celluloid_dream
No bio...
User ID: 758
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
I'm sure that works as you describe - cultivating a reputation, social proof, all of it, but doesn't it feel dishonest to its core? Like, the whole edifice is built on wanting to be seen as the kind of person who is a sociable regular at a fancy cocktail bar and not actually being that person. If you were that person, you'd already have such a place in your back pocket.
celluloid_dream
10mo ago
Decent probability this is fake, but there was a short viral video recently of a "social experiment" where you see the target pause, consider what's going on, and conclude that "no. There's no possible way this is genuine, not even as a real pick-up line. I must be on camera."
Funny, sure, but also a bit sad.
I feel the same way about most unprovoked social interactions in public, except it's almost always about money, not entertainment. One time, someone waved at me, gave a smile and said they liked my hair. This is extremely rare. I never get compliments, and this one brightened my day. Immediately, my brain screamed "scam. They're lying. They want money. It's not real", and I told my brain to shut up. Just this once, we will give this person a chance. They said something nice. There are nice people in the world. Reciprocate. So I stopped, we introduced each other. They were about my age, seemed interesting. We talked about school or something for five minutes. It was pleasant.
Then they got to the part where they just needed fifty bucks to pay cab fare across town to meet their sister. They normally wouldn't ask for money but..
I walked away mid-sentence.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Often overlooked: test taking speed correlates with writing speed, like actual physical putting letters to paper. I think in my school days I probably spent 90% of the time writing and 10% of the time thinking of the answer. My penmanship was just that poor.
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
What a frustrating quiz. Is there some reason these are always left so ambiguous? Does Marl give up and close the tab the second he's forced to read more than 50 words in a row? Eg.
- "Scott is hosting a dinner party. For dessert, he serves chocolate cake, shaped to look like dog poop." - I'm supposed to make a call about whether this is "morally okay or not" given no other information. Does this not obviously depend on who's at the dinner party, and their preferences, temperaments, etc? Scott is hosting a dinner party for his football buds who find it hilarious. Laughs are had, poop-cake enjoyed, etc. Fine, yeah, morally okay! Good even. Scott is hosting a dinner party for his in-laws, who he knows don't appreciate his twisted sense of humour. They are disgusted. Scott knew they would be disgusted, and did it anyway just to see the looks on their faces. That's bad.
- "Some men have a private, all-male club and feminists take them to court, demanding that they open it up to women." - What is even being tested here? Is it having a private all-male club in the first place or taking the club to court to open it up? Presumably the latter. From the perspective of the feminists, they likely have a sincere belief they are doing the right thing. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to say about this. I personally think people should be able to have exclusive clubs, but also think you should be able to oppose exclusive clubs if you feel that way. I guess I'm neutral? Again, if the question was more specific, I could come down stronger on one side or the other.
- "A group of parents, concerned about their children's risk of obesity, demand that the local store stops selling XL sized candy bars and soft drinks." - Again, what is being tested? The parents have a reasonable concern, make an unreasonable demand, which they are entitled to make, and the store is entitled to reject. "Is this morally okay?". Is what morally okay?
- "Sarah's dog has four puppies. She can only find a home for two of them, so she kills the other two with a stone to the head." - a little more information please? Could Sarah not afford to house the puppies herself, or does she simply not want them? Does she have any other options? Is that the most humane way she could have killed them, or is she just trying to avoid a vet bill?
I don't think I'm being pedantic here.
celluloid_dream
9mo ago
Charitably, these comments are less self-deprecation and more praise for the heroics or achievements of others. If there's any narcissism, it's in the need to be seen as publicly signaling one's respect, and inability to just say it plainly.
Rambling half-formed notes that never get posted are basically all I write. Example of a fun thread one whining about pokemon:
(Pokemon games are poorly designed by their own stated principles)
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games constantly tell you to bond with pokemon, not only use them as tools, but then make you use them as tools, sometimes literally
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and the stats/moves/types are unbalanced, encouraging you to only use the overpowered ones
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the game doesn't teach the real game - doesn't play like a human trainer would, switching based on type matchups, having inter-pokemon synergy, having strategies.
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(later pkmn games): raids .. - this is a terrible thing to put in as a game mechanic in pokemon. It makes sense in fantasy because coming together to take down the giant/dragon is sort of the thing. Pokemon is absolutely NOT that. It's .. cute cockfighting. It's low-level. It's gym training. It's person vs person, poke vs poke at their normal power levels. No super saiyan, no magic. definitely not supposed to be fighting some giant pokemon inflated like a balloon
- can just imagine some lazy game designer coming up with this. "players like raids in MMOs right? very social, much enjoyment. let's just copy that!" instead of coming up with something more creative that fits the world & game they actually had
Cities speak saith Paul Graham.
