Mnemnosyne @ Mnemnosyne @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

Mostly if you had ever posted something that was useful to people, it hurts other people now trying to find that information on the internet somewhere. It is unlikely Reddit actually deleted the data, they just made it inaccessible. Storage for posts is cheap. There's no reason for them to not keep literally everything ever, especially since they've known for well over a decade that the data itself is useful.

Odd comparison, and internally inconsistent. They criticize KOTOR for having only one decision that affects the overall story, but fail to consider that SWF had zero decisions that affect the overall story.

It is true that as a multiplayer game there are theoretically more opportunities for roleplay in SWG, and if they'd focused on that it would make more sense and be more consistent.

The combination of competence, the necessary skills, intelligence, and most importantly, the willingness to sacrifice oneself to effect change is...rare. It's also uncertain whether results would be positive.

Consider what is needed to pull off 'focused' violence - that is to say, assassination of key targets. You need to be sufficiently skilled to manage at least one successful strike. You cannot communicate with people to do this - it's far too easy to get caught in the modern day. You need supplies and equipment, and sure, guns are somewhat easy to get in the US, but they aren't the only thing you need. You need access and information, some of which is public, but some of which can be hard to get, and can draw attention by being sought (keep in mind algorithms are pattern matching to find this stuff).

Then consider the potential outcome of these actions. As mentioned before, organizing is impractical since it would mean getting caught before doing anything with much higher probability. Regardless of your skills, the chance of getting caught approaches 100%. You may be able to take out two or three key senators, or if you're very good and very lucky, a few supreme court justices, before being caught. At this point you will either be imprisoned, or you commit suicide to avoid this fate.

And what's the result? Violence of this sort to effect change is hard to pull off, but even harder to predict the outcome of. If you've succeeded in all plausible goals, you might manage to change the makeup of the supreme court - that's probably the best possible outcome you can hope for with this sort of violence, but right now on the gay front, the supreme court shockingly has yet to do anything too bad, so you may not want to provoke that shit. But there are a lot of possible bad outcomes. And as someone smart enough to pull this off, you're smart enough to see that. It could lead to increasingly strict rules, to retaliation against the group you're trying to help - it could even be the catalyst to strengthen your opponents position enough to make things worse elsewhere.

The idea of someone killing a bunch of the key bad guys is great, but it has so many impracticalities, and worst of all, such an uncertain and potentially worse outcome that it's probably just a bad idea overall, even as much as I too sometimes wish someone would just kill some of these motherfuckers already.

Yeah, that's an excellent example. Those protests posed a credible threat to that specific business - indeed, to some degree they even already carried out some of the threat, just to show it was credible - which made changes to what they had the power to affect - their own actions.

I think the best way to put it is that protests can be effective only when they present a credible threat of some sort against the people who have the power to make changes to whatever the protest is about. That threat may be direct violence, it may be electoral change, or it may be something else, but a credible threat of some sort is absolutely required.

Protesting against Israel, therefore, is of little use in most situations. The protesters pose no credible threat to Israel, so their decisions aren't going to change. And the protesters generally are not representing much of a credible threat against their own governments either, so their own governments are also not moved to change.

Schlock Mercenary. Amazing webcomic, by one of only like 2 webcomic authors that I'm familiar with that have the simple capability of putting out a comic on time (although this no longer applies as the story is finished) and is a fantastic story from beginning to end.

Yet, none of the friends I've ever recommended it to have been willing to read it

Their purpose is to serve as a visible (but not too visible) threat to force people to sell their lives in exchange for the money needed to avoid that fate.

Don't discount the generative AI either!

Language generating AI like LLMs: Though we're in early stages yet and they don't really work for communication, these are going to be the foundation on which AI learns to talk and communicate information to people. Right now they just spit out correct-sounding responses, but eventually the trick to using that language generation to actually communicate will be resolved.

Image/video/music generating AI: How difficult it is right now, for the average person to illustrate an idea or visual concept they have! But already these image generating AI are making such illustration available to the common person. As they advance further and adjusting their output based on natural conversational language becomes more effective, this will only get better. A picture paints a thousand words...and now the inverse will also be true, as anyone will be able to create a picture with sufficient description. And the same applies to video and music.

That said I love your managing production point. It's something I e been thinking too - centrally planned economies have always had serious issues, but if with predictive AI we can overcome the problems by accurately predicting future need, the problems with them may be solvable, and we can then take advantage of the inherent efficiency in such a planned system.

