My point though is that you talk about all of that as if it’s some sort of chore.

To me, it’s a lot of the fun.

I rarely even get to the point of having to stop and weigh choices in my inventory, since every time I come across something new, I have to stop and check it out and try to figure out what it is and what it does and what sort of advantages or disadvantages it might have. I enjoy that. So all along the way, I’m figuring out what I want to or think I should keep and what I want to or think I can get rid of, and not because a finite inventory demands it, but because that’s part of the point of playing in the first place.

Broadly, you’re asking if other people actually invest the time and energy to sort out how to play complex games. I’m saying that we not only can and do, but that that’s a lot of the point. That whole process of sorting things out is a lot of the reason that we play in the first place.

Yeah - I just jump in and wing it.

At the risk of inviting the internet’s wrath, when people talk about the difference between serious gamers and casuals, this is the sort of thing they’re talking about.

“Serious” gaming involves a particular set of skills and interests, such that the person is willing and able to just jump into some complicated new game and figure it out. And it’s not just that “serious” gamers can do that - the point is that they want to. They enjoy it. They enjoy being lost, then slowly putting the pieces together and figuring out how things work and getting better because they’ve figured it out. And they enjoy the details - learning which skills do what and which items do what, and how it all interrelates. All that stuff isn’t some chore to be avoided - it’s a lot of the point - a lot of the reason that they (we) play games.

You talk about your inventory filling up and then just selling everything, and I can’t even imagine doing that. To me, that’s not just obviously bad strategy, but entirely missing the point - like buying ingredients to make delicious food, then bringing them home and throwing them in the garbage.

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Gurren Lagann

I think this puts consciousness on too high of a mystic pedestal.

I think that one of the most common ways by which the devotees of reductive physicalism try to make it appear to be a valid position is by positing a false dichotomy by which they then sneeringly characterize anything that’s not simply physical as “mystic.”

What makes you think that it is impossible to observe someone else’s consciousness?

The fact that it’s an emergent phenomenon with no physical manifestation.

I think we’ll be able to (and in fact we already can to some notable degree) track neuronal activity in a brain and map it and interpret it, so we can make reasonably solid guesses regarding its nature - general type, intensity, efficiency and so on - but we can never actually observe its content, since its content is a gestalt formed within and only accessible to the mind that’s experiencing it.

There’s nothing at all “mystic” about that - it’s simple logic and reason.

And, by the bye, it’s also much of why actual philosophers rejected reductive physicalism almost a century ago.

Philosophy can’t have "a scientific basis.

If an idea has a legitimate scientific basis, then it’s not philosophy - it’s science. Philosophy explicitly addresses ideas for which there is not, and in most cases there can’t be, a legitimate scientific basis.

Conveniently enough, I just wrote another response to the thread, since there was more I wanted to say on the topic, and it addresses this.

It’s not a matter of not having the tools to test theories of consciousness - it’s more fundamental than that. We are consciousness. When we theorize on consciousness, we are engaging in consciousness. It’s inescapable - it’s the very thing that makes it possible to theorize. And it’s entirely experiential - you necessarily experience your own consciousness and cannot possibly observe anyone else’s. We are each and all, and necessarily, behind a veil of perception. It’s literally impossible for it to be otherwise - to somehow step outside of consciousness and observe it, since the only thing that can meaningfully observe it is that same consciousness.

Yes - we can concevably at least make some good guesses regarding the physical processes that correspond with our experiences of consciousness, but that’s necessarily the extent of it. Again, it’s not simply that we don’t have the tools to do more than that, but that it’s inherently impossible for it to be otherwise.

This is still nagging at me - there’s more I want to say. So, another response.

This particular theory is a pretty good illustration of the unfortunate ignorance of philosophy I mentioned, but an even better one is mentioned in the article - “the popular claim, advanced by philosopher Nick Bostrom and taken seriously by physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Chalmers, among others, that our reality is a simulation being run on a computer, as in The Matrix.”

That’s not just pseudoscience, but embarassingly ignorant. If these people had even the vaguest understanding of the idea, they’d recognize that it’s about as far from science as it’s possible to get.

The whole concept was first popularized by Descartes in the 17th century. He presented it as the possibility that one’s perception of reality could be manipulated by an “evil demon,” but the underlying concept was the same as “the Matrix.”

But the thing is that it was never intended to be an actual theory of perception and consciousness - rather it was a thought experiment meant to illustrate the fact that it could be the case that our perceptions of reality are controlled by an evil demon (or are a computer simulation), and we could never know.

The exact point is that it’s literally impossible to somehow step outside of our perceptions and our consciousness and analyze them, since any observations we might make are and can only be products of the very perceptions and consciousness we’re trying to analyze. So they could be entirely right or entirely wrong or anything in between and we could never know, since they simply are and can only be whatever they are.

