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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • I’m confused why you seem like you’re arguing with me but still fundamentally making the same point. Those improvements don’t inherently make games more fun, but they create opportunities for variety and new elements to the medium. It was previous tech improvements that made Halo and F.E.A.R. possible, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

    But processing power isn’t really a relevant limitation to game design anymore. I genuinely don’t see any future console generations being particularly enticing for me, outside an upgrade to my steam deck, especially when most of what I play is 5-20 years old anyway.


  • I have to assume you’re too young to remember previous generations.

    Increased power makes a difference up to a point, but we’re now so far into diminishing returns you can hardly tell the difference between a ps4 game and the ps5 ‘enhanced’ if you don’t have a 4k TV.

    Increased computing power used to open up entirely new concepts in gaming. 3D environments, then larger and larger worlds, dynamic physics engines, more complex NPC Ai and more power to run larger numbers of enemies at a time.

    Now, it hardly matters. There’s more than enough power to do pretty much anything you want. Unlimited worlds, thousands of NPCs, photorealistic graphics, and absolutely nothing new. It can always be ‘bigger and better’ but at what point does that stop mattering? For me, it was last console generation.







  • Your black and white view of this is exhausting. There is obviously a difference between making assumptions about a population based on inherent qualities, and making assumptions about a group of people based on all making the same decision. It is not stereotyping to assume that someone posting in a Donald Trump fan group is a fan of Donald Trump.

    Now, I certainly wouldn’t approve of infringing on anyone’s actual first amendment rights on this kind of basis, but again, we’re talking about completely private spaces here with absolutely no pretense of free speech. People do also have every right to create whatever exclusionary communities that they want.

    So, say I was anti-Trump and I posted there… I would still be misunderstood as an “other” and labeled, banned, etc. Then have to appeal a ban for a judgement incorrectly pre-passed on me.

    This is extra weird to me. Isn’t this already the exact scenario you’re claiming? The one that started the whole discussion? You’ve been claiming to be centrist and that you only posted there once, but now you’re throwing it out like it’s some hypothetical? I’ve been trying to assume the best here but it’s getting increasingly difficult to believe you’re anything but a bad actor trying to stir people up.


  • You are inadvertently supporting the same bases of bias that racial segregation came form.

    No, sorry, but that’s pretty dumb. There’s nothing wrong with creating a conversation space that excludes people who make certain choices. That’s the fundamental difference here. You weren’t born into the wrong subreddit, you chose to post there. And a hell of a lot of people that choose to post there aggressively harass anyone questioning law enforcement. It’s a nice way to weed out people who have no interest in good faith contributions, and there’s an easy way to get unbanned for cases just like yours.

    That is not in any way the same ‘base of bias’ as excluding people based on their race, gender, nationality, or sexual preferences.





  • Temperature is not the problem. No climate scientist has ever worried that plants won’t produce well in higher temperatures. Acting like they’re ‘exploring the consequences of climate change’ is a smokescreen, it’s a way of making it seem like the fears are overblown. They’re testing a hypothesis with an obvious conclusion that’s somewhat related to global warming, while conveniently ignoring the things real scientists are actually worried about.

    The fears come from the other effects of rising temperature and greenhouse gasses. Most of the real scary stuff is happening in the oceans. Things like the potential for massive amounts of algal death and the loss of potentially 60% of the oxygen creating organisms on earth. Plants are gonna grow great when oxygen levels drop to 15% and people have to wear breathing masks anytime they venture to the surface.

    We are absolutely not a hardy or fast growing species. It takes years, for our children to be remotely self sufficient, and over a decade to reach sexual maturity. We have a similar growth pattern to elephants, outside of whales, we’re some of the slowest growing animals alive. We can’t survive extreme temperature swings, radiation, loss of oxygen. We’ve created things to overcome our physical mediocrity, but those things can very quickly disappear for most of the population when the infrastructure supporting global shipping and manufacturing collapses. The fact that we make up such a huge portion of mammal biomass mostly just means we’ll be a great food source for whatever bugs evolve to eat us. Keep in mind that we may be about 30% of mammal biomass, but livestock make up more than 60%. That’s not because they’re small and adaptable, it’s because they’re food.

    This is a ‘transition period’ on a geologic scale. We’re talking about the next 50,000 years at best, it’s not something we’re just to ride out and things go back to normal.


  • Because higher temperatures aren’t the problem, the rate of change is. I assume the worst because we’ve seen it before in the fossil record. The best comparison is the Triassic-Permian extinction. Rapid change in temperatures led to global ecological collapse and the death of 85% of all life on earth. Now, during the Triassic-Permian extinction CO2 levels rose from 400 ppm to ~2500 ppm over the course of ~50,000 years, with an estimated rate of change of around .05 ppm per year. We’re starting out lower at 280 ppm before the industrial revolution, but we’ve already hit 420, and we’re now adding about 2.5 ppm every year, with that number increasing every year. So we’re currently experiencing warming that’s 50 times faster than the most devastating extinction event in Earth’s history.

    The fact that our entire food industry is based around genetically engineered monocultures is just another point of failure. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse to continually keep each generation of plants protected against changing diseases and pests, and because the vast majority of the seed is coming from one company, if something does adapt to overcome the engineered defenses, it’s devastating to the entire global population of that crop.


  • Look at who funded that study, and the actual contents.

    According to this study - funded by the Chinese government, the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions on earth - we’ll see increased plant growth in the short term under controlled warming. Even ignoring the incredible conflict of interest, the fundamental assumption of the study is that we’ll be able to get warming under control and stick to the goals of the Paris agreement, maintaining only 2 degrees of warming by 2070. That’s absolutely absurd. We’ll be incredibly lucky to not hit 2 degrees of warming by 2040 at this rate. Besides that, they are essentially just looking at how plant growth responds to changes in temp and CO2. Of course plant productivity increases with higher temps and more available CO2, that’s not where the problems come in.

    The problems occur when those hardy, fast growing species start really exploding. Cyanobacterial blooms that deoxygenate massive swaths of the ocean, killing millions of fish at a time. Population explosions of pests, contaminating food supplies and starting future pandemics. The ecosystem is complex and interconnected, things will adapt eventually, but the transition period will be catastrophic.

    We are not a hardy, fast growing species. I have no doubt that people will survive, but it’s going to effect everyone, and a lot sooner than you think.