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In this topic, I celebrate my inability to shut up. in General
The Immortal
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Member # 4
 written Saturday, June 3 2006 10:12 Profile Homepage #29
Well, I've had some unholy history with bread, but it has been short and uneventful.

Honestly, there are better spooge mops out there.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
What continent do you live on? (in which the voices take over) in General
The Immortal
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Member # 4
 written Friday, June 2 2006 09:54 Profile Homepage #4
In before the 1984 jokes start.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Reputation system in BoA? in Blades of Avernum Editor
The Immortal
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Member # 4
 written Thursday, June 1 2006 19:31 Profile Homepage #4
There are a ton of things I would implement with any reputation system. For instance, for each "region" (a city and its outlying areas), I'd give a number of days before word of your actions in one region passes to another region, and maybe even an amount of time before word of your actions passes to the region itself.

Plus, I might actually add modifiers. For instance, a "violence" reputation that might make you unpopular with religious types. Or a "cruelty" modifier that will make you MORE popular with the particularly evil. But that depends on what you're aiming for.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Reputation system in BoA? in Blades of Avernum
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Thursday, June 1 2006 19:31 Profile Homepage #4
There are a ton of things I would implement with any reputation system. For instance, for each "region" (a city and its outlying areas), I'd give a number of days before word of your actions in one region passes to another region, and maybe even an amount of time before word of your actions passes to the region itself.

Plus, I might actually add modifiers. For instance, a "violence" reputation that might make you unpopular with religious types. Or a "cruelty" modifier that will make you MORE popular with the particularly evil. But that depends on what you're aiming for.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Thursday, June 1 2006 13:25 Profile Homepage #98
quote:
Originally written by Germany Wins:

More mods is the true solution. TM, you up for the responsibility?
Oh, hells yeah.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Peer Review Process (was Evolution Stuff (was What is Religion, exactly?)) in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 22:13 Profile Homepage #72
quote:
Originally written by Robinator, #034:

There's also a city in Germany called Worms. Yummy.
IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Luther46c.jpg)

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
New Village Idiot? in General
The Immortal
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Member # 4
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 21:09 Profile Homepage #2
How "tolerant."

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
New Village Idiot? in General
The Immortal
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Member # 4
 written Wednesday, May 31 2006 20:59 Profile Homepage #0
This is an anonymous poll, but please go ahead and answer it.

Poll Information
This poll contains 1 question(s). 8 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

function launch_voter () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=vote;pollid=tVPFbbJXwtUQ"); return true; } // end launch_voter function launch_viewer () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=view;pollid=tVPFbbJXwtUQ"); 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: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Tuesday, May 30 2006 06:02 Profile Homepage #68
quote:
Originally written by Ash Lael:

TM's saving his strength for when Exodus gets released. :P
...this is pretty much dead-on.

quote:
Capitalism doesn't create a pure meritocracy; nothing does. Without a pure meritocracy, the poor can't be blaimed entirely for their status. This seems like common sense.
Of course it doesn't make sense. That's why I call it wrong. I was merely displaying the ideological conclusion of what PoD Person had suggested (and what tends to be a very common stock-defense).

quote:
The global thoughts on possibility or impossibility of manipulating with human society both in their minds and as a result in their deeds seem to lead nowhere but dictatorship, no matter what ideas were followed at the start.
1. This is not technically a sentence.
2. Dictatorship? Then you're saying that ANY ideology that attempts to change the status quo (ie, how things are right now) is inherently dictatorial by that same logic. In fact, the result of your argument is that anything which we do not think/do right now is inherently stifling, which itself is the most stifling line of argument I have ever heard of. (In fact, your argument itself RELIES on human nature to say that it is inevitable [ie, "power corrupts absolutely"]-- otherwise, you're essentially calling me a jackass. Thanks.)

quote:
What is a competition then, were it not the struggle for better life?
It can be an utterly fruitless struggle that parodies itself. For instance, if I shoot you in both feet and punch you in the nose, then ask you to race against Olympic athletes, it's not particularly competitive, now is it? (Of course, this concern could have easily flowed from shifting idiom.)

