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The Factorio Mindset

thediff.co

301–310 of 358 posts

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will be a problem in a few hundred years of our energy consumption continues growing at this rate; I've done the math on this website a year or two ago.

At the rate our energy consumption is growing, even if we avoid climate change wrecking our society today, the heat waste of our energy production will start to eclipse the effects of climate change in only a few centuries, at most a millenium. Which isn’t that long of a time.

I've thought a bit about this a bit.

You can get pretty far by being extremely efficient. We keep making better and better superconductors and even have some above room temperature. Vac-trains with superconducting maglev is more efficient, in principle, than anything short of orbiting. Better materials can make dry mass near nothing.

Reversible computing requires no fundamental energy input.

Space based solar power could make sure the waste heat from electricity production is almost zero and only useful energy is pumped to the ground.

You can shade the Sun at the limit. And you can shade only the portions of the spectrum that are not biologically active, i.e. shade infrared. That's tens of Petawatts.

You can also literally build radiators at high altitudes to dump waste heat into space before it gets conducted into the atmosphere.

You can also just do more work in space instead of on the ground.

I think also we won't grow exponentially but instead linearly or quadratically. That's actually sustainable for as long as the universe would've lasted anyway.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#302
post #241

My problem with games like Factorio (and more recently Oxygen no Included), is that after I get addicted and get up past 100 hours of gameplay I start to question what the hell I'm doing with my life. Up until that point it's great fun designing, building, and optimizing, but then a switch in my head flips. I start to become anxious about the fact that I was excited about getting better at skills in a virtual world.…

I got really into it for a while and had to stop for the same reason. Plus the whole aesthetic and theme of the game felt gross to me.

Fair side downside : I feel I’m playing some type of world destruction simulator while playing factorio.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factorio should be the interview test ;) Tech’s Ender’s Game. (factorio fan, but with little time to enjoy it)

>Tech’s Ender’s Game // Spoilers!?! Playing Factorio is actually doing some sort of real-world silicon design, or when you I'll the aliens you're really killing aliens... ? Not read the book, only watched the movie. Probably someone will come and tell me I misunderstood it.

I assumed it was a less subtle reference to the fact that you spend half the game massacring untold numbers of bugs, and the aliens in Ender's Game were referred to as bugs.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#304
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aliens are there to consume, no less than the engineer. Same as all other life really.

Eh, life tend to sit in an equilibrium with its environment, biters will happily destroy it. Their evolution and multiplication happens regardless of engineer actions.

It really doesn't. Life sits in a complex, chaotic feedback loop which on our mayfly timescales tends to orbit around a semi-stable attractor. It only does so because everything is killing everything else just as hard as it can, while everything else tries to kill or outcompete it right back.

It's not like if all the foxes suddenly disappeared the rabbits would just reach optimal comfortable population and then start using birth control.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#305

I'm literally playing Factorio right now, with my kid. Got into it over Christmas based on HN talking about it all the time. Good game to multi because I don't have to pay attention all the time. It really reminds me of software in many ways. You fiddle with tiny little things like balancing a belt, and then move on to building belt balancers. You then move up the abstractions to where you're not really placing inser…

> the game is a bit, you know, dark

That’s what really bothered me with this game. I’ve tried playing it in the past but this kept me from liking it and continuing. It’s depressing enough we’re doing some version of that in real life, but at least I’m not fully responsible for it. In the game, I am causing it and am 100% responsible for it.

I don’t know why they did it that way. It could just as well have been without this destructive and deathly element.

Oh well, I have other hobbies.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purpose of life is reproduction Reproduction is easier in engineered environment

Are you saying you're one of those people? If so could you tell me why you're ok with trivializing your life like that? Are you religious?

You might be using the word "purpose" in different senses. The one you're responding to likely means that "the selection bias inherent in our perspective on the world selects for traits that enhance reproduction".

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#307
post #48

Please please try Satisfactory. It's a beautiful, 3D equivalent. Holds a coveted Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam.

Thank you for yet another reminder that it sucks to be a mac user :-)

Streaming clients like GeForce Now have come a long way if you want to play games as a Mac user. It's what I use to play Satisfactory and it works really well in my opinion.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#308
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aliens are there to consume, no less than the engineer. Same as all other life really.

Eh, life tend to sit in an equilibrium with its environment, biters will happily destroy it. Their evolution and multiplication happens regardless of engineer actions.

Yeah that’s totally incorrect. Every species is an “invasive species” given an environment where it can flourish.

There is only equilibrium because everything is jostling as hard as it can to outcompete everything else.

Peace is a human invention, it does not exist in nature.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#309
> I used to be of the opinion that the computer game Factorio was a colossal waste of talent, burning many billions of dollars of GDP every year.

Oh no, the GDP!

I appreciate most of the rest of the article, but the premise that it's value is tied to it's ability to influence one economic metric is a very flawed lens to view the world through.

Re: The Factorio Mindset

#310
post #241

My problem with games like Factorio (and more recently Oxygen no Included), is that after I get addicted and get up past 100 hours of gameplay I start to question what the hell I'm doing with my life. Up until that point it's great fun designing, building, and optimizing, but then a switch in my head flips. I start to become anxious about the fact that I was excited about getting better at skills in a virtual world.…

I like to explore the game mechanic. I abandon games once I feel like I figured out the game loop and don’t want to invest in the grind.

Why do it? Because building stuff in the real world isn’t necessarily better. What are you gonna do with things you build? In a game, at least you’re not wasting real resources.

Riding a bike is probably better, but what do you do when you’re done?

So personally, I think it is totally fine to invest these 100 hours and then abandon, because they were entertaining. You don’t have to deeply invest and hence, I don’t see it as "a problem".

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