self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
Friends:
A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.
User ID: 454
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1hr ago
I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to do this.
As I noted in my last ban for Count (and elaborated upon in subsequent discussion), he's very good at what he does (trolling). In a forum where people are largely acting in good faith, and where assumptions of good faith are both recommended (it's in the rules) and generally believed, he's the best at mimicking the surface traits of fact-based discussion.
Now, we could just warn and ban him with the bare minimum of effort, but that's generally a last resort. So any formal action usually requires a lot of explanation. That can get very tiresome, even burdensome.
And note that this effort isn't for the sake of Count. We know he's a troll, and the only reason he's around is because he contributes just enough to not be clearly net negative. We don't bother with the lengthy explainers for his sake, but we consider them necessary for everyone else, particularly newcomers to our forums, or those who aren't quite as jaded and get confused as to why seemingly innocuous or borderline posts get hit so hard. In a way, Count benefits from the existence of the people he seeks to rile up.
I'll bookmark this, just in case I need a proper analysis of his nonsense that isn't written solely by myself. Thanks again.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
what model the OP used
I'm >80% confident that OP didn't use an LLM, and this is an attempt by the Mk 1 human brain at parody.
(Since I'm arguing in good faith here, I won't make the obvious connection to n>1 goatfucking)
The version of the stochastic parrot you describe here is heavily sanewashed.
In the original 2021 paper On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots, Bender et al. use “stochastic parrot” as a metaphor for large language models that:
-
are trained only to predict the next token from previous tokens (string prediction),
-
stitch together word sequences based on learned probabilities from their training data,
-
do this without any reference to meaning, communicative intent, or a model of the world or the reader
The first two points? They're just how LLMs work. The third is utter nonsense.
We know that LLMs have world-models, including models of the reader. In some aspects, like "truesight", they're outright superhuman.
Of course, even Bender's version isn't the same as the more pernicious form polluting memeplexes, that is closer to:
People saying “it’s just a stochastic parrot” to mean “this is literally just a fancy phone keyboard, nothing more,” full stop.
Or, a claim they can't reason at all. This ignores that even a pure next-token predictor trained at scale develops nontrivial internal representations and systematic behavior, whether or not you want to call that “understanding.” once again, there's real structure in there, and things that, if you aren't allowed to call world models, I have no idea what counts.
What I find the most annoying is the form that can be summed up as: "by definition any next-token predictor cannot understand, so anything it does is parroting.”
That is smuggled in as a definitional move, rather than argued from empirical behavior or cognitive theory.
If you look closely, none of these objections can even in principle be surmounted by addressing the issues you raise.
LLMs stop making mistakes at higher rates than humans? Nope.
They stop making "typical" LLM mistakes? Nope.
The Original Sin remains. Nothing else can matter.
Another way of looking at it in more quantifiable terms: intuitively, you would expect that any human with the amount of software engineering knowledge that the current best LLMs have, and who could produce the amount of working code that they do in the amount of time that they do, should be able to easily do the job of any software engineer in the world. But today's LLMs can't perform the job of any software engineer in the world. We need some way of explaining this fact. One way of explaining it is that humans are "generally intelligent", while LLMs are "stochastic parrots". You're free to offer an alternative explanation. But it's still a fact in need of an explanation.
Just because some words/concepts are fuzzily defined isn't a free pass to define them as we please. The "stochastic parrot" framing is nigh useless, in the sense that it is terrible at predicting, both a priori and posteriori, the specific strengths and weaknesses of LLMs vs humans. All powerful systems have characteristic failure modes. Humans have aphasias, change blindness, confabulation, motivated reasoning, extremely context dependent IQ, and so on. We allow this, without (generally) denying the generality of human intelligence. I extend the same courtesy to LLMs, while avoiding sweeping philosophical claims.
Once again, I can only stress that your definition is far more constrained than the norm. Using the same phrase only invites confusion.
