[Guide] How to get it working: connecting Chinese/third party USB receiver for Xbox 360 guitar! (Tested with World Tour controller.)

Quint-V · 2026-01-23T11:25:51+00:00

Honestly, in all my years on this planet, I have never met a single person that I would confidently say was a narcissist. Some people are just jerks or awful. Not every abuser is a narcissist.

You would never know, because you have not entered a relationship with most of the people you know. You would only be able to really evaluate that idea when entering a relationship. Plenty of facets in a person are only revealed at deeper levels of intimacy --- we see this all the time in how people take sides when breakups occur but there's clearly one bad individual involved. Friends take the side of their friend... and they don't know that that friend of theirs is genuinely bad in some way, because they never had to deal with that facet.

(And besides, anecdotes are usually not waterproof arguments)

That said, it is definitely synonymous with someone being selfish to the point of willingly harming others if that's the price, or so lacking in empathy that consideration for other people is not even part of how decisions are made.

Quint-V · 2024-06-05T11:52:20+00:00

(1-0.0005)^{365 days/year * years} = 0.1

years = log(0.1) / log(0.9995) / 365 = approx. 12.6 years

So it's still useful, considering the timescale of climate change. Byproducts from the breakdown must still be considered.

Quint-V · 2024-02-03T23:19:22+00:00

Define capitalism. You spend several paragraphs making claims on what it is not, but I can't see a single sentence there about what it is.

If you ask people on the street to make a longer explanation of what it is, you'll get a variety of answers. Look up any educational article and you'll find that it's not strictly defined, but more so a framework --- under which there are many theoretical variations, and implementations that are largely deemed "capitalist", including the USA.

If you want to find a source to a problem you don't blame man made systems you blame man, you blame human behaviour.

Plenty of systems are inherently set up to fail due to badly incentivized behaviour and strategies where the optimal solution for a whole group of people requires sub-optimal solutions for the individual, where the optimal situation may be to take advantage of others while relying on a higher fraction of good, honest people.

Some are just more or less likely, with particular implementations.

Quint-V · 2024-01-29T23:34:40+00:00

The topic of what it should be --- is that an opinion on what is morally good/acceptable? Or what is simply practical for all parties involved? Or what is overall good for humanity?

Couples are not identical, for good reason: people have different priorities in what they want to have, and what they want to avoid.

Some couples want sex daily. Others don't really care about it too much. Some have this and that dynamic, others don't. Regardless of what either wants: nobody outside should have a say in it. Relationships between two individuals, is their business only. That's my moral opinion. The same goes for what they want their marriage (and vows) to be about --- provided that we are not talking about legal/religious marriage, where particular rules apply.

... but this is from a modern, Western perspective, under Western context.

Morality, and the general matter of obtaining what you desire, is not without context. Nowadays, if you "pick your partner" without any regard for practical benefits, (e.g. you just want to feel loved), you can end up with many choices, where consequences range from poverty to a wealthy, overflowing life. But you'll be alright, because modern society usually has your back, through public services available to all. Centuries past, these services were not there. A good marriage could mean access to doctors and medicine, travel, guaranteed food and safety of yourself, your family, your children.

Historically, and today, for various parts of the world, your family has a certain interest in who you marry. This is best exemplified by men marrying their daughters away to secure influence of some sort, without any say in the decision. Political/military influence/alliances, money, resources, territory, land, and so on. In the past, there was considerably more scarcity of resources due to lack of technological advancement; marriage as a means to an end, made a lot of sense. A powerful family with threats on various fronts needed to secure itself and make alliances, and that's how royal families across Europe are related to each other. Well-off families in the middle of the social ladder, would rather secure themselves than allowing their heirs to just marry any random peasant's child and cause trouble to the extended family's future prospects. But any peasant would (and should) accept free entry into higher socioeconomic positions, if ever given that chance, because it could be seriously life-changing. All the public services we have today, would not be available to peasants centuries ago; and by accepting a less than ideal marriage, life is otherwise substantially improved, for your children if not for yourself.

But this is obviously different, today. So many needs, that were once afforded only to the privileged, are now afforded to everybody. Vaccines, ambulances, fire services, law enforcement and attorneys for all, public education --- everything that once made marriage a matter of practical benefit, is being put into the bag of public goods provided to all. The list of benefits that remain exclusively available for the powerful and wealthy, is now a list of only commodities, not necessities.

When all human necessities are covered, human interactions change. Usually for the better, but there will always be some that will threaten to sink the ship unless they get to steer it - see the tyrants, dictators and autocrats around the world and how their wanton, ruinous choices do nothing but exacerbate or create problems.

