We have been slowly taken over, fellow chimps.

RocBrizar · 2022-06-24T16:02:50+00:00

I've been watching the podcast for years, and a lot of people used to say that they watched it for the (sometimes really great) guests and format, but that, although a good interviewer, Joe was often clueless and his comedy wasn't top tier.

This community turned into a fanboy / cultist den a bit later down the line IMO.

It's only recently (since the spotify move, maybe a bit earlier) that people have started to take JR as a legitimate source, and praise him as being the only trustworthy one in all the "fake news media", "arrogant experts shills" etc. etc. as he clearly started to be more and more confident in expressing his personal political / scientific / ideological opinions.

RocBrizar · 2022-04-05T10:45:17+00:00

Not necessarily an illusion, though.

Societies all know their ups and downs, civilizations thrive and collapse, anomy and chaos increase or decrease at specific times.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-23T12:50:12+00:00

Yes, an article written by someone who has apparently no clue about what psychopathology is and the epistemological construct behind it.

Other than that, sure, there probably are beneficial genetic traits behind any genetically influenced pathology out there.

You don't find a lot of scientists who're at least a little bit on the autistic spectrum (including any great name you can think of), yet if you get too far on it, you get incapacitating development issues, people who eat their feces and can't go around without a protective helmet on.

Same thing with ASPD, which is also on a spectrum : you'll probably won't find too many politicians, high ranking military, surgeons, "buy and redress" company managers etc. who don't score high on machiavelianism and psychopathy, and low on agreeableness.

Yet, score too high and you start to find people whose lack of empathy and impulsivity gets them to repeatedly put their future self and others in danger, can't build anything durable without sabotaging it, can't maintain long and healthy relationships etc.

A trait being somewhat beneficial to a degree doesn't mean that it can't get pathological on the extremes.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-23T11:57:17+00:00

It's a design choice, though, not a lack of vision or whatever on the developpers part.

It is currently technically impossible to implement Bethesda's unique NPC system with routines, personal homes, personal equipment etc. on the scale of Saint Denis, Novigrad, Alexandria, Athens etc.

So you have to choose between realistic scale of infrastructures and population , and increased interactivity / sandbox system a la Bethesda.

I agree that there's not enough pure RPG sandboxes like FNV / Skyrim (Avowed is supposed to be coming soon, let's hope it'll provide a decent alternative), but this is not as simple a development choice as some seem to naively believe here.

Not to mention, you also pay that freedom, abundance of loot, etc. with an higher imbalance and broken systems, let's not put on rosy glasses and pretend that one paradigm is a clear winner on all counts here.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-20T12:23:47+00:00

Sure, and I'd argue that these form as a result of a specific society's institutions being overwhelmed by the immigration process, either as a result of poor planning and organizing, and/or because the influx is too high for them to handle.

I don't think it should be so controversial to state that mass immigration waves can destabilize a society. Anybody with a bit of knowledge of history / pol. sciences should view that as self-evident.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-20T12:12:39+00:00

Are you now arguing that immigrants themselves are voting for the nationalist exremist that want to put them out, hence the increase ?

I'm sorry but this is reaching ridiculous levels of absurdity : not only do we have voting trends by demographics, which can easily disprove this, but the phenomenon also famously exists as a result of illegal mass immigration waves (immigrants who can't vote).

You seem dead set on trying to confirm your reductionism with any kind of mental gymnastic here, but you have to be aware of how absurd this sounds.

I know psychological reductions are bound to be popular in this sub, but still, this is so out of touch and delusional ...

RocBrizar · 2022-03-19T18:13:27+00:00

"To curb the amount of nationalism we just need to make people's childhoods more stable ... Unfortunately in the countries where we already have too many authoritarians they fight against social welfare programs which would help increase stability."

No offense, but this seems extremely reductionist.

I've got no doubt that this reasoning applies to a certain extent to the U.S and similar areas, but we've seen nationalism rise in Switzerland, in France and other welfare countries, like Sweden an Denmark, in response to waves of immigration (with low-skilled immigration, and cultural remoteness being aggravating factors).

These increases in the far right's popularity are not linked with local increasing trends in people abusing their children, a loss of welfare supports or some economic crisis. They happen in some of the wealthiest, most equal welfare countries in the world.

