Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

And yes, I absolutely love talking about hypothetical time travel in fiction. It's always been one of my huge interests. I read a LOT of alt-history fiction and time travel sci-fi.

Notschmendrake posted...

Its nonsense as well. You never would have gone back in the first place to cause whatever is making you go back every other time.

Depends on how time travel and the past works.

In a chrono-stable universe, the past cannot be changed. Anything that happens has always happened and will always happen. You were always the one that made that person disappear, and your going back to investigate was always the thing that caused it to happen in the first place. It's a simple stable closed time loop. Basically, it boils down to us trying to understand four-dimensional reality with a three-dimensional brain. It makes perfect sense even if we have a hard time understanding it (because honestly, we have a hard time understanding a lot of things).

Conversely, in a universe where time can be changed, there would have been an original inciting event without you (say, the missing person falls down a ravine and no one ever finds the body), but your actions in the past change events, and you essentially create a closed time loop (wherein you make the person disappear, which in turn becomes the impetus for you to go back in time in the first place). You have altered history, but from the perspective of outsiders nothing has changed, and future iterations of the time loop will seem like they've always been how things work (ie, there'll be no evidence left of the original timeline).

The latter is actually the easiest solution to potentially change the past in universes where altering the past seems impossible. It was my immediate thought while watching the Time Machine remake with Guy Pearce (spoilers):

Guy Pearce invents a time machine to go back in time and save his fiance who died. But every time he saves her she's pretty much immediately killed in a different way, as it seems like the universe is twisting fate to guarantee she winds up dead. He eventually realizes she cannot be saved, because it was her death that motivated him to build the time machine, so if she doesn't die, he won't invent the time machine, which means he won't be able to use it to save her. So it creates a universe-shredding paradox, and reality itself will always manipulate events to stop him from saving her to protect itself. So he has to learn to accept her death and move on.

Meanwhile, my immediate reaction was "So go back, fake her death, then either hide her or bring her forward in time so your past self thinks she's dead, thus inventing the time machine, thus preserving the loop. Stop being a wuss and letting the universe boss you around - you're supposed to be a genius!"

Again, the problem is that a lot of this is all hypothetical - we really have no idea how time travel would work, if it's even possible at all. So we're mostly just making shit up.

(And the real problem with time loops is uncreated eternal artifacts - if I travel back in time, and give myself an object, and I keep that object for years before eventually going back in time and giving myself in the past that object, -I- have completed a closed loop, but the object itself is trapped in an infinite and never-ending loop, wherein it has no origin and no end, and somehow defies the effects of entropy, never breaking down or changing over time.)



SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I often question how things like that are supposedly connected in time travel stories. Like while in the past the main character alerts someone that their shoe is untied. Then upon getting back to the present they learn a race of sea creatures have overrun California. What is the sequence of events that lead from the one thing to the other?

It's assuming that time is very elastic.

Realistically, the moment you appear in the past you have irrevocably altered the timeline. Each breath you draw is moving molecules in ways they didn't move in the original timeline. Every move you make is displacing matter and energy in ways that are different from their original patterns. Each molecule and particle moves, displacing others, setting off chain reactions that never happened in the original history. Even if you never even speak to another human, you have already left a massive ripple in the water.

And once you throw human interactions into the mix, things get even worse. A 30 second conversation you have with someone slows them down by 30 seconds - which may be the difference between whether or not they get stopped at a red light on the road later. Which in turn may lead to them either meeting or failing to meet someone. Meanwhile, them being in different places means they can slow or avoid other people, who's own behavior is likewise changed. As the snowball of changes slowly spreads and becomes an avalanche, major changes can occur (like in the mostly forgotten movie Sliding Doors, where the difference between missing or catching her train is the difference between the main character either discovering her boyfriend is cheating on her or not, which radically changes her entire life).

Actual conversations can alter things even more - flirt with a waitress and it might change how she feels about her boyfriend, causing (or preventing) a break-up. Pissing someone off might cause them to take out their frustration on someone else, causing a fight that never happened before you changed things. History is made up of a million billion variables constantly interacting, and you've just thrown a bowling ball into a pinball machine. Over a long enough span of time, the constantly rippling changes may lead to radical differences - people living different lives, entire cultures taking different paths, wars being fought (or not fought).

