RoyalHenOil's recent activity
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Comment on Can friendships be forced? in ~talk
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Comment on Former naturalists/materialists, what changed your view? in ~humanities
RoyalHenOil Link ParentYes, that is precisely what I am discussing as well. This is a bold claim. As far as I am aware, we do not have any reliable way of determining whether a given entity has conscious experience if...When psychologists and philosophers refer to "consciousness," they are typically referring to subjective experience—the felt sense of phenomenal awareness that each of us has in observing the world and our own minds.
Yes, that is precisely what I am discussing as well.
Cognitive processes like perception, attention, memory, reasoning, and language comprehension can and do operate without conscious awareness to a large degree.
This is a bold claim. As far as I am aware, we do not have any reliable way of determining whether a given entity has conscious experience if it cannot specifically tell us that it does (and even if it can, that may not actually tell us much, as in the case of LLMs). If it cannot tell us, it may still be conscious — for example, I have early-childhood memories of conscious experiences that pre-date my ability to communicate them.
Subjectively, it does feel like just a portion of my brain is conscious while most functions are unconscious. But then it also often feels like I am the only truly conscious being and virtually everyone else is effectively an NPC. That's because I only have direct access to my own consciousness, and I am forced to infer it indirectly in other people — which I don't always take the time to do, and even when I do, it often turns out that my inferences are wrong (e.g., I was startled to discover that some people internally voice all of their thoughts, which is very foreign to me and suggests that our internal experiences may be wildly different). My own consciousness is the only consciousness I can verify and understand, and everything else is a kind of an unknowable black box that I make conjectures about.
I have no reason to assume that the other portions or functions of my brain are unconscious, just as I have no reason to assume that lizards are unconscious or that newborn babies are unconscious. I simply do not — and cannot — know if they have subjective experiences or not. The best I can do is make an educated guess based on their characteristics and behavior, but it would be intellectually dishonest for me to assert that they are conscious or unconscious.
Now, for medical purposes, it is useful to make some assumptions about consciousness. For example, we assume that general anesthesia induces unconsciousness because people who undergo it report a loss of consciousness. But strange things can happen under general anesthesia, which illustrate that we can't actually prove that an entity is unconscious.
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Comment on The startup offering free toilets and coffee for delivery workers — in exchange for their data in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentMy personal experience has been that these barriers actually correlate with bathrooms that are more disgusting, more likely to have run out of toilet paper and soap, and more likely to have...My personal experience has been that these barriers actually correlate with bathrooms that are more disgusting, more likely to have run out of toilet paper and soap, and more likely to have fixtures in disrepair.
I imagine this is because businesses that, for whatever reason, cannot or will not invest in janitorial service favor introducing barriers to access so that the bathrooms degrade more slowly — but they do still degrade. Evenly barely-used guest bathrooms in private homes degrade without some basic maintenance once in a while.
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Comment on Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient in ~enviro
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentI used to be involved in behavioral studies on pollinating insects. I strongly suspect that at least some insects could have something we might call consciousness because they perform behaviors...I used to be involved in behavioral studies on pollinating insects. I strongly suspect that at least some insects could have something we might call consciousness because they perform behaviors that we associate with consciousness. Insects are an extremely diverse group, and there is a wide degree of intelligence between different insect species (and, to a surprisingly large degree, between individuals within the same species), and I would not be surprised if consciousness tracks with intelligence to a reasonable extent.
In our studies, honeybees seem to be much quicker at learning non-instinctive behaviors than the non-bee pollinators we looked at, and solitary native bees seemed to be quicker at learning than honeybees (it honestly sometimes felt like the solitary bees were faster learners than we were). Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to work with any pollinating wasps (they just aren't important enough pollinators for the crops we were studying), but I suspect they would be faster learners still.
Within all of the insect species, there were some individuals who would put a lot of effort into exploring the puzzle and would figure things out faster than their compatriots (sometimes much faster); there were others who would not explore the puzzle very much themselves, but they would copy the behavior of those that did and learn that way (this seemed very common with honeybees in particular); and then there were others who did little of either and therefore learned very slowly or not at all. There were also some amusingly familiar demographic trends; for example, young male insects were particularly unfocused and slow to learn when in the presence of females, whereas older males and females of all ages showed no significant differences in a co-ed environment.
