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Aceyalone

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Yes and I know! And thats what I was pointing from the beginning! Its not a simple misuse than can kill ppl... Its something that derives from the society itself and the problem also hits society itself! Death is only the tip of the iceberg, there are a dozen more problems below that tip. Sure you cant blame games for providing escapism some ppl need, which is in their nature. Its like you said, blaming dynamite.

 

I think its more a matter of education (strict memorizing, bad teachers, less interaction and communication among children etc) and the way our society acts (giving honor to the gratest, passing false ideals such as fame and power) and less game's.

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The video is not only acting, it's also bad acting. ;)

 

I've played EQ for probably a year in the past, and AO off an on (since it's free ^_^). It's certainly easy to start "getting into it" too much, but really, if you've got other interests, I think it'll pull you away when appropriate. If it's a nice day out, or you've got to make dinner, or go to work, you stop.

 

Then again, my perspective on it may have with age, because I do remember some 16-hour days as a teenager playing Ultima. :wub: I don't think I've been *that* into a game for a decade or more. Even with Thief, which I was simply enamored with, I set aside a few hours at night, once a week (it was Thief Night!), maybe twice if I was drooling in the interim. And I haven't had a game capture me the way Thief has, since those days. I don't know if it's me, or the games, but probably the former. Then again, I have a bit of self-deprivation quirkiness about me too. Kramer: "It's very monastic!" I like to anticipate. :)

 

But I've definitely known some MMO addicts. I could name some from AO right now. People who have not one level 220 character, but 12. :blink: My char is only 129. :mellow: There have been days where I've played for 6 hours, but they're rare, and usually rainy Sundays. I haven't logged on in probably 4 months, and prior to that for only a month after another 6 month hiatus. In that time, each and every time I log on, log off, or am away, two people - no, make that three - will be on at all times. If I get on at 10am, play for an hour and then go out for the day, the Organization lead will be on already (probably since 4am), on when I leave, on when I get back to play for an hour after dinner, on when I leave... it's definitely bad when the rest of the Org starts talking in secret, "I'm worried about ____. He seems to play 20 hours a day. He has a wife. Do you think they're having problems?"

 

Erm... ya think?

 

There I think I've pushed the smiley quota on this one.

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Since a few people here mentioned Diablo, can someone explain briefly what it is about and why people play it? In august 2001 I bought three box-sets of games: Thief, Diablo, and Commandos. I tried playing each game for 15 minutes initially. For the past 6 years Commandos box serves as a stand for some vase. I remember Diablo involved some inconvenient controls and repetitively clicking the mouse button in the dungeon. The day after buying it I put it out on some electrical transformer, and I suppose kids who were passing by took it.

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Diablo I had a really great atmosphere at that time. The gameitself is, in hindsight, rather boring, but when I got it the first time, I played it a lot and enjoyed it. A few years ago I tried to play Diablo II, because I remembered how great Diablo I was, but somehow I didn't get into the game anymore and found it rather pointless. Maybe I will give it a try again at some time. :)

 

Commandos, especially the first two series, were really great. I tried to play C3 as well, but it was quite hard. I sure will play it when I have time again. Why didn't you like Commandos? You also have to move very carefully and plan your movement, and which character you are using for a given task. The sniper is very limited, because he only has a few shots. The spy is rather weak, and the marine is strong and can do a silent knife attack, so you really have to combine the skills and watch the enemy carefully to succeed at a map.

Gerhard

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Because compared to Commandos Thief was more intimate, concerned with my favourite fusion of fictitious ages, and atmospheric. Oh, and in Commandos I couldn't pause to think, it required continuous work from me.

I noticed some annoying guitar playing in Diablo, and it was dusk, but the game seemed to be a deception in that they kind of suggested at an atmospheric free-roaming adventure place but in my opinion didn't deliver. I didn't play it much to judge it accurately though, just met some kid, and went into the dungeon twice.

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Because compared to Commandos Thief was more intimate, concerned with my favourite fusion of fictitious ages, and atmospheric. Oh, and in Commandos I couldn't pause to think, it required continuous work from me.

