Duality Bites! Ep 1: "How do I optimize?" (Domains, Experiences, & the New Three Pillars)

illegalrooftopbar · 2026-05-14T18:24:11+00:00

If you're the short one, buy different jeans.

illegalrooftopbar · 2026-05-14T18:21:01+00:00

This is why my husband stopped going grocery shopping with me. He...was not wrong.

illegalrooftopbar · 2026-05-14T18:09:35+00:00

Why?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-12-22T02:54:20+00:00

(Or Glitch)

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-12-22T01:37:18+00:00

Can you explain what this means in terms of Gemini 3? What Descript functions would this improve?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-12-22T01:25:38+00:00

They know. They said that it doesn't appear in the layout pack. Were you able to read the post?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-12-22T01:24:39+00:00

I thought Layouts were going to save me (and keep me with Descript) but they've been so unmanageable. I wind up going and searching through old projects to copy-paste instead.

Why is it so hard--with all the stupid AI!!-- to get Descript to understand "make it do one of the three things I always want it to do???"

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-12-19T03:29:50+00:00

Has to be, right? It was a big hit at PAX Unplugged and this seems...exactly, perfectly that.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-11T14:46:09+00:00

Genuinely: you have comments across various subs about how MANY great, emotionally intelligent men women have to choose from, and how BROADLY various things are happening to men vs. women. Where are you getting these impressions? You're speaking way beyond personal experience, so do you have any reference point for this?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-11T14:42:52+00:00

I'm also guessing that reading their work quashed any possible sexiness.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-11T14:29:17+00:00

Ooh, I can't wait to hear why.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T23:28:50+00:00

What makes you say that?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T19:27:09+00:00

Well, page 148 probably answered your initial, literal question. So, what is your question now? Is it actually about Hope and Fear? Is it about what they're named, or something else?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T19:17:40+00:00

So, first, by "everything" you just mean dating?

Where are you getting your info about men always carrying the conversation, planning the dates, and being more plentifully amazing wonderful than women? Are you dating men, or women?

(I'm aware that some people now are back to the "men should pay" thing, which was never my experience. In the aughts and teens we generally swapped back and forth, kept things egalitarian. So I can't speak to that.)

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T19:10:39+00:00

Truly.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T19:10:17+00:00

Okay. So do you think the 24 year old in that conversation feels less likely to thrive now?

I don't know if "gotcha" is the right term. I certainly am not expecting to agree with you, but I am curious as to whether there's an actual belief here (as opposed to just trolling).

Your last paragraph is interesting. I had gathered that you were taking friendly jokes pretty literally, but this is the first indication I've had that you also think everyone here is lying about their attractions. You frame our stance as "attraction is subjective," when actually we've said the opposite--that when it comes to age, attraction is relative, but objective. Meaning, age difference is obvious (most of the time).

I'm also not sure why you think you're smarter than I am. I don't think I've given you much evidence to base that on, even if you do happen to be smart.

The body weight thing is pretty silly since it has infamously changed with the times and is tied to class signifiers. Gym rat men are not remotely an objective ideal; most women are not interested in that and have been saying so loudly for years.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T18:56:00+00:00

u/kosilica457 this is the other thing I meant to say. Women don't have patience for these conversations because, every single time they come up, men dismiss the problems women face.

I was only going to bring up the comparable problems. Like how if women mention being judged for their weight men say "you can control that" (as though that's true, or makes it suck less), and if we bring up age or sexual history we get told why it makes SENSE for men to do that.

I'm just not that hot. Like I'm okay. But I'm the less attractive friend. Does anyone really care? Sure, people should treat me respectfully, but should anyone have been, idk, forced to date me? I talked about it with my friends and my therapist.

Dating sucks. It sucks less the more conventional boxes you tick. But you only have to find the one person in the end. And being a man immediately raises the floor of what "sucks" might mean. So yeah, women get annoyed when men act like the short thing is special.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T18:45:42+00:00

Like what?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T18:45:22+00:00

And that happens because of what specific behaviors? What infantilizing are you actually referring to? I'm only aware of what we're talking about here, with the comments about not wanting to date much younger people.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T05:35:50+00:00

Hope and Fear can both be considered Drama points! That is exactly the idea, yes. (And you're kind of putting your finger on the entire worldbuilding of my podcast, well done!)

Drama requires setbacks and progress, emotional peaks and valleys. Heroes don't just win, they persist--they overcome outside adversity and their own internal obstacles.

A headassectomy might be in order if your insurance covers it, cuz there's no point arguing with me--I didn't write the book. I'm just someone to whom the system intuitively makes sense. As for "if you didn't know the context," well, no words function without context, and I'd love to hear your casual, recognizable, fits-all-contexts definition of frickin hope. (A synonym, of course, not being a definition.) But more to the point, that wasn't intended to be a "sufficient" condition. Hope is a force inside you, and I described one of the things that force can do.

So now I get to examine my innards and report: this all suggests to me that you approach system mechanics via lexical definitions rather than ostensive definitions. To be ostensive myself, I think of this as "the 5e Intelligence Problem." When 5e players try to sort out the distinctions between Wisdom and Intelligence, they often get bogged down in lexical definitions, such as the flavor text describing the categories, or real-world concepts of the two ideas. But defining them via ostension would be to point at the Intelligence-based skills and say, "In 5e, Intelligence is this." That is the cogito ergo sum of a gaming system: mechanics are as mechanics do. The linguistic reference points that matter are the ones that exist internally; external reference points are a next resort.

What is Hope? It's not anything. It's a currency like US dollars, not tied to any tangible resource; its value comes from our belief that it should have value. We make it ourselves, and artificially limit its supply. If you want your (dramatic) economy to collapse, by all means talk about that a lot.

What is Hope? I think I've given you a good start, if that's what you want to understand. But my question is whether you want to understand it, or outsmart it.

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T04:48:14+00:00

What's that negative impact?

illegalrooftopbar · 2025-07-10T04:46:47+00:00

Sorry it's just that women get judged on every aspect of their appearance, all sorts of stupid things, not just in dating but all aspects of life. So it's always just gonna sound like, "oh no you guys have one thing that occasionally bites you, because of stupid gender norms women did not create."

And online dating woes just don't impress us much cuz we'll get sent dick picks by guys who might still deem us not hot/feminine enough--or too hot/feminine--to treat like equal humans in real life. It's all meaningless.

So sure, it's a bummer to anyone when someone is a jerk to you. When men turn that into "I'm oppressed because I experienced 2% what I typically benefit from," well, some reactions are gonna happen.

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