> But I can certainly squint at other people when they spread Terry's quotes and memes
Someone can use language you disagree with but still have a point if you dig past it. I also happen to personally think it's important to engage with this sort of thinker at least sometimes
Insisting on polite, formal language can be a type of bigotry too you know. It's historically pretty classist, and lately also indicates a sort of neuronormative bigotry.
Wait - not conversing with someone who thinks it's fine to post the N word is now classist and some kind of neuro-whateverthefuck bigotry?
No it's not, it's enforcing the norms of civil discourse. If they have some kind of actual underlying issue that causes this and it's legit beyond their control - then sure, go the extra mile and try to meet them where they are.
If on the other hand, it's some annoying person who likes ruffling feathers on purpose - I really think they ought to be ostracized for such behaviour.
There is still a difference here at play you haven't addressed yet: "posting" here sounds like its some form of direct speech i.e. the author is using the nword as part of their terminology. The context is what is the deciding factor. Does the display of a specific cultural artifact stand to represent itself and and thus point towards its own specific context, or is it a stand in for the authors speech, with a thin veneer of displacement of authorship that ambiguates thuer racist bias.
The argument against classist bigotry is also "just something to think about" and not identified specifically with saying the n-word"
Also there might be some contexts in which this identity might be a valid argument - e.g. some works of black artist/thinkers/writers philosophers etc. (E.g. sylvia wynters ceremony must be found, the music of aanderson paak etc.) Well thinking about it: As a rule of thumb it seems pretty reasonable to not converse with people who >>post<< the nword as long as it is not a dogma that takes the responsibilty of contextual awareness away. (Not certain about the context here, haven't properly read the article)
Short of something like the recent event with the chap with Tourette's saying awful things at the BAFTA awards, or Terry Davis with schizophrenia saying outlandish stuff, there aren't many scenarios where I'd be willing to give someone a pass on this.
If you have the ability to choose not to use the n-word, and you're not in a group that can use it self-referentially among your peers, and you use it anyway, then you're an asshole and I don't really care to hear what else you have to say. I feel pretty OK with that blanket assessment.
> Short of something like the recent event with the chap with Tourette's saying awful things at the BAFTA awards, or Terry Davis with schizophrenia saying outlandish stuff, there aren't many scenarios where I'd be willing to give someone a pass on this.
"There are some scenarios where you might want to give people a pass for reasons outside their control" is literally the only point I was trying to make
So I guess we are in violent agreement?
Edit: also, you will never actually discover which people you should give the benefit of the doubt if you categorically dismiss anyone who uses language you dislike
> No it's not, it's enforcing the norms of civil discourse
You don't see how that is exclusionary to people who struggle with norms?
I guess if you're born neurodivergent and can't handle social norms, you don't deserve any kind of grace. You can't ever contribute anything worthwhile or meaningful if you don't live up to all of society's polite norms. Good to know
Speaking as one, I have found that I have never gotten "grace" from most folks. A few folks have been especially patient with me, over the years, and for that, I'm grateful; but they haven't been the norm.
I used to go to Japan, quite often, and watched Americans violating societal norms, all the time. The Japanese were usually fairly good at not lashing back, but I could see them visibly restraining themselves, sometimes. Over the course of about a decade, I learned to at least respect their ways. I found the Germans to be less accepting of annoying Americans (and I was one). I learned a lot quicker, there.
I know that many folks think that self-diagnosing as "on the spectrum" is considered some kind of "get out of jail asshole" card, but that's just an urban myth. If you're an asshole, you'll usually be treated like one; no matter the reason.
> Speaking as one, I have found that I have never gotten "grace" from most folks. A few folks have been especially patient with me, over the years, and for that, I'm grateful; but they haven't been the norm
This mirrors my experience too. I think my bitterness about that is on full display in this thread
Oh behalf of the neurodivergent people surrounding me, 100% of whom successfully resist any temptation to say the n-word in my presence that they may ever feel, it's reprehensible that you're conflating racism and neurodiversity. I've never, not once, ever, heard someone blame their racism on ADHD.
You've never encountered someone who is pretty autistic and doesn't care about (or perhaps understand) the social consequences of using slurs?
Or someone bipolar who gets kind of erratic and can say really out of character stuff when they are going through a manic episode?
Or someone with tourettes that might say something that pops in their head unexpectedly?
Sure thing about ADHD. You're right that people with the executive function disorder don't tend to blurt wild social faux pas. But there are also people with social function disorders who might.
It doesn't necessarily mean they are terrible people
This is an insultingly narrow definition of "neurodivergent" limited to people with profound impediments to social functions.
I'd already explicitly excluded people with Tourette's and other major challenges, but you knew that, so now I presume you're arguing for the sake of arguing. Have a nice day.
I just want you to know I'm similarly frustrated with you and also feel you are arguing just to argue, and deliberately trying to take my words in the worst possible light
Like seriously.
> This is an insultingly narrow definition of "neurodivergent"?
No! I'm trying to define it as a broader scope of behaviors than just "my friends with ADHD" like you did!
