It is a fun test that shows how little I know about makeup and classical literature. I have a couple problems with it though. A few words appear to have spelling mistakes (
Some questions have a lot ambiguity to them. Like, one could use
With that in mind, I can't take the test super seriously, but at least the categories are interesting, and legitimately span a wide array of topics.
Bombadil
1d ago
At this point, my main issue is with how this is enforced. A world without children on the internet would be a better one. But how do you ensure children don't access the internet without doing away with any semblance of online privacy?
Bombadil
1d ago
I would be interested in learning more about the casual dating market in china. With marriage being gated behind prohibitive sums of money, I would expect people to just not get married. Human desires being what they are though, people are going to find some way to romance and sex. So I would think that situationships, casual flings, maybe lying about seeing someone on the side, would be common practices. The obvious loophole in the social norms. We can tell people that we are dating to figure out if we are a good match, then break up once we realize it would be better to see someone else.
I think in general this hints at a certain weakness of of how China is ruled. It seems like the Chinese government has been attempting to force behavior change through authoritarian means, but with every law they create, some unforeseen side effect pops up. The one-child policy resulted in a huge gender imbalance. Turning the country capitalist made it wealthy, but increased the people's financial anxieties to the point where they are using marriage as a means of making money. Blackmailing people into demanding less money for marriage seemingly just has not worked.
From my point of view, these problems appear to have been caused by government overreach. Perhaps the solution then, is to just let it play out, regulate less, accept life will suck for the next generation, but assume the problem will eventually resolve itself with time.
Bombadil
3d ago
No. Both have agency. And the bystanders are correct to blame both the instigator and the culprit.
Bombadil
3d ago
You are. You provoked a psycho (threatened his life, really) who in turn became hyper aggressive. The psycho is also responsible, but you absolutely carry part of the blame. This was a predictable result of your actions, and you did nothing to mitigate the harm you knew (or should have known) would occur.
Bombadil
3d ago
Who are the people that you believe supported the lockdowns, knowing that they were lying about the effects they would have? I have a hard time identifying any group that benefited from this, other than the hospitals which were under less pressure than would have otherwise been the case;
The point of the lockdowns was to lessen the load on the hospitals so they would not be overloaded and forced to triage. A very real possibility at the time, given just how fast the disease was spreading and the amount of people expressing debilitating or life threatening symptoms. Instead of everyone falling ill during the same short timespan, the course of the pandemic was spread out over a longer period, allowing time to adapt and treat serious cases as they came in. Incidentally, this also bought time to develop a vaccine, resulting in less people becoming sick than would have otherwise been expected.
I will grant you that the lockdowns did not directly save lives compared to risking infections. Covid is not the bubonic plaque that so many make it out to be. To many, it was in fact no worse than the flu. But the effect of overloaded hospitals had the potential to be immense. Tons of people would have been unable to work as important operations were postponed. Healthcare workers would have been worn out and more likely to become sick themselves.
Further, you have to factor in the fact that no modern society is willing to turn the sick or injured away from hospitals. Modern morals dictate that if there is a path to treat everyone, then we must follow it. Even if it results in lowered quality of life for others.
You can look back now and make a reasonable argument that the lockdowns were a mistake. But at the time, I don't see how the politicians could have really done anything different. They are accountable to the public if nothing else, and most people were watching the situation pretty closely. The numbers of infected were constantly going up, breaking news showed bodies being transported through the streets, and anyone with a connection to healthcare (whether it be as doctor or patient) could see the situation slowly spiraling out of control. The public demanded action. History tells us that the main way to stop infection is to isolate the sick. So everyone had the same question burning on their lips: "If a lockdown can slow this down, then why are we not doing it?"
Without a compelling narrative, your statistics are powerless against such sentiments. And as I outlined above, there were legitimate arguments here. In retrospect, they may not have been sufficient, and we can hope that we will make better decisions in the future. I personally hope for hospitals that have the resources to handle sudden influxes in patients without resorting to triage. But in the end, our leaders were under pressure to act rapidly, and this was the best answer they could come up with at the time.
Bombadil
4d ago
The issue with Ukraine is that Russia would not accept anything short of unconditional surrender. So there was really nothing to discuss. Even now, Russia continues to demand areas they are not currently in control of. This would also not mean peace. The Russians will only settle for an armastice that would give them time to rebuild their military whilst demanding that no security guarantees be placed on the Ukranian side. If the Ukranians accepted this kind of "peace", most likely Russia would just attack again in a few years anyway, potentially with Ukraine being weakened and Russia much stronger. By then, the Ukranians might not fare as well as they currently are.
