Sotha
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Posts posted by Sotha
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Thanks for playing! Always gratifying to hear someone likes your work.
@Mircea, a fun little developer commentary for you,
On the origins of the origins of the caulk:
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18030-the-origins-of-caulk/?p=388346
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Well, it probably goes so that people stop trusting anything they read, see or hear.
It will be really difficult to convey new ideas or progress things. Humanity will go stagnant: there will be those who are informed and able to discern reliable information and think for themselves, and there will be the masses of ignorant monkeys who are pulled to any direction the populists or hate mongers want.
Fascinating times. We have only little time to discard democracy and start running meritocratic technocracies for the benefit of the whole humanity. But how do we make sure the technocracies do not turn into autocracies?
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Really good discussion, as expected!
@Skaruts,
I am a scientist myself, but I would not say that the scientific method is based on distrust. I would say it is based on critical scrutiny, which is different from distrust (but they could be thought to be distant cousins).
Trust is required in scientific progress. If you do not trust earlier data or findings, you do not have a foundation to build your own experiment (I.e. if you allow a a silly example: if you distrust the scientific consensus the Earth is round, but -looking yourself around your immediate area- conclude the Earth to be flat, you will have hard time putting satellites to the orbit.)
A lone scientist cannot know everything, so they must trust some sources when they build their work. Trusting does not prevent critical scrutiny. If they find an error in the previous data, of course they should then revise and report accordingly.
Thus, I would separate levels of trust like this: "Distrust", "Trust" and "Gullible Trust"
"Trust" is what I was looking for: people can interact based on basic trust. We are not gullible, but listen the other party with good faith, but you use critical scrutiny. We can reach consensus because we trust the other party does not screw us. The other party also trusts us (has calculated we have little incentive to screw them). The Trust generates a climate of cooperation and everyone wins. When there is Trust, you can make a contract or an agreement, because you trust the other party will honour their part of the bargain. Trust builds trust: when you have a partner with whom you have done previous transactions, who seems to honour their end of the bargain and everything ran smoothly, you will likely do business with them again.
"Distrust" is that is happening now inside America, and elsewhere. Different factions listen to each other with bad faith: assuming only lies and trickery. In that kind of climate, you cannot have a discussion. Discussion with bad faith and the expectation of lies is useless: it is just shouting and saying anything to get your way. Consensus is not possible. You will get dysfunction, hatred, and in extreme cases civil war. It is not a climate of cooperation. The winner takes it all, the loser loses all, everyone fights fiercely and truth does not matter anymore. When there is severe Distrust, there is no point in making contracts or agreements, You expect the other party will screw you over anyway, they can always interpret the contract fine print like the Devil.
"Gullible trust" it what you talked about, where you trust everything without critical scrutiny, and get conned. The favourite state for people in a dictatorship.
So the initial question of the OP would be, how to progress more into the direction of:
*more Trust
*less Distrust
*less gullible trust?
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I've been reading the Climate Change Thread and wanted to start another discussion. This time it is on Trust.
Human societies are based on trust. The paper piece (money) in you pocket has value and can buy you things only because we have agreed together that it has value. You can safely buy land and property, because we have agreed you own them after the purchase and we have agreed that if someone comes to your own house, throws you out and claims it for their own, you can trust the state violence monopoly (police) comes to your assistance. You can trust the bus arrives roughly on schedule and that the trip costs the promised amount. The value of stocks and the economy stands on basic trust. If you lose trust, the economy collapses. Without trust, truth has little relevance, because truth cannot be transmitted between minds.
Without trust, we cannot have this society. Nothing would work anymore. We cannot agree on anything. We cannot even have a discussion, because the other party would be just lying and saying anything to get their way.
Trust seems to be eroding. Look at our situation:
*many people think the elite is conspiracing against the common people.
*politicians are lying all the time is the common perception and norm.
*people seem to think research results that they do not like are fraud.
*Trump got elected because at least partially because the voters wanted to demolish the elite because of deep distrust.
*is Brexit due to distrust of the British people towards the EU?
Lots of distrust. But yet the society still works. Signing contracts still have a meaning. But how much more distrust can the society endure?
How can we build trust? We need some kind of system for integrity enforcement. Trust builds trust and lying produces distrust. Thus, lying should have consequences: at least reputation loss. Maybe now trust is being destroyed, because lying has no consequences, integrity is not a required virtue and decency seems to be forgotten.