EDIT:

IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Lynx_art.jpg)
LUKE... I DID YOUR MOM.

[ Tuesday, May 30, 2006 06:04: Message edited by: Keto-san ]

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Monday, May 29 2006 15:34 Profile Homepage #58
quote:
I'd like to take TM's argument apart and see if I can understand it and why it didn't work.
I'd like to assume that my opponent is wrong from the get-go and go on from there too.

quote:
I'm doing this more as an exercise as a writing teacher — since I do teach essay writing as part of an SAT class — than anything else, really.
You're on the internet. You don't have to explain that you don't give a crap. But for reference, I'd also like to go down as stating that my opponents are all intellectually impotent.

quote:
You have still not begun to make an argument.
I'm saying that your proposed solution is entirely hollow since you don't really determine how much of either is needed. Why I spend most of my post on it is because it's too good to be true.

quote:
I take this to mean, basically, "If you have any capitalism, then competition in a society should be awarded accordingly." This makes no sense, and I'd like to dissect why.
My justification is less a direct argument about what you said (for reasons above), and more an assumption I have to make since you basically don't. My reasoning is that if capitalism has ANY place in a society, it is for that reason and that reason alone. If you can provide another justification for it, it'd have been nice to have heard that before.

quote:
This has two problems: "award competition" and "accordingly." Do you mean reward competition? And according to what? I take "accordingly" to mean "in accordance with some principle," but I don't know what that principle is.
...wait. You leave a system totally undefined, and then question ME for not filling in blanks about something I'm forced to MAKE UP? That's cold. Fine: according to merit. In a society where rising above the competition equals reimbursement (aka a meritocracy), merit is the gauge by which deeds are given payment. Or, at least, that is the principal moral justification of capitalism, whose presence in your system was my self-assigned job to explain.

quote:
This is also kind of a weird assumption: capitalism cannot exist without competition of the kind that you're expecting based on your later discussion. I'd be more careful about stating exactly what you mean by "competition" straight out in order to make this part of the argument less leaky. It would be really nice if you filled in the gap explicitly: "competition" (by your definition) ensures inequality of outcome. Then show how this creates a contradiction: that capitalism must include competition, and competition creates inequality of outcome, which in turn creates inequality of opportunity, which means that there can't be a level playing field. Thus, capitalism and socialism together can't create fairness.
Wait a second-- if capitalism cannot even exist with the type of competition present, why is it such a stretch to put a name to it?

Or, in other words-- you've done a rather fine job of filling in what gaps may not have been entirely self-evident for you. It'd only be fair if you give me leeway to do the same for you.

quote:
I have no idea what makes a mix of socialism and capitalism "postmodern," but I suspect that you don't, either.
And I suspect many things about you I (read as: the moderation) chose to omit.

For instance, I could say your policies are based on nothing but feel-good rhetoric whose only goal is to act pragmatically big-balled at coctail parties and bury the disadvantage in false promises and BS.

But I won't. Honestly, it'd just be crude.

(To answer your question-- well, more line your insult, but nevertheless-- I feel your utopia is postmodern because of the myth of unlimited potential that fell out of postmodernism. See, for example, Reagan. Which certainly doesn't fall from the actual written word of Wittgenstein, Derrida, Foucault, et al, but what from that era did? Essentially, postmodern globalism relies on the myth of constant growth, which is in-line with the meritocracy a capitalism promises.)

quote:
Competition has a value? Competiveness is still among society's values? Again, your poor word choice and awkward construction is making your point less clear.
And yet you manage.

quote:
That's "incentive," not "imperative." Again, poor word choice is making your point less clear.
I used "imperative" and meant it. I do not look highly upon gov't officials or capitalists.

quote:
I didn't have to read the rest of the post to know what you were going to say.
That's funny, because my post actually DID go on to say different things.