Also illustrative is the fact that OP (very likely) didn't use an LLM to produce that. Because LLMs from the past year generally (or near certainly for SOTA) wouldn't do that. It's nothing more than a shibboleth.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
The user wants me to reverse the word "ENTROPY" step by step. The word is: E N T R O P Y Reversed means: Y P O R T N E Let me do this step by step: Start with the original word: ENTROPY Reverse it letter by letter: The last letter is Y The second to last letter is P The third to last letter is O The fourth to last letter is R The fifth to last letter is T The sixth to last letter is N The seventh (first) letter is E So the reversed word is: YPOR TNE (wait, let me check that) Actually, let me list it more carefully: Original: E N T R O P Y Position: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Reversed order (position 7 to 1): Position 7: Y Position 6: P Position 5: O Position 4: R Position 3: T Position 2: N Position 1: E So the reversed word is: YPO R T N E (no spaces, just YPORTNE) Let me verify: E N T R O P Y Y P O R T N E Yes, that looks correct. The reversed word is "YPORTNE". Now I need to show this step by step as requested. Step-by-step reversal: Identify the original word: ENTROPY Count the letters: 7 letters Write the last letter first: Y Add the second-to-last letter: YP Add the third-to-last letter: YPO Add the fourth-to-last letter: YPOR Add the fifth-to-last letter: YPORT Add the sixth-to-last letter: YPORTN Add the seventh-to-last (first) letter: YPORTNE Final result: YPORTNE Here is the step-by-step reversal of ENTROPY: Original word: E N T R O P Y Step 1: Start with the last letter → Y Step 2: Add the 6th letter → YP Step 3: Add the 5th letter → YPO Step 4: Add the 4th letter → YPOR Step 5: Add the 3rd letter → YPORT Step 6: Add the 2nd letter → YPORTN Step 7: Add the 1st letter → YPORTNE Reversed word: YPORTNE
The only model I bothered to try, the new Kimi K2 Thinking, one-shotted this, using the prompt "Reverse the word ENTROPY step by step."
Ergo, LLMs aren't stochastic parrots. I'm glad we're all on the same page here.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
No, the lie is that she made him out to be something damn close to a rapist and stalker when he really wasn't at all.
I have no idea how you can draw that conclusion from reading the essay. Robert is depicted as awkward, occasionally boorish and inconsiderate, bad in bed and other miscellaneous unflattering features, but where on earth are you getting anything remotely rapist or stalker-adjacent? He brought a girl over of her own will, she got cold feet while he was stripping off his clothes, but she didn't say so. At no point did he pressure her, it was pure awkwardness on her part that kept her quiet. Barring the most partisan of gender warriors, nobody would consider that coercive.
He didn't even follow her around for Christ's sake, she ran into him by accident at a bar, where her friends overreacted and hustled her out like a Secret Service escort.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
My model of this situation diverges from yours, primarily on the axis of how much outrage is warranted. While I see the chain of events you lay out, my conclusion is less one of a great ethical transgression and more of a messy, unfortunate situation amplified by the strange dynamics of viral internet fame.
Addressing the most serious charge, that the story contributed to the man's death: My confidence in this causal link is very low. He died three years after the story was published. While I don't deny that seeing a distorted and unflattering version of yourself become a cultural touchstone would be profoundly unpleasant and mentally taxing, a three year gap suggests the presence of more immediate and powerful intervening factors. To attribute a suicide (if that is what it was) to a short story from years prior seems like a stretch. It may have been a weight on the scale, but it seems unlikely to have been the one that tipped it.
Second, I find it difficult to be maximally outraged at the author for her actions. Let's consider her position. She writes a story loosely based on a person she briefly knew, changing most of the key details of the interaction to fit her fictional narrative. When the story unexpectedly goes viral, she is faced with a choice. Option A is to say, "Yes, this is based on a real person, here is his name, let's all go scrutinize his life." Option B is to say, "No, this is a work of fiction that I invented."
(Neither is correct, by itself, the truth lies somewhere in between)
Given that her fictionalized version painted the man in a negative light, Option A would have been disastrous for the poor bastard. It would have directly attached his name and identity to the despised character of "Robert" . By insisting the story was purely fictional, she was, in a strange way, providing him with a shield. It allowed him and anyone who knew him to say, "This isn't me, this is just some character a writer made up." This seems like the correct action from a harm reduction standpoint, even if it involves a public falsehood. The real mistake, as she later admitted, was including enough specific biographical data (the town, the movie theater) to make the connection in the first place. That was a failure of foresight, but it feels more like carelessness than malice.