The Ukranians are in a difficult position: Unconditional surrender or keep fighting. Currently they seem to believe that freedom is worth the deaths. Surely, an American should understand this concept.
Bombadil
6d ago
I think in the case of RedPill, most people that both hold nuanced opinions and are also influential enough to help steer the tone of conversation have just gotten old. Much of red pill theory seems based on how the dating market shifted through the late 90's and early 2000's. People who were in their late twenties in 2008 are almost 50 now. It seems plausible to me that those who originally wrote the theory no longer care about swaying public opinion and the drama that comes with that.
Bombadil
9d ago
What fucking guy is the unlikely combination of hot enough to get a woman to go on a date with him, romantically frustrated enough to engage in Man-o-Sphere content, AND clueless enough to talk judgy redpill lingo about bodycount and hypergamy to the woman he's on a date with?
Assuming that the manosphere content works in getting women attractive, this combo actually makes sense. The man in question failed to attract women due to being clueless in the past, and thus became sexually frustrated. He eventually stumbled on to red pill content, and implementing it improved his game to the point where women now find him attractive. Once he is a few dates in, he starts to relax and use redpill lingo. Since he follows redpill content, he is not interested in long relationships, and eventually moves onto a new woman. At this point, his former lover becomes angry and starts talking about how she should have seen the warning signs.
Besides, the guy doesn't have to mention something as extreme as hypergamy to be perceived as red pill. Certain behaviors are red-pill coded enough, and would be enough evidence for an angry ex feeling like the guy was at fault. Stuff like negging, or not taking her emotions seriously.
If you look into the history of poorhouses, you will also find stories of people whose life were ruined due to grief from losing children. So we can see that even those most likely to loose their children, could still feel intense sorrow over the event.
Only having few written sources on people grieving their lost kids is also not necessarily indicative that it did not happen. People tend to write about either the exceptional or what they consider important. If something is extremely common, even if sad and tragic, then it is possible that only those very close to the event itself would be interested in writing down their experience. But for most of history, only the elites were capable of writing. In other words, it is possible that grieving was common place and that many were deeply affected, but because it was considered an ordinary part of life, most people did not care to write about it.
I would not assume that people were less attached to their kids just because survival was less guaranteed.
Besides, people are quite god at surviving. Humans have an impressive capacity to soldier on in the face of all kinds of pain if the only alternative is starvation.
Bombadil
12d ago
But Dubai is pretty infamously known for being created by slave labor. You claim the rulers bent the dessert into a successful city, but neglect to mention who actually did the manual labor. Slaves. Slaves create the buildings, slaves maintain the infrastructure. Without slavery, the city collapses. That is not a successful city. Successful cities are good places to live for a large majority of their inhabitants. Mistreatment of foreign workers, trapping them with debt, and stealing their passports so they can't leave is all pretty well documented at this point. The city is a hellhole if you are not a tourist or rich.
I see that the city is an impressive feat from the perspective of human ingenuity and mastery over nature. But the leaders deserve no praise. Anyone so explicitly utilizing modern day slavery for an achievement that is impressive but obviously totally unnecessary is a pathetic loser.
By all means, dare to dream and attempt what others believe to be impossible. But if your construction project that mainly exists to show off how great you are, requires trampling on tens of thousands of human lives, then it is time to let go of it, and do something else.
I correlate a good life with a healthy mind and body. The healthier you are, the better your life is likely to be. I order to achieve good physical and mental health, there are certain needs which must be met. I will highlight three, that I believe the current state of entertainment interferes with:
- Some amount of exercise. This helps both physical and mental health, but if you spend all your energy consuming, you are less likely to do physical activities.
- Some amount of in-person socializing. Online communities can get you some of the way to feeling real belonging, but it is still not the same as being physically present with others.
- Mental downtime where your mind is not occupied by other stuff and has time to process your emotions. While engaging with entertainment does not necessarily require much effort, it is highly stimulating, and if anything leads you to not think of anything but what you are consuming.
In your example of a paradise, I assume you also won't have to work. If so, you may not have these problems. You could spend 10 hours a day exploring your library, and still have ample time left to handle your needs. But when more than eight hours a day is spent on commuting and work, the equation changes. Even just four hours spent on the internet means you will likely have to make sacrifices elsewhere (sleep, socializing, exercise, and so on).
