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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34345 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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Aside from generally being unpleasant and mischaracterizing my post, I'm not sure what your point is.

Are you mad that I'm not listing more fun Dune media? That I'm not getting further into the weeds? Or do you think that talking about another game that you have already described as fun and unique somehow disproves my point about Dune having disproportionately better media than Lord of the Rings?

What do I have to argue against, even if I wanted to? You say that Dune II is mostly generic with its ships and units, as if that is somehow a strike against the idea. But a couple of other people already made the point that the ability to fill in the gaps and details of Frank Herbert's universe is one of the things it has going for it when creating media.

Are they wrong? Maybe. Feel free to make that argument. It could be interesting, but you haven't actually made it yet.

Instead you seem to think you have proven some point when all you have done is attack me, state some facts about Dune games, and declared that I am "wrecked" because of my "grand-sounding theory."

If you step out of your weird fanboy-rage for a second, you'll see that I don't actually have a theory at all. I have three statements, only two of which are at all controversial. One is the assertion that some media inspires higher-quality derivatives than others (even if the media itself is not necessarily higher quality). This is a hypothesis. It has none of the characteristics of a theory because it is currently a blank page. A thesis statement looking for a body.

My second assertion was that Dune has inspired quite a lot of high-quality media. This was an illustration of the hypothesis. Because abstracts without concrete examples don't get engagement.

My final assertion, the one that seems to have filled you with such weird, fanboyish rage, is that Lord of the Rings has a much lower average level of quality. This is also part of the illustration for comparison and contrast. This isn't a theory. Now, I'm not going to say that I don't understand why the statement is controversial, and I'd be happy if people were disagreeing in a way that even broached the thesis statement, but again, you aren't doing it. You haven't even actually engaged with the concept.

You are so mad that you think that you can somehow knock down my "grand-sounding theory" without even engaging it. You can't. Even if you were to somehow prove that I am totally wrong and Lord of the Rings has much higher quality media, that still wouldn't disprove my hypothesis. Because that would just fit the hypothesis in the opposite direction.

I didn't use the word prove, so I don't understand why you are once again attributing words to me to mischaracterize what I wrote. Is this intellectual dishonesty or just poor reading comprehension?

Edit: Oh, you think I "accidentally" admitted that this is unfalsifiable. Just poor reading comprehension, then.

You and @meh both look look pretty petty and condescending here. Knock it off.

If you want to say I'm being petty and condescending, that's fine. But you're going to say that someone is being petty and condescending after he misquotes me and says that I'm "accidentally" admitting that my extremely abstract idea is unfalsifiable? No, he's being hostile and antagonistic. Don't do some false equivalence here. He mischaracterizes what people write and seems to only be here to "win" discussions. I get annoyed by his hostility and get prickly. We are not the same.jpeg

We are not the same.jpeg

You're right - you use more words to be petty and condescending. Now stop it.

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