oats_son
8hr ago
I'm not arguing that gaming crack never existed before today's time, I'm just trying to push back against "gaming's golden age ended decades ago" point. I like that there's good stuff in the 90s. I'm happy it mostly still exists for weirdos who want to play through the best stuff. I would be very sad to give up the more recent stuff in some hypothetical world where gaming was executed for writing crimes against humanity sometime in the mid 2010s, like I suspect some hardliners might want.
oats_son
9hr ago
This is a good point and, I think, a big reason why the mods are now levying permanent ban warnings against WhiningCoil. Every time he goes as far as he did last time, he causes a wave of discontent and many people have a hard time reacting to him civilly. The more inflammatory he gets, the more it's unreasonable to turn a blind eye to him but not to the people responding to him. I do not envy the moderators on decisions like this, because he's posted many a good post.
oats_son
10hr ago
Charitability isn't the only thing that is being measured in any ban. I was just re-reading this post and its replies, in rehashing some old drama to satisfy myself, and there is a reply from Zorba below, to something else that I'm not sure what it was:
I want to be really clear on why it's a warning, though. It's a warning because you have a stellar track record. If you were a new user, this would probably be a quiet remove-post-and-ban; there are people coming from dedicated troll subreddits who are making better posts than this and still earning bans for them. You've been a spectacular long-term contributor, and that gives you a considerable amount of leeway, but not infinite; our ban lists are littered with people who made great post after great post, then some switch got flipped and they turned toxic overnight and now they're permabanned.
Rightly or wrongly, WhiningCoil has a bunch of AAQCs and is generally upvoted and considered a quality, if provocative, user. I can't really think of anyone who thinks the same of AlexanderTurok or BurdensomeCount, even on the left. Do they provide good steelmans of their own side? Seems like they don't, or you'd get more left-leaning posters defending their posts, or you'd get the more even-handed moderators giving more nuanced opinions of how they view the posts. If you've read a lot of moderator warnings, you see that they show their homework when giving any warning or ban.
oats_son
10hr ago
This is a point in favor of my thinking that video games are better now than ever. All of the video game equivalents of crack cocaine have generally released within the last 15 years. I got horribly addicted to Caves of Qud, Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (I think @TracingWoodgrains may have played all three of these? He had an AAQC on roguelikes on the subreddit), Escape from Tarkov, Mount and Blade Warband, and likely others that I don't remember right now. Maybe that's just my brain being different as an adult somehow, but "gaming crack" seems like it's alive and well. Plus, you can still play all the old stuff!
oats_son
12hr ago
Yes, for me, video games are straight up just the best they have ever been. More than ever are releasing and they are excellent in so many ways. I wanted to hedge this by saying that there are some tradeoffs, like hardware being more expensive, but that's not a factor if you don't want it to be. You can remain an herbivore gamer and just play indie games that run on anything and those are still head and shoulders above most stuff from 30 years ago. We've figured out a lot about how to make things fun since then. And everything is way more accessible now, since you can buy games without leaving your house. I suppose you could say that there is less nostalgia now, if you've been playing games a long time, but that wouldn't be a concern for some kid starting to play video games right now. Also,
Everything else has tradeoffs, at best. Medicine is much better now, but the average age of the United States is much older, and healthcare costs have ballooned. You can reach so many more people with your effortposts and read whatever you want, and that would be great, but it's turned into such a double-edged sword, with echo chambers forming and subcultures within subcultures growing ever more toxic and distanced from reality, and in the last year, we seem to be seeing a return to ideological terrorism. Movies are stunning, but shallow, lacking the balance and variety that the 90s (and 2000s, probably) had. Pop music seems to be more vulgar to me now, and will never be a shared cultural touchstone as it had been in the years before the 2010s, though you can listen to anything from across the entire world now. College is probably actively worse than it was in the 90s, it costs more, there is rampant leftist ideology influencing many classes (though not all, I had plenty of great history courses, the art ones were where I really ran into it), and the degrees seem less useful.