In settings that are relatively chrono-plastic, this doesn't matter - whatever changes you make are smoothed out almost immediately, and almost nothing beyond what you specifically do matters. But in realities where time is both elastic and volatile, even the slightest change in the past can potentially lead to a world ruled by Nazi dinosaurs.



SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Also, they would have created a bunch of other timelines where one or more of the infinity stones vanished since even after returning them it wasn't to the same timeline it was taken from. So there wouldn't have been a "snap" for them to undo.

Not really. The Ancient One basically says the real problem isn't that they need to undo the snap, but that simply removing one stone from a universe creates an imbalances of forces that will eventually destroy the entire universe. Which is why she's adamant that they can't have her stone (at first), or that they need to return her stone to the exact point they took it from if they do.

The implication is that bringing the stones back to the exact point you took them from doesn't create yet another alternate timeline, but is just preserving the original timeline, and preventing them from suffering cosmic decay once the stones are gone.

But yes, it does imply that if they screwed up their timing, they just destroyed multiple parallel universes.

It also raises the question of whether or not having ALL SIX STONES in our universe destroyed simultaneously has a much more significant side-effect than anything we see. Though that might be a moot point since Doctor Strange went on to break all of time and space anyway.

captpackrat posted...

The time travelers are always stupid about it. They run around trying to warn people about what's about to happen or they try to prevent it. And they never think about how they'd be changing history if they stop some disaster.

There's plenty of fiction that doesn't do that, though. Where the main characters are like "we have to be careful not to change the past or we'll erase our own future!" And then the emotional conflict of the story becomes whether or not you can resist the temptation to stop bad things from happening to good people simply because you know they're supposed to happen. Or just the mechanical effects of trying to "fix" the past back into its original shape if you've already accidentally broken it (like Back to the Future).

There's also the type that falls somewhere in-between, where the protagonists will find a way to change the past, but do it in such a way that it seems like the past remains unchanged. Like saving the life of someone who is historically recorded to die at such-and-such a point in such-and-such a way, but you just fake their death instead and they go into hiding. Or exploiting the Observer Principle (ie, you know someone dies because you read a newspaper article from the era - but it turns out after you save the person's life you just ask the newspaper reporter to file a false story).

And all of this is complicated by variations over whether or not time is elastic (the past can be changed, and likely even relatively small changes can completely alter the future), plastic (the past can be changed, but history has inertia and will generally fall back into the same patterns unless you're making huge changes), or immutable (where you literally cannot change the past at all, because any action you take is either something you already did, because you were always part of the past, or because anything you do in an attempt to alter a major event will fail as the universe itself is seemingly acting to prevent you).



Revelation34 posted...

It would be interesting if we had one where they actually succeed.

There's quite a few, honestly.

Related to what I said above, there are stories where time travelers change the past but it gets covered up so the future doesn't actually change, stories where the past is changed and the future is radically changed (and the time traveler either ceases to exist, loses the ability to go home, or returns home to see a completely different world), stories where the past is changed but only in a minor way that only the main characters are aware or, or even stories where even the slightest change immediately fractures the timeline so any changes you make don't actually alter your own future at all, but create an entirely new world (and travel back to the future either takes you back to your original timeline, fast-forwards you on the new timeline, or becomes impossible because you can no longer access your original timeline by going "forward" - you'd essentially have to travel back to your point of divergence and then double back down the "right" timeline).

Time travel physics can get confusing. And since they're all mostly hypothetical anyway, they tend to differ across different stories, and most of the details get handwaved away as not being all that important.



JimBeamMeUp posted...

My problem with time travel is it never accounts for the movement of the earth, the solar system, or the galactic plane. The Delorian would hit 88.8mph and more than likely *bamf* in another time out in the cold vacuum of space...and that's not even accounting for conservation of angular momentum.

Most sci-fi stories assume those mechanics are built into the device you're using to travel, presumably anchoring you to a specific point in spacetime and then projecting that point forward or backward in time, and simultaneously sideways in space. Or are based around wormhole physics where the ends of the wormhole are physically stationary in some way and compensate for spacial movement. It usually gets glossed over because it's rarely important and most of the audience won't understand or care anyway.