quote:
This is the point where you really lose control of your language and of your rhetoric. It's not clear what "competition... being a functional agent of meritocracy" means.
quote:
What this literally means, as far as I can tell, is that competition no longer causes meritocracy.
Moving on...

quote:
In order for this to make sense, you have to fill a gap: competition creates social stratification.
Which is exactly what you were able to salvage from what I wrote before.

quote:
How the hell do you get from "The rich will help their friends and family not entirely on the basis of merit" to "The poor will blame themselves for being poor"?
I'm saying that competition as an ideology makes this the only tenable conclusion.
(For instance I wrote:)
quote:
Competition in this sense... ...shifts the blame of exploitation to the exploited.
quote:
Do you think that the poor don't know that the rich help out their friends and family not entirely on the basis of merit? Have you ever talked with someone who grew up in a low-income family? The poor know (indeed, all too well) that a mixed-socialist system isn't a pure meritocracy!
Wait-- let me get this straight. You're yelling at me for PoD Person's arguments? He was the one who said that the poor are perfectly happy, which I both denied, and stated what you're citing as one of the ONLY possibilities.

I was not explaining how the poor actually think (except for when I explicitly said that they reject oppression). I was explaining how capitalism expects them to think.

quote:
Now I'm guessing that you're just saying, "Your proposed system may not solve anything," which isn't really what "solvency challenges" would mean
Wrong. This word I gained from debating-- man, this is one of my idiosyncracies that is both common and not idiosyncratic.

quote:
A sabot... a shoe? A shoe in the gears? What are you going on about?
Sabotage. Okay, THAT was a bit obscure.

quote:
And that wasn't and wouldn't be my assertion, but whatever.
Whatever's right. Honestly-- when I can't construct an argument from what you say, I dunno how I can be chided for it. And besides, even if you weren't going to assert this, SOMEONE was. It's a stock capitalist defense.

quote:
I'm considering. You surely are talking about intellectual trends, not "how humans thought" — that is, movements of popular opinion.
Well, that was my thought too, which is why I used the dark ages. But honestly-- as absurd as intellectuals in the 80's were, the common folk weren't that far behind. ("It's a good morning in America...")

quote:
Another massive leap: from "Changes of public opinion occur" to "Human nature itself can be changed deliberately."
I don't think anyone's arguing that human beings can grow wings by force of will, but on the other hand, nobody's arguing that the inability to grow wings by force of will is indicative of communism's failure-by-default either. What people define as human nature-- namely, greed-- can be changed. And if it can be changed in an individual, then it can be changed in a society.

In fact, if your counter-argument is "you cannot destroy human nature, but you can suppress it" (which it may or may not be, but in case you didn't pick up on this, I ignored your arguments and started being pre-emptive a while back), then I addressed that much as well:
quote:
Clearly, any changes in the way people think are artificed, but artificial is not the same as erroneous. In the context of human thought, human ideas are as real as one can possibly get.
In other words (although I admit, I was waxing way too broadly), as much as "human nature" is a real force to be contended with, so are any "artificial" social constructs. (And of course I'd also argue that human nature is 99% manufacturd, reserving the remaining 1% to copulation and breathing, which I said after that anyway.)

quote:
This completely doesn't follow, partly because you're confusing human ideas and human nature.
Yeah... Okay, again, I really did wax too broadly with that one, but that was an assertion I did make.

quote:
Huh? Do you mean that people didn't object to them before and now they do? If so, say so explicitly.
No, I'm saying that so much as one idea can be wrong, any idea can be wrong. It's a case for relativism. (Essentially, I'm addressing the claim of brainwashing that "communists" so frequently encounter, which I had prefaced in avoid-the-word style simply to avoid giving more fuel to righties. So on that count, yeah, I should have been less duplicitous.)

quote:
You mean, "change" it. Again, poor word choice is making your meaning obscure.
Well, not really-- considering that I would espouse that it's a construct AND a bad one, my suggestion would very much be to get rid of it.

quote:
this argument applies to any society, capitalist or not, that does not perfectly assign rewards solely on the basis of "merit" (whatever that is). Since it is not possible to create a real-world society that does perfectly assign rewards solely on the basis of merit, this critique applies to all societies with any potential for existence and cannot be used to judge between them.
My critique was that meritocracy is inherently cruel, self-defeating and that it must be done away with. You seem to be under the impression that I think meritocracy is a good thing that we simply haven't realized, which is about as wrong as you could be about where I stand.