How do we go to the other direction?
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Thanks for the Bosnia story. That was an exiting read! I wonder how it would play out in a Finnish city, where -because of legislation- only police, military, registered hunters and shooters, and criminals have guns.
If the officials confiscate weapons in the early days from honest folks, that means only police, military and criminals have guns.
I suppose the correct maneuver would be to get out of cities to the countryside just *before* the shit hits the fan. And like the Bosnia story writer said, everything happens too fast.
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Heh, the future is here!
Global value chains means that when you buy hardware, you get china-chips from Chinese subcontractors, russia-chips from Russian subcontractors, america-chips from American subcontractors, and spy-chips from all the other parties of the value chain. Plus after hardware, you still get all the bloatware and malware that comes pre-installed.
I find it tragicomic. Bright side is that at least you get extra microchips for the same price...
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I think people are tricked by the marketers and confused. It is true that some level of consumption is required for happiness, but after basic needs are fulfilled, increasing consumption no longer increase happiness.@Sotha, my view is that the purpose of humanity is not to consume; the purpose of humanity is to be happy. Consumption is just one means to that end. Happiness trumps everything: love, justice, truth, wealth - none of them have any point unless they produce happiness. What is the point of happiness? (By 'happiness' I mean every form of contentment, satisfaction, an agreeable state of mind for everyone.) Strangely, it seems to me that happiness is an end in itself. The only one I know of actually.
People struggle for more and consume more, but they do not attain the happiness they struggle for. Happiness is a simple internal thing in you, which you can activate if you choose to do so. It is not something you seek out from the world and grab or buy for yourself.
The expectation of infnite growth must be somehow linked to this confusion. I know a lot of educated and smart people who really believe their immediate happiness depends on acquisition of Trinket X. Then they buy it, are happy for a brief moment, then feel hollow, store it in their fault of trinkets, and start craving for Trinket Z. Trinket X could just as well be an item, or a holiday trip to Thailand or something else.
This confusion results in the purpose of humanity to be consumption. People want happiness, but end up consuming instead. Wastefully.
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I agree that it is hardly probable that 1 CEO really equals in value 230 ordinary workers for work "value."
But there is the flip side of the coin (pun intended);
at least in Finland high salary CEO means a lot for government tax income. Also, when the CEO buys their expensive toys and penthouses and palaces, the government taxes those as well. Thus some part of the wealth is recirculated back to the money pool of the common people and pays for welfare benefits, healthcare, road maintenance, and stuff). That is, if the tax money was not squandered in ineffective bureaucracy, corruption, etc.
Because there are wealthy people, there are markets for luxury items, which is probably a profitable corner of the economy as well.
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I think it is a miracle that the capitalistic economy works. Please pause to consider it. It is the glue and an artificial (perhaps sometimes even arbitrary) set of rules and incentives that coordinates massive amount of people to cooperate towards a common goal. And it works! Have you ever tried to influence the behaviour of a large group of people? Really difficult.
But here you have it: capitalism + democracy (The System) leads to a more or less stable and predictable society and economy. The incentives direct people into mostly useful activities. Wealth is generated and distributed. Laws and directives are obeyed. Technology develops. Humanity proceeds and prospers.
It may very well be that the System is even efficient. It facilitates the development of new technologies, which make it always more and more efficient. Perhaps, too efficient, in fact. Humans are beginning to be the bottleneck for the progress of efficiency.
If you have an efficient System, you should consider what the purpose of the System is? If it is really efficient, it takes you to its end result very quickly, and you should damn well be aware where the destination is. What the goal is, is also interesting topic to debate. What is our economy and society for? What is the big picture?
The objective of corporations is to maximize profit. The objective of governments is to govern (in ideal case, for the benefit of the people. In dictatorships, for the benefit of the ruling elite). If I am not mistaken, our current System is based on consumption. More and more consumption increases employment, profits, taxes and well being. Less consumption means recession, stagnation and unemployment.
Thus, from a planetary point of view, the purpose of the System is to consume. The purpose of humanity is to consume. Incentives direct us to consume everything like a swarm of locusts. But with our modern technology, we are much more efficient in consumption than locusts. This poses a considerable threat to the environment, which must support the ever increasing consumption.
At some point we need to change the expectation of limitless growth and consumption, right? Then, we need to change the System, either through gradual and controlled change or a sudden crisis. But can we even have a sustained economy without increasing growth and consumption. What is the next system? And when does the change come?