You already mentioned most of that, but if many people thought the 90s was close to the peak, I wonder, had smart phones been invented in the 90s, would the same trends we saw in the 2010s happen, with people widely critiquing lack of healthcare and historical oppression of women and minorities? Would they fail to recognize the golden age they were living in? Probably, if you ask me.
oats_son
12hr ago
I found the video disturbing. Sometimes I have to recall how I felt watching that first video to give any credence to the other side at all, especially as it relates to the conviction of Derek Chauvin, whom I usually think should have been acquitted, but sometimes, the thought of that video pops up again and I think twice.
Obviously, it didn't justify any of the rioting, though. That was an insane year.
oats_son
1d ago
Sorry for the late reply, but I think the founding principles of America vs Japan are way different. America has a ton of stuff about equality and freedom in its founding document. The natural outcome there is the liberation of the slaves. Japan had no such thing. Also, Japan, like the rest of the Old World, was a way older thing, so the historical standard is stronger.
oats_son
3d ago
I suppose a more accurate statement would be that "tribalism is the default state of humanity". I was indeed including cultural divisions in my original statement.
Race is, of course, real. Taking a microscope within very similar populations and pointing out how similar they are doesn't erase the distinctions between more disparate groups.
Do you think dog breeds are a social construct?
oats_son
3d ago
Good post. I am not sure what causes EverythingIsFine to argue this out. It feels like a steelman of the "race isn't real" thing I see on reddit, but there's only so much you can do with something that's totally false on the face of it.
You may have difficulty determining the difference between a bred-for-competition German Shepherd and a bred-for-work German Shepherd, but that doesn't mean there's no difference between a New Guinea Singing Dog and a dingo. They can interbreed, sure, but there are significant differences. Distinguishing Koreans from Japanese or Frenchmen from Englishmen isn't particularly enlightening to me, but the broader you get, the more that distinguishing between races makes sense to me. I would also agree that culture is a significant factor, too.
oats_son
4d ago
Millions of white Americans are obese, welfare-dependent, high school dropouts who don't hold a candle to a Mexican day laborer, let alone the millions of educated and net-positive tax contributing immigrants whose hard-earned money is used to pay for SNAP so Harold can buy more Doritos.
How do you think this sounds with a different ethnic group? Are you sure you aren't tainted by racism?
If you listen to the progressives, everything is tainted by racism. Everyone except white liberals views everything through a lens of race, and even they do too, they just are polite enough to say that they don't. For black people, it's negative outcomes that they get handed through the system. For Asians and other minorities, it's perceptions about their ability at math or other minor things. I think, as time goes on and the two separate Overton windows continue to get further away from each other, you will see more and more blatant acknowledgement of things from the perspective of race, as this is something that the progressive left and the "dissident right" share a viewpoint on. Racism is, after all, the default state of humanity. It is natural, in that groups with differences will have disparate outcomes simply because they're different, and they are viewed differently because they are different.
oats_son
4d ago
I do think the standard is different for Japan, because Japan was founded in a different way than America was. Japan is pretty much by definition formed by Japanese people from its inception before the international concept of nations existed. America did not exist in that way.
I will note that this makes the cosmopolitan-ization of the western European states more sad. They used to be basically exclusively white, now they aren't, every single one of them has been globalized and diversified and I don't really know what it means to be French anymore. At least the shithole central European states haven't been touched in this way.
oats_son
4d ago
Chinese and Vietnamese, no, I like Asian immigrants in general. I also consider Hispanics American good enough. There were just way too many of them coming in and straining the social services a lot and undercutting wages.