Most fantasy time travel stories simply don't give a shit, because a wizard did it, and you should probably go outside more.



Mensis posted...

in endgame how did captain America come back as an old man? Hulk says they cant go back and change the past earlier so wtf? He should have just disappeared from their timeline entirely

The writers and director actually disagree about this.

One of them (I forget which) says that because he went back and changed minor things and wasn't obvious about it it "didn't count", so the timeline didn't split. He's basically been hiding out until time caught up with the point where he left, so he could show up at the meeting. He's been in our timeline the whole time.

The other says the timeline absolutely split, so basically Cap spent most of his life in an alternate universe, shacked up with an alternate universe Peggy, and then only returned to "our" timeline after she died, so he could close the loop and pass along the shield.

Personally, I tend to favor the latter theory, but some people don't like it because it implies he was cool hooking up with someone who wasn't "his" Peggy and letting the alternate universe version of himself stay on ice for decades when he could easily have told people he was still alive and where to look.

So it's ambiguous enough for the audience to make up their own mind.



DrPrimemaster posted...

I read some story about some lady who traveled back in time to see the Titanic and ended up messing up her leave time and ended up dying on it.

It made me really sad, I still think about her.

Could be worse. Could be like the love interest character from the second season of Heroes, who wound up getting sent to a dark future, before said future was retroactively prevented and erased, which theoretically implies she ceased to exist as well.

Though the idea of people from the present traveling back to the past and falling in love with people from the past only to die in a famous disaster of some kind is pretty common in time travel stories. With about a 50-50 chance of the traveler bringing the love interest to the future with them instead, thus saving them from their own fate (after all, if you're on the passenger list of the Titanic when the ship goes down, and you're not among the survivors they rescue, everyone's going to assume you died... but maybe you're just living off the grid or under a fake identity in 2012).

PMarth2002 posted...

The only time I'd tip that low is if I'm putting change in a tip jar.

The only time I'd tip that low is if the service was terrible and I'm leaving a handful of pennies as a deliberate and blatant fuck you.



wpot posted...

Tipping has gotten extremely wacky and I don't understand it anymore. The original idea (pay someone a little extra if they did a particularly good job) is long gone. Now you pay extra to support the person you're interacting with.

The real problem is that it borders on extortion now. You're not rewarding someone for excellent service, you're told what you're expected to tip regardless of service, then have to worry about whether or not they're spitting in your food or posting your receipt on the Internet to complain about you if you don't tip to their expectations.

And that's not counting places where gratuity is automatically factored into your bill regardless of your consent.

At this point we'd be much better off if we just went like the rest of the world and dropped tipping entirely, and just raised prices and pay scale to compensate. It's not like tipping is serving any meaningful or useful purpose at this point anyway.

streamofthesky posted...

Sometimes s/he gets re-banned so fast that I don't even get a chance to tag his alt as "Meadiocre". And yet I still have like 10 damn accounts w/ that tag now.

I only just noticed and blocked the new account yesterday. Now it feels like I wasted my time!



CinderLock posted...

I saw a nord vpn ad they mentioned British Netflix and I'm like who the fuck wants to watch British Netflix.

I would. The British have been making better TV shows than Americans for like 50 years now.

I spent a large portion of my childhood watching British TV on American PBS stations because there was no other way to see it back then. Which is part of why I've always thought shows like Rosanne, Home Improvement, or Friends were kind of shit.

Jen0125 posted...

And I felt personally attacked and confused by that

Welcome to my life 20 years ago.



LinkPizza posted...

Yeah. The younguns at work always mention the year they graduated, and I realize that they are so very young

I still remember when a friend of mine who worked in a bank was indignant because a customer pulled up to the drive-in window who was born in 1982. He was like, how dare someone so young be old enough to drive!

Now people who were born in 2005 can drive. No wonder the modern world is so doomed!

Though it also sucks when movies like Back to the Future are set in the "far-off future" of 2015, and that came and went 7 years ago. The future needs to stop becoming the past, damn it!

GameLord113 posted...

Or most likely it is just some licensing thing.

