SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
No bio...
User ID: 225
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4hr ago
I don’t interpret the rules of this site as prohibiting any commentary on the quality of a user’s output...
For what it's worth, I think the misstep here was saying "you're a deeply unserious person", rather than "this is an unserious position". The latter is, as you said, a comment on the quality of a person's output. The former is (at least imo) a personal insult.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4hr ago
And did you report those comments? I don't disagree that you take a lot of heat (though not all of the things you mentioned are legitimate grievances). But nobody said that the people on this forum are angels. You are expressing views that are unpopular here, and for better or for worse that means you're going to get people dogpiling you. To some extent, that simply means you have to have a thick skin. Go look at @Amadan posts sometime - he routinely gets dogpiled and downvoted into oblivion just because some people don't like him. He still posts here, though, even though I'm sure he doesn't like it any more than you do. That's the kind of mental toughness that you frankly will simply have to have to post here.
To the extent that people are violating the rules while piling on, then you need to be reporting them. If you have been, and if there hasn't been anything done about any of those posts (which you would need to follow up and look at, because it's not like the mods are going to ping you when they warn someone), you should take that as a sign that the moderators disagree that people are breaking the rules. And then do with that what you will - if you think that means you don't want to hang here then don't. But I find it very frustrating that, at least in this specific instance, you're refusing to even try to get the mods to intervene, and then using it as an example of why you think the site is bad. That's not fair in the slightest. And if you haven't been reporting other interactions you felt violated the rules, then frankly your complaint has no legitimacy at all. The mods aren't omniscient, and they need people to report violations of the rules if they are to help enforce them.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5hr ago
Report people when they break the rules, don't argue back at them. This is like, rule 0 of the Internet. Also, it's been not even an hour since the comment you are complaining about was made. It takes time for one of the mods to be online, see the report, and decide what to do with it.
I agree with you that calling you an "unserious person" is a violation of the rules. But the rules aren't a magic wand that prevents breakage. Bad comments need to be reported (especially in a thread as old as this one), and you need to be patient to let the process work. You can't hold this post up and say "see, this is why I'm quitting" when the moderators haven't even had a chance to respond yet.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Of all the metaphors I ever expected to see used to describe the transcendental nature of heaven, doujin wasn't anywhere near that list. But man, I'm here for it.
Obligatory: fucking weeb. ;)
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
To be fair that's way less inexplicable than "what's Ethiopia". I'm still surprised by that.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Sure, it would be a bad thing. But it's only going to be weeded out by natural selection to the extent that you're so lazy that you die off. Presumably people with genes that made them that lazy are long since dead, but everyone else got to work (because they had to) and so they passed on their traits to us.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means.
I don't think it's fair to say "don't bother", because the situation is more "can't". You're asking finite beings to describe something which is not just infinite, but completely alien to our experience. Of course people can't adequately describe that.
But that also doesn't detract from my original point: it isn't "cope" to say that death is a good thing if your framework of existence says "after we die we get something even better than the best things here". That's just straightforwardly true in that case! Note that I'm not trying to convince you the framework is true, just pointing out that if you accept that framework for the sake of argument then death is obviously a good thing.
Well, I'm 35, and I still don't see it; my reasons for being weary of life are all fixable. I'm tired of getting old, but that can be fixed by being eternally 18. I'm tired of watching my friends and family die, but that can be fixed by making them all eternally 18. I'm tired working a job I hate, but that can be fixed by making AIs do all the jobs. I'm tired of having lost the love of my life, but that can be fixed by forking her and modifying the copy just enough that she will still want to be with me until the last star grows cold and the universe comes to an end.
You're cheating here by including things that are not really related to your original scenario of "living in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe". Yes, your body breaking down over time would be fixed. If we assume that you're also preventing any form of death, then losing your loved ones would be mostly fixed. But that doesn't bring back the loved ones you have already lost, it doesn't prevent your loved ones from deciding they want to gracefully exit life (at which point you lose them), it doesn't magic AI into existence to do your crappy job, it doesn't change human nature such that people will actually be nice to each other for the first time in recorded history.
