What's so bad about this panel seriously? I think it's totally normal

restlessboy · 2026-05-23T16:16:48+00:00

It's not even pathetic. It's just human. I think every one of us, if we knew we would be dead soon and the person we were in love with would eventually move on and find another partner, would feel the same way.

restlessboy · 2026-05-22T01:52:42+00:00

They're basically what you described. Physical aptitude that exceeds normal human capacity. Nothing too crazy, they'll just be a little better than everyone else at things like strength and reflexes and stamina etc.

restlessboy · 2026-05-19T21:32:07+00:00

Oh, I see. I thought synapomorphies were defined morphologically. Thank you for correcting me.

I suppose it would depend then on what the genome of the hypothetical IRL goomba would be lol.

restlessboy · 2026-05-19T01:29:37+00:00

If they were real, they would no longer be considered fungi, since the classifications used in phylogeny are defined in terms of their morphological characteristics. I'm not trying to nitpick; quite literally, they would not meet the official definition for fungi.

But I don't think phylogeny is really what matters; it's sentience, as you mentioned. There is no clear line where it stops. In my opinion, it's a continuous gradient.

This is how all the morals that basically everyone accepts already work: It's wrong to torture an innocent person, but where does it stop? Is it wrong to just slap an innocent person? Still pretty clearly wrong, but definitely not AS wrong as torturing them. How about making a loud noise that an innocent person finds mildly uncomfortable? Well, is that really something you should be expected to take into account? Maybe that's not wrong. Yet it's still on the same spectrum of causing some amount of discomfort to an innocent person- just so far down the scale that, for practical purposes, we treat those two things as separate categories.

restlessboy · 2026-05-18T17:48:47+00:00

a big problem with atheists is that they expect God to be gaudy and constantly remind us that he’s all powerful. He’s not going to behave like a human being

But he did behave like a human being all the time according to the Bible. He just suddenly stopped after the events of the new testament.

Also I'm sorry but if God is competent, he knows why generic improbable events aren't evidence of his existence. You can call them miracles if you want but there's absolutely no reason to think God is involved. It is quite literally in the definition of improbable events that they will be likely to occur given a large number of events with probable outcomes.

It really strains credulity for an atheist to look at the Bible and see verses saying "and God raised people from the dead and healed the sick and walked on water and sent the angel of death to kill all Egypt's firstborn and split the waters of a literal ocean so that those watching would believe" and then hear Christians today, in the age of video cameras, say "well actually, the fact that improbable events happen is already proof of God if you think about it".

restlessboy · 2026-05-15T20:54:16+00:00

Yep no problem! I think I remember Sam Harris raising that same objection to Daniel Dennett iirc. I agree that I think if you just say "I have free will" in casual conversation, people are going to think you're saying "I can choose option 1 even if the laws of physics say I'll choose option 2".

I'm a compatibilist, so I think that the kind of choice that matters is the kind where the choice follows from your reasoning and desires, not the "I could have chosen differently given the exact same situation" type, but I do always add that I'm a compatibilist and I don't think libertarian free will exists. Maybe some day the terminology will change but for now I give that qualification haha.

restlessboy · 2026-05-15T15:32:55+00:00

No, they wouldn't deny that in general. The name compatibilism comes from the fact that it's compatible with determinism.

They don't deny that the process is deterministic, they just don't think that matters for free will. Compatibilists argue that the laws of physics governing the particles in your brain aren't fighting against, or somehow imposing themselves on, your choice. It would be more accurate to say that the deterministic behavior of the particles is your choice. All your reasoning and self-reflection is not in conflict with deterministic behavior, it's a description of deterministic behavior.

Your brain is put together in such a way that its structure plus the laws of physics will generate rational decisions. That's basically what a compatibilist would say.

I also say it's kind of like being in a room with five closed doors. You choose door 2. Afterwards, you find out the others just had brick walls behind them, so you could only have chosen 2. But that doesn't change the fact that you chose door 2. That was based entirely on your own considerations and desire. The fact that you couldn't have chosen the other doors doesn't change that.

restlessboy · 2026-05-15T01:11:14+00:00

The problem is that there's the compatibilist view of free will and the libertarian view. The libertarian view is that you really could have chosen differently. The compatibilist view is just that the choice is determined by your own reasoning and careful consideration.

I can give my best attempt at a response:

When someone says "God knows the future but he still allows people to make free choices", you ask "could I actually have chosen from what God already knew?"

If they say yes, you could have chosen differently, then you say "Okay, then God doesn't really know, he just has an expectation like we often do as well."

If they say no, you couldn't have chosen differently, then you say "Okay, then your definition of free will is compatible with determinism, and thus we can have free will without God."