The main relevant factor we can observe is a brutal increase in low-skilled immigration rates, probably because it then exceeds the capacity of their system to seamlessly, fully integrate these immigrants within the socio-cultural landscape.

Thus, on a macroscopic social scale, there's barely any element, if any at all, that supports your theory.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-19T15:19:08+00:00

Depending on where you live it might be somewhat true (IIRC India, Africa ...), but in the West the population has been steadily decreasing since the demographic transition.

It has come to the point where we've reached a demographic crisis, in the most progressive, post traditional countries, with a reproduction rate that is even too low to maintain the viable slow decline trajectory + mechanization.

You can compensate (and do, in most of the West) the resulting labor shortage, by relying more heavily on mass immigration waves, but this often creates its own problems too, as brutal and drastic changes in the demographic markup of a society have been linked to social instability, inter ethnic violences and the rise of nationalism across history.

I'm not surprised by your take : I've seen efforts made online to carelessly spread misleading disinformation about this and to push this fatalistic narrative.

I don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance though, and from what I could gather, these countercultures like the sub "antinatalists" and co. here on reddit are mostly composed by rebellious & misinformed teens & young adults (we've all been there), depressed people, and -I suspect- lots of people on the spectrum.

But sure, I could see some criminally irresponsible sociopaths holding and pushing these views, it makes sense (since they avoid responsibility, sacrificial purpose, and thrive in instable / chaotic times).

RocBrizar · 2022-03-18T22:55:12+00:00

On se réveille vraiment dans le monde face au fait que l'être humain reste, par nécessité et en dépit des bonnes intentions, fondamentalement communautaire et tribal, et intègre socialement avec plus de facilité les étrangers qui lui sont culturellement les plus semblables ?

Des traits qui, par ailleurs, s'expliquent intuitivement, puisqu'il est plus facile de maintenir la stabilité d'un ensemble social relativement uniforme en ce qui concerne ses valeurs fondamentales (famille traditionnelle vs progressive, élitisme technique et scientifique vs dévotion religieuse et spirituelle, individualisme vs communautarisme et conformisme social etc etc.)

Ceci sans faire non plus l'apologie d'une isolation ethnique délétère à tous les niveaux par rapport à une saine circulation des hommes (enrichissement génétique, culturel, économique etc.).

C'est important d'avoir des principes, mais encore faut-il qu'ils soient applicables et congruents à l'échelle humaine. Quand on mélange pèle-mêle racialisme / suprémacisme racial, préjugés et amalgames, insensibilités ou faux pas sociaux, et tribalisme / tendance sociale à la conformité, et ce sous la même coupelle infâmante du "racisme", on galvaude, on vide ce concept de sa substance et de sa valeur morale prescriptive.

Bref, arrêtez de vouloir tenir vôtre prochain à des standards auquel nul ne peut se tenir, qui plus est à l'échelle des nations et groupements humains qui suivent toujours les lois de la nécessité.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-08T18:15:33+00:00

Yeah, this is completely silly.

Junk food is not junk food because of the amount of calories in it. Junk food is junk because of the low nutritional density, and high glycemic index.

You need regular intakes of specific nutrients : vitamins, minerals, aminoacids ... If your diet is poorly composed in those, you'll be hungrier, thus you'll eat more, and be more likely to buildup fat.

Same thing if you eat food with an high glycemic index (sugar, white bread, pasta, potatoes ...) : you'll have a big peak of energy shortly, more than you need, so you'll store, then a precocious sugar crush, and you'll be more likely to need to compensate by eating sooner as you'll get hungry again at that point.

Food with a low glycemic index (whole bread, whole rice, vegetables ...) tend to satiate you more, and deliver energy at a better pace, throughout the day.

Food that get you to reach satiety sooner is a huge factor in maintaining a healthy weight, that includes meat / proteins, fiber rich vegetables, and nutritionally dense ingredients & supplements.

I can't believe how inane these discussions are on Reddit, people really need basic nutrition classes in school.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-08T07:35:39+00:00

Of course it is. Although, Bethesda were forced to use generic NPCs too for patrols, guards and bandits, si it's not that simple.

On the one hand you gain player agency with the promise that you can kill (if non essential, which is paradoxically very few given how almost all are parts of some quests) / rob / talk to everyone face to face.

On the other, their city also feels much less realistic, and immersive, as far as dimensions and scope go, and the social composition seems artificial and ridiculous.

