Once you lose your innocence all you have is a Human-Error Processor.
Glad to hear that.
Bamboo Shoots!
Age 35, Male
Poet/Designer/Etc
ACCOMPLISHED
Sweden
Joined on 1/17/04
- Rank:
- Sup. Commander
- Global Rank:
- 6
- Blams:
- 33,274
- Saves:
- 247,829
- B/P Bonus:
- 60%
- Whistle:
- Deity
- Trophies:
- 44
- Medals:
- 11,348
- Supporter:
- 12y 2m 30d
- Gear:
- 11
404
Refresh page maybe it magically appears!
It's a miracle!
An x-mas miracle.
Mas x-mas miracles!
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/650910
There you have an idea for many great musicalish, i don't know if you already covered Prodigy and The Beastie Boys.
Hmm, don't think I have, though I used to listen a bunch to the both of them. Thanks for the tips. As for the game, it's on my playlist. :P So many games with a shitton of medals lately!
Man i can't even compare my medal list to yours, it puts me to shame! T_T
Haha well we all gotta start somewhere. ;P I'm way behind some other people though *cough* VicariousE *cough*... even though they started collecting after I did! It's a slow but steady grind towards the 10k medal/hexalist spot...
10k? more like 100k, i am on 30k not even half there.
Nah, medals man, only medals count in the: http://hexalist.ngpot.com/
I'm almost halfway, closing in on 5k medals with almost 100k points. ;)
I see almost 5k medals!
Talking about games Dr S3C just recomended this game http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/572374
He says it has the best story of all games in the whole page, but i find it hard to believe, any thoughts on it?
Yupp, the time's closing in for... a post in the wi/ht level up lounge! :D
Hmm, haven't tried it, but it's got medals so... bookmarked. ;) Even if RPG games usually take the longest time to complete. The combination of shooter/RPG sounds intriguing, reviews seem positive, score is high, time will tell! Thanks for the tip.
Oh boy soon you will be half way up there with the 1% medal holders.
Oh it is long alright, and the gameplay is average, but apparently it shines in the story, i ahven't encountered nothing special so far, the federation who are supposed to be the good guys are hunting pirates, but the pirates are also good guys, we are pirates, and there are some crystals of power that the leader of the federation is collecting to rule the universe, it is a generic story so far, apparently it has various endings like most RPGs, and it also has dating sim.... i am skipping that part maybe that is why i am not getting exited, it is just so much idle dialog, apparently the universe is in danger but we still have time to go and search for a girlfriend.
When you put it that way it sounds pretty awesome! :O
Sounds a bit like One Piece... the it sounds a bit like Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy! The idle dialog is usually the part in RPG games I spend the most time with btw, I speak to everyone, speak to everyone again to see if they have something new to say, read people's minds if there's the opportunity (IOW Golden Sun)... I probably waste an unnecessary amount of time on fictional socializing, but that's one of the fun things with games like that, reading text. Hmm..
But of course it is awesome you will be medal rich!
Yeah it sounds like OP but it is different, i find that part of the gameplay boring especially when it is just a detour and it is not helping me to get an enhancement, some characters do have some useful info, others are just part of the dating sim gameplay.
Medals = time = money. Hell yeah! :D
Mmm. Yeah dialog isn't always the most useful, but if it's well-crafted dialog it's fun to read, not all games have that though. Crystal Story (2) didn't have the richest, most creative dialog, but they joked around a bit... I guess it adds 'life' to a game. It's the human aspect of it.
If only XD.
I have rarely felt it, i usually feel like chopping the heads of chatty NPCs rather than getting attached to them.
Well you know how they say that 'time is money'. ;)
Ah, you probably save a lot of time on skipping those! I wish I could!
Yeah time invested in work generating a product or service, that can then be exchanged for money... similar to the cards on Steam that you can exchange for games in certain events... you know i wonder if Steam has card miners just like WoW had gold farmers... hmmm.
Yeah sometimes when i see that the NPC doesn't has anything important to say i furiously hit the next button XD, oh but that sometimes backfires, when it does i find it as a cheap move to force the player to listen to an NPC, why would you put this vital info after more than 50 lines of filler text!?