It was very easy to ascribe mammal-like qualities to some of these insects, in a way that I never had done before I had the opportunity to do a very detailed observation of their behavior in controlled circumstances. It was tempting to imagine the hypothetical thought process they might be having, much like I do with my dogs. It is super unlikely that they have human-like (nor dog-like) consciousness, and I would certainly not make any claims about any kind of consciousness in a paper or presentation, but the behavioral features that ping my this-person/animal-is-thinking-consciously instinct in vertebrates was definitely pinged by these bugs as well — especially the solitary bees (who sometimes made us feel eerily like they were attributing consciousness to us and had figured out we were fucking with them).
I definitely don't want to put forth the idea that I believe some insects are conscious. I really and truly do not know. However, my gut instinct (which, mind you, is honed for social cooperation within a human society and is no doubt biased toward theory of mind) leans that way. Basically, if we could magically peer into the ganglia of insects and determine whether they have anything we might call conscious experience or conscious thought, I would be a little surprised if all insects exhibit it, but I would equally be a little surprised if no insects exhibit it.
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Comment on Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient in ~enviro
RoyalHenOil Link ParentTo be fair, scientists do study consciousness because it is highly relevant to certain fields, such as medicine and neuroscience. Anesthesiologists concern themselves a great deal with...To be fair, scientists do study consciousness because it is highly relevant to certain fields, such as medicine and neuroscience. Anesthesiologists concern themselves a great deal with consciousness, for example.
Free will is a different matter, and I am unconvinced that it is a logically coherent concept in the first place.
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Comment on Former naturalists/materialists, what changed your view? in ~humanities
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI would be curious to know how your ethical preferences regarding AI relate to other beings that we now know almost certainly experience consciousness — and yet we create them by the millions and...I would be curious to know how your ethical preferences regarding AI relate to other beings that we now know almost certainly experience consciousness — and yet we create them by the millions and subject them to abject misery: livestock animals.
I am open to the possibility that AI algorithms, even as they exist today, could potentially be conscious. However, these AI have not been shaped by eons of evolution to experience exquisite mental and physical pain in response to danger or harm. Animals absolutely have and, moreover, we specifically subject them to the very experiences that are effectively "designed" to cause them intense pain — physical injury, loss of loved ones, curtailed freedom, unhealthy diets, overcrowding, etc., etc.
If attempting to create true AI should land you decades in prison, should attempting to breed an animal?
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Comment on Former naturalists/materialists, what changed your view? in ~humanities
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentMy hunch is that consciousness arises from the way certain systems are organized. We know that life works this way — we are made up of non-living material, but life arises from the specific...A computing system can act intelligently; it can learn from inputs and create outputs, but when, under a materialist view, should consciousness show up as an emergent property of such a system? It seems that we can imagine an AI that functions identically to a human mind, yet has no conscious experience itself...
My hunch is that consciousness arises from the way certain systems are organized. We know that life works this way — we are made up of non-living material, but life arises from the specific organization of this material, and life is lost when that organization is disturbed — and I don't see why consciousness should necessarily be any different. As far as I am concerned, it is possible that chatGPT experiences some form of consciousness (albeit likely very foreign to our own, and also likely much less cohesive, as our brains have been heavily refined by evolution), and that all things with the ability to make complex decisions experience some form of consciousness. Perhaps every time someone executes a lines of code, a thread of consciousness is created and then dies away.
We currently have no way of verifying this, of course, but we also have no way of discounting it. We don't have a way of reliably identifying the presence or absence of consciousness in anything other than humans with some kind of language faculty. We don't even know where, on the timeline from zygote and adult, consciousness develops in humans. We can't even reliably tell if a person undergoing general anesthesia is conscious (until they wake up and tell us — but even then, that only works if they also retained memory during the procedure, which is not a given).
We can also imagine a biological intelligence, maybe a human, that functions identically to a human mind, yet has no conscious experience itself; it merely processes inputs/outputs and potentially updates weights in its brain. Such a human is known in philosophy as a philosophical zombie or p-zombie.
Does this differ from what humans do all day most of the time? We regularly make extremely complex decisions (e.g., coordinating millions of cells to manipulate our appendages, using these appendages to manipulate a vehicle with a fine degree of control and timing, processing subtle variations in light to identify the environment we are driving in and moving obstacles within it, and recalling a complex set of distances, angles, and sights that we have memorized in order to drive to a specific destination) on autopilot.
