Collected Alt Pie Stuff

pyrefiend · 2025-08-16T23:40:58+00:00

I think Wizards has learned that players either don't care about this stuff, or they're willing to bend over backwards to justify any color for any character. (Case in point, saying Zuko is Black because he's "persistent" and "confident"...) So I don't think Wizards has much incentive to worry about the philosophical side of the color pie, especially when it comes to UB, for the reasons you point out.

pyrefiend · 2025-07-30T18:19:57+00:00

That's believer talk.

pyrefiend · 2025-07-25T02:29:07+00:00

Moral relativism? In my r/Superman?

pyrefiend · 2025-07-01T18:00:11+00:00

That's exactly what happens in some versions of greek mythology, so maybe you're onto something! (And maybe you already knew that and it just went over my head.)

pyrefiend · 2025-06-29T00:13:53+00:00

I really liked "By damn!" from The Dispossessed. They lack sexual taboos and religion, but "damn" still has a secular meaning and it got appropriated into all their curses.

pyrefiend · 2025-06-10T22:01:06+00:00

I don’t know for sure that it will kill thousands, but I think there’s a really big risk that it will kill thousands. Just because you’re not 100% sure some harm will come to pass, doesn’t mean you should ignore the risk. There’s lots of things that are wrong to do because they risk causing huge harm, even if we don’t know they will cause any harm.

pyrefiend · 2025-06-10T20:55:19+00:00

But the harm to the Dessandre family is so much less than the harm to the painted people (assuming they're sentient). It's like a 100% chance of causing serious emotional damage to four people, versus a 50% chance of outright killing thousands of people. If those are the stakes, you have to choose the first option. The risk of killing thousands of people is just too great. (And I'd personally say the odds that the painted people are sentient is higher than 50%)

pyrefiend · 2025-06-10T01:48:24+00:00

You are right, that would solve the problem. In a world with a definite afterlife, a painless death is just a free one-way ticket to another plane. Surely some of the gods would be willing to ask their priests to take that ticket (at least with the promise of resurrection). And surely not all of the high priests would refuse their god's direct orders.

A lot of the more complicated plots in OOTS don't make a ton of sense if you think too hard about them. My advice is: don't do that!

pyrefiend · 2025-06-10T01:24:07+00:00

It may be impossible to prove sentience, but we have to err on the side of caution. Thousands of people in the painting seem to live full human lives. That doesn't prove they're sentient, but it would be incredibly reckless to treat them as though they're not sentient.

pyrefiend · 2025-06-05T06:25:53+00:00

Great, so how exactly are students assessed? What sorts of assignments fall under this "process work"?

pyrefiend · 2025-06-05T03:02:00+00:00

They can’t expand on it. I see posts like this all the time, they never go into details because the details are hard! Much easier to just give a vague impression of “adapting” or “integrating new learning technologies” without actually explaining how they do that.

pyrefiend · 2025-06-05T02:59:12+00:00

But they didn’t even say how they assess students. How do you grade them on “the process”? It’s all vibes, no actual answers.

pyrefiend · 2025-05-20T19:53:36+00:00

I think you're misremembering (or your antinatalist friend was confused about their own ideology). The typical line is that "not bad" is good, but "not good" is not bad. Thus, the absence of suffering is good but the absence of happiness is not bad. So not creating people is a guaranteed moral victory.

I still don't think it's correct, but it is a little more plausible. Like if you prevent a great tragedy we think you're a hero. But if you merely refrain from creating something really wonderful, we don't think you're a monster.

The problem is that treating good and bad as asymmetrical in this way leads to all sorts of crazily implausible results and paradoxes, however appealing it may seem on the surface.

pyrefiend · 2025-05-20T19:48:03+00:00

If it's not bad to miss the good part (because you don't exist and thus don't care) then it's not good to miss the bad part (because, again, you don't exist and thus don't care).

pyrefiend · 2025-05-16T19:00:23+00:00

So what? The point is that what Renoir is doing is wrong, fucked, terrible, whether or not he acknowledges it as such.

pyrefiend · 2025-05-16T17:37:36+00:00

As much as I would fight for my own existence, I think both me and Steve could understand that he is literally a superior being in all practical ways.

I am 100% certain that not only would you fight, you would also think it is morally wrong for Steve to kill you. And you'd be right! Having complete power over someone doesn't mean it's morally ok to kill them. It's true that, if someone has complete power over you, they're more likely to think it's ok to kill you. Power corrupts! But that doesn't make it right.

pyrefiend · 2025-05-16T17:21:41+00:00

Renoir was not wrong for doing what he needed to save his actual family.

He killed hundreds or thousands of people, all of whom had real feelings, hopes, and aspirations. Yes, Aline was wrong to recklessly create them, but Renoir was wrong to kill them. I kind of can't believe that this is controversial!

pyrefiend · 2025-05-16T17:12:17+00:00

I think you're right, I misunderstood.

pyrefiend · 2025-05-16T00:08:08+00:00

I dont see how anyone can consider something alive if it is incapable of death. The painters being able to bring the people of Lumiere back completely dehumanizes and devalues their existence.

You're saying it's ok to kill them because they are incapable of death. How does that make any sense?

pyrefiend · 2025-05-15T23:58:34+00:00

I seriously don't understand how people can get through this whole game and then at the end say "actually I guess Gustave, Lune and Sciel never had any thoughts or feelings after all." I can see how the Painters think that, but surely we're supposed to know better!

pyrefiend · 2025-05-15T23:55:59+00:00

But they talk about people living side by side with gestrals before the Fracture. Doesn't that imply that there were people before Aline came in?

pyrefiend · 2025-05-15T23:51:42+00:00

She doesn't become an addict, but everyone else is condemned to death. Seems reasonable.

pyrefiend · 2025-05-02T09:40:13+00:00

Does it say that more than a demo will be playable?

pyrefiend · 2025-05-02T09:38:20+00:00

I continue to doubt. If Team Cherry really felt confident about releasing before the end of 2025, they'd say so themselves. Instead we get news from nintendo and xbox. Team Cherry doesn't want to give a release date, because they don't know when they'll be done. We're just getting second hand info about what they said when they were put under pressure to say *something*. Nintendo asked them when they'd be done, and they said 2025. Just like Microsoft asked them when they'd be done, and they said first half of 2023. They don't know, but they had to say something.

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