RenOS
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
something is wrong
12hr ago
Somehow you replied to yourself on a completely different topic, as far as I can see?
See, for example, this reddit explanation of the unique vertical level design of DS1. Imo none of the other entries, including ER, have done it quite as masterfully, even if they clearly were inspired by it. Which is fine; They have done other things better.
Edit: Btw, DS3, since you mentioned it, is probably my least favorite of the bunch. DS2 at least tried a bit more to do its own thing. DS3 returned to the roots, yes, but in the process feels the most like a rehash of DS1, but invariably worse since a copy never reaches up to the original. That's imo one of the reasons why ER was deliberately given a different name, marketed as something different and has at least some clear deviations in the design, such as the open world.
There is also the element in which, since the DS entries are explicitly intended to be different iterations of the same loops, makes them work together better than alone. See this post which in my view - despite me agreeing that DS3 is a weaker entry! - entirely misses the point of the DS3 design: By the time of this iteration, the cycle has been going on too long, the fire has been lit too often, so that the sacrifice has to be ever greater for but a sliver of the greatness achieved earlier. The message is clear: This time around, just lighting it yet again will not be sufficient. You have to find another way. It's deliberate.
Edit2: I also think, since, as you mentioned, a lot of the design choices are easy to miss & somewhat subject to interpretation, DS games are especially susceptible to the tendency to always like the first game of the bunch you played. You'll always be more willing to look into all the details, all the theories, etc. the first time around. The more you play, the more you tire of it, so you'll miss more and more on average.
RenOS
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1d ago
People say GRRM was just there to have his name on the tin for marketing, but I don't know how anyone literate can conclude this. The lore of Elden Ring has the most profound aesthetic depth I've ever seen in a video game, and that depth is simply not there in Dark Souls 3 or in Shadow of the Erdtree (the former felt like the Walmart version of Elden Ring, and the latter like the Hobbit compared to the LotR trilogy). To me it's clear the big-brain behind the magic is Martin himself, and, in his own words, "when the sun has set, no candle can replace it."
The reason people say this is pretty simple, it's that Elden Ring's setting, to the DS veteran, mostly is just more of the same as has been done the last three times. It's just hard to really see Martin's stamp. You can of course claim that he has done it better, but this is quite subjective. There are a lot of arguments about that already, and everyone has their own opinion. ER is undoubtly a good game, but most of your post could be written equivalently for any DS game, including even the aesthetic design (well, maybe not DS2, as much as I think it is somewhat underrated) and, funnily enough, even Martin's quote. Partially for this reason I got bored with ER halfway through the game, though I'll certainly pick it up eventually again. As a DS veteran you just can't shake the feeling that you have already played this game 3+ times, with near-identical story beats, setting and mechanics.
RenOS
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5d ago
Maybe I misunderstand you, but this is imo calculated the wrong way. Presumably, most of the dudes family is also 130 IQ, and you already explicitly spelled out that her parents and siblings are all 130 IQ. If the expected child IQ of a 130 IQ pairing from a 130 IQ wider family is actually 118 ... What astronomical luck did the families have up to then?
First, heritability is a red herring, since we're not in an adoption study or similar situation. These are rich parents raising their own rich daughter. The relevant factor is regression to the mean, which is generally estimated to be ca 0.5, i.e. if you take your spousal IQ_s, and compare it to the population mean IQ_p you're descended from, then you're kids IQ will be roughly (IQ_s + IQ_p)/2.
The population mean you regress to is generally speaking that of your actual sub-population, which is your wider family; Ideally you also know the IQ of your grandparents and uncles and aunts, that improves the estimate further. It's not always 100, which is a very common misconception. It's generally trivially acknowledged for clear examples, such as ethnic ashkenazi jewish among gentiles, but it even holds among seemingly homogenous groups. The reason you see regression towards 100 is partially that assortative mating in superficially homogenous groups is only moderate, so usually there is some difference between the respective spousal family background, and partially an artifact of averaging. But it certainly holds for ethnically separated groups with rather strict assortative mating as is typical in large parts of India, as I understand it.
So the expected child IQ of a 130 IQ pairing from a 130 IQ wider family is simply 130. With a single spouse at 90, the spousal average becomes 110 instead, and the final number after regression is around 120. Still a 10 point difference though, so I guess not a big difference on that account.
