ameancow

@ameancow@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People don't really know their own motivation for their actions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  The most important revelation I ever had about existing and being human was the understanding that our brains are not machines of logic and reason, despite being capable of performing logical reasoning.

  The brain is, by default, a story telling machine. It just takes your memories and experiences and uses those things to explain whatever you’re feeling at the moment. Those explanations don’t necessarily have to make sense or be connected to reality, it just has this massive priority to weave a coherent story to explain how you got here, feeling this thing, doing whatever it is you’re doing.

  From that understanding, you can beat rumination, you can challenge yourself, you can overcome addiction and do a lot of amazing things with your life, but it all comes back to understanding that your brain doesn’t work “out of the box” and if you want to make better decisions and feel better, you have to manually TRAIN IT to make you feel better and make better choices. You have to learn to control not your emotions, but your reactions to those emotions, to think through your thinking, to follow your chains of thought to a source.

  You are not your brain. Your brain however is very, very complex, with a multitude of voices inside of it each trying to get attention, you’re only aware of the top-most surface level that uses language to think, but the very best thing you can do for yourself is get in the habit of thinking about how you think.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The developers of PEAK, explaining how they decided on pricing for their game. ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I think for a good game, by a good company worth supporting, $30 is very fair and reasonable, especially if you get more than a few hours of play out of it.

  We seem to spend $60 on movie tickets and snacks for two and leave the theaters after 90 minutes disappointed and never complain as a society beyond saying the movie sucked, but then going to watch the sequel because everyone else is watching it.

  The only reason I wouldn’t personally spend more than $30 or so on a game is because generally everything more expensive is published by a major studio, and thus sucks ASS.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The developers of PEAK, explaining how they decided on pricing for their game. ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I have not spent more than $20 for a video game in over a decade. I have no idea who’s affording all these “AAA” titles that go for $50+, or who’s keeping that market alive.

  There are some miserable, well-off parents out there in liberal America who just throw money at their kids and ignore what they do with it I guess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The developers of PEAK, explaining how they decided on pricing for their game. ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Were… were you under the impression that companies who sell products of any kind have some kind of deep formula for making sure their pricing is only the razor-edge of what they need to price it at to keep a business running?

  Are you insane? Have you ever sold anything? Have you ever run a business?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that radishes are fucking amazing. They improve heart health and are full of Sulforaphene, a powerful anti-cancer substance. They contain almost no calories⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Cutting them to look like Mario Bros mushrooms.

  ironchefshellie.com/…/tutorial-radish-super-mario…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that radishes are fucking amazing. They improve heart health and are full of Sulforaphene, a powerful anti-cancer substance. They contain almost no calories⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  the butter is undoing the idea of them being low-calorie, but you can use greek yoghurt with garlic and lime and seasoning as a dipping sauce you will have a far, far healthier snack.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I skipped 1, I adored 2 and played it to a harmful degree, I tried 3 and got bored after three attempts to get through it. There was a fourth??

  I mean, the second game was basically setting the thing up for a MMO open-world, group-mission-running/loot extraction type game across a huge, cel-shaded world with open PvP areas… and they dropped the ball on that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  About 100% of shooter/survival games made with open PVP turned on all the time become kill-on-sight instantaneously, and those games usually give players a PvE mode for people too scared or annoyed with PvP, the segregation has been normal in gaming since the early days of online gaming. So it’s not as simple as saying it’s “supposed” to be PvE, it’s that they tuned the mechanics and themes to encourage more cooperation in an unprecedented way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK facts about renewable vs fossil, and more⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Been watching since he started, I guarantee his previous content has aged well and is really worth watching today. It’s actually agonizing how slowly we progress technologically unless you’re speaking strictly about microprocessors and touch screens.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Facts made a much bigger impact 20 years ago.

  I’m just saying that they only did because we had social pressure on us to respect facts, because we still largely functioned in large social groups. People don’t actually care if facts are real and rational and good or make, they care far, far more about if their tribe-mates are going to make fun of them for not knowing the right facts according to that tribe. I firmly believe that the only thing that makes the majority of people respect reality is the pressure to conform so they don’t lose social standing or worse, be expelled from the tribe.

