Zalack

joined 1 year ago
[–] Zalack@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

IMO it's a good feature and it's a good thing it's required. I remember the days when I would boot up a game and never be sure if my system crashed or not.

This requires the game to start giving you feedback before you start wondering if you should do a power cycle.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We'll always DRR DRR !

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually think the radio signal is an apt comparison. Let's say someone was trying to argue that the signal itself was a fundamental force.

Well then you could make the argument that if you pour a drink into it, the water shorts the electronics and the signal stops playing as the electromagnetic force stops working on the pieces of the radio. This would lead you to believe, through the same logic in my post, that the signal itself is not a fundamental force, but is somehow created through the electromagnetic force interacting with the components, which... It is! The observer might not understand how the signal worked, but they could rule it out as being its own discreet thing.

In the same way, we might not know exactly how our brain produces consciousness, but because the components we can see must be involved, it isn't a discreet phenomenon. Fundamental forces can't have parts or components, they must be completely discreet.

Your example is a really really good one.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 24 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Self driving cars could actually be kind of a good stepping stone to better public transit while making more efficient use of existing roadways. You hit a button to request a car, it drives you to wherever, you need to go, and then gets tasked to pick up the next person. Where you used to need 10 cars for 10 people, you now need one.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is !lostlemmings a thing anywhere?

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

At a sketch:

  • We know that when the brain chemistry is disrupted, our consciousness is disrupted

  • You can test this yourself. Drink some alcohol and your consciousness will be disrupted. Similarly I am on Gabapentin for nerve pain, which works by inhibiting the electrical signals my nerves use to fire, and in turn makes me groggy.

  • While we don't know exactly how consciousness works, we have a VERY good understanding of chemistry, which is to say, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism (fundamental forces). Literally millions of repeatable experiments that have validated these forces exist and we understand the way they behave.

  • Drugs like Gabapentin and Alcohol interact with our brain using these forces.

  • If the interaction of these forces being disrupted disrupts our consciousness, it's reasonable to conclude that our consciousness is built on top of, or is an emergent property of, these forces' interactions.

  • If our consciousness is made up of these forces, then it cannot be a fundamental force as, by definition, fundamental forces must be the basic building blocks of physics and not derived from other forces.

There are no real assumptions here. It's all a line of logical reasoning based on observations you can do yourself.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 11 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Why would you assume consciousness is a fundamental force rather than an emergent property of complex systems built on the forces?

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My point was that Star Wars has been tied to the same characters for personal and business reasons, not inherently creative ones defined by the setting. The difference IMO is mostly down to who the creators and executives involved in the process of each IP have been, not the actual merits of the respective IP's worlds.

If Gene Roddenberry has decided that Next Generation had to be about Kirk and his crew, and then Paramount also mandated all it's other Star Trek projects to be about TOS crew, we'd be having the same discussions about "why can't Start Trek get away from the original series?" even though it has nothing to do with the setting.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

No offense meant, because you raise a lot of good points on why Star Trek works as a setting, but I fundamentally disagree with the Star Wars take here. Historically, Star Wars has centered around the Skywalker saga for Personal (George Lucas) and Business (Disney) reasons, not creative ones.

Star Wars offers an excellent setting with a framework to discuss ethics and morality baked directly into the universe. Stories like Knights of the Old Republic have shown that you can get away from the main Saga and still tell an engaging story rooted in the universe that Saga created. Tons of old Legends content didn't tie directly into the original films and were excellent.

Andor has also shown that it's also just that bad writing is what leads to IP burnout. I couldn't finish Book of Boba Fett or Mandalorian season 3, but have watched Andor 3 times.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think the problem is that there is less often something to be said if you agree. Every now and then you might have something to add that fleshes out the idea or adds additional context, but generally if I totally agree with a comment I just upvote it.

On the other hand, when you disagree with something your response will, by logical necessity, be different from the parent comment.

So if you want to prioritize "adding something novel" there's a logical bias towards comments that disagree since only some percentage of agreement will tick that box.

Otherwise you end up with a bunch of comments that literally or figuratively add up to "this".

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 6 points 1 year ago

More good options is always a good thing.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yup, I remember the D20 modern rulebook alternated using "he/him" and "she/her" throughout the text. One class section would use "he/him" to describe the archetypical character for that class, and the next would use "she/her".

I remember it left an impression on me as a teenage boy.

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