RenOS
something is wrong
6d ago
As a guy, my experience is also that nobody actually wants men to show their real emotions, least of all publicly. Male anger or horniness is scary. Crying or anxiety is pathetic.
The good news is, this includes the men themselves. At least from my PoV, the toxic masculinity talking point is to a large degree the inversion of reality; there is a grain of truth, but there is also toxic femininity that tries to get men to open up more, expecting them to show emotions that accommodate the feminine worldview, in a female-friendly way, and then punishes them for having wrong feelings the wrong way, aka their actual male feelings.
And I mean, I get it, I do. They have a school to run and can't be spending all their time on the neediest kid. But I do worry at the message that he's getting. "It's not okay to be anxious." "It's not okay to get angry" - or at least not in a way that anyone can tell. Keep those feelings bottled up, young man, and only express them in socially acceptable ways. Otherwise, grit your teeth and get with the program.
So, yes, unironically this. It's not necessarily about simply ignoring or bottling up your feelings - it's that managing your own emotions is your own business, or at most to a minor degree that of your closest confidants who are giving you helpful pointers. If strangers or acquaintances can read your feeling in a way you did not intend, you screwed up. Some amount of screwing up is perfectly normal. And contrariwise, deliberately showing even anger is occasionally the correct course of action for the purpose of whatever your goals are. But losing control of your emotions as a man and openly & fully showing them to anyone but your closest friends will always be unpleasant for everyone involved (and often even then).
On the topic of managing emotions, anger is easy; Sports or competitive games generally do perfectly fine, depending on his inclinations. Anxiety is more difficult, and usually includes thinking hard about what you are really anxious about, and either convincing yourself that it is irrational or finding mitigation strategies, and then ideally exposing yourself to the thing you're anxious about, so that your strategy is proven correct (in reasonable limits, of course).
RenOS
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6d ago
I fear that in certain fields, the opposite might even be the case - that the science regresses one funeral at a time. It's not that the older scientists have no biases whatsoever, but it really isn't rare that younger academics (can't really call them scientists in good conscience, tbf) are much more strictly dogmatic and don't even pretend to be interested in the pursuit of truth if it goes against their beliefs.
RenOS
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12d ago
In general I rarely watch things multiple times. Even on this list, nothing has probably hit double digits. But these are just very relaxing for me, and I come back to them when I just want something comforting.
For me:
- Harry Potter movies, especially the first 4
- Lord of the Rings
- Supernatural (mostly the first few seasons)
- Haibane Renmei
- Tatami Galaxy
- Mushishi
For my wife:
- Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella
- Gilmore Girls
I was raised christian (though I'm not anymore) and traditional teaching is very clear that avoiding sin is a communal project, i.e. you're supposed neither to directly sin, nor to make someone else sin. See the literal Enemy, Satan, whos' most dangerous attribute is making humans sin, not the fact that he himself sins.
RenOS
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13d ago
Starmer did a lot of work in, and seems to respect a great deal, international law in particular. The thing about international law is that it often has virtually no enforcement mechanism. The kind of lawyer who looks for technicalities to let their client get off scot-free does not go into international law, since their clients are already usually getting off scot-free if you do nothing at all. You need to have some moral belief in the righteousness of international law and need to use the weapons of activism as well to get anything done.
So the technically correct terminus for Starmer is international-law-brained.
RenOS
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15d ago
I'm in a somewhat similar position as you. Currently employed as a postdoc at the local university, but not interested in becoming a professor, so I'm pretty much on borrowed time. I just want to avoid a career change while the kids are still small, and my prof is very relaxed so I earn well in comparison to the actual work I'm doing while having lots of free time to spend with family.
Teaching is definitely a good option if you enjoy it. I'm also looking into insurances since it's well-paid, quite safe and I studied math anyway so it's comparatively easy for me, but dunno how much of an option that is for you. Just general large local employers are usually always looking for many different positions as well.
RenOS
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15d ago
In my experience, for the great majority of women, they don't. They prioritize either fun, free time, self-actualization, etc., on the one hand, or they prioritize safety, stability, morality etc. when making job decisions. The former for the young and attractive, the latter when older and settled down. Money is a concern insofar as it is necessary to guarantee a certain minimum living standard, and is preferably gained through parents, partners or the state.
