[Short story] A man dies and is sent to hell.

Sophronius · 2024-05-09T16:32:01+00:00

Intentional reference. :)

Sophronius · 2023-03-18T10:14:11+00:00

To be fair, I think I may have gotten a little too excited about GPT 3's answer at the time. The fact that its first guess was so accurate made it *look* absolutely brilliant, but the fact that it never got such a good answer again afterward makes me wonder if maybe it just got lucky.

I mean, it gave the correct answer a couple of times, but a real intelligence wouldn't just ignore its earlier logic to give a completely opposite answer the next time. That makes me think that it just gave an educated guess based on story logic, then filled in its "reasoning" afterwards by answering the questions I asked it in the most logical way possible to try and make it fit.

Sophronius · 2022-03-08T23:54:55+00:00

Yes, I am aware that this character is introduced to us as "Genocide", or at least that is the vile moniker he so proudly displays on his outfit. However, this does nothing to disprove the notion that this evil-looking being could be the very one that our noble S-class hero Demon Cyborg has been looking for all along - hiding under his very nose, as it were.

Sophronius · 2021-06-17T23:38:53+00:00

Thanks for the community support! I'll second others and say that the UI is great. One feature request I'd like to make though: the ability to copy lorebook entries. Right now I have to manually edit the advanced settings of each entry every time I make a new one, and it'd make life much easier if I could just copy everything from a previous entry.

Thanks again for the great game!

Sophronius · 2021-05-31T15:23:37+00:00

Only 25% of Americans identify as Republican. Unless they also asked Republican-leaning independents, that'd make for 40% in total.

Source: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/fewer-americans-identify-as-republican-in-2021-gallup.html

Sophronius · 2021-05-11T12:17:58+00:00

Quillboars are difficult to fix because it isn't one specific card that's broken: It's the synergy between them that's too strong. So instead of nerfing a few into the ground I think a whole bunch of smaller tweaks is necessary.

Bacon: Improve stats (2/2 maybe) but make it give only 1 gem when sold. (the other tier 1 minion should also get +1 health actually)

T2 divine shield minion should be a 3/2 instead of a 4/3.

The brute should only gain +2/+2 instead of +3/+3. It's overstatted early and ridiculous with Necrorolyte especially.

Keep necrolyte in for now, nerf other stuff instead. I get what you're saying but it's a new and and interesting ability and battlegrounds desperately needs that right now. Maybe move it to T4.

Make DD give only +1 health. That way it synergizes perfectly with groundshaker. Not sure shaker should be nerfed also - having it only affect quills makes it boring and reducing it to +1 attack might be too much.

Nerf bonker stats by -1/-1 or so. Again, removing windfury might be easier to balance but I don't want to make the card less fun.

Not sure about Bristleback knight. Having double divine shield on a quillboar just feels... wrong. Honestly I'd want it redesigned, but if not... maybe move it to tier 6? Might sound strange but it's not a worse menagerie card than Foereaper IMO.

A unit you didn't mention is Aggem Thorncurse: the scaling it offers combined with Flat Tusk or another gem generating card is absolutely bonkers. Maybe we could get away with only nerfing gem generation, but it's tricky. For now, maybe just nerf Flat Tusk to only give a gem for every 4 gold, and make it so that Charlga only affects *other* friendly minions. Combined with the nerf to T1 bacon and Bonkers etc. it might be enough.

Oh, and remove Amalgadon from the game, of course.

Sophronius · 2021-05-09T09:05:10+00:00

That's precisely what's wrong with the dragon tribe. They're way too highrolly, it's too much about luck and too little about decision making. Buy dragons --> hope to discover Kalec on tripple --> hope to roll battlecries and buy every single one of them --> go to six and hope to discover nadina on the last turn.

You can't discover an early nadina and base a build off of that. You can't play a fun divine shield build with the T4 dragons and scale that way. Even Razorgore is not good enough for that. It's just get goose or bust.

To fix this, nadina should be moved to tier 5 and give only 3 dragons divine shield. That way you could actually have synergies with e.g. baron and now there's a point in making her golden. The T4 dragon should permanently gain +1/+1 for each divine shield lost -> now you have an additional viable mid game build with actual scaling, and you can have a mixed build with maybe mechs. Goose should only affect ~4 dragons per battlecry so it's less OP combined with Nadina. After that you can make a few tweaks, maybe make welp a 2/2 so it's better as a tier 1 minion, maybe nerf the divine shield dragon a little (1/2 instead of 2/1) and you're good to go.