We also experience different degrees and different forms of consciousness. Sometimes when I listen to music, for example, I pay attention to the lyrics and composition, while other times I just vibe and lose myself inside the overall experience. These are two wildly different experiences generated by thesame stimuli — the only difference being the style of consciousness I employ in that moment. Yet these experiences are so wildly different that it's almost like I am not the same person in each. It certainly makes me wonder about the nature of conscious, and whether it's actually the singular, cohesive, ongoing thread of experience that it feels like it is — or if that's an illusion created by memory recall and it's actually a series of distinct, disjointed experiences that are conjured temporarily and then die away.
And this leads me back to the hypothesis that consciousness arises from complex decision-making systems. Perhaps our unconscious experiences are actually conscious, but we do not form memories of these experiences, and therefore we cannot reflect on them and recognize them as consciousness.
Alternatively (or additionally), maybe different areas or different functions within the brain each have separate consciousnesses, which are only in very loose communication with one another and are largely ignorant of each other's experiences.
For example, in the process of writing this comment, there are some seemingly subconscious processes going on. I am not consciously moving my fingers to type (they feel like they are moving on their own) and I am not consciously selecting the precise words (it feels like they are just appearing to me out of nowhere, and my conscious brain has only to review them after my fingers have typed them). I am certainly having a conscious experience here as well, but its job (to have a notion of what I want to communicate and to double-check that what I am writing gets that idea across) feels so small compared to all the other things my brain is doing in the background. Is it possible that the part of my brain that chooses words is fully conscious, but it is equally mystified about how itse writing prompts are chosen and how its output is ultimately either accepted or sent back for a re-write? Perhaps it feels like the reviewing task is done subconsciously, and its role is the only truly conscious act in the whole production.
Callosum syndrome is caused by severing the connection between the two halves of the brain (which is sometimes done to alleviate severe symptoms of epilepsy) and effectively results in the patient having something akin to two separate brains inside the same head. Do both of these hemispheres experience consciousness? Maybe. It certainly seems plausible to me, and if this is the case, maybe all kinds of things experience consciousness in weird and disconnected ways.
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Comment on What cooking techniques need more evidence? in ~food
RoyalHenOil Link ParentFor this, I recommend learning about gluten percentages as well! You can mix in vital wheat gluten (include it with the flour's weight when doing your calculations) to make any flour— rye,...If something doesn't work (for example, I added too much rye to a recent loaf and it was flatter and denser than I wanted), then I can look at how much I added (as a percentage) and scale it back from there, regardless of how big my loaf actually was.
For this, I recommend learning about gluten percentages as well! You can mix in vital wheat gluten (include it with the flour's weight when doing your calculations) to make any flour— rye, buckwheat, etc. — behave like bread flour in the oven.
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Comment on What cooking techniques need more evidence? in ~food
RoyalHenOil Link ParentFor me, learning about baker's percentage — and a few related concepts, like learning about gluten percentage — was a revelation for me. It freed me up from being a slave to the recipe and allowed...For me, learning about baker's percentage — and a few related concepts, like learning about gluten percentage — was a revelation for me. It freed me up from being a slave to the recipe and allowed me to improvise. Now I can makes loaves of bread out of any type of flour or combination of flours, I can add in whatever additional ingredients come to mind (fruit, seeds, etc.), I can make loaves of any size, and I can make them all to my preferring kneading method (I prefer to start with a small hand mixer and then switch to hand kneading, and virtually no existing recipes cater to this).
I generally find it very boring to follow recipes, so this turned bread making from a chore I procrastinated on (and ultimately did only on special occasions) into a fun activity I look forward to.
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Comment on Video game devotees are much more likely to be working-class than middle-class, says research in ~games
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIt may not be due to a class distinction, however. It may just be that different hobbies appeal to people who sit all day versus people who are on their feet all day. Anecdotally, I used to do...It may not be due to a class distinction, however. It may just be that different hobbies appeal to people who sit all day versus people who are on their feet all day.
Anecdotally, I used to do hard physical labor at my previous job, and I spent most of my leisure time doing seated activities, including playing video games (as well as reading, painting, programming, etc.). Now I have an office job, and I hardly ever do hobbies that involve sitting; I prefer to be on my feet as much as possible (so I do more woodworking, gardening, etc.), and I neglect my seated hobbies until I have a long weekend.
