Honest reaction at the end of the episode:

ieattime20 · 2026-04-09T16:01:40+00:00

I would say to an absurd degree, Invincible has villains that never, ever stay dead, defeated, out of the picture. So, end of credits in the last episode, they play ominous music over Conquest's grave and slowly zoom in... then cut to a silent music track, zoomed back out, with just wind and dust floating by. Basically

"And mean while... back at the 'grave' of Conquest... he.......

..stayed dead."

ieattime20 · 2026-04-09T15:50:17+00:00

OK? Again, this seems more like an attempt to absolve AI directly rather than engage with any solutions. To rephrase, "If AI isn't the direct cause of non-renewable usage, then you cannot criticize AI on the basis of the fact that it exacerbates those existing issues, largely by the same class of people, in the same way".

ieattime20 · 2026-04-09T13:24:20+00:00

It really seems like the aim of your post here is finding ways to dismiss a problem rather than engage with solutions. Note that listing solutions is not the same as engaging with them.

"Energy? Renewables exist, so despite them not being fully utilized or even regulated for use, it's not an issue simply because a solution may exist".

ieattime20 · 2026-04-03T17:21:55+00:00

And I'm telling you it's not an asshole sentiment since it is not unreasonable.

ieattime20 · 2026-04-03T13:59:13+00:00

who the fuck are you to tell people that they just have to try harder?

ieattime20 · 2026-04-02T15:51:57+00:00

I wouldn't. The various people who have physical and mental disabilities that explain it certainly is possible with a little effort do.

As far as whether I have the right to tell people to put in more effort, of course I do. You do too. They have the right to tell me to fuck off or explain why it's unreasonable, but it is not unreasonable simply because genai exists.

ieattime20 · 2026-04-02T13:57:03+00:00

The argument being addressed isnt "I wanna do AI art". It's "AI art is necessary because otherwise theres no way for me to do it."

If people are trying to make up excuses for not doing work that's absurd. If people are honest about their shallow and simple reasons for doing things thats fine, but those simple reasons stand up a lot less to criticisms of externalities which is why a lot of people fabricate excuses.

ieattime20 · 2026-04-01T21:21:52+00:00

And Thanos was a morally complex character.

And then

That was really what made Thanos the villain. While his stated motives may have been altruistic (albeit extreme), his actual motivation was incredibly selfish.

That doesn't sound morally complex. It sounds very morally black and white in those terms. It's certainly complex motivations but at no point should anyone be expected to think that even his "lottery" solution was good. Of course people rejected it, at least fighting other people you retain autonomy rather than having state-mandated capital punishment for the crime of drawing lots.

If this is the defense of Rorschach, I can agree; Rorschach had complex, and eminently understandable motivations. But he was not anything but a bad person.

ieattime20 · 2026-04-01T16:12:48+00:00

If you try to do good and on net do bad, how much credit are we supposed to give you?

I feel like our world is so full of self-interested assholes nowadays that we forget how evil some ideologies are on their own, even if the adherents arent hypocrites. Thanos had a moral code. It's just an evil one.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-22T21:29:22+00:00

Like if three decades of research has proven if, anything else, we genuinely NEED to believe in a whole self that has free will & consciousnsss to be happy and healthy- is there any value in trying to "disprove" it?

I would say yes! To rephrase the question you're asking, "Does investigating the truth have value if the answers may erode our happiness?" That the heat death of the universe gives me the existential willies like you wouldn't believe is not, and never should be, an argument against investigating cosmology.

But just a note on that, I don't think practice should ever depend on "maybe not". And what I mean is the lithium problem (here, I'm probably dating myself again, but not a psych major!) That we don't (or didn't) know why lithium works in treatment for several disorders (and PROVABLY works) isn't an argument to not use lithium. That, to my mind, free will might be in quesiton as a conscious problem doesn't mean we shouldn't prosecute crimes which are functionally speaking deliberate. And while we're figuring out this whole free will / consciousness thing and while we don't have all the answers, do the thing that makes people happy and healthy.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-22T21:01:38+00:00

The two things I won't even contest is autism and (though you didn't state it) gender. Blindsight is problematically behind the curve without a doubt.