  Now that we have atomization, our realities are entirely flexible and we don’t suffer for it, if anything we find these pseudo-tribes of invisible people to populate our heads online who will validate even the most irrational thoughts, so our driving motivation to respect shared reality just isn’t there anymore, or is dwindling rapidly at large scales.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we’re saying the same thing but coming to different conclusions.

  I see our successes as a species as examples of trial and error and the efforts of the minority in manipulating the masses and see this as an example of why we will never rise above the same problems coming up over and over again, because our minds are inherently flawed and primitive.

  You are seeing this as an example of how progressive politics actually succeeds. And I don’t argue that either, but I’m saying we’re going to having these same fights in 200 years, while our species is mostly huddled in the alleys and shadows of those titanic beings with upgraded minds and thinking capacity, if we even get far enough to build our descendant species.

  I have almost no hope for our future in our present form. Something will see a better tomorrow, either an upgraded version of ourselves or some new entity unlike anything else that has lived on Earth. But it won’t be us, we don’t even know what a better future means broadly. We cling to stories and explanations to explain feelings originating in 500,000 years of ice-age survival and fighting each other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll concede that my explanation is very simplified, but the nuance has more to do with how the brain pulls together its story-telling material, which is predominantly from associations and experiences and practiced knowledge/actively reinforced education.

  But for the vast majority of people who feel things, the brain just hastily assembles an explanation for those feelings on the fly, from materials “laying around” and that path of least resistance is usually whatever is on the surface of an issue or feeling, and that can be a defaulting to a supplied narrative “You’re poor and can’t succeed because immigrants ate your cat.” or it can be tied to your past “You’re suffering because girls are bad, per that one girl who was mean to you in 5th grade.”

  And while there is complexity to it, we’re talking about population groups more than individual capacity to be rational.

  and throughout human history, cooperation based on rational thought

  My turn to push back. I am talking from experience talking to psychologists and reading about brains so it’s only partially out of my ass, but I don’t think cooperation is at ALL required to be based on rational thought, in fact most of our cooperation is based on survival impulses and hardwired defenses, which is why so much cooperative action is based around violence and fear through history. The fact that we can cooperate at all to build bridges and Arby’s restaurants and fiber-optic networks has far more to do with the vision of a small group with more advanced conceptualization using primitive tools to move large numbers of people. (Primitive tool: We pay you to build fiber-optics so that you can eat and not die.) But the thousands of people involved in the project aren’t emotionally tied to the feeling of completion when the last line is laid.

  And for the most part, most of our successes and modern world has been built on more of a process of gradual trial and error than a logical plan being seen through from start to finish, of the unsuccessful cooperative actions getting left behind and the successful ones shaping the world. And we define success as that which gives us a more comfortable life with less suffering… so that alone should tell us how flawed this process can be. We are broadly using this overpowered skill of cooperative action for self-preservation, not community preservation, and logic rarely needs to apply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do horses allow humans to ride on their backs?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe for some people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  How did all of the propaganda literally erase that entirely?

  I struggled with this also around the pandemic watching people deny reality, and my result is that in my adult life I have been re-black-pilled by depressing new knowledge about the human species:

  We are not a logic, rational creature. Our brains are not machines for working out problems, they’re machines for telling stories to create a coherent narrative. And that narrative doesn’t need to follow rules of reality, it just needs to tie ends together. This is why you ruminate and get depressed about things that aren’t real or have already happened, this is why people will cheer for their wrestlers while also knowing it’s scripted, this is why people can get into positions at the height of power by just saying “I’m the best at this.”

  We are massively vulnerable to cognitive dissonance, and once again, the only thing that has kept this in check for the majority of human society has been social pressure to know the rules.

  The rules have changed over the centuries, but they’ve at least required the members of the community to know how to distinguish things that are against the rules from things that are allowed, and with this comes critical thought (for self preservation) and pondering one’s choices (for self preservation) and the desire to conform and adapt to the will of the people around you (for self preservation.)