I was originally going to ask why it would be there in the first place considering it was a Cartoon Network/Hanna Barbera property and not an HBO one, but then I remembered that because of the torturous spider web of corporate acquisitions and buyouts both of them would be owned by WarnerMedia, so it would make sense to be there as long as the people programming these sorts of things wanted it to be.

That doesn't really work if you put the caption above the picture. 2/10.

Probably a soft-serve ice cream dispenser.



hypnox posted...

Like an icee, shaved ice

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61yAIXOID9L._AC_SL1001_.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMXqRlAcbOo

Sarcasthma posted...

Maybe we'll have both when we're old men.

You won't.

I'm never gonna say I'm sorry for the essence of my soul. There's so many ways to change my life.

BEERandWEED posted...

Fight the power not the people.

Easy to say, less easy to do.

Moreso than ever now, when keyboard warriors can proclaim their startling revelations about human nature and historical imperative without ever doing anything more meaningful to follow through, thus changing absolutely nothing.

Metalsonic66 posted...

"It was a mistake and therefore why apologize"

"Nothing is ever my fault, and now I will get angry and hurl abuse at people."

Muscles posted...

I think it should be required reading for schools honestly

These days we'd be better off reading Brave New World instead.

captpackrat posted...

Eternal September

Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to keep bringing that up. Stop stealing other people's lines!

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Star

Gaawa_chan posted...

You're as hyperbolic as the group's response.

Congratulations! You've successfully understood the joke!

+2000 PO points for you. Once you reach 15000, they can be redeemed for fabulous prizes.

Cotton_Eye_Joe posted...

Just went into GameStop

I think I see the problem here.

Lokarin posted...

Utah passes pedo bill - By that I mean teachers need to inspect students

To be fair, back when I was in school everyone on a sports team had to have their balls fondled.

...because a full physical was required before the school would clear you for any sort of sports activity, which included a hernia check. So you either needed to get checked by a personal doctor or the school nurse. If you didn't want a stranger cupping your coin purse, you weren't going to play, period.

Not that most people on PotD would be aware of that sort of thing, because most people here were the kids getting stuffed into lockers, not the people on the sports teams.



Muscles posted...

I'm not sure how serious I should take that article, it definitely doesn't scream impartial

It's full on propagandistic. It's very telling that as far as I can tell they don't actually cite the ruling in question, or provide a link to read it for yourself, and instead just rant about it in the most sensationalistic and inflammatory way they can. It's emotion-fueled rhetoric designed to manipulate you into seeing the issue the same way they do, rather than allowing you to make your own decisions based on the actual facts.

It's not impartial reporting or news, it's an op ed hit piece.

The sad part is, from what I can parse from the actual ruling, it doesn't even seem all that discriminatory (I think it literally boils down to "If you're trans, you have to inform the school and seek approval to be classified as your chosen gender rather than your official birth gender"). Which is perfectly understandable because otherwise you're absolutely opening the door to potential for unfair competition (because there are absolutely different degrees of transitioning, and people can always potentially lie about their situation).

Though I may be interpreting it wrong, because I'm trying to break down all the obligatory legalese of the ruling. Which is why it would have been nice if the article posted had actually tried to objectively sum up what the bill actually says in terms a layperson can understand rather than ranting about how everyone involved is literally worse than Hitler and how this is apparently the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the human race.

SinisterSlay posted...

Then everyone that's ever used a phone is disqualified. Also shouting out the window counts. Also those gossip card things they used to spread. Maybe the Romans were the first with social media. Although sharing cave drawings probably counts as memes.

Except no, because inherent in the definition of the term is that it requires use of the Internet. So literally every single thing you just said is wrong.

Stop trying to be pedantic, you're not very good at it.

SinisterSlay posted...

BBS like gamefaqs predates social media by like 20 years minimum.

BBSes are also considered social media, depending on how loosely someone is interpreting the definition of the term.

(And GameFAQs is not a BBS regardless.)

The term itself was coined in the early 2000s, but it retroactively applies to applicable formats that meet its criteria. Sort of in the same way how there are plenty of FPS games that are classified as FPS games that were released before the term FPS ever existed.

Depending on how you define social media, I barely use it now.

PotD's pretty much the only place I bother posting, and at this point I could abandon this place for a free sandwich and a bag of chips, let alone $1800.



