Humanitarian technologist & big data wrangler, on a quest for evidence-based policy. Rational optimist, post-statist, contemplative humanist, mystery enthusiast, bardo tourist.
I don’t understand how letting players pay money to avoid grinding for items isn’t a douchy move. It either means they think you will have less fun if you pay less (otherwise people wouldn’t be motivated to buy shortcuts) or that they are making you pay extra for an easy mode.
I understand your point, but I think that magical and mythical thinking are fully part of how our minds evolved and still work, and if we fully develop our faculties of rationalization, almost everyone still thinks magically. Think about ideas like luck, or a fear of something improbable, or most of our expectations in life. Or why many masters of logic still believe in mythical beings and afterlives.
If you talk to someone from an animistic culture, they don’t need to question or have a structure of reasoning in place to explain why the waterfall has a spirit. It just does, it always has and it’s obvious. However, if a person who lives in a wealthy country today, had public education and believes that vaccines are dangerous. They will believe it rationally, not irrationally, and have a slew of rationalizations for the belief. These are two types of magical thinking, but the former has a magical worldview and the latter does not.
Rationality is weak against many types of thinking and motivation, and there are many more steps in the maturation of a mind. I do personally agree that a solid foundation in rational thinking should underlie whatever beliefs, morals, ethics, and insights a person adopts. But it is also highly likely that in my examples the former person is healthier and happier than the latter person, and both could be just as gullible.
I prefer this view. Limiting the definition of cults to “small” or “based around a person” is missing the point that all religions are self-preserving in-groups that offer “truths” that will limit your worldview by excluding others, and practices that differentiate followers behaviorally.
But also beliefs can be useful. For example, the idea of an afterlife or reincarnation can help reduce the fear of death. The belief of forgiveness for sins, can offer redemption. That random events have meaning. That we are not alone when we are alone. All cognitively useful and therapeutic.
Opposing beliefs can be held at the same time. I can know that probabilistically, or based on personal experience, or empirical evidence, that death is either an ending or an unknowable, and still choose to believe in reincarnation because it does give more meaning to my actions and reduce fear of death.
And cult practices are often as good for the individual as the beliefs. Having community and regular social interaction is critical to human health. Conducting rituals and ceremonies give structure, meaning and comfort to the parts of our days and lives. Praying and meditating. Charity and service and on and on. These are all useful, healthy to the individual and to society.
When we can learn to adopt these things without closing our minds to other worldviews and possibilities, without in-group fear and defensiveness, without superiority and proselytization we’ll be in a better world that’s still full of cults
Is this Winamp for Finns or a financial amplification device?
Switched away to Vivaldi and Opera on desktop years ago due to better design and ability to swap between workspaces. Trying to migrate back to Firefox for ethical reasons. Desktop design still lags behind but privacy is great.
The main problems I have with it now are sometimes there are still issues with loading between browser and apps. Like it might open multiple tabs trying to open an app, and it leaves the app redirect pages open in your tabs list. Additionally, sometimes (like 3% of the time) website scaling doesn’t always work, especially on older sites or those made with janky CMS’s, and I’ve also rarely had problems with some dynamic content like inline forms and graphs.
I recently made the switch. Make sure to install whatever add-ons you need, turn on the “open links in apps” setting, and turn on the “pull to refresh” setting. Import your bookmarks and you can still use the Android password manager. It’s not 100% as smooth, but it’s pretty close.
I too am confused
Yup, and in my case they started sending door-to-door salespeople. They’re spending all the money to kill Google Fiber where I’m at.
Their website, instructions for use and list of tested games: https://beastsaber.notion.site/beastsaber/Praydog-s-UEVR-Beta-Getting-Started-Guide-4c4d94ecf8cf4933b04ac362411a930e
You can also follow along on this Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/aV7UDa8c
I mean, hypothetically. That is the end result of the neoliberal, or late capitalism economic philosophy if applied on a model. But economic systems in practice are never the philosophy, and are only there in the first place to support the governance of a nation state. I spend half my time in Italy, for example, where the laws protect both the big international brands and the mom and pop shops.
My point is that we are the citizens that make up the government that designs the governance rules for our nation-state. Capitalism is not a government, or people, or the entire story when it comes to commerce and trade systems. We can shape it and use it, like any other framework.
Likewise, regardless of your economic system, greedy people will try to accumulate power, bend the rules to benefit themselves, and extend those benefits across borders if they can. Powerful egos will warp people and rules around them like gravity. All governance systems that strive to be just, collaborative and promote the quality of life of all its citizens have to both put strong rules in place to check the power-hungry, and constantly monitor and adapt to keep them in check.