  When you take away the community and the pressure for survival, people can just live with whatever stories run wild in their minds, without consequence. The rest of us just hit the “mute” button or walk away and go be alone in our own universe of our own choosing. We’re all guilty of doing this about something, at some point, and when you get millions of people doing this at all once, you no longer have “objective reality” you have millions of Main Characters not caring about consequences for choosing to believe in things that run against reality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yah I did, it was kinda wacky, not as bad as Civ VI but not great, I’m not opposed to the concept but I think they could have done a lot better with the idea than just “toxic gas” as the most memorable, key mechanic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a pretty good idea how it happened, I just have no idea how we can guardrail our human weaknesses against every single entity committed to exploiting those weaknesses in new and inventive ways so that they can gain power over others.

  We had this entirely new thing come into our lives where we could get mental stimulation on-tap anytime we want, perpetually and it fucked everyone’s minds, we lost our attention spans as organized groups worked tirelessly to change our thinking and behavior, either for commercial purposes or for social/political agendas, and it worked spectacularly because we had no idea what “the internet” does to a human brain until someone makes the internet and does it all to us.

  Social pressure holds communities together, as primitive as it is, it’s a system we’re designed to work within, and as we’ve given up community outside influences are replacing it with incel-forums, loot-boxes, 24-hour news feeds, same-day shopping and and endless stream of jokes, memes and voices each desperately trying to get your attention, and getting just enough that you don’t look away or question your own capacity to question.

  And of course it doesn’t help that actual bad people are doing things like indirectly paying millions of people in developing nations to spread propaganda across the US for retweets and clicks because it’s just enough money to make a career for someone in India or Philippines.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Every single fucking thing Trump has done I predicted and warned people about and got shadowbanned across half the goddamn internet for it.

  Okay great we were warned, let’s stop whinging about the idiots of the past and start working to convince today’s idiots.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.

  I have about 20 games where I stopped before getting too far “just in case they decide to join me.” Those games are now piled up in dusty, forgotten crates alongside the Ark of the Covenant in that same giant warehouse. I think I’m part of the slim margin of people who enjoy simulated hardships as a social bonding experience, I don’t know if makes other people too bored, or too anxious, but I can’t make people play hard, slow games where you have to rely on each other and talk through problems.

  I used to be able to, I had great success running groups in SCUM and Project Zomboid but as more and more short-attention-span gaming has been released, people have migrated away from investment-gaming and now just want to “chill” with some colorful slop and fast battle royals or loot extraction. Now when I ask if someone wants to play something like SCUM, they ask if we can play a game where loot and experience gain is turned up to max, enemy robots are disabled, and you can order loot from discord bots in chat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yah I keep hearing fantastic things about the game, but I can’t connect with the “looping” mechanic and the weird ship/floating controls make it hard to want to keep doing the same planets or whatever again and again.

  And I mean, I KEEP trying to get to a place where I’m like “Oh yah, here we go again, lets do this” like with other games and it’s just not happening. I can’t find the fun part. Maybe I’m too old.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Diablo 2 was one of the best games of its type ever, and everything after has just been desperately trying to recapture that feeling. PoE was kind of close, but got a tad grindy. I like when a game just wraps up and you don’t have an endless slog at the end to do completion sub-goals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I was in that pit for a while, it took me years to actually sit down and play it long enough to kind of figure out what to do and how to play, when I did it was very good. I still never had the time to actually finish it, but I highly recommend just pushing through that first barrier, it’s worth it for at least a few days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Arc Raiders took this trope and turned it on its head. The game is entirely about being a loot goblin around other people in a no-rules environment but if you don’t pick fights, you will gradually get matched to servers with other people who don’t pick fights, and you start to meet people and have adventures together, it happens very organically and pleasantly, and if you ever DO run into a PvPer the game doesn’t really give a huge advantage to sweaty try-hards, a newb with a basic gun can defend themselves just as well as some well-equipped player hunter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It was marketed as a game, when really it’s an interactive novel. If you don’t like that kind of experience, you won’t like it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I know a number of people who have motion-sickness issues with games like this, it’s almost entirely first-person games that cause this.