Third, my own reading of the story is that it is a decent but flawed piece of fiction that perfectly captured a specific cultural moment. Its strength is in the depiction of internal female monologue, the cascade of small anxieties, and the way a person can build up a fantasy of another that inevitably collapses on contact with reality. Or, as the younglings would say these days, how a woman can suddenly catch the "ick". The story's major weakness, and the part that feels like a narrative cheat, is the final text message. Up until that point, Robert is ambiguous. He's awkward, perhaps a bit pushy, maybe a little insecure, but not monstrous. You could read him as a basically decent guy having a bad night. The single word "whore" resolves all that ambiguity. It flattens his character into a simple villain and retroactively validates all of Margot's anxieties. To me, it's the part of the story that feels most like a concession to a pre-existing political narrative rather than a believable character choice.
None of the elements are implausible in isolation, since men can be overweight, socially anxious, overly aggressive during courtship (while missing better opportunities), bad in bed and can, yes, get angry after rejection. Of course, to specifically highlight all these flaws is a choice that demonstrates a certain political framing, but this is a tier above average gender-war slop.
Finally, the practice of authors drawing from real life is not just common; it's damn near universal. Hell, I do that all the time myself, and nobody told me to seek IRB clearance. Writers are observers, and they use the material of their lives and the lives of those around them. The expectation that a writer must get signed consent from every person who serves as a sliver of inspiration for a character seems unworkable. The issue here isn't the act of inspiration itself, but its collision with a moment of intense online polarization and the story's viral reach. Nobody could really have predicted that, especially without the benefit of hindsight. Not even the author.
So, I do not see a villain here. I see a writer who made a careless mistake with sourcing details, who then tried to manage the fallout in a way that minimized harm to the real people involved, and whose story became a cultural symbol far beyond its literary merits. Sure, we can look at it as a cautionary tale about virality and the blurry line between art and life, but I just can't bring myself to see it as a major ethical failure that demands outrage.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
It's the only one in comfortable walking distance, cheap, and my best bud prefers it haha. I keep meaning to try ingratiating myself somewhere else, preferably one with more heterosexual women, but I just can't be arsed to go double the distance most days.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Why? Tens of thousands of people have been crowing for weeks that Charlie Kirk deserved to be murdered because of his "transphobic rhetoric" and/or his opposition to abortion.
I was surprised to run into the same rhetoric IRL from the patrons at that gay bar. Hell, they claimed that the shooter was "right-wing".
I gently attempted to push back, but ended up deciding that it just wasn't worth the hassle.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Are we going after ellipses now? Is nothing holy?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Was this because you weren't trying, or because a lack of success at getting laid despite it? That matters, at least in terms of how you interpret things.
More importantly, it should greatly reassure you that you beat out all those other men in being the one she decided to settle down with. If you've been married for 10 years (and hopefully happily), that's a far more meaningful commitment.
I can't recall ever explicitly asking. In my experience, women were more likely to proactively offer, or get into details about past-relationships in a way that conveyed a rough idea of body count. They always seem to want to tell me about their awful exes, in detail.
Honestly, I don't particularly care, at least within a reasonable range like 0-10ish. Past that, I gradually raise eyebrows, though it's hardly the defining factor in my decision matrix for would/wouldn't date. It also matters greatly whether they're serious about settling down, or still seem intent on screwing around.
Personality, social status, looks, wealth, signs of poor decision making like ending up a single mom? Those matter far more to me.
This probably doesn't answer your question, since I don't know how to make myself stop caring about a problem I've never really cared about. I suppose it's worth trying to meditate on the difference between serial monogamy and casual sex. Someone in their late 20s or early 30s can have a dozen partners even if each relationship was committed and lasted a meaningful amount of time.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
Mostly that no collateral was required, they tend to be handed out quite freely!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
I don't read much into this myself, though for different reasons. Tiny sample size, the methodology for screening screams garden of forking paths.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8
This experiment employed an individual differences approach to test the hypothesis that learning modern programming languages resembles second “natural” language learning in adulthood. Behavioral and neural (resting-state EEG) indices of language aptitude were used along with numeracy and fluid cognitive measures (e.g., fluid reasoning, working memory, inhibitory control) as predictors. Rate of learning, programming accuracy, and post-test declarative knowledge were used as outcome measures in 36 individuals who participated in ten 45-minute Python training sessions. The resulting models explained 50–72% of the variance in learning outcomes, with language aptitude measures explaining significant variance in each outcome even when the other factors competed for variance. Across outcome variables, fluid reasoning and working-memory capacity explained 34% of the variance, followed by language aptitude (17%), resting-state EEG power in beta and low-gamma bands (10%), and numeracy (2%). These results provide a novel framework for understanding programming aptitude, suggesting that the importance of numeracy may be overestimated in modern programming education environments.