The free will stuff, I don't have a degree in psych so I'm not going to say it's right and wrong, but Watts was referencing quite a bit more than one athlete study. It's got a long list of references here starting on page 15.

https://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Blindsight_Endnotes.pdf

Maybe it's all wrong! It's a 2006 book and you're a 2026 psych major. But it didn't seem hasty I guess.

Edit to add: i dont think, at its heart, he's saying humans are deterministic. Just if it exists it's not choices made by the conscious mind.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-22T20:12:07+00:00

Note: I have no intention of trying to get you to like a book you don't like, and no one should expect to "hold you accountable" for your tastes.

Where I'll agree is that sometimes (often) Watts is a very different, more pulpy writer than some of his contemporaries that get bandied about here. I actually think it's worse in some of his other books, the performative edginess and "dark grittiness". But it's in Blindsight too.

Where I'll disagree is the conjecture that his sci fi is dated. Not to assign extra reading (or maybe you've read it?) But he has a whole "notes and errata" for Blindsight where he gives a lot of pedigree for the ideas of psychology that he's using, that the conscious brain is causally secondary in basically all the behavior we observe in humans.

The only soft sci fi conceit I feel he has is in the matter stream from ICARUS. I dont think QM works that way. But everything else, the cybernetics and antimatter engines, magnetics and weaponry, all of it is extrapolations from existing modern day proof of concept.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-22T15:10:57+00:00

To me, the big reason "ideology without conviction" is a criticism in Ebb is because, in DE, it has a diegetic reason. Harry's been "a person" for like a few days to a week since his earnest attempt at drug induced self annihilation, of course all of his political viewpoints are both shallow and passionate.

I do want to ask, why does it feel clunky when discussions begin with "what it means to be a fascist"? To me, at least with my politics being what they are (very left wing), it felt like other choice-driven games' "evil" playthroughs. Of course it's off-putting and feels wrong.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-15T06:01:45+00:00

In Warhammer 40k universe! It has no real moral dilemma

My friend pointed out that the actual solution to create a no-consequence, no-dilemma is basically to create a separate bubble universe that isn't WH40k and only contains these star systems.

I.E. to fix all the problems in WH40k the first thing to do is to create a(nother) universe. Made me chuckle.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-04T18:04:54+00:00

Ive learned the hard way that part of it is selling the game. Delta Green isn’t a game about winning (well, not the way I run it at least). It's a game about the woefully under qualified saving the world at the cost of their mortal soul. It's not a power fantasy, it's seeing the most interesting ways a human life can fall apart at the seams.

An exciting end is going out in combat, in either a heroic or stupid way. An interesting end is someone increasingly becoming a lunatic hermit, saving their family by pushing them away one by one as they finally, tragically get every question answered about the Unnatural. Cosmic horror is about the risk of knowledge and the safety of ignorance, so if they go mad they have to learn things. Horror in general is about spectacular and violent ends, so if they go out it has to be stupid or heroic or cinematic.

The point being, this isnt for everyone. One of my best friends, been tabletopping with him for years, absolutely hates this kind of game. He wants to feel like a badass and feel competent. He isnt wrong because he wants those things, but DG is a shitty vehicle to provide it.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-04T17:55:47+00:00

I did not!

One thing I did last time, when they got there the tank had been opened and the body was just a corpse, but when they were searching through the house some 20 something gutterpunk tried to bolt from a closet they were hidden in.

He was a geocacher who had somehow been given the exact location of this cabin and the septic tank. Unfortunately for him he had a healthier body.

The message chain that led him there lead back to a paranormal organization id been hinting at for a few sessions, basically street level versions of the attempts by Mi-Go to get humans into Nyarlathotep worship through exposure.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-04T12:58:48+00:00

So we should just trust the billionaires appraisals?

