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Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

arstechnica.com

451–460 of 654 posts

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#451
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a nice collation of his greatest hits over on Reddit[1] [1]: https://www.redditmedia.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1jh275...

It seems that the "covid trutherism" or "spreading covid misinformation" claim is unjustified. Here's Blow's original tweet: > If a state entity does an oopsie in a lab, then forces its citizens to undergo an experimental treatment because of the oopsie, while suppressing news of side effects, and also denying that the oopsie is anyone's fault ... that's just abusive? Unfortunately Blow was unwilling to come out and…

> because he criticizes the Chinese government

I think you are taking a very charitable view here - the tweet immediately before the one you quote is clearly talking about the US vaccine mandate (not China).

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#452
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow and Muratori gained a following of engineers by bashing existing popular languages and engines, claiming they were all garbage. They both started this after the Witness came out, 10 years ago. Since then, guess how many games Muratori has shipped? 0. (He cancelled his announced game.) Guess how many Blow has shipped? 0 so far, but it sounds close now. These engineers spent their time ragging on other developers…

I think Blow and Muratori are pure engineers (as defined here: https://www.seangoedecke.com/pure-and-impure-engineering/ ). Pure engineers deliver perfect and fast software somewhere along the Black Hole Era. Not quite heat death of the universe, but almost there. Impure engineers deliver "working" code in a deadline, for an arbitrary definition of working. Basically, The Worse is Better™.

I broadly agree with the author’s point there, but disagree with the specific language he used. In my view, engineering includes those pesky non-technical considerations, like the business context and the human factors, which bring their own tradeoffs and priorities to the engineering decision-making.

That is, his “pure engineers” are not really doing engineering, at least under my understanding of the term, whereas (some of) the impure engineers actually are! :)

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subredditdrama post in question does in fact contain a link to the full tweet, which you objected to as bad faith. So I'm asking what is a good faith way to link to this tweet.

It could have been linked here directly instead of presented through the lens of a toxic smear community. Presenting it through a community called "SubredditDrama" is poisoning the well[1]. I am not going to entertain that smear tactic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

I don't think "Drama" implies which side of said drama is in the right. That drama surrounds a bunch of Blow's public statements is maybe the one thing everyone can agree on

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say, "not well support by evidence," you're either wrong, anti-science, or lying. Numerous studies absolutely show very large average differences in interests based on sex. And those carry over into occupation preferences. Just one more recent study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726812... Plus: Jon never said it's the "primary" factor, as you claim. He said it's a large factor, that…

Well, no, you're the one that is "wrong, anti-science, or lying". The very first sentence of the article you linked to says, "Occupational choices remain strongly segregated by gender, for reasons not yet fully understood." So claiming that its for biological reasons is bullshit. You have no idea whether it is or not. And neither does Blow.

LOL. You're going to dismiss the study because of the justification for doing the study. Here, let me help you understand:

"not fully understood" -> "so we studied it" -> "here's what we found"

Besides that obvious point, the sentence you quoted says "not yet fully understood," not "we have no idea." Those aren't the same thing. We actually have substantial evidence pointing in a clear direction.

- The most egalitarian countries show the largest gaps, not the smallest. - Women exposed to elevated androgens in utero become more things-oriented despite being raised normally as girls. - Male and female monkeys show the same toy preferences we do. Nobody's socializing rhesus monkeys into gender roles. - A 1.28 standard deviation gap in every culture that emerges in infancy and grows as societies get freer is not what socialization looks like.

You're treating "not fully understood" as "both hypotheses are equally supported."

They aren't.

The evidence overwhelmingly favors a substantial biological component. Just because you don't like the implications of that, doesn't make it false.

Seethe harder.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#455
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these are not fringe opinions Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. > throwing around certain bad words like fascist Fascism has a very clear definition. It describes a particular set of behaviours and actions, all of which you can compare to reality and determine if it’s happening or not. It’s an objective word. If anyone is trying…

The therm "fascist" is definitely being thrown around like it was nothing, for the most unnewsworthy opinions or statements. There are definitely people who call anyone fascist who would dare to claim that there might be differences between the sexes on average for example. Doing so probably has a fascist element itself (not accepting different opinions). It's also unreasonable, and let me say _ridiculous_, to even d…

"There are differences between men and women" isn't a fascist-coded statement because of the statement itself - it's obviously a true statement no matter what you believe. It's fascist-coded. This statement is almost exclusively said by fascists, for reasons that have not much to do with the statement itself.

Why is that? IMO it's because fascist slogans always tend to drift away from their actual meaning, towards things that are socially acceptable to say.

