a lot of our modern problems on worship of victims (which promotes unhealthy behaviors like aspiring to weakness). I wonder if we'd be where we are now if idle revisionist chatter surrounding WW2 was treated like all other variants of revisionism.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

Do you know anything similar to Heterogenia Linguistico? I just caught up with online chapters, and it ended up being a lot better than it started. I enjoy linguistics, but get little out of raw academia, so this scratched a difficult itch.

I've already gone through basically everything listed in this thread, mostly due to anime availability. I'll try Astrofighter Sunred later today.

I'll be saving Pluto for a single long reading session. I could never really get into Astroboy; am I gonna be missing a lot of references?

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evilmathmagician 4 points ago +4 / -0

I've picked up Pluto and Heterogenia Linguistico, thanks. I only started reading manga a couple years ago, so it's nice trying out recommendations.

I've been curious about the other works of the author of Monster, but I wrote it off as a fluke after being disappointed with a few random ones I tried. Pluto isn't putting me off, so I'm thinking maybe the author only excels at writing mystery type stuff. The art style (character design) is very refreshing.

Nichijou

Not to knock the content, but I'm surprised at the manga being recommended when the anime has such superb animation. Though the OP did specifically ask for comic format.

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evilmathmagician 8 points ago +8 / -0

Is Amber a huge bitch in the comics too? There was a scene in the animation (can't say what episode) where she expressed a desire to attend a certain college because "they have a great social justice program". Normally a red flag, but she's such an unlikeable feminist that I thought it was almost suitable.

Having a closeup every time there's an interracial kiss is a bit too Netflix for me, however.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

It really shouldn't be a mystery that you see new people crop up while another somewhat similar site is down: saidit.

That's a good point. I kept an eye on the voat refugees we got a while back. I never took saidit seriously as a platform, so I had no way to really identify their users. But I should have kept it in mind - I'm usually more mindful about that.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

To a degree, I'd agree with that. I'm personally a bit paranoid over the prospect that a few fed teams learned how to blend in. Having others continue bungling the work then serves as an effective way to give us a false sense of security.

Of course, as soon as one suggests engaging a federal crime, it's obvious. It's just creepy to think that people around you might be waiting for a chance to report you.

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evilmathmagician 5 points ago +5 / -0

The etymolygy of it isn't clear to me, but I think it stems from both the anime Dragonball Z and places like 4chan (which take a lot of influence from things like anime, movies, and games). While it's a stretch to claim elements of chan culture as part of the broader internet culture, I think it's one of the few solid points I saw from them.

acid test

Ahh, I actually hadn't considered that. I'm too used to more passive tests. In that case, let me provide some context for a percentage of the response you got: some of us are hypervigilant here due to exposure to strife (natural effect of the culture war), and seeing a person say something that makes them stick out is a red flag that maybe we're about to get attacked (typically small stuff like trolls, journalists). There's also more complicated theories on federal agent activity (common belief is that federal plants are really bad at blending into online groups). Another percentage is obviously spite towards rejected ideologies, which isn't all that surprising considering why we're here (who rejects what being a tossup as usual, but we basically encourage the rejection behavior).

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evilmathmagician 9 points ago +9 / -0

Hiding your power level is a sort of euphemistic piece of advice. It's a saying on the internet. What power level means is up for interpretation. It's largely a cultural lesson on blending in.

The "sieg heil" line was seemingly unprompted and without context, so I assumed it was intended only as an ideological signal. I'm not gonna slam on you for believing whatever, but I will recommend making a better effort to blend in.

So, in good faith, I thought maybe you were making a joke since you revealed your "power level" in response to such a username.

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evilmathmagician 7 points ago +7 / -0

I think any such thread would be welcomed here, if it's any consolation.

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evilmathmagician 9 points ago +9 / -0

Sieg Heil!

Are you havin' a giggle? You do this in response to a user named "alwayshideurpowerlevl".

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evilmathmagician 4 points ago +4 / -0

It kinda blows my mind that it's become necessary to reinvent the wheel in such a way. I hope this 'new field' continues to grow.