Like yeah, if you wave a magic wand that says "every bad thing about life is gone now" then living forever is great. But that isn't what you said, you simply talked about living forever by itself being good enough. But it isn't, you would need to fix all the other problems too.
It gets even worse for your case when you think through what fixing all the problems in the world actually would require. Not just tech, though the tech barrier is so high that it should give us pause as to whether it can ever happen. The sheer fact of individuality means that sooner or later, two people are going to have desires which conflict with each other. Now what? Unless you mind control one or both of them, at least one of those people is going to be unhappy with the outcome. Even with a magic wand, this is unfixable. I guess you could use mind control, but that seems like the utopia now has a dark dystopian underbelly that is needed to make it work (yes Persona 5 Royal, we see you over there). Not a very satisfying utopia any more. Perhaps the sort of thing one might write a short story about walking away from. ;)
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Even "The natural environment had limited resources" doesn't seem like a good enough reason for the desire to self-neglect and to avoid opportunities which are obviously good just because they're a little bit difficult.
But that is the long and short of it. Consider humans before the fairly modern era we have:
- Food is more scarce
- You have to work way harder for it (physically)
Because food was scarce, it was advantageous to survival to store up calories as fat. And because you had to exercise just to eat, everyone had to exercise. So there was no selection pressure pushing humans to develop in a direction where the body would maintain its health without exercise.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
I can't tell if you're calling George's words or Tolkien's "cope", but if it's the latter then I think you're mistaken. Tolkien was Catholic, and his setting reflected his beliefs. Death is absolutely a good thing in that framework, because you get to be with God, and that is such a profound joy that all else pales in comparison (even being in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe).
Also, I think you're underrating how weary the world can become after even just our short stay here. Some of those problems would be obsolete in your hypothetical scenario, but not all. At some point, when you've seen a pointless genocide for the hundred thousandth time, is the fact that your body works great really that much of a solace? One thing I've noticed in spending time with old people (proper old, not @George_E_Hale lol) is that they are often quite ready to lay down their cares and rest. And the young never quite understand it because they just haven't been through enough of life to get to the point where death seems like a welcome end to things (with some exceptions, like very depressed people). But it's a very real thing, and to be honest I can understand it a lot more now at (almost) 40 than I could at 25.
Jesus Christ, some people won't see the Singularity coming until they're being turned into a paperclip.
Dude. We could've had a program play Pokemon badly decades ago. It isn't impressive to have one do it just because it's playing Pokemon badly in a novel way. Or, to use your own snarky format:
Some people are trying so hard to see the Singularity coming that they are giving themselves eye injuries and calling the visual noise "the Singularity".
Edit:
I also think that "it's not trained for this" is an exceptionally poor argument when you're discussing artificial general intelligence. The whole point is whether the program can cope with situations it wasn't made for! If it can't (and it sounds like it can't), then it isn't AGI, full stop. Nor is it impressive that it can play at all, given that we have had AI playing games for a long time now (and it actually plays well when it is designed for it). "It can play the game, even if badly" is table stakes here, not an innovative development.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3d ago
My guess would be that it's something from the rdrama code base which either was not fully implemented there, or it got broken when we removed various other features (there were a lot). And in either case was never fully excised.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3d ago
A world without women? The closest approximation we have to that is roughly prison.
I appreciate your attempts to be fair and not just turn this into a rant about women. But this strikes me as off the mark. Perhaps prison is the closest approximation we have, perhaps not - but it's not very close if so. The people who get sent to prison are (by and large) bad people. They act in horrifying ways because they acted that way on the outside too. It's kind of like pointing to the most manipulative, sociopathic of women and going "see, this is what women are like without men to moderate them".