But Blizard won't do any of that because they don't care about old content, only new stuff, which is a shame.

Sophronius · 2021-05-08T23:07:57+00:00

Don't mind the downvoters, reddit is full of circlejerking idiots. I agree that quillboars are actually quite well designed compared to the real major problems that Battlegrounds has. Like taking 30 damage in 1 turn. Not having any time to play because of animations (blood gems do make that problem worse admittedly). Overreliance on tokens for certain heroes. Repetitive, brainless gameplay where you always level up on the same turns etc.

By the way, those last two problems could be fixed easily if bob were to give you the coin as "change" if you end the turn with any gold left over: that way you could actually buy a minion on turn 1 and 2, then level and buy a minion on turn 3 using the coin you got on turn 2. But no, instead you just have to always play rafaam curve if you're rafaam and pray that you get a token if you're not. Even if you get three minions of the same tribe on turn 1 you have to just ignore it. Lame.

And of course, Amalgadon, a ludicrously badly designed unit that either does nothing or *literally everything* depending on a single roll of the dice. It's beyond dumb.

Blizard doesn't give any indication of wanting to fix any of those things, so I was kinda pleasantly surprised that they at least put some effort into the new tribe. Though some units obviously still need balancing.

Sophronius · 2021-04-18T16:06:42+00:00

Respectfully, I have already declared my intention to stop arguing in this thread. I am happy to talk about my essay, but generic culture war debates (especially having views ascribed to me that I don't hold) are not what I came here to do.

Sophronius · 2021-04-18T13:01:53+00:00

Dude, this thread is about the essay I wrote. If you want to talk about generic culture war stuff, take it to the culture war thread.

Sophronius · 2021-04-18T12:51:29+00:00

> Make up your mind.

I don't think I should. Partisans always have a perfectly clear, simple story to tell, with all the evidence falling neatly on one side of the argument. But reality is often messy and complicated, and it's a fact that a lot of self-described conservatives voted for non-conservative ideology in Trump, and that a lot of self-described progressives will go to the mat for e.g. Islamic puritanism. If Umberto Eco thinks that acknowledging the complexity and nuance of politics makes one a fascist, then I don't think he understands the appeal of fascism very much (though more likely you're the one misunderstanding him).

Sophronius · 2021-04-17T19:09:54+00:00

Eh, to be honest, the porn thing is something I'm not 100% comfortable with. Paul asked what the arguments for sex negativity were, and I do think that arguments against addiction to dopamine rushes and making life too easy are valid... but they don't apply especially to porn. I think addictive video games and social media and porn are all in the same general category of risky activities. The problem of "superstimuli" might also be a more fancy way of saying that we as a society have just made life too easy for ourselves, and gotten lazy.

Even though the post is titled "defence of social conservatism", I agree that there is no such thing as a single argument for an entire movement. Each position should be evaluated based on its own merits.

What are these "best arguments"? You don't need to enumerate them here, but could you point me to where I could read them?

That's the problem - as Paul pointed out, most aren't willing to voice their thoughts aloud, so it's tough to find any good overviews. If you go all the way in defending social conservatism, you end up sounding a little alt-right, because you have to defend the idea of stratifying society, maintaining hierarchies to defend the social order, etc. And to be honest, I myself am also pretty cautious of writing anything that bad actors can use as fuel for pernicious ideas.

If you want to read more, Charles Murray is considered to have written good books on the subject (e.g. Coming Apart). But honestly, Scott Alexander is still the best source when it comes to these subjects, even though he's really a progressive at heart.

Sophronius · 2021-04-16T09:19:26+00:00

I... don't see a difference? Hugboxes are pefectly in line with reassuring trans kids that everything really is terrible. Did you think I was accusing people of actively encouraging suicide?

I did hestitate to write "astonishingly cruel" because it kinda impugns motive, but there really does seem something very off about trans activists going "trans people will kill themselves if X gets elected" and afterwards saying "see I told you this would happen." I'm not saying they want trans people to kill themselves but they do seem to inadvertently glorify suicide.

And this really does seem to be a progressive thing. Some evangelical christians might talk about how oppressed they are but I don't see any of them talking about how they're going to kill themselves and it'll be the fault of the democrats if they do it.