For a while now, I've had the notion that a good friend can do the job of a good therapist. It's how I often try to describe the benefit of therapy to other people. I suppose I was a little naive - not everyone wants to have the type of friend you talk to about personal shit. But this reaffirms that having a good friend will likely prevent the need for a therapist, not that gaining such a friend doesn't have its own difficulties.

It's also a glimmer of hope, in a way. This could be the start of seriously re-evaluating how useful our discarded traditions were, followed by re-introducing them into public acceptance. (rabid smear campaigns aside)

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evilmathmagician 6 points ago +6 / -0

a couple of researchers determined that using normal therapy techniques actually increases maladaptive behaviors and possible suicide when used on men

Can you give a source or something? It sounds like something that would never be allowed to receive media attention or publication, so it's hard to believe this kind of information is available.

Also, say more about "man therapy", it sounds interesting.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

Eh, I disagree. Making casual into that kind of an umbrella term dilutes the original meaning too much. A casual does not play for 6+ hours a day. A casual never cares to try adopt strategies for the purpose of efficiency.

The only time a casual would mimick a good player is to play around. They would then stop mimicking and revert to their normal play habits. If they stuck with the successful strategy, they would no longer be a casual.

Edit: I'd even say that a casual can be a good player (good players can lose). That would directly contradict the proposed definition. The casuals I encountered were decent teammates as long as I didn't expose them to high stress/skill roles.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

Ohh, that. Yeah, I have encountered a lot of that. Normally, they'd listen when I tried to explain how the meta worked, eventually understanding how to overcome their new problem. But only in pvp - in pve is ironically where I saw the most stubborn strategists unwilling to adapt or compromise. Maybe the time pressure makes people more willing to compromise?

I don't think there's another term for "bad player mimicks good players but refuses to improve their fundamentals". That's where the above always failed. If one particular strategy is seen as powerful, they'd get fed up and adopt it themselves after a while to "see how they like it" and it would 90% backfire because they don't understand the strategy well enough to back it up. Naturally, since they are then motivated by emotion, they are unwilling to listen to an explanation of why they're failing.

Low skill players can come to understand their limits and strategize around those limits. But a bad player cannot come to terms with their limits, ultimately stunting their skill growth. The most tragic player to play with in my experience is the bad player with moderate skill, who doesn't understand just how strong they could become, but has enough skill to carelessly mimick strategies they see, yet crumples when confronted with a high skill opponent.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

Oh..so you did want your title question answered.

the actual production effort that goes into a modern AAA game title is 100x or 1000x what it was back then

I dispute the premise. I'd agree if you said production budget or maybe minus the term "actual". It implies that no useless effort can come out of monetary incentive. Despite how nice the world would be if all systems utilized merit, the reality is not so. I blame managerialism.

satisfy the investors who aren't gamers themselves

I'd extend this past the simple financial investor. Take any AAA game product. The production leadership is responsible for crafting a solid creative vision of the finished state. They must then take efforts to ensure that every person working under them adheres to this vision, likely splitting up the vision by department to diminish directorial workload on each underling. Each of those underlings then will split up their portion amongst their underlings. Repeat until you get to code monkeys that are completely detached from the project because they have no idea what the creative vision is, so you have a thousand monkeys being expected to construct a forest by working on their little scrap of bark. There's just no skin in the game for any of them. Why should anyone care about the result as long as they get paid?

The complexity of the modern production team process is also a feature that grants immunity from outside criticism. In a team of 3 people, it's not hard to assign blame for mistakes as a consumer. In a team of 3000, it's a herculean task to figure out who to blame for any given mistake as a consumer. Uninformed consumers are more likely to make uninformed purchases, so it becomes a goal of the producer to minimize the information available to a consumer (or to present all relevant information in a manner that is not useful for informing a purchase). To do otherwise is to express confidence in the merit of your product, and we simply don't live in a world with such honest business.

Not to overlook the ideal demographic of people with low impulse control. Those are hugely profitable even outside of microtransactions. Combine with low information for guaranteed sales.

