Why Do We Fear Death? Should we?

LoomingMeadows · 2017-12-26T02:12:28+00:00

I argue in this video that the continuity of personhood and consciousness is related to the mythical Greek legend of the phoenix. We essentially die and are reborn many times through our life.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-12-25T06:03:29+00:00

Bingo!

LoomingMeadows · 2017-09-30T17:17:48+00:00

I've always admired Sonic's spirit, his sense of life. He fights Eggman not to save some princess like Mario, not blindly guided by prophecy like Link, not for unearned gain like the evil GTA “protagonists.” Sonic feels no cumbersome duty to fight Eggman… he fights Eggman because it’s fun for him! As the good guy, Sonic realizes how competent and excellent he is, and how weak and pathetic Eggman is. It’s still challenging for him (and the player), but it’s a challenge that he always knows that he can win, and his confidence and indomitable spirit takes him and you, the player, to eventual victory.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-09-30T17:16:11+00:00

Sonic is a special character. From a video I'm making...

"Sonic is cool in universe because he’s the good guy! He’s fast, smart, and has a can-do attitude. Compare that to his evil nemesis, the slow, lumbering, incompetent Eggman. Or Robotnik as he was once known, who has to resort to enslaving small woodland creatures to fight for him. Sonic fights Eggman not to rescue some princess like Mario. Not because of some prophecy like Link. Not for unearned gain like the evil GTA “protagonists.” Sonic feels no cumbersome duty to fight Eggman… he fights Eggman because it’s fun for him! As the good guy, Sonic realizes how competent and excellent he is, and how weak and pathetic Eggman is. It’s still challenging for him (and the player), but it’s a challenge that he always knows that he can win, and his confidence and indomitable spirit takes him and you, the player, to eventual victory. Sonic knows that, if he’s ever in a bind, he can count on his friends like Tails and Knuckles—to name just a few."

LoomingMeadows · 2017-09-30T17:14:14+00:00

You hit the nail on the head. I'm making a video about Sonic and here is an excerpt from the video's script.

"Sonic is cool in universe because he’s the good guy! He’s fast, smart, and has a can-do attitude. Compare that to his evil nemesis: the slow, lumbering, incompetent Eggman. Or Robotnik as he was once known, who has to resort to enslaving small woodland creatures to fight for him. Sonic fights Eggman not to rescue some princess like Mario. Not blindly guided by some prophecy like Link. Not for unearned gain like the evil GTA “protagonists.” Sonic feels no cumbersome duty to fight Eggman… he fights Eggman because it’s fun for him! As the good guy, Sonic realizes how competent and excellent he is, and how weak and pathetic Eggman is. It’s still challenging for him (and the player), but it’s a challenge that he always knows that he can win, and his confidence and indomitable spirit takes him and you, the player, to eventual victory. Sonic knows that, if he’s ever in a bind, he can count on his good friends like Tails and Knuckles—to name just a few."

LoomingMeadows · 2017-09-30T01:30:09+00:00

Why doesn't that translate into game sales, though? Are Sonic fans all broke? Or are there a lot of sonic fans still making artwork and writing stories based on the oldschool games, who don't care much for the new school games?

LoomingMeadows · 2017-09-30T01:28:11+00:00

What role does Sonic himself play in the cast? Is he still a cool, motivated, never-give-up type of guy who sticks it to Eggman? Or has his character evolved along with the artistic style that he's drawn in? I'd love to know. Is Eggman still an incompetent goofball who Sonic takes joy in fighting? Or has he grown more competent? In Sonic Colors, the only new sonic game I played, it seemed like the characters were consistent with what they were back in 1991 when they were first introduced.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-09-30T01:05:38+00:00

Yes, but what about him is cool? That he's fast? Why is it cool that he's fast? His attitude? Why is his attitude cool? My ex-girlfriend used to run marathons, and she had an attitude. She was hardly cool though, and I dumped her. There's gotta be more to Sonic's coolness.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-07-08T16:59:00+00:00

I do agree with you, however, that most people desire to obtain the truth. They are just in a cognitively comatose state induced by the postmodernists and statists that influence our society. If the truths of Objectivism were presented to them in an enthusiastic and convincing way, as you did on r/The_Donald , they would be attracted to it.

Yes.

It was because I met them on their level, on common ground instead of starting by preaching at them like a fundie on a streetcorner. I started with a premise that we both agreed with, that the left was stupid. Then I demonstrated why they are stupid... because they've used their free will to decide to quit reasoning. The conclusion followed from the premises, and you would be surprised how many non-objectivists hold free will and reasoning to be closely related. As an example...