As far as that goes then, it not only falls astray of but pretty much explicitly illustrates the distinction between science and pseudoscience.

And if Tyson et al had even the faintest understanding of philosophy - if they weren’t blinded by some ludicrously ignorant species of reductive physicalism - they’d already understand that, and recognize how foolish it is to treat the Matrix, or any other such idea, as a legitimate theory.

I’m pleased to see this.

In recent decades, science has been trying to move into areas, like consciousness, that are really philosophy, and all that does is fuck things up for everyone.

Yes - of course it’s pseudoscience - it can’t help but be, since it’s all untestable.

The problem is that, by labeling it “science,” whatever it is that someone proposes is immediately treated by devotees of scientism as certain fact, when in reality it’s philosophy, and thus “fact” is a quality it can’t even possess. And that’s doubly a problem because not only is it not and can’t ever be legitimately treated as fact but, not to put too fine a point on it, when it comes to philosophy, all too many scientists don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. In ways, many of them are even more ignorant than laypeople, since they tend to disdain and thus ignore the philosophy that’s gone before them.

It doesn’t matter what you, I or (almost) anyone else thinks about much of anything here.

You say that you’re “well aware of the decentralized aspect of Lemmy,” but apparently you really haven’t thought it through.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is no mechanism by which any self-appointed “we” can do anything.

The instance owners are entirely free to run their instances as they prefer, and the community owners are entirely free to run their communities as they prefer, and that really is that.

[email protected]

It’s pretty much a lost cause, at least for now, but I keep posting anyway. And it’s not like it’s an imposition - I check in on Mangadex a few times a day anyway, to catch up on my follows and maybe browse the new updates, so I just post discussion threads for the stuff I like and would like to discuss.

Years ago, I used to post a lot on the Reddit manga sub. It was always much more active, but my tastes in manga are obscure enough that most of what I was following didn’t get posted otherwise. But then the sub grew to the point that there were more enthusiastic posters even posting that, so I stopped.

That’s made it sort of awkward on kbin though, since I’m still just posting the sort of obscure stuff I like. In order to grow the community, it would be better to post more popular series, but that just seems sort of dishonest to me. It seems to me that if I’m not even reading a series myself, I have no business posting it.

So it goes…

I don’t even understand this headlong rush for an app. And especially being so desperate for an app that you’d use one that embeds ads unless you pay to remove them.

It just seems completely backwards to me.

With Reddit, it made sense - it was awful in a mobile browser, the official app was complete garbage, and either way it was buried in ads So you could (and I did) use a third party app and get a cleaner and more useful interface and no ads.

But Lemmy’s already fine in a browser and it’s ad-free. So what’s the point?

I could maybe see, somewhere down the road when the apps are complete and established, it might be interesting to experiment with some and maybe find one that’s got just the features I like most. But that’s not what I’m seeing. What I’m seeing are people desperately clamoring for an app - any app - it doesn’t matter how primitive and janky it is - they just desperately need to have an app right now, today, this instant. As if lemmy is completely unusable without one.

And it’s just… not that way at all. Sure, it could be better, but it’s fine.

So I just don’t get it.

I couldn’t even watch the whole thing - my cringe meter topped off with Canti in a suit, sounding like a TV weatherman.

Judging by the community this is in, you’re probably thinking of the wrong “subs.”

Oblivion. It’s been a few years since I sat down and added it all up, but between all of my characters, I had just short of 3000 hours into the game. Nothing else is even close to that.

Yeah - I read that article yesterday.

While I agree that the panic is tiresome, I wouldn’t call that a “grounded” article. It struck me as entirely predictable PR fluff from the “CEO” of Mastodon, which is to say, the specific person who stands to profit the most from any sort of deal with Meta.

The strength of the fediverse is its freedom, and specifically each individual’s freedom to create an instance or join any instance they prefer. So my plan is to simply exercise my freedom as I see fit, and without submitting to the rhetoric either of people who are trying to convince me to panic or trying to convince me to welcome Meta with open arms.

I have no intention of joining Threads, or of being a part of any instance that’s federated with them.

And that’s entirely beside the point. I’m not arguing the merits (or lack thereof) of Threads or of federation with them.

I’m simply relaying the fact that I’ve already seen a forum destroyed by the sort of internal strife you’re fomenting.

And it should be noted that with your response, you’re still following the script exactly, by jumping to the conclusion that because I criticized your call for a “united front,” I must be on the side of the enemy.

Funny thing - the last time I saw a promising forum destroyed, the beginning of the end was when people got all in a panic about some purported external threat and started demanding a “united front” to combat it. Then they started calling for retribution against anyone who didn’t join them. Then they just kept fanning the flames of hostility against anyone on the forum that they decided wasn’t sufficiently devoted to their cause, and the forum ended up tearing itself apart from within.