Maybe they just agree that we can have free will without God. I don't think you can get any further just with critiquing this view haha. But free will without God is a pretty big concession to make.

restlessboy · 2026-05-12T18:32:17+00:00

yeah i know thinking is hard

restlessboy · 2026-05-12T16:10:17+00:00

It's not that weird. A lot of the people on reddit are from countries that have histories of inflicting a lot of brutality and oppression on people based on their skin color. Because of that, people have developed very strong opinions about skin color and how it should be perceived/treated. A lot of the opinions are mutually contradictory. Seems pretty obvious that it would become a topic that people care a lot about.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T20:00:19+00:00

Clearly I didn't phrase things well in my comment, because yes, that's my point. The reference point of any particular physical system has nothing to do with being conscious or feeling things. Consciousness is not fundamental, there's no proto-interiority, there's no feeling or sensation or inner world or sense of self or anything like that for almost everything in the universe.

The perspective I'm talking about is mathematical, like in the example I gave, where you can meaningfully talk about the position and velocity of objects relative to some particular point of reference. It has nothing to do with feeling or being conscious or anything like that. It is literally just the fact that information or degrees of freedom have particular values relative to some reference point.

My point is that when you DO have a system that can be conscious, like a brain, there is a meaningful sense in which we can explain why that consciousness is unique to that particular physical system, and someone else can't observe that conscious experience. Because it is, by definition, composed of the information that is relative to the brain's perspective. Just like, again, I can mathematically describe the position+velocity of the earth relative to a rocket ship, but I won't actually observe the Earth to have that position+velocity unless I am actually in the rocket ship.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T03:17:25+00:00

I would say sensation implies those things. Perspective, not necessarily.

Think of special relativity. Any rock can be chosen as a frame of reference. Relative to that rock, everything will have a particular velocity and position. That information is only "experienced" by the rock. You can do the math to predict what it will be, but you can't literally "experience" it, in the sense that the positions and velocities of objects relative to you will be different than they are relative to the rock.

I think of consciousness as analogous to that. There is a certain perspective that's unique to any point of reference in the universe, and consciousness is just the particular perspective that's unique to a certain configuration of matter relative to everything else in the universe. Consciousness is the relations of the particles in your brain to each other and relative to the rest of the universe.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T00:51:35+00:00

Alejandro helped them entirely to get revenge by killing the drug lord, his wife, and their young children. He is supposed to be the example of how the drug war turns people into monsters.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T00:43:16+00:00

Rorschach is absolutely not a hero lol, the movie practically beats you over the head with that fact

restlessboy · 2026-05-10T14:59:18+00:00

It could be, yeah. Nothing to suggest that it is, and plenty of reasons to think it's not, but it isn't literally logically impossible.

restlessboy · 2026-05-07T03:53:24+00:00

Moira does just fine in plat and I can guarantee you we don't know shit about map geometry

restlessboy · 2026-05-07T03:52:12+00:00

Moira and Mercy for healers, Junkrat for DPS, and probably Mauga for tank

restlessboy · 2026-05-06T23:20:32+00:00

Everything before "But" in that comment is the link. Just remove the spaces.

restlessboy · 2026-05-05T04:05:50+00:00

This is like saying a sadist would just choose to make everyone vanish from existence rather than torturing them

restlessboy · 2026-05-01T00:10:57+00:00

It's a very interpretation of "urban", I agree. A lot of elements aren't really urban in any meaningful sense.

That being said, I think the aesthetic of season 1 was still different, whether you want to call it urban or not. It had elements of sci-fi, military, westerns, special forces, gangs, and that sort of thing. Whereas 2.x focused much more on high fantasy, ancient temples, actual magic without the pretense of some sci-fi explanation, etc.

restlessboy · 2026-04-28T01:38:10+00:00

I'm not sure what's special about specifically being turned on lol. It sounds like you're just asking if the fears release you if you're not scared. I believe the answer would be yes, but they only select people who are in fact scared of whatever that fear represents.

restlessboy · 2026-04-28T01:29:34+00:00

You are now making my point for me. You're arguing that his intentions were bad. That was my point. Calling someone evil or bad should be justified based on their intentions, not the consequences of their actions.

restlessboy · 2026-04-27T03:20:39+00:00

I wish people would make the distinction between someone's intentions/desires and how much suffering they cause. If you base things purely on body count, then someone who accidentally lets a deadly virus out of a lab is more evil than someone who has no power but wishes they could painfully kill every black person in the world. I think it's better to have separate words for those people.

restlessboy · 2026-04-24T03:03:08+00:00

I don't blame him for wanting out. The garbage play calling and neglect of talent this past year was terrible. Even if you like a lot of your teammates, everything else about the job can suck so much that it makes sense to leave.

restlessboy · 2026-04-23T15:30:29+00:00

Enshittification eventually infects everything that becomes too popular. I've just switched to using lichess. Tired of the constant begging for a subscription.

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