I don't consider strenuousness and discomfort as moral goods, but I do believe that some amount of adversity is probably necessary to live a good life. Consider an extreme example, where you have a button that you can press which floods your brain with pleassure hormones, for a short time making you feel intense bliss and removing any pain or negative emotions you may have. You do not build a tolerance, and there are no side effects in the classical sense. Only, pressing the button will at any time be the most pleasurable thing you could do. Let us also say that in this world, you can replace your job with pushing the button. So if you want, every push also transfers money into your bank account, which can be used to purchase whatever necessities you may need.
This sounds horrifying to me. Even though there is an argument to be made that a society of button pushers would be heaven on earth, I just can't buy that this would be good. So while discomfort is not itself a good thing, it is probably necessary in some amount.
Bombadil
17d ago
I would think the negative consequences for the individual are obvious: Worse physical health due to a sedentary lifestyle. Vitamin D deficiency when too little time is spent outside. Worse social skills and fewer friends due to not socializing. Worse mental health due to not not socializing and being constantly bombarded with viral posts and articles that are often emotionally charged, leading to compassion fatigue. This all leads to lowering the quality of life. These all seem fairly obvious and pretty serious.
Bombadil
17d ago
Sure, reading is a useful and valuable real world skill. It is also less addictive than watching content on a screen, as the reader generally has to pay attention and extent some amount of effort. Reading is not as mindless as watching TikTok or YouTube. There is also a bit of friction involved, as once you finish one book you have to put effort into finding a new one, and content is produced more slowly, so you don't get the same effect of never-ending scrolling that social media gives. Provided you stick to physical books that is.
But it seems to me that the mass production of fiction was the first step towards the entertainment landscape we see today. Compared to most activities, it is fairly passive, and when you have access to enough fiction, it is tempting to just spend all your free time reading, losing track of the real world in the process. As a means of easy escapism it can be harmful in similar ways to a smartphone with internet access, even if the amount of harm that reading causes is less.
Bombadil
17d ago
I think the word "moral panic" makes it sound made up. Like people were manufacturing concern for their own gain when none was warranted. I think current internet usage makes it clear there was good reason to be worried about tv watching and reading novels. Like, spending 4 hours a day (28 a week) watching soap operas is probably bad for you. At the time, there was enough friction that people would eventually get back to their daily life. Besides, as long as the activities are done in moderation, there are certainly worse ways to spend your time. But in excess, it turns into vegetating and losing your life to escapism. In the modern day, content has been optimized for engagement, so moderation is becoming increasingly rare. I believe this has very real negative impacts on people that result in negative consequences for society.
Less socializing means less dating and fewer children. People become isolated and easy to manipulate. Their physical condition worsens, which results in worse health, thus more time spent sick, which puts pressure on health care, and reduces quality of life. Your military worsens as an increasing amount of recruits are couch potatoes with no emotional resilience, as they have always been able to escape their problems on the internet. The list goes on.
I don't know how to solve this without resolving to extreme measures, but I think it is overall a good thing that people are noticing the problems.
Anyway, is there anyone out there who has an actually useful way of discussing "screens," especially in respect to children, but also in general? If I had more attention to devote to the topic, maybe I'd try reading Heidegger's Simulcrum and Simulation, since at least the title seems like it's heading in an interesting direction.
I think of it in terms of "passive entertainment". That is, anything that you can do that keeps you entertained in some form while requiring minimal input from the user. This also includes reading, watching television, and listening to the radio. Anything where you can sit down and vegetate, stop interacting with the world and still find yourself entertained by someone else. The reason why "screens" are particularly bad, is that the content you can now consume lasts forever. Compared to a book that ends after a few hundred pages and you then have to buy a new one, or Saturday morning cartoons that only lasts until Saturday morning is over, the internet produces content faster than you can consume it. Especially if you don't care that much about the quality (as is often the case with children). Now add all the ways in which online content is designed to capture and hold on to your attention for as long as possible, and I think the problem starts to reveal itself.
You have an eternal source of easy stimulation that is much easier to engage with than anything else, because every other thing you could be doing requires more effort. Even pulling yourself off the screen to go to the bathroom can be hard. This creates a habit of spending as much time on the computer as possible, which then results in spending less time on healthy activities, such as moving your body around or interacting with other people in person. As you neglect those real-world skills, they start to atrophy (or in the case of children, never develop) which makes it even more difficult to do anything but sit with your iPad.