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Primitive boys, in jungle paradise, build a roman-style brick house using only their wits, sticks and stones. They make their own bricks, too. Awesome!
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A nice little project:
(no, the AI grumble was TDM's own idea: I did not put it in!)
Here is an animation if someone wants to try to do something with it. Even if it would not go to core mod, it could be pretty cool as a scripted city watch raid or something..
And the files as .pk4 are here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PcGb4s1awWWBvdCC2317Sl23rZRuGD0A/view?usp=sharing
Enjoy!
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Working on an animation now...
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Kicking and shoulder-bashing a door does not *unlock* it, but would rather break the door or the door frame, right? (The lock slide cracks through the frame or the door comes down from the hinges.)
Would it be a little weird if the AI would violently kick the door, which unlocks, and then is opened normally?
Also, if the player has a key to the door, can the door be unlocked again? If so, would be silly. Kicking would be a skeleton key for all doors.
The issue is a non-issue if the AI is allowed to open all doors. In my missions, I always give all AI permission to open all locked doors for this reason.
Kicking and shoulder-bashing would make sense if the whole door was destroyed. It would we useful for the AI if they got stuck by player blocking the door from opening with moveable. Play kick anim, remove door model, open visportal permanently, remove all nearby moveables, splatter the area with door debris, which despawn after a while. Add dust cloud particle effect. Even so, it would be strange if AI could demolish doors with a kick, but the player cannot even with a fire arrow or explosive mines. On the other hand, if mines could be used this way, it would open up interesting break-and-enter type of missions.
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I think, map design wise, they nailed the atmosphere of a northern city qu8te well. If you go to Stockholm after playing the game, you see hauntingly familiar places parks and suburbs...
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Oh that, we talked about it years ago.
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18270-cry-of-fear/
I think it was pretty awesome. Not so good gameplaywise, but the atmosphere was spot on.
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What is the exact anniversary date?
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I wonder if crushing walls trap could have simple script that detects moveables in the trap space and removes them when the trap is triggered. Add a dust puff particle effect when the walls start to move which would conceal the disappearance of the moveables.
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"What if your children will be assholes who'll kill each other over your inheritance and in the end it will just be owned by the state? Or some immigrant polishing children's shoes to get a will with the aforementioned inheritance, that will get because those children were too selfish, leading to being alone, rich and miserable? Isn't that even more pointless to fight so selfishly for life only within your family? It's Santa Barbara type stories but they do happen. "
Exactly. If humans really did pointlessly fight each other, we could have never progressed this far. We progressed this far because we stopped being selfish bastards and we banded together and collaborated. One could of course call this being selfish, too: you help others only because you benefit from it yourself.
So maybe we are selfish and help others for mutual benefit, or maybe we are self-sacrificing heroes who help others altruistically, the net effect is the same: everyone benefits and progress progresses and the world is not as shitty place as it would be if everyone were really fighting each other brutally all the time.
I like to help because helping makes me feel good and it gives life meaning. A nice bonus is that when you have a track record of "helper" rather than A "selfish bastard", others are more likely to help me back. It is sort of an win-win situation.
I am sorry, but I sort of missed something: what makes Anderson believe we (humanity in general) progress towards dictatorships? Or did you mean your own country? Some countries are, and some countries are not.
I think democracies slip into dictatorships when people are Confused (see my earlier post) and because of their confusion, they vote populists, religious or other groups into power, who then start to systematically change the political, juridical and media systems to permanently enforce their own power.
One more reason why we should combat the Confusion and those who wish to promote it.
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"I feel we work ourselves up over semantics; we think alike in that the scientific method is indeed superior, and, in it's idealized form, as an idea, is optimal, at least the best we have for finding truth.
I just want to stress that until it produces truth, it temporarily can (and often, perhaps usually in some fields) produces falsehoods; [...]
But the central usefulness of science is for helping us to make more successful decisions, and those have to be done right now or soon, and we have very often not the time to wait for science to produce perfect truth."
I think we are in perfect agreement here. Points I want to make are:
*In life we have to accept high level of uncertainty all the time. Is it even fair to ever expect The Perfect Truth, or 100% certainty from science? I would not expect that. 70-90% is pretty awesome/impressive already.