MrMelodramatic posted...

$1800 says he still used Reddit, Tumblr, YouTube, or other forums/blogs but mom didnt count that as social media

YouTube basically isn't social media, as long as you don't bother reading comments or posting them. If you're just using it to watch videos, you're not really engaging in its social aspect at all.

Same deal with GameFAQs - if you come here to read FAQs and nothing else, it's not really a social media site. But if you're using it to engage with other users via the message boards (especially, you know, the social boards), then yes, it's social media.

One of the key defining characteristics of the term is that you need to be interacting with other users to some degree, not just consuming user-created content.



Lynyrd_Skynyrd posted...

I wouldn't do it now, but when I was 12 I thought that was a shitload of money

Yeah, but keep in mind, if you have to avoid it for six years, $1800 is only like $25 per month. So you're arguably making a significant sacrifice for minimal payoff.

Even more so when you consider in the modern era, completely removing yourself from social media is absolutely handicapping yourself compared to your peers, which could ultimately lead to both social and career problems later. You'll be less experienced, less skilled, and overall less valuable than others who have mastered those skills.

It's why parents refusing to allow their kids access to tablets/phones/Internet/etc is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it might be better for physical and mental development to avoid constant exposure. On the other hand, you may be permanently crippling their future as you render them incapable of ever really catching up to or keeping up with their peers.

DeltaBladeX posted...

Can we forget all this drama and go back to how obviously they ripped off character designs (and nothing else like story, abilities or ages, even the default names used are different though they are changeable)

Nah, you'd be better off making a new topic, Zang's complete and utter lack of self-awareness has basically turned this one into a never-ending river of feces now and forever.

adjl posted...

In a pinch, a large enough boat can double as a bridge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdg-niiTuX8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nXMRLQmFf8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmT9kOu_NrM



I couldn't find a good video of Xerxes bridging the Hellespont to attack Greece in 480 BC, but yeah, this is not a new innovation.

Jkd91 posted...

8.29 well spent.

Not really. It's pretty easy to get it for free if you know where to look.

Same goes for the other two MHA ripoff hentai games out there at the moment.

Veedrock- posted...

A boat won't get you into Gerudo Valley.

Not with that attitude!

I loathe chicken wings. I generally stick to either drumsticks or breast.

KodyKeir posted...

Remember, only burn your bridges *after* you've crossed them, not before.

It's like pillaging a village: loot first, burn it down second.

No, the lesson you should learn is to buy a motherfucking boat.

Fuck yo' bridges!

Borderlands 2 was better than the original in pretty much every possible way, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_a_Nightingale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn

Depends on how slimes would work in a real world context. Biology, risks, sentience/sapience, etc.

I mean, not gonna lie, I've read some slime hentai. There's some intriguing ideas there.

Gaawa_chan posted...

And just for a quick aside, I always found it a bit strange how hated Edward is. I always liked him, even when I was little.

It's because he's a spoony bard, obviously.

Though it's more likely because he's one of the more useless characters in the game - he has low health and defense, one of his special abilities barely works, and the other consists of him hiding and leaving you to get beat on by the bad guys, so he feels like an absolute load. He's barely a character, he's a tactical handicap you have to suffer through until you can get rid of him.



Gaawa_chan posted...

Edge was my least favorite party member

Yeah, but he was a ninja in the 80s/90s, so most kids were contractually obligated to love him.

I always go back and forth between IV and VI as my favorite. A lot of times, it just depends on my mood.

I liked the first game tremendously, and I really enjoyed VII, IX, and X later, but just in terms of sheer joy and impact on my enthusiasm IV and VI are the two that stand out as the best for me.

Especially since it's before some of the more blatantly Japanese elements started creeping into the series and taking over (like Yuna doing an idol concert in X-2, or Squall being a textbook insecure antisocial Japanese protagonist, or just having every major character being an elite veteran as a teenager and over the hill by the time they're in their 20s), and the games still felt like fairly traditional Western fantasy (even if VI was much darker fantasy, while IV was more traditional high fantasy).

Speaking of fantasy, IV and VI were still at the point before an emphasis on tech and sci-fi trends had kind of overwhelmed things - in the earlier games, tech was certainly a thing, but fantasy still kind of predominated. With VII and VIII they went really overboard on the tech and it was kind of a turn-off for me.



