• 0 Posts
  • 39 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle


  • Many people in here arguing things “have never been better”. It’s true to an extent; things are pretty good in terms of poverty, liberties or world peace (for now). It’s not great, it’s never been great, but it’s a decent bit better than it’s been in the past. Overall.

    We are, however, in an era of unstability and unrest, where it feels like things are constantly on the cusp of changing for the worse (and in some cases, are indeed already changing for the worse, like abortion or LGBT rights in the US, for example). Violence and discrimination are on the rise, global peace is being threatened, democracy is in jeopardy (not just in the US mind you), the 1% are getting WAY richer way faster than ever… To top it all off, climate change is objectively, unarguably as bad as it’s ever been, and it’s getting much much worse, much faster than even experts can keep up with. Like, we’re headed straight for extinction and we keep accelerating toward it.

    You have every right to be worried. Yes, it’s easy to forget and take for granted the things we have now that we didn’t even a mere 60 years ago, but many of them are very much under attack at the moment. Just because shit maybe hasn’t quite yet hit the fan doesn’t mean everything is fine.

    And to answer your question, I’ve found some refuge in art, both experiencing and creating it. Reading books, watching movies, playing games, etc, especially those that echo that sentiment of fear and uncertainty for the future (or present). Trying to use all that as inspiration for my own work, I think it’d help to express my feelings this way. I am indeed doing very poorly still though, it’s a lot to deal with, on top of my own personal problems.



  • “there are squillions of simulated universe.”

    Huge assumption there lol, but I guess I see your point. If you assume simulations of this scope and quality are possible (again HUGE assumption), then your odds of being in one go up a lot, obviously.

    Again though, at some point you have to hit actual, non simulated reality, and when everything seems to point towards that being the case for us, and absolutely nothing hints at a simulation, I don’t see why we couldn’t just be in that actual reality. I can’t help but see that thought experiment as just an attempt to answer “the big question” in some way, even though in actuality it just moves it out of view.

    It’s Russell’s teapot, impossible to disprove and theorically possible, but there’s nothing backing it up besides fantastical assumptions. In that regard yeah, I think the comparison with God is warranted. The creators of our simulation, and especially the ones up above that are actually real would need such absurd levels of technology so far beyond our comprehension that it would be magic to us, and they would absolutely be our Gods.

    I don’t see much of a difference, it’s kind of just a tech themed spin on it, with the same fallacies plaguing the whole concept, IMO. It’s cool to think and write scifi about, but that’s about it.


  • Idk what’s the exact purpose of this meme but I really do see a lot of similarities between God creating the world and simulation theory. Obviously ST and religion are wildly different in their impact on society and how many people genuinely believe in them, but ST is pretty silly too.

    It’s just a “what if” scenario, one that’s potentially possible but wouldn’t change or explain anything if it was true. All you’re doing is moving the existential problems up a layer and forgetting about it, it’s the same as saying God made us: at the end of the day both the beings in charge of the simulation AND God have to come from somewhere, they live in a “real” universe, and you’re not explaining that.

    Why can’t it be that we simply live in a real universe? That’s the simplest answer, the one that requires the fewest assumptions. It doesn’t have a convenient, satisfying reason as to why we’re here, or how reality came to be, but it’s easily the most plausible.




  • I fully support the arrest, those are serious threats and they should be met with serious consequences.

    It’s still weird to me that it was done in a classroom though. I understand the intent of “sending a strong message” but idk if I like it all that much. They could’ve arrested him at his home and forgo this whole performative stunt.

    When I was in high school someone in my class did some highly fucked up shit and got in very serious legal trouble for it (and we never saw him at the school again). After he was expelled/arrested, we just had a very long talk in class about what he did and why it was so serious and wrong, and it was effective, it’s one of few things I remember from high school now actually lol. We didn’t need to have the police show up to scare us into not doing it, at least I didn’t, idk how effective it was on everyone else.

    Not sure how I feel about that.








  • Yikes… That’s fucking gross.
    Hopefully there’s some kind of backlash from chess players and community figures, this is absolutely vile.

    Honestly lately I’m kinda just losing hope in humanity, and wondering if LGBT folks will ever be accepted in society. Seeing what little progress we acquired over the past century or so be undone so easily is crushing.

    Fuck FIDE, fuck Russia, and fuck all the ignorant, hateful bigots that keep fighting against people’s very right to exist.



  • You know, I was actually wondering about that recently. I watched The Thing in 4K and I sort of regreted it; I loved the movie, but I can only imagine how much better of an experience it would’ve been to watch it on VHS back in the day.

    Tried looking for some kind of video player or something that could emulate the look of VHS (not unlike shaders like CRT Royale do for retro games), but couldn’t find anything.

    If anyone knows about something like this, let me know.