Going for an actual career is, by and large, a thing men do. If this post may read too anti-women for some, there is also plenty of dysfunction in male life decision making, mostly centered around taking unnecessary high risks that are believed to plausibly have high returns but really don't, and/or playing competitive negative sum games on the mistaken believe that one is surely far above average.
I'll grant you Switzerland. Netherlands and Belgium are still too recent imo. Marriage developments also took decades, as well as multiple specific law changes, to fully take effect.
And as I said, it's not that I want to outlaw it; But I just want to make the slope a little bit less slippery. It's notable that in Switzerland, it's merely legal by omission, it's illegal for organizations or people to earn any money or get any other benefits through it, and the substance can only be provided, but it has to be administered by the person themselves. All of these seem like sensible limitations to me. And there have been almost no changes to either practice or law since then. Contrast Canada, where it has only become legal recently, is explicitly legalized as a service by the health care industry, it already got extended significantly only a few years in, and is in the process of getting extended yet again. At least to me, it seems like it's reasonable to worry about a slippery slope being possible if it's done the wrong way; That doesn't mean it's impossible to find a correct way, though.
RenOS
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19d ago
You don't even need the if here. You can already get guns provided you're sufficiently functional, patient and have the right connections. AFAIK the easiest way is generally getting your hands on old soviet stock from eastern Europe.
But these conditionals matter, because the average terrorist and hard criminal does not have these properties. People still get caught before they can do anything because they fell for obvious honeypots on silk-road equivalents. This is also why the large-scale entry of organized crimes into Europe is so dangerous; Not only do at least some of the members have these properties and so can organize guns for the rest of the members, while there at it they can also buy more stock that they can sell further locally, making it much easier to get a gun.
RenOS
something is wrong
19d ago
I mostly agree with you, but the trajectory of the things like the dissolution of marriage certainly makes me worried. If you looked 10 years after any one legal or social change, it would have looked like the conservatives were unnecessarily worried, but nevertheless when I nowadays bluntly state that modern marriage is entirely meaningless in varied company, most people agree with me (after an initial slightly scandalized look). This is a category change compared to the past, when marriage was both considered sacred and had a clear purpose (the creation of family). While most still say it was worth it for individual liberty, few disagree that we have lost something that we won't get back. And I suspect that there is at least some social desirability bias in what people say, but that part is obviously hard to prove.
These changes can take multiple generations to fully take effects. The first generation grew up under the old system and will often replicate it through simple inertia, especially if the change was explicitly sold as a emergency measure only reserved for extreme cases and there is a clear moral framework on why it should be so. The second already grows up with the measure existing, albeit rare enough that not everyone has had direct contact with it, and they will often extend the application of the measure in incremental ways for what they think is personal benefit (which they aren't always correct on). By the time of the third generation it is fully normalized so that it can be extended to large swathes of the population.
For this reason, I'd like a strict criterion of using MAID exclusively for cases where death is foreseeable in the near future (called Track 1 in Canada). It's still somewhat slippery - what is "foreseeable"? what is "near future"? - but it's imo much less slippery than estimating some nebulous quality of life cutoff that is sufficient for the state to help you kill yourself. I know Track 2 is still only a small percentage, but that needn't stay so.
RenOS
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19d ago
I don't think that follows. Terrorists clearly choose to copy based on a combination of lethality and availability, as seen by the proliferation of car-based attacks since the Nice truck attack. Easier gun availability would mean more initial gun-based attacks, and a higher transmission likelihood for following copycats.
RenOS
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20d ago
In europe it's quite common even for terrorists and other hard criminals to use knifes simply bc guns are just too hard to get for them. And that's despite hunting licences being available!
RenOS
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20d ago
Has this actually been done? I'm aware of people talking about it, but not of it actually happening.
See Colossal Biosciences and their Dire Wolf project. Regardless at which point you consider it "true de-extinction", they have demonstrated how you can modify key genome locations of a related species to the original of the species you want to de-extinct, and that these modifications do indeed generate the desired traits that species is known for. At the moment it's, as said, quite limited (they only made 20 edits with large phenotypic impact), but from here it's mostly just a question of doing this repeatedly to get arbitrarily close to the original species. And dire wolfs have gone extinct in ancient times; It should be much easier with contemporary animals due to the better availability of varied genomic information and more closely related species you can start from. That approach is probably not viable for every extinct animal, though.
