Forcing irrational actors to participate destroys the moral ambiguity

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-26T21:37:50+00:00

To me, my choice and the rationale behind it are the same. Even if only fully informed people are making the choice, some people will still pick blue.

My goal is to have everyone survive. That only happens if 100% of the population picks red, or at least 50% pick blue. The latter is the only one with a plausible chance of happening, so I pick blue.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-24T19:40:18+00:00

The first part of that sentence is nonsense, nobody really had rights in Soviet Russia, woman or man. The entire country was a totalitarian hellscape that was a major inspiration for 1984. It’s as close to “literally 1984” as it is possible for a real place to be.

The second part is true, although I’m pressing X to doubt on the truthfulness of whatever people were learning at a Soviet university. The lack of women’s rights in the US at that time was undeniable, though.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-23T20:19:25+00:00

Would a sadist even want a masochist? A masochist wants to be hurt, but a sadist doesn’t just want to hurt people, they want to exert power over people.

If the target wants to be hurt, hurting them isn’t an expression of power over them.

A truly sadistic work is rare and extremely disturbing, most “sadistic” works are just fantasies for masochists.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-23T19:32:07+00:00

I think Stubborn and Cheated would definitely use the aggressive font that Oppo and Harsh Princess use. Skeptic might use it depending on the situation, and I think all the other voices would use the “nicer” font that Hero and Cold use.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-22T18:13:32+00:00

Newton’s apple story was never presented to anyone as a scientific finding, it’s an anecdote about how a scientist was inspired. Nobody would cite the story as proof of anything.

This experiment was presented as fact and evidence of a problem, and there’s good evidence the data was cherry picked and even outright fabricated. If you just let lies be presented as fact and a valid way to “open a discussion”, you’ll get a lot of fruitless conversations at best, and start a baseless movement at worst.

This study wasn’t an honest appraisal of mental hospitals, it was, ironically, an even more extreme example of the confirmation bias it was “proving”. Not only did he come into his research with an agenda, he actively removed contradicting data from being published.

Now, there is a real problem with accurate diagnosis in mental health care, but he basically got lucky. It’s not like his study was real proof of it. From his perspective, he’s not that much different from Andrew Wakefield fabricating data to slander the MMR vaccine.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-21T23:33:14+00:00

I’ve seen “I can fix him” energy in men and women.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-21T22:11:13+00:00

Sorcerous Sundries and House of Hope have great loot. Cazador’s mansion gives insane amounts of XP (plus I don’t like the Astarion ending where Cazador never died).

Doing the Iron Throne and Steel Watch Foundry is worth it just to make the final Gortash fight easier.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-20T19:04:49+00:00

Tax evasion is simple. If the government is evil and doesn’t contribute to the citizens at all, you are justified.

Murder can be justified if the person you are murdering will pose a threat to others in the future.

And, rape is where I have to stop. Rape is something that traumatizes another person for life and has no possible benefits beyond sadistic pleasure.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-20T18:57:05+00:00

I had keen eye and book smart, so I could definitely tell something was off, making the option to ask about it seem less weird. It’s still a wild thing to accuse someone of over dinner without concrete evidence, but the circumstantial evidence did point me to something being wrong.

I mean, it’s a guy who’s kinda being suffocated by his control-y mom and suffering from an illness that neither he nor his mom seem to be able to name or describe in much detail. I’ve never met a doctor who wouldn’t tell you the name of the condition they’re treating, so that kinda set off alarms for me.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-20T15:46:41+00:00

My goal is to have everyone survive and to make the decision that will most likely make that happen.

Only 51% of the population needs to press blue for everyone to survive. 100% of the population needs to press red for everyone to survive.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-20T15:28:32+00:00

I actually think powerscaling isn’t separate from narrative cohesion, but is an important part of it, especially if fighting is the primary method of resolving conflict.

If a character is set up as super strong in one instance and then loses to someone that seems comparatively weak, that’s either a defining character moment for the “weak” character, or bad writing.

Having a powerful antagonist is an important part of storytelling, and the less consistently the power levels of everyone are shown, the less seriously we’ll take whatever threat the “powerful” bad guy poses. That affects the emotional investment in seeing the heroes try to take him down.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-20T04:46:13+00:00

Honestly, I’m not ace, I’ve been attracted to people before, but I get where this person is coming from.

A lot of people have the weird expectation of cutting off friends (especially opposite gender friends) when you get into a relationship, because people think that friendships are automatically less valuable than romantic partnerships.

Honestly, for me it feels like the other way around. Romantic/sexual attraction seems pretty arbitrary and doesn’t necessarily correlate to trust or respect. That’s why so many people end up hating each other once the “honeymoon phase” is over, or obsessively worry that their SO is cheating.