The whole bit about human nature I wrote as a proof of how capitalist justifications of meritocracy (despite its being bad-- see Student of Trinity's "Churchill defense") are hollow, and it is POSSIBLE for us to be completely rid of it.

quote:
Also, your writing is plagued with gaps in reasoning that the reader has to fill in. Make sure that you build your argument with every appropriate step so that there aren't missing pieces.
Yeah, you're right-on with that one.

quote:
One way to do this is to make sure that you've built the entire argument in the abstract ("Competition creates stratification, stratification creates favoritism, favoritism mucks with meritocracy") in writing before you start inserting examples. Then don't delete the argument in the abstract! Those points will summarize your major examples.
You seem to think that I pick these out of my head as they come out in some sort of emulation of stream of consciousness.

...

Okay, so you're two-for-two.

quote:
You can write everything that you're trying to say in a much simpler fashion, and I suggest that you do so in order to be understood.
IMAGE(http://cgi.bbc.co.uk/totp/images/artist_photos/meatloaf.jpg)
Three out of three ain't bad.

Fine, so I'll proofread my posts in the future and axe out any words that are large/obscure (if at all possible).

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Sunday, May 28 2006 15:43 Profile Homepage #43
quote:
However, the assertion that human nature must be changed implicitly supports the vanguard theory (changed by whom?).
It should be changed by the people at large. A great deal of the problem with lenin was that he failed quite dramatically at changing the mindset of the people (and stalin/kruschev didn't help any either), and what resulted was a government that was supported intellectually exclusively by the upper-class, whereas the lower-class was as mystified as a destitute petit-bourgeois in any first-world country could ever hope to be.

quote:
After all, marxism is the darling of the overprivileged elite nowadays, not "the people."
Make no mistake- I was born rich enough to get a decent education. Not that I am ashamed for that, because I consider an education something that all human beings should be afforded.

Although it's not as if the exploited (in this country alone, nevermind the ever-present third world!) have actually been exposed to many positive ideas. If the poor honestly don't want to change the world, it's going to be because they're so intensely jaded from being perpetually prostrate (and prostate as well), or because meritocracy's main lesson tells them to hate themselves for not succeeding, and if they hate themselves, then they certainly won't fight for their rights, now will they?

quote:
It would seem that the masses prefer their opiates, religion and a miniscule chance of becoming fantabulously rich, to an optimal distribution of resources or the promise thereof. If the lower classes prefer those things to a Marxist society, I see no pressing need to change the status quo in that regard.
Right. The slaves prefered living under their masters-- I say we get the national guard back home and have them work on a final solution to the negroe problem.

quote:
I do not in fact gather what your viewpoint is, except that it is extremely anti-capitalist. That leaves a wide range of possibilities.
I know. And my response in my post was that, despite the fact that I did not outline an exact system in my posts, I'd still use the same justification to support at least the solvency (if not merit) any system. (I also hinted at the fact that I very much support the dissolution of property, but little more than "hinted".)

(Although honestly, "anti-capitalist" isn't quite as broad as people usually think. The anarchists such as Bakunin were at one point called communists (and that point was the Hague Conference), and their primary disagreement was over, yeah, solvency.)

quote:
You see, I've spent a good ten to fifteen years, depending on how you count it, at the very top of the world's academic pyramid.
Not that I doubt you, but whereat and at what role?

EDIT: And as for what I mean by "the issue of solvency," I mean "questions as to whether or not communism will have solvency."

