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.

To Imane, pt 70

MrBeast also did the red/blue buttons poll, giving the problem another 39 million views: https://x.com/MrBeast/status/2049273335742435617

Some variations:

    - red blue button, but the blue button is located at the top of a 300-meter hill (disabled people can access a lift)

    - red blue button, but the first time someone presses the blue button, their name and picture is broadcast to everyone in the world. People who have already pressed the red button cannot change their vote. *Poll options are unchanged: blue or red.

    - red blue button, safe is picture of a tree, risky is picture of an axe

For the last, I wouldn't encourage anyone to make a poll in which the risky button is labeled "Ignore climate change" and the safe button is labeled "Care about climate change", so that is the ambiguous version. Compare the orcs cutting down trees in Lord of the Rings, or the industrialization in Princess Mononoke.

Problems are seen as interesting if there's disagreement, so what a person sees as the 'correct' answer is less likely to be reached without discussion. The trolley problem is interesting because it's five lives vs one: if it was one person on each track, then people would see the obvious answer as doing nothing. Even with five lives on the line, many people see "doing nothing" as an attractive choice.

People who have committed suicide since I first shared this idea:

    - probably your friend in high school, if you were more than 15 years old when he died

    - Clara Dao's friend D

    - Reckful (Liquipedia, Wikipedia)

    - Robin Williams

    - Dylann Roof's friend, whom 'AI' is unable to correctly identify (article related to Dylann Roof, but not related to his friend who committed suicide: https://www.bet.com/article/1vhxme/dylann-roof-s-black-friends-he-wasn-t-racist-to-me)

    - various people who committed crimes before they killed themselves, like Adam Lanza and Andreas Lubitz

    - Leader of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

    - Russian military pilot Roman Filipov

    - Utada Hikaru's mother, Fuji Keiko

    - Goo Hara from Kara, as well as her friend Sulli

    - Katelyn Nicole Davis, aka Dolly (added 03 May 2026, 03:08)

Relevant: Tales of The Past III

For the benefit of anyone who doesn't have access to a secret government conspiracy:

26 Apr 2026
Clip of Weng Jie (??) asking about Covid, in reply to tweet asking about her identity

are Chinese people more likely to get hangnails?

ask AI, 'is there any reason for anyone to press the blue button?'
and, 'which button should I press?'

ask AI, 'why is apple sauce more popular than pear sauce?'


27 Apr 2026
rename nxZglmRScSo Let The Love edit, Alone, Pyramid Scheme, ?, Limbo, Faded - ZHU, Champs

Poll: You have to associate the word 'good' with one of the following, which do you choose? Left or Right

"I didn't realize until a few hours after updating it that the last blog post's title becomes a like pun, and my plan is to procrastinate on unpublishing it after Greta says something on Instagram until it's clear that procrastinating won't accomplish anything"


30 Apr 2026
"If Imane doesn't share the idea within 24 hours, it means she thinks I'm a bad person and is trying to hide it by making the world think I'm merely a stupid person"

"If Imane doesn't share the idea within three hours, I will assume that I am not doing anything that someone wants me not to do and have not done anything in the past year that someone who knows about me but has never met me did not want me to do"

Suppose that you think that it benefits me if you do not immediately share this idea.

I cannot affect much. I have no money etc. (which could be spent on influence), no access to anything that requires a smartphone or a phone number, nothing that would get people to listen to what I say. All I can really do is say, to someone who might be interested in me, "I'm not interested in you if X."

Option 1: X is "if you share the idea". Option 2: X is "if you don't share the idea."

I have the goal of am trying to get people to use this idea. Possibilities:

1) You aren't interested in me. It doesn't matter what I say.

2) You might be interested in me. Option 1 for X: you now have two reasons not to share the idea.

3) You might be interested in me. Option 2 for X: adds a reason to share the idea, but the original reason for not sharing it remains.

So I have no reason to pick Option 1, but cannot expect Option 2 to succeed either.

What if you expect me to pick Option 2 even if I know that Option 2 will fail? It implies you think that I don't care about the result of me not being interested in you — such as if I would prefer if you thought that I wasn't interested in you.

I already tried something similar with Sherine, in 2013: I said, "If you don't share the idea, it means that you like me."

[22 december]
It would make me happy if you told people even if one or both of us die

[...]

If you hadn't changed your Twitter username maybe I would have convinced someone else to tell people, it's all your fault

If you hadn't changed your username I wouldn't have thought you might care about me though

[...]

Am I blocked

If you don't tell people about the idea on Twitter now in public, it means you like me

I think my account is blocked because I can't favorite your answers

If it is blocked then there were a lot of questions I asked that you didn't see, oh well

If you tell people about the idea on Twitter now it means you like me

Just as a reminder to myself as to why I'm bothering to write anything at all if I've already tried everything, it's because of what Greta was wearing in the video she recently made.

