Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
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| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| picking a job in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, May 2 2005 06:52
Profile
As a participant in the physics industry I am really happy to see people advocating a physics degree as a career launcher. Please, tell all your friends. It's not addictive at all, and the first integral is free. The only caveat I would add is, make sure that you learn to write, too. You need that for pretty much everything, including physics, but you won't get it if you only study math and science courses in college. [ Monday, May 02, 2005 06:53: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| How about a different kind of game... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, May 1 2005 19:20
Profile
I think a turn-based FPS would have to de-emphasize shooting a fair bit. So in effect it would be a Choose-your-own-adventure. I'm not holding my breath for 'Sceneforge'. [ Sunday, May 01, 2005 19:21: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| my grang-grandfather died in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, May 1 2005 19:12
Profile
Okay, my understanding of Purgatory is mainly from Dante; but what it amounts to is that Purgatory is not about repentance but about penance. Souls steeped in sin, although saved by faith, require sanctification before they can enter Heaven. The idea is that this process is bound to be painful. Interestingly, this issue was taken very seriously by Bertrand Russell, who used it as an argument against Christianity. IIRC, he confessed that his character was bad enough that he was really no fit subject for eternal felicity. Yet he argued that any change that would make him into a good enough person to survive Heaven would effectively annihilate the Bertrand Russell he was, just as thoroughly as if there were no life after death at all. I think Russell was onto something. The concept of becoming the best possible version of myself, as opposed to someone else entirely, is quite nontrivial. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Trouble Of Times. in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, May 1 2005 19:01
Profile
Meridians are the lines of longitude. AM and PM stand for ante meridiem and post meridiem, which are simply Latin for 'before midday' and 'after midday' respectively. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| NPCs neccessary? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, May 1 2005 15:17
Profile
They're kind of fun, and since you get to control them, they are at least potentially worth their cost in experience sharing. If you pick them up, remember to upgrade their abilities when they gain levels! Unlike with your creations, it won't cost you any essence when you upgrade Alwan and Greta, and it keeps them quite competitive as you advance through the game. You certainly don't need them; I played one game without them fine. But now I'm bringing Greta along, for a different experience on the second game, and she's okay. I started out with Alwan too, but after he got blown away by one of the four big Spawners on Harmony, I didn't bother to go back and get him. I'm looking forward to playing an uber-loyalist Guardian next time, with Alwan as my wingman. [ Sunday, May 01, 2005 15:20: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| THE GREAT DEBATE in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 12:58
Profile
The ape language thing is actually very controversial. I haven't heard about gorillas learning sign language; that seems pretty improbable, since I would be very surprised if any researchers have been able to do the close one-on-one training, which is required for this sort of thing, with such large and dangerous animals as gorillas. The best thing along these lines that I know about is bonobo monkeys supposedly learning to point to symbols on a desktop. And the problem with that is distinguishing whether they have merely learned to do a certain trick in order to obtain a certain reward, as dogs have been doing for millennia, or whether they have actually gotten the idea that the desktop pictures are abstract symbols that mean things. My wife would know this sort of thing better, but I believe that the consensus in the field at the moment is rather skeptical about the latter interpretation. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Deep Things in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 11:49
Profile
Thanks; found the key. I had just overlooked it, as I feared, and it would have been very annoying to have to comb through the whole darn place again, fighting poison the whole way. About the Deep Crystal: Sigh. I was afraid of that. I picked it up last game very easily with my Agent. Horrible poison areas are no big deal with Agents and Guardians, but are such a drag with a Shaper. In the first place I always let my Shapers stay wimpy, and carry all kinds of gear that sacrifices their own strength in favor of creations'. So a few basin belches will wipe me right out. And in the second place, you always have to go through these poison areas in combat mode, and with a big squad of creations that gets awfully tedious. I'll probably just bypass the Plant this time. I'm not going to use the Emerald Chestguard anyway, since the Crystalline Shroud would suit me better. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| THE GREAT DEBATE in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 11:11
Profile