[ Sunday, May 28, 2006 16:00: Message edited by: Keto-san ]

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Sunday, May 28 2006 12:15 Profile Homepage #38
I just made a post that essentially knocks down the issue of solvency as an impedement to communism, and yet the issue of my stance is somehow shrouded in mystery?

There are many problems with your post, least of which is a lack of literary subtelty (and I wasn't even trying to be subtle either). Let's just say that unless you disagree with many of the things that I stated, you won't be able to assert much of ANYTHING against ANY system I propose, so even if your plan is to pin me down as being against "property" and then whining about how I'm going to take away everyone's blankie, you'll STILL have to confront the notions I've outlined in this post ANYWAY.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Sunday, May 28 2006 11:08 Profile Homepage #34
quote:
So wouldn't the failure of vanguard theory itself (as opposed to a few historical failures to implement it) be tantamount to the failure of Leninism?
Yes. I wasn't aware that I was defending leninism here. :P

quote:
Well, if you read works of Lenin or Marks, you shall see, that true Communism in its final state is rather unachievable. I can't imagine a country not using money system at all.
Human nature is ghostly. If you cannot see a system that does not use money, who's to say that your descendants will see things the same way?

quote:
The main problem is that it cannot be achieved through tyrany. Actually, nothing can be. So there is the failure of vanguard leaders, but not the theory.
But if the vanguard theory espouses that communism can be gained through a tyrranical minority leading the way when in actuality such a thing is impossible, doesn't that show a failure of the theory?

quote:
Also I accept democracy. BUT from the definition of this word, or better to say, from its translation, it is citizens, who decide. Any country with one key figure: president, monarch, emperor, shah, etc. is not a democratic one.
I know it might be difficult to imagine this in a time when we're actually watching a vanguard (ie. neoconservatism) die, but leaders only exist with the people's permission.

quote:
A rosy ultimate goal might get Karl Marx credit for being a nice guy at heart, but Marxism has to stand or fall on its theories about how to get there.
Actually, Marx was quite an irate ass-hole in person.
PS- He also goes on to call romantics "social slime," so calling his communism a "rosy, ultimate goal" is a bit self-defeating.

quote:
I think that Marx's critique of capitalism still stands: capitalism was horribly corrupt in his day.
Right. Nowadays, however, our methods of human resource extraction from the third world are as humane as they are profitable?

quote:
The problem is that the answer is a blend of socialism and capitalism within democracy, not a communist anarchy (and not the Leninist communist dictatorship).
Pleasant answer. Not much, but pleasant. I, too, think a blend of crap with ambrosia would possess a more appealing boquet of fragrances.

But then, I suppose the onus lies on me to prove why it's imperative for me to prove why this proposed "solution" is bad. But that's difficult, considering that you leave the crap-to-good ratio undefined, but for any of capitalism to be preserved, the only moral assertion you could possibly make is that competition in a society should be awarded accordingly, "socialism" being factored in to guarantee fair competition.

Which, of course, is still a tricky assertion-- what about inheritance? Wasn't the father (or ideally mother/father in your postmodern utopia) fighting for his son's well-being when he did that much better than his competitors? Ah, but wait, his son still gets to go to the same schools as everyone else. But what if there's a private school that wants to compete with the socialized school? Is that contrary to competition?

But let's set practical difficulties aside, since I have no idea what shape your postmodern utopia will take precisely. What of the means of production? If competition is still a value, then every factory worker will still be working for her/himself. But if everyone is still fighting for the self (and has the possibility of reaping the rich rewards for doing so!), and is prompted to do so by the society's ideology and the gov't's methodology, then what is the imperative to maintain competition? The people on top, after having struggled oh-so-valiantly to do so (well, hypothetically, anyway), will be the first ones to try and preserve their positions. Competition in this sense ceases being a functional agent of meritocracy (if ever it was one-- hence the "postmodern utopia") and becomes an ideological burden, which shifts the blame of exploitation to the exploited. In other words, when a society is based on the notion of people fighting for themselves, don't be surprised when they do so.