It should be: 'time well-spent is worth more than money'! ;) After all, money is just a means with which to get things you want or need, and some things you just cannot buy! Like cheap avocado in mid-winter Sweden. :/
lmao XD Only times I remember getting annoyed is when I accidentally press one time too much just when the conversations ended, starting right over again. Especially annoying with long convos. :P I remember some tired times where I was just trying to click away a conversation and kept going on a loop forever, this one part in Pokemon when you speak to an old lady to take a rest especially, there's no warning, soon as you talk to her you take a rest, soon as it's over she says just one thing, and if you're not careful with that confirmation button...
Bad example you can still buy avocado, it just costs more, you can even buy cheap avocado, if you use money to build a trade company and import the avocado from the Caribbean, in essence money is just an unit of measure of worth used for trade, and as thus it doesn't has any value by itself, hell nowadays we don't even use money as the primary unit but credit, then we exchange that credit for money, which is then exchanged for other goods or services.
Oh the old "did you catch everything i said? do you want to hear it again? YES/NO" and they put the damn cursor on yes so you keep looping the damn thing, i have wasted so much time in those loops.
Well that was kinda the joke... but yeah, there are ways to achieve even that which seems unachievable! Only problem I see with opening up a trade company though is: that might require some money! We're living off of the illusion of money now!
Haha yeah that kind of thing. :) They're endless by our own initiative! Crazy.
The point is that as long as you attach a price to it you can buy it.
I do think that they do it on purpose just to mess with us, after all if you talk again with them they usually give you the same rant.
Yupp yupp, the stereotype thing here would be to say: you can't buy happiness! Love! Friendship! All of that which makes life worth living!
Hmm, so all these RPGs, all this time... all a giant conspiracy!!
Mmmh it depends on how you invest that money, happiness is probably the easier one, then love (after all marriage was in the beginning just a transaction, and then the couples would warm to each other out of marital duty), friendship seems like the tricky one.
Illuminati!
True love and longtime relational bonding are two different things! As for happiness, things don't make you happy don't you know, the less you have, the less responsibility, the more freedom! The more happiness. Into the wild don't you know? At least that's the theory. Well you might be able to buy everything to a certain extent if you're fortunate, even relations and emotions, but that'd be a truly tricky business.
And they've really quietened down all the hype around this thing. O_O Just imagine how many people discovered this horrid truth before us, and then...
Pff say that to your great great grandparents who didn't went for the divorce even when they could; Things don't make you happy, necessarily, true, but having less things don't make you happy either, what gives the most amount of happiness is experiences, and to have access to some experiences you will need money, also no being free doesn't implies being happy, that's nonsense, top notch nonsense (Fuck you Rousseau!); Tricky but not impossible it is all about management.
The Japanese branch has been working hard on it.
My grandparents are long gone by now, but my parents... yeah you might say they're in a similar kind of relationship. :/ That was the world back then though, when marriage was an almost obligatory form of unity and emotions didn't steer the way... it's different now! Not everyone even gets married! :OOn topic of having less... ever read the fisherman story? It's a classic: http://www.wambui-bahati.com/The-Fisherman-Story.html
Mmm, in the new world it's all so complicated!
Yeah and now people marry in the name of love, and almost 1 out of 2 marriages end in divorce: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-wales/2011/sty-what-percentage-of-marriages-end-in-divorce.html
http://www.divorce.usu.edu/files/uploads/lesson3.pdf
http://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/
And that of course then leads to:
https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/
http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/content/365/Statistics
Which means that people nowadays go marry in the name of love or not even that, they start a relationship in the name of love, then get pregnant and have kids by themselves, which can work but it is irresponsible in a world where competition becomes harsher and harsher, in essence to promise a feeling to another person, is despicable, because feelings are one of the most unstable things in humans.
I know the story, but it is flawed, you don't become a millionaire to have the same life of a small fisherman, similarly people are not migrating to coastal areas to lead simpler lives, why? because in one hand we want more out of life than just that, and in the other small fishermen don't have that kind of carefree lifestyle they experience harshness too, to portray the contrary is to indulge in a fable, ambition (in more than just one sense of the word) was a thing that neither of the 2 men portrayed in the story had, one of them being the so called fool (the tourist, and likewise he was a fool for more than one reason).