*There are rogue elements in every trade. That's why I suggested to always check the source reliability and check multiple references. Find the consensus data. Disregard unreliable sources, emphasize reliable sources. Scientific mainstream is a good place to be, but not always right. It is true that sometimes being right condemns you to the minority.
*If one adjusts their view according to current mainstream scientific consensus, they have probably the most accurate and reliable view the humanity can provide. But it also means one has to be prepared to change views as the consensus views start to shift as new studies are completed. In reality normal people are not going do this struggle all the time. But when Important Decisions are made, the decision makers should check the science, see the options and choose the optimum one available at the time. Like you buy something expensive: you do your homework, you check reviews (from good source), you ask around (good sources), you list your options and you buy the optimum, not the best, not the cheapest. Information will ALWAYS be incomplete, but this way you at least did your best to make a wise choice.
*It is good to be sceptical, and it is good to think to yourselves. The problem is that the issues are often so complicated that we are helpless in arriving to correct conclusions on our own:make one little mistake and you could end up far away from the truth, while thinking you are correct, and them make a horrible mistake. That's why we have experts. They know the topics better and have a better shot in arriving to correct conclusions. If you build a house, you ask the construction professionals for advice, not the economist. When you invest to the stock market, you ask the economists for advice, not the construction professionals. After gathering the information, you should be enlightened enough to make the correct decisions. (All this assuming the experts were trained according to the most recent up-tp-date scientific knowledge, which is not always the case, sadly.)
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@Destined, I think Stumpy is referring to Indium, which is needed in transparent, but conductive ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) films. Indium is expensive, relatively rare and China is the biggest producer (deposits exist elsewhere in the world, too though). Since it is applied on substrate as a really thin film, it is difficult to recycle from the devices.
Last time I looked, there is a furious ongoing effort to replace ITO with variety of methods. It would be so cool if they succeeded...
I'm a chemist too, by the way...
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After this discussion (thanks everyone!) I think I am revising my position towards "less worried" in terms of climate change.
Some thoughts, briefly:
1) Climate change has been identified as a real problem by science, but now there is fortunately at least some building momentum to tackle it.
2) what will happen during our lifetime is probably something between two extremeties: a) Venus-like greenhouse-effect-outta-control (very unlikely), or b ) no significant change (very unlikely).
Highest probability event is loss of inhabitable land in some areas (floods, drought, extreme weather). Food supply get hit, economy may go into recession.
3) The effects will hit poor regions of the world hardest. Western societies are so ultra wealthy, we will probably just take economic impact and then adapt. We will probably need to have harsh immigration control because people will flee areas affected areas (famine, wars, etc). The hardest impact in western countries will hit the poor population (food, fuel, etc prices go up.) Those who are well-off take the smallest impact.
4) As long as one is among the well-off westerners, you are relatively safe. But that should not mean one should ignore the environmental effects entirely.
We all should learn to conserve resources, consume less and teach our children to value the Better Things in life (I.e. things you can not buy). This is useful even now, because when you consume less and waste less, you save money, which is always a good idea.
5) I think my personal strategy would be: work hard to remain among privileged westerners, but also -in everyday life- reduce ecological footprint and research ways to save energy, conserve resources and recycle/reuse as much stuff as possible instead of throw-away culture. Buy robust and repairable items instead of cheap disposable ones.
The most important prepper -thing I might do is to buy are big Jerry can of fuel to the garage for emergencies. A water purifier might be a good idea too, because extreme weather may increase probabilities of the drinking water to go temporarily non-potable (via sewage floods, etc). Good quality hiking equipment and wilderness survival skills are also good to be available (if you like hiking and being in nature like I do, I need them anyway.)
6) For solving the climate change, there is not much more an individual can do. In western democracies, scary amount of responsibility is put into the hands to the voters. Instead for voting populists or people who only drive the interests of your power group, we should vote for well-informed people who make decisions backed up by science, not just random thoughts of the day.
7) What will be to our detriment is Being Confused. This means following our random thoughts and believing our thoughts to be always true.
Conspiracy theories ("the climate change is a hoax by the XYZ") or religious nonsense ("God is our armor: pollute as much as you like, he will save us") are things that get us easily confused.
Stopping trusting science (our only tool for gaining clarity) gets us confused.
Believing populists who offer ultra-simple solutions to ultra-complex problems ("everything is the EUs/immigrants'/jews/nazis/used car salesmens fault") gets us confused.