11110111011 posted...

Ug. It's the worst of the SNES games IMO.

5 is the best, followed by 6 and 4.

V is easily the worst for me. But I acknowledge that at least part of that is because I didn't play it until seven years later (via the PS1 port), at which point it already felt archaic and inferior to "modern" games, without any of the nostalgia that the other two SNES games had earned to offset that.

(On the other hand, it's not just the graphics, because it also came out around the same time I played Suikoden I and II for the first time, both of which feel a bit "old" by that point, and I absolutely loved them.)

It's probably also at least in part because I was playing IV and VI as a teenager, whereas by the time I got to play V I was already past legal drinking age in the US (ie, the same reason I usually point to for why I never really got into Pokemon, or pretty much anything 90s kids absolutely love). So childhood wonder had been replaced by jaded cynicism.

Though it also didn't help that I found pretty much all of the characters in V to be completely bland and uninteresting, so I didn't really care about them, their world, or their story the way I did the other two games.

Rotpar posted...

No, Baby's First FPS didn't impress me because I'd played FPS games since Wolfenstein 3D.

I'd also played Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, but I was still relatively impressed by Halo because I wasn't a hipster or a snob.

Definitely enjoyed it better than its more contemporary predecessors (give or take) like Quake, GoldenEye, and Half-Life.



AndyReklaw posted...

KodyKeir posted...

The first five or six seasons of Red v Blue were pretty good, but then I stopped watching to deal with real life and didn't bother watching the rest.

You should go watch at least through season 8 (9 and 10 are fine too). The 6-8 adds a pretty engaging story (and Wash who may be the series' best character) but season 8, when they brought Monty Oum on, was a great spin on the series.

The problem is it kind of depends on exactly what you want out of the series.

The first 5 seasons were great if you like the show for the comedy. 6-10 are great if you enjoy the overarching dramatic narrative they're telling. 11-13 are interesting in their own way, but can feel like a bit of a letdown after the earlier seasons, and it's definitely the point where the people behind the scenes are starting to get tired of working on the show.

It's after that point that it mostly dropped off a cliff into an ocean of shit.

I absolutely loved the shift in tone from 1-5 to 6-10, but the end of 10 very much feels like a perfect place to stop watching, and 11-13, while also good, feel a bit superfluous. And I'd never recommend anything from season 14 onward to anyone.

G) Other:

"The franchise hasn't been worth caring about since SF2 Turbo."

papercup posted...

I like how it comes with a visual novel nobody ever played and not Chrono Trigger

Considering it's the visual novel that Chrono Cross was literally based on, it makes perfect sense to include it (especially since it's been pretty much impossible for Westerners to play it legally before).

Whereas Chrono Trigger will almost certainly get a rerelease of its own at some point, because they can milk you for more money doing it that way.

Yeah, I originally assumed she was Hispanic, or maybe even had a bit of Arabic or Indian in her (especially when you see what her brother looks like), but if you watch Hey Ash Whatcha Playin, you actually see both her parents, and it's extremely obvious that her mother is Asian.

Unbridled9 posted...

It's probably not a matter of intelligence honestly.

However, the average human WISDOM has, almost certainly dropped.

It's more than just the difference between "knowledge" and "common sense", though. We've kind of proven that the more we invent devices that "remember" things for us or "think" for us, the less capable our brains become at replicating the same processes. The human brain is lazy - if it doesn't have to do something, it doesn't want to do it.

The invention and proliferation of written language actively weakened our ability to memorize and accurately transmit information via oral tradition. Calculators tend to weaken our ability to do math in our own heads. People today have a much harder time remembering phone numbers than people 50 years ago did. And so on.

The Internet has effectively placed the sum total of human knowledge at everyone's fingertips, but at the same time weakened our ability to recall information over time. Worse, because there's no real filter on that data to separate fact from fiction, our ability to detect the signal/noise ratio of all the information pouring into our brains is greatly limited (ie, we're exposed to so much information so often, we've kind of lost the ability to evaluate and fact-check it effectively, meaning a lot of what we think we know is potentially wrong anyway).

