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Posts by Lanny
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2015-12-09 at 5:02 AM UTC in What Games Are You Currently Playing
First one. I picked up the saga in the current GOG sale and thought I'd try it out. The sound assets suck and the graphics are nothing special, but the gameplay and story are solid.
I want to try out Jeff Vogel's other work, except for Avadon (because I hear it's casual as fuck). I was looking at Nethergate on Steam a few days ago and thinking it would be great if it went on sale soon. Was checking out the sale offers last night, and there was Nethergate, so I bought it.
Just don't like paying full price. I always regret it when I later see the game on sale.
Yeah, Jeff is pretty cool although I think Geneforge is his best stuff (2 is the pinnacle IMO but opinions differ) I can definitely see why people love Avernum, it was just never my cup of tea. All of his games have shit-tier graphics/audio but that's part of what makes them fun, I actually think as he's upgraded to sprites and stuff over the years the writing has fallen off a bit (I remember this one level in GF1 where the description near the beginning is like "the ground slopes upwards to the northeast" but it was put really well and of course the engine doesn't support anything but perfectly flat maps but just from the way it was described and the way enemies came after you I had the uncanny sensation of slogging my way up a hill).
Avadon was fun despite its flaws. It was well balanced but it also meant you never wondered into an area where you got your ass kicked and had to run away, which is a canonical experience for spiderweb games so I can see why people would call it casual. If it's on sale for a few bucks I'd say it's worth picking up although I can sympathize with its critics. -
2015-12-08 at 5:30 AM UTC in I found hella pills while couch spelunkinnnnnn
HAI4U!!!
dose compression artifacts doe -
2015-12-08 at 5:27 AM UTC in The retarded thread: Fuck, §m£ÂgØL made one first edition
He's a child molester and rapist?
Yeah, that's a development. A word to the wise hydro, if that's provable then you have nothing to worry about but if you get caught in a lie, or something you can't prove, in a custody battle then all you've done is hurt yourself. The fact that your husband left, he's not clearly the biological father, and that you're the mother all make a potential custody case weigh strongly in your favor but if you come off as a liar then it's anybody's guess who the kid lands with. Also not that I really have room to give advice but if he wants the kid them maybe that's an opportunity to patch things up. I'm not one of those people who think kids need a father (or a mother, one or the other will, empirically, do) to be healthy/normal but it sounds like the economic situation is such that another parent/income would result in positive life outcomes for your kid. Not just the typical socio-economic signals (although significant, piano lessons vs. playing unorganized basketball or whatever has a statistically significant effect on rates of criminal conviction, income) but being able to spend more undistracted time with your kid (there are a number of studies supporting the correlation between reading ability and the number of words a kid hears. Social isolation and anti-social behaviour starts in infancy).
If your husband really is abusive you shouldn't have anything to do with him, but if the struggle is "incompatible personalities" or whatever(a perfectly valid reason to not want anything to do with a person, but you need to think about the counterbalance of the shared interest in your child) then you should consider coming to a compromise purely in terms of risk/reward. Poor is better than abused, but middle class and raised by loveless parents is probably still better than poor. -
2015-12-08 at 4:30 AM UTC in whirr dropped from their record label for transphobic remarksYeah, when
SUN
BAT
HER
dropped back in 2013 it was all the rage with my circle of friends who were into music. The vocals aren't really my cup of tea but the instrumentals are great. -
2015-12-08 at 3:42 AM UTC in What Games Are You Currently Playing
Geneforge. Also, Risen (when it doesn't crash) and Neverwinter Nights. It's RPG season.
Oh man, geneforge is one of my favorite games of all time. Which one are you playing?
I'm on a spree of pirated mediocre AAA titles, Dying Light and FO4 mostly. FO4 is better than I thought it was going to be although it sure has shit-tier perf for a game with negligibly better graphics than its predecessor which came out like 5 years ago. Might start into DA Cisquisition as well just for shits and giggles. -
2015-12-08 at 3:35 AM UTC in whirr dropped from their record label for transphobic remarksWow, that is bullshit. I'm surprised too, Run For Cover is a pretty cool label, guess you never know when someone's gonna go full SJW on you.
Well I'm still going to be following whirr around the bay, transphobic or not (and it seems like they actually aren't). -
2015-12-07 at 6:26 PM UTC in Tool isn't actually that bad
Even in 8th grade I thought Tool was the gayest band ever. It's even in their name, it makes you a "tool"
hahaha, that's so original. No one has ever made that joke before.welcome to 1996, lanny. now go see them live.
