To Imane, pt 78

Before I wrote the post, pt 73, I was thinking something like this:

What do Al Qaeda, the US National Socialist party, and the Church of Satan have in common? They never talk about jobs.

I didn't really want to mention them.

Watched part of Hotman 2, after it was mentioned in the comments of Gegon: New Ability. Not sure how the Korean title relates to the name, "hotman": maybe a literal translation? When he was healed by the druid in his party who was stealthing next to him, I had to watch it like five times until I understood where the second heal was coming from. Saw the first consumable and kept rewinding to search his bars for the second consumable, since potion didn't go on cooldown, until I finally looked elsewhere on the screen and saw the Regrowth graphic appear on him and the buff in the upper-right.

You may or may not be familiar with the Epic Maneuver fad. I think it was before your time. "Acting like a thing is difficult, when in fact it is not difficult", although the page notes that some people think it's for things that are truly difficult.

Wanting to have the friendly player nearby is understandable. World PvP is, or was, inherently unbalanced: you might want 1v1s but get a 1v4. So: "Epic Maneuver" is a comment on the use of dramatic music, the song used by Hotman, for something that is not really difficult. 'Epic music' songs on YouTube often have comments like "I listened to this while washing the dishes and" (I can't think of how to complete this), or "my cat listened to this and turned into a tiger".

I think a better use of the song at the start of Hotman 2 was in The Memories of Sun.

And a better example of a PvP scene featuring a healer is in Gegon: New Ability, from 10:11. It starts with a 2v1, but does not end there: it becomes 2v3, which Gegon and the NE shadow priest Shalliya win (at 10:34 Shalliya takes a 2k crit fireball, 40% of her health: opponents were not undergeared), then a different scene featuring the same player. I notice, for the first time, that Gegon is not using Dampen Magic in either scene, and I think it would make sense to use, even with a priest ally whose heals would be reduced by it.

So, as the second scene opens: they have just killed a Horde hunter. Gegon's buffs are at 13 minutes, so he has been alive for at least 17 minutes. A 2v3 is about to become a 2v4 due to an approaching player, but they kill one player, so it remains a 2v3. Two more players arrive, making it a 2v5. Another Alliance player becomes visible at 11:26, so 3v5 (but mouseover tooltip at 11:41 shows that this player was only lvl 40). They kill two players, making it 3v3, but another Horde player arrives at 11:40, so back to 3v4. A hunter pet attacks the third Alliance player at 11:43, so it's 3v5. Gegon kills the druid just after the third Alliance player dies, making it 2v4, until two more players attack him from the side (making it 2v6) and kill him — the hunter and mage that they killed at the start of the scene, who have resurrected.

Better than 2v1-ing a single player, as Hotman did.

Suppose that everyone in the world is smart. Does it change what you do?

I don't want to publish this. I doubt many people would get the point of me mentioning WoW PvP videos. If this site ever matters, this post is just more 'filler' material that wastes the time of people who read it. By writing it, there's a chance it will lead to a useful result, but also a high probability that it will not. It makes me think of a question like this: "would you press a button that has a small chance to do a lot of good, if each time you press it, a bad thing happens? Like a person or animal being harmed, perhaps fatally? Trolley problem but probabilistic: 1% chance to save 5000 people each time you press it, but 100% chance to harm one person, would you keep pressing it until the 5000 people are saved?"

GirlDeMo(Angel Beats) - Crow Song(Lyrics In Description)

https://angelbeats.fandom.com/wiki/Crow_Song

If you’re only going to say annoying things,
Let the jet black wings carry you away and just disappear.

(Pronouns open to interpretation: https://www.marumaru-x.com/japanese-song/play-q9oqwe4o4y has Japanese lyrics, lines 18 and 19, which do not include the word "you". Note lost in translation, くれ > くれる "to give to me, to do for me", "of neutral politeness and most commonly used".)

To Imane, pt 77

I did a Google search for "I'm assuming Imane hasn't read my most recent weblog post addressed to her", and one of the results was https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/accelerate-energy-innovation/reader/three-tough-truths-about-climate

I'm reluctant to link to something by Gates. My oldest brother mentioned, around 2012~2013, that Gates sometimes responded to emails; he might have said that he emailed Gates himself about some issue and got a reply (my oldest brother worked at Microsoft at the time, the company which Gates co-founded). But I never tried this. I assumed someone else read Gates's emails and anything I wrote would get filtered out, and did not want to have to deal with the uncertainty of whether Gates had read my email and ignored it (some people might say that someone who does this is "evil"). I had already tried, and failed, to contact Warren Buffett, and Gates would be "another person to contact simply because they're rich".