It's also nearly a fact that gamers don't have to be the audience of game producers anymore. The evidence has only become more obvious. Epic pays a big sum of cash for exclusivity based on projected sales (connection to reality not needed). Do people think that's new? Exclusivity deals have been around for a long time. Other deals can exist, like advertising some commercial product in your game. This is without getting into the extremely likely realm of contracts done under the table where special interest representative A pays a few million for their special interest to get pushed in the game somehow, but no one has publicly submitted a notarized confession so it's obviously impossible.

Are microtransactions making up for the gap?

No. No reason to trust any producer representative or journalist saying so. They''ve got a bucketfull of strategies to pursue to make up for the gap already. Microtransactions and seasonal dlc stuff is in the field of rent-seeking to me. The producers believe they deserve a big return on their financial investment. They followed the textbooks and powerpoint slideshows to the letter, so they are now entitled to your money. They're in the business of profits, not the business of making games.

Indies have a different set of problems, such as unironically taking a gamegrumps video as a lesson on game design. But at least indies tend to try to make their games be games instead of just quarterly earnings.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

I don't have many opportunities to talk about this, so forgive the lengthy post.

shames their opponent for using a better strategy

Aside from this, I'd say our definitions are not mutually exclusive. I haven't actually encountered your type of scrub (despite having spent hundreds of hours playing Destiny1 with random people), so it's hard to speak for the motivation they might be having. Surely they'd use an angle more effective than "stop winning so hard"? Like mimicking the argument I might make towards my type of scrub: accusing them of wanting to command a machine rather than play with real people. Or even complaining that using optimal strategy X is getting boring, so we should try something different. Though both types do seem to share that aspect; neither seems interested in actually cooperating with their allies (which always involves a degree of compromise and adaptation).

The scrub would not pay to win in a p2w game, they would (rightly) complain about the unfair advantage their opponents get from decisions that should be out of scope.

For this part, I assume you mean that they only complain and do not bother trying to compete or adapt. My type of scrub would also have a lack of adaptation and competitive attitude, but they deeply desire victory (this is different from wanting to compete) and understand that the optimal strategy is to spend more money.

A well-designed p2w game will have some avenue for free players to get close to competing with whales, leaving just enough power gap for the whales to stay ahead but not too much of a gap that good strategy can't beat the whale. This is necessary to keep the free players in the game and the free players are needed to help the lesser whales attain their beloved victories (this is part of why it's so rare to see a p2w game with no pvp; Genshin Impact is a bizarre case that I'm still trying to understand). No whale wants to play against only other whales - they'd have to make an effort to get their victory then, unless they knew that they had spent more than their opponent.

The whale-scrub likely has a complex about losing. They lack the right attitude to prosper in the face of adversity. They don't rise up and say "I'll win next time", they stay down and curse other people for their failures. This is what makes p2w such a paradise for them; now they can have a concrete hierarchy and force their way to the top - not through hard work, skill, or any of that gamer stuff, but through the utilization of non-game resources. It's a very 'revenge of the nerd' thing, to conquer the alpha male because you're willing to spend more money than he is on a game.

I don't mean to imply that any guy doing research on optimal strategies is a scrub. Full growth will inevitably involve seeing how other people succeed. The non-scrub will take those strategies and at least consider why they are so successful, then compare to their own strategies. A non-scrub cares about things beyond seeing a congratulatory message on their screen; they would want to know that they beat a strong adversary with their own skill, or they'd consider how they could improve when they fail, or any number of motivations. I'm wanting to place a fixation on victory because it seems to corrupt men who lack secondary motivations.

If a gamer looks up optimal strategies and only ever strictly adheres to those strategies without even considering why they're optimal and how they could be improved, I'd probably accuse them of being a scrub. Though consideration must be given to some possible excuses, like the odd case of just wanting to see how a story ends or the more p2w-model symptom of feeling like you're doing a chore by playing. It is also possible they're merely worshipping the authority of their favorite e-sports-guy, which is a seperate deficiency.