All this is before we get into how a specific piece of content might be bad for you. Just limiting what kind of online content children can watch (like YouTube kids, or requiring ID to access porn sites), I think misses the mark. If children (or anyone, really) spent the majority of their free time watching TV or reading fiction, I would think that is also really bad. But home computers, with social media and video games, are really the first thing to be so engaging as to make this extreme mass consumption viable on a large scale, where it consumes both free time, work, and school. The people spending all day passively reading or in front of the telly, used to be either weird loners or mentally ill. Due to phones and computers, this has now changed to be an increasing amount of the population, and something that starts in childhood. I think that is legitimately a real problem that should be dealt with.
Bombadil
23d ago
My estimate assumes ThomasdelVasto is a beginner at all things gamedev and is working alone in his spare time. Not saying all interesting games take that long. Obviously it changes with experience and how much time you allocate.
That said, AI could speed up the process, and it depends on how ambitious he is. It is of course entirely possible to spend less time if you know what you are doing, and keep a reasonable scope. But anyone opening with "what engine should I use" probably doesn't know all that much yet.
I did not mean to be discouraging, but simply wanted to inform that making games is difficult and takes time. An interesting prototype can be created within a few weeks, but making something that is fun for an hour or more just takes a lot of effort.
But a lot depends on the AI. If it can make up for the lack of experience, then maybe this project will take much less time than that.
Bombadil
24d ago
I see. In that case, Godot, Unreal Engine, and Unity are all fine choices. Unreal Engine is probably out if you want the AI to generate most of the code though, since it will likely have to write it in C++, and I doubt you want to deal with that as a beginner. Between Unity and Godot, it is down to personal preference. There may be more tutorials on Unity, which would make your AI better at giving good responses. But the GDScript language of Godot is in my opinion more beginner friendly than C#.
As for feasibility, making a game is hard and takes time. Without AI, I would estimate anything remotely complex as a multi-year project, provided you want to make a game and not just a tech demo. Even making solid custom maps (where much of the code and assets you need already exist) can take months. With AI however, maybe that will change.
Bombadil
24d ago
If you want to make an RTS custom map, why not use an RTS with custom map features instead? You will have a lot of assets available to you, and for the most popular games there should be a decent amount of documentation for the AI to draw on.
Bombadil
30d ago
An issue downstream of this is how it incentivizes bullshitting and otherwise gaming the system. Because the process is impersonal, exaggerating your abilities is incredibly easy. The only part of me you see, is what I write. No facial expression, tone of voice, or body language. Then once I am at the interview, and you ask me to verify my claims, all I need to do is smile and nod. With dozens or hundreds of applicants, it only takes one person who games the system to get hired over the honest worker who does not, forcing everyone else to adapt to a kind of prisoner's dilemma where you either exaggerate your abilities or stay unemployed.
Bombadil
1mo ago
The issue with tiered welfare is that controls are expensive. You are essentially taking money that could have been spent on food, and using it to pay for lab tests and full-time bureaucrats whose job it is to verify test scores and family size. This would have to result in some pretty significant savings for it to be justifiable in my mind. If you end up spending the same amount of money overall, but now poor people get less of it while more goes to the bureaucracy, at the same time making the process harder for those in need (as they now have to spend time dealing with said bureaucrats), I don't think you have really solved anything.
Bombadil
1mo ago
Given enough time, random chance ensures that things will change. But in general terms it seems to be true. If someone is born rich, odds are they will stay rich. Someone born to a poor alcoholic will likely stay in the underclass. Even then, exceptional people prevail and rise above what you would expect. But it is more common to stay in the class you were born in, and to my knowledge, this has always been the case.
But if the meme was true, you would expect basically every society to see a cycle of uprisings from the lower class that overtake the complacent upper class folks. The new rulers would then get complacent over time, and their descendants who only knew good times would be overthrown by the underclass created by their parents. You would expect a good deal of social mobility where rich kids rot while the poor amass power until the positions are reversed.
Yet that does not happen. The poor stay poor, the rich get richer. Money flows towards wealth, and power creates more power. The same families stay well-off for generations and usually your parent's social position is a strong predictor for how your life will turn out. This is the opposite of the meme. Even in countries like the US where your rights are (mostly) not dictated by your social standing, people who break out of poverty are incredibly rare.
I think appeal stems from the idea that people grow in the face of adversity and get complacent when everything is handed to them. I think this much is true. But it does not at all follow that hard times create strong men. Humans need the right amount of adversity to grow - too much will damage you - along with good role models, food, and shelter. You need some amount of abundance for this. Good times, in other words. So unless you actually mean to say "complacency creates weak men" (which is so trivially true as to be uninteresting), I also do not believe it holds up.
Assuming that being non-cis is an inborn trait, it could also be that being non-cis makes you more likely to be sexually assaulted at some point.
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