Hmm, seems like previous generations stuck together even if they were polar opposites (and not in the Yin/Yang way :P), wheras people don't take marriage as such a sacred oath any longer. Not so surprised divorce numbers are high, but if I was them I wouldn't get married in the first place if there's even a itsy bitsy potential for breaking up... or so I say now but they do say love does strange things to a person... yeah, feelings can be unstable, but then again I know at least a few incredibly happy couples, both old and young. Don't know if it all boils down to finding the right person or if it's more about finding the right purpose, the right place to live, not having incredibly stubborn personalities and no will to compromise, etc. There seem to be two kinds of relationships: those where you grow apart with time, and those where you grow together. I like to think there's also the type where you're just *bang* together forever.
Well, I agree that a poor fisherman probably wouldn't have the insight required to realize what a harmonious and peaceful life he leads; that he doesn't really need or want more, but the moral of the story is, as I see it, that we should check our heads. What do we really need? Do we need more than we have already? Would we feel better if we ___ or had ___ or did ___? So many times people take the long way around, go full circle and come back to step 1 and realize they didn't even need to take that journey. But I guess that's a journey everyone needs to take to really understand.
"Don't know if it all boils down to finding the right person" that doesn't really works because in the spur of the moment people will always thing that they have found the right person even ignoring the flaws that everyone else sees in them.
Happiness is not really about what we need, but about what we want, and the trick is that what we want changes with time, for example i have no interest in the life of a fisherman, but the life of a scholar interest me, however it is worth it? the answer is probably not, somethings are designed only for people that can derive joy from the most tedious task, for example next year or ending this one i will come face to face with programming again, i haven't touched a code in years, i don't know what i am gonna do, however i prefer that to the life of the fisherman, is a bet to the future.
No doubt people can be misleading, but I do believe there is a 'right' person out there, you just need to happen to find them. If there's an actual strategy you can use to get there, if it's all based on luck, karma, confidence, who knows...
Hmm, but isn't what we want the thing we need most? Discarding all superficial wants that we don't really 'need', only going for that one thing - that core value in life that we strive to reach, even if we don't know it yet. How do you know what you want until you know about it/until you find it? It's like saying your favorite fruit is an orange if all you've ever tasted are lemons. Do you think you know what you really want at this point in life? I get what you're saying, but I don't really agree, I think we all have a purpose we can find that REALLY makes us happy, even if it's something so simple like just fishing by the sea. I think many people discard the simple options and assume they won't be happy unless they have more, even though sometimes, less is more. That said, I don't want to be a fisherman either, and programming... man that stuff's complicated. Numbers and stuff. Ugh.
Oh sure there must be a person for most people out of the 7 billion humans on the planet, probably... i don think that it all comes down to luck/chances, because being objective while in love seems contradictory.
I see the difference of views, i was approaching this using Maslow's hierarchy of needs http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg (that list has been revisited plenty of times and changes for example i would remove sex from the base and leave it on the 2nd or 3rd floor, since you can't really die from abstinence thus it is not really a basic need (even if it is physiological), similarly depending on the environment of the person social needs go above or below personal needs, etc).
(i recommend you to read all of this first, links included, and then comment, what comes next is 1 long answer that tries to cover all corners, and the sentences are there just to make it easier to read, but just imagine that this was a normal Nietzlawe text)
Anyway back to this, what most people want is probably simple in essence, find love, have a family spend their time with them, see their kids grow, then they die, most people don't really care about other things outside that spectrum, art and literature is whatever may be trending, their spirituality is whatever they were raised with and they don't question it, and their intellectual facts are whatever was told to them before they became adults, even if the information was wrong.
But that is only one kind of common person, the other one wants an opulent life filled with excess and debauchery, deep down they probably want the exact same thing as the first kind of people, however they long for a taste of the things they never had access to, would becoming rich make them happy? if they know how to manage their money, yes, after all money is just a tool to get things, however chances are that they don't know about that, and are instead worshiping money.