 

Not sure about this, but I think there is a pause key. It was a long time since I played it, so I would have to check it. :)

 

I noticed some annoying guitar playing in Diablo, and it was dusk, but the game seemed to be a deception in that they kind of suggested at an atmospheric free-roaming adventure place but in my opinion didn't deliver. I didn't play it much to judge it accurately though, just met some kid, and went into the dungeon twice.

 

Diablo takes quite some time until you can actually play it. At the beginning, you are quite busy with running back and forth because you can't carry enough and you need a lot of healing. I guess this was the main reason, why I didn't like D2 anymore.

 

BTW: Who is you avatar?

Gerhard

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Sperry the neurologist?

He did the famous split-brain studies (people who had their corpus collosum severed, cutting the left hemisphere from the right).

I loved researching that in college.

 

You'd show people like a picture or command to the right hemisphere, then they'd be instructed to follow it, e.g.,: "laugh", the person laughs. Then you ask the person why they laughed (effectively asking their left hemisphere; language is dominated by the left side). Of course they (or their left side) seriously has no idea. But they would make up a story and really believe it, "Oh, you guys are just hilarious." And then they'd try to defend the story. It's really sort of chilling if you think about it.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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It was (and still is for very severe cases) used for for severe epilectics, so if they get a seizure it can only spread to half the brain and doesn't spread to the whole brain, meaning the whole thing doesn't shut down.

 

It's not like a lobotomy; no functional area is being taken out ... so a patient or anybody else really can't even tell it's been cut in day-to-day situations (although granted the quirky experiences would start to add up over time). The corpus collosum is a narrow band of wiring that carries relatively little information across hemispheres, most of it which is redundant anyway because most sensory information is spread to both hemispheres at the same time, and internal "brain talk" is pretty much kept in the same hemisphere to do its work. It just smooths out the pretty rare situation (in nature) when one side needs something only the other side has, like if a flash of light only hits one side of the retna (so only goes to one hemisphere, rather than the usual both). The whole point of the study is that because the two hemispheres do so much work independently, and do it so well, there's really not much need for them to be physically connected to do their thing, anyway. If you didn't do these kinds of studies, nobody would even know it's been cut; well, they'd notice weird things happening, but it wouldn't be obvious. What was most surprising was how much *didn't* change by cutting it ... it's like having two brains is basically the norm.

 

And actually, a smaller pecent of the population is even born without a corpus collosum ... and they can go their whole life without them or anybody else ever noticing until its discovered after their death!

 

That doesn't mean I'm going to be jumping to have mine cut, though! First of all, it's too expensive to do for a whim.

 

Sperry the inventor? I don't know. What did he invent?

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Oh come on! what did he invent. Gyroscopes. Other stuff. All kinds of naval stuff. You remember Edison, don't you? Well that's only because he was a bloody jack-ass, always promoting himself. He learned PR and talking to the media while he was telegraph operator during the civil war (selling out military plans and secrets basically for sex and cigars).

 

I guess I'm so freaked out about the collosum because mine is so active. Since childhood I've noticed a heightened ability compared to those surrouding me to do things which benefit from or require the use of the two hemisphere simultaneously.

 

In the past couple of months I've started doing work in a new way which challenges me in a new way, and I noticed a significant increase in my Brodmann area 10 activity in the frontal lobes. I've also noticed that for the past few years I've been having some trouble with my cerebral cortex.

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You'd show people like a picture or command to the right hemisphere, then they'd be instructed to follow it, e.g.,: "laugh", the person laughs. Then you ask the person why they laughed (effectively asking their left hemisphere; language is dominated by the left side). Of course they (or their left side) seriously has no idea. But they would make up a story and really believe it, "Oh, you guys are just hilarious." And then they'd try to defend the story. It's really sort of chilling if you think about it.

 

Just more evidence that "free will" is an illusion. A person does something "automatically" and then proceeds to convince himself it was a conscious choice. Perhaps that is what we all do, all of the time.

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In the past couple of months I've started doing work in a new way which challenges me in a new way, and I noticed a significant increase in my Brodmann area 10 activity in the frontal lobes. I've also noticed that for the past few years I've been having some trouble with my cerebral cortex.
Forgive me, but I find myself slightly skeptical of one's abilities to notice how just how active specific parts of their brain are...
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A person does something "automatically" and then proceeds to convince himself it was a conscious choice. Perhaps that is what we all do, all of the time.