But Gates did sign, and co-founded, the Giving Pledge. I like how when I visit that page, under his name, it says "alt text is not supported." Clearly an error, though I can't be bothered to spend 3 minutes loading another browser to see if it's just my browser being old. (Web browsers used to have things like the Acid3 test which all modern browsers used to pass but no longer do, and I don't know why my browser being old could potentially lead to things being rendered differently. Progress.)

So how does this idea fix the problem of people being deported from Sweden to Afghanistan, and Afghanistan being poor due to lack of fossil fuels?

The argument for the world being better is "people would do fewer wasteful things with fossil fuels". Like, spending 80 minutes per day driving at 100 km/h to get to work, and another 80 minutes driving back.

Step 1: more jobs are created.

Step 2: people get smarter, and act smarter. Problems like unemployment being solved lets us focus on other problems, and the whole 'conflicting goals' thing helps with signal accuracy, which helps with filtering solutions to problems.

Step 3: countries with fossil fuels reduce their production of them, because using them all now is dumb.

Step 4: ?? renewable energy is potentially more competitive on price, and the market optimizes for them to achieve scale, OR

Step 4: ?? we realize that renewable energy is not long-term viable due to the difficulty of recycling critical materials etc., maybe the only real renewable energy is hydroelectric dams and maybe even those are temporary on a geologic timescale, and we adjust our expectations for the future. (And we get an answer to the Fermi paradox.)

Compare the article from Gates. He says,

I know that some climate advocates will disagree with me, call me a hypocrite because of my own carbon footprint (which I fully offset with legitimate carbon credits)

So THAT'S how people justify what they do. Just spend more money, problem solved. Rich people are moral, poor people are not, according to this solution.

He also says,

I work with scientists and innovators who are committed to preventing a climate disaster and making cheap, reliable clean energy available to everyone. Ten years ago, some of them joined me in creating Breakthrough Energy, an investment platform whose sole purpose is to accelerate clean energy innovation and deployment. We’ve supported more than 150 companies so far, many of which have blossomed into major businesses. We’re helping build a growing ecosystem of thousands of innovators working on every aspect of the problem.

Compare the problem of shoes. Does Gates feel the need to invest in shoe production? No, because shoe production is already profitable, with many companies doing it.

The logic behind "what society is doing is basically fine": waste a lot of fossil fuels, but because there are rich people like Gates, they can afford to fund people who work on the problem of clean energy, who would otherwise not be working on this problem because it isn't profitable and people need an income. Let's say that (incredibly optimistic) 10% of the "unnecessary" use of fossil fuels goes towards supporting research into clean energy.

What I am suggesting instead, in Step 3 of the above progression, is to make clean energy profitable by making fossil fuels expensive.

I don't think I'll bother to read more of Gates's article, beyond the point I quoted above, but the article's title is "Three tough truths about climate" and the "What to know" section at the start lists three points, one of which says "which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero". A search for Green Premium shows that the article defines it as "the cost difference between clean and dirty ways of doing something".

If fossil fuels are expensive, will the Green Premium reach zero? Or does "clean energy" have fossil fuel inputs (like the fuel that powers the vehicles that are used to mine lithium, used for batteries) that mean that the Green Premium can never reach zero, when properly calculated?

Some people are afraid to find out, so they do nothing, and hope.

Are you afraid of Step 1 in the above progression?

Or are you like a certain player in Aion, who had on their website character profile, "Doesn't afraid"?

To Imane, pt 76

I thought I had commented something like this, and I was right. On
Gegon: New Ability! (2006), I commented on 07-09-06,

Gegon you were a legend, those who saw your movies will never forget you... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell us if you ever make more movies in other games! We need our heroes... and it would not be right for the Gegon legend to die...

I think I said something similar to Laura, in 2009. Her friend died from anaphylactic shock, leaving a daughter. I asked her friend's name, so that I could remember her, but unfortunately forgot her name. These conversations were on my military email account, so I don't have a record of them, but I think that I said to Laura that "the world needs heroes."

