171–179 of 179 posts
There are two separate issues: A. 1,000 ft view: drugs are bad. Both chemical drugs and electronic entertainment that is engineered to be addictive. Light weight drugs in small doses are less bad: 90s vs now. B. 50,000 ft view: the real problem. When rats are put in normal laboratory settings they choose drugs over food and water if given the choice. Most of our research on addiction is based on this. In a study wher…
> When rats are put in normal laboratory settings they choose drugs over food and water if given the choice. Most of our research on addiction is based on this. In a study where the rats were placed in a healthy environment they chose food and water over drugs. I'm reminded of the mouse "utopia" experiment, and how people somehow find it surprising or insightful that animals left stuck in an overcrowded cage indefini…
(See later experiment with "rooms" for mice.) The strain of mice used was relatively aggressive too.
Of course, not quite applicable to humans or even apes.
There are two separate issues: A. 1,000 ft view: drugs are bad. Both chemical drugs and electronic entertainment that is engineered to be addictive. Light weight drugs in small doses are less bad: 90s vs now. B. 50,000 ft view: the real problem. When rats are put in normal laboratory settings they choose drugs over food and water if given the choice. Most of our research on addiction is based on this. In a study wher…
That forest kindergarden looks awesome. Too bad it's a liability hell in basically all western countries. Freedom-oriented laws would solve a lot of problems.
Realistically, an unattended playground is vastly more dangerous. Or giving scissors to kids. (Including allegedly kid safe models.)
There are two separate issues: A. 1,000 ft view: drugs are bad. Both chemical drugs and electronic entertainment that is engineered to be addictive. Light weight drugs in small doses are less bad: 90s vs now. B. 50,000 ft view: the real problem. When rats are put in normal laboratory settings they choose drugs over food and water if given the choice. Most of our research on addiction is based on this. In a study wher…
No, it's not.
A lot of popular discussion of addiction is, but that's a very different story.
This subject is prone to so many reasoning traps. - The "problem" is with the current generation of children, so their future character is pure speculation. - The media consumed is seen as new. This means people believe (rightly or wrongly) it affects children very differently. Paradoxically, these same people claim to know how it affects them, despite it being new. - People are tempted to argue using childhood memor…
I remember reading a NYTimes article that used the fact that we don't know our friend's phone numbers anymore as evidence that younger generations have deficient memories. How stupid. I live in a world where I don't need to have them memorized. It is not because I am deficient.
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I love fully voiced dialogue in some games, if it’s done well it can really help with telling a story, but in more freeform roleplaying games it definitely detracts from the fantasy that’s playing out in my imagination as it means I can’t imprint my own feelings of what characters are feeling. MUDs were definitely the pinnacle of that for me, especially when you played with people who took their fictitious roles seri…
imo, the Witcher 3 is an example of very well done fully voiced dialogue. I almost never wanted to skip through it. I think it fits in this game because you are playing as an already fleshed out character, Geralt. like you said though, sometimes the player character is meant to be more of a blank slate that you fill in yourself. in KOTOR, the player character is essentially a blank slate, as you literally have no mem…
If, on the other hand, the game has little or weak character building around the player character then please let me create my own character (let me choose gender, looks and name) and don’t have the character voiced at all — let me play the character I like to imagine they are instead.
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This reminds me of the very typical discussion about the value of mathematics and the "descendants": physics, chemistry etc. :-) If the ultimate purpose is to "do some work", movies and videogames definitely do: - movies require (in theory) around 90 minutes of undivided attention, which is definitely "work" (how many people can watch an entire movie without peeking at the phone?); additionally, they can be intellect…
Where do games like Screeps, Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, Factorio, or Minecraft feature? Leveraging (or demanding) the user's creativity and construction to meaningfully drive gameplay (though how meaningfully varies) is like opening an extra dimension compared to games where you're only meant to respond to stimuli relatively simply, like Papers, Please.
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Specifically, the philosophical belief of dependent origination indicates practicing one thing here may lead to "things" happening there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da The argument goes that "dropping out" may be linked to a causal effect of which of which we are not yet aware. For example: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/08/why-young...
Thank you for the link to the Wikipedia page. Makes for good Sunday reading :) If am tracking everything right, then an (albeit simple) description of dependent origination is that we can't necessarily predict the unknown-unknowns of our actions. If so, I don't see how dropping out (in the Timothy Leary sense) is any different from other phenomena that cause unforeseen consequences? Using your example as my example,…
It's sorta like "equal and opposite reaction". Push and pull. Up and down. Without "up", there is no "down".
When we do new things, we aren't really sure what the effects or the reach of the correlated/opposite/related effects will be. Going "up" and elevator has simple ramifications. You will need to go "down" again. This is a type of "karma", when your decision making process gets involved. I think of karma as more "work you do" than "shit you've brought upon yourself". It can be good or bad.
With something more complicated, many things may occur all at once and not necessarily be obvious in their origins. Polar vortexes, for example, may be caused by the Earth heating up and disrupting the magnetic field which keeps the cold contained. At least that's what Faraday thought.
You are right about pointing to challenges in predicting unknown-unknowns. In science, we typically avoid those discussions. In other philosophical approaches, we identify them with something beyond our conscious awareness.
Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism have been dealing with these concepts for a long time. It's interesting to see how technology and those thoughts are converging.