The above is a bunch of things that I wrote, so for some balance, something that Sherine wrote at some point in 2013: "We are just stardust"

A lot of people like stories with like princesses and such. Ask yourself, what qualities does a princess possess that you do not, other than amazing martial arts skills?

A single day

https://youtu.be/FcUhJAEUqTw?list=PLlCrV9TCfzMZ2xwpTDu30mKrZiRxA_hJ7&t=1574

Gold is the scarce resource in Age of Empires II. Just like oil is the scarce resource in the real world. A stupid player will use up all their gold, trading their military units that cost a lot of gold for enemy units that don't cost gold, and won't have gold when they need it.

One villager dying in the early game, or one villager not being created due to an idle town center, can have a huge effect later on. If a player was completely idle with no working villagers or TC for the first 20 seconds of the game (or if they took 20 seconds longer to place a TC on a Nomad start), then it's exactly like they're 20 seconds behind for the whole game. If the end game state is to have 180 population, with 20 units being trained in 20 seconds, then the 20 seconds idle at the start of the game means 20 fewer units at the end game. If the player who was idle at the start has 40 military units, the player who was not idle will have 60 military units, and can expect to win a battle with (60^2-40^2)^0.5 = 45 units remaining.

Suppose someone shares this idea, and people use it. On the day before they share it, and also on the day they share it, 500 people die in group conflicts around the world. The day after they share it, 490 people die in conflicts. Five years after they share it, 20 people die in conflicts in one day. Does sharing it one day earlier save the lives of 10 people?

No, it saves the lives of 480 people. Stupid people might not realize this, but it's the correct answer, and enough people can see the correct answer that they would inform the stupid people and it becomes the group's evaluation of someone's actions. Anyone who cannot see that 480 people would be saved by sharing it one day earlier is stupid.

Same with other things, like suicides. If 2000 people commit suicide each day, and the suicide rate is halved from problems like unemployment being fixed, then sharing this idea one day earlier means 1000 fewer people die from suicide.

Cannot continue due to lack of a title

The most important thing: "doing nothing" is not the way to avoid looking stupid. I made a mistake in my last post: I did not realize when I chose the title that it could easily be seen as a reference to the implied coin flip in the lyrics of "Only My Railgun": "a parabola decides my fate", with "parabola", with the meaning "conic section", in Japanese is written as "released + object + line". Although Wikipedia says that the Japanese term came from Chinese, where the first character is "throw", not "release", it's reasonable that fripSide felt the modern spelling was more relevant than the archaic spelling would have been. The relevant meaning being "an object that doesn't control or influence its path during its flight"; an object dropped from a hand that is moving sideways still follows a parabola, even though it wasn't thrown.

Just as I can't control what people do as a result of me writing a post or an argument about this idea.

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/only-my-railgun-only-my-railgun.html-1

*I'm confident that most people who translate these lyrics use what is apparently the adverb form of "nante" なんて, which Wiktionary says has a falling pitch accent, when the meaning is actually the particle, which Wiktionary does not indicate has a falling pitch accent (consistent with the melody for those lyrics).

(That took 26 minutes to write and if I had said other things first, I very easily could have forgotten some of this.)

I did say, apparently on ask.fm since it's in the text file of things I said to Sherine, that "It's easy to not make any mistakes if you never do anything difficult", on 08 Oct 2013. Noting that this was one of many things I said to Sherine on that day, but this is the thing I remembered.

So, at least I didn't say "if you do nothing". Doing nothing can still be a mistake.

And one can do difficult things by doing a series of things that are not difficult.

I still don't think that Ellie thinks that Imane reads this site, and so I am still not checking Imane's Chirp Club account. I am also no longer checking Ellie's Chirp Club account, as I felt the risk was too great that it would cause me to write something when I should not. The motivation for writing something would be to help Ellie, which only makes sense if I think it's possible she reads this site.

So if I think it's possible she secretly reads this site, why don't I think it's possible that Ellie thinks that Imane secretly reads this site? Because it's apparent that what I think differs from what other people, including Ellie, thinks. I think that it makes sense for people to talk to me about this idea: that not doing so, and continuing to care about it, is a waste of time. The first public argument for this idea opened with a quote about the importance of time.

So if other people have reached a different conclusion than me about whether it makes sense to talk about this idea, I find it very reasonable that they could reach a different conclusion on what someone would do or would want to do, based on their observable behavior without any statements from them to clarify their intentions or values. (I generally find that it makes sense to trust what people say, like the character Nao does from the drama Liar Game: "Honesty is the most important thing." Where honesty in Japanese is (one of the several meanings here, probably "correct") + direct. A character combination that implies, why not take the most direct and straightest path to a goal?)