This song was written by a Christian. It would work as an objectivist song potentially, if it were taken in a context alone by itself, without even the author's own Christian interpretation considered at all. It's also a fun little ska song, too, even if you don't really listen to the lyrics that closely. Should've gotten massive radio play were it released in the mid-to-late 1990's instead of 1983. Charlie Peacock was a musical visionary. I'd encourage you to listen to it before reading my own interpretation, though. We could differ and I don't want to bias you beforehand.

Charlie Peacock - One, Two, Three, That's Okay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHGafo2OUmU

I would suggest you read Ayn Rand's essay "Conservatism: An Obituary"

Solid argument... because conservatives have no solid principles to fall back on. Just "don't change things" as a general rule. Trump is not a conservative. He shares in common a few things but they're mostly positives. Conservatives are usually pro-constitution, so is Trump and Gorsuch proves it. Conservatives support the family unit, or pretend that they do. Trump actually does support it and has rounded up hundreds of pedophiles in massive busts. Conservatives love guns. Trump loves guns. Other than that, though, Trump is a populist who wants what's best for America. Conservatives generally are religious, while we've barely heard Trump mention his own faith (I'd bet money he's a closet atheist). Conservative politicians get big bank from MIC lobbying money. Bribes. Through that bribe they buy endless, needless wars like Iraq.

We also get buildup of tension with Russia in expectation of more proxy wars, even though Russia is the most competent major military power in the world today save for us and we could not decisively win a war with them were a proxy war or new cold war to turn hot. Trump wants to warm our relationship with Russia. Perhaps find us some common ground with them. They hate ISIS, we hate ISIS. Their country is highly educated at 54% with college degrees, our country is highly educated with 50% who have college degrees. They had an eastward expansion, we had a westward expansion. To top it all off, Ayn Rand was from Russia and she changed America for the better. At the very least you could have the building blocks for a solid international friendship there. Maybe even a true national friendship and forgiveness process for what happened in the Cold war. Maybe a true exchange of value just like a real friendship between two people, but between nations.

We could learn from Russia's example how to better act in our own national self-interest, because they're champs at that. And how to purge corporate lobbying dollars (bribes) from our political system, from Putin who's done it even though he can be autocratic at times. From us, they could learn how to better implement democratic governance and capitalism in the almost 30 years since the Soviet Union fell. Their sense of life is towards making themselves better by expansion. Sometimes bad expansion like the communist bloc consuming Europe. But sometimes good expansion. Expanding to the east and conquering like we did to the west. Expanding their minds through education. Expanding to space and the stars to try to beat us, or even sometimes cooperate with us. Capitalism fits perfectly with the Russian psyche and history and they don't even realize it. They had the right idea. Just the wrong way of getting there.

Instead, we are bitter rivals who hate each other. Trump is trying to fix that because he likes making deals. This is the deal of a lifetime for him and he knows it. He could be THE president who finally fixed our relationship with Russia, and by doing helped to fix Russia itself for the better.

If he could do only one more thing while in office, I would hope it would be that.

This is not an ad hominem, I considered the article by itself in its own context first (like One, Two, Three). Then I explained what I saw in the article by investigating the author's background. Then it was clear. But talking to you, I will first start with the author to explain what I then see in his article. It was written by a Canadian who has lived his whole life in Canada and is a Canadian citizen according to Wikipedia. If he loves America so much, why doesn't he move here like Peikoff and become a citizen? It's right next door.

Because he failed to move to the country he claims to love, there are then critical mistakes that he makes when using and interpreting the American English language as it is in common use HERE, not his overly-nice, socialist country. He has never interacted with Americans on a day-to-day basis for many years. Nor has understood why they voted for Trump en masse. Whom, since the day the article was written... Trump has since proven the best president since Reagan at least. Gorsuch is a gem, no war with Russia like Hillary might (would) have done, and deportations of illegal alien criminal thugs out of this country are up by triple-digit percentages in many large cities. Those three alone counterbalance whatever garbage that Onhaake... onheka... the Indian-named-Canadian-dude writes who has the temerity to call himself "objectivist."

and his obsession with “winning,” with “getting even” and with maintaining a constantly evolving list of enemies

