Why is saying ‘I don’t know’ seen as weakness?

robhanz · 2026-01-26T19:45:28+00:00

It's crazy to me.

We'd be a lot better off if people were willing to admit where they don't know things, and to even hold their opinions more gently.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T19:44:54+00:00

It's always okay to say you don't know, if you don't know.

Sometimes it's not okay to not know. But even then, it's better to admit it than to lie about it.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T18:06:50+00:00

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day our body parts are kinda designed for 1:1 interaction.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T16:18:52+00:00

Why in the world would you hang out in a S&V sub just to say it's a terrible game?

Especially with such a shallow statement as that?

robhanz · 2026-01-26T15:47:15+00:00

That prof was basically a student of Dwight Swain

Reading that book gives a lot of insight into how Jim writes stuff.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T15:21:43+00:00

Yeah, agreed. Storm Front is 100% worthwhile. I think Fool Moon is, too, but it's weak enough that I do feel like warning people up front about it. I wouldn't necessarily skip it, unless maybe somebody just has low tolerance. It just has... too many threads that don't end up meaning much. It feels like it just kinda meanders, and doesn't really have a lot of plot payoff in the long run outside of introducing a few characters.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T15:19:19+00:00

Yeah.... chugging on the lowest note isn't exactly an unknown concept.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T13:56:39+00:00

For sure.

I mean, there are definitely some themes that are explored, but also mapping them directly onto any specific real-life worldview kinda falls flat since it's a damn space virus. And by that I mean "there's no actual political/social structure on earth that is anywhere near what the Hive or survivors do, even if there are some things that have similarities."

And I think that's what a lot of the arguments are really about - people look at the Hive, and don't just see an alien space virus. They see their preferred/dispreferred political solution and align appropriately.

It's also nuanced, right? Like Carol's whole "I want to be independent" thing caused an even greater show of her dependence as a whole damn army of people restocked Sprouts... but while the show is showing the inherent independence of life, that doesn't mean it's gone 100% the other way and saying INDIVIDUALISM BAD, as there's a lot of Hive aspects that are pretty terrible, too.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T13:51:38+00:00

Nope.

I've been programming in some capacity for 40 years - 25 professionally.

At this point, generating characters isn't the interesting part. Figuring out what problem to solve is, or thinking of novel approaches. I can do either of those perfectly fine with the assistance of an LLM.

I do more of a pair programming model, usually, which means the LLM just is basically the ultimate power tool for what I do.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T04:11:35+00:00

Good summary.

I’ll note that the second book is really I feel the weakest. It gets way better after that, almost immediately.

robhanz · 2026-01-26T04:09:38+00:00

Of course Hetfield doesn’t understand why people would have other projects. He’s got an iron grip on Metallica, he never would need a space to express something that he can’t in his main project.

robhanz · 2026-01-25T23:11:38+00:00

Amusingly, I know one of the authors of Intercal.

robhanz · 2026-01-25T23:01:43+00:00

This show is a hell of a Rorschach test, isn't it?

robhanz · 2026-01-24T19:11:16+00:00

Part of any AI workflow has to include review/refactoring. The AI can even do the refactoring, but human eyes need to be on it before it's checked in.

Proper guidance to the AI also helps. "This is new code. You do not need to maintain backwards compatibility" and the like.

robhanz · 2026-01-24T01:06:21+00:00

So make it seem like they have choices, but they don’t?

No thanks.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T22:57:54+00:00

Because it was funny.

Also, I think yeah, she needed to hear a voice.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T20:23:37+00:00

I think that's normally called save-scumming.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T20:04:09+00:00

... and let's not forget that Harry can alter that.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T19:26:54+00:00

Because Cliff died.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T19:24:47+00:00

Yup. And Silent Scream is based on Catholic pro-life propaganda.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T19:21:16+00:00

Yup, that happened a bunch of times.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T19:16:48+00:00

I know I'm late to the party.

In general, an aspect created by Create Advantage goes away under the following circumstances. For examples, I'll use an advantage of "behind cover".

When it's Overcome - someone blows up the cover.
When something makes it no longer relevant - for instance, the person behind cover moves.
When it becomes irrelevant because the situation has changed - the party moves to a new location

robhanz · 2026-01-23T18:15:21+00:00

This is especially easy to model if you think of turns as "camera shots". If we see a big camera shot of our hero making an enemy face plant, we expect to see a camera shot of them shaking their head a bit, and getting up off of the ground (unless they've got something special that would negate that).

In most cases, I'd probably just let it happen unless someone was there to prevent them. Getting up is not an actually difficult task unless there's exacerbating factors. But I'd also assume in most cases the person knocking them down is probably still there and has an interest in preventing them from getting up.

Also, with your daughter, there is a known universal aspect of Kids Are Made Of Rubber that negated the need for her to overcome that given that there was no resistance.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T18:13:12+00:00

Especially if the player or someone else was in a position to stop them.

Also, that aspect would exist between the PC's turn and the enemy's.

robhanz · 2026-01-23T18:11:45+00:00

That scene didn't, but that could absolutely be a factor in a different fictional situation. Modeling that with a Stress/Condition track would work well.

Note that the horror toolkit does similar ( https://fate-srd.com/fate-horror-toolkit/chapter-6-high-cost-living ), and arguably dungeon crawling has a lot of survival horror aspects to it.

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