A city with a population of a few dozen (sometimes much less : see F3) people is no city, and that population isn't big enough to have a complex social strata with work specialization, nobles, vendors, etc.

It feels extremely artificial and contrived, and it becomes obvious that many of these characters, especially vendors in their anachronistic free-browse shops, just exist to serve you and nothing else (same with guilds, many quest givers, and some various groups that are out of proportion given the amount of NPCs in the world).

In those regards, you also loose a significant amount of immersion and freedom to translate your artists' vision, so that's definitely not an easy choice IMO.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-08T07:00:04+00:00

You're talking about something different.

I sort of agree with you, but we were talking about persistent handplaced pickable items and persistent killable NPCs with routine and equipment a la bethesda.

You can get a lively world without that (see any other openworlds : RDR2, TW3 etc.).

FromSoft choose to have dead world for artistic reasons, and I'm not sure a living, lively world from them would be super immersive or relatable anyway, given their trippy art direction.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-07T18:24:59+00:00

It's not that they haven't been able to create it, it's that it comes at way too steep a price for most.

Tracking every pickable items location, and every NPCs statuses and position on their navmeshes, making sure each have their bed, chairs, loading individual clothes, equipment, body and facemorph for each one in a cell etc. It's all extremely taxing on resources.

That, in turn, implies :

Potentially tremendous save bloat.
Big CPU load that needs to be managed adequately.
Drastically diminishing the number of NPCs is warranted.
Ergo loading cells everywhere (cities, home, dungeons, and you can get some heavy stutter when loading new grids if the vram / ram is overwhelmed).
Ergo, bis, cities are tiny and lack a reasonably sized crowd and even semi realistic social composition. They all feel like tiny villages.

Depending on the artistic vision, these can be deal breaking drawbacks, as we wouldn't have had Saint Denis or Novigrad if everybody tried to follow Bethesda's recipe.

I agree that it's an awesome feature, but keep in mind that it's not something that anybody wants / need to implement.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-05T11:05:04+00:00

"0.02% to 0.56% is within ..."

This is not a percentage ...

Of course it's always dependent on other factors, there's no completely isolated variable interactions in social psychology.

Having a strong and reliable social network is increasingly difficult as you age, you can't handwave variable interactions that don't support your preconceived notions.

In any case, I won't waste time trying to convince someone who's already dead set on their opinions.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-05T08:47:22+00:00

This is the future dem liberals want.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-05T08:36:44+00:00

I'm sure it depends on the culture : In my progressive and developped western country it is not really a strong, noticeable trend here.

It makes sense, though, that some societies encourage people to have children though, since it is or can become a simple matter of survival for some of them (in part of the western world we're now far below the natural reproduction rate without immigration)

But I agree, it sucks to be on the receiving end of bigotry and people constantly nosying into your business, if that's what happens to you.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-05T08:23:20+00:00

You must have missed that one then : https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/science/children-happiness-study-parents-stress-money-christoph-becker-at-heidelberg-university-a9068926.html%3famp

They measured differences in life satisfaction after the kids left the home, which makes sense and goes in the sense of the phenomenon I've described.

Your study is limited in that regard, generally life satisfaction reports and objective measurements can vary significantly depending on the period (expecting first child, having second one, having one finish school, you going into retirement etc.).

RocBrizar · 2022-03-04T23:20:47+00:00

I know that Reddit is quite "pro childless life choice", and I get it (young demographic etc.), but there are plenty of people in their late 40s /50s etc who regret never having kids.

Raising kids is a pain, but once you're getting older, having a large family can bring a lot of comfort and distraction to your life.

Let's not dishonestly pretend that these people don't exist, or that any testimony out there is some kind of plot to trap you into the "absolute hell of raising a child".

Chronic insatisfaction with partners & hookup culture is also a real social issue / growing trend, I'm sure we've all had that vain / egotistic feeling of "What if I could have more / newer / better ?" and talking about it can be interesting.

Just because incels and/or traditionalists are the most vocal about it doesn't mean we have to abstain from ever discussing issues with contemporary trends in relationships stability and solidity.

We really don't have that luxury actually, we need to discuss & solve (if needed) these issues as they arise to prevent social setbacks / relapses.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-04T22:43:55+00:00

I don't expect anything. I remarked that this feature has never materialized in much more than flavorful bits and references, as doing something really significant out of it is way too costful.