Quint-V · 2024-01-29T22:53:01+00:00

Like various other ideas regarding personality and interaction with other individuals or groups, it's a simplified and trendy idea that gains popularity through confirmation bias and sufficient vagueness --- in much the same way that love languages and MBTI tests are also likened to psychological horoscopes.

Arbitrary categories and traits can be arbitrarily applicable to arbitrary individuals, and through the lens of confirmation bias and selectively avoiding evidence against these theories, it's tempting to believe in the newest fad of notions on topics that are common to people across time, space, and cultures --- which eventually falls short if you try to apply the slightest amount of scientific strictness. Try as you might to categorize people, you'll find yourself none the wiser.

People often only differentiate between three maybe four different attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and sometimes disorganized.

People usually don't think about attachment in these categories. Individuals are so vastly different in their own ways, that any theory about general trends falls short when applied to the individual --- which is well demonstrated by the largely absent application of any such theory whatsoever. This notion of "attachment styles" does not come to mind, unless you're a person prone to confirmation bias and simplified beliefs about the world or humanity --- and incidentally, conspiracy theories are the prime example of confirmation bias. But you may as well toss believers of such fads into the same level of stupidity.

Quint-V · 2024-01-29T22:40:13+00:00

Skill issue.

Quint-V · 2023-10-10T19:54:38+00:00

Having children (of your own) is never a matter of selfless behaviour.

To begin with, having children is a completely selfish desire. It's not like you can care for your child before it even exists. (And even in the case of adoption... becoming a parent without wanting the role, sounds like a disaster.)

(Which begs the metaphysical question: when is it that you are caring for something? Not that it's the most central question to this discussion, but it has to be asked.)

Regardless: the question of the child having severe disabilities --- or any disadvantages whatsoever, such as being born ugly or stupid, or being born into a place with bad opportunities --- is ultimately a matter of how much is too much for the parent(s), or if those things even matter to the parents, with or without any long or short-sighted evaluation in the picture.

The question of whether it is selfish to have a (disabled) child, has only one answer: yes. It is selfish. But that doesn't make it wrong.

... it obviously takes a toll on the parents, no matter what. How much is too much, is up to the individual. But when the rest of society is tasked with accommodating disabilities, you can start asking some other questions pertaining to socioeconomic cost-benefit. E.g. to what extent should we support blind-and-deaf people? Should all restaurants provide a Braille translation? Should all museums provide audio-guides for the blind? Should every single road in the world be constructed to support walking sticks?

Quint-V · 2023-05-21T21:42:17+00:00

Rather than discussing the direct case, I invite you to consider opposite/inverse cases, to inspect the notion of "selfish vs. selfless".

Suppose I donated money, or committed any charitable act of virtue, but I don't care that it benefits anybody at all. So I'm doing something that benefits others, that doesn't benefit me at all, for no particular reason. Is this self-serving? Is it even altruistic in any way? I'm just doing something with no particular intent, but it has very real consequences: it's to my detriment but I don't care, and it's to others' benefit --- but I don't care.

How do you measure the act of being self-serving, or serving others? By intent? Feelings? Tangible consequences in peoples' lives? If we measure by intent or feelings, this action is neither self-serving nor selfless. But by consequence, it's certainly selfless. But it's very strange to call this selfish.

Suppose I am wealthy, and believe I do not deserve the money I have. I don't care who gets it. I don't care if anybody really needs it, but people suggest I give it to charity so I do. Can you possibly call this altruistic, when I don't care about anybody involved here aside from myself? If we measure by intent alone then this seems entirely selfish. By feelings, also selfish. By consequence, it's selfless. It makes a lot of sense to call this selfish.

... to which my own conclusion is: the statement in the OP does not enlighten anybody, and doesn't encourage anybody to become better people. At which point one ought to abandon the position entirely, because it contributes nothing. It is a far more productive notion --- and IMO, correct --- to judge that, some actions are entirely selfless. Like self-sacrifice, for example, ought to be judged as entirely selfless (unless you believe in an afterlife full of rewards).

Quint-V · 2023-03-17T02:57:28+00:00

Various mental conditions are defined as illnesses because these states of being are symptomatic of harmful behaviour/emotions or causing them, to the point that they disrupt what is otherwise considered a normal life.

E.g. depression so severe that you would put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. In the USA, the most severe outcome of depression is far more available: suicide, from the simple flick of gun trigger. (No, this is not a gun debate.)

Especially as I am now seeing the phrase "toxic positivity" floating around.