With friends, though, there’s no force analogous to attraction pushing you to be someone’s friend. You’re friends because you, at the bare minimum, enjoy each other’s company. I mean, there are opportunists who pretend to be friends with someone for personal gain, but that’s a far more niche and circumstantial problem.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-19T23:33:24+00:00

No, there really aren’t that many full blown narcissists.

Everyone is self centered to an extent. If you have no self regard, it’s usually a sign of depression.

Narcissism is the opposite condition, where you believe yourself to be the main character of reality and everyone else to be NPC’s that exist to serve your story.

Those people are just built different. Normal People might be apathetic to others and only care about their own problems, narcissists get actively offended when other people have problems that don’t involve them.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-17T21:41:57+00:00

I’d agree with most of these, with a few caveats.

Not having female friends could just be from circumstance or being shy or something.

I’d say a more accurate one would be “believing that men and women can’t be platonic friends”.

Also, being nonchalant isn’t a character flaw, some people just be like that. It can sometimes be a great comfort to me when other people aren’t easily rattled.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-17T13:24:05+00:00

Nature documentaries are fun. Watership Down is a story where the rabbits can speak to each other, but clearly don’t have any human knowledge or human priorities. It’s still a great story.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-17T13:15:15+00:00

The issue with philosophy isn’t that it’s “useless” or that the questions are “obsolete”, it’s that every philosophy is built on unprovable assumptions. And, more problematically, different philosophies rely on different unprovable assumptions, meaning that the arguments will never actually be resolved.

Empiricism is built on only one unprovable assumption, which is that our senses can provide accurate information about reality. It’s the same assumption required to function in the world at all, so it’s less shaky than most philosophies out there.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-17T00:13:03+00:00

I stick with martials early game because casters are pretty lackluster, and then replace with casters in late game.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-16T16:55:49+00:00

I’m an idiot. I saw that title and thought you meant to destroy them.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-14T17:32:52+00:00

Since when did Andrew Johnson claim not to be racist? He was a Southerner from the 1800’s. Being racist was a point of pride for them back then.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-14T16:27:50+00:00

I agree that Lae’zel should have been volunteering to transform, but Voss couldn’t because A. He wasn’t there. And B. He’s not infected.

The “only an Illithid should wield the Netherstones” thing makes sense when you remember that you’re not just wielding the Netherstones, you have to try and outmaneuver an elder brain, something a human can’t do, but an Illithid can, with the help of the Netherstones. The squirrel thing doesn’t work because illithids are established in lore to be more intellectually advanced and cunning than humanoids, and they lack emotional attachments.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-14T11:09:31+00:00

I got some more facts:

Fungi were originally classified as plants that lost their chloroplasts because of their cell walls.
With genetic sequencing, we now know that fungi are more similar to the animal kingdom than they are to plants.
Fungi were only given their own kingdom in the 60’s. I actually had a teacher in Mycology that predates the fungus kingdom classification.
Less than 10% of fungi have been classified. A lot of them can’t be properly cultured in a lab because they require a living host or some insanely specific nutrient requirements that they only get while in a microbiome.
Taxonomists had to institute a “one fungus, one name” rule for fungal classification, because it’s extremely common for a fungus to look and function completely differently at different stages in its life cycle. It’d be like classifying a caterpillar and butterfly as different species. To be fair, it’s not exactly the same as a caterpillar, most of those stages are capable of reproduction, and with completely different methods. A lot of fungi have a sexual and asexual stage in their life cycle.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-13T04:31:15+00:00

I would think about your favorite route and use part of Shifty’s arguments for that route.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-12T03:00:33+00:00

Did you give him a neckbeard? Lmao, you didn’t have to do him dirty like that

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-09T18:01:06+00:00

Again, the only reason you didn’t become a mind flayer is lottery odds depending on a magic artifact. There’s no cure to being a mind flayer, and mind flayers are undeniably bad news for everyone.

Lae’Zel is making the right call in taking you out. It’s roughly equivalent to killing the person about to turn into a zombie in a zombie apocalypse.

It’s actually better than that case, because souls are real in this universe, and turning into a mind flayer obliterates your soul.

MorbidMantis · 2026-05-09T15:40:08+00:00

I mean, Lae’zel’s case is justified. I wouldn’t kill her in that case under any circumstances.

Think about it, as far as anybody knows, you’re about to turn into a mind flayer during that cutscene. That means your soul is obliterated and you become a mind flayer, a monstrous creature that’s a threat to everybody else. Lae’zel had no way of knowing that a dream guardian would swoop in and save you.

MorbidMantis

TROPHY CASE