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Devon Zuegel thinks Miami says "Be entertaining and flamboyant"
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Sasha Chapin thinks that Joshua Tree invites you to slow down and take the long view, that Las Vegas is a damned liar
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Isaac Simpson thinks we should pay attention to what Montana is cursing under its breath
What does your city say? I'm interested in more articles that try and convey the vibe of a place.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
It can't only be laid at the feet of some exec imposing norms on the masses below them. Advertisers cater to their customer base, and their customers are us: people, weak humans with stone-age psychology insufficient to the demands of liberal modernity.
It should be possible to separate the content from the advertisers, the art from the artist. We should understand that when le_edgy_tuber6969 drops N-bombs, says "fuck" every two words, and giggles "Kanye was right", scoring hundreds of thousands of views, this does not reflect on the politics of the company that pops up in the ad box for two seconds before the average person hits 'skip'.
In practice, people either can't do it, or disagree that they even should; that, yes, the company in the ad box is to blame for platforming/supporting le_edgy_tuber_6969.
celluloid_dream
4mo ago
I would highlight something I noticed in a few conversations recently.
- Louise Perry & Bryan Caplan (mentioned by @raggedy_anthem yesterday)
- Agnes Callard & Robin Hanson (basically any episode with just the two of them)
That is, the ability to really listen in a discussion, the humility to integrate what the other person is saying in real time, and offer thoughtful responses. Louise and Agnes are outliers in a lot of ways, but they're extremely good at this.
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
I remember liking Halo CE a lot back in the day because of the unreasonable effectiveness of the backup pistol. It was arguably the best weapon in the game - certainly the most well rounded - and you just got it for free every time you respawned. Didn't matter if your opponent had a rocket launcher, a sniper rifle, or a tank. You always had the means to kill them with three headshots.
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
Well, since AFAIK, themotte.org never defined what the arrows mean here, I can't say you're wrong, but this community emigrated from Reddit, where the arrows did have an intended meaning
"If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it"
"Please don't.. Downvote an otherwise acceptable post because you don't personally like it."
I think it's fair to assume that on this Reddit clone, the arrows have inherited that meaning. In my opinion, a measure of value is better feedback than a measure of agreement because I want to optimize for good participation. Optimizing for agreement is how you get an echo chamber, or audience capture.
"So don't do that then, and ignore the downvotes", I assume you would say? Sure, but I think you admit the vote score do matter. That "cheap dopamine rush" exists and affects how people feel about their posts. I worry when I see threads like the pronoun one where someone is patiently laying out a minority opinion, and getting negative reinforcement for it.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
But a community college student can't churn out a page in ten seconds, fast enough to run an ongoing open-ended story at the pace of a conversation. Maybe I unintentionally emphasized the wrong thing. It's not so much the prose, but the interactivity of it.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Relatedly, I've noticed a lot more inane and just plain stupid comments on ACX posts these days. (example, another).
Maybe I'm looking at the past through rose coloured glasses, but I can't remember this sort of thing back on SSC. After wading through enough emoji reacts and "lol so true!!", I get annoyed and close the tab. It's frustrating that a growing percentage readership feels this is meaningful participation.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Enthralling despite the brutal subject matter, it had this kind of meditative cinematic quality. Probably half the allusions and references were over my head, but the stark account of events cut with poetic landscape paintings hit the spot. Days later I'm still turning over some of the chapters in my head.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
What is "price gouging"?
I hear it a lot lately, specifically as something that grocery stores are doing with food prices.
My instinct is that if retailers raises prices, even if only because they think customers will pay more, and then customers do pay more, then that is the new market price. As such, there can't really be "gouging" by definition, no matter what price retailers set.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I view this as a societal problem, not just an individual problem with me. I saw a family of three at a restaurant the other day, mom and dad and a young boy, and all three of them were glued to their phones, ignoring each other. That made me very sad.
My excuse in these situations is that we're satisfying our preferences better this way. <Sibling> is reading about the latest sports happenings (don't care). <Parent> is playing an ad-ridden slot machine game (ew!), and I'm reading culture war insight porn (which would horrify them).
If we all tried to have the respective conversations that interested us, it would be awkward. I didn't see that ludicrous display last night. Neither <sibling> nor I want to talk about grandkids, and my family doesn't appreciate abstract argument the same way I do. They get *annoyed* at disagreement. They are allergic to contrarianism. They don't like philosophy. They're low decouplers. We can't even discuss pop culture: "Ugh. Must you overanalyze everything?"
So .. phones.
celluloid_dream
3mo ago
Matthew B. Crawford's Why We Drive and The World Beyond Your Head.
Why We Drive is a vitalist paean to driving (and motorcycling), specifically the kind that involves risk and skill. It's also a rant against self-driving cars, glowing rectangles, and checking out of the real world.
