Extreme Z7

A negative review of Scorn because why not lol? https://www.thejimquisition.com/post/scorn-worthy-of-its-title-review Personally, I think this review may not give the artistic direction enough credit. I haven't played the game yet, I don't know whether or not the environment design is worth it enough for me to forgive it's bad game design. But at the very least, I can say that something like this is a very reasonable critique: "Speaking of checkpoints, they’re rationed like chocolate during World War II. Since much of the game involves watching tedious animations while puzzles bring lumbering machinery to life, the ability to manually save, or at least access to liberal checkpointing, would be a blessing. Instead, Scorn expects you to replay huge chunks of it should you die, which includes solving multiple puzzles you’ve already solved. This is an absolute fucking sin - there’s nothing challening or interesting about completing puzzles you’ve already completed. Having to sit through them and their laborious animations again is actually worse than the notorious respawn animation in Too Human, and when Too Human can act as a more positive frame of reference, you have truly fucked up." For those who don't know, the respawn animation to the infamously bad "Too Human" from 2009 involved an unskippable scene of a valkyrie coming down from the heavens to slowly carry your body back up to heaven every single time you died. I'm likely still going to play Scorn at some point though. I'm willing to forgive bad game design and boring puzzles a lot of the time if the aesthetic experience is interesting enough to me. Heck, if I wait long enough they might even just patch it at some point to have a better checkpoint system. Admittedly a terrible expectation we should have from released games but there's enough love and care put into the artistry of this game that I'm willing to play it even if it doesn't get patched.

The best kind of narrative.

@Leo Gura I mostly care about the narrative and world-building. Scorn seems so mysterious.

@Leo Gura I recently got my first gaming PC. Hoping to try Scorn out sometime but I've got other games I've been meaning to play at the moment. Like 'The Talos Principle' which is ironically also a first-person puzzle adventure game. Could buy Scorn early if it's on sale though. I mean a bigger sale, it's at 10% off right now, it could be better.

I've always been curious as to what constitutes "living/not-living" or "conscious/unconscious". I've been speculating as to whether the Earth is itself a living conscious being on its own.

Will be buying your book list sometime soon when I'm done reading the free samples. Nothing to contribute to the discussion, I just wanted to say that.

Hmmm. . . I think at that point, entering singular text prompts would be inadequate and it would have to progress to just outright having conversations with the AI. Making the AI more of a person now than just a tool. But wait. . . wouldn't that just make you more of a producer than an artist LOL? Let's hope these AI don't rise up and demand worker's rights.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Keep in mind that these AI bots have no idea of what the actual cultural landscape of humanity looks like which is something actual visionary creators take into account when thinking up new projects. AI only has text prompts to start from and an admittedly-complex system of probabilistic drives that lend them to use certain images over others. But it doesn't really know anything about the actual psychological impact that specific AI creative decisions have on the audience looking at its work. (In short, it only naively produces a result but doesn't really care about its meaning or value) Some AI art may look hyper-realistic and "professional", for sure. But if my life-long interest in video gaming has taught me anything, it's that graphics isn't everything.

You haven't seen the arrogant reactionary STEMlords I've seen. But if I'm being fully honest, I'm only beginning to dip my toes into looking into the whole Hard vs Soft Sciences fight in universities. It seems to me that the worst of the worst of the "Rationalist" Hard Science side tends to be pushed out of or resign from academia due to disliking the new social standards and diversity goals the humanities is trying to push. So maybe perhaps STEM fields are less full of shit in the sense that the worst that they have to offer aren't even a part of academia anymore, meanwhile the most irrational of the humanities are still hanging about because they still fit comfortably within the overall status quo.

To be fair, the STEM fields are significantly more full of shit. Efficiency doesn't matter if the goal you are pursuing is rubbish to begin with. Be careful not to fall too much into the trap of Stage Yellow relativity that you become ineffective yourself. At least for now, I find it much better to pragmatically ally with the Humanities as they need all the help they can get to push humanity away from shallow materialistic goals into higher-level values of Love, Happiness, and Ethics.

They already exist.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-ex-prime-minister-abe-may-have-been-shot-taken-hospital-nhk-2022-07-08/

More info on the killer's motivations. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62089486 The guy had multiple homemade guns and freakin' explosives in his home.

?? But I was able to edit my title. I wrote "in Critical Condition" originally.

Seems like the article has been updated to say that he has unfortunately died. Perhaps I'll update the title of this post too.

More than just martyrdom. He specifically said that he holds the ban as a badge of honor. More like martyr-dumb.

Basically, Distraction. . . Distraction everywhere. Even if you're already on a Life Purpose journey, distraction will still get ya'.

JP's segment should be called The Daily Whine.

Wasting your time trying to change closed-minded fools who scoff at your self-help/spiritual habits.

I really like the sense of nuance in this article because it wasn't exactly written by an Objectivist clown. But still, I doubt this person is spiritually awake. They seem to be just at the edge of intellectual rationalist exploration without quite knowing where the next step is supposed to be. https://dropsofexperience.com/2022/04/27/the-anti-foundationalists-problem/

FUCKING IRONY.

I'm not particularly worried about this. Elon Musk might try to reduce enforcement and Rules and Guidelines somewhat but it will quickly blow up in his face with all the public backlash. 'Course I could still be wrong in the short term but long term is what we really need to keep track of.

@Yobenm I didn't interpret your post as supporting Rationalism, that was just a side note of mine. Seems like your talking more about Intuition. I think it depends on what level of consciousness you're at. I'm thinking there'd be a lot more fuzziness as you go closer to the infinite so your Intuition would need to be stronger as you approach higher levels.

Anyone who thinks all of Reality can be conceptually-mapped deserves to be dismissed as a kook. Especially if they are of the "Rationalist" type.

Non-binary seems valid to me. I presume you mean the weird neo-pronoun stuff, right?