Coming back to the original point: "scrub" should probably only apply within multiplayer games and focus on the inability to engage with other players appropriately or effectively, spreading to a refusal to accept alternate strategies and a desire to ridicule anybody not agreeing with them. That would match both our definitions. A scrub would never be able to maintain a #1 position in a skill-based game because they can't adapt like a normal gamer. Scrubs that aren't dummies would learn to adopt successful strategies from non-scrubs, so the dumb and the desperate scrubs become the prime candidates for the whale role.

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evilmathmagician 3 points ago +3 / -0

it's really asking if some things are so precious or valuable that they're technically "above value".

I started answering your title question, but it looks like you want this question instead.

My personal data is already monetized, I'm just not getting anything from it because it's being sold without my consent (non-negotiable e-contracts are not consent). I'd be fine with it if I got a cut or got to choose who it's sold to. I think I should also have the ability to withhold specific pieces of data from such sales if I choose. The why should be obvious; different people have different values, so I might consider it a big deal for Microsoft to know how many computers I own while the next guy might share his number of computers publicly without any sale needed.

You end up getting into "how much does anyone care about anything?" I hope you don't simply take "everyone has their price" at face value. It'd be a hard sell with any amount of money to try to buy the right to punch someone's baby in the face (let's assume the parent isn't a crack addict). Even if you could offer all the money in existence, the person should be suspicious as fuck and refuse while looking for hidden cameras. You'll get a different result if you try to buy the right for your own baby to do the punching because the parent will start making assumptions about how little damage is possible.

Is it really even controversial? I thought it was a common thought experiment to consider what your price is on various personal principles. I even went to the trouble of calculating my expected death time, estimating future expenditures and guessing at how much a compromise would diminish my quality of life to determine where my line is for several issues. (There are some I would sooner die than compromise on.)

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evilmathmagician 4 points ago +4 / -0

refinement culture

An interesting article -I had been thinking of the matter more as the pursuance of efficiency. Still maintaining the managerialism because you get a lot of spreadsheets of data with clueless employees making silly interpretations that are taken as truth by other clueless employees.

It's easy to see when playing an online team game. If there's an accepted most efficient strategy, you'll conjure a lot of negative responses by doing anything other than that strategy. The glorification of the "meta" as a holy path in gaming is tragic - it takes something fun and slowly turns it into a job.

I've been trying to to figure out if this efficiency focus is a cause of the scrub personality. I've already determined that most whales in p2w games are scrubs (and devs too often engage a disgusting cycle of monetization and manipulation with them). Scrub here meaning a person with low skill/ability who also has no incentive to improve, instead opting to seek out strategies developed by select authorities, blindly adhering to those strategies, and typically talking down to anyone that refuses to cooperate with their chosen strategy.

The corporate logo example, that's easily a symptom of managerialism; useless employees try their best to justify their salaries to other people trying to do the same.

There are probably more links between this cultural phenomenon and managerialism.

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evilmathmagician 18 points ago +18 / -0

as well as increased stimulus payments for financially struggling U.S. residents.

I won't know how to feel about this until they say where the money will come from. If the money comes from an end to the ridiculous mountains of cash being sent to foreign countries, I could support it, but I'd still need to see where all the rest of that money is going.

However:

The group opposes all COVID-19 lockdown orders

Why would stimulus payments persist when there are no covid lockdowns? I'm eager to hear more directly from this new group.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

I browsed that christianity .win for a bit. Does not look hopeful. I'll check on them once in a while, though, as they might mention alternative places.

I saw you mention over there that you're a quaker. Did the religion come before or after you researching determinism?

Schopenhauer

I haven't read any of his stuff, but my current fixation (Nietzsche) was supposedly inspired by him. The theories on Will sound relevant to me. Might add him to my backlog.

As interesting as it all is to me, I can't act like I'm a serious scholar or anything. A lot of my motivation comes from a love of metaphor in fiction, and a desire to make boring stories more interesting due to how many boring stories I've encountered. So to explain the path I walked to some philosophically-inclined conclusion is likely to sound ridiculous or embarassing.

I remember being really fixated on quantum stuff for a while. All evidence I could understand pointed to determinism, but I was simply disgusted by some of the ideas I saw associated with it, so was forced to invent my own ideological compromise. Reading more books probably would have saved me a lot of effort, but it's fun to reinvent the wheel sometimes.