Make it a year or two earlier and I'd be able to see my bloody valentine before their break up which would be cooler I think. Not sure I'd pay to see tool live. Like I said, it's fun music but certain segments of the fanbase really are intolerable. -
2015-12-07 at 6:14 PM UTC in BradleyB's Rock Bottom -- Recovery Thread
Bradley's AA honeymoon phase ended at least a week ago. He was in TC drinking with a fellow AA member, and since then he's been in and out smoking syncans out of an aluminum foil pipe and passing out between hits. True story.
Poor bradley. Was it his mentor or some other AA person? -
2015-12-05 at 3:30 AM UTC in The retarded thread: Fuck, §m£ÂgØL made one first edition
Lanny, when you're older, you're going to be confronted by this, and if you don't run or turn away, if you fully face and delve into it, aren't or don't seek distraction in your daily life, from your career, hobbies, entertainment, relations etc. you may come to see the terrifying ugliness and inadequacy of the world.
I mean if you write off as a distraction everything that gives life meaning (a distraction from what exactly?) then sure, you'll find life is inadequate by design. Sure, there's all kinds of things wrong with the world and I have no intention of trivializing them. I don't think we have a meaningful calculus of the world being better or worse than some sufficiency condition, but I would even be willing to entertain the idea that the bad outweighs good in a final reckoning. But I don't think that's sufficient to call it inadequate. You have to start from somewhere. Think about how much less-shit the world is today than it was couple thousand years ago, and the only reason for that is human effort and we're only getting better at changing the world. I can deal with a world filled with wrongs as long as there's a means to set them right.For example, you're very biased and resistant toward this idea, but you may find just how hard it is to find a woman you can truly consider an equal. I suppose it depends on what you want, but can you really imagine spending the rest of your life with someone that doesn't meet certain standards, that doesn't share certain interests, isn't capable or interested in having genuine (not illusory) deep conversations on complex and important, meaningful, matters? That doesn't adhere to an acceptable level of rationality and emotional control? Don't you see something profoundly wrong and terrifying with that idea?
A woman I consider my equal at what? As a computer scientist? Sure, that's pretty unlikely but I don't know why I should care. Most women couldn't consider me their equal at childrearing, singing, reading speed, or their given career but I don't think they would dismiss for any of those reasons as well they shouldn't. My equal in terms of intrinsic human value? Well most humans seem to have the same capacity for experiencing pain or pleasure that's not hard. In fact most women are probably slightly better than me in that dimension due to my strong tendency towards hedonic adaption (the downside of novelty seeking). My equal as an intellectual? I honestly don't believe that finding women who fit that description is particularly difficult but let's say it's true. Let's say everything with a vagina is incapable of calling itself my intellectual equal. Then fine, that casts the romantic endeavor in a different light but whatever, sex is now the exclusive end-game of relationships with women. That's not as good of a world as the one I believe in but it's not that bad either, like 90% of what makes me happy is still out there. I can survive without a romantic relationship. If women really are born inferior in these capacities then I do see something wrong with that: it's tremendously unfair to women. But this is one more problem to solve, not an argument for what I should lay down and die.Christ there are a lot of therapists/psychologists/counselors/psychiatrists in the bay area. Makes it such a pain to choose the right one, particularly when you're such an atypical trainwreck like me.
I think one of my very first posts in trt was saying the exact same thing. -
2015-12-04 at 6:34 AM UTC in ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?So are you just going to copy paste the whole (freely available) paper and not discuss it?
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2015-12-04 at 6:20 AM UTC in The retarded thread: Fuck, §m£ÂgØL made one first editionI need some shelves so I googled some DIY stuff and started putting together a list of things I'd need, then a few minutes ago I realize that A) I don't know how the fuck to use hand tools am more likely to injure myself than end up with a usable piece of furniture and B) I've wasted like twice the price of a cheap shelving unit in wage-equivalent time before I've even bought supplies. Still might do it because projects are fun and picking up new skills seems like something worth doing but jesus the economic prospects of DIY stuff are kinda funcking grim.
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2015-12-04 at 6:05 AM UTC in Lanny is the awesomest faggot i knowAww, this thread warms the cocks of my heart.