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Comment on Chinese woman in Beijing goes on one hundred blind dates per year in ~life
RoyalHenOil Link ParentAre 30-year-old women really considered "leftover" in China? The male-to-female ratio in China implies it would be a very foolish sexual strategy for men to be that selective. Even in countries...Are 30-year-old women really considered "leftover" in China? The male-to-female ratio in China implies it would be a very foolish sexual strategy for men to be that selective. Even in countries where the sex ratio is more even, men are generally not that selective.
That mindset seems pretty anachronistic in modern economies with high male survival (fewer war deaths, workplace deaths, etc., to skew the population female) and very low infant mortality (making later-age marriage much less of an obstacle to successfully raising children to adulthood).
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Comment on Truong My Lan: Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death for $44bn fraud in ~finance
RoyalHenOil Link ParentYes, as a general rule, deterrence relies on punishment being applied consistently, not on the harshness of the punishment. When the chances of seeing punishment are low — even if the punishment...Yes, as a general rule, deterrence relies on punishment being applied consistently, not on the harshness of the punishment. When the chances of seeing punishment are low — even if the punishment is very harsh — risk-takers (as criminals usually are) tend to dismiss the risk. So the idea here is not to deter people through some small chance that they could be punished; it is to deter them by actually punishing them. Even a mild punishment applied consistently (e.g., a night in jail every single time you steal a dollar) is much more effective than a harsh punishment applied arbitrarily (e.g., the death penalty only after stealing billions of dollars over many years).
That being said, this woman's criminal activities certainly will be deterred when she's dead. If the goal is not general deterrence, but instead to lure criminals into believing they can get away with it while secretly amassing evidence to put them away for good in one fell swoop, then this is an effective strategy that investigators commonly employ (e.g., the FBI and Target's loss prevention team).
It seems pretty likely to me that a team has been investigating her for months or years, and that they deliberately avoided deterrence so that they could gather absolutely watertight proof against her. In fact, this might be the only strategy that will work against very powerful people who can otherwise pull strings to get themselves out of trouble. In these cases, I am quite OK with a non-deterrence-based approach designed to bring their criminal career to a sudden and overwhelming halt (although, for various philosophical reasons, I would strongly prefer to see that in the form of a lifelong prison sentence rather than the death penalty).
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Comment on Chinese woman in Beijing goes on one hundred blind dates per year in ~life
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentWhen I was single, I found that meeting online led to somewhat better matches than meeting in person, but it needed to be more casual and less rushed (basically the exact opposite of this woman's...When I was single, I found that meeting online led to somewhat better matches than meeting in person, but it needed to be more casual and less rushed (basically the exact opposite of this woman's strategy) than most people are willing to do. This is because I am extremely slow to feel attraction to someone; I have to feel very comfortable around them and regard them as a good friend before I can develop romantic feelings. I did form some connections with a few guys who accommodated my cold feet, and so there were a few potential relationships I was very interested in pursuing (until I fell in love with my current partner instead).
I also went on a large number of dates with people I met in person, but I never felt any chemistry. In-person dating was inherently too rushed; I was not anywhere close to experiencing any kind of romantic or sexual attraction to someone I barely knew.
All of my relationships grew out of established platonic friendships. But all but one of these (the one I am in now) didn't really work out — I think because, as a general rule, most people are far quicker to experience attraction than I am, and so the fact that these guys didn't make any moves earlier in the friendship suggests that I wasn't really their #1 pick, if that makes sense.
I ended up with someone I originally met on a dating website, but we were from the opposite sides of the globe, and I think the circumstances were basically ideal for us. Dating was absolutely not on the cards due to the distance (for example, I had a hard rule where I wouldn't date someone who lived more than 2 hours away from me — and we were more like 36 hours apart), so we were just penpals for years. We fell in love when we started video chatting for the first time, and I think that was about ideal: I felt very comfortable with him after years of email correspondence, yet the chemistry was also immediate and essentially love at first sight (something I had never experienced before).
What proceeded was years of long distance, mountains of paperwork, and savings-depleting expenses to be together. This was a far higher price than either of us had previously ever imagined a relationship could be worth, but once we fell in love, there was no question that we would do it. We knew it would be hard, but the alternative was inconceivable.