This point neither supports nor erodes the logic of ownership of territory or land; it merely points out that it has a very long history. Many things have a long history, some of which have consistent reason and logic behind them, and some which do not.

It is true that once production of an item becomes a greater task than simply the work of one person, the ownership of it can be considered more complex, but my point was that at least something created by people makes sense to be owned by its creator.

Only in frictionless spherical cow in a vacuum territory - that is to say in theory in unachievable ideal conditions. In the real world the market is wildly distorted and people are forced by a variety of external pressures to participate even if they don't believe they are being offered what they are worth.

Private ownership of things made by people is perfectly reasonable; the person who made the thing should own it and be able to sell or transfer it as desired. So a rock you found isn't made by people, so yeah, but a painting, or a chair, etc, was.

It's land that wasn't made by people where private ownership gets really ridiculous.

If you want to challenge actual data and claim it's not correct, you need data to show that. If you don't have data to challenge that claim but you're still suspicious, you can say we need more, better data and we should make efforts to gather it.

But simply asserting that the data is wrong with nothing to back you up but the hot air coming out of your mouth is crap and anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that.

Well it doesn't specify dragon type/color. Not every dragon has an innate alternate form ability, so hopefully you get one of those.

Age is also an issue. Depending on how old you are, you'll probably be somewhere between young to young adult. If you're at least 50 you can hit young adult. This means you're pretty limited in a lot of things, and if you have your innate spellcasting at all, it's gonna be pretty limited.

If you're one of the dragon colors that doesn't get innate alternate form, you're probably gonna have to hide for the better part of a century just to get old enough to have some decent spells.

So there are downsides, if temporary ones, to the dragon option. Still, it's probably the best choice, yes.

Expanding the court requires the approval of Congress, which Biden won't get.

If they rule presidents are above the law, he could (and perhaps even should) simply kill them himself without any possible retaliation, but seeing as he'd never actually do that they don't have to worry about it.

I hope it's not too late, but I do fear that Republicans have been allowed to do whatever they want with no consequences for too long.

This is actually what I look forward to most in gaming in the next decade or two. The implementation of AI that can be assigned goals and motivations instead of scripted to every detail. Characters in games with whom we as players can have believable conversations that the devs didn't have to think of beforehand. If they can integrate LLM type AI into games successfully, it'll be a total game changer in terms of being able to accommodate player choice and freedom.

I'd say I need to know enough to play a character that grew up in that world. Which means I need to understand the things that a person who grew up in the world would know. That includes things like:

• The biome and general weather conditions of the region I grew up in.
• Any particularly notable features of my region and its society.
• The local laws, structure of government, how much respect or obedience I must pay to my betters.
• General history of the last 25-45 years that affected my region of the world (increase timespan by 50 to 100 years if I am an elf or other long-lived race). This need only be the highlights and things that directly affected my people, not all minutiae.
• What gods are worshipped, and how are they worshipped. For example, does an average farmer pray exclusively to the god of farming, or do they pray to whichever God is appropriate for the situation they're praying about?
• Who are the most famous people in the world and why are they famous?
• Who are the most powerful known people in my region and how powerful are they?
• What kind of creatures are considered common annoyances, and what kinds are considered serious threats, to villages, towns, and cities respectively?
• Demographics of my region - what percentage of the population is demihuman, what percentage is of the monstrous humanoid races, etc.
• What races are considered normal in my region, and which are tolerated, which are reviled, which are kill-on-sight: basically, who are the people of my region racist against?

However, there are things people commonly write in homebrew world documents that I do not need to know. These include:

• Creation of the world and its gods.
• History of godly struggles.
• History of kingdoms and empires that existed more than a couple elven lifetimes ago.
• Geography of regions not immediately adjacent to my home region.
• Lineage of Queens and nobles, etc.
• Cosmology of the planes.

Some of these may be needed for specific characters, but most characters don't need this information because they would not know it.

I don't know my Greek mythology that well, but my instinct is Aphrodite. She wouldn't want her champion to be ugly, so she would make me beautiful (but not as beautiful as her).

Not a good damn thing, unless everyone with a higher standard of living than I do has already sacrificed enough to bring them down to my level. If I was anywhere near the top standards of living then I would be more willing to go first. But I am not going to be tricked into giving things up on my own, or even as a sizable group, while some individuals and corporations are continuing to make issues worse.

Yeah...I definitely believe in the principle of being innocent until proven guilty, and that should apply in all facets of life. I know legally that only restrains the courts and government, but in my opinion, it should apply for everyone - no one should be fired or otherwise treated as though they're guilty before it has been proven.