The implication was that I thought it was a good thing that her friend — who I think was the same friend that Laura had previously mentioned, as someone who would still be your friend even if you didn't talk to them for years — had a daughter, even if that daughter was now missing a parent. Allergies are typically something that someone knows about, and perhaps Laura's friend could be said to have taken a risk in whatever situation caused her to be exposed to an allergen, and I showed with this statement that I was not criticizing Laura's friend for taking that risk despite having a daughter.

(Note that 311006, which appears in my username on Warcraft Movies, is supposed to be the 31st kana, counting from 0, or "mi", and then the 10th, or "sa", and finally the 6th, or "ki".)

A question that, as with others, would have the potential to reach a wider audience if posted on a platform like Chirp Club, where people can share it:

"You are a female ant. You and your living sisters will never have children. In the future, your mother, the queen, will have special royal offspring that can start their own colonies, but you don't have that opportunity. You and your sisters have to take a vote: either you and all of your sisters each get an ant-sized smartphone for your entertainment, as well as a piece of candy as large as you are, OR all of your mom's descendants in two years each get an ant-sized smartphone, an ant-sized luxury car, and five pieces of candy."

The most selfish thing to do that most people can imagine is to do things that only benefit themselves. (Compare The Selfish Gene.) From there, doing things that help one's family; then maybe one's clan, or extended family; then one's country; then possibly one's religion, when it's larger than one country; then the world.

Most people don't even think about "the world in 100 years": they're proud if they can convince themselves that they care more for their family than for themselves. So young people now talk about how earlier generations were selfish and ruined the world for later generations, and the world is on track for people in 50 years to say the same thing about people who are young today.

"The world needs heroes" is what one thinks if one understands all of this.

To Imane, pt 75

My plan was to be offline for about another 24 hours. Although I'm still checking Yara's account once per day, if I check it at the start of one day and the end of the next day, that's a gap of over 40 hours. The theory is that if I am online, even if I'm just watching videos for entertainment, things can happen that make me say things. Even if it doesn't happen on a particular day, if I put myself in a situation where it can happen, it's hard to say that I'm trying to avoid doing anything.

This post is not the result of me being online, because I wasn't. I was thinking randomly as a result of not having anything to distract myself; I even thought for a bit that I might go to sleep, but that seems unlikely now even though it's 22:45 my time.

A random YouTube video led me to this article: ["When her face twitched"]This Crucial Harry Potter Scene Was Even Worse in the Book

I have not read the Harry Potter books. I have no interest in reading them. Maybe the only reason I acknowledge them at all is that Mionelol probably got the name from the character Hermione. Yesterday I tried to look up if there were any funny discussions about the "meta" of dueling in the Harry Potter world, as in a discussion of which spells are useless (because, for example, it takes too long to invoke them due to too many syllables) and which spells should be spammed, which would allow for judging whether duelists are skilled based on whether they know and use the "meta".

One series that I read when I was young was the Dragon Knight. In, I think, The Dragon at War, the 'novice' main character accidentally disables a powerful French magic-user with the word "freeze".

(My browser had the display bug, had to restart it.)

According to the article, people criticize a character because the fact that her face twitched — despite her intending not to show that reaction ­— showed her inner feelings. They judge her based on her feelings, not based on her actions. They say, if only her inner feelings were different, other people would have acted differently, and she is to blame for how those other people act. (Or they don't even use this logic and just criticize her because of her inner feelings, regardless of her actions or anyone else's actions.)

But it's also an example of the tiniest mistake affecting people's judgement.

I have — when I remember — suggested that I am not trying to get you to share this idea, ever since I stopped emailing you in January. People might say that if I did something that I said I wouldn't, it would be like the character's face twitching.

I am switching strategies. As of this post, I am trying to get you to share this idea.

Greta made a video about people being deported from Sweden once they turn 18. This better explains the issue, compared to a video in Swedish she posted a week ago. They are people who are in the country basically illegally, but Sweden doesn't want to be accused of deporting young people, so it waits until they are legally adults.

My view: Sweden, like all countries, doesn't 'deserve' its economic prosperity. It is, basically, being bad, and letting people stay in the country is encouraging them to also be bad. Having stated my view, I will see if the data that I look up supports this view.

Hypothesis before looking up data is that fossil fuel prices have risen along with world GDP per capita, which makes it difficult for poor countries below the average to achieve the economic growth that other countries did when they had that GDP per capita.