People today like to think they're "smart" (and definitely smarter than everyone else who's ever lived in the past), but a larger collection of data is about the only thing we have going for us . Our sum total of accumulated knowledge is absolutely greater, but our ability to remember and process it is likely much more impaired than our ancient ancestors.

So if you definite intelligence as "knowing things", we probably are smarter. But if you define it as being better able to process information, we probably aren't.

LinkPizza posted...

But I believe that people are supposedly getting smarter all the time. Just not everyone Its more like an average

Most science suggests the opposite. Though it arguably depends on how you define intelligence.

https://youtu.be/LEX9Uu6CcrI?t=210

https://youtu.be/3h_vHEfNDzI?t=1288

Unbridled9 posted...

a 6-man boss battle

Yeah, but it's like a weird Schrdinger's Cat situation, where 5 of them are always dead and only one is alive, but the universe is out of phase and constantly shifting, so which one is alive periodically changes.

It's actually canon in-universe in Dragon Age: Origins that all six potential protagonists exist in every game, but Duncan only recruits one of them (the one you choose to play as) and the other five die. You can actually see this in some cases (the dwarves will mention how the king sent his middle child to die in the Deep Roads, you'll actually see the body of the Dwarf Commoner at one point if you didn't play as them, Merrill mentions the Dalish Elf Warden died if you didn't play as them, etc). The others are mostly supposition (ie, the Human Noble would have died in the attack on their home, the Circle Mage would die in the Tower, the City Elf gets arrested and probably dies in the Alienage revolt, etc), but it's still implied. So since Duncan can't save more than one, you'd never have a universe where more than one of them are running around at the same time.

Geez. You really think people can remember the last four games they've played in order? Ugh.

And by fourth game, do you mean the most recent game you've played out of four, or the fourth one back, with the "first game" being the one you're playing now? So needlessly overcomplicated!





Okay, based on my vague memory (and recent achievement lists), and assuming you mean listing the games in chronological order from four games ago (ugh), I suppose I'm in a scenario where The Boss from Saints Row is actually an evil overlord who wants to take over the entire world (which pretty much IS the plot of Saints Row, honestly). And apparently Dane Vogel is my childhood friend and love interest (I'm kind of okay with this - young Jay Mohr is kind of a hottie, and Dane's a cunning SOB with the military assets of an entire corporation).

The real monkeywrench is that the main character of the second game is ALSO The Boss from Saints Row, because I played Saints Row: The Third after Saints Row 2. So now I'm apparently joining forces with an alternate universe version of The Boss, who is fighting against a version of themselves who joined forces with Killbane and the Syndicate. Which might be my only hope, because the only person insane enough to beat The Boss is also The Boss.

At which point I'm apparently betrayed by... hmm. Crows? A large number of slimes? I'm not sure who I'd say the antagonist of Stardew Valley actually is (Morris from JoJo Mart? Arbitrary fatigue limits that force you to pass out at 2am? Leah's weird non-gender specific ex?). Either way, I'm then saved by an oddly bad-ass farmer with an insane magical cosmic sword and way too many mushrooms, and the Archdemon from Dragon Age.

And then apparently I wind up having to fight the Grey Warden. Which doesn't seem like it would be that tough a fight, considering there's technically six of them, and five of them die automatically in every instance of their universe. Six if you count the Darkspawn Chronicles DLC. And then all the universes where they sacrifice themselves to kill the Archdemon.

Judgmenl posted...

I care about the quality of posts on this board.

I'm afraid you're at least 12 years too late to stop that particular boat from sinking.



Judgmenl posted...

PotD will be gone some day. Cherish it while it lasts.

Wouldn't be the first site I've spent tons of time on that eventually vanished forever. Probably won't be the last, either.

Unless I stroke out tomorrow or something, in which case it might possibly be the last.

But yeah, if they flip the giant switch that shuts the entire site down forever tomorrow, I'd mourn for about 15 seconds before clicking on my bookmark to Reddit. PotD isn't even remotely as important or meaningful as you seem to think it should be. And it honestly never was.

Dikitain posted...

I could point to a dozen or so instances in the Silent Hill games from 20 years ago that are just as if not more disturbing.

You kind of can't, though.