But even apart from that it will cause solvency challenges, your postmodern utopia has no reason to exist in comparison to, say, a communism (your "blend" minus all the capitalist stuff). If your assertion is that human nature will be a sabot in the gears of a communist society, then consider how humans thought in the dark ages. Hell, consider how they thought in the 80's. Clearly, any changes in the way people think are artificed, but artificial is not the same as erroneous. In the context of human thought, human ideas are as real as one can possibly get. If the problem is the way people actually think-- ie, the current nature of most humans-- then the solution to make communism feasible is to determine the causes for damaging thoughts and work with the person to change those thought processes. If human thought patterns were immutable, history would never have changed in the first place since people would always be reproducing the same circumstances. If human thought patterns were somehow sacred and not to be touched, then who is to object to genocide or imperialism?
If human nature is an impedement for the greatest good for all individuals, we must get rid of it.

(And if I sound like Mill, this is absolutely right. I would agree with Mill as well, if he didn't spend all of his time contradicting himself. If you read A System of Logic, for instance, you come out thinking that the author of On Liberty is either mistaken or an ass.)

EDIT:

quote:
There is no relation between the Soviet government and the mafia.
Not true. The mafia and soviet elites began waxing guanxi as time passed.

quote:
Socialism and democracy are not historically mutually exclusive.
For a socialist society to exist without democracy is something of an absurdity. Certainly, it could, but democracy at this point appears to be the most effective method to reach communism. Plus, for socialism to not have a democratic process by necessity rather than mere coincidence shows that it's going to be toppled for trying to exist in a more backwards society anyway.

[ Sunday, May 28, 2006 11:17: Message edited by: Keto-san ]

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 20:13 Profile Homepage #22
quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

Having read a bit of Marx and Lenin in college, I have recently been impressed by Malia's argument in The Soviet Tragedy. He makes a detailed analysis of claims that, at any of several possible points, the Soviet system went off its good Leninist rails. He concludes that it was really those rails themselves that were the problem: ruthless coercion of many by few was there from the start, and it poisoned the good fruit for which it was supposed to have been committed.
In other words, the failures of vanguard theory.

Interesting fact- Fukuyama has gone on to call the neo-conservatives "leninists."

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
A Poll for My Sake in Blades of Avernum
The Immortal
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 written Thursday, May 25 2006 15:25 Profile Homepage #11
Um... No, but I know what you're talking about.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
My God can beat up your God! in General
The Immortal
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 written Thursday, May 25 2006 12:45 Profile Homepage #89
Of course jesus KNEW Hebrew. Thing was, Hebrew was the second language in Palestine, and it's not like jesus was preaching to Egyptian Jews. It would have been unnatural and stilted for jesus to have spoken in Hebrew, and for the poor/uneducated, it would have been utterly incomprehensible.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
BUGS! in Blades of Avernum Editor
The Immortal
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Member # 4
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 12:21 Profile Homepage #56
This is TM being TM.

[ Thursday, May 25, 2006 22:59: Message edited by: Khoth ]

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
BUGS! in Blades of Avernum
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 12:21 Profile Homepage #56
This is TM being TM.

[ Thursday, May 25, 2006 22:59: Message edited by: Khoth ]

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
My God can beat up your God! in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 11:43 Profile Homepage #83
quote:
Originally written by Explication:
Non-coding text:
A question on Biblical literalism that just occurred to me:
IMAGE(http://www.chick.com/tractimages40482/0003/0003_07.gif)

IMAGE(http://www.chick.com/tractimages40482/0003/0003_08.gif)

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
a4 is the best game yet in Avernum 4
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Wednesday, May 24 2006 20:24 Profile Homepage #101
quote:
If your going to keep whining, then let's see YOU make a game as good as Jeff has done, market it, sell it, and raise a family off of it. Until you do, you should shut your yaps.
Lame juice. This is the absolute worst way of trying to rebuke Alec I could think of. That's like saying, if you don't like a movie, that you should STFU, buy a video camera and make one that's better. Honestly. I can say that a TV program is crap without having made one of my own, why are JV's games any different?

