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Having a name for these "thought-killing statements" or "thought-terminating cliches" has helped me recognize them in all sorts of settings in my life. Corporate, social, religious, the list goes on.

It makes sense as humans that we do many things to simplify things or even eliminate them in order to save energy and avoid stress, and we should be careful to recognize a need for balance while still working towards some greater goal, purpose, or good.

Even so, much like kerning, once you are aware of it, it is painfully difficult to ignore.

Do you think we will recognize any walls? Or is there a point where the output might look different with respect to different paradigms / modalities we throw at it, but we won't be able to understand the quantitative differences as good/bad/scalable?

That is a fine stance to hold but some facts are still true regardless of your view on large businesses.

For example, it will benefit more people to secure Microsoft or Amazon services than it would be to secure a smaller, less corporate player in those same service ecosystems.

You could go on to argue that the second order effects of improving one service provider over another chooses who gets to play, but that is true whether you choose small or large businesses, so this argument devolves into “who are we to choose on behalf of others”.

Which then comes back to “we should secure what the market has chosen in order to provide the greatest benefit.”

Can you imagine a switch trying to load all the maps and resources for AngelBobs/K2/SE?

I know they do some impressive work to port modern games on switch but even my state of the art computer struggles to run K2+SE at scale.

You can also use sleep items/magic and fight them one at a time.

Also if you never lock on to either of them, they are less aggressive.

I love that these games are turning to my old man. “Back in my day you Had to think your way through the problems…”

I have to say, as someone that clicked this link that I found a few things you might want to consider before plugging again:

1. No disclaimer that you are involved with the site 2. Maybe talk about something other than furries in the room that you link 3. Maybe link to a landing page with more info on how to...do anything other than talk about furries?

Just my 2¢.

Isn't the short answer to "why are people subjecting themselves to this" just dark patterns?

I know it sounds overly reductionist or boogeyman-esque, but they captured a market and refuse to let go, doing every single thing they can to keep and monetize human attention.

Sure you do, the only feasible way to make a mars colony work is one-way trips of people / supplies once every nine months, when the earth/mars orbits align best for interplanetary travel.

I remember reading an interview where Asimov is asked why the books of the Foundation trilogy are so different.

The short answer is that the first book was inspired by an idea he had while talking to a professor about the rise and fall of civilizations.

The others were inspired by pressure by publishers to repeat success, and so he tried to improve and continue the story. This lead him to try and carry the story with characters, which was ironically not why people liked the first book.

The Mule was alright though, even if a little forced.

I’ll have to do this then, thanks!

I always forget how little actually happens in the first book of the trilogy, and how…earthy(?) it is?

It’s just so small in scope compared to the following books that I forget that its entire appeal is just how unknown the unknowns are and how much potential it sets up for the rest of the story.

Second McCarthy’s “effective language” attribution.

I read The Road, and it was so sufficiently “effective” in its descriptions and it’s setting that I’m happy never reading another McCarthy book again. Glad I did once.

I will watch the movies though!

I tried to read Cryptonomicon as a first introduction to Stephenson. Kept waiting for the good parts, and actually just stopped reading halfway through out of sheer boredom.

A few years later and I read Seveneves. Absolutely fall in love, and read Anathem right after. Loved it too.

To this day I still don’t understand why the first book felt so boring and the others didn’t. To make it worse, when you go looking for a synopsis of Cryptonomicon, everyone is so vague!

I almost got past this recommendation without having to read another sci-fi book but your Anathem pitch got me.

I’ve been stuck in sci-fi for 3 years straight and thought I was finally going to read something else before 2022.

Bah humbug!

Gatekeeping aside, I took the meaning of the comment to be that there is something in the galaxy that has the ability to construct/manipulate their surroundings in such a way that it appears to us as “intentional, from living beings”