People generally overlook this point, but I already brought it up earlier with the GTA thing - like it or not, people do see a difference between creepy horror and gore and the like presented passively, versus something that is seen as being actively disturbing in a way that requires direct player immersion.

The GTA games are "murder simulators" where you shoot hundreds of people, plow through innocent civilians in your car, and can pick up a hooker, have sex, then bludgeon her with a bat to get your money back. And yet even some of the people who like GTA and who weren't generally bothered by the extreme ultraviolence still drew the line at the mission in GTA V where Trevor winds up being part of an interrogation of a "terrorist", and the player has to actively choose torture implements to use and deliberately press the buttons that cause you to yank out his teeth with pliers, attach jumper cables to his chest, etc. Tons of people who would gleefully murder every gangbanger, cop, or pedestrian that crosses their path still complained online about how uncomfortable the torture scene made them feel, and it sparked a lot of debates about just how far is "too far", whether or not that mission should have been skippable, and so on.

There kind of is a difference between creepy shit and visceral gore or other "horror" elements being presented in the background or as part of the "monsters" you're fighting, and being asked to actively choose to be a monster yourself. Silent Hill never really took things that far, even with the creepy psychological aspects to its horror.

It's one thing to watch Pyramidhead sword-raping nurses. It's kind of a level beyond to require the player to use the analog stick to line up his aim and then repeatedly tap the A button to jam it in over and over. Especially if its being presented in a way that sort of crosses the line from horror game to something closer to gore porn (and you just know that someone, somewhere, is jerking off to it).

(There's a reason why Hatred got a ton of... well... hatred on Steam a few years back. The community itself clearly agrees that sometimes even horror games can go too far. The problem is, the line is subjective, and lots of people don't agree on just where "too far" lies.)

I'm not saying it should be censored (I honestly don't care), or that it bothers me personally (I didn't mind the Trevor scene in GTA as much as a lot of people seemed to), but I do understand why it can bother a lot of people, and why there is more to it than just "oh, you're being oversensitive".



Dikitain posted...

This just reeks of Sony going "Hey guys, look how progressive we are!"

It could be more of a case of Sony looking at cancel culture and Twitter in general, and seeing how often people who get offended at things immediately try to sabotage or scream for boycotts or demand everyone involved be fired, and they've decided they'd rather be safe than sorry and are overcompensating.

Again, there've been debates in the past over what is and isn't acceptable in games in terms of violence, gorn, or porn, and there will always be people who agree that certain lines shouldn't be crossed, and certain content shouldn't be on any system. It's easy possible someone at Sony saw this particular game, asked "Oh shit, are we going to get in trouble for this?", and then tried to defuse a problem before it started. Only to cause an entirely different problem.

People are quick to jump to malice as an excuse for things, but stupidity, ineptitude, apathy, and poor judgment are usually far more likely answers. And the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

keyblader1985 posted...

The crazy part is, most of us don't even disagree with the general message there.

-I- don't even entirely disagree with the general message, considering what I've had in my sig for like 18 years now.



Revelation34 posted...

Probably Zangulus anyway.

Don't know - Zang's never really had a raging hate-boner for me or anything that I've noticed. We've disagreed on stuff in the past but it's usually been relatively civil.

I've got a couple suspects in mind, but it doesn't really matter which shitposter it is when they're too afraid to admit who they are, and I've already blocked them.

Thanks for proving my point.

Archaea_Ottoia posted...

Once again PO uses a lot of words to say absolutely nothing.

So which shitposter are you again? I lose track when you all keep getting your accounts banned and have to keep making new ones (or digging out forgotten old one) to keep shitposting with.

People complained about the visceral torture scene in GTAV. Just as described, this sounds worse. I can easily see Sony being afraid of Twitter drama bullshit and deciding to try and defuse it in advance by asking the devs to take it out.

Of course, because the Internet is a machine fueled by outrage and stupidity, attempting to prevent Twitter drama often just causes Twitter itself drama anyway.

chelle

Dmess85 posted...

What? That's crazy!

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T2bdNiUpbSw/UiZPxOH9dgI/AAAAAAAASEQ/qkQnTzWbjHA/s1600/sd-baba-yaga-2.jpg