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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • As I understand it, people mostly change their mind (and thus behavior) for two reasons.

    The first is in-group beliefs. If someone sees other people in their in-group believing a thing or behaving in a way, they’re more likely to adopt that. Possibly the people who play audio in public, their friends and peers are the same way. But if you also might be in one of their groups, like a college kid to another college kid, or a junior professional to another, talking to them might make a difference. But if you’re like a 59 year rich old white guy, telling a 16 year old non-white poorer kid is unlikely to land, because they probably see you as outgroup.

    The other thing that changes minds is horrible trauma. Like, if you smashed their head into the bus window, took their phone and transferred all their money (via venmo or whatever), then tossed the phone out the window, they might change their mind about being a public irritant. Maybe. They might also take some other lesson instead. But either way you’d go to jail for several crimes, so probably don’t do that.



  • There was a (fiction) book I was called “all the birds in the sky”. I really liked it. Highly recommend.

    One of the plot threads is a rich tech bro character that’s like “the world is doomed we need to abandon it for somewhere else. Better pour tons of resources into this sci-fi sounding project”. And I’m just screaming at the book “use that money for housing and transport and clean energy you absolute donkey”.

    There are a lot of well understood things we could be doing to make the world better, but they’re difficult for idiotic political reasons. Racism, nimbyism, emotional immaturity, etc.




  • Guild wars 2 is a very good game, but very different than guild wars 1.

    They both avoid the endless gear and level grind, but gw2 is generally easier and less tactical. You can solo most of it. Builds are a little more limited, but it’s also harder to make a useless character.

    They addressed the most common problems with early mmos: other players are never a bad thing. there’s no kill stealing. If you’re doing some event to fight off demons that have invaded the town, and other people show up, the game silently scales up a to accommodate more players, and everyone gets credit. it’s great.

    I really like it. I don’t play it every day, but I go back to it all the time.



  • What if leveling up didn’t make number get big, but instead gave you more options in a fight?

    Horizontal progression is pretty cool .

    Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want that. They want to feel cool and competent without actually doing anything. That’s not to say like you need to “earn” your fun or whatever. But that the progress quest number go up don’t think too hard is immensely popular with a lot of people. They don’t want to be challenged.

    And that’s fine. It’s a game. It’s just not a game I want to play all the time.