I didn't hate it, but given its title, I expected "Why we road trip", "Why we go for a drive to clear our heads", "Why we explore that highway we've never been down", etc. Instead, it was more like "Why we speed", "Why we do donuts in the parking lot", "Why we tinker with gearhead shit".
Specifically with the gearhead stuff, the book did not do a good enough job of selling it to me. I fully believe it's part of why Crawford drives, but gearhead shit is not at all on the radar for me, or the vast, vast majority of people I know. The rare one or two that could MacGyver a timing belt out of pantyhose (or even know what a timing belt is) tend to be either the children of auto repair professionals, or else very deep in some automotive subculture already. That just makes the "We" in "Why We Drive" way more exclusive than it needs to be.
Partway through The World Beyond Your Head, which I'm already liking much better. It's so far a more general case of the topics surrounding attention in WWD. Probably should have read this one first.
I wonder what Crawford would make of the fact that I'm listening to it over a shitty TTS voice reader while: driving, making dinner, eating, playing video games, cleaning my apartment, swiping notifications away, only hitting pause when something else demands the vocal-processing-modeling part of my brain, such that I can no longer concentrate on the book in the background.
celluloid_dream
4mo ago
Recently, I think the default UI change is a factor. Comparing new.reddit.com to old.reddit.com, you get much less text, and many fewer visible comments per post on new reddit than old. By default, it seems to "... expand to continue" long messages. Some subs now also display gif replies, which seem to only be used for snark. In general, it seems to encourage low-effort participation, and discourage thoughtful answers.
celluloid_dream
4mo ago
I find it a bit puzzling that the LLM is expected to do things correctly with minimal or no guidance, which is a bit like expecting a riderless horse to stay on track and win a race. Maybe it can sometimes, but with a code jockey, it can be so much better.
That probably looks something like noticing that it's overfitting on poker, translating the question to avoid that, and seeing if it does any better. Eg. not calling the symbols "cards" or "faces" or "suits". ROT13-ing the letters so they don't look like a poker hand, or whatever.
- I hate rests as a resource system. It feels like it breaks power fantasy when a character can only do things a few times a day that they ought to be able to do at will, especially the weapon maneuvers. There's no believable reason why my character can only do a flourish with their sword once an hour. It certainly wouldn't cost them more energy than leaping 5 meters, which they can do every turn.
- Related: The game expects you to rest a lot, and weaves in story progression during each night. .. but it also rewards you for not resting. There are incredibly powerful buffs that get applied once to your party during various story events and then last until your next long rest, and then you can't get them back. (Eg. +1d4 radiant damage on weapon attacks, +1d6 to attack rolls, ability checks, saves)
- Some builds and features are so good/broken/fun that they make everything else feel lacklustre. Eg. Tavern Brawler (+str to attack & damage for unarmed + throwing). Eldritch Blast (The best damage cantrip for only 2 levels in warlock, long range, deals 1d10 + cha, pushes enemies, and gets extra beams scaling with character level without any more investment).
- Common for CRPGs like this: Items and ability features are a total clusterfuck. With the exact same rules text, some items work on all weapon attacks, some only on melee. Some apply to throws. Some don't. The only way to know for sure is to test. There are some bonkers interactions where one effect procs another, which procs the first again and so on.
celluloid_dream
10mo ago
I'm skeptical that "it's simply the case that real life offers superior enjoyment", full stop. What real-life team sport offers the complexity, action and fast paced strategy of a RTS like Supreme Commander? What real-life pursuit offers a visually stunning, persistent imaginary world for thousands of players to live in and form communities like FFXIV? What real-life performance or play matches the worldbuilding and narrative depth of something like Disco Elysium?
For some people, sure. Winning that game of ultimate frisbee, climbing that mountain, seeing that play, might be more fulfilling than vidya. For others, I doubt it.
celluloid_dream
10mo ago
Depending on what you want to achieve, Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay (yes, really) have a book: How to Have Impossible Conversations
They generally advise not marshalling evidence for your claims, but instead seeking to understand why your opponent believes their claims, then just asking if they can think of any evidence that would change their mind. This both helps get to the root of the disagreement, and also zeroes in on the kind of evidence you could provide if asked.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
I'm sure you're referring to a more general pattern, but I remember watching this discussion last year. IIRC, it's quite good - civil and balanced - with both Aella and Louise talking to each other rather than at each other.
celluloid_dream
1yr ago
Don't imprison the entire population was a principle so fundamental that...
Was it? I think the principle debate here would be over whether it is ever acceptable for the government to restrict movement in the interest of safety. Would you bite the bullet and say that it is never okay, even if doing so would avert a dire outcome?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty".. etc?
Vancouver, Canada
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