Arab or black or Indian, yes, probably, depending on how they turn out. Arabs are insular enough that there's a good chance their kids do not integrate, same for Indians, and black people have their own terrible culture that they're usually unfortunate enough to fall into even if they're born outside it.
oats_son
4d ago
I will eat the bullet and admit that people of different ethnicities tend to make me uncomfortable in large supply. I like that knowing that the people around me are like me in substantial ways. I have nothing against Chinese or Vietnamese who speak English as a second language, but I don't get the impression that I could speak to them as freely as a white person, if at all, and I think that my social missteps would be more harshly looked upon. Since humans communicate to each other, even as strangers, this has certain effects. For instance, at Sam's Club yesterday, I was asked if I was in line by another shopper, and I explained that I thought I was, but I evidently wasn't, and that furthermore, the line was too long for me to consider it worthwhile. I would not feel so free to give such an explanation to someone significantly different from me ethnically. Also, our definitions of "normal" are quite different. I don't think a practicing Muslim Arab would consider me normal, and I certainly wouldn't consider them normal, either. The details I have heard about immigration in Canada makes me think that even good liberals are generally bothered by vast quantities of foreigners in their country.
oats_son
4d ago
Haha, I wonder what the statistics are on edging vs no edging for samples. There's clearly a whole branch of gross biology studies that haven't been done. I'm something of a goonscientist myself!
I know that weightlifting increases testosterone, but not sure about success in general.
oats_son
4d ago
Hey, Costco shopper! I am very dissatisfied with Sam's Club. They didn't have pork butt yesterday, and their pork loin was 40 cents more expensive than the wholesale store and 40 cents more expensive than their own website said it was. Are you satisfied with Costco meat prices? If only I had one near me. Please tell me more about Costco. What do you like about it? When you see the inside of Costco, are you blinded by its majesty? Paralyzed? Dumbstruck?
oats_son
4d ago
That's awesome. I've wondered if purposeful inducement of twins or identical twins would be possible, considering the usefulness of twin studies, and this seems like it's sorta-close to that. Good for her, imagine the family reunions 20 or 40 years down the line.
oats_son
4d ago
I am glad that you painstakingly offered the experience of this procedure you did. I always wondered what it was like to donate sperm, and I bet that's somewhat similar. I would have thought you'd have to do it on site or something. Did you wait a week or a few days from your last "emission" so that it would be a larger quantity? Well, good job, anyway. I thought you both were over 35 and already parents or happily not-parents or something.
I think female infertility would be a serious blow to a relationship. The way I see it in my mind's eye is that sperm is cheap, so if yours didn't work, you could just go get Chad DNA from a sperm bank or something. Chad DNA has its own benefits, because I would want my kids to be successful and having good genetics like tallness or lack of mental or physical illnesses are very helpful, but some people really want their kids to be "theirs". Personally, I would just want something to dedicate myself to that doesn't have any baggage like a preexisting child would. I guess I'm not evolutionarily correct, though the thought of my hypothetical wife cheating on me is still horrifying. On the other hand, female infertility leaves you in the same position that The Gays are in: either hundreds of thousands of dollars paying for another uterus, or tens of thousands of dollars for decent adoption, or a few thousand dollars for an adoption of a subpar kid or foster-to-adopt.
oats_son
4d ago
I agree, Western Europe is a disaster. But that is cold comfort, because if anything, I see Europe as just a sneak peak of what America will be someday. That may be backwards. It is Europe that has been aping us, after all. And, as you say, there are important differences, like our immigrants being a better fit.
oats_son
4d ago
Part of this tendency, surely, is that the scale of things is totally incomprehensible to the human brain. I don't know what 50 million dead people at the hands of Vladimir Chudin looks like. I don't know what 700 thousand pounds of steel produced resulting in an ungodly amount of GDP per capita looks like, or how it's even possible at such large quantities. Maybe the rest of society can catch fire but the 700 thousand pounds of steel being produced every year keeps the entire thing afloat. There's just too much of the picture that not only can you not see, but is impossible for you to see.
oats_son
4d ago
South Korea is an extreme example and bringing it up likely weakened the point. I don't mind the idea of things changing to be a more stable equilibrium, but if we're on a cliff, it would make me feel a lot better to know if it's a short drop or a long drop.
