oDDity

Well, I'd certainly call his thread 'gay'. Watching and talking about a bunch of overpaid neanderthals playing sport, is the second most pointless thing after history, do we may as well just group them into the same thread for ridicule.

Conjecture. So, what did the Greeks look back on for their advancement then? Intellectual improvement can only happen via some study of previous centuries? Obviously not. Further, the renaissance thinkers created their own radically new ideas of science, they did not copy the greeks and romans. There's a reason why what the greeks and romans believed was mostly forgotten, because it was mainly nonsense. Double whammy. Conjecture and irrelevant. The last century is still within living memory for some people FFS, and does not qualify as history that has to be uncovered. Aside from that, the reason Europe is getting closer is not because it's fed up with the centuries of fighting. It's for economic and trade reasons in a changing world. Also, making a superstate from smaller states does not mean fighting can't happen, it can just as easily cause friction, and has done many times. See last point. Also, that's a point against your argument about learning from history. They clearly didn't learn from history there, they copied it. None of these are accurate or relevant. You didn't prove anything there, or show any fitting examples. I can't believe you make a living as a journalist, other than one who fills tabloid column inches with vacuous tittle-tattle. The cut-off point is when it falls out of living memory. Anything after that point which has not remained alive on it's own merit, is not worth digging up 300 years later. You haven't proven this statement wrong. It's the pioneers who are creating new knowledge who are important, not the fools digging up the past.

Remembering the past doesn't stop it being repeated. Do you think the ethnic cleansing that went on in Bosnia a few years ago was done by people who had no knowledge or recollection of the Nazis? You could equally claim that remembering past events gives people the idea to do it again. The point for me is that any useful information or discovery naturally flows forwards anyway, it's doesn't need to be uncovered by historians 300 years later. No historian or scholar has ever spent years digging into the past and then uncovered anything of any use or value to us in the present. What we know about the past is that they didn't know as much as us. No one from the past has got anything to say to us that has any relevance. The problem is that so much crap and bollocks has been dragged forward form the past in the name of 'tradition'.

What history books are these that you're reading? What you mean is that any event that has happened, will continue to be an event that happened, no matter what future date you look back on it from. I've always scoffed at history in general. People who spend their own lives digging up iron age settlements to see what people back then did with their lives (you can be sure they didn't waste them digging old bits of pottery out of the ground). Whatever they find out about iron age people, what possible relevance does that have to our lives. Who gives a shit how many wives Henry VIII had either. History = most pointless academic subject in the world.

I didn't say it was superior, that's your inferiority complex making you think that.

Anyway....enough of this blabbering. THere is no conclusion to be reached on the subject itself. The point of it for me was to point out that because I may have wildly differing view on such subjects as the topic of this thread, but it doesn't mean they are any less real or 'right' than the programmed human response the rest of you have. Don't assume that just because I actually consider what I'm thinking and why I'm thinking it, to see if it's logical or simply what I've been conditioned to think, that I'm doing it to be obtuse or trying to start an argument.

So what is your greatest area of interest then? Film work requires a much higher skill level than games. All the best people tend to move up into movies. Also with the current high interest in CG and the many kids learning it and more and mroe schools doing it, the general quality of your future rivals is rising all the time, so you have to be better and better to get in. It doesn't have to interfere, I assumed you joined to hone your skills within a semi-professional real world project in whatever your greatest area of interest is. Working within a team is easy. It's not something that has to be 'learned'. Gaining the skills that make you worthy of joining any team are 99% of the work. 'Good at teamwork' seems to be the sort of generic meaningless statement that everyone in every industry puts down on a job application. There are not many jobs in the world where you don't have to work with at least one other person.

We've already established that existence is worthless. The only thing that can raise it a little above worthlessness, and therefore make it worth the effort, is to stand out in some way from the crowd, to do things in the way you want. If a million other people can fill your shoes without anyone even noticing, then you might as well not exist in the first place. So yes, I'm not as indifferent as you, and I was frustrated, but now I'm doing something about it. My life and my mind has changed a lot in the last 5 years. Whether I ever succeed is a different question, I'm still not entirely clear just where I'm trying to get to at this point, but at least I'm trying. That may amuse you, but in turn, your contented indifference sickens me. We get back to the idea about whether the point of life is to enjoy yourself while you have it. If that's the only point of life, then what a waste -a waste of this amazing brain we all have, perhaps the most complex thing in the universe, if all we're meant to do with it is amuse ourselves with silly games until we die..

'Little amuses the ignorant' is how we say it in English.