Online dating is just a tool, which can absolutely be used to good effect, but she doesn't seem to know how. She is systemically searching for men as if she were arranging a compatible-but-loveless marriage, but then she is disappointed when she doesn't feel any chemistry for them or them for her. I think she misunderstands how love works and believes it's a simple numbers numbers game. I mean, it is a numbers game to a certain extent, but she has probably met dozens of men she could have fallen in love with if she had given them and herself the chance to do so. How many years will she try this failing strategy over and over again before she realizes she's doing it wrong?
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Comment on How to succeed in a cramming-based academic system? in ~science
RoyalHenOil (edited )LinkI don't know how well this advice will work for you, but this is what worked for me. Differentiate between the things you actually want to learn and the things you just need to memorize for a good...I don't know how well this advice will work for you, but this is what worked for me.
Differentiate between the things you actually want to learn and the things you just need to memorize for a good grade. You will need to pursue entirely different strategies for each. It sounds like you have a good handle on the former, so the goal is to do the latter as economically as possible so that you can devote most of your time and energy to the former.
You may find that some classes weigh more heavily toward cramming and others toward real learning. Unfortunately, as a first year student of biochemistry, your cramming-to-learning class ratios are going to skew heavily toward cramming. The ratio will very likely move more toward real learning as you get further into your degree, so it's worth persisting.
The good news, however, is that having a lot of cramming-heavy classes means that (if you use the right strategy) you will have more free time than real-learning classes will leave you with. This is free time that you can put toward meeting with professors, doing internships, auditing classes you are not enrolled in, working on projects, reading books, etc. But cramming is going to take some real work (albeit condensed).
From what I can tell, the only way to effectively memorize large amounts of material is by using some variant of the flashcard method (or, in other words, through repeated quizzes). This is how I did it:
• I always went to class. Always, always, always.
• I took a notebook and a pen (not a pencil because then it's tempting to erase mistakes, and that takes too long), and I wrote down what the professor said and any diagrams the professor showed. I did not copy what they said word-for-word (that would take too long), but I wrote down any key points they hit upon, as well as any details that seemed like they could even possibly end up on a test. I learned to write very, very fast using a sort of pseudo-cursive that I could only kind of read, and I included lots of conceptual drawing to reduce how much I had to write (like circling words and drawings connections between them, drawing dark underlines under anything the professors repeated because that's usually a hint that it will be on the test, and so on).
• Many students are tempted to type their notes instead, but I would really recommend using paper and pen instead because being able to draw freely, squeeze tiny notes into the margins, etc. is super duper helpful — especially in the sciences where there are a lot of spatial concepts. And if the professor provides notes or slides for you to use, do not fall for this trick. Your professor does not use their own material to study for tests, and they will inevitably gloss over key details. Write your own notes; they will be so much more thorough and attuned to the specific gaps in your knowledge.
• Not too long after taking the class, I would go home and transcribe my rashly-scribbled notes into something future-me would be able to understand. That means using more legible handwriting, translating abstract drawings into proper diagrams with full sentences to explain them, and so on. If I needed to, I would use my textbook for reference or clarification to make sure I got the facts right if my original notes were unclear. It is ideal to do this the same day you took the class when it's still fresh in your mind; think of it as part of your daily homework.
• As the test approached, I would review the second set of notes and figure out which items were almost certainly going to be on the test, which items might be on the test, and which items stood a low but non-zero chance of being on the test. Then I would re-write these into study notes. (Yes, this means I wrote my notes three times; this sounds like a lot of work but, believe me, it takes a lot less time overall than the alternatives studying methods, especially if saves you from repeating classes.)
• There are a few different ways to make study notes. The "proper" way to do it is using flashcards: every fact, diagram, list, etc., you have to memorize gets its own flash card—with a question on the front (How do you draw the Krebs Cycle? What is the chemical structure of caffeine? etc.) and the answer on the back, and then you use them to study. However, I had basically no money and could not afford flashcards, so I made do with regular paper: I would write questions on one side of a sheet (in descending order from most important to least important), and then write the corresponding answers on the other, and then I would just flip back and forth as I was studying. If the answers were complex (e.g., drawing diagrams), I would keep some scratch paper on hand to write my attempted answers on and then compare them to the correct answer,
• Then get to quizzing yourself. At first, you will just get everything wrong and feel stupid. But all that means is you haven't crammed enough yet, and you've just got to put in your reps. I would do, say, five questions over and over; when I could get all five of them correct in row, then I would do the next five questions. When I had those down, then I would do all ten in order to make sure I still remembered the first five — and then move on down the list in this fashion. When I could answer all the questions, then I would stop for the day.