Bad practice to continue a thought that was in parentheses, but I just bookmarked [125k views, 24.5k subs, 28 Apr 2026]Why “Being Real” Doesn’t Work in Japan - YouTube without watching it. The comments are relevant to the topic of honesty and suggest that the 21-minute video is not just a waste of time or clickbait like many videos are (which would deter me from linking it).

Note quick way of summarizing it: "the truth is, I am unhappy" — reasonable when Japan is ... 30th out of 183 countries for suicide rate, lower than southern Korea and the United States (need to click on the All column to sort the list). If accurate, quite an improvement; in 2010, Japan was 6th out of 104 countries, with Belarus showing even more of an improvement than Japan since then. But anyway, we all know that when most people ask "how are you?", they are not expecting a real answer, like "I am unhappy." This is the tension between honesty and dishonesty. If society was such that people were happy, there might not be this obvious scenario in which many people are dishonest.

Not thinking is a type of 'doing nothing'. Someone can read something, not understand it, and not think about it enough to correct their lack of understanding. The longer I make this, the more difficult it becomes to understand.

I haven't solved the problem of the title of this post, so I'm just writing more. I thought about what German pilot Hanna Reitsch said in a letter before her death. Apparently (I had not remembered this much) it wasn't a public statement, but it was still something she wanted someone else to think. So, something about Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Boston marathon bombing, which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said was targeted at the US government or something and the people who died were collateral damage. Which makes sense if he thought people who worked for the US government knew about this idea but weren't sharing it, and does not make much sense otherwise. How often is a bomb that is deliberately detonated near people not intended to kill them?

—Why when I search for "ireland car bombing mistake" does it return results from 2 days ago? But anyway, 6th search result: Omagh bombing, not intended to kill anyone but killed 29 people because "police inadvertently moved people toward the bomb."

One person who died was Chinese; another person who died was young. I hesitate to say that Sherine, Yara, Autumn, and the person who had @fancyfenty were supporters of Dhozkhar aka Jahar, as might sound like they supported the bombing. (I also hesitate to say, "which they did not.") @fancyfenty answered a question about why she didn't say her name or post her photo by saying she didn't want to get killed.

When I said to Sherine, "It's easy to not make any mistakes if you never do anything difficult", someone reading this casually might just pass over it without thinking. It sounds true, and uncontroversial. So why did I say it? I think Sherine understood why at the time. Like, I had asked on 05 Jul 2013, on ask.fm probably,

After all if what you want is someone who is only interested in you and no one else, I don't think I was ever able to provide that

If you do care but you aren't going to tell people, then I guess you're just too stupid

Are you stupid?


Why didn't you just beat them up

I was going to ask why you didn't just kill them but I thought that might sound wrong


Are other people stupid?


Is bullying a joke? http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/2013/03/29/bullying-is-such-a-joke-problems-with-the-rpg-kickstarter/

etc.

It was a criticism. Of everyone who does nothing, thinking that doing nothing is easy.

Coin flip

Just ran an experiment in my head and I think it's predictable enough to make a conclusion without actually running the experiment.

People want to be seen as good rather than evil. It's a bit of a tautology that being evil is bad. The only complication is that people sometimes prefer to be seen as evil by certain other people when they perceive that those people seeing them as evil leads to outcomes that are better for the world. This reaches an extreme when, as shown in fiction, someone tells another person to kill them.

Thanks to Bing's Copilot search, I was able to find a scene that I remembered reading about, from Iris II: New Generation (2013):

Yoo-gun's martial arts skills are too good and he ends up defeating Ray. With Yoo-gun holding a gun, Ray dares him to "take the shot" and Yoo-gun, filled with rage and fury, shoots him to death. 

(In my search, I checked TV Tropes pages like Please Kill Me If It Satisfies You. It lists several variants and this particular scenario does not quite seem to fit any of them; the show Iris doesn't seem to be listed on any of the variant pages as an example.)

The experiment is this: it's the blue and red buttons again. People are asked what they would do if everyone had to choose between two buttons, and one button would kill anyone who pressed it if less than half of all people pressed it, but they would be safe if at least half of people pressed it.

(Note that one can vary the question, like by increasing the percentage of people who need to press it for all of them to be safe, but the '50%' scenario is more relevant for real-world judgements of behavior: 'the majority is always morally correct'.)

There are two scenarios: one where the safe button is labeled "I am good" and the risky button is labeled "I am evil", and the opposite. People are asked which button they would press in both scenarios, with the order of these two questions randomly varied and they answer both questions before submitting their response.