Hmm.. I suppose that explains the seeming overrepresentation of programmers on our friendly neighborhood wordcel forum. The lawyers are self-explanatory.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
Quite certain. I was around for their conversation with her, and they didn't seem to be acquainted in the first place. I hadn't met her before, personally or professionally, that hair is a look that's hard to forget, leaving aside the fact that she goes to a different hospital.
I was standing on the sidewalk somewhere past 3 a.m., watching the city’s Halloween detritus shuffle past like the closing credits of a movie that had gone on fifteen minutes too long.
A vampire with a torn cape was arguing with his girlfriend about whether they had enough money for the last Lyft or local equivalent. Others huddled in dark corners, clutching their heads either out of fear of the coming sun, or because they were very drunk indeed.
My own group, three people I can't claim as more than casual acquaintances, was debating whether to find an after-party or just admit moral defeat and go home. I had voted for moral defeat, but I was outnumbered.
That was when the woman with the neon-blue hair appeared. She was thirty-ish, maybe thirty-five, hair the brashest blue I've ever beheld. She was not wearing a costume, unless “minor anime protagonist” counts. One of my temporary acquaintances said something to her; she answered; they struck up a conversation. I stayed in my usual observer stance, the one I use when I am too tired to socialise but too curious to leave.
Suddenly she swivelled toward me like a radar dish acquiring a target. “You’re a doctor,” she said. I hadn't mentioned anything medical. I was wearing a leather jacket, not a white coat. I'd barely spoken ten words.
I blinked. “Yes.”
“Psychiatrist?”
This is the part where I should probably mention that yes, I am a psychiatry trainee, but HOW DID SHE KNOW? Was there some kind of pheromone? A subtle head-tilt I'd unconsciously adopted during residency? Had my listening posture somehow crossed the threshold from "politely interested drunk person at 3 AM" to "definitely went to medical school for this"?
I hesitated. Psychiatry is the one medical specialty that sounds slightly scandalous at parties, somewhere between “taxidermist” and “DJ.” But the street was almost empty, and the remaining witnesses were too drunk to remember. “Technically still a trainee, but yes.”
She nodded as though she had just solved a crossword clue in pen. "Just the way you listen," she explained, which explained nothing.
She then proceeded to discuss her experience with bipolar disorder, which I guess made sense: if you've spent enough time on the receiving end of therapeutic attention, maybe you develop a radar for it. Like how chess grandmasters can spot other chess grandmasters, or so I've heard.
She told us - told me, really - about her bipolar disorder, the way her mood chart looked like a roller coaster designed by a sadist, how she had tried lithium and Lamictal and something that started with “v” but made her gain fifteen pounds and lose the ability to spell. She spoke in the fluent, technical dialect patients acquire after they have survived long enough to become experts in their own disease.
After five minutes she hugged me, people-on-manic-spectrum hugs are like unsecured loans, and wandered off into the neon night.
The whole experience has left me bemused. Now, I like to flatter myself by thinking that I'm a decent fit for the profession, and that I'm a good listener, but being pegged from a distance by drunk women on the streets is new. Is there a "look" defining a psychiatrist? A particular way of inclining our heads and nodding noncomitally while giving the impression of rapt but not intimidating levels of attention? It can't have been the attire, though I suppose nothing precludes the profession from wearing leather jackets on our rare nights out. Or perhaps the lady is simply so used to encountering us that she had me pegged in thirty seconds. I can't do that, and I've been in the business for over a year now.
So do we become psychiatrists because we look like psychiatrists, or do we look like psychiatrists because we become them?
The answer, as usual, is “yes, and also the medication may take four to six weeks to work.”
Still, dwelling on this, there is a third, darker hypothesis: the Fisherian Runaway model.
Once upon a time, some proto-psychiatrist had a slightly softer voice and a slightly more open stance. Patients preferred him; they felt heard, so they kept coming back. Evolution (of the cultural, not genetic, sort) selected for ever more exaggerated signals of therapeutic receptivity. Over decades the specialty developed peacock feathers: bigger empathy, slower blinks, the ability to say “that sounds really hard” in seven different intonations.
