My point though is that you talk about all of that as if it’s some sort of chore.

To me, it’s a lot of the fun.

I rarely even get to the point of having to stop and weigh choices in my inventory, since every time I come across something new, I have to stop and check it out and try to figure out what it is and what it does and what sort of advantages or disadvantages it might have. I enjoy that. So all along the way, I’m figuring out what I want to or think I should keep and what I want to or think I can get rid of, and not because a finite inventory demands it, but because that’s part of the point of playing in the first place.

Broadly, you’re asking if other people actually invest the time and energy to sort out how to play complex games. I’m saying that we not only can and do, but that that’s a lot of the point. That whole process of sorting things out is a lot of the reason that we play in the first place.

Yeah - I just jump in and wing it.

At the risk of inviting the internet’s wrath, when people talk about the difference between serious gamers and casuals, this is the sort of thing they’re talking about.

“Serious” gaming involves a particular set of skills and interests, such that the person is willing and able to just jump into some complicated new game and figure it out. And it’s not just that “serious” gamers can do that - the point is that they want to. They enjoy it. They enjoy being lost, then slowly putting the pieces together and figuring out how things work and getting better because they’ve figured it out. And they enjoy the details - learning which skills do what and which items do what, and how it all interrelates. All that stuff isn’t some chore to be avoided - it’s a lot of the point - a lot of the reason that they (we) play games.

You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything, and I can’t even imagine doing that. To me, that’s not just obviously bad strategy, but entirely missing the point - like buying ingredients to make delicious food, then bringing them home and throwing them in the garbage.

The way it made me really think about how truly expansive space and time are really made me think that “that’s not impossible to think that there is a 11th dimension being that has some agenda that we cannot understand.”

Absolutely.

But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about making the leap from recognizing that such a being could exist to believing that such a being does exist. That, to me, is so bizarrely irrational that I can’t even work out how it is that people apparently actually do it.

Yeah - I don’t even really understand how all of that works. I see that people apparently sincerely believe, but I have no idea how - what it is that goes on inside their brains that allows them to make that leap to actually believing.

I don’t know that it does, but I can see how it could.

One way that neurodivergence can manifest is as a relative inability to simply assume things - a relatively outsized need for clear evidence on which to base a conclusion. And religion is notably devoid of actual evidence.

No surprise there. He’s a middle-aged teenage edgelord - what else would he do other than play video games and shitpost on used-to-be-twitter?

I don’t spend any time on Mastodon.

Why? Are there anarchists on Mastodon? Or is this some kind of sarcasm I’m not getting?

I do have a Mastodon account, but I never use it. I much prefer forums over microblogs.

The implication here is that anarchists are relatively common on the fediverse, and if so, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen this idea expressed.

But the thing is that I am an anarchist, and I’ve been keeping my eyes open, and I haven’t seen any other anarchists here. LOTS of authoritarian leftists, ranging from naive social democrats to full-blown “submit or die” tankies, but not one single other anarchist.

So are you actually trying to say that anarchists are common here? And if so, where are they?

As is generally the case, only a relative few have enough power to actually do something meaningful, and as the winners of the countless battles that had to be fought as they crawled their way up whichever hierarchy to the top of which they now cling, they tend to be ruthless, self-serving, dishonest, amoral and entirely heartless, hiding behind a convincing-enough veneer of principles and integrity.

So as is generally the case, the world can be roughly divided into those who could do something but won’t. those who would do something but can’t, and those who aren’t paying attention, for whatever reason.

Definitely.

I posted a fair amount on Reddit too, but mostly I’d just write something, then think about what was likely to happen if I actually posted it, then delete it.

I think this puts consciousness on too high of a mystic pedestal.

I think that one of the most common ways by which the devotees of reductive physicalism try to make it appear to be a valid position is by positing a false dichotomy by which they then sneeringly characterize anything that’s not simply physical as “mystic.”

What makes you think that it is impossible to observe someone else’s consciousness?

The fact that it’s an emergent phenomenon with no physical manifestation.

I think we’ll be able to (and in fact we already can to some notable degree) track neuronal activity in a brain and map it and interpret it, so we can make reasonably solid guesses regarding its nature - general type, intensity, efficiency and so on - but we can never actually observe its content, since its content is a gestalt formed within and only accessible to the mind that’s experiencing it.

There’s nothing at all “mystic” about that - it’s simple logic and reason.

And, by the bye, it’s also much of why actual philosophers rejected reductive physicalism almost a century ago.

Philosophy can’t have "a scientific basis.

If an idea has a legitimate scientific basis, then it’s not philosophy - it’s science. Philosophy explicitly addresses ideas for which there is not, and in most cases there can’t be, a legitimate scientific basis.

Conveniently enough, I just wrote another response to the thread, since there was more I wanted to say on the topic, and it addresses this.