The price of oil:

https://www.google.com/search?q=our+world+in+data+price+of+oil

Results:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_of_oil "Before oil, whale oil was used in lamps, as lubrication, etc. It was very expensive."

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-prices-inflation-adjusted

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-crude-oil-price-vs-oil-consumption

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-price-index

GDP per capita:

https://www.google.com/search?q=our+world+in+data+world+gdp+per+capita

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-average-gdp-per-capita-over-the-long-run?time=1940..latest

World GDP per capita is about four times what it was in the 1940s. If oil was about US$140 per cubic meter in the 1940s (adjusted for inflation, just like GDP per capita), and is now around $500 per cubic meter, that is also four times higher, although there has been a lot of variability and oil had increased by a lot more than global GDP had in the year 1980, for example.

https://www.google.com/search?q=our+world+in+data+afghanistan+gdp+per+capita

Constant GDP per capita for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (NYGDPPCAPKDAFG) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

Only goes back to the year 2000. Afghanistan's measured GDP per capita was 22% higher in 2023 than it was in 2000, at $378. If one looks at YouTube videos of life in Afghanistan, one can believe that the country would have been pretty similar in 1940, other than population:

https://www.google.com/search?q=our+world+in+data+afghanistan+population

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/population-demography/afghanistan Population 7.8m in 1950, 41.5m in 2023.

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/afghans-report-the-lowest-life-satisfaction-in-the-world The reason people who grew up in Sweden don't want to go to Afghanistan.

If countries achieve economic growth by creating machinery that can use fossil fuels to do work, and fossil fuels are a scarce resource that are allocated towards countries that are already rich (whether because of patents that transfer money from poor people to rich people or using those fossil fuels more efficiently and creating more profit from them than a poor country would create) and also cause climate change and will soon run out, then the entire economic model is bad. If rich countries can't show poor countries how to have a good, 'advanced' economy if they too poor to compete for expensive fossil fuels, then those rich countries aren't showing us that they can remain rich in the future once all fossil fuels are expensive — putting them in the same position that poor countries are in now.

To Imane, pt 74

"It's hard to know how to help the world. So, it's more common to help the parts of it you like."

Don't know where I said this. Checked two weblogs and a bunch of text files.

I was afraid to open these text files, but this is kind of funny: a file named 'remember!' without the quotes (there is another file named "'Strength'", where the single quotes are part of the filename), the content of which was a reminder of my passwords, or apparently, modifications to my passwords:

ym: + .
gm: _41
tw: + _
wd: + *
mj: # 1

Sort of like how when I chose a password for this computer, in 2009, I chose one that would be hard for someone to memorize by watching me type it, by using the Shift keys on both sides of the keyboard: En2>#Li'GH.te0nm!EN7t. All this does is make me frequently fail in typing it in, with no more security than if it was "password".

I never look at my old files. Almost all of the ones I searched through with 'grep', about 300 files, were last accessed on 18 Apr 2020, when I copied them to an external drive. File 'discipline', last modified 20 Dec 2008, which really isn't important; I include it because of "(Kuwait)" and "This will not be sent.", so it was what I wanted to say to Mei:

4 Oct 2008

1. cinematic mode for starting game client. Camera controls or more freedom; lighting controls!

2. lower variance on damage for low vs high, in the 'no absolute power scaling' system. Reduced damage, and animation, is better than 'parry'/'resist' and animation.

3. keep downleveling for instances.

4. art is so important! Flashy graphics while casting a spell are distracting. Animations should convey useful information, but also keep focus on what is important. Very difficult~

5. Mass PvP is not interesting because it does not easily correlate player actions with outcome, and it is too hard to keep track of what other players are doing. Note art, things like AE and FN in WoW causing graphics at target locations. WoW had good artists. :(

6. Any way to tell whom people are targetting without the UI..?

7. Cinematic mode turns off names?! Then usable without having to restart. But, how does this fit with targetting display? >.< What about BGs?? Zooming out.

8. Filters > lighting..? >_< Unifies spell effects too.

9. DO NOT TOLERATE MEDIOCRITY

10. cinematic thingy: a way to save current lighting, then load an 'acting'/greenscreen environment, with optional stationary camera controls, to record movie clips. Arrows pointing at light sources.