A better (though still not perfect) model of a man's world might be fraternities. They do act very badly indeed sometimes, but not on the level of prisons. The main flaw with using them as a model is that they're still very immature young men, so again they aren't necessarily representative of what a true world without women would look like (because that world would have mature as well as immature men and the former would moderate the behavior of the latter). Another model might be young businesses where they only have men on the payroll. These don't tend to be hellscapes of bad behavior as far as I'm aware. They seem to be just focused on getting shit done. This too is probably an imperfect model, albeit the flaws don't stand out to me. But regardless, I think prison is a pretty flawed model and we have better available to us.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3d ago
The economic tragedy in America is that, today, the dutiful "middle class" career person or family who pays all of their taxes, saves responsibly but without being monkish about it, and tries to setup a self-sufficient future is actually the RUBE.
Wait what? You more or less described me, but I don't see how I'm a rube. I know that social security is basically stealing money from me, I don't have a choice whether or not to pay it. I know that the uber-rich have ways of making money that surpass my wildest dreams, but also they require seed capital I don't have. So, I put money into my retirement account because that's all I can really do as far as I can see. But I'm not doing this because I've been fooled into thinking it's an amazing option... it's just the one I have available to me.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3d ago
Ethiopia is a country in Africa. No idea what the reference being made is, but I assume some past political event. Realpolitik is the philosophy that in politics, one must deal with cold hard reality. In this case, whether one believes Ukrainians are entitled to get their land back or not, they aren't able to take it themselves and nobody seems inclined to fight on their behalf to get it back for them. So like it or not, they should (according to realpolitik) deal with the situation that exists as best they can, not cling to vain hopes of getting their land back, because they are just going to annoy people and wind up with an even worse deal in the end than if they gave concessions now.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5d ago
I second the recommendation for Masters of Doom. It is a really interesting book. I also recommend the author's similar book on GTA, called "Jacked" if memory serves.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
6d ago
I don't care about Ukraine less than those. I don't care about any of those countries one bit. I have no malice towards them, but I don't see why we should intervene in their affairs. Once we fix our numerous internal problems, then maybe we can use those resources to play world police. But until then, I do not think there's a good justification for spending money on other nations' problems rather than our own.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
6d ago
Agreed. I also suspect she can tell he still has feelings for her, and that is why she was kind of distant with him. That is going to cause problems for a friendship too, so I think it's better to just make a clean break here.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
6d ago
I'm really sorry to hear that, man. It sounds really heartbreaking. I do think that you had the right of it with regards to the woman when you were younger, that if she didn't want to pursue you then she wasn't for you. As much as it hurts, the same is true of Natalie. She chose to move in a different direction, so she really wasn't for you in the end.
For what it's worth, based on your description of the night she told you was leaving, I do think you made a big mistake there. It seems like she really was hurt by you saying she didn't care about you. Would things have worked out if you hadn't said that? Maybe, maybe not. But I suspect that if there was a chance, saying that hurt your chances significantly. I think she did care about you, and when you said she didn't it drove a wedge that wouldn't have otherwise been there. Just sometime to think about for next time (though obviously hopefully it won't come to that next time).
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
7d ago
I'm flattered and I would love to receive your butthole cozy, but alas I don't think my wife would understand. You know how it is, once you get married they don't want you to interact with anyone's butt hair except theirs.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
7d ago
I recommend weaving it into fabric and making a little butthole cozy for yourself (or a special someone). Waste not, want not!
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
7d ago
Thanks for the info!
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
8d ago
For our resident doctors - is it common for nonsmokers to get lung cancer? I'm wondering because my mother in law got a "probably cancer" diagnosis from her doctor recently, but (to my knowledge) she never has smoked nor lived with smokers. It seems kind of like she has gotten royally unlucky, but maybe it's more common than I would've thought.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
9d ago
It's definitely P-N-G and not "ping", imo.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
9d ago
Man, I envy you. I really was hoping it would have good effects for me in terms of making it take less willpower to not binge on sweets, but no such luck I'm afraid. Obviously it still does me good in terms of blood sugar control, but I didn't get the fringe benefits I was hoping for.
But even then, it seems to me like you would need to qualify that. If you say "your positions are consistently unserious" that's one thing, but "you're an unserious person" strikes me as a general attack on someone's character. That's how I read the original sentence, at least.
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