Get a clue what you're talking about before posting again, you're an embarrassment. I made it clear when I left this project almost 2 years ago, that the reasons I joined were selfishly motivated. It was an opportunity for me to hone my skills on a hard project. As soon as I got bored with that and felt it could take me no further, I left for greener pastures. I'm back for the moment because I think it's a good opportunity for me to hone some character animation skills. No amount of doing something on your own makes up for working on a real project with all the problems it throws up. I feel no allegiance to the Thief community, I'm not part of it and never have been. I utterly despise the sort of people who post threads at TTLG, mainly consisting of thigns like 'what if yous was garet in real life!', 'what is you favorit benny song' 'how many times does garet say the word 'and' in Theif?'. Also for the record, and I've made it clear in the past in debates here, I hate philosophy - that's is, I hate people who sit around reading other people's philosophy. I've never read nietzsche or anyone else, and certainly didn't go to the sort of school which had philosophy classes. Try using your own brain, that's what its for.

To further demagogue's last point, when I say 'life' I'm not talking purely about nature, since we no longer fully subscribe to that. I mean the culmination of ten thousand years of society and social programming and tradition and laws and etiquette, which I think governs our actions much more that natural instinct. That's how we've programmed ourselves. Basically like ants, each filling a little role that all adds up to the greater good of society.

Well at least you're starting early in life. I wish I had. However, you're seriously underestimating how much work and effort and focus it takes to get to the top in even one discipline such as modeling or animation. Years of self study just to master any one of those. I'm not sure the generic 'lets teach them a bit of everything' approach is valuable. I'd call the entire university generalist CG course nothing more that an appetiser. You cannot expect to go to school and have art forced into your head. You have to teach yourself in your own time. If you don't want it badly, if you're not almost obsessive about it, then you'll never be any good, because that's what it takes. When you start applying for jobs, all they are interested in is the quality of your portfolio, not how many courses you've done or diplomas you have. From my experience of talking to people in CG, I'd say the majority of them did not do a CG course of any kind.

Life is such a fleeting thing, a flash in the endless vacuum of non-existence. Who gives a shit what you did with it, we all won't exist soon enough, and much sooner than you think. I think life is one big endless game, and the point of the game is to avoid at all costs thinking about your imminent death, because if you did it often, it would drive you mental. You just ignore it and go though the motion of living a life that isn't going to achieve anything that you'll be around to experience. It's ridiculous actually. To grab a bunch of chemicals, shape them into a thinking individual capable of pondering its own life and death, and a few years later disperse it all back into chemicals. This is why it's important to be individual and not care about anyone else. Life has preordained that you be a worthless little cog in the machine, your purpose being to serve the greater good of your species as a whole. Your individual life is not meant to have any significance in and of itself. I'm not having that though, I don't give a shit about the species as a whole, and I don't care if they all die out 2 seconds after I do. So I'll take this life that was forced upon me and work out a way of living it that seems fitting to ME, not anyone else.

Of course I won't care. If I was dead I wouldn't exist, how could I care. People can come and dance a jig and piss on my grave for all it'll matter to me ('me' is an erroneous term of course, since at that point there will be no 'me') "human beings are social creatures" In some part its the emotions that we have that makes us different, to deny them and then replace them with aggressive logic really seems illogical, well unless your in the army and your job is killing people. 'natural' meaning the traditional programmed response that most people automatically have without even thinking about it, but that's not necessarily a good or right thing, is it? Eh? The exact opposite of that is true. What's a judge? He's an impartial neutral guy who spends all day making judgements for a living. Someone who's neutral is the BEST person to be making judgements. No, I'm not a rebel. I don't look at what others are doing and automatically take up an opposite position just t be different. I look at what the status quo is, and I think about it and decide if it's logical or not. If it is, then fine, no change is necessary, if not, then I decide what makes more sense, and behave in that way. Average human behaviour is so messed up between instinct, emotion, tradition and logic, and I try to just use logic. I'm not talking about pure formal logic here, just general intellectual consideration.

I don't see much on this reel that relevant to this mod. It's all cartoon stuff. Have you done any realistic modeling? If that's all they're teaching you at school, I'd advise you to quit and teach yourself. There are only a few good CG schools in the world, and they're not cheap.

I haven't got a negative attitude. It's a neutral one, based on logic and not emotion. It's just that the collective brainwashing that's been going on for millennia is intentionally designed as falsely positive, and therefore, a cold and neutral attitude seems negative in comparison. I wish you guys could see further than the end of your noses.

That's a decent goal in itself as far as I'm concerned. I now a professional artist, and being different is what separates the good from the great. Being different in all areas of thought is important to being a unique and great artist in my view, and that's what my ultimate goal is. I literally don't care about anything else. I'm only annoyed that I started down this path relatively late in life. I feel like I completely wasted my first 3 decades. It has given me a rather large chip on my shoulder. I'm not homophobic, that was just another one of macsen's little jibes.