Which means that the average person already knows what they want, and what makes them happy, they already have an idea of what happiness is, just like in the story of the fisherman, which i already said is flawed, for many things, one of them being that they portray a model of life as a general ideal that applies to everybody (meaning they live under the second scenario in which we can know and measure happiness, similarly and thus, happiness doesn't has subjective value, this will make sense further down this comment.)
"How do you know what you want until you know about it/until you find it?"
"Do you think you know what you really want at this point in life?"
Those are basic questions of skepticism from the kind of "how does someone gets to know anything." and more importantly, how do they "really" get to know anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism
The answer to both those questions is no, there's no way to "know" something, there's only a justified belief: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief#Justified_true_belief
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_justification
http://www.niu.edu/~gpynn/Goldman_WIJB.pdf
And even then we wont be able to know if our belief is not a product of human error, which is, in part, why we have falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
Ok going back to the 2 questions, the first question says "until you find it" meaning that a person can knew what they want through experimentation (the answer to the second one was no, there is no way to "really" know something), but there is a problem with this, that "want" is tied to a longing for happiness, and happiness is subjective, right? (lets assume for now that it is) which means that only the person itself and no one else, can know if they are happy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism and this provides the following problem(s), how do we know if we are "truly" happy? this leads to at least 2 things, the first the nature of "legitimate things" that can only be experienced internally, such a thing proves an impossibility of knowledge, because we wont have a way to know what is true and what not, in essence whatever experience that gives us a certain amount of happiness can appear itself as "true" happiness; the second is under the assumption that we can know when others are happy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_happiness (read the part of Positive psychology, i don't have much characters left, interesting because is a really Humeian (as in David Hume) way to prescribe a happy life, mainly focused on denial/distraction, and a "virtue"/value of gratitude, of course it is highly simplified and doesn't shows all the other things that Hume points on his Treatise), and actually measure happiness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia (in this case the gross total happiness experienced in a life), under this scenario (which is the second scenario that i mentioned) a person wont have to search for a purpose that would make it happy, because we can know when someone is happy, how happy they are, and what will make them happy, (continues...)
A lot of people to filter through indeed! :) And a lot of text to filter though below, I'm on it...
You certainly do your research! Me I'm more of a: 'create my opinions based on the circumstances of my life' kind of person (meaning I usually have no data to back up any of what I say), so more of the 'authorative testamony' and 'logical deducation' than empiricism... but it's always interesting reading up on this stuff, specially that first chart, simple; conclusive; didn't take more than a minute or two. :) I hope you're not expecting me to read through ALL those other texts (even though you say all), gotta be at least 100k characters in there. O_o
Mmm, makes sense! Similar to the 'thinking an orange is a favorite fruit if you've only tasted lemons', you would indeed not know what true happiness is until you experience it, and without experiencing it you would not know you want it. So what makes us want more? What level of happiness does it take for us to be content with life... or are those entirely different things (as you mention later)? On that family aspect, I've never felt like my purpose was a family, and I feel that'd be a rather strange notion in the modern world - people thrive on visions rather than relations - though if that's for better or worse is something for another topic...
That part about how 50% of our happiness is genetic doesn't seem to hopeful! But the mind is powerful indeed, should be possible to surpass those puny 40% if you train your brain enough! The power of the mind knows no limits!!
we could do that with an EEG scan, and then proceed and give a prescription that will lead to a happy life, some people already do that, albeit they do it not from a scientific perspective.
Ok so we have 2 scenarios:
1st one:
We have the uncertainty of not knowing what true happiness is, and thus whatever we may get close to, may as well fill and take the place of true happiness, in this scenario you could go to the Fisherman (taking him as an sample of someone that claims to be happy and that we both know), and ask him if he "is truly happy with his life", of course as someone that claims to be happy he will say yes, when asked why, he will describe how his current life is, however we don't have any other tools other than to believe in his word.
The problem with this scenario is exactly what you describe, people wont know what they want to do in order to be happy unless they experience it, the problem with this is that people are not all the same, so you can't prescribe a model of happiness to them, people have to find happiness by themselves, and is all up to chance and luck whether they will find happiness or not.