To the second paragraph, I guess my opinion is probably close enough; I'd be lying if I claimed that I consider every human life more valuable than every extinction imaginable.
RenOS
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20d ago
You wrote:
I'd consider it worse to kill a critically endangered species than to kill a random human. Because killing the endangered species gets closer to robbing and harming every human forever (leaving aside scifi Jurassic park stuff) while the death of any individual human probably doesn't.
That's quite general about critically endangered animals, you don't make it clear that you only mean specific ones. So it seemed relevant to me to point out that in many cases you're not really robbing anyone of anything since it's just a variation of a common, non-endangered animal.
Likewise, the "scifi jurassic park stuff" isn't really scifi anymore, we're already doing it in a limited capacity.
RenOS
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20d ago
If you don't distribute the aid in an orderly manner, and make sure that it does not get horded by a small number of people, you will also get starvation quite reliably though. I'm pretty confident that if the IDF didn't enforce order, they'd be harangued by international media that obviously they wanted to cause starvation - they just let bandits get away with all the food, how is that supposed to help anyone? Of course they will just eat some part themselves, hord another, and then sell only a sliver at excessive rates! Probably there would be some conspiracy theory how the IDF is secretly sponsoring and working together with these bandits, too, and/or even profiting off of them.
Israel always gets this super-agency where even if they help distribute aid among an hostile populace they need to make sure that everything goes perfect and if not it's obviously their fault, while palestinians get zero agency assigned, where even if roving bands actively try to steal aid it's just desperate people who can't be expected to behave any other way. The only thing which seems to be allowed is to stand by while hamas-sympathizing groups get to distribute god-knows-what (including aid) to hamas centers, which then distribute it further to their own supporters.
And it's not even that I particular like or trust the IDF or the Israelis. Settlers getting away with blatantly illegal conduct is really shitty. But no, obviously, if you try to steal while enemy military distribute aid to your own civilians you're gonna get shot. That's just common sense. Hell, you're probably also getting shot if your own military is distributing aid to its own population and you try to steal.
RenOS
something is wrong
20d ago
Eh. Species have been dying out (and splitting off) since forever, and our technology to re-breed them gets ever better, especially for those we have non-ancient samples. Especially since the majority of endangered species are just small variations of very similar, non-endangered species that is simply more competitive, sometimes even so closely that they can crossbreed.
RenOS
something is wrong
20d ago
Why? No matter how successful a company has been in the past, any dip can be a long-term re-evaluation or even the start of the way to bankruptcy. Especially if you consider the average person asking for investing advice, thinking they can reliably tell apart an irrational panic that will soon be corrected, or a genuine problem that will have long-term impact seems foolish to me.
On the other hand, index funds can't really go bankcrupt. At most, it just stays lower than expected for an extended period of time before going up again. The risk/reward for buying into the dip seems much better here for the average low-knowledge investor.
RenOS
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28d ago
Great! Sounds like you're getting a handle on things. With clawmark you don't need so much FTH, especially if you two-hand. Prioritizing STR first while only going for FTH min reqs is perfectly viable. But more FTH will of course help.
Don't equip two short ranged weapons at once. Too much wasted weight. At most a dagger with a useful skill.
RenOS
something is wrong
28d ago
I know that it's hard, but this imo really needs to be changed. It's bad enough for progressives to be regularly downvoted (even if I may disagree as well) but probably unavoidable, but longtime posters constantly getting filtered without mod action has to be supremely frustrating and I probably would also leave eventually.
I don't get this impression, at least not strongly. If anything, the people I know who have actually lived and/or spend multiple months in exotic countries are almost exclusively men. Maybe women do go a bit more often, but usually to more generic, touristy spots.
My experience matches Arjin's, in that travelling is just generically high status behaviour at the moment, and women tend to be much more receptive to signalling status behaviour. Also, everyone enjoys not having to work, and women tend to have less pressure on that front, so they can have a bit more leeway in how often and when they can go on trips.
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