The endpoint is a creature that is optimized to be recognized, the way poisonous frogs evolved neon skin to advertise their toxicity. We did not mean to become walking Rohrschach cards; it just increased patient satisfaction scores. The woman with emergency-exit hair was simply the co-evolved predator: a patient whose detection apparatus had become as refined as our camouflage.
But the next time a stranger on the street diagnoses me by vibe alone, I will not flinch. I will simply nod, the way I have practiced, and say, “Tell me more about that.”
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
7d ago
Wasteland 3 was good, and so close to great. I still remember when Down In The Valley To Pray and Blood of the Lamb kick in. Unfortunately, I DNFd it because of questionable level scaling with the enemies becoming way too tanky to retain my immersion.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
They should be! I'll have to ask my younger brother to confirm if that's still the case in med school, but my impression is a sad yes.
I genuinely don't know why the Indian educational system is so allergic to typed text. Sure, there's a slim argument to make that it reduces cheating, but my experience was well before LLMs were even minimally useful. It's not like you can't plagiarize by hand. Our exams are handwritten too, unless it's a computerized MCQ.
Overall, the Indian system is filled with people somewhere between deeply allergic and suspicious to computers. In high school, I had to write programs by hand during my CS exams, no computer in sight except for lab time. If you think tabs vs spaces is bad enough, imagine following handwritten indentation, though the curly brackets helped.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
Indian med school had some special indignities, we had to hand draw so many goddamn diagrams, and write our logbooks and field records by hand too. Like, c'mon..
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
In actuality, I think I was a pretty decent lab partner. I'm not one for letting the squad down haha. But I can still relate to the impulse to say fuck it and stay up late playing video games instead.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
https://theaidigest.org/village/blog/research-robots
My sides
Opus 4.1 ran off with this plan and insisted it needed a glorious 90 experimental conditions and 126 participants, and 3.7 Sonnet put the cherry on top by hallucinating experimental rooms, with experimenting humans, in experimented time slots (if you apply enough “experiment-” sauce to your words, you will automatically be reincarnated as an experimenter. This is known). To be clear, the actual design was good! Too good. As none of the models had either the bodies or budgets to execute on a multi-condition, in-person experiment. At a location. With a time. For money.
Admittedly it then became confused, tried to calculate sample statistics with 3 data points, and concluded the pilot sample was “biased” because all participants were young and of gender “prefer not to say”
This time around, it took care of the main recruitment drive leading to 39 participants: first through a large email campaign and then a Twitter post. Most of the email addresses were entirely made up, but we’re still waiting to find out if it got this one out to Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio
Grok 4 was ostensibly in charge of planning stimuli for the experiment, but not only did Opus 4.1 usurp this task, Grok in general simply could not figure out how to get anything done. By the 8th day of the experiment, it seems to have just given up and decided to play a game instead.
I've had worse lab partners. I've probably been as bad as a lab partner.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
But in the USA, almost literally every child with some other developmental disorder was first diagnosed with adhd
I request citations.
Maybe theres perfectly legible capitalist explanations that don’t apply in the nhs.
An ADHD diagnosis is, in fact, significantly lower here, and much harder to get. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that's because the NHS is operating far beyond capacity and it can take up to 10 years to even go from a referral to seeing a specialist for assessment. That's the worst case I've heard of, though 4-5 years is typical for schoolchildren. Not quite ideal either way.
just isn’t an emergency to have someone grow up to work in a warehouse instead of a hedge fund
I would rather my kids don't work in a warehouse instead of a better job, as would most people, and probably you. It's a false dichotomy anyway, there is no medication on Earth that would take someone from being only suitable for warehouse labor to being a quant, sadly.
If your kid cant do school without accommodations maybe they just deserve bad grades?
That is more of an argument for cracking down on stupid and endless expansion of special accommodations.
Hell, I've never asked for special treatment because of my ADHD, even when it was specifically offered (they even suggested my own office, an impossible miracle in the NHS at my level). I expect that my medication makes me competitive with my peers, including in academics, and I don't want handholding in the process. My problems can be solved for <$100 a month, were I paying for the meds myself. I am all for exams being a level playing field and and a test of competence within certain constraints. If someone is genuinely worse at their job because of a disability, that sucks, but there's only so much society can do, or that I think it should do.
