newcomputerwhodis
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User ID: 3218
newcomputerwhodis
5d ago
You can like surprise and novelty, and you can at one point enjoy a movie that surprises you and later lose that enjoyment when it stops surprising you (because it can't, since you already know it so well or whatever), but those are definitely way above the level of basic sensory pleasure - are they the only things you enjoyed about the movie? The movie can still look good. The movie can still sound good. You could move very slightly up the ladder and enjoy something like wordplay (needs a little context). If a person can only appreciate things at the highest level, they've genuinely lost something - quite a lot of somethings.
newcomputerwhodis
6d ago
Outside traumatic self-shattering experiences, why should there be (much) change other than accumulation? Typical mind fallacy, I suppose, but of course I'm roughly the same person over time - how could I not be? I wouldn't be me if I was someone else! Some people undergo harrowing Big Deal Events and come out the other side changed, but without such a forcing function shouldn't people stay roughly stable? If you change dramatically all the time, then you don't have a stable stream of experiences and should have trouble thinking of yourself as a single conscious being - you should have trouble planning for the future since past you was so different and future you will be yet more different.
The child is obviously still there, and ~all his base-level tastes remain intact. Some of them are moderated by knowledge (this has a side effect I don't like) and there are plenty of new enjoyments I've found, but for the most part anything that was good then is good now. Is this like that thing where adolescents throw out their old 'taste' because it doesn't fit socially, like my younger sister completely 180'ing on music several times in several years? I never did that. Some of it I like a bit less, there are new things I like much more, and there are a handful of things that might still drive sensory pleasure but I no longer engage with for other reasons, but my younger self wasn't wrong - thing X produces positive sensation Y.
newcomputerwhodis
6d ago
Then philistine am I. To Scott's point, the background of the work cannot modify the experience of a blind sampler, and so it cannot reliably impact the experience of consumers in the future when the background or context may be lost or warped. Or even now when the seller can just lie about the background. The work is as good or bad as it is with zero context. Sure, you can use the context (assuming you trust it is accurate) to predict salient facts about it, but that is not the same as those facts being modified by or dependent upon the context. The structure of a book is perceivable "blind" so it can easily be considered - it is part of the work. The vintage of some wine? No. The author is dead. Embrace that and don't fool yourself into disbelieving your own senses because of the prestige of the thing. Does it have desirable quality A, or not? If you don't like a passage of Shakespeare given to you unlabeled (and you didn't recognize it), then you ought not like it in the alternate setting where you're told the author. All else is pretentious hogwash.
Scott is right - there is a bare, brute fact of sensory pleasure, and training yourself to override it, while possible, doesn't make it go away. Angelus Novus evokes no sensory pleasure. Any pleasure I could imagine derivable must come from appreciating context and hence, is not attributable to the work itself. There is separately, a 'work' of situating a work in a context, of creating a work within a context, and the quality of the two may differ drastically. "Fountain" is a terribly low quality work. While the 'work' of getting it displayed amongst fine art is perhaps an enjoyable thing, it does not make the actual object any more appealing. Decouple. Always decouple.
newcomputerwhodis
29d ago
From time to time, I see articles/essays that speak negatively about modern games in ways that are mostly true but not really getting at the heart of the problem, and then comments ripping them apart and saying 'the games haven't changed, you have' and I hate this! It's completely and verifiably true that games have changed - a lot - and I miss what I still think of as video games; not that none are made anymore, but that the industry has moved on and the word means something else now and I mostly have to go to various poorly publicized indie corners to find what I want. I just haven't actually gone through the effort to put together my own competing essay to explain what the change is and why it happened. So here's a prototype/outline/draft/braindump:
Video Games were a fixed, finite product with a defined, finite audience. Somebody would have an idea, some people would think about how much effort and cash and time it would take to make that idea into a game and how many people might buy it, if it seemed like it had a good chance of a healthy profit they'd do it. The developers would develop the game. The publishers would hound them about deadlines. The devs would either buckle down or push back, but the game would be (mostly) done before it released because there was no way to turn back once the physical goods were produced. And the number to be produced had to be figured out, because if too many were produced money would be lost manufacturing and warehousing and shipping, and if too few were produced the lead time to produce more would be a drain on the hype.
Games needed to be (mostly) complete and free of game-ruining bugs, but alongside this developers had a little more pushback power because going gold was a line in the sand - if they felt something needed tweaking, they could meaningfully press the publisher for a bit more time. The target audience needed to be figured out and sized so they could produce the right number of copies, and this meant that games needed to know what they were and who they were for.
That's right. I'm blaming digital distribution for the vast bulk of modern gaming. Ever finer sanding off of edges, dumbing down of gameplay, yellow paint (though this also has another technological cause), open worlds and crafting systems everywhere, pretty much all of it comes downstream of the dissolution of the idea of a 'finished product'. There's no longer any meaningful way for devs to push back unless the game is totally non-functional - patch it later! There's no longer any pressure to tailor your game to your audience - just keep casting a wider net, there's not cost to overproduction! A wider net will surely fall around many who are less versed in your niche - just make it simpler more accessible! A net can be widened by aping the successful bits of the big boys - open up that world, add in that crafting system! Some devs may somehow stand firm, but even if they don't buckle they still feel these pressures. Incentives are powerful, and the industry today is shaped by incentives I despise.
Something like that. Things have changed. I'm not so much a fan of games these days. I miss video games.
Two-boxers fundamentally disbelieve the premise - refuse to engage the actual hypothetical. The strict domination idea, that 'once you're in the room, the money is already there' is discarding the very thing the problem is working with - the predictor predicts you. If you are thinking along two box lines, then the predictor will leave one box empty. Once you have entered the room, the game is already over. The prediction has already been made, and if you're a two-boxer, you've already lost. You have to realize that the only way to win is for the predictor to think you are going to pick one box, and for the predictor to think you are going to one box, since it is extraordinarily accurate, you have to be a one-boxer. You can't solemnly resolve to be a one-boxer while secretly planning to be a two-boxer, because the predictor will pick up on that. You have to actually have the thought patterns of a one-boxer. You have to believe one-boxing is the superior strategy. It's not 'irrational' - it's playing the game. In this specific case, because of the predictor's stipulated accuracy, one-boxing is the strategy that wins. It doesn't matter how the accuracy comes about - a lack of free will, time travel, hand waving woo - it's there. The experiment depends upon it, and discarding it is foolish.
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