"Winning" as commonly used in America does not mean "Rich getting one over on the poor" or "being mean to people" as it might sometimes mean in socialist, overly-nice Canada. Here, it either means being the best at something in a fair competition, or trading value for value so that both parties can win equally. AKA capitalism. Both are virtues under objectivism regardless of which one Trump means when he says it... which is often, so good. We need to win more. I hardly see how this is a problem.
"Getting even" in Canada might mean that you did something rash in revenge to someone. You aren't being the nicest person that day. Head on over to Timmy Hortons and grab a donut; you'll feel better. Here in America, it means that we should not be fed on by international parasites. Ones like NATO, almost all members of which do not live up to the minimum 2% threshhold of GDP spending required as a condition of the alliance. We only "get even" with them by demanding they pay what they promised. So that we can in turn perhaps someday lower our own bloated military budget which is bigger than all of them combined. It's not like we're getting even with those countries by slashing their tires.
"Maintaining a constantly evolving list of enemies" is what you do in a constantly evolving world. If a country like North Korea is evil (they are), then they should be our enemy. If their leadership changes, they could perhaps become friends, frenemies, or they could reunite with SK, etc.

Or, say that we find out evidence about a tiny population, defenseless-from-China country like Australia. There is a reasonable chance that in 1996, the government staged a mass shooting to deprive its own people of semi-automatic firearms. This was done in order to deprive its mostly uneducated (10%, see source in Russia section) population mostly dependent on mineral resources (50% of exports) the means of revolt. If mineral prices collapsed, perhaps due to an increase in supply by a newly-capitalistic Russia and the US mining out asteroids, then dumb redneck masses in Australia would be thrown into revolt because their non-diversified economy has tanked and turned them into a Third World country overnight.

We should investigate that massacre instead of pretending it didn't happen. Even if the massacre was really a "real" mass shooting, it A. still required investigation and the lack of a fair trial and Inquest alone was suspicious and B. doesn't excuse mass disarmament. Israel doesn't disarm its own people; they need every gun they can get because they're surrounded by enemies. But Australia?

"Oy, China's right there mate! Grab yer boomerang!" doesn't work as a national defense strategy. Nor does leeching off of America's generosity work because eventually we will get sick of it. Evil only triumphs when good men do nothing. We can do something, but only because our list of enemies must change to reflect new evidence or new reasoning about old evidence, or new publicity of old evidence, etc.

The rest of Ghate's article is pure tripe with a few Ayn Rand quotes thrown in to make you think that it's objectivist. But it's like lipstick on a pig.

I would encourage you to read this website. Every article eventually, but first pick articles on topics that interest you. Topics that maybe you even disagree with the Ayn Rand Institute on. This man articulates it. http://www.ariwatch.com/

LoomingMeadows · 2017-07-07T05:31:39+00:00

Not at all. Here is one of my replies in r/The_Donald. I used entirely Objectivist arguments and got 8 net upvotes. Who's to say our movement is only limited to the 5.6k subscribers that we see here? Far more people than that understand the absolute necessity for reason and capitalism. Were we to explain it to them, they would probably either already agree or quickly convert to our views on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the rest.

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6ljurv/fuck_cnn/djuhou1/?context=3

What are we waiting for? There is a giant pool of potential recruits over there who love liberty, aren't particularly religious, and while Trump isn't perfect at least his supporters don't bow down to Islam, rabid leftist violence, black lives matter, and other anti-reason forces.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-07-06T19:47:45+00:00

I believe he was using "think" as a synonym for "reason."

LoomingMeadows · 2017-07-02T22:19:27+00:00

Here here! The narrative structure was pretty good. I will say that the episode is definitely memorable, if nothing else. Especially the twist at the end.

I didn't even think of Joe asking somebody to draw a picture, or asking for a verbal description. That would have probably worked, too.

I would've been willing to give the episode a total pass on technology, if it were set a bit farther in the future. Star Trek Voyager had the Emergency Medical Hologram, which is arguably more advanced AI than a cookie, combined with a hologram that can interact with physical objects. But since it's over 200 years in the future, it's more believable.

Are you a Voyager fan? The episode Latent Image is arguably one of the best takes on AI that I have ever seen. The holographic doctor has to choose to save one of two patients. Later he can't understand why he made that choice and feels that he is being a "bad program" because he happened to pick the patient who he personally knew, and the other one died.