PS- While it's true that I haven't raised a family on game design yet (and I have absolutely no plans of doing so), I've spent the last 6 years of my life hammering out scenarios. So even if you can chide Alec (who actually HAS made scenarios, but not to an overly meaningful extent) on the basis that he hasn't gotten his feet in the water and tried to put something out, then what about when I say that A4 is bad? Or Stareye? Or Thuryl? Heck, Alcritas has been against Avernum from the get-go.

quote:
If you like Exile, KEEP PLAYING EXILE!
Sorry, but we've beaten it a few times since 1995.

quote:
Jeff has a consistant record of putting out good shareware games...
Consistant [sic]? The last two Geneforges have been painfully unimaginative, Avernum 3 was a remake of a game which was never even CLOSE to selling itself on plot in the first place, and Avernum 4 absolutely takes the cake when it comes to being BAD. If it sounds like bellyaching, then I would appreciate not being fed inedible crap in the first place.

So then-- why protest at all, rather than leave? Well, one convenient excuse for me is that I'm still around for BoX matters. But aside from that, offerings like ASR, NG, E1-2, and even GF1 show that JV can put out good things. If cliches are abandoned, new things are tried and there's genuine interest in the plot (as I can't imagine that A4 was any less a chore for JV to make than it was for the player to hack through), good games are the inevitable result.

And, of course, if he wants to think that only the unintelligent buy his games, well... He can only manage that assumption if his consumers let him. ~_~

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
A Poll for My Sake in Blades of Avernum
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Wednesday, May 24 2006 19:09 Profile Homepage #2
Um... Let's say "Red Ruby Regiment" now stands for "None."

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
A Poll for My Sake in Blades of Avernum
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Wednesday, May 24 2006 18:22 Profile Homepage #0
It's about how many of the Echoes scenarios you've played.

Poll Information
This poll contains 2 question(s). 33 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Quick question... in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Tuesday, May 23 2006 21:22 Profile Homepage #4
Relax? RELAX?!!!

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
My God can beat up your God! in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Tuesday, May 23 2006 21:00 Profile Homepage #66
quote:
Originally written by Pez:

TM,

you are probably well aware of this next point and likely have even addressed it but part of the argument for the infallibility of the scriptures is that they are "God breathed". Of course, this is circular in that, once again, you must prove God exists (or have that faith) in order to accept this.
Yeah, pretty much.

Of course, there's the added kink that even if the word was infallible at its inception, it needn't be infallible nowadays, but the deus-ex-machina explanation falls out pretty easily when you've already assumed the deus as a working premise.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
My God can beat up your God! in General
The Immortal
BANNED
Member # 4
 written Tuesday, May 23 2006 17:21 Profile Homepage #57
quote:
Originally written by radix malorum est cupiditas:

Yes, but if he states a statement like that (x = y, or x != y) he should be able to prove that. Never mind Thuryl's opinion on the matter of provability.
I like the part where you've totally debase any logical base for the bible's infallible status.

I think it's a piss-poor example of how it's somehow become easier to affirm something than to negate something. But:

Your argument is based on the notion that the bible is infallible. That's just about it. Now keep in mind that the bible has undergone multiple translations over time, and that it never even had to be jesus' words in the first place, considering that the gospels were written some three-hundred years (give or take) after his death.

If I suggest, for instance, that deifying jesus made it easier for Constantine to sell christianity to the Romans (thus giving BOTH Constantine and the persecuted proto-papacy motives for making it so), it makes for a far more cogent argument than "some people who never even met jesus were able to faithfully reproduce his words."

But what gets me is that I have to provide an alternative, rather than simply remark, "that's absurd" (since the only way to prove christianity requires a direct intervention of god) and leave it as-is. Honestly.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00

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