11. Lighting and motion are how we judge things. BRIGHT EFFECTS WITHOUT LIGHT SHADING ON OTHER OBJECTS IS RETARDED!! zomg ._.

12. Need more abilities that increase uncertainty AFTER use. Blink, vanish, what are more examples? Change your options forcing them to change their decision, or that change or reduce their options.. 'release of tension, misdirection of tension'! Causing them to think a bit in the future, and anticipate actions that turn out to be wrong. Hard to create discontinuities which do this. Another example: knockback, then slow fall in the middle of knockback. Changes landing position, more room, more options. Look for splits, or divergences, where expectations go one way (as a result of a choice by either opponent) and action goes another way...
 - the example that doesn't exist: spellsteal as a spell that 'steals' the next spell cast at you and stores it as a charge... o.0 (less overpowered version of the fire/flame/shadow reflectors in WoW)


19 Oct (Kuwait)

Japanese production, quality of art. Realism dependent on cameras, other things. (Self-expression, presentation of gameworld, rules encourage believable behavior by players, no zerging of quest zones etc.) Mythological setting.

New design? Scaling is 'fake'. Every player has 100% life; no number given. Lower-level players see low numbers. High-level players see high numbers. It is illusion, but a believable one.

This will not be sent.

22 Oct (Kuwait)

'illusion' damage scaling seems.. bad.. static power should work. Hiding health bars on enemies already puts focus off numbers; no need to '100%' it. Progress from customization ('talents'), gear, hobbies, and PvP TITLES (or equiv) should be sufficient. Weapons increase probabilities of success or etc, not damage directly! Armor is just ~opposite. New zones and content take focus off of leveling, so that when level cap increases it is an opportunity to see new zones, not a job of grinding more levels to increase power.

Probably more but I forget. Might be in mayor's cell, with highest possible or yet seen GT score, /sigh. Mei~

28 Oct (Kuwait)

went un-crazy two days ago, but I don't know if it's lasted lol. If I say that I don't know if I want to not be crazy.. I should delete that but I won't. Just don't read it. Or think about it. <= this is why I'm not talking to anyone

So it would work. It separates first viewing of someone, from the clear identification of hostile or friendly affiliation. Injecting uncertainty forces paying attention to unit details, and caution when approaching or being approached. It also allows greater tactical elements! Being this: name would not display immediately, but would sort of flash into being once you were sure whether they were friendly or hostile. For those you are grouped with their name would display as soon as they reached line-of-sight (viewing distance); for others, it would depend on multiple factors and not just distance. Selecting someone at range would flash their name and affiliation, but it would fade over a few seconds after deselecting them. Mouseover would give you tooltip, but wouldn't flash their name (was wondering if it should tho). Hostile or friendly actions against you would flash name at completion; against party members, or those you are fighting, is uncertain tho. Maybe it would, but only within another distance radius..? This way you could still encounter a conflict at range and be uncertain to its immediate situation, what the odds are, even if one of your 'raid' or group is involved in the fight.

Character facing may or may not influence 'name detection' range. Occlusion behind objects should definitely influence it :p. Camera facing and viewing area should influence it. Staying 'in combat' with someone should also influence it. Environment should also influence it.... desert/plains vs jungle?? Or otherwise when greater uncertainty is wanted to enhance tension at a location (as long as it makes sense).

However, this does not mean you should have the FFA-toggle to force players to try to distinguish players who look friendly (saving disguises ofc.)! Fun is outweighed by betrayal and lack of trust in faction and detraction from dramatic expection that comes from a pure, simply-presented two faction system. But in special areas only it could be FFA against other players, aka 'yellow-name' flagged and clearly presented. Reward or not, I don't know.. it would make players feel less betrayed if they are killed by same faction since the game fairly presents the competitive motive, but it could (as always~) also lead to 'farming' or anti-productive/disruptive behavior.

But guards could have more complex interactions. Faction-based, and even individual guard -based evaluations of players based on previous actions, current behavior, and even styles of clothing and dress. This would mean more complex clothing-changing rules maybe, which could be good. But it might be better instead to base it on a title-based system or other achievements.. with a way to change your name or title, it could seem like a more realistic way to 'disguise' yourself when you want to avoid attracting attention in a city. Penniless scamp, or grand evil bandit-lord knight in decorated black plate armor..? Sort of like more complex 'aggro' rules, with recognition based on if you try to mimick a certain archtype or have flaws in disguise etc (and distance from guard, lighting, etc), as well as party/grouping so someone with a good reputation could accompany someone with a bad one. But, would this mean aggressive behavior that is not attacking? Arresting someone usually requires communication...