• The next day, I would repeat the whole process. Start with the first five, then do the next five, then do the five after that — and occasionally going back and testing myself on the previous questions if I hadn't done them for a little while. And I would keep doing this every evening, up to the day before the test.
• The night before the test, I would do one last round of quizzing myself, but I would absolutely not let it eat into my bedtime. In fact, I would try to go to bed early that night and do something extra relaxing (like listen to soothing music in the dark) to help me get to sleep.
• The morning before the test, I would give myself a couple hours to thoroughly quiz myself over breakfast (even if that meant waking up extra early, if the test was in the early morning). And then I would arrive about 30-45 minutes early, and continue quizzing myself directly ahead of the test while I waited in the hallway for them to let me in. By the time I finally went in to take the test, all the material was still fresh in my mind, and I usually zoomed right through the test.So the other question, then, is how do you actually make yourself sit down and do the cramming? That will depend a lot on what works for you personally, but some general advice (trite as it is) is to make sure that you are getting enough sleep and that you are eating healthy food that does not leave you feeling ill or drowsy later on. The more tired or crappy you feel, the more distractable you are, and the harder it will be to practice willpower.
Another thing that can help enormously is the Pomodoro technique. This works extremely well for seemingly endless, boring tasks like cramming.
I, personally, found it helpful to take power naps partway through my study sessions. When I was studying for final exams and cramming a ton of material for a bunch of different classes all day long, I would get mentally exhausted and sometimes have several naps a day! Naps are a really fantastic way to give yourself a break because they not only rest your weary brain, but sleep also helps you commit what you are studying to memory.
This all sounds like a huge time sink, and it is — for a short time. It will suck away your leisure time for a good week or two leading up to tests. But then the rest of your time (aside from rewriting notes into a legible format) is yours, and that's when you can really sink your teeth into this incredible learning opportunity in front of you, where numerous experts are available to you at no extra cost and eager to engage your curiosity.
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Comment on I have now donated a full gallon of blood products! in ~health
RoyalHenOil LinkIf anyone here experiences pain from having your blood drawn and is therefore reluctant to donate, maybe time try your other arm and see if that feels better? My partner always hated having blood...If anyone here experiences pain from having your blood drawn and is therefore reluctant to donate, maybe time try your other arm and see if that feels better?
My partner always hated having blood drawn because it hurt him terribly (whereas I can barely even feel it). He would get it done only in his non-dominant arm because it would ache for a long time after. But then a particularly observant phlebotomist had a look at his arm and said, "Did you know that you have a nerve growing right in the way of your vein? Let me do your other arm instead." And it now he no longer dreads having his blood drawn.
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Comment on Does the Dog Die? - A website for filtering movies by triggers in ~movies
RoyalHenOil Link ParentCapalert did this, specifically for evangelical Christians looking for movies suitable for their children to watch. Although I am a solid atheist, I don't mind the existence of this site. In fact,...Would a similar site be tolerable if it listed movies on the basis of violations of religious prohibitions or ideological precepts?
Capalert did this, specifically for evangelical Christians looking for movies suitable for their children to watch.
Although I am a solid atheist, I don't mind the existence of this site. In fact, I rather like it: I find some of the reviews pretty amusing (e.g., he criticizes Bewitched, "I counted 46 uses of 'magic' for purposes such as to do harm, to manipulate for unfair advantage, to deceive, to grow plants, to appear and disappear, for theft, to control time, to fly and levitate, to force performance of the victim(s) and many other things such as convenience manipulations like opening and closing doors and making an umbrella appear."), while others are just sweet (e.g., he praises Wall-E, "I will be so bold as to make a somewhat rare positive comment about a film. This film presents one of the best visual depictions of falling in love I have ever seen in an animated film. A great example of non-verbal communication."). And I also appreciated the honesty of these reviews within the context of the belief system (e.g., The Chronicles of Narnia, despite carrying an overtly Christian message, gets failing scores on "wanton violence" and "offenses to God", such as depicting mythological human/animal hybrids).