It’s not a matter of not having the tools to test theories of consciousness - it’s more fundamental than that. We are consciousness. When we theorize on consciousness, we are engaging in consciousness. It’s inescapable - it’s the very thing that makes it possible to theorize. And it’s entirely experiential - you necessarily experience your own consciousness and cannot possibly observe anyone else’s. We are each and all, and necessarily, behind a veil of perception. It’s literally impossible for it to be otherwise - to somehow step outside of consciousness and observe it, since the only thing that can meaningfully observe it is that same consciousness.

Yes - we can concevably at least make some good guesses regarding the physical processes that correspond with our experiences of consciousness, but that’s necessarily the extent of it. Again, it’s not simply that we don’t have the tools to do more than that, but that it’s inherently impossible for it to be otherwise.

This is still nagging at me - there’s more I want to say. So, another response.

This particular theory is a pretty good illustration of the unfortunate ignorance of philosophy I mentioned, but an even better one is mentioned in the article - “the popular claim, advanced by philosopher Nick Bostrom and taken seriously by physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Chalmers, among others, that our reality is a simulation being run on a computer, as in The Matrix.”

That’s not just pseudoscience, but embarassingly ignorant. If these people had even the vaguest understanding of the idea, they’d recognize that it’s about as far from science as it’s possible to get.

The whole concept was first popularized by Descartes in the 17th century. He presented it as the possibility that one’s perception of reality could be manipulated by an “evil demon,” but the underlying concept was the same as “the Matrix.”

But the thing is that it was never intended to be an actual theory of perception and consciousness - rather it was a thought experiment meant to illustrate the fact that it could be the case that our perceptions of reality are controlled by an evil demon (or are a computer simulation), and we could never know.

The exact point is that it’s literally impossible to somehow step outside of our perceptions and our consciousness and analyze them, since any observations we might make are and can only be products of the very perceptions and consciousness we’re trying to analyze. So they could be entirely right or entirely wrong or anything in between and we could never know, since they simply are and can only be whatever they are.

As far as that goes then, it not only falls astray of but pretty much explicitly illustrates the distinction between science and pseudoscience.

And if Tyson et al had even the faintest understanding of philosophy - if they weren’t blinded by some ludicrously ignorant species of reductive physicalism - they’d already understand that, and recognize how foolish it is to treat the Matrix, or any other such idea, as a legitimate theory.

I’m pleased to see this.

In recent decades, science has been trying to move into areas, like consciousness, that are really philosophy, and all that does is fuck things up for everyone.

Yes - of course it’s pseudoscience - it can’t help but be, since it’s all untestable.

The problem is that, by labeling it “science,” whatever it is that someone proposes is immediately treated by devotees of scientism as certain fact, when in reality it’s philosophy, and thus “fact” is a quality it can’t even possess. And that’s doubly a problem because not only is it not and can’t ever be legitimately treated as fact but, not to put too fine a point on it, when it comes to philosophy, all too many scientists don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. In ways, many of them are even more ignorant than laypeople, since they tend to disdain and thus ignore the philosophy that’s gone before them.

The one time I did that, I just switched my inbox from “Unread” to “All.” Problem solved.

I happened to run across a CD of the fourth one used, a couple of years after it released. I didn’t even know it existed before that, and definitely didn’t know it’d end up becoming my favorite. And I still don’t have a copy of the fifth. I do have the last two though.

25 On is sort of reminiscent of Tornado or The Good News and the Bad News - a return to form. It’s pretty good on its own, but sort of suffers by comparison. Monster Movie is odd but interesting. It feels kind of self-indulgent, but in a good way - just a bunch of guys sitting around playing what they want to play just because that’s what they want to play. It’s a bit disjointed, but I like it.

I happened on them when they put out their first album and have been a fan ever since, and that’s even without ever getting a chance to see them live. Bob Walkenhorst is easily my favorite songwriter.

Flirting with the Universe is their fourth album - after a bit of a recording hiatus after The Good News and the Bad News, and it’s far and away my favorite. It’s obvious that they took their time and carefully crafted an album designed to showcase their talent. It’s unfortunate that it still didn’t manage to bring them the recognition they’ve always deserved, but I appreciate it.

Off the top of my head…

The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America

Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat

The Rainmakers - Flirting with the Universe

XTC - Black Sea

Morphine - Good

Bloodhound Gang - Hooray for Boobies

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes

The Mattoid - Great Lovers

Frank Zappa - Joe’s Garage

Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog?

…or something like that…

Yes - I’ve had many of those asshats over the years insist that I have to “choose a side.”

That’s generally because they can’t actually argue for their position, and the best they can manage is to find fault with a self-serving characterization of a falsely dichotomous opposing position. So they need to be able to assign me to one or the other team, so they know whether they can ignore me or if they need to hurl some emotive rhetoric and fallacies somewhere in my general direction.

And yes - they’re almost never worth engaging with.

And to go all the way back, it could be said that the exact problem is that they have unfounded confidence.

And it’s sort of ironic really, because they’re generally driven by a psychological need to be right, and clinging desperately to one fixed position pretty much guarantees that right is the one thing they will not be.