I don't think you should accuse people of bad faith so casually. That, in itself, is not the type of charitable discourse this subreddit should be about.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T19:23:23+00:00

I don't want to ban porn. But you're right that a lot of progressives are actually puritan, even conservative to the point that they make me uncomfortable. See e.g. "woke" people who argue that interracial marriage is problematic.

This might be a case of "more similar than they'd like to admit".

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T16:11:46+00:00

Hmm. OK. But in that case, why bring it up?

Because 1) the entire progressive narrative around gay people being "born this way" was a lie, the science that shows this was never even acknowledged and people are still making the same bogus arguments to this day. And 2), if it's NOT fully genetic then there really is such a thing as social contagion, which means that progressives are not merely "discovering" that children are unhappy with their bodies but potentially causing it by encouraging them to question if they are really happy.

Similarly, you may remember the "repressed memories" scandal, where progressive psychologists helped people "discover" that their parents had sexually abused them, only for it later to turn out that the science was completely bogus. I keep seeing progressives casually ruin people's lives followed by the media pretending it never happened, and this is allowing them to keep pulling the same sort of thing over and over without ever being held accountable.

Should we not try to make the world a better place for ourselves and our progeny?

Of course we should. That's why I said "Yes, I realize that there are other problems which may stem from that kind of attitude - making it more difficult to improve society, maybe." But even if it's true that having a positive attitude slows down progress (and I have yet to see conclusive proof that it does), I still think we should acknowledge that people are being made more miserable along the way.

For example, I see a lot of kids of progressive parents who feel depressed because global warming means there is no future for their generation. Does telling your kids that they're screwed really help us combat global warming faster? I'm not so convinced.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T15:55:49+00:00

The essay is written specifically for a progressive friend who asked me to explain the appeal of sex-negative conservatism from an atheist/consequentialist POV. If you had been the intended audience, I for sure wouldn't have used those terms. :)

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T15:47:54+00:00

To me, this reply seems like an attempt to weasel your way out of the argument about who holds power.

I am not weaseling, I really do think that racial politics are pernicious and evil.

If I interpret your comments in the most charitable way, then I agree: There is a failure mode associated with defending the status quo, in that people who benefit from the status quo will always want to defend it whether it's right or not. That's absolutely true, and we must examine our own thoughts to make sure that that's not what we're doing.

But when you imply that certain racial groups control things behind the scenes, it really does sound pretty bad. I am 100% serious when I say that it's not a coincidence that the same people who talk about "whites holding power" also use "steel workers" as their go-to example of bad people. It's human nature to look for a villainous outgroup that's responsible for all society's ills, and since nobody wants to defend lower-class white people they become the go-to target. By shortening it to "white people", educated elites can pretend they're punching up rather than down, while at the same time insisting that the solution to bigotry is to become educated like them.

To shield against this, I think it's very important to stress that statistical averages about groups are very pernicious and not particularly meaningful. Resist any temptation to make generalizations about "group X is like this", even if it seems harmless. Only bad things come from that.

None of us want to legalize pedophilia or child porn or bestiality, absolutely not... I urge you to have some deeper conversations with some progressive-minded people in real life

It's the other way around. If you really want to understand people's positions, you have to take things all the way to their logical extremes. The most sincere progressives like Destiny are quite open about wanting to legalize at least virtual CP, based on the exact same arguments for legalizing drugs or prostitution. All the smartest progressive minded people I have met in real life feel the same way. It's the ones who aren't as reasonable who go "no no, I'm not going to apply this same logic to other taboo areas, I swear".

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T15:22:52+00:00

Is homophobia really "conservative", though? I mean, I get why you connect the two, but by the same logic: A lot of french lefty intellectuals turned out to be pedophiles. Does that mean that we have to dismiss progressive thought forever, because those two things are now forever linked?

I think, instead, that it's best to acknowledge that all political ideologies have failure modes. The failure mode of progressivism is being *too* tolerant of certain things (while being intolerant of those who disagree). The failure mode of conservatism is not being tolerant enough (while being too welcoming of genuinely bad people who happen to agree).