oats_son
4d ago
I like this post. Yes, the future flatlining and being the same trend forever is unrealistic. My points are more that I don't see any mechanism for some of those issues getting better. Also, you'll hopefully understand that just because humanity already has went through civil wars and starving poverty, that I regardless won't be particularly enthused if it happens again.
oats_son
4d ago
Meh. I think that everyone likes feeling "sensible". That doesn't mean much, if everyone does feel like they're sensible. Being a centrist doesn't make you more sensible. It just makes you more palatable to more people. It also lets you get away with not actually giving your own viewpoint on what will happen, I guess. Comfortably distanced forum poster, you did a bad job responding to my post!
oats_son
4d ago
I'm a doomer on the U.S., and I want to know what you guys think, in general, will be the trend for the next decade or further on. Here's my theory for how all this ends:
- Politically, conflict theory has totally won. Extremists from both parties keep trying to outdo each other. This can lead to outright civil war or government breakdown down the line. Democracies all around the globe host more and more unhappy populations that, no matter which politicians they vote in, never seem to get what they want, leading them to vote in more and more strange and radical candidates.
- Government spending will never recede. Too many groups need to stay satisfied with their welfare, otherwise the party that cuts them will never win an election again. This will lead to an eventual collapse, someday, with more and more economic pain as time goes on and as less productive people exist to support the invalids and growing number of leeches.
- Dating sucks and gender relations are likely going to get worse as the social media experiment continues, to South Korea levels. It can only get worse from here.
- As someone mentioned downthread, I could easily see status becoming harder and harder to get, as the players in the game optimize towards the most awful way to live: constant striving in every arena. Anyone left playing the game is a tiger mom. This is the one I'm least sure about, but it could change rapidly as economic circumstances shift.
- I have no idea if the country will fail slow or fast, but it will likely decline in the next decade by a noticeable amount.
My friend is more of an optimist. Here's his theory on the first one:
- Eventually, one party is going to realize their extremists never win races. They elect a moderate. Things normalize, politically.
Unfortunately, I didn't quiz him on all the rest of it. But now, somehow, it is making me wonder about the outlook of most of the Mottizens. I certainly see the doomer take on things pretty often.
I see a factoid sometimes that says conservatives are happier with their lives than liberals. Maybe that's a factor of rural living, maybe that's a factor of less thinking about serious issues, and less reading. I am pretty sure that conservatives on this site, on average, do not live in rural areas and, on average, think a lot more about serious issues, and read more. So maybe some bad, anecdotal science testing on The Motte is in order.
Are you a doomer, or a "bloomer"? What are some factors that lead you to your conclusion that the country is trending downwards or upwards? Please explain yourself, and please fight it out with everyone who thinks you're wrong.
I appear to have missed the words "video game equivalents of crack to me" in my statement. My bad!
My dad was a 90s computer gamer, so I probably have a more unique view on gaming than most. From my perspective, I discuss games from more recently more than I talk about old stuff. My favorites from the 90s were probably Fallout 1, Planescape: Torment, and Marathon, which had some pretty meaty things to talk about, and Fallout was totally oozing style. But more recently (and using the term "recently" loosely), there's stuff like Hotline Miami, Spec Ops: The Line, LISA: The Painful, OFF, Katana Zero, and Dark Souls that put together some very unique combination of mechanics and writing that are really fun to think about and interact with, basically all of them having honed their own unique style in a way that was impossible back then. Maybe it depends more on the genre you like? Like, CRPGs have definitely suffered, I think. But if you are writing off indie games, I think that's generally a bad idea, because those are a lot more true to the company culture that composed 90s gaming companies.
I don't care if I've heard it before, I like reading about things I'm interested in. Please, write more about video games, all the time, everywhere. If my examples seem dated, that's mostly because I'm cheap and only buy cheap old games.
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