Meaning a person is not assured that they will find a purpose that will make them happy, even if it exist, which means there's the possibility for a person whose purpose that may make them happy doesn't exist, in this sense and before you make a objection, i am talking about wholesome happiness, AKA true happiness, real happiness, etc.
An example of this: a person whose purpose is space exploration (in this thought experiment, we know what the purpose of the person is, but the person itself only has an idea of this), but it lives in a world that has a geocentric view of space, even when Copernicus already demonstrated the opposite, that person could write a fictitious book about men going to the moon, but it would end there, his dreams can't become true, (this has nothing to do with Jules Verne, is just an example of someone whose purposes doesn't exist, it can be more extreme than that, after all our reality has limitations), going back to this person, he could lead another kind of life, maybe that of a fisherman that has a small family and at night plays domino with his friends, drink beer and sings songs, was his life happy?
1) we can't tell because only the person itself knows if he is or not truly happy.
2) Now lets assume that we know, we know that out of all the things the person could do, the one that gives it the greatest amount of happiness is space exploration, meaning that being an astronaut makes this person more happy and more fulfilled, than having a family in a fisherman village. However this doesn't implies that being a fisherman doesn't makes him happy, it just doesn't gives him as much happiness as being an astronaut, the question then comes: is the life of a fisherman making that person happy or is he just content (as in it experiences serenity, but it is not joyous, let alone euphoric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plutchik-wheel.svg while we are on it an euphoric(can be replaced with ecstasy but more intense) life is impossible because we are not in a perpetual state of happiness, similarly when i say "an euphoric life" i mean to use Nozick's model of measurement of happiness, which consist on the summatory of all the happy and sad moments in a person's life all the way to his dead, but more on this on the second scenario) with his life? the answer is content, because we already know what makes this person truly happy, having a family is just a compromise that tries to replace what it can't obtain, luckily for its kids his dad wont try to force them to somehow change the world so he can live his dreams through his kids, which is something that is morbidly common nowadays, thinks like child beauty pageants should be illegal everywhere.
The point thus under the 1st scenario is that only a person can know if they are truly happy for themselves, and if there was a way to peek inside them and see if they are really happy, and then know what will make them really happy, we would find that the person wont have a certain surefire way to achieve true happiness in life, for such a thing is not guaranteed nor granted in life.
Mmm, artificial euphoria... even if it works, I don't like the idea. Like I don't like the idea of replacing certain body parts with technical counterparts to effectivize certain tasks. Even if humans aren't the most resilient creations, I believe in the natural route, in honing humanity and going through hardship to attain bliss. But anyway, back on topic:
1) I do agree, but if the fisherman claims to be happy with his simple life, who are we to tell him otherwise? It is also a highly sustainable; environmental way of life, so whichever way you look at it, it seems like an ideal situation. He doesn't purposefully seek out anything more; why should he? The Man tries to make him want more by using an argument that doesn't actually offer him anything more, it leads right back to the same scenario, and maybe this is his mistake. He doesn't suggest a path with an actually different outcome, like: you could travel to Africa and see Zebras. Then the fisherman might've said: Zebras? What are those? His curiosity is piqued; he wants to know more; he wants more. When really, he's already perfectly happy as he is (we can only assume he is since that's what the story tells us). If more people settled for less there wouldn't such consumptional craze and chaos in the world as their is right now. Though of course, this has nothing to do with true happiness, but if it's subjectively true for him, it's all good right?
´Being content or being truly happy... though there's definitely a large difference in how you'd experience life with either one, it seems like a thin line between the two. Conclusion: there is no 'surefire way to achieve true happiness in life, for such a thing is not guaranteed nor granted'? I agree! Does that mean we should stop looking for true happiness? Settle for less? Could, paradoxically, settling for less be what makes us truly? There really is no way to know...
Man that's a depressing scenario you paint up, people not being able to reach their dreams even when they know what those dreams are... mmm, parents forcing on their own dreams onto their kids too...
Doomroar
Found the bonus, oh man, it hurts, it hurts way too much, this is emotional sadism TurkeyOnAStick!
Cyberdevil
Hah, yeah, was wondering where I should go from that article... turns out all you had to do was read. :)