 

Well, to be fair, in 999 out of 1000 cases, the part of your brain that's answering the question has some real access to the "conscious choice" part of the brain that made the decision, so knows a lot about what's going on. So it's not so bad to think of it as one system working together, and the "convincing itself it made a real decision" is about on the same level as a govt spokesperson or company PR person annoucning the decision of the President/CEO on behalf of the country/company. We still blame the president/CEO for a bad decision, even if it's the PR guy that announced it ... because the organization is set up that way. The brain is in the same bag, IMO ... it's organized to work together so it's ok to hold it responsible for things. As long as people remember that it's an "organization" that has to work together, but sometimes doesn't.

 

The weirdo cases like this IMO just go to show that the part making the decision (IMO "freely" in the sense it's really making a decision, based on whatever reasons are important to it at the time) and the part explaining why "it" made the decision are different parts of the brain and while they often work very well together, they don't always ... and people can't explain their own decision-making very well. It doesn't mean that some part of them really didn't make a decision (IMO), it just means they aren't very good at understanding their own thinking. But we can still hold them responsible for those decisions, just like we hold a President responsible even if the PR guy inadvertantly messes up (or more likely, intentionally colors to save face or whatever; think Freud) explaining the "real" reasons for the decision.

 

I just want to be sure that people can still be held responsible for things, even admitting the basic jist of your point. People can be said to act "freely" and be "responsible" for their decisions when the system works properly on a day-to-day basis (you can use the word "illusion", but I prefer to think of it as "a system that practically works when it's operating properly"; semantics, maybe, but at the end of the day it "works") ... and when it doesn't, then we lock them up in psychiatric wards, because then it's something like scitzophrenia where one part of the brain thinks of other parts as literally foreign, hostile voices.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I just want to be sure that people can still be held responsible for things, even admitting the basic jist of your point.

 

Even if free will was conclusively proven not to exist, and the entire brain was determine to be nothing more than a deterministic goal-oriented agent, this would not remove the need to hold people responsible for their actions. The fact that an action has consequences is precisely what drives a rational agent, and being punished for a crime is a necessary input to ensure the rational agent doesn't select criminal behaviour as an easy means of achieving its goals.

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As for the appeal of Diablo II, two words: eighth grade. I think that kind of explains a lot of why I was so enamored with it at the time.

 

I think the greatest deterrent from getting "addicted" per se to MMOs for myself was the fact that I can't stay up at all hours of the night. I'm one of those few people (I know, its rare) that actually needs a good night's sleep and can't function without one. If there are those with insomnia, there are those with the opposite extreme, and unfortunately I guess I'm just one of those. I can't sacrifice my sleep for anything, let alone a game :P.

 

Also, in terms of illusion vs. reality, one is needed to supplant the other. For one to exist, the other must; illusion is a shadow of reality. Thus, if free will is an illusion then there must be real free will. If there is none, then "fake" free will is real free will.

 

Point in being? Don't over-intellectualize.

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If there are those with insomnia, there are those with the opposite extreme, and unfortunately I guess I'm just one of those.

 

Insomnia is not the opposite of needing a good night's sleep -- it's the inability to get a good night's sleep, no matter how much you might need it.

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I think the greatest deterrent from getting "addicted" per se to MMOs for myself was the fact that I can't stay up at all hours of the night. I'm one of those few people (I know, its rare) that actually needs a good night's sleep and can't function without one.

 

LOL. I know what you mean. I also can't let a chance, to get a good night sleep, slip by. When I was younger, I often made a night through, but I still had to get my eight hours at least afterwards..

Gerhard

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I played WOW for six months, came from job turn on computer log on and play, weekends completly lost to that world, after reach 60 leavel i give up, when burning crusade came out i return to play for a week and then give up for good, for me, it was the worst expended time of my life. Im at 30´s now and im still a gamer and will continue, but MMOO´s never again, well i my try Helgate London, lets see what they come up?

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