Two male apes park next to each other:
“You don’t fit into the sociocultural group I’m a part of, AKA THE BEST GROUP, because you are not sending the right social signals! Therefore YOU ARE NOT A VERILE MATE FOR THE HOMINID FEMALES!”
“NO! CLEARLY IT IS YOU WHO WILL NOT SEED THE NEXT GENERATION OF OFFSPRING! Based on all the information I’ve gotten about appropriate social signals for my gender, age, ethnicity, cult, location and socioeconomic status, I am displaying the appropriate signals! So I shall point at you and say WEIRD!”
I agree, I think we could even go further and make vehicles of a certain size use cargo lanes on the highway.
My wife is European and lives in the US and she thinks the fact that giant SUVs and trucks can have such a vast size differential to compact cars, so that she is eye-level with their bumper, and that both use the same license and same lanes, is incredibly dangerous.
I bought one 3 months ago after going back and forth for ages. It’s really good but I wish I had either bought it immediately or waited a few more months. Don’t hesitate, go for it.
Specifically for neoliberal capitalism, it’s a fitting metaphor. The lack of tying capital to any concrete resources, constraints or externalities, with a supposition that infinite capital growth is possible, would actually lead to… the 20th century. Though nobody really buys this anymore, and is clearly just a justification to do horrible things in the name of making money. While greed has and will always destroy lives, communities and environments, the real damage of neoliberal capitalism is that it’s ahistorical. Removing people from the philosophical and social context in which the system was born and operates, makes it hard to see and hard to question for most people.
Participating in society isn’t the same thing as being in a prison. There are always rules and consequences in any social organization, whether it’s a prison, a school, a gang or a rave. If the organization is a village, city or state, that is somewhat wealthy and somewhat democratic, most people followed rules to be ethical, rather than out of fear for themselves.
Our society right now is organized in the fashion of 20th century institutions, and in the ways that ideas are validated, rules are made, disseminated and followed does feel like an institutional bureaucracy - like a prison, a school, or an office that generates rules by consensus of a small group of leaders or experts. And it is always a moral good to see the water we are swimming in, whether it’s how our society is organized and its shortcomings, how our thoughts and behaviors are habitualized and unhealthy.
And yes, there are always people who have strong feelings for or against institutional rules, make that a large part of their identity, and crusade for the rules to be adopted or rejected. And sometimes, these people are crusading against their own self interests. For example, a working class individual who fights against progressive or corporate taxation.
So I agree with most of your points. But your framing makes it seem like (assuming you’re American) we live in an oppressive society that uses psychological tricks to brainwash people into following draconian rules. But, relative to much of the world today, and all of history, that is just a wild exaggeration. The kind of wild exaggeration that is used to sell ad time these days, which beggars down votes.
This shouldn’t happen unless you overcook your pasta. When the water starts boiling, toss in some salt and then the pasta. Wait for length of time on the pasta package. Then remove from heat and drain. If it still gets sticky, buy a better quality pasta.
This happened to me too, except my L5/S1 disc is permanently bulged now. If I don’t keep my core strong, and my hips and thighs flexible, I get debilitating sciatic pain down my right leg.
Stay in shape lads! Stay strong, but don’t lift hard. Stay flexible, but don’t stretch too far. Get some cardio, but low impact.
If only they taught us in school how to take care of our bodies, our feelings, our minds, our relationships, our communities and our environment… sadlolz
Having continuous population growth leads to continuous economic growth. But…
You can also achieve that by squeezing more economic productivity out of fewer people, by continuously improving education, diversity of thought, legally protecting creativity, fostering small businesses through seed money and tax incentives, and lots of other stuff.
We have already been scaling the amount of productivity that comes out of a population since the invention of the steam engine and the factory line. Digital automation, AI and robotics are expected to keep that trend going for a long time.
Not to mention, that it’s easier now to operate productively in areas of less dense population. Previously small towns would die, but with clever infrastructure that supports broadband everywhere, public transportation, self-driving vehicles, drone delivery, additive manufacturing (3d printing), virtual presence through XR, and so on, you can operate a rural population like a big productive city, and get the benefits of both.
And at the end of the day, if your economy doesn’t grow, it just means that wealth in the country doesn’t grow.You can maintain that indefinitely. Or if an economy shrinks, society doesn’t come collapsing down until everyone gets poor enough that bribery and corruption overcome lawfulness. But if the society was already wealthy, that will take a long time, and you can mitigate it by doing things like spreading out concentrations of wealth among the population (taxing the rich), increasing immigration, and adopting socioeconomic sustainability planning approaches.
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