Numbers do not have to depend on gear. They can also come from specialization, and numbers show the power of that specialization path, not of gear advancement. Faction-based contribution and how it relates to PvP, and PvP showing, is more important. Why should you respect someone's (solo) PvP actions, besides their skill?

(why no general same-faction FFA option: necessary to discourage certain PvP actions via presentation. But, FFA discouragement, even selective, interferes with ganking discouragement of opposite faction. Conclusion, it is better to be able to make friends with opposite faction than it is to make enemies with same faction. Example: two enemies. One is 'Most Wanted' from frequent ganking. Kill her, then bow to the other enemy and leave because they are on the same side of a second, artificially-created moral division called 'do not gank!'. Or: 'Only engage in honorable PvP combat with fair odds'... etc..!)

29 Oct (Kuwait)

PvP and PvE achievements & progress complement world PvP situation. It provides an opportunity and an excuse for playing, when social progress is both necessary and insufficient to continue in a game. The most obvious thing isn't always true.~

PvE: no grand reward one-time for killing a boss, because it would devalue later attempts. No required farming either, because it would restrict choice in a game. Main reason to go again is social (helping friends) and for completion of 'optional progress'; aka ability upgrades. Excuse to go is non-necessary goals outside the instance, like crafting mats only obtainable in that instance..

(Progress to advance self over others corrodes achievements that would otherwise be seen as acceptable. Gear farming may sound acceptable until you actually contemplate doing it. Thus importance of disadvantages... transforms from power advancement, to progression in complexity of options)

Focus of attention: what makes PvP movies interesting beyond just numbers?
- crits are deceptive in a way, they provide metric of 'high damage' even for someone without experience in a game but aren't actually indicative of skill
- status symbols. PvP mount, or gladiator title
- movement, how react to and predict events. Goes beyond numbers
- complexity metric: even if you don't understand what things are done, if enough things are done and at the right frequency, with observable effects on other players, it provides its own sense of control
- ofc, number of players against. But must be perceived same by 'experts' in the game as by those with no knowledge, can't exploit power differences and fight many weak enemies unless game mechanics clearly present the power differences and even then it must be a difficult fight

(from unlimited warfare)
Warfare of imposing losses is different from warfare of withholding gains. Offensive destruction vs 'trade sanctions'. How does this apply to hostilities justification in an MMO.~ (what are things for faction-state to lose? Loss of life...)

30 Oct (Kuwait)

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" either of yourself or of friends, distributing wrongful hurt. Kuwait invasion justification by the US in Desert Storm. So, deprivation of happiness, deprivation of freedom.. sensitive issue. Many different kinds of freedom, naval blockades etc.

Historical differences can provide atmosphere of unease, even within present tense peace; historical great actions can provide inspiration for further attempts at contributions to the 'common good'. This becomes more meaningful the more detailed it is explored with full knowledge by participants, see Warcraft RTS series. Game accompaniments provide interactive knowledge of this in particular? Not just as 'another way to experience the world'...

you harness the imagination with social incentives. Creativity.

are any of those stories worth telling...


No. They cannot form social bonds with no gain or loss, and telling of a story has low worth when it also does not benefit anyone from the telling. You can't learn to work better with people when there is no one else involved in production. Dead end thought, stop thinking out loud =p

but people will believe silly things if it's for a good cause


20 Dec

'HUD' except around every person. Only friendly units, and transparent depending on screen population. Indicates damage and healing. Vertical orientation, and scaling in the distance, gives more intuitive display for large numbers of people compared to horizontal 'bar over your head'. Lack of shadows indicates it isn't 'real' in the gameworld, so it doesn't become intrusive. Transparency in general might be underused in communicating game information without being intrusive :P

Enemies wouldn't, but any damaging attacks should have both audio and visual indications of severity, or lack thereof. Normalization between levels makes this easier, but 'special' damage events like crits need to be visually indicated somehow (note: in the old game, physical crits were indicated but by sound). More information can be conveyed about an unfriendly unit that is either selected or moused-over.