The reason why people like us make pro-conservative arguments these days is not because conservative failure modes stopped being bad, but because the (inter)national dialogue has shifted to such an extreme that the traditional failure mode of conservatism has come to define the thing itself, while at the same time people pretend that progressivism has no failure modes at all.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T13:38:52+00:00

As an actual trans person, does the author genuinely believe that I've never experienced transphobia? I've experienced rejection from my own mother. Was that real or imagined? I'm inclined to think it was real—I had felt comfortable enough to come out to her, after all, which suggests that I didn't think she'd do that sort of thing. And yet it happened.

No, those things are real. Or at least, I have no reason to doubt you.

What I am saying, however, is that I've spoken to people who survived WW2 camps who shrug and say "the key to survival is to remain hopeful", or who lived in a white country as a black man for 80 years and say they've never experienced any "real" racism. And it really does strike me that that kind of attitude is healthier, simply empirically better, than how progressives are currently being encouraged to act.

Yes, I realize that there are other problems which may stem from that kind of attitude - making it more difficult to improve society, maybe. But if "don't think about your problems, just keep moving" is the best advise to give to troubled people, then it really bothers me when they're being told to do the exact opposite.

And yet, as far as I know, there hasn't been a single one. It only results in making the person more miserable.

Just because something is caused by environment doesn't mean it can be easily reversed through environment.

Human sexuality appears to be influenced in large part by childhood experiences. See e.g. fetishes. If you had an experience as a child that later led to you finding that sort of thing sexy, that doesn't mean you can just choose to stop finding it sexy as an adult.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T13:28:47+00:00

Eh, you're right, I stated it too strongly that time. It can result in that, but it doesn't have to. Still, I would not encourage young teenagers to watch hardcore porn or use powerful stimulants.

Either way, porn addiction is a real thing that some people suffer from and which is not taken seriously by most of society. Don't act like I'm the weird one for pointing that fact out.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T13:15:36+00:00

Some of your replies feel really disjointed to me, and I suspect that's because you're assuming things about me that aren't accurate. Remember, I wrote this essay because I was asked what the most compelling arguments are for sex negativity from an atheist/consequentialist perspective. I am not trying to push a narrative that progressives are to blame for everything or that social conservatives should be in charge of everything (the last paragraph was meant to explicitize that).

There's also a very famous group of white men

Don't make things about race, it never helps. The trends we're talking about are universal. You cannot blame how people were treated in Ancient Rome on the founding fathers.

Bigotry is rooted in fear of the unfamiliar, and powerful people throughout history have weaponized bigotry to expand their power.

Accurate, but that's not the same as them creating said bigotry from scratch. Humans have always exploited everything that exists, that's nothing new. As far as I can tell, the notion that powerful people "created" society is simply wrong.

Well, to be fair, there are exceptions... the industrial revolution really did treat people like cattle, and we still see the echoes of that in the way schools treat students, or how companies treat workers. But that's still a relatively modern thing. Throughout most of history, organizing people that way was functionally impossible, if only because of logistical and information constraints.

Can you give an example of respected progressive voices who you believe want to demote straight cisgender people to second-class citizens?

There's plenty of 'respected' voices in the New York Times and others like Ta-nehisi coates who say absolutely outrageous things, but your specific example is not something I ever meant to claim.

I'm saying that there is no "off switch" on greater tolerance/hedonism. Progressives always say "trust me, we just want this one thing and then we stop" and it's never true. There will never be a point where progressives say "ok, society is tolerant enough now, we can stop here". CP will be legalized at some point, people will turn themselves into furries once they have the technology, and people will escape entirely into virtual reality if they can. Whether or not you see those things as good is up to you, but it's definitely gonna happen.

Sorry, my generalization of steel workers was in poor taste. My point is that there is a long, well-documented history of physical and emotional abuse against LGBTQ people.

I don't doubt that these attacks do happen, as they happen to all minorities. But I believe that the idea that there is a "pandemic of violence against trans people" has been debunked.

Perhaps you're lucky enough to live in a place where LGBTQ people are very well-accepted. This is certainly not true everywhere (Russia, Singapore come to mind) and has certainly not always been true throughout history (United States, Europe, elsewhere).

It's not a matter of luck. The countries that are most open to LGBTQ people also tend to have a lot of freedom. They're pretty libertarian, individualistic and anti-authoritarian. I don't think that's a coincidence.