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Comment on PVP in MMORPGs is dead (and here's why) in ~games
RoyalHenOil Link ParentFor me, it is completely the opposite. I hate matched competitive games with a passion, but I love sudden moments of chaos. I enjoy games like Dwarf Fortress and Noita, which occasionally throw...For me, it is completely the opposite. I hate matched competitive games with a passion, but I love sudden moments of chaos. I enjoy games like Dwarf Fortress and Noita, which occasionally throw total madness at you that there is no hope of countering. And, likewise, I played WoW on a PvP server and had enormous fun running around in areas where there might be overpowered Alliance players lurking (I was Horde).
Unfortunately, WoW extremely did not cater to my tastes. I loved loved loved being in over my head (e.g., trying to survive in zones where every monster was ??? level), but the most effective way to level up was to grind for experience in the most boring, level-appropriate locations possible. This is why I ultimately stopped playing WoW. I felt like I was being punished for having fun; my friends (who were less grinding-averse than I am) all leveled up far faster than me because they played the game as it was "supposed" to be played, and then I couldn't play with them anymore.
I just don't have the willpower to treat a game as a chore. I hated leveling up in WoW so much. I would procrastinate on my designated grinding time by doing homework instead — and when I did manage to make myself sit down and play, I would inevitably get distracted and run toward mayhem instead.
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Comment on Venting doesn't reduce anger, but doing calming activities does, study finds in ~science
RoyalHenOil Link ParentThis is the case for me as well. I am not prone to anger (when I am deeply unhappy, I default to sadness instead), but anger is sometimes a very useful emotion to have (it motivates action, unlike...When I'm angry and I vent to someone, I usually don't do it because I want the anger to go away. I'm pretty good at controlling my emotions, and if I wanted to calm down, I could've just done that myself.
This is the case for me as well. I am not prone to anger (when I am deeply unhappy, I default to sadness instead), but anger is sometimes a very useful emotion to have (it motivates action, unlike sadness which saps my willpower), so I have occasionally used venting and a few other similar techniques to deliberately increase my agitation level. I do not naturally reach the degree of anger required to make the hard decision to, say, leave a bad relationship or a bad job.
Unfortunately, I think some people can tell that I am easygoing and try to take advantage of that. They are terribly surprised when, seemingly out of nowhere, I react to them with rage (when I've previously only ever been patient and accommodating, however egregious their impositions) and that I intend to never make peace with them, not even over years or decades. What they don't realize is that my rage is meticulously groomed over a period of weeks or months; it is not some temporary departure from rationality.
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Comment on Hey, monthly mystery commenters, what's up with the hit-and-runs? in ~tildes
RoyalHenOil Link ParentThis is exactly me. When I was active on Reddit, however, I would reply to comments even if I was several days late; only the person I was replying to, and possibly the person who made the...- simply infrequent viewers. They may pop in, make a few comments, and then not think about Tildes for days. By the time they see a reply, the window is long gone to reply.
This is exactly me. When I was active on Reddit, however, I would reply to comments even if I was several days late; only the person I was replying to, and possibly the person who made the original post, would get notified.
However, I am very reluctant to do that on Tildes because the whole thread gets bumped and everyone sees it on their front page again.
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Comment on Spotting visual signs of gentrification at scale in ~tech
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentI think the artsy/youthful route (indicated by things like murals) is definitely a common way that neighborhoods begin to gentrify. Young people without means (often students) will often spring...I think the artsy/youthful route (indicated by things like murals) is definitely a common way that neighborhoods begin to gentrify. Young people without means (often students) will often spring for an inexpensive neighborhood, and then they eventually reach a critical mass where the neighborhood becomes desirable to others seeking out the youthful vibe. Also, the young people themselves will grow older and accumulate wealth.
My own childhood neighborhood gentrified exclusively through the ethnic/cultural route, not the artsy route, so we never had murals.
My parents were really struggling financially when they bought their house, and so they bought it in a neighborhood that had undergone so much population loss that it vaguely resembled a post-apocalypse movie: there were boarded-up buildings everywhere (including an entire mall), forests erupting out of parking lots, kudzu completely obscuring some roads, etc. It was honestly a pretty magical place to spend my early childhood: I was always outside exploring, and I could range through forests for hours and hours and hardly see another person — and all within sight of skyscrapers. But that did not last.