A few years ago, I made some bad choices that demanded reflection. I ended up updating my prior beliefs to something like "You have opportunities to change paths right up until you hit the crossroad - at that point, you'll only have the illusion of opportunity." This was because no matter how much I thought about how I could have made better choices, I realized I was stuck in that path and just couldn't see it at the time. Yet it was important that I struggled even when it was futile, because to do otherwise is to degrade oneself to the level of a puppet. Though, yeah, that's just one of many factors that predetermines where I'll end up.

The conclusion I carried away from the whole endeavour is that there is no such thing as true randomness. Just hidden variables.

This is amusing, thinking back on it, so I'll share. What really struck me along these lines was when I learned to cheat at dice and cards (for fun, I don't cheat for profit). An eye-opening moment for me, to realize that something I always assumed was random could actually be manipulated and controlled with skill and without an observer understanding what they're seeing. It had a lot of far-reaching implications to me at the time.

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evilmathmagician 9 points ago +9 / -0

I'd love that. I think it demands a crushing and undeniable victory in the culture war, though, and I'm not sure how to get there from here.

It's been many years since the strong have been expected to serve the weak. Just defeating the front line of sjws won't be enough; we need a resurgence in counter ideas like meritocracy. Even if we could magically round up all the bad actors and evict them, we need the foundation to resist when they pop up again next time.

A lot of it has been taught by example, so otherwise intelligent and adaptive citizens grow to learn a strategy for success that matches those examples. Why gain knowledge or build skills when you can just file frivolous lawsuits all day to cash in on settlements?

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +2 / -1

I'll admit I'm unfamiliar with religious conversation. It's hard enough just finding people conversing about philosophy (I consider religion to be a sort of subcategory of philosophy).

It matches your later explanation that you were trying to make a point about differing worldviews. And it is more straightforward than asking what their religion is.

Where do you even go to find religion talk? I'd be interested to see how the lens of spirituality colors certain perspectives. Even political wrong-thinkers have places to talk, so surely the religious do as well.

do not believe that people have any power to change their trajectory in life

Like here, this sounds like it has drastic consequences for a person's views unless you put a big "But" in there. I can't believe all methodists adhere to it, but I doubt most religious people strictly adhere to the religion they use. And I'm realizing now that my sample data is pretty lacking to verify. To me, it's logical to pick and choose and develop your own system of beliefs, so I struggle to understand why a person would strictly follow a giant package of beliefs like a religion.

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evilmathmagician 3 points ago +3 / -0

This kind of questioning seems cruel, as it's an inherently frustrating topic and most readers are going to be reluctant to answer without some evidence of intent.

In a way, it's strengthening to dive into a bleak committment like "free will is a lie". It destroys motivation, so it takes new strength to pull yourself out of that bog. This type of strength isn't a functional imperative for most people, so I wouldn't expect it of others. Though I'm uncertain if most people are intuiting that sort of struggle when they recoil from the question.

I'll try to answer for fun: no, but I've decided to behave in all ways as if I do because it's useful. Similarly, I believe a god might exist, but that any such god does not desire worship or acknowledgement, so it is a type of sin to do either.

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evilmathmagician 1 point ago +1 / -0

Ah, a replacement for sentences where re-integration is not planned. At the least, it sounds frightening and that would be a potential motivator to dissuade some criminals. I do like the idea of seperating such offenders from the ones that can rejoin society, as a prisoner with no hopes is likely to make everyone around them miserable on purpose.

Is there a high number of blind people committing capital crimes?

I doubt it, but I wouldn't be surprised at a newly blind guy getting up to something crazy. Maybe not on a comic book villain level, but I imagine it being a traumatic change that could distort a person's values. Most guys wouldn't have henchmen available to facilitate crazy plans.

I was assuming the blindness to be meant as punishment. Why bother with it at all? Just putting them in isolation sounds sufficient. Give them light and normal books, take away the Alexa. Drug their food when you want to give them a checkup. You wouldn't even need them to hear instructions for the suicide button, you could have a sign.

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