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2015-12-04 at 6:03 AM UTC in Some advanced bash scripting.This seems like a perfectly suitable job for bash to me, you don't even really need a script or anything, xargs will do this for you:
lanny@niggasin:~$ cat urls.txt
http://textfiles.com/art/afinger.txt
http://textfiles.com/art/bobface.txt
lanny@niggasin:~$ cat urls.txt | xargs -L 1 curl
/"\
|\./|
| |
| |
|>~<|
| |
/'\| |/'\..
/~\| | | | \
| =[@]= | | \
| | | | | \
| ~ ~ ~ ~ |` )
| /
\ /
\ /
\ _____ /
|--//''`\--|
| (( +==)) |
|--\_|_//--|THE FACE OF "BOB" fnord
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and
THE FACE OF "BOB" (SMALL VERSION) 12-13-90
@@@@@@@^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^@@@@@@@@@
@@@@@@^ ~^ @ @@ @ @ @ I ~^@@@@@@
@@@@@ ~ ~~ ~I @@@@@
@@@@' ' _,w@< @@@@
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@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ I @@@
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The holy visage of "Bob" Dobbs is copyright 1990, and probably other
years as well - MAYBE EVEN YEARS YOU WON'T FIND IN YOUR PINK CALENDAR!
- by the Church of the SubGenius. Fnord.
(Note that the face of J.R. ``Bob'' Dobbs is a registered trademark of
the Church of the SubGenius. Fnord.)
lanny@niggasin:~$Bare in mind my script will prpbably come with args so does bash know i mean redirect when i enter two greater than symbols or will it think i am trying to pass an argument?
The former, ">>" as well as other bash reserved symbols are never read as arguments. If you want to pass >> as an argument you need to wrap it in quotes. -
2015-12-04 at 4:25 AM UTC in Freewill
You know, when you stop to think about it, that sounds a lot like pretending to be someone he isn't.
If a person were to pretend to be an expert in something when, in reality, they are not then sure, there's a definite similarity there. If a person pretends to be something rather mundane, or even undesirable (for example, when we act as though we hold views we don't for the sake of argument or to elicit a certain response from others) then I think it's forgivable. Socrates is a famous example of someone pretending to be someone other than what he was to famous and much applauded effect.Like taking credit for stuff. Let's suppose a man invents something amazing and world changing. Knowing that freewill does not exist, and that all of his activity leading towards this invention were merely a result of earlier events and interactions, does he really deserve praise for the invention when he isn't so much its creator but rather the conduit of its creation? Would his taking pride in his "accomplishment" really benefit anyone? Should he be paid royalties for the invention, when the truly altruistic action would be to allow the world free access to it?
It seems like there's a risk of circularity here. If we say a person is responsible for a thing when they can claim credit for it then we need to ask what is the criteria for claiming credit? I think the common answer would be responsibility, you can claim credit for things you're responsible for. As for creators, I think it's fair to say they deserve a level of credit. While their actions may be mere consequences of prior states their output is incomparable to the input, that is to say calculus is more interesting, more commendable, than the educations that Newton and Leibnitz enjoyed. While their discoveries may be the inevitable effect of the confluence of their circumstances they are not equal. They produced something of value, whether or not they had any choice in the matter.
As for royalties, it's a simple question of consequences. In a world where invention is rewarded we would expect more people to try it, more people to succeed. If inventors are too richly rewarded, if their inventions are made too costly, then they pose little benefit to us, thus the question of how much a person deserves for their effort is the optimal point between encouraging discovery and making the fruits of that labor widely available. Sorta like laffer curves only not retarded. I suspect, although I can be swayed by empirical data, that we tend to overreward many sorts of inventors in the 21st century western world, evidenced primarily by the fact that historically most of our great minds were not exceptionally well compensated. I suspect there's a connection between eagerness to do something (that is, willingness to do it for minimal compensation) and likelihood of doing good work. This shouldn't really be surprising, if a person love their job it seems wholly realistic to think they'll do more of it and generally be better at it than someone who doesn't.While I admit that I do not believe individuality is meaningless, the concept of "self" appears to be illusory in light of our lack of freewill. I mean, what is "the self"? Most people tend to think of the self as some interior essence that distinguishes a person from the world around them. But if you think about it, it's fairly obvious that you didn't just will those thoughts you are thinking right now anymore then you willed the words that I typed on this screen. Thoughts just arise in your mind. If the self is not really the author of your own thoughts, what is the self? If we suggest that the self is consciousness, then what is consciousness? A sort of highly evolved awareness, a highly evolved reaction to our environment. It appears to be perfectly reasonable to suggest that the environment is the cause of consciousness, for consciousness (you and me) arose out of this environment and if there were no environment to be conscious of, what exactly would consciousness consist of?