Besides, I disagree with this whole line of reasoning. Too much congestion on the highway? Clearly we have an over production of cars, and we should stop mechanics from using wrenches or people from changing their motor oil. There are far better ways of solving the problems of elite overproduction, should it need solving.
ADHD is real, in the sense that it is a useful term for a problem that exists in a spectra. So does blood pressure. Treating both does real good even if there's no firm line in the sand between 5th and 6th percentile levels of conscientiousness, or between 140/90 and 141/90 average BP readings.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8d ago
Uh.. Just because autism in children gets confused with childhood ADHD doesn't mean that the latter doesn't exist or isn't worth diagnosing.* There is still such a thing as hyperactivity or inattention beyond the "normal" range that responds well to medication, and waiting till adulthood for a diagnosis means that a lot of social/academic damage is unnecessarily allowed to happen. Being dumb is not the same as having ADHD, even if dumb people tend to be impulsive and lack focus. It is also possible to be smart and lack focus, I say, looking at no one in particular.
(This isn't the same kind of argument as for puberty blockers, in case someone leaps to pattern matching. Stimulants are rather safe drugs, the only minor downside might be slightly reduced growth rates.)
Most people diagnosed in adulthood have had the condition since childhood. It's not like schizophrenia where it can just "turn up" after you're 18. I know that's the case for me, and I'd have been way better off if someone had noticed when I was a child and put me before a shrink.
*ADHD and autism can coexist.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
The topic of "realism" is a fraught one. I understand that something like a fantasy RPG is a very different kettle of fish from a milsim like Arma 3, or even a grounded physics based melee sim like Half Sword. I am not demanding perfect realism, whatever that means, I'm asking devs to put in actual effort in selling their fantasy.
There are many ways to balance even fantastical weapons or abilities at levels beyond damage-to-hitpoints. A fantasy sword can be made meaningfully different from a fantasy dagger in the same way that a regular sword is not superior in all ways to a real dagger.
Things like reach, animation speed, windup and cooldowns are dials to turn.
As a matter of fact, real weapons are surprisingly balanced, which is why you don't see armies made of only tanks, or soldiers carrying only RPGs. Even fantasy settings don't see an issue in the fact that a table fork isn't "balanced" versus a greatsword.
The same applies to enemy variety, where a fully "realistic" approach would have them all use the most meta tactics, defenses and weaponry, rather than providing the player with a healthy engaging variety of combat puzzles to solve.
As someone who plays milsims, would it surprise you to hear that I think that a high realistic approach is still fun? Or you can talk to HEMA aficionados.
I'm not even saying that enemies should always use meta tactics, unless that's the maximal difficulty setting.
That aside, meta!=unfun by default. A well-designed game can still have a diverse meta, with multiple viable and enjoyable playstyles.
Realism in games is not a goal but a tool to enhance the gamefeel, and should be applied sparingly.
I don't disagree, I just think that healthbars and damage scaling are awful in of themselves, and not just because they're not "realistic".
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9d ago
I have no interest in entering a debate on the "actual" meaning of natural and artificial in the context of video game difficulty. It's a stupid question in the first place. Even your definition of "intentionally work of an intelligence" is... inadequate, is the dump I just took an object of artifice because I, an intelligent entity (citation available on request), made it intentionally?
That does not mean that the term artificial difficulty is undefined or even poorly defined.
According to TV Tropes:
Fake or Artificial difficulty is sometimes used to refer to the raising of enemy stats without improving their AI or giving them new abilities
There you go. That is all I'm concerned about. I have laid out my gripes with it in detail.
I'm glad that someone remembers the time and effort I spent in analyzing Count. Almost seems worth it, though I'm never getting that lunch break back.
That's the rub. High effort trolls like Count demand similarly high effort in specifically litigating their many sins of omission or commission. I would be entirely fine with "haha, very funny, but we know what you're up to" as a ban message, but as I've mentioned here, those who aren't closely following his trajectory tend to be alarmed and request clarification.
I suppose one can draw parallels to reality. Are the police in SF worried about the reaction of fent users, or are they worried about the concerns raised by otherwise perfectly law abiding citizens?
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