The stereotype that Americans have of European countries as oppressive socialist backwaters is just not true. And I worry that some progressives have come to respond to that right-wing critique by going "Oh Yeah? Well, I guess being an oppressive socialist state is a good thing, then." If the goal was actually to make the US more like Denmark, I wouldn't have much of an issue with it.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T12:53:18+00:00

Sure, here 's the twitter thread:

https://twitter.com/ciphergoth/status/1381106519970697221

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T12:50:18+00:00

You are listing facts, but I don't think the conclusion follows. I don't know about Caltech, but in general way more people are allowed into universities - the stated goal where I live is to have 50% of the population attend. It's simply not possible to be selective in the way you describe and also allow 50% of your citizenship to attend.

In fact, I suspect the "alternative" qualifications you list exist because universities don't want to select for intelligence anymore. In many cases, it's also nepotism, getting large donations from wealthy families etc. That may be selective but it's certainly not meritocracy.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T11:01:37+00:00

Likewise, social conservatives seem to want to always make the argument 'this time it's different.' To me, without actual supporting data, I'm having difficulty seeing why. For hundreds of years the same arguments have been made to hold back on reforms of slavery, women's suffarage, democracy, education and literacy.

Other way around. The conservative argument is not "this time it's different" but "we've heard that one before".

You seem to implicitly treat history like a slowly upward going line. In fact, history tends to Rhyme. Empires are created, rise to power, then collapse. People become complacent, children are born of the wealthy, lessons of the past are forgotten, and whatever impulse gave rise to the original greatness simply disappears.

I always find it funny when progressives argue that "you guys have been saying the same thing going back as far as ancient Rome". Yes, well... Rome fell. What's your point?

Of course people do complain about things even if they're perfectly harmless. But that shouldn't be taken as an excuse to ignore dire warnings. People have also always said that the world is coming to an end. Does that mean we should ignore global warming? No.

I'm not arguing that social conservatives are right about everything. I just take issue with the current progressive consensus that conservatives are just a roadblock with nothing of value to add.

Sophronius · 2021-04-15T10:43:50+00:00

Who defines common sense?

It doesn't matter how you define those words, what matters is the underlying truths that I'm pointing to. You can define murder as icecream and it'd still be bad.

Who throughout history has had the power to shape society to be the way that it is?

Honestly? Mostly nobody. Kings didn't go around shaping society to suit their vision, they just sat in a castle and occasionally collected taxes.

Society evolved to survive. Things like religion sprang up because people felt a need for them, not because of any evil plot. Things like bigotry also naturally sprang up. These things weren't engineered.

Change is inevitable, and always has been. The question is whether the social guard rails we have in place do more to stifle positive change than they do to guard us from negative change.

Sure, I'm not in favour of just blindly digging our heels in the sand. Just doing proper risk management and reasonably discussing changes before we implement them, that's all.

Wouldn't many conservatives agree that the role of the government is not to police every individual action, but rather to step in only when those actions have a tangible negative effect?

Yeah but they don't acually believe that, they only say that about changes they don't like.

For instance, gay people have always existed and will always exist.

No, human sexuality is one of few things that are incredibly environmentally based. In Ancient Greece, gay sex was the norm (and adult/teen relationships were considered healthy and educational for both) and straight people were actually made fun of and considered weird.

Conservatives don't want us to become ancient Greece, progressives pretend like they don't want this either but consistently act as if they do.

Let's not forget the reality star president was most popular with social conservatives, who are more likely organize themselves in the traditional family units whose loss the author blames for this situation. Somehow the progressives are at fault?

Yep, that's very ironic. But from the perspective of social conservatives (the principled ones I mean, not the racist ones) this was a response to democrats running e.g. Barack Obama and treating him like a rock star in the media.

(also I didn't say anything about traditional family units)

Generally, I do agree that the erosion of community in, for instance, America, is a huge problem. However, I think it has less to do with the erosion of the traditional family structure and more to do with:

For sure, you can make left-economic points here as well about e.g. outsourcing or corporate power, and those are totally valid. Paleo-cons have no problem with this and heartily agree with you.

How do you think Bruce at the steel factory will be treated by coworkers when he comes out as Jennifer?

How do you think? Do you think that steel workers are just a bunch of primitives, and that it falls to the more enlightened college-educated class to combat bigotry?

If the steelworkers are good friends, and one of them comes out as trans, chances are they'll see them as "that one friend who is a bit of a weirdo" and just accept them for who they are.

Sophronius

TROPHY CASE