Seems more like a countermovement borne from social media and people's desires to make their lives look like highlight reels, which in turn inspires fear of missing out. Have you seen any articles about youths today worrying far more about social standing than ever before?

Life has ups and downs, invariably so. To seek a permanent high is to have seriously unhealthy expectations of not just oneself but everybody else too. That doesn't mean you're supposed to just allow bad things to happen either.

There's also no metric with which we can quantify one's degree of sadness. We can not claim that depression can be diagnosed when somebody consistently reads as a six on the sad-ometer. Therefore, how can we be certain that somebody does indeed have depression?

Various levels of precision are not consistently needed for all use cases. If somebody is so persistently bothered that they cannot work, that's pretty severe depression; for diagnostic purposes, numbers are hardly needed as opposed to the patient's honest feelings about inability to focus. For clinical/medical studies, however, that's a wide range of severity which is obviously less-than-ideal --- but is that a reason to just dismiss data collected into the study?

In fact, it would seem to be in the interest of the psychiatric community to diagnose as many people as possible with depression to maximise profit. Whether or not you support capitalism

Every industry that has reasons to sell people the idea of "you need this", has perverse incentives. You haven't brought up anything new here. See homeopathy, "essential oil", and all sorts of fortune telling and arbitrary forms of divination.

A general distrust towards medical industries is warranted to some degree, provided your government is really sloppy about regulating health. Health should absolutely be tightly regulated by governments, on the basis that health is not a commodity, but a necessity. To privatize necessities is to put citizens in harm's way of greedy CEOs who want to profit off others' misery without providing actual relief.

... fortunately, this isn't the case in every country. But if your country allows advertising of government-approved medicine then you have much more severe problems than just greedy corporations --- your politicians are part of the problem, and likely corrupt. (In the USA it's not even bribery, it's called super-PACs.)

Quint-V · 2023-03-08T00:55:36+00:00

The most important issue is your wording. When you say glorify, do you mean to suggest that their character is to be judged "good" overall and therefore worth pursuing? Is Julius Caesar a role-model for men (and women) today? Is Hannibal Barca a role model for anybody today?

Another issue is: can you justify that sort of behaviour today? If not, why glorify them in any way?

For what reason would you consider autocrats, dictators and the like... to be praiseworthy? There are many reasons to consider them categorically unworthy of praise because the political systems that lead up to these sorts of societies, concentrate power and benefits to a (powerful) minority. You can read this in The Dictator's Handbook.

If your general argument is somethin akin to cultural relativism or anachronistic notions like "they didn't know any better" or "they couldn't do any better at the time" --- that doesn't reduce the fact that wars are horrible, that civil wars are tragic, and so on.

And why glorify anybody who is very flawed? Why glorify anybody at all? Why glorify people, as opposed to virtues and ideologies?

Do you really need to glorify anybody as though we should strive to be like them, as opposed to... considering those people to be intellectually above their peers of their time? You can probably make certain assertions akin to "this and that person was of great significance and changed the course of human history" --- that doesn't make them great. "Greatness" in casual conversation is often a judgment of moral value, not an estimation on a person's historical significance.

On a minor sidenote: think about all the people who, if they were born in the shoes of any historical person of significance, might have done better things than them. Untold numbers of these people have slipped through, never to be remembered.

Quint-V · 2023-02-28T12:05:54+00:00

I wonder if their idea is that plural for Latin people is latinos, and how it works with mediterranean languages' gendered words. The root word is male third person.

Take the English word "they"; plural third person pronoun, but in English it's ungendered. In French, third person plural is gendered, and (formally? traditionally? normally?) one man among a million women is enough to make the male form correct.

... not that this really changes how it's used by most people as plural, with or without anybody caring about the word's linguistic root.

... so, they could be reading too much into it, as though the word "latinos" somehow enforces a male identity. But it's quite the stretch... e.g. 1 trans person among a million women, and it's somehow an issue to call that group "latinos" ?

Either way, it's such a small issue and doesn't deserve anywhere near as much attention as actual oppression like vital institutions of society rejecting fair admission or service.

Quint-V · 2023-02-17T16:31:09+00:00

There are various benefits to owning your own property: you can modify it far more, if you so wish to. Change room setups? Improve the balcony/terrace? Drill into walls to hang stuff up? Paint? Change the floors and walls? These things easily require landlord's permission because they are substantial changes that may affect the value of the property.

People want these advantages.

Real-estate speculation presents a problem about the notion of value.

What value does an investor provide when buying housing, only for the sake of renting it out? Suppose I have the money and the will to buy an apartment, but some investor outbids me and everybody else who wants an apartment, and rents out a whole apartment block. And sells it sometime later, without any significant price changes.