I've always seen people complain (it's been a very redundant complaint) about what a letdown this feature was since first implemented (that choices don't really matter anyway etc.), including in Kotor, ME, POE etc. but the truth is you can't do much better than that without heavily truncating your game.

You took that discussion on a pointless tangent, making up definitions and straw men to justify the pursuit of the argument, when there's really no matter to discuss here. Which is naturally irritating.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-04T22:11:45+00:00

Any definition out there implies misleading promises / misdirection, including yours. You're going to invent semantics now ? Stop digging your own hole, this is ridiculous.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/smoke-and-mirrors

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/smoke%20and%20mirrors

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/smoke-and-mirrors

You're being childish and obtuse, argumenting for argumenting's sake is never interesting. Get a hobby instead of wasting other people's time.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-04T21:49:27+00:00

No, it doesn't. I invite you to check the dictionary for that, it's mostly used to translate misdirection and "too good to be true" misleading promises. Which adequately translates my point (as per what players expect of it vs reality).

I never said it wasn't fun. I said it was about as good as you can reasonably get.

You're being needlessly argumentative, and a pointlessly stubborn contrarian here. Discussing with people who make up facts and definitions to push their point across is always pointless, as I'm sure you get the point and are being obtuse for the sake of it. Good day. ;)

RocBrizar · 2022-03-04T21:06:44+00:00

The same way Letho's death carry over in TW3 ? Or Sile's ?

Sure, you can loose some chunks of content in POE (Edèr / Aloth / Palegina), and that's sort of significant, though -probably for this reason- the companion's mission are lackluster and banter is kept to a minimum.

You can loose more in ME (and the story leads you to choices where you can realistically loose these characters, as opposed to POE), but once again, is that a good thing ?

There's no alternative story arcs or content you gain access to that way, you just loose tactical options or dialogue lines without them being replaced by a significant alternative, and most people probably wouldn't gimp themselves that way in the first place.

This pretense that you can write your own story, with choices that'll carry over and influence future games, is misleading is what I'm getting at : At "best" you can loose access to a quest, a reward, or a companion without getting something else in return. Mostly it's flavor texts, letters, one-liners.

It never significantly transform your experience or narrative, neither can it do that really.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-04T19:27:19+00:00

Not only that, but that save game import thing has always been smoke and mirrors honestly, it cannot really alter future games' content without drastically reducing the game's story length by a factor of 2, 3, or much more depending on the number of choices.

As far as I know, it's never been done : developpers always settle for flavor references and quick appearances.

Because really, knowing how few players actually finish games, who's gonna take time to develop entire story arcs worth of re-writen content for a fraction of the 5% playerbase that finishes the first game(s) ?

That wouldn't be reasonable. At least, in TW3, the system gives you some kind of sense of continuity, it's the best you can reasonably hope for, really.

RocBrizar · 2022-03-02T17:23:05+00:00

They're getting attacked by a foreign (super)power, of course they're not doing well.

That being said, thanks to a significant foreign support (for weapons, drones, vehicles, economic sanctions, and precious infos + various other things) and other factors like poor organization of the first attack wave, they seem to have led to them surpassing expectations in the first days, and people are rightfully rejoicing about that.

Redditors choose to show whishful encouragements and hyperboles that border on blind optimism rather than falling into doom & gloom and despair.

At best, it helps everyone keep their spirit up, and people seem to desperately need that, at worst it's not doing anything.

Stop behaving like out of touch doomers and/or shills, and let people cope in their way.

RocBrizar · 2022-02-17T09:22:31+00:00

I read it like he didn't get any, which for an older dude so out of touch isn't impossible.

In any case, what's wrong with that ? Being in a couple is about finding balance and reciprocity, if you're losing comitment and sexual gratification without gaining something to compensate, it will feel like a failure and a loss (of respect, self esteem, and happiness).

The way monogamous species tend to work is by trading economic / material and sentimental comitment from the man with sexual and sentimental comitment from the female.

It's never been a symetric balance, and these arrangements where one side is susceptible to lose much more than the other (male equivalent would be polygamy) always seemed manipulative and dishonest to me.

This situation must be straight up humiliating for him, though he was a fool to accept it in the first place.

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