This is precisely the problem I have: I don't see how we can tell. As far as I can see, any animal could well be 'just' a complicated machine, with reflexive responses to stimuli, and complex instinctive behaviors, but no-one 'there' inside, to actually experience fear, or pain, or anything at all. Humans have strong instincts to anthropomorphize behavior. We instinctively interpret even the utterly mechanical behavior of simple robots in terms of conscious planning and motivation. So although I do attach some weight to subjective reports that 'my cat is definitely conscious', I don't find them at all conclusive. On the theoretical side, it is not clear whether one should expect consciousness or intelligence to evolve first. Sufficient intelligence to make the complex plans that humans do would seem unlikely to work without consciousness, but prior to that stage, it is not clear which of the two would lead the way. Nor is it clear that consciousness is an all-or-nothing phenomenon; it may well be a matter of degree. Or it may not be. There are severely handicapped people, who may not seem much more intelligent than some animals; and yet, at least to my moral intuition, killing them is no whit less murder than slaughtering an Einstein. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| A quest for information in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 08:39
Profile
Well, if you redefine 'save the world' into 'fight someone', the plot is indeed old. But there does seem to me to be a nontrivial issue of scale, here. As far as I know, the stories just listed all deal with problems that were important, but clearly localized even within the context of the stories themselves. I was under the impression that Gilgamesh was simply trying to find a way to live forever, that it was only his own death that he was trying to avoid. The Baghavad Gita deals, on the literal level, with a battle that must be fought between two rival branches of a powerful family. Don Quixote is just playing knight errant in general, with no notion of saving any more than small parts of his world. The 1001 Nights stories are set in the vast medieval Islamic empire, and none of them involves more than a single kingdom within it; moreover, all the plots I remember are really driven by individual problems, with the few realm-savings that do occur serving as mere backdrop. The Odyssey isn't about anything more than getting Odysseus home in time to save his marriage; once he does get home, he is actually set to wandering again, so he doesn't even really get to save Ithaca. I don't know the plot of Orlando Furioso. But I think that having the main plot be about saving everything that anyone in the story is aware of is a relatively recent notion. It might well have originated with Tolkien. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Rebels on Dhonal? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 08:27
Profile
Yes, I thought that was how it would be, but I wanted to be sure. Thanks for the independent confirmation. Last time I was in such a hurry to toast Spharon, and used so much speed doing it with my singleton Agent, that if he did engage me in his charming conversation, I had forgotten about it. (Plus that time I had no idea where his soul-shard was, and never thought to look in a mere clay jar right beside him, so I was busy trying to sneak into his back rooms while he was still fighting me.) This time I got to enjoy his repartee before feeding him to my hungry Glaahks. [ Saturday, April 30, 2005 11:54: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Item Recipes in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 06:44
Profile
Hawthorne does not give you the All-Protector. You have to make it yourself. I find it a rather lame item, though. There are Drakon skins -- the only kind you need, whether Ur or Perfect or whatever, there is actually only one kind -- in three places. The Drakon that emerges from a tank after a lot of Drayks; the Drakon that sells things; and some Drakon-thing in Tears-R-Uss (Monastery Caves). The first two are on the Isle of Spears, and it doesn't take long to find them. The last will take a while to get hold of because you need the access bracelets. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| RWG in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 05:33
Profile
That sounds plausible. In fact, I just saw the same illusion at another museum, which gave precisely this explanation. Congratulations! On another color-related note: one of my favorite fun facts. The color magenta is named after the battle of Magenta, which is a town in what is now NW Italy. The color was one of the first wholly artificial dyes, and was developed that year. The main market for artificial dyes -- and in those early days it was an enormously booming market -- was women's fashion, of which Paris was, of course, the capital. So naming the new shade after one of Napoleon III's relatively few victories was a commercial tactic that paid off well. This rather bizarre fact, that what we think of today as almost a primary color was named after an event, is just the poster child for the fascinating history of artificial dyes, which were discovered in the latter 19th century, launched the chemical industry, and changed the human world from the rather drab place it was for most of human history, into the colorful place we now take for granted. [ Sunday, May 01, 2005 19:15: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Rebels on Dhonal? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 05:13
Profile
I'm trying to be the most rabid rebel possible, but I haven't found a way to get the rebel forces on Dhonal to accept me. Greta doesn't even seem to suggest that that might be possible; her only helpful ideas are to get help from the shapers to fight through the rogues. Is the only possible plotline the one where you help the shapers right up to the last moment, when you repair the creator instead of destroying it? I understand from posts here, and from my own experience in a previous game, that you can't avoid fighting Spharon's runed serviles. But someone suggested that you could talk with Spharon himself. Is this just the usual 'banter before I kill you' conversation, or can you actually make friends with him? If so, how? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Crafting list organized by item used in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, April 30 2005 04:18