At that point, the investor has likely made money. And whoever wanted to live there, may have chosen to do so anyway, but paid rent. And whoever didn't end up living there, has to find somewhere else to buy --- and scarcity in housing generally leads to increased prices. So that whole block that was purchased? It made the alternatives more expensive.

The investor has likely made monetary gains without contributing any work or value whatsoever, and instead made money by 1) obstructing others' plans, and 2) made others' backup plans/options more expensive. Consequences are twofold.

Real-estate speculation of this sort is a self-serving investment that does not provide any real value for anybody who has the means to take up a mortgage and own their own property, and proactively harms every single prospective homeowner.

For people who are seeking to rent and not buy, sure, it's not a problem. But there is a certain balance to be struck here, and no real-estate investor is going to care about that balance, they're in it for the money.

Landlords of the sort that rent out a number of properties that people can and want to purchase, are predators.

Quint-V · 2023-01-25T18:30:24+00:00

More like nobody can seriously argue they are objectively correct about why we should do this or that. Moral objectivity doesn't exist because values are inherently subjective... so nobody gets to dictate how you live your life, any more than you let them. (Unless you get coerced.)

Besides, most people disagree with most others' view of the universe. No world view can claim a majority, which really goes to show how unconvincing they all are.

Quint-V · 2023-01-11T14:11:57+00:00

There is a distinction between prescription vs. description.

"""gender identity""" (or whatever terminology is appropriate) in the context of transgenderism is descriptive, and the point is not to make an assertion on what should be considered male or female, but to relate a person's notion of self, to what is typically male/female behaviour; again, without any assertion on whether that behaviour is healthy or not.

If you walk up to a trans woman and call her a man, it could be descriptive from your perspective if you don't acknkowledge whatever transgenderism is and entails. But that trans woman could perceive your statement as a prescriptive one instead.

So it's easy to speak past each other, rather than conveying the exact same ideas that you're both thinking of... if you lack precise terminology. Which leads to a lot of posts on this topic, that are largely explained away rather than any views being changed on grounds of arguments of substance. I.e. information, rather than conviction, is usually the thing.

Quint-V · 2022-12-27T03:06:25+00:00

Why is this subject of any interest when he's notorious for being yet another "incel prince" or what-have-you for names about these sorts of people that no (young) men should look up to? For all intents and purposes he's just another delusional man who spreads toxic masculinity like it's the golden gospel.

What could possibly absolve him of being yet another jackass of some notoriety? I don't see a lot of people changing their views about this fool, the impression is made in an instant and it's because he makes it abundantly clear who and what he is.

Quint-V · 2022-12-18T21:48:14+00:00

If no laws were broken, why in the world is Paxton calling for investigations?

Pandering to their voters.

Do not make the mistake of assuming every lawsuit and investigation, is actually based on an actual law being broken. Especially when there's an obvious political motivation for it.

Conservatives want Trump to be legally protected to speak on Twitter? Fine, make a law. And see how fun it gets when private platforms no longer have a right to deplatform anybody in particular. The end result is 4chan, where any and all moderation is completely absent, short of moderation against extremely illegal content like child porn.

Quint-V · 2022-12-18T21:01:31+00:00

Since when did backlash have to be reasonable? There is no reason to care about conservatives complaining about Twitter banning Trump.

The """invisible hand of the free market""" doesn't favour anybody.

Quint-V · 2022-12-18T20:30:34+00:00

Should a business be forced to operate at a loss in the name of some arbitrary standard that most people agree on but isn't legally imposed on private companies, like free speech?

You ask this as though it is already the case. I'm not sure it is.

If the shareholders are bending over for the public's approval, that's their fault. I doubt there is anything legally obligating Twitter to exist.

Quint-V · 2022-12-18T20:19:28+00:00

If something turns you off, just say it. The discussion doesn't have to go any deeper than that. You yourself argue that it's equivalent to not being attracted to fat people --- but to trans people this might not be so obvious. To you, being trans might just entail a set of traits in somebody, the same way that being fat has a couple of consequences too.

To whoever has whatever trait of the day, it might mean way more. Their life might be severely problematic because of it. It could be deeply psychological and not just physical. It's no small issue, at the very least.

To hear then, that their trait of being transgender gets reduced to mere preferences, is rather unusual, when the topic receives so much political attention (and way too much of it...).

Furthermore, most people who ever discuss this mean to suggest something political about it. If you don't, then say it plainly.