What about a 'defensive energy' mechanic. Parrying a certain number of attacks before you become tired. Allows for more decisive 'single hits' when defenses are defeated, and maybe helps to avoid low-intensity fights that neither can win..? If both physical and magical defense resource.. ?


'Leveling an item when you repair it' should have already been covered. Importance of a backstory behind a race or other differentiation, to provide an alternate standard other than 'sexiness'. Deepness of stories.. still don't know the best way to provide content, in what situations you can expand laterally. Maybe if new branches always preclude old ones, but even then previous journeys had less choice which is bad because it invalidates old decisions.. unless maybe you can generate artificial 'legacy' mechanics with old > better? For those who want to, anyway. Not many examples of stories in the old game, maybe the dragon but replacing content isn't very efficient.. maybe PvP stories are examples.

Maybe if certain PvE stories relate to each other, like the pirates! Exploring a new zone would mean abandoning almost all of the old ones, because the old stories 'fit together' in a group. Fully exploring one zone is better than taking random pieces from multiple ones, unless they connect of course. Storytelling can be hard :p

Still difficult to find game-like complexity that doesn't involve combat.. >_< What about the explorer's dimension.

'Environment can only be incidentally affected by player's actions, you cannot directly attack a tree with a fireball'. Footsteps on hills and cliffs. Tracking vs persistence to the point of boredom. What about the small dimension, of unforced camera manipulation..? As well as 'cinematic camera' which should have been mentioned before. >_>

The other file that I opened was the file 'tiger', last modified 11 Sep 2008. It's a poem:

Each form changed anew
A bright path ahead shining
Bloodless wound now aches

I think I quoted this poem in 2013. Sherine made a 'reply' post, "Keep stabbing me until your hand gets tired". It wasn't clear if she was implying that she was getting stabbed, or that I was getting stabbed.

So anyway, I could not find where I said the quote at the start of this post. I know I quoted it to Susan Wilson in 2011, maybe after I didn't respond to her request to know more about the person she was talking to (which I intended as an excuse for her to stop talking to me), so clearly I wrote it at some point before that. It might have been in an email, which I won't search for.

I'm expanding on this quote. "The parts of the world you like" is sometimes easy to describe, and quite literal: the town or country that someone is from. But here is another case: smart people wanting to help other smart people.

What are the consequences of a smart person wanting to help other smart people, vs them being indifferent? One consequence: a smart person who conceives the goal of helping other smart people is more likely to notice if other people have the same goal and act the same way. This can result in someone trying not to let other people know that they have failed in their goal of trying to be helpful. This is like the questions about whether one is happy, which are posted on a site which is intended to help smart people. It's like when someone says "thank you" for a gift of food, but then just throws it away: they don't want to offend the giver, and so they act in a way that makes the world worse than if the gift had been refused.

This could be for one explanation for when a community that seems to have a lot of smart people acts in a dumb way, by not sharing this idea. The 'gift' from other smart people in the community is, like, entertainment or information. People might even see it as "validation in ignoring problems by agreeing to focus on topics that seem less important". We can tie it back to the blue and red buttons dilemma: what people perceive is that a community's current behavior is like everyone pressing the blue button, and if a threshold of people were to say that what the community is talking about is the wrong topic, half the community would die.

A similar explanation might apply to other communities: when war approaches a city, but people don't want to flee because it would upset other people in the community who have not yet fled. So they act in a risky way, in the hope that sticking together will result in a better outcome.

To Imane, pt 73

This is really for Greta who posted something about labor conflicts, which I didn't watch. "The J-word".

I suggest that someone make this poll; a poll would be more effective than a question where people give free responses, and I can't make any polls that would get more than a handful of votes.

"ONLY for people who believe that evil rich people control the world: do you believe that evil rich people would want the global unemployment rate to go up by 1%, or down by 1%?"

­— as seen in the comments of any video about birth rates, for any country, about why they're not interested in having children: "that's exactly what the evil rich people want you to do."

The poll could still include separate options for people who ignored the instructions and want to vote even though they don't believe that evil rich people control the world, like this:

- They want it to go up

- They want it to go down

- I don't believe that evil rich people control the world, but the evil rich people that control the world want it to go up

- I don't believe that evil rich people control the world, but the evil rich people that control the world want it to go down

To Imane, pt 71

Terry Pratchett once wrote that a good writer should always be reading. This statement could be analyzed and supported with an argument: if fiction is about presenting and solving problems, then the problems should be neither too easy, too hard, nor irrelevant to what people care about.