Staying in the social media echo-chamber get us confused ("everyone agrees with me so it must be true!")
Using "othering" gets us confused ("everything is the elites/researchers fault." or "the elites/scientist conspire against the common people.") Fact is that humans are mostly the same: they have the same needs, the same fears, the same biases. When you see an elite or other "othering" group and want to hate them, it might be a good idea to remember that they are human just like you.
Closed mind gets us confused ("I'm not gonna listen to this data because the source is an expert, and I do not like experts nor the message. I prefer to listen what matches with my pre-existing beliefs.")
Being distrustful towards leaders and specialists gets us confused. (If you distrust sources with detailed information (specialist) or sources with broad big-picture or information (leader), you only have your own cognition to rely on and will probably get incorrect results. For most reliable results, always use multiple sources and know that all sources are not as equally reliable.)
The only way to get clarity is to rely on science. The thoughts in your mind may be true, or they might be totally (utterly and horribly) wrong, and you cannot know which is the case.
The only way to know which thought is true is to test them using the methods given by science. Not everyone is a specialist in complicated fields of science, and like Spring said if the message of the specialist does not make sense to you, it probably means you do not understand the topic, rather than the specialist does not understand their own field of expertise.
The problem of our era is that nobody listens anymore. It's about echo chamber frenzy, cherry picking the story that catches your fancy and not about what is really true. This is a big threat to the western democracies and also to our ability cope with climate change. But I am fairly hopeful that things are going to go fine. The humanity has made it thus far, so we are probably doing something right, so perhaps we will endure these obstacles like we have endured all the previous ones.
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A good horror story never reveals the horror
It always lurks in the shadows. The heroes might stumble through the terror it generates, but in the best stories they do not have definite answers. They can suspect variety of causes, but there are no answers. Only more questions.
I recommend some Lovecraft novels, I think most of the books are freely available at project Gutenberg. And I like the journal-like scientific approach in many of them. Also, read the stories at SCP foundation. Those free and delightfully creepy and modern, sometimes outright funny. Also, a treat for anyone enjoying scientific reports and experiments (often gruesomely gone wrong).
How to turn these into gameplay? Ultra-difficult. It is like the Zone in the Roadside Picnic (another wonderful example) if you understand the recipe for horror and start exploiting it, the requirements transform and your output is no longer scary anymore.
It is the unknown that scares.
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"Doesn't this mean that you perceive reality through a filter, so you see a prettified illusion instead of reality?"
Yes. And it also means that you have your own filter, too. I choose brighter filter than what you have chosen. Everyone experiences the reality through their own filter, and -make no mistake- nobody runs without filters.
So in a sense, you can pretty much choose how life tastes by choosing your filters. Why choose a dark one when you could choose a bright one? I know one can be forced.to use dark ones if something horrible happens, but one can learn bright filters in time, if motivation exists.
I guess the world, in reality, is neither good or bad. Stuff happens and you attach the story, whether good or bad.
The good story is not always the truth, but it could be. Similarly, thinking everything to be sourced from negativity and cruelty, could just as well be an error. Another those things of which truth-valuenwe cannot define. But it makes a nice discussion and perhaps we find out new avenues of thinking. Or maybe not.
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"I think you are living in a fairy-land."
"I think you seem to have lived a very happy, sheltered life, isolated from harsh reality."
This is probably correct. I am aware that in many places life is much more difficult than in civilized western countries, and in those place people probably have to do horrible stuff to survive. And nature is harsh indeed, where the weak are given no chance. Together, we have built these societies, safe havens of comfort.
I am glad I've given the opportunity to live in this relative comfort, where life-and-death struggles are not there. The original purpose of the OP was to wonder how we can sustain this wonderland, even if climate change causes a crisis.
I also think that I would be prone for severe depression if I would perceive the world without values, selflessness, friendship, justice, morals, and all the other good stuff that makes life worth living.
So, looks like we live in different worlds and that's fine. I'll prefer my side of thinking as it seems to me more... beautiful. I am not sure what the benefit would be in obtaining even more cynical and cruel perception of the same world. I guess we get to choose our own interpretation of thw world we inhabit. But thanks again for the discussion, it is interesting to see different point of views.
On Trust
in Off-Topic
Posted
Hey! This is exactly what I was trying to talk about in the OP!
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/29/why-we-stopped-trusting-elites-the-new-populism