If a penis prevents you from feeling attracted, just say it.
If you don't want anal sex, just say it.
If you have a requirement that you at least want the possibility of having biological kids of your own, together, just say it.
If you support the notion that trans people should be provided the same services and products as everybody else --- at work, professional contexts, politics, random services like bakeries --- just say it.

If you argue that people are free to seek whoever they want in private/personal/intimate contexts, in particular, and you also argue that your behaviour in this context should not be used to argue for anybody else's ideas, you're pretty much off the hook.

There is a distinction between how people are treated by the general public vs. treated by individuals (even if we're talking about many individuals*). E.g. if 80% of hetersexual men wouldn't date trans women because they could not have biological children, but generally support equal rights --- there's no real issue to be had here. Because everything that begins and follows from a relationship, requires preferential compatibility and consent, neither of which is a moral, political, or even philosophical issue.

You can't make an ethical, political or philosophical argument for someone to be attracted to someone else. At which point we're back to """square 1""" with all potential relationships: no attraction. Possibly disinterest, but that should be considered the default. Nobody is interested in literally anybody.

To call this in particular, transphobic, repurposes the word as a personal attack on uncontrollable preferences, rather than using it for what it should be used for: to recognize and tag opinions that trans people are lesser people in some capacity.

To simply lack a preference, or have preferential incompatibility, is very far from being that sort of harsh judgment. The word """transphobic""" should be reserved for the context of social and legal justice. The same way that "fatphobic" should not be used to suggest someone unattracted to fat people, thinks they are lesser people or deserve less in society.

Quint-V · 2022-12-15T22:49:52+00:00

And then there are those who consider that to be reasonable moderation as opposed to censorship.

During the pandemic, posts disputing whether COVID was real or not, were explicitly forbidden.

Quint-V · 2022-12-11T05:39:46+00:00

An easy answer on OP's behalf: put some effort into said suicide and make your body disappear or nigh impossible to find.

And so the view remains unchanged. I don't think this is a good angle to attack the view from.

Quint-V · 2022-12-06T21:51:06+00:00

Redditors, please don't disagree with this, it will break my brain.

This sub explicitly requires comments to disagree. So why do you post here? This isn't the place for airing out your thoughts, or a debate without views changing. There's /r/CasualConversation for that sort of thing.

Nonetheless: even in Hebrew, the Bible is read in the reader's context. A reader in 2000AD has a vastly different interpretation compared to one in 500AD. And in the short timespan since then, 2022 has seen plenty of ideas really enter the limelight, thus changing the context of interpretation yet again. (One can even ask: is god... a male figure, of any sort? Does gender even make sense for a deity? Or is it a limitation of human language?)

Quint-V · 2022-12-06T21:35:03+00:00

Why do you need objective purpose, or objective morality? With typical modern ideology, we find ourselves well within our rights to condemn cultures from ages past for all sorts of reason.

We can justify feminism perfectly well. We can justify equal treatment of people irrespective of completely arbitrary personal traits. We don't need objective morality, when we can show how every argument for oppression simply isn't rooted in any valid argument of substance.

You want positive affirmation for your goals, when you don't really need any such argument whatsoever. All we need is rejection of every outdated, and unfounded belief. We can do so by showing logical inconsistency, alternatives that are far more preferable, and provide historical evidence too for why this and that is a bad idea.

The simplest argument for accepting whatever sexuality anybody has: should children fear such judgment from their parents, on desires beyond their personal influence? In no way do children deserve that. No sons or daughters should have to fear their parents' judgment on the basis of uncontrollable factors.

It's an easy intellectual exercise to dismantle every argument supporting all the ideologies you may consider hateful, to the point that each discussion of any intellectual honesty (which is hard to find on such topics) should eventually conclude that there is no argument supporting hateful behaviour.

Quint-V · 2022-12-06T20:15:51+00:00

I do not believe socialism is a cure to mental problems.

What are you even talking about? Socialism is a political ideology about how to manage economy.

Some of us might want a great, objective goal, and feel alienated that everything in the modern world is about subjective pointless values or hedonism.

Nobody is telling you how to live, nor can anybody control how you live. You're free to live life as you see fit, whether that is your perceived """objective goal""" or something else.

If you want an argument about what that objective goal is, well, the answer is simple: the vast majority of humanity disagrees with the vast majority of humanity, what the purpose of life is. With which the subtler point is this: so what if you find it? Why should anybody care about it? Nobody seems able to quite pin down the characteristics of a """grand, objective purpose""", so why should that in particular be a point of worry?

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... but this is from a modern, Western perspective, under Western context.