Profile
Experiment has shown that the Lightning Girdle requires Solidified Flame instead of a Deep Focus Orb, even though the in-game recipe hint seems to agree with the Hint Book in indicating a DFO. There also seems to be a problem with the Charm of Mental Focus; the given recipe apparently doesn't work, and suspicion centers on the Rotghroth Fang being incorrect. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What do YOU want to see in G4? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 17:34
Profile
It turns out Ghaldring the ultimate Drakon is just a frontman for the real power behind the rebellion: the mighty Ur-Ornk Lord! [ Friday, April 29, 2005 19:07: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| THE GREAT DEBATE in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 15:44
Profile
Animal species that are 'R-strategists', having huge numbers of offspring, are arguably producing a lot of individuals whose sole purpose is to be eaten by predators, in order that a few of their siblings may survive. Are we sure plants, and bacteria, aren't conscious? I don't really suppose that they are, but here's the point: if we can eat anything that isn't conscious, and creatures can lack consciousness because of insurmountable physiological limitations, then perhaps we can also eat some animals, even if they exhibit defensive responses to threat or injury, as long they also lack consciousness. Having a brain may be a necessary condition for consciousness, but is it sufficient? Can we eat insects? Earthworms? Krill? Once it's a matter of deciding how good a creature's brain is, perhaps the dividing line really should be drawn well above cows? In other words, doesn't the supposedly moral issue of vegetarianism become a question of scientific fact, instead? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Benedictus XVI has a twin brother... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 15:34
Profile
See? Benedict XVI just says, 'Palpatine who?' -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Which difficulty level do you play at? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 15:11
Profile
This should maybe be a poll. I play at Torment all the time. I'm not sure why, since it really only makes a difference for a few tough fights, and on them I end up save-loading enough that all claim to machismo must be lost. Oh, yeah: it's because I'm so cool. :cool: That's why! :rolleyes: -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Deep Things in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 15:06
Profile
Can anyone remind me where the Deep Crystal and the Deep Focus Orb (not the one in Tears-R-Uss) are? I'm pretty sure I found them fairly early in my last game, but now I've just opened the Darkstone anvil and I still don't have them, so I think I may have missed them somewhere. Please don't say one of them is in the Purification Plant. I dragged my poor Vlish all through that place, got to the western doors and discovered I didn't have the key. Anyone know where that key is? EDIT: Found the Deep Focus Orb. Where is Deep Crystal? [ Saturday, April 30, 2005 08:26: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| THE GREAT DEBATE in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 08:09
Profile
Just why are we sure it is morally acceptable to eat vegetables? Some are much bigger than we are and can live much longer. If injured they react, albeit slowly. Wild plants would certainly seem to have richer and more exciting lives than their domesticated cousins, which have mostly been bred into weird shapes that make them dependent on humans. Perhaps vegetarianism, even veganism, doesn't go far enough. I'm not really just being facetious. The challenge for vegetarians is to formulate criteria that consistently permit herbivorism but forbid carnivorism. I don't think this is actually as easy as one might expect. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Errand boy vlish in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 08:00
Profile
Actually, if you look closely, you are amazed to realize that Vlish have only two tentacles. It's eating too many calamari that makes them seem more. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Easter Eggs in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 07:57
Profile
The Ornk spawner. I keep flinching whenever I see the dreaded message that the Spawner has made a new creation, and I have to remind myself each time that it's okay, they're just Ornks. It's in the Monastery of Tears [AKA 'Outer Tears-R-Uss']. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Ouch in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 07:49
Profile
Apparently when they say 'General' they ain't just whistlin' Dixie. Still, my sympathy. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| THE GREAT DEBATE in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 07:14
Profile
Drakefyre's subtle distinction between cattle and cows is eluding me, since I would use 'cows' and 'cattle' interchangeably in most contexts. Is it supposed to be about how 'cattle' can include bulls? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What do YOU want to see in G4? in Geneforge Series | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, April 29 2005 05:01
Profile
I want to see some luxury Shaper accommodation. A place where there are comfy chairs, attentive servile waiters, and spawners that make fine wines and espresso. Some little corner of the map that says 'We Shapers don't just know how to shape life; we know how to live.' -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |