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Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, May 16 2006 01:00 Profile #90
I guess I am also a Darwinist, but I think one should remember that the reason Darwinism is such a strong idea is that it is only a hairsbreadth from tautology: 'fittest' means 'most likely to survive', and has nothing to do with what would be best from any other point of view.

And even for a strict Darwinist anxious to avoid all other values than Darwinian fitness, there are always other points of view, because there are always longer time scales and larger groupings. The proliferation of one species and extinction of others in its genus is often a Darwinian catastrophe for the genus, which dies out entirely (and that one dominant species dies with it) when conditions change on the longer term.

In other words, cultural diversity would seem to be a valuable survival trait for the human race, and no cultural Darwinist should be calm about cultural extinction.

Having said that, I'm quite happy to let some North American aboriginal cultural traits get baptized into oblivion: for instance, perennial warfare, cannibalism, ritual torturing to death of prisoners of war, harshly enforced arbitrary taboos. And then there are cultural features that are simply doomed by advance of technology. Once you have rifles, you can try to maintain the traditional expertise in hurling harpoons, but now you've made it into an artform. You can't preserve the vital importance of harpooning as the key to survival.

As you might guess, I'm thinking of traditional Inuit culture as an example. This has got to be one of the best cases for indigenous societies, since there were no hordes of white miners or homesteaders stealing the tundra. Even the Inuit language is in fairly healthy shape, at least in eastern Canada. But it's tough.
The average Inuk watches over 3 hours of television a day, and less than half an hour of this is in Inuktitut. High school kids are starting to speak to their friends in English and French. It's really hard to think of ways to preserve traditional Inuit culture that don't amount to forcing modern-day people to live in stone age conditions. Surviving in the stone age was a full-time job, and an awful lot of aboriginal culture is just about surviving in the stone age. Take away the stone age, and you take away a lot right there.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, May 16 2006 00:30 Profile #88
quote:
Originally written by The Worst Man Ever:

[The ideology of the free market is fundamentally opposed to conceptualizing what you refer to as 'damage'. To the free-market economist, the market turning down, people losing their job, and a few hundred thousand more homeless cropping up in the streets is a natural and healthy part of the economy.
You learned this in a recent audience with the Pope of Free Market Economics, perhaps? Sure looks like a straw man to me.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, May 16 2006 00:14 Profile #87
quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

The problem is the "in a couple of years" part. The market corrects itself eventually, but how long does it take, and what damage is done in the meantime? That's hard to predict.
But this was the point of my post: I don't think this particular case actually is so hard to predict. A shortage of plumbers would indeed seem to be something that the normal free market operation will simply correct in a few years, and not something that will grow into a major depression because of non-intervention. I pointed out the obvious correcting mechanism, that high school kids will start noticing that they can train for a couple of years in plumbing and then get rich. Unless someone can point out why this won't work, we should stop fussing over the plumber shortage, since nothing else is really going to work any faster than that, anyway.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, May 13 2006 09:11 Profile #63
Hey, I'm not saying pure laissez-fair ensures paradise. But there is clearly something to the concept that free markets can correct problems. That there is some tendency to do so seems obvious, and I don't understand how one can be skeptical about that. The stronger claim is, still not that laissez-faire ensures paradise, but that free market self-correction is in most cases more efficient than dirigiste solutions, which even when they work are more apt to have bad unintended consequences. And I also find it hard to deny that this claim has a lot of validity. Thousands of humans with their own interests pressingly at stake are very apt to be collectively smarter, and more in touch with the relevant facts, than a handful of do-gooding bureaucrats.

The limitations of free market adaptability tend to appear in Prisoner's Dilemma-like situations, where everyone's individual and immediate self-interest sharply contradicts the longer-term collective interest. Such situations are by no means academic cases; from time to time they really occur and can be horrendous. The Great Depression alone is a sufficient example.

So perhaps we are speaking at cross purposes. I'm not denying that a shortage of plumbers could bring some short-to-intermediate-term economic pain. But my premise is that nothing can prevent periodic bouts of this kind of pain: if it weren't the plumbers it would be something else. Most enthusiasm for capitalism is not naive faith that it makes everything perfect, but disbelief that anything can. Life is bound to be rough; the problem is preventing it from being absolute hell.

So if we talk about the plumber shortage as a noteworthy problem, I presume that the question is whether this is going to be a grave and intractable crisis. And it seems to me that the real, if finite, power of market self-correction ought to suffice in this case to prevent that. Or at least, that anyone who wants to bewail the coming dearth of plumbers should be obliged to explain first why the market won't just bring more plumbers in a couple of years.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, May 13 2006 03:34 Profile #61
That Hamas document was interesting, if repetitive.

Question for Kelandon: why are you dubious about the market correcting itself? There are some things for which free market self-correction evidently does not work all that well, but keeping enough plumbers around is precisely the sort of thing for which it works very well. It seems obvious why it should work, and there seems to be ample evidence that in fact it does (for instance, the mere fact that the first world economies have changed so radically in the past century, without grinding to a complete halt).

Of course, the time scale for self-correction may leave something to be desired. The theory of ideal market capitalism is all about 'in the long run' equilibrium, and as John Maynard Keynes succinctly put it, in the long run we are all dead. But it really doesn't take that long to train a plumber; the Keynesian critique would seem to apply to broader and subtler problems than this.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Dreams in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, May 12 2006 13:15 Profile #36
Windows in Germany are much like these doors, and so are some outside doors. Turn the handle half way, and the door swings open sideways; turn it all the way, and it tilts down from the top, instead. In vertical mode it only opens part way, to give a bit of fresh air.

On the other hand, screens are unknown.

Back on the first hand, by Canadian standards there are essentially no mosquitoes here.

Well, there it is.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Learned Darian Speculation in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, May 12 2006 12:48 Profile #8
She has fathomless wisdom. If it were just ordinary wisdom, I agree, she'd be toast. But with fathomless, all bets are off.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Shopping Problem in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, May 12 2006 12:45 Profile #3
Do be sure to sell gemstones and emeralds only to the Fort Muck dude. He rips you off, but he never runs out of money.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, May 10 2006 13:14 Profile #56
A service economy is just one in which the service sector is dominant, not one incapable of producing any material objects. The US is not going to lose the capability of making stuff. But, for that matter, there are lots of other things to offer in exchange for imported stuff: movies, industrial design, management consulting, surgery, education, advertising, tourism ...

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, May 10 2006 12:25 Profile #53
Don't buy it. Firstly, I don't think the people who fix your overflowing pipe or wire your house can be offshored. But if we include skilled tradespeople who make products that could be shipped from overseas, well, why the sudden urge for autarky? Cabinetry isn't exactly a national security issue. Letting South Korea have most of the master carpenters runs only the terrible risk that, if South Korea ever cuts off trade, there will be a temporary price spike in fancy linen chests. Martha Stewart will be able to afford it.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Native Americans in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, May 10 2006 11:56 Profile #50
Anyone have any reasonable data on these supposed dearths of plumbers and electricians?

If it is a problem, it will really only be that plumbers and electricians get to cost even more than they do now. It will never be that a large country starts to fall apart for sheer lack of technicians. We're not talking about the last plumber dying without passing on the secret of drain traps.

Supply and demand, and pretty soon enough kids will decide they'd rather be rich as expert plumbers than starving as inept lawyers. The new equilibrium wage of plumbers will probably be higher than it is now. But on the whole that would probably be a good thing for society as a whole (c.f. the thread about income disparity).

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Fluffy Turtles : The origins in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, May 10 2006 01:26 Profile #11
Unless he's an algebrist.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
New Playable Race? in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, May 10 2006 01:23 Profile #11
Plus you'd have to disable the Change Name option.

Seriously, if horribly, Jeff has the technology (from Geneforge 3) to incorporate NPC longtime companions who participate in dialogs. So you could have the option of picking up a GIFT, presumably be finally saying Yes to one that wants you for a mate.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Spawner graphics: G1 vs G3 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, May 10 2006 01:09 Profile #15
Accursed antipodean freaks of nature: apparently even the ducks down there are seriously wacked.

[ Wednesday, May 10, 2006 01:10: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
HOOT in Richard White Games
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, May 10 2006 01:07 Profile #5
If you needed to know, they would tell you. But face it: since the upgrade to Implant 10.4.6 a few months ago, your implants can pretty much handle everything on their own, and there is really nothing you do need to know.

As far as we poor downtrodden and benighted Imponderable Archons are concerned, this is dandy, because it means everyone else will now be just as pitifully uninformed about the deeper secrets of the order as we are.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
"Terror's Marlenny" contest in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, May 9 2006 10:09 Profile #12
Grrr, another moderator hassling us about our punctuation.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Sentinel Pyrowyrms in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, May 9 2006 08:22 Profile #2
I told myself they made the greatest Shrimp Diavolo in the universe.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
What exactly are slith avatars? in The Avernum Trilogy
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, May 9 2006 00:55 Profile #7
Blichh. He tries much too hard. The easiest thing for any author to do, when the anxiety of influence gets too strong, is go sick. It's easy, in the sense that it lets you stretch a spoonfull of inspiration with a gallon of perspiration, and it will reliably generate stuff that ain't like Tolkien. But it ain't good, either. Maybe sick doesn't necessarily mean bad, but easy does. And, sad but true: trying too hard is too easy. If only mere effort made art.

I'm judging only by Perdido Street Station, but I found several of the many things that were raised in a paragraph and dismissed to be more interesting than the main menace, whose power failed to convince. I couldn't help feeling, from half way through, that the only reason slake moths were so bad was that the author was going to insist they were, because they were his "different" bad things. And the only reason those alien hyperspiders were so capriciously malign was that the author realized they would otherwise be fairy godmothers; so he has them torture a few red shirts to death for no reason, and that problem is solved. Slather on some sick and the readers will never think "Wizard of Oz meets Charlotte's Web".

And so on. You can sense the author prodding every chapter into novelty, usually by adding gratuitous gruesomeness. This we don't need.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
What exactly are slith avatars? in The Avernum Trilogy
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, May 8 2006 14:56 Profile #2
Rakshasas and Nagas were brought into the collective FRPG bestiary years before by AD&D.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Spawner graphics: G1 vs G3 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, May 8 2006 14:52 Profile #0
The spawner graphics changed between G1 and G3, from the G1 'evil flower' to the G3 'barfing stump'. I liked the G1 version much better.

Poll Information
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function launch_voter () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=vote;pollid=zoWwSDkxbLlt"); return true; } // end launch_voter function launch_viewer () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=view;pollid=zoWwSDkxbLlt"); return true; } // end launch_viewer function launch_window (url) { preview = window.open( url, "preview", "width=550,height=300,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status,menubar=no,scrollbars,resizable,copyhistory=no" ); window.preview.focus(); return preview; } // end launch_window IMAGE(votenow.gif)     IMAGE(voteresults.gif)

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
What style of graphics would you like to see in Avernum 5? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, May 8 2006 14:40 Profile #40
Taking some nice fan-made graphics on the odd rare and isolated occasion is one thing; systematically filling out Spiderweb graphics with donated art is another. If it doesn't look good and contribute significantly to the games, it's not worth doing. If it does, at some point people are bound to start feeling funny that only Jeff is getting paid for the games. If by then people have come to expect a lot of nice donated graphics in his games, Jeff is in trouble. So I don't expect he wants to start down that road.

I do think the Chitrachs have worked out very well, so perhaps we may see more one-off contributed bits like this. But I don't think donated graphics can ever expand much beyond that.

[ Monday, May 08, 2006 14:43: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The Abominable Photo Thread IV: A New Hope in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, May 8 2006 14:22 Profile #227
quote:
Originally written by Dikiyoba:

[S]houldn't it be cellos instead of violins?
No, cellos go "Zoop zoop zoop zoop zoop."

EDIT: Ask anyone.

[ Monday, May 08, 2006 14:24: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Avernum V in Avernum 4
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, May 8 2006 14:14 Profile #294
This is one of several ways in which Ran was King Lear the way King Lear would have written it: in Japan, retirement was supposed to work out for a ruler.

I suspect Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead might have been Hamlet's Hamlet. Any candidates for Macbeth's Macbeth? (Hmph; maybe, in fact, Macbeth; which puts Macbeth, and Macbeth, into peculiar sets.)

Or Othello's Othello?

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Buy GF3 or Wait for GF4? in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, May 8 2006 11:18 Profile #15
I also like the GF zone structure, because it helps you budget your playing time: I'll just do one zone. Also for the opposite reason: I'll just do one more zone. One thing I both like and dislike about G3 is that its world map is broken up into different islands, so you don't get to see the whole thing at once and guess where the zones will go. It was frustrating on the first two islands not to be able to see anything of Dhonal's Isle, but on the other hand this 'super-zone' effect did really motivate me to get to the next map, to see the next island.

I have been wondering how G4 (or G5 or whatever) might handle a large city. Perhaps something a bit like the A1-3 towns would actually do the trick: an area in the game map is blocked off, and if you enter it then you move to a new map, kind of the way you do in G3 when you sail to a new island. But this new map represents a single city, and might contain quite a few zones.

Ehh, it's probably not necessary to do it that way. You could make a big city the same way as in G3, just by packing a lot of zones close together.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
"Policing" ourselves? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, May 8 2006 10:43 Profile #86
I take JS's post as Swiftian sarcasm. Impressively multi-pronged, too.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00

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