Bolegium

Cool, and agreed.

Those studies are interesting. I think you are hugely overstating how 'damaging' the net social effect of the jokes and memes about gg are to the "goal of correcting erroneous beliefs". I think the effect of these jokes are minuscule compared to the self inflicted damage caused by self-identifying with gg in the first place. I think being so actively critical of something as mild as jokes does more actual harm than the potential harm of those jokes. I'm sure you don't intend it to be, but this is another silencing effect against gg-critics. So I ask you to reconsider what you are doing.

What point are you trying to make when you argue that "condescensions are not helping", when any form of communication with gg has been shown time and time again to "not help"? If by "help" you mean some abstract goal of "helping end the fight between pro-gg and anti-gg earlier rather than later", then there is something distinctly strange with you specifically calling out people who make jokes about gg, as if they are somehow responsible for perpetuating this animosity. There seems to also be a lack of understanding of how social conflict exists. Social conflict isn't something to be won or lost, where we eventually reach some middle ground or equilibrium. The equilibrium IS constant change, reactions, and reactions to reactions. If your desire is to have this gg argument 'end' in a timely fashion, i'd say that is very short-sighted and ignorant of how culture/society exists and functions. Also I've been slowly catching up with this thread (which is why I missed the original post by Flynn with the link to FCH's article) but it definitely doesn't seem like you agree with HULK considering the points you have decided to argue about.

There is nothing rational about gg, as much as they may claim to be the 'voice of reason' against the 'emotional' hordes of SJWs. The movement is uncompromising and wilfully changes every aspect of their position and claims to avoid criticism. Rational discourse is only effective when both parties are rational. Anyway all of this is moot. You're taking issue with people using the "actually ethics" meme as a joke, then conflating it with your own personal concern that not engaging with gg on the terms that they want will further solidify their position against decent human behaviour. First of all, everything and anything you can say or do, no matter how 'civil', will only make the divide between gg and everyone else more apparent. Secondly, you need to adjust your priorities if you're sincerely taking issue with people making abstract jokes about the misuse of the word "ethics". Sorry to repeat myself, but try reading the FILM CRIT HULK article again, linked to earlier by Flynn and myself. And here again: http://badassdigest.com/2014/10/27/film-crit-hulk-smash-on-despair-gamergate-and-quitting-the-hulk/ I don't know why you name drop FCH earlier to support your claim that people shouldn't make fun of gg-ers (not true anyway, he does), but then ignore him when his arguments run against yours. You keep on claiming that he treats gg-ers like people (implying that others don't), and seem to have ignored that his main argument is that it is impossible to engage in any sort of dialogue with gg, 'rational' or otherwise.

Now I have, thanks. Sounds really interesting.!

There should be a German loan word for "German loan word for hyper specific psychological state" Memories of high school German classes and Google translate leave me with: Uberspezifischpsychologiezustanddeutscheredensart.

FILM CRIT HULK full length article about gg: http://badassdigest.com/2014/10/27/film-crit-hulk-smash-on-despair-gamergate-and-quitting-the-hulk/ (This isn't intentionally directed at Gormongous/singlespace, Just wanted to post this *fucking awesome* article and it was a coincidence that the discussion had veered this way.) I don't expect anyone to be 'nice' to gg in the face of their death threats, harassment, lies, and more lies, but I am glad that someone like HULK can still somehow try to reach out to the repressed humanity of these 'inhumane' people. This isn't HULK being naive, or an attempt to take the "high ground" or whatever you want to call it. This is choosing hope and optimism in the face of justified cynicism. Giving up on ever attempting civil discourse, even when taking that road is completely justified, is still just giving up in the end. I gave up wanting to talk with anyone pro-gg before any of this shit started, but i'm glad that there are people who still try. Hopefully this doesn't seem like i'm playing some bullshit devil's advocate, because fuck the (tone) police. singlespace should read HULK's article for a more nuanced look on how to not come across as a gg apologist (not saying you are) when arguing for more understanding. Because his article actually is about ethics in journalism, and life.

My mouth is still agape from that payoff. Fucking win.

Listened to dälek again after a long time of not playing them. It's so hard to pick a single track of theirs to showcase, all of them are the best. I'll just go with the first track on the first album of theirs I heard. Their other stuff is more noise / industrial / shoe-gaze / Ravi Shankar influenced.

Just watched Whiplash. The movie is bloody intense. Watch it.

I played through the first two 'chapters' of Chapters, The social integration is optional, and shows statistics of the binary choices that players have made. The weird thing is that you see these statistics by toggling them on during a 'choice' section, rather than only as a summary at the end of the game like in The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us. (I haven't reached the end of Chapters yet). This can obviously affect the choice a player makes, especially when you see things like 90% of players chose A over B. I don't really know what the point of it is, maybe it'll be more meaningful when the sample size of players is larger and i've encountered more choices. I still think they should have only shown statistics after the end, as it stands now it's very easy for a choice to be a reaction to what the majority chose rather than what you personally feel. I'm liking the story so far, it's been a while since playing TLJ and Dreamfall so I'm also having trouble remembering some plot details. *Also my laptop always seems to struggle with Unity engine games, getting framerates between 14 and 30 per second. I have a GTX 460M and it runs most other engines pretty well.

Might not be the right thread to post this in, but here goes. I was reading this today and thought it was great: http://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/10/harnessing-depression-one-ars-writers-journey/

I immediately thought of Frozen before reading that, no suprise she brings that up. Does anyone have examples of animation/comics etc. with a good variety of female faces? Off the top of my head I would say Satoshi Kon's work has diverse female character designs, Paranoia Agent being a good example with a large cast. Having said that, the designs still don't seem as diverse as those for his male characters. Coraline also comes to mind as a good example. (*Just checked and the female characters all have a bit of that annoying 'tiny nose' design unfortunately) It's hard enough trying to come up with examples of animation with a roughly equal ratio of female/male characters to even compare.

I was going to say that a video about a mere umbrella doesn't warrant the accompaniment of such an epic BoC track, that should be reserved for videos of record breaking altitude dives. Having now watched it, wow, totally deserving. Bravo.

'm b v' by my bloody valentine is great listening for a windy pre-dawn commute.

Just saw 'The Skeleton Twins' which has Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, and a rather bland title. Really good movie though. Quite different from what I assumed a Hader-Wiig movie would be like. Repeat: it's really great.

The first chapter of Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey, Part 1: Reborn: The Longest Title, is being released in a few days. That would count as good news?

Whether you actually die when you get a kitten, or are just pretending to be dead.

Ok, I thought you were attributing 'self' with body, or at least the physical state of your brain, as per your previous comment about needing all your neurons to be preserved. And that the recreation of the brain does not count as being the same brain to you. I compare teleportation with 'aging' because the fundamental state of 'your' quarks, gluons etc. are different for every moment. So you could define youself as a different person at every moment. You can draw a causal link between a cell existing now and a cell existing later, but you can also draw a causal link between stepping into a teleporter and emerging from the exit. The quadruple negative in your last paragraph is confusing! Anyway I don't know if we disagree all that much actually, but it's getting harder to track what everyone's views are.

The argument is that hate speech itself is harmful already. I'm not USAian or well versed in the legality of speech in the USA. Many countries have legal limits to speech, and many of them are robust enough to withstand abuse. I haven't heard of right wingers claimimg equal rights movement speech as hate speech, though i have heard of right wingers twisting religious freedom laws to allow them to discriminate against people they don't like. I don't think religious freedom laws should be abolished due to right wing abuse. Similarly I don't think anti hate speech laws should be relaxed just because those on the right may try to abuse it either.

New implies that there is a new 'self', otherwise why would that 'death' be important? You've said that death is important to the 'original' but why do you assume ownership of that original but not of the copy? Again I don't disagree with you necessarily, just that if you think teleporting makes you die permanently forever, you're also dying permanently forever every second all the time. But I don't think you're agreeing with the latter. Death matters to you because you are not that copy, you are not the same as a copy because your sense of self is not transfered / is broken. I'd say the sense of self is pretty important to your, or anyone's argument. Problem machine, i agree that 'self' is metaphysical concept and is an emergent product of how our minds usually work. I think it's a useful concept to have though, and that it's not immutable and that we can come up with good definitions for it. These can be prescriptive or descriptive, I prefer the latter.

I highly suspect that many instigators of gg (especially the ones self described as doing it for the 'lulz') deliberately prey on vulnerable people. As much as they vocally and intentionally aim to inspire anger amongst their feminist 'enemies', they derive just as much enjoyment from riling up their antifem 'allies'. I wish gg and notyourshield realised that the people who started this shit are laughing at them as well. Their only 'goal' is to get everyone angry and fighting each other. They know there's a large population of self described gamers, but they don't actually care about 'gamers' they just want them to be angry like they want everyone else to be angry.

So if a person was killed in a freak accident, and their fresh corpse was reassembled (i.e. using the same atoms) to the state before death, would that count as a 'temporary' lack of consciousness? Re: problem machine, in that hypothetical what is the irreducible part of 'self'? If the particles are in different positions why bother to qualify with 'looks the same', because that's an arbitrarily macro frame of reference. Is it that the person 'feels the same'? If so how do you measure that, and if multiple people feel the same does that mean they are the same? (i'd argue not, barring certain circumstances). Also, 'perfect' reassembly and perfect recreation is fundamentally impossible as it is impossible to clone/recreate quantum states. (see: no cloning theorem). Quantum teleportation at subliminal speeds is theoretically possible, but i don't think that is what is generally being discussed here. Just as a pre-emptive comment, I don't have an issue with what people want to define as death, conciousness, self, etc. However they should be logicaly consistent rather than only applying in circumstances where they support a conclusion. Also there is a spectrum of useful/meaningful definitions, that could range from overly broad 'everything in the universe forms a single conciousness', to the narrow 'self only remains the same if there are no temporal and physical breaks'. Both are reasonable, but the usefulness of each are different. This reminds me that The Swapper was a really great game, and that this thread has gone super off topic haha.

Regarding teleportation and the concept of "self", have a look at this: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1. How is a temporal/physical break in "conciousness" meaningful other than as a form of pedantry? Basically, all teleporters "kill" the person at the point origin (whether it's disassembly>transport>reassembly or extact atomic cloning). But how is that death meaningful to anyone? That definition of "death" can apply to every yoctosecond of mundane existence. Sorry if I come across as arrogant, It's just that this topic has been discussed a lot (sometimes heatedly) between my circle of postgraduate friends, and i'm confident we've covered most areas of discussion that are likely to be brought up, and that my/our arguments hold pretty well under scrutiny. Anyway having said that, i'd still be scared of teleporting myself if it did exist, even when I logicaly think there's no reason to fear it.

An oldie from 2002, Atama Yama (Mt. Head) by Koji Yamamura