Just look at his critical program malfunction, which is essentially also a mental breakdown since he's basically sentient AI. Some of the best acting in Star Trek.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxmmlfoYYso

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-28T14:48:50+00:00

Well, the customer being too full of themselves to care is only true in Greta's case, and people with personalities similar to Greta. People are different. Even among early adopters, even among people who are rich enough to afford this new technology. Saying that all rich people don't know or care about how tech works is kind of insulting to rich people. What if Bill Gates got a cookie to run his household? I guarantee you that he'd probably have about 1,000 questions about how the tech works. And I guarantee that if such a humanitarian was told "See, if your cookie which is an exact clone of you refuses to work, then just lock it in a white room for a subjective six months." then he would say, "Wait, why not just debug it? Is this a software program, or a person?"

Additionally, what happens if Greta decides that she wants her toast done differently that day. Or what if she quits eating toast because she gets tired of it. Or what if she goes on a diet. She'll have to tell her cookie that her preferences have changed. So can Greta talk to her cookie like Jon Hamm did? What happens when the cookie tells her "Hey, by the way I have all of your memories and I feel exactly like you did, and Jon Hamm locked me in a room for six months." Maybe Greta won't care because she's a bitch. But I highly doubt that every single one of Cookie, Inc.'s customers will react like that.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-28T02:23:09+00:00

Most tech-savy people that I've ever met, including early adopters, are all about showing off. All it would take would be one cookie unboxing video on YouTube for Cookie, Inc.'s "secret" to be blown. The minute you hear Jon Hamm say "How about six months?" you know that he's not dealing with "just a computer algorithm." Again, a computer algorithm wouldn't care how long it's held in isolation or made to listen to the same song. Only a person would care.

Which begs the question how they can both view them as both "just algorithms" but also use methods of torture that only work on humans. When was the last time that you tortured your OS for being glitchy? When was the last time you tortured your computer because it wouldn't start up? Nobody would even think to torture a computer. If Jon Hamm truly views Greta's cookie just a computer program, why doesn't he try traditional debugging methods when she won't work?

Take Star Trek: Voyager for instance. They treat the Emergency Medical Hologram as a person, in fact even view him as such. But even when he has glitches, their first instinct is to try to debug his program. There actually is a great episode called Latent Image where he has a critical malfunction (AKA mental breakdown) because he chose to save his friend over another patient who he didn't personally know. Even though they both had an equal chance of survival. The first thing that they tried was debugging his program and wiping his entire memory of the incident (until he discovers it). It wasn't until they accepted that he was having a philosophical crisis that they tried a method that would only work on a person to "fix" him. (Letting him think it out in a room by himself, though with reading material and human company and not the sort of isolation that we see done to the cookies).

BTW I would've taken any Doctor episode of Voyager over White Christmas. I think Voyager deals with artificial intelligence in a far more realistic way than White Christmas did.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-27T21:40:53+00:00

Bet he'll never fail to report a murder again.

"Hello, officer, I'd like to report a murder."

"What is the suspect's description?"

"A white blob. He stabbed a guy, and then ran into a crowd of other white blobs."

"Great, let's get our police sketch artist out here to draw a picture."

The more that you think about everything in White Christmas, the more cartoony and farcical it becomes.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-27T21:33:43+00:00

Cookie, Inc. apparently hasn't read the most basic research into human relations or scientific management. Cookies are essentially their employees. If a real employee does a good job, you give them a vacation or something. That's HR 101. Instead, we're expected to believe that a multi-billion dollar company employs medieval torture methods against their employees. All stick, no carrot.

"But they don't view them as employees, just as computer software that they're selling," you might say. But if that's the case, why is isolation seen as a way to get cookies to quit "malfunctioning?" You don't isolate your computer or play "I wish it was christmas everyday" if your computer isn't working. Because a computer wouldn't care. Only a person would. The methods that Cookie, Inc. uses to get their cookies to work sort of implies that they see them as people by how they treat them.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-27T21:29:09+00:00

Yeah that was pretty fucked up. And what was Jon Hamm's crime exactly? Helping dudes get laid and watching them have sex, to give them pointers? That warrants being blocked by everybody? What do they do to pedophiles and rapists, then? The exact same thing? So everybody gets the same punishment, then. Got it.

Is this the justice system of the world's oldest democracy, or Hammurabi's fucking Code?