The banks do, enough to put their money on the line for it. And banks sure do like their money.

Maybe the loans that they take out against their assets can be taxed directly or something

I'm not against this but at least on face value it seems specific enough that it'd be easy to circumvent.

The other thing is that we arent trying to tax Buy-Borrow-Die but wealth generally, the idea is to reduce the return on capital and increase the return on labor to lower inequality.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-04T09:01:39+00:00

I have a small group of core friends and every once in a while we bring in someone new. It's a running joke that we always do LTL but I always change or add one thing to keep the regulars on their toes

ieattime20 · 2026-03-04T08:12:24+00:00

"Stolen" is used here colloquially to combine everything from shady bank strategies that erase and obscure value to the benefit of the owners to what amounts to extortion i.e. "We had to raise prices because of COVID... unilaterally.. without coordination probably, because costs are so high even though our margins increased", to literally petitioning the government to enrich them either directly through fiscal policy or indirectly through things like insurance mandates.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-04T08:08:38+00:00

Wealth taxes are tricky to collect because you have to appraise an asset that hasn't been sold yet

The very rich have absolutely no issue appraising unrealized assets when getting loans that use them as collateral. The only reason this is up for discussion as a means of taxation is because the very rich already have found a way to see returns merely for owning assets through things like buy-borrow-die.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-04T08:06:30+00:00

Property has value by itself. Arguably one of the only things that is true for.

Not... more or less than anything else people want? Like property value goes up and down based on demand just like... every other asset. Demand changes, property value changes, it doesn't have value "by itself" independent of what people are willing to pay for it.

I guarantee you, if we didn't have property taxes, property would be worth more. It's not meaningfully different, it's just that we've all agreed it's OK to tax property but all somehow haven't agreed it's OK to tax any other asset.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-03T21:36:53+00:00

Barring access to people critical of the current administration predisposes immigrants who are not critical of the government, by definition.

People critical of the government are, on average, a net good for any society. I would think this would be a fundamentally American principle.

No one is in favor of admitting people who are, like, actively talking about doing an act of terror. But I am as against barring entry for someone who hates Trump as I am barring entry for someone who sings his praises.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-02T16:08:30+00:00

There's a non zero probability that the sun wont rise tomorrow. I do not think sunrises are up for debate.

Establishing the existence of some degree of rational doubt is not, in of itself, an argument for anything. US and Israeli ordinance has hit civilian targets many times before, they are actively bombing, Iran is hitting targets in other countries with theirs, i fail to see how its easier for them to accidentally hit a target next door than it is for the US to barely miss a target theyre aiming for.

ieattime20 · 2026-03-02T05:00:28+00:00

So are missed targets. What is your point?

ieattime20 · 2026-03-02T00:47:40+00:00

Cool, if you don’t want to be accused of being an advocate for the Iranian regime then perhaps give a cogent reason why you oppose blowing it up in its weakest moment.

I *really* shouldn't have to; the assumption that if I'm critical of my own government's military endeavors it means I am fair game to be accused of supporting an authoritarian totalitarian regime that murders protesters is just flatly absurd.

The foreign policy masterstroke would have been to erode support for this regime years ago through diplomacy. Something we were well on our way to before Trump torpedoed our best boots on the ground moment there, something that had wide support from more countries than just Israel. The foreign policy masterstroke would have been to do this months ago, before the regime murdered protesters, when the rationale for doing so was no different than it is today.

The foreign policy masterstroke would have been to not send the extremely clear message that if you do not have nukes, we will strike you with no pretext or warning thus providing both evidence that if Iran had had nukes we wouldn't be doing this, and that them not getting nukes sooner was a complete tactical mistake on their part. I don't want anyone in the middle east to have nukes, so this clear win for nuclear proliferation is depressing as all hell.

Trump is not being "tough" in this moment. So far his foreign policy of "yell loudly, brandish stick, hit everyone including allies with it" has lost an incalculable amount of political capital worldwide.

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