I mean sure, if we accept a deterministic, materialistic universe then we can explain any phenomenon without ever making reference to minds of persons but that doesn't make minds or persons non-real. We can explain the universe in terms of atoms and never need reference rocks or trees or whatever but that doesn't make these things non-real or meaningless. I will agree that the notion of an atomic essential self is both pervasive and seemingly wrong but that's not the only notion of self out there. Existentialism has grappled with this problem and has a lot to say about the idea of a self and personal responsibility in the absence of an essential nature ("existentialism" itself is a name chosen to contrast with essentialism). Just because an explanation of ourselves requires reference to non-us things (for example, my ideas about free will (something that is in some sense a part of me) can't be explained without talking about the arguments I've seen for and against it (clearly not a part of my self) ) doesn't mean we can't draw a line between self-things and non-self-things or that such a line can't mean meaningful, it just means the distinction isn't going we're going to go and find out in nature.
And sure, that's crushing to many world views, perhaps a majority of lay people fail to recognize this, but it doesn't invalidate or disprove an other concepts of self. Hmm, so since this is kind of a theme I'm pressed to ask myself why, if most people hold an idea of self that's contradictory or invalid, why the statement "self is illusory" would be false. Maybe it's due to usage in a philosophical context, "self" means something different in philosophy, and even from philosopher to philosopher, than it does in common usage. Don't know, have to think about that one.While you might not really be to blame for your weaknesses, it's still important to correct them. What is the value in pride and shame when it would be better to just commit to well being and the improvement of your life and others?
Well the value is that they are lever arms on action. We're not perfectly rational beings, not even the most rational among us. We need pride to motivate us towards nobel goals and shame to keep us from doing wrong. Yes, you can feel pride at doing evil or shame from something innocent, but it's hard to imagine any person producing a great work that didn't feel either pride in it or shame in failing to do so. I mean obviously pride and shame aren't the only two emotions here, anything that acts as a hedonic motivator will do, but those two, even if they are tied to a false sense of responsibility, seem to be very powerful motivators towards action. Probably because they're tied to the idea of responsibility. -
2015-12-03 at 2:55 AM UTC in ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?I like a lot of what Bostrom says and I think the simulation argument is definitely interesting. As I recall he ends his paper with an actual number of how likely we are to be in a simulation which seems a bit silly, even if you buy into the idea that his formula is exhaustive it's at best like the drake equation, something to think about but efforts of actual calculation are sorta informed guesses at best.
I think there's an interesting question in the ethics of simulation, I'll actually maintain large scale simulation of human history is immoral. If we are in fact elements of a simulation, and if we accept minds divorced from biological material are still minds, then to conduct a sufficiently accurate simulation of human history is to be responsible to every genocide, every crime, every unit of suffering ever endured by a human. And that's pretty bad. It's just the epicurean trilemma reflected in a novel another creator scenario. I'd like to think a sufficiently technically advanced civilization would be sufficiently morally advanced to realize such simulations would be tremendously unethical. -
2015-12-03 at 1:46 AM UTC in Freewill
I don't know who he is. I just liked what he said in that video. Is he such a cunt that he pretended to be a different person for years?
More of a cunt by far. In fact I don't think pretending to be someone else is inherent cuntly, but I'm biased. One element of his cunthood is his delight in trying to make expert commentary on topics where, often by his own admission, he is painfully ignorant of prior art. His into to End of Faith is a famous example of this.So, to those of you who agree that we do not have freewill, I ask you what are the implications of this? Are people responsible for their actions? Is a sense of individuality essentially meaningless? What are your thoughts on the subject?