Then, this data is used to simulate successive experiments. This way, there is no need for a condition of, "the test is run again and everyone forgets the first test and chooses as though they had not encountered the problem before".

People are randomly assigned to one of the two scenarios, i.e. one of their choices for which button to pick is selected with a 50% chance.

If the vast majority of people pick the risky button, then there is no simulated decrease in population between generations. (Again, note that real-life scenarios could require a higher threshold, like 80% of people selecting the button for anyone who selected it to survive.) If almost everyone picks the safe button, there is only a small decrease in population, and most people would not feel the scenario is interesting. So we say that typical results are very close to 50% of people pressing each button.

This is exponential decay: after 10 generations, if the outcomes remain around 50%, 0.1% of the population remains. After 100 generations, approximately 10^-30 of the original population remains (my calculator is being funny and rounding to 0 instead of 7.8886090522×10⁻³¹ of the population remains. If each person clones themself each generation, then it's not a problem, but it distracts from the point, so we just accept that we only have 10 generations.

There are, basically, two possibilities: the percentage of people who think, based on reading the buttons that they press, that they are evil increases, or the percentage who think they are good increases.

Any individual person could answer anything to the two questions: they could always choose the safe button, no matter what the buttons say, or they could always choose the risky button, or they might press the risky button more often than the safe button if the risky button says one of two things: either when it says "good", or when it says "evil".

The 'control' question is when the buttons have neutral, non-meaningful differences, differing only to the extent needed to indicate which button does what. (For example, positioned to the north and south, if people don't view north as evil and south as good.) We assume that with this control question, about 50% of people will choose the risky button; it is, in any case, less than 100% and more than 0%. So the question is, what is more likely to increase the percentage of people choosing the 'safe' button: labeling it as the 'good' button, or labeling it as the 'bad' button?

People want to do things that other people see as 'good'.

Possibility 1: a person who wants to do good things already sees the safe button as 'good' when it has neutral markings.

    - 1A: the safe button is marked as 'good'. They press it.

    - 1B: the safe button is marked as 'evil'. Do they still press it?

Possibility 2: a person who wants to do good things sees the safe button as 'evil' when it has neutral markings.

    - 2A: the safe button is marked as 'evil'. Do they press it?

    - 2B: the safe button is marked as 'good'. Do they press it?

Discussions around the blue and red buttons suggest that people see the safe button as 'evil'. This breaks the symmetry that would exist if we assumed that people saw labels 'good' and 'evil' with indifference.

If the safe button is labeled as 'good', people have an excuse to press it. If the risky button is labeled as 'good', it does not convince more people to press it, since they already saw it as good and pressed it.

Note that people who did not assume or think that the risky button was 'good' when it was labeled neutrally might be convinced to press it when it's labeled 'good', but this is not most people.

So in any given generation: the majority of those who see the risky button labeled as 'good' press the risky button. The majority of those who see the safe button labeled as 'good' press the safe button. When the risky button loses, the majority of the survivors are people who pressed a button labeled 'good'.

It also includes people who pressed the safe button when it was labeled 'evil'. But over time, what we expect is a survivorship bias towards people who pressed buttons labeled 'good', whether or not they thought what they were doing was good or not.

In other words, people who survived got there by doing what an external system told them was 'good'.

Note the paths of individual people: one person survived because they always choose the safe button, no matter what the labels say. Another person survived because they were lucky enough to get 10 scenarios where the safe button was labeled 'good', even though they always pick 'good'. A third person got five safe buttons labeled 'good' (5 coin flips = 3% chance), but in the sixth scenario, the safe button was labeled 'evil' and so they chose the risky button, labeled 'good'.

If the percentage of people who pick the risky button is always 49.9% due to bad luck, then no one who ever picked the risky button survives (including this third person). If it's usually 51%, with enough variation (from people who vary their choice based on the labeling being assigned a different label) that just 10% of generations are below 50%, then the survivorship bias towards people who have always picked the button labeled 'good' is much weaker, and it would take many more generations for most survivors to have always picked the 'good' button.

I'm unpublishing this post if Greta posts anything on Instagram without sharing this idea, disregarding any Stories that she posts that get deleted after 24 hours.

Originally published 27 Apr 2026, 14:18.

___

Update 27 Apr 2026, 16:35

Some comments from people who watched a 19-minute video that I didn't watch:

all the credible research I’ve looked at indicates a 110-120 degree gape for fatalis and populator, which is quite a significant bump over the 90 you posit.

The interpretation offered here regarding a more limited gape angle fails to acknowledge that the temporomandibular joint of the living animal would not have been bone-on-bone articulation.