  Some things to consider from my years of assisting managing it:

  • You get motion sick because your eyes tell your brain that you’re moving, but your inner-ear gyroscopes say you’re not, so your brain assumes you must be infected with something so it starts measures to evacuate your stomach of potential poison.

  • View bobbing, screen-shaking, depth-of-field, motion-blur and frame-rates have a huge impact on your sense of balance and visual processing of motion, so try to always turn those off. (Minecraft has had view bobbing since early on, it’s always “step one” to turn it off for everyone.)

  • Framerates also can make you sick. If you’re playing an first-person game and the field of view isn’t moving smoothly it will be more likely to make you start to feel nauseous. Turn graphics settings down until your frame-rates are at least 40 or so. (You would have to look up the game and/or platform to figure out how to turn on FPS display on your screen to see where you’re at.)

  • The brain is highly elastic for learning new things, but also learns negative associations. This means sometimes you have to train it like a toddler or puppy. Patiently and with persistence. This can take the form of only playing for 15 minutes instead of waiting until you start to get nauseous. You need to train your brain that the viewing experience isn’t actually harmful by disconnecting the association with feeling sick, by getting used to the game without triggering the motion sickness. So frequent, short sessions, not letting yourself get sick. (This is the most effective method anyone I know has tried.)

  • Medication. Seriously, anti-histamines work pretty effectively. Motion-sickness pills are literally just anti-allergy medication. It will make you very quite groggy though so don’t plan on staying up late playing. Chewable nausea tablets also help a lot. Again, you’re just trying to let your brain adapt to a new perspective/activity without getting fully sick.

  • Field of view is also a huge factor. Try turning it up or down, most 3D games give you the option. Additionally, playing on a smaller screen can help a lot too. Play in windowed mode and gradually work on making the screen larger and larger until you’ve adapted.

  • Engagement in the game also helps. Once you start having fun you will often forget about the negative sensations and give your brain more time to adapt. If you’re not enjoying a game, don’t force it. Try a different one until you find some mechanic you enjoy that hooks you.

  • After adaptation, you would likely also need to periodically “refresh” it and play a 3D game for a little while every day or you will slip back into motion-sickness triggers again easily.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I keep trying Civ VI and keep uninstalling it before finishing a single game.

  I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s changed since earlier games, but it’s lost a lot of the addicting charm and intuitive flow that made me play prior versions for days.

  If that’s the trend of the franchise I sure won’t be touching any of the later ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m also waiting for it to hit a low-enough price to justify the amount of time I will lose just trying to mod the thing into a playable, enjoyable state.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games you really want to play, but can't or won't?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d love to play Baldur’s Gate 3 with a diverse group of real people and share an adventure together, but have no friends who enjoy games that aren’t mindless slop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In a future that will hold robotic police there will surely be robotic house burglars.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I dream of an absurd day when ROBO-ICE comes to haul off my robot housecleaner for being an illegal import.

  Jokes on them though, I will never afford another house. It will actually be another robot who owns the house. And that robot will likely be my boss. I’ll be retiring under an underpass near 7th and Pershing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, you’re too reactionary, I’ll pass.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  My original comment was only to clarify that a friday protest isn’t remotely a “general strike” so I wish that outlets, forumgoers and media would stop using the term because it’s reducing the power behind the word. Actual general strikes have been performed in our modern world and have crushed governments. This isn’t doing that, and I fear too many naive people are going to think that a couple friday marches on PTO are going to make anyone in seats of power cry.

  I never said it’s bad to march and protest, it IS having an impact, but by itself it won’t move anything because the people in power don’t actually care about the will of the people, if all you’re doing is saying you’re unhappy, well great. They WANT you unhappy.

  I don’t know how to get hundreds of millions of Americans to understand this, neither do you. None of us do, but we can keep trying and we can keep making sure that our language isn’t getting watered down because we want to believe in things that aren’t real. This is all going to get worse before it gets better, and people will point to it and say “See? General strikes don’t work!” when we haven’t even done one yet.