The first signs of gentrification came when very lots of desperately poor immigrants of uncertain visa status started renting (or possibly squatting in) previously abandoned homes in the area. They were followed by immigrant families, who bought up the houses to open up restaurants, nail salons, etc. Then they opened up the mall. Then they built expansions onto the mall and expansions onto the houses-turned-shops. Then they tore down houses-turned-shops to make purpose-built shops. Then they started having carnivals, concerts, firework shows, etc., and it became a pretty freaking rad place to be a teenager.
Around this point, white gay couples started moving in because it was such a fun, happening neighborhood. The house prices were still very low because the quality of the local schools was not up to middle class standards, which the gay couples didn't care because they didn't have kids. But once the number of white people reached a certain critical mass, white middle-class families started spilling into the neighborhood (they just used their No Child Left behind school vouchers to send their kids to other schools) and drove the house prices way, way up. At this point, immigrant families were suddenly getting economically displaced from the neighborhood, and gay couples followed because the neighborhood wasn't as fun anymore.
At this point, the community incorporated, and the brand new local government started investing heavily in the local schools (tearing them down and replacing them with new buildings, hiring a ton of staff, etc.). Parks were built, sidewalks and street lights were added to roads, public transportation was expanded, etc.
But this middle class heyday was short-lived, because then the speculative investors showed up, and they have exactly one goal in mind: selling to rich people. Shops and community centers are converted into industrial-modern-style apartments, apartment buildings are torn down and replaced with lower-density townhouses, small standalone houses are torn down and turned into 3-storey mcmansions, etc. Vast swathes of woodland are clear cut, even in places where it is not required for new buildings: mature oaks, beeches, rhododendrons, etc., that would look lovely amongst the mcmansions are, instead, chopped down and replaced with lawns or, even worse, fields of pavers.
As far as I can tell, no rich people have actually moved in; they just buy, build, clear cut, and sell. Some new houses are built over the foundations of previous houses that were, themselves, built just a few years ago over the foundations of the houses before them.
My parents still live there, and they have found the latest round of changes very sad; it was such a beautiful and interesting neighborhood throughout its various stages, but now it's being ransacked of its greenery and rendered into a cultural desert.
Developers knock on their door and drop letters in their mailbox, asking to buy their house, sight unseen, for far larger sums than they originally bought it. They have considered these offers from time to time, but they don't want to move too far away from their friends and the life they have built for themselves, and so they are stuck: any other house they might be able to afford is immediately snapped up by developers and torn down before they can even have a peek inside. Not only that, but their lot is one of the last remaining spaces with mature trees, and they hate the thought of them being bulldozed.
I moved overseas during the white-middle-class phase of gentrification, and I used to enjoy going back home to visit my family; the place wasn't as fun as it had been when I was a teenager or when I was a child, but it was still nice seeing the fancy new street lights and parks. But now I hate going back. It knots my stomach up. It feels like wanton destruction for no purpose. I have a hard time even looking at photos from my childhood, because I can see all the trees in the background that are no more, and because the amazing community that once thrived there has been dispersed to who knows where.
I think what I feel about it must be a very small taste of what it must be like to watch your nation colonized and your people dissolved into a far-flung diaspora, and to realize that essentially no one living there now understands or cares what has been lost.
I'm not sure that I would use the term "forced", but friendship can absolutely form between people who, left to their own devices, may not have given each other a chance. The way we present ourselves toward strangers differs from the way we present ourselves toward friends, and this can have an unintended filtering effect that may not necessarily correlate with compatibility.
Some of my most treasured friendships are with people I was "forced" to get to know via school or work. They are people who, from a certain perspective, have very little in common with me — but when we got to know each other, we discovered that our differences (like cultural background) were only skin deep, and we actually have a whole lot in common in deeper ways (like innate personality).
Some of these friendships took a very long time to bloom. With one of my closer friends, we only became friends after years of having to work closely together—but when it finally happened, we became the kind of friends-for-life who never truly drift apart. Left to our own devices, we never would have become friends because our acquaintance-personalities are not very compatible, even though our friend-personalities very much are.
Of course, this can go the other way as well. It is common to meet people you hit it off with right away, and then later discover you don't actually get along with as you become friends.