What kind of logic are you guys using here? It's obviously the 'there's two of us and one of him, so we can say anything and look as though we're winning' tag-team logic. i.e, 'we agree with each other, but not with him, so democracy wins' logic. For a start, I've never said I disliked those groups, we've had discussions on them before no doubt, but my views were a lot more considered than 'I don't like them'. Also you fail to understand that just because someone likes a cock instead of a vagina, or says 'oui' instead of 'yes', it doesn't make them an individual, or give them a fundamentally different view on life, and furthermore, you're also badly confused by the idea that because one person has strong individualist views, that they should therefore automatically like anyone else who has stong individualist views. That makes no sense at all. Yes, there are a lot of people out there who strong individuals, but that doesn't mean we are all the same. The very point is that we're all different from the average AND each other. We're not a group of people who all have the same views, because we don't follow the socially programmed thought process that the masses do. I know you and sparhawk are going to claim to be individuals and different from each other, but what is different about your lives are quite trivial details, your thinking diverges away from one at other only at the highest level, so you end up being two different sized apples on the same tree, while my thinking diverges away at root level, so I'm a different kind of fruit on a separate tree. I'm not claiming my thinking is better either, only that it's different. It's like saying a pear is better than an apple, it wouldn't make any sense. Having said that though, I wouldn't want to be seen hanging dead form your apple tree.

Ha, well at last you're getting my point - I don't want to be an average human. You're better off not existing at all than being average. What's the point, if a million other people have almost identical thoughts and lives to you? These are deliberate decisions I've made as I've approached and passed the age of 30. I've really changed a lot since my younger days, and for the better. Do you actually think about what you're saying before you say it? You're only of provng my main point in this thread. Everything you say is so transparent and obvious, it's very hard to believe you're a journalist and might have to question someone to winkle answers out of them. Judging from the way your argue around here, you'd be lucky to get their real name. Just because I don't get enjoyment from the same neanderthal things as you, doesn't mean that I'm not getting pleasure and satisfaction from life. Sparhawk, I wish you would stop being such a coward. If you're going to post blatant insults to hide your complete lack of argument, then don't put smilies after every sentence to try and make it look more innocent. It just makes you look like a cunt.

Of course. One already has died, and all my grandparents. I believe there is nothing but non-existence after death, and therefore, to spend any time grieving for a dead person is pointless. Grief is selfishly motivated, its all about how the death relates to you personally, it's not about the dead person. They're dead, they don't exist, and that's that. Due to the fact I feel no need to form close relationships with people, their deaths don't affect me, and so I have no reason for the selfishly motivated 'how does this death affect me' grief that the rest of you wallow in on such occasions. Get over it. I've never attended a funeral. The most pointless ceremony ever devised in my opinion. As for me becoming terminally ill, the only thing that would make it worse would be getting pity and empathy from others. No. I've read most of the discworld books, and enjoyed them, but I wasn't changed by them, It's just a bit of light entertainment for a few hours. I don't see how anyone could have been 'changed' by them. As you say, your 'sadness' is all about you, all about the fact you might not have any more books to read.

I enjoy arguing. It's nice to take little breaks from sculpting to argue now and again.

And as I've said, your empathy is useless unless you turn it into real help, which you can't and won't for Pratchett, so keep your useless empathies to yourselves. They serve no purpose other than to fill a few forum posts.

I don't know what you mean by 'get on with'. I have business and other formal relationships with people to get things done (I mostly tolerated you guys for a few years here) I don't see how 'get along with' in the sense of 'getting drunk with them in a pub' or 'kicking a ball around a field' is of any relevance. Well, this topic has kicked off becasue of my differing views on the way the sort of information that you so blithely posted here should be handled. Everyone else immediately goes into automatic 'aww that's sad' mode, without even thinking about it. Social programming. These aren't your own thoughts at all, they're just a little program in your brains. I'm sure if you read back through the many threads I've taken part in, you'll see many other examples like this one. I don't keep a list.

In other words, you're putting on a nice little social act every time you go out. I can't be bothered with that nonsense. Be who you are.

You're not an individual though, you're the typical average grey man, indistinguishable from everyone else around you. Everything about you is average. You're an average office worker with an average wife, a average house, an average car, 2.4 average children. You live an almost identical life to the average person, and would be considered typical by any advertising agency. You've never had a thought in your life that was outside the collective Borg consciousness, and more than that, you can't even fathom what that kind of thinking is. You're idea of individualism is wearing bright orange Nike's to work one day. Being a strong individual does not mean simply having a minority point of view on topical issues such as the Euro, that's the sort of small time thinking which you consider makes you individual. For me, it actually means having a fundamentally different way of thinking about almost everything, about life itself. Looking at the very nature of why people think in certain ways. The fact that a lot of that thought comes up as negative, is perhaps more an indictment of life and the way it's conducted, than a flaw in the methodology. That's not to say that all social norms are wrong, some of them make sense, but a lot of them don't and need rethinking. In the meantime, anyone who doesn't follow them is (quite rightly) considered strange.