Again, it depends on what you take to what you consider "responsibility" to be. The obvious split would be to say that responsibility is dependent on an agent's freedom to do otherwise, so we ask what freedom is which leads us to ask what free will is which is the "what does free will mean" question again. Sidestepping an argument over the nature of responsibility I don't think there are any determinists who think we should stop jailing murderers because they couldn't have done otherwise. I'm perfectly happy to say let's jail/punish/whatever people for things they're not responsible for. Like even if we grant free will, we can imagine situations where this is OK. If someone possibly has a deadly contagious disease we can't really say they're responsible for contracting it (baring exotic scenarios where they intentionally infect themselves) yet quarantining them seems pretty non-controversial. Likewise if we catch a serial killer and live in a deterministic universe then we can jail them even if they're not strictly responsible for their actions. This would imply some interesting changes in our justice system, like if we catch an offender but somehow have very good reason to believe they'll never commit a crime again then there's no need to jail them. We do have a precedent for this in temporary insanity but insanity wouldn't be the only criteria.
I have no idea what line of logic you think leads from lack of free will to individually being meaningless though. -
2015-12-02 at 6:19 AM UTC in Freewill
Yeah but sam harris is a dumb cunt -
2015-12-01 at 6:14 PM UTC in The retarded thread: Fuck, §m£ÂgØL made one first edition
You know, I never liked most kids either.
I find there's usually an age. I have a younger cousin I've been getting along surprisingly well (to me) in recent years, I don't know if she got cool or I got old enough to enjoy kids of that age but before 10 or so I find interacting with children is like talking to a retard. Of course it's not their fault, just how kids are and have to be, but I can't deal with them without feeling like I'm taking down to them which is uncomfortable. But there come a point where you can see a fundamentally similar mind in there, like of course at 10 or whatever they're still pretty ignorant, you couldn't have an informed conversation about literature or whatever because there's just not the experience there but it's like "ok, with some time I could sit down and teach them basically anything I know, even if I have to build up from first principles" whereas younger children there are ideas that they just won't take, the mental rigor isn't there. And that's kinda exciting, not that I feel the need to try and teach kids math or whatever but just the idea that they are mentally whole at that point, kind of a sweet spot where the "childlike spirit" is still in evidence, kids seem pretty happy all things being equal around this age, but it doesn't appear to be for deficit cognitive abilities. Maybe it's just that's the first age I can recall clearly, I remember how much joy I got out of simple things like video games or a some gesture by an adult. Almost like a utility monster, someone who's legitimately happier per resource spent than others, something worth fostering I think.
Still, the idea of creating another mind with some necessary relation to my own is kinda frightening. There's an obvious appeal in the vanity, we all think our own way of thinking, of being, to be among the best and there seems to be good reason to believe that's inherited in some sense. But on the other hand, hmm, it's kinda hard to express. Like the madness, the cosmic mystery, to put it on another being seems strange, foreign. I'm not an anti-natalist, I'm not saying the suffering or negative elements of human existence always outweigh the positive. I guess it's kinda like sonder, like the enormity of the human experience, another person fully as real as you, it's almost mind shattering to think about. Like to make that decision, anything that goes into it must fundamentally be lesser than the consequence since if your lives are equal then the consideration must be lesser since it's contained in the consequence, it's a decision that you could never possibly give full due consideration to.
Hmm, that sounds dumb now that I read it back. Guess I just don't know how to feel about kids.
P.S. I didn't get your PM although I can send/receive on test accounts. -
2015-12-01 at 5:38 PM UTC in What happened?
He said BBSs are now "basically non-existent" and used the words, "dial up". That's good enough for me. And even if he were implying otherwise, I could list hundreds of Telnet-based BBS hosts which are still in operation today. He's wrong, wrong, and wrong again.
Telnet BBSs are pretty scarce these days too. Even if you could actually list hundreds of them it should be obvious there are tremendously more forums running over http. Even 8chan (perhaps not a forum in the traditional sense, but a community site served on HTTP) has nearly 9 thousand boards alone.
And really, talk about scapegoating, jesus christ man you blame the last decade of history on gifs and web browsers? Yeah, that's believable, Jeff wouldn't have ragequit on us, zok wouldn't have gotten doxed, arnox wouldn't have been autistic and idio wouldn't have... done whatever idio did if only we had had all been looking at shitty terminal emulators instead of browsers for the last 10 years. Totally man, that would have changed everything. -
2015-12-01 at 4:26 AM UTC in &Temple of the Screaming Electron
That was a pretty smart move. And the only piece of totse trivia you told me that has ever actually interested me.
The story I always heard was the & wasn't originally part of totse, totse just appeared at the end of the NIRVANAnet BBS listings so the others would be listed and at the end would come "& TOTSE" and the ampersand got included by osmosis over years.
I wasn't around for the BBS days so I can't personally attest to it being one way or another but that's the story I've always heard.