I didn't see this statement about reading in https://www.lspace.org/books/pqf/alt-fan-pratchett.html, but I will include three random quotes from that page:

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books; occasionally, however, there are alternate pasts.

One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry.

So: I overheard a line from a movie, a male soldier saying he would do anything to get back to a female character, with him repeating the word "anything" for emphasis. I immediately thought, "would he kill people?" And many people would. Many people who have been in wars talk about how they killed someone and later felt bad about it.

It's a bit like the red and blue buttons question, on the topic of which I thought of two three more variations:

red blue button and risky is labeled good, but as you are about to press a button, you are stopped and informed the buttons were mislabeled for you by accident, and everyone else got buttons where risky was labeled evil

red blue button as blender, but 'red button' is to jump into a giant blender that will not turn on as it's broken due to an internal fault.

red blue button but the red button does nothing, acting as a placebo and equivalent to not pushing any button, and you are told this. Red button does not stop you from also pressing blue button, and vice versa. Only blue votes are counted, and must reach 50% to save blue button pressers. How many times would you press red button? 2x3, six options. (added 03 May 2026, 16:01)

But I think that a soldier can morally kill others as long as the soldier is themselves willing to die; the commentary from Book of Five Rings that I quoted before.

From there, I thought about how I never learned if I would kill someone who was an 'enemy'. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have if the only one they were threatening Noting that I was prepared to attack the person who tried to mug me, I will say that I think it would have been better if I died as a US soldier from being shot by someone in Iraq, than if I had killed someone fighting against the US there (whether they were Iraqi or a foreigner who came to Iraq to fight).

Many people are willing to think positively of someone who will risk their life, with no benefit to themselves for doing it: people who press the blue button. But if it were a more complex (and realistic) situation, where it wasn't just me being threatened, but also other people on my 'team', then more people would be willing to condemn me if I did not press the trigger when my weapon was aimed at an enemy.

So even if I had the intention of being 'good', there was a slight possibility when I signed up for the military that I could end up in a situation where the 'good' action was unclear. And also a slight possibility that the intention of being 'good' could result in a situation where it would clearly be worse for me (if an enemy and I were pointing weapons at each other).

Why did I act this way? To me, there is an obvious explanation. It lowered my value: it made me someone with a lower chance of survival than someone who would kill without hesitation (while still following the applicable rules of engagement, which all soldiers are required to memorize); note cases like the Iraqi female who, around January 2009, approached US forces on a road in Baghdad, shouting at them and causing the vehicle to back up until the vehicle's gunner was ordered to fire a single shot at her, at which point the Iraqi police on the scene picked her up and took her to a hospital.

And a lower value was how I justified telling Mei that I l*ved her, even if it meant Elyse could never be in a relationship with me. It made it possible for me to reason that Elyse could find someone better than me, because there was at least one obvious way (in addition to all the other possible ways, like appearance) that someone could be better than me.

The thinking that I was lower value because it's possible I would have let an Iraqi kill me as a soldier is subjective: it's possible other people would disagree. The point is that it was a flaw that I chose, and people who are in a similar position might also choose a flaw. The specifics might be hard to predict.

Possible poll about the prevalence of intentional flaws:

"A genie offers to change anything about you that another person could possibly consider a flaw, making you perfect (without adding capabilities like protein synthesis). Do you accept, or transfer the choice to a random person of the same gender with about the same attractiveness as you, who can also refuse it? This is a morally neutral choice."

___

Wrote the above about an hour ago and did not publish it. It made me think of the plan that I never carried out: "travel to Pakistan and get a group to announce that they had me, a US citizen, in captivity and would execute me if people did not talk about this idea."

I'm not sure exactly when I had this plan. I had money from the second round of Covid stimulus benefits in the US (I never cashed my check from the first round), but by that point my passport was expired.

So, if I thought of this plan before my passport expired, I would have needed money, which I would have gotten from my oldest brother.

Most people would probably say it's a plan with a low chance of success. They would also call it crazy for another reason: the personal risk involved. Even people with a more accurate understanding might say it would have a low chance of success. It would depend on some group understanding and caring about this idea, and me being able to find them, in a country I did not know that used languages I don't understand.

But it could have led to this idea being used ~8 years ago. If this idea saves 300k people from suicide per year, that's over 2 million people.