Back in Hitler's time, Hitler didn't give speeches about "Let's kill all the Jews" - he'd rather give speeches about "Let's clean up Germany" even though he clearly wanted to kill all the Jews. When Hitler says "Let's clean up Germany" and the crowd goes wild, you know they're going wild because they're wild about the idea of killing the Jews, not because they're wild about the idea of mopping the floor. At least I assume you would know that now, with the benefit of hindsight. You'd have to be living under a rock not to. And that's not a euphemism for "Let's kill all the Jews" specifically. It's a general euphemism for all the bad things he wanted to do with all the people. It's not like there's one euphemism for "Let's kill the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's gas the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's kill the gays". It's more like all the euphemisms point to all of the underlying true thoughts, all at once. One loose region of semantic space points to another loose region of semantic space.

You can see how Hitler could have started out saying what he actually meant, but to avoid scrutiny he'd drift towards more innocuous words, but anyone who's been following his whole campaign would know what was meant. It's a bit like Cockney rhyming slang - the pointer drifts until it has no surface-level relation to the pointee, but just because it's not surface-level obvious, doesn't mean it's unknowable (as people who pretend not to recognize the statements often claim).

And if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm following politics, and my friend says "I support cleaning up Germany" I'm going to do a double-take. I'm going to suspect he's not talking about mopping the floor and picking up litter. Though, if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm ignoring politics, I might reasonably assume that he is talking about those things and get quite confused why my other friend thinks he's a fascist.

In modern fascist dialogue, "men and women have differences" is a pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women belong in the kitchen", which itself is pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women should do what men tell them". You can see how this came about because saying "women should do what men tell them" would be unpopular, then fascists justified it with logic like "well women are biologically submissive and men are biologically dominant" and it over time it got watered down to stuff like "men are biologically different from women"

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a nice collation of his greatest hits over on Reddit[1] [1]: https://www.redditmedia.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1jh275...

Do you think it is acceptable to link to a submission to a place called "SubredditDrama" filled with bad faith links to secondary reactionary sources? Am I supposed to take this seriously?

I opened it for you. It's basically the same problem with Notch or JK Rowling and it's backed up by credible sources. He said women don't like programming because of biology; he said the USA made COVID-19 in a lab and he opposed the vaccinations for it; he said Donald Trump is the best president of his life; he supports the new Facebook rule where you're allowed to post misinformation.

There's clearly something about making a successful game (or book) that just makes you completely lose touch with reality after that.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played The Witness and didn't find it remotely fun. I've enjoyed all of Blow's other titles. I suppose I was coming in with expectations of a modern Myst and/or Riven, but it was not that. There was not enough active narrative to keep me engaged with the puzzles and there wasn't enough "reward" in completing them.

Sounds like you'll really enjoy the Looker then

They say The Looker is made for two kinds of people: if you loved The Witness, you'll love The Looker, and if you hated The Witness, you'll love The Looker.

It's a pretty short game - a couple of hours, if you don't spend hours and hours stuck on one of the puzzles. (just look up a walkthrough at that point - the game's not so awesome to be worth spending hours stuck)

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been linked here directly instead of presented through the lens of a toxic smear community. Presenting it through a community called "SubredditDrama" is poisoning the well[1]. I am not going to entertain that smear tactic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

I don't think "Drama" implies which side of said drama is in the right. That drama surrounds a bunch of Blow's public statements is maybe the one thing everyone can agree on

That community has no oversight for what gets posted. It's a free-for-all for anyone to gather (read: cherrypick) low quality information and present it in an overtly sensationalist way and intentionally misrepresent what they quote.

They have no standards, no oversight, no formal methodology, so naturally it attracts gossip-oriented people who want to stir up drama for fun.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say, "not well support by evidence," you're either wrong, anti-science, or lying. Numerous studies absolutely show very large average differences in interests based on sex. And those carry over into occupation preferences. Just one more recent study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726812... Plus: Jon never said it's the "primary" factor, as you claim. He said it's a large factor, that…

Well, no, you're the one that is "wrong, anti-science, or lying". The very first sentence of the article you linked to says, "Occupational choices remain strongly segregated by gender, for reasons not yet fully understood." So claiming that its for biological reasons is bullshit. You have no idea whether it is or not. And neither does Blow.

AFAIK there are differences established on many psychological axes that are more basic than "occupational choice", such as competitiveness, neuroticism, interest in things vs human relations, and others. I don't understand these deeply but you can research for yourself, so there is certainly no shortage of possible explanations based on those.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What features in Jai make it superior to C++ for writing games specifically? I know that Jonathan Blow can be abrasive and one-sided in his talks on programming, but I think we should be open-minded about Jai. Yes, he is making this language because he doesn't like C++, but you make it sound like he is hating on C++ just for the sake of it. I mean, is it really so hard to imagine that someone might not like somethi…

I feel like a lot of people go after Jai because of what Jon Blow says about XYZ political issue. Jai seems perfectly reasonable for at least the narrow task of making games in an indie studio. The macro capabilities might be terrifying in a large enterprise, but if you're handrolling all your own code and don't have to worry about a software supply chain, who cares?

I go after Jai because I think the problems it is purported to solve are better and more readily solved with existing frameworks, libraries and engines, and I think the programming language itself is entirely too low a level for these things.

You don't need to design a specific language to implement structs of arrays, you can just... do that.

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