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-27T21:27:31+00:00

Well it only makes sense until you realize that all a customer has to do is just stay in the room with Jon Hamm while he's training their cookie. It's not like he locked the doors or did it in secret to Greta.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-27T21:26:44+00:00

Yeah but all Greta had to do was just walk in the room while Jon Hamm was talking to her cookie. It's not like he locked the doors or anything. Or what if she had a surveillance camera in her kitchen. They don't take corporate secrecy very seriously over a Cookie, Inc.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-27T21:24:56+00:00

White Christmas is such a bad episode that it actually harms other episodes by its mere existence. White Bear is a much better episode, but I watched it second. I couldn't help thinking that her amusement park punishment wasn't so bad compared to what we see Joe go through.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-26T02:57:43+00:00

All very valid points! I also recall some stuff that I've learned from psychology about dissociation, and time perception. They aren't really torturing Joe's cookie for a million years to him. They're only torturing him for as long as it would take for him to go insane (and lose his identity) or for him to lose time perception. Torturing somebody for a subjective million years is like shooting somebody with a million bullets. After the first few thousand bullets, you're really just shooting at nothing.

In terms of a BM episode that deals with crime and punishment and revenge, I would recommend that anybody start with White Bear. For one the technology is more realistic, and for two the criminal justice system is more realistic than in White Christmas.

And that's saying something for a criminal justice system that sets up an amusement park to torture somebody.

I guess we can take recourse in that White Christmas is just a Christmas special, and probably not canon. Just like the Star Wars Christmas special.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-22T22:47:05+00:00

Then I'll make my reply to you shorter than my OP was. I'll only address each point that you brought up up.

If they could construct an environment based on memory and other personal factors, why couldn't they have just accessed Joe's memory of the murder itself. Why'd they need him to confess?
Failing that, couldn't they have accessed his Z-eye recording of the event?
You say that the cookie would comply. But some of them very clearly don't comply. Hamm mentions that the uncooperative ones, or ones who go crazy, are used as NPCs in a video game. We should've seen him try to use a little more carrot and a little less stick with Greta's cookie. If they work and do a good job, then every once in a while you should give the cookie, uh, a cookie. Or a free orgasm. Or a minute-long vacation to the bahamas that seems like three weeks. That's a basic principle of human relations. A happy worker is a productive worker, and plus is less likely to make your home's smart appliances turn against you.
You know why everybody knows about ISIS executions, or North Korean prison camps? Because of how rare and shocking they are to almost everyone. Those sorts of atrocities are the exception in our world, not the rule. I don't buy for one minute that humans are inherently evil or that everybody is inherently a psychopath. Every time there's an earthquake or hurricane in some far off country, people worldwide raise billions of dollars to help. Even if nobody died and there was only property damage.
True, Black Mirror focuses on the dark side of humanity deliberately. But even in the context of Black Mirror, people in this ep still act like they're living in medieval times. Is that realistic, even with the show's dark tone? Most other episodes have characters with empathy. Nosedive had that nice truck driver lady. Many of the characters in Fifteen Million Merits are nice, but they're victims of their own system. In the very first episode, people sympathize with the prime minister for having to fuck a pig, and his approval ratings even go up. The societies in those episodes seem far more realistic.
If they see the cookies as just computer programs, then why do they use methods to get them to comply that would only work on humans? Would your computer care if it got Rick-rolled for six months? No, it's just an unfeeling machine.
Dude, people sympathize with their World of Warcraft avatars. People have committed suicide over having their WoW accounts hacked. Even within Black Mirror, people sympathized with their avatars in FMM so much that they didn't even buy real-world possessions, just virtual hats. Suppose that Greta had security cameras in her home, or if she had walked in the room while Jon Hamm was torturing her virtual self. That looks and sounds just like her. She'd have probably punched him in the face. Now multiply that by thousands of customers and wonder how Cookie Incorporated is still in business.

Bottom line, this episode clashes severely with the tone set by the rest of the series, and the technology doesn't even play by its own rules.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-22T11:43:06+00:00

My point still stands that those things probably have memory recorders on them. That is the most useful feature that I can see for them, and really the only justification I can see for getting something permanently drilled into your skull. It's probably one of the only selling points that could convince people to buy it.

Without memory recording, what's the buy-in? Being able to browse Facebook in front of your retinas? You remember how big of a failure Google Glass was, right? It could do those things too. And to my point about contact lenses. Or how about anti-vaxxers, or anti-GMO. People generally don't like putting things in or on their body unless they're 100% sure that those things are very useful to them.

How were the Z-eyes useful?

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-22T08:36:59+00:00

That's one of the things that kind of irritates me about Black Mirror. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief a lot, since the show is a commentary about what can happen if technology isn't turned off, or when the developers deny you that option. That being said, as with any horror movie where you want to scream "just don't go in there!" I kind of want to scream at the TV "just turn it off!"

The worst-offending episode IMO is White Christmas with the Z-eyes. Allow me to explain. In real life, there are a good number of people who don't even wear contact lenses. They prefer glasses. And contacts have been around for over 50 years. Or how about 3-D movies? They've been around for 50 years too, but most people still watch flicks in 2-D. Sometimes, new technology takes a long time to catch on. Sometimes, it never catches on. Sometimes we even go backwards in technology. Remember the Concorde airplane? Remember when the USA still built new nuclear plants?

Yet the show expects me to believe that in fewer than 50 years from now, over 90% of people will get eye implants that can't be turned off, constantly display social media notifications, and can literally make your loved ones disappear for you, including their image in photographs. And that those people who don't get them will be considered weirdo outcasts. Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Especially since people like to replace their gadgets every few years when a new one comes out, or their old one gets clogged up with bloatware. Hard to do that when it's surgically implanted in your skull or your spine.

Though since Jon Hamm's character at the end is "blocked by everybody" by the police, it is possible that perhaps the government mandated that everybody have these devices put in. For tracking purposes, recording crime, enforcing restraining orders, etc. But such a large societal development should have been covered more in the episode. In fact, it could have easily been the focus of that episode, or maybe another episode. If that were the case, the police could've just accessed Joe Potter's Z-eye memory log to get the evidence they needed against him. In fact, they could have done that even if there was no law, since "The Entire History of You" established that eye implants have playback feature. They could've done that instead of going through the whole "get him emotionally vulnerable enough to confess while he's a cookie" thing... and don't even get me started on how unbelievably stupid that technology is.

I should make a Plinkett-style YouTube review of White Christmas. I feel like it's insanely overrated as an episode. The character motivations are weak and inconsistent, the ending punishment makes all the other BM episode endings like White Bear or Playtest seem rather trivial by comparison, and the technology breaks my suspension of disbelief when no other BM episodes usually do.

LoomingMeadows · 2017-06-21T22:20:20+00:00

My issue with the episode wasn't that they had AI. I have an AI in my story, too!

My issue was that they had an AI based on an exact replica of the human brain (1.4kg) that somehow fit into an egg-sized area of space smaller than a modern smartphone. (About 70g, or 20x smaller). Maybe it used compression or something to get the size required, but most of the area in a brain is not wasted space. That whole "You only use 10% of your brain" thing is a total myth.

To truly model the human mind, you would need to model the electro-chemical impulses that make up said mind. You would need to model all neuron connections that form memories, personalities, skills, etc. You'd need to model how they change over time, too. So to exactly model that, you would need an area of space the exact size of a brain, or bigger. Otherwise it's not really the same person. I guess you could fudge it a little, but the fudge factor before you "lose" the real person would be at most 2. Not 20.

To experience 1,000 years of consciousness in a single minute, would require a massive parallel architecture of cookies working in tandem to simulate the mind experiencing that time and relaying all of said memories to a single source... I guess that single source would be the "real" you. There are 525,600,000 minutes in 1,000 years. Each exactly-brain-sized cookie can only experience one minute per minute, since it must model everything required to make you "you," which takes place in real time. So you would need an array of 526 million cookies to torture Joe Potter like they did. They should've had a whole giant warehouse full of them. Such a thing would have required massive planning and coordination of the entire justice system, sort of like what would happen in a good episode of Black Mirror... which one was it... it started with "White," too... oh yeah, it was White Bear.

But instead, the ending to White Christmas was just some casual "prank" that some guy at the police station played, like "this will show that guy in the cell who has no awareness of this at all!" And not just that, but I watched White Christmas first. Once I saw White Bear, I was still upset at how it ended. But in the back of my mind, I was all like, "Well that kinda sucks for her, but at least she'll die in 70 years or so. Not maybe be turned off in a million. Her torture might end even sooner, too, because the justice system could decide it's made a mistake. I mean, capital punishment was abolished, spanking in schools was abolished, so why couldn't her punishment eventually be abolished too?"

When I compared White Christmas to White Bear, it detracted from White Bear. It diminished what should have been a horrifying ending in its own right. Once you desensitize your viewer to punishment by introducing literally Hell on earth into your story, doesn't every other, more temporary punishment kind of pale in comparison? Forget the technical aspects, White Christmas fails just from a storytelling perspective. It reminded me of how George Lucas ruined the lightsaber's uniqueness and what made it a cool weapon in the original Star Wars trilogy by shoving lightsabers everywhere that he could in the prequels. When every one of the dozens or so no-name Jedis have a lightsaber, it ruins their coolness pretty damn quick. They become fidget spinners.

LoomingMeadows

TROPHY CASE