What a frustrating interaction. I hope you're pleased with yourself
I'm neurodivergent (diagnosed) and under the care of two mental health professionals and I'll just say I don't have tolerance for people using slurs.
As much as I appreciated the point being made in that article, once someone pointed out the image and I went and read it, I won't ever choose to share it with anyone because that image is discrediting. The writing had the intended effect on me and at the same time I'd be ashamed to link to it.
Yes, I'm a bigot against bigotry. It's unacceptable.
No. There's a huge, eye-wateringly vast gap between impolite, informal language and racial slurs. I happen to personally think it's completely unimportant to engage with someone actively calling someone else the n-word.
That's not classist, and in no way neuronormative bigotry, unless we're classifying racism and generalized bastardry as a mental illness.
I think LLMs currently need to be used by someone who knows what they are doing to produce value, but the jump they made from being endless slop machines to useful tools in the right hands is enough for me to assume it is only a matter of time until they will be useful tools in the hands of even the untrained masses.
I wish this wasn't true because I think it will economically upend the industry in which I have a career, but sadly the universe doesn't care what I wish.
> assume it is only a matter of time until they will be useful tools in the hands of even the untrained masses.
IMO this vastly overestimates how good the "untrained masses" are at thinking in a logical, mathematical way. Apparently something as basic as Calculus II has a fail rate of ~50% in most universities.
Most people on here don’t belong to that group of people. So ofc they can find a way to create value out of a thing that requires some tinkering and playing with.
The question is can the techniques evolve to become technologies to produce stuff with minimal effort - whilst only knowing the bare minimum. I’m not convinced personally - it’s a pipe dream and overlooks the innate skill necessary to produce stuff.
There's nothing "basic" about Calculus II. Calculus is uniquely cursed in mathematical education because everything that comes before it is more or less rooted in intuition about the real world, while calculus is built on axioms that are far more abstract and not substantiated well (not until later in your mathematical education). I expect many intelligent, resourceful people to fail it and I think it says more about the abstractions we're teaching than anything else.
But also, prompting LLMs to give good results is nowhere near as complex as calculus.
If they truly did, there wouldn't be a huge amount of humans whose role is basically "Take what users/executives say they want, and figure out what they REALLY want, then write that down for others".
Maybe I've worked for too many startups, and only consulted for larger companies, but everywhere in businesses I see so many problems that are basically "Others misunderstood what that person meant" and/or "Someone thought they wanted X, they actually wanted Y".
The multi-decade existence of roles like "business analysts" and "product owners" (and sometimes "customer success") is pretty strong evidence that this is not the case.
> I wish this wasn't true because I think it will economically upend the industry in which I have a career, but sadly the universe doesn't care what I wish.
I mean, yes. I'm worried about my career too, but for different reasons. I don't think these things are actually good enough to replace me, but I do think it doesn't matter to the people signing the cheques.
I don't believe LLMs are producing anything better than slop. I think people's standards have been sinking for a long time and will continue to sink until they reach the level LLMs produce
The problem isn't just LLMs and the fact they produce slop, it's that people are overall pretty fine with slop
I'm not though, so there's no place for me in most software business anymore
But I look at software from the perspective of them as being objects.
Since it’s intangible people can’t see within. So something can look pretty even if underlying it all, it’s slop.
However, there is an implicit trade off - mounting slop makes you more vulnerable from a security standpoint, bugs etc which can destroy trust and experience of using the software. This can essentially put the life of a business at risk.
People aren’t thinking so much about that risk - because it hasn’t happened to anyone large substantially. What I think about is will slop just continue to mount unchecked? Or are people expecting there to be improvements that enable oneself to go back and clean up the slop with more powerful tooling?
If the latter does not come about, I think we will see more firms come under stress.
Overall though, I think too much focus is on the acceleration of output. I never think that’s the most important thing. It’s secondary to having a crystal clear vision. The problem is to have a clear vision requires doing a lot of grunt work - it trains and conditions your mind to think a particular kind of way.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
In my experience there's a substantial number of women who are fans of something like overwatch, but not of actually playing Overwatch. They like the designs and the world, they make fanart and fics and such, but they don't actually play
Now, that might still be a real success for something that is billed as an esport, but if you're trying to move actual copies of your game you have to be aware that there may be a real big disconnect between your fans and actual paying customers
The usual disclaimers apply: I'm not trying to imply that no women play games or that women are "fake gamers" or whatever. This is just my personal observation
> In my experience there's a substantial number of women who are fans of something like overwatch, but not of actually playing Overwatch. They like the designs and the world, they make fanart and fics and such, but they don't actually play
I'm the same way with Warhammer 40K. I love the lore, but have no interest in actually playing with the miniatures.
That's still a win for the company if they engage with side media or merchandise, although perhaps not for the gaming industry as a whole. I, for example, don't like LoL the game but I recently watched Arcane, and I've bought more than one artbook from games I don't really feel like playing either.
One great thing about multi-media projects (as in appearing in multiple media separately), is that you can like and engage with just part of them.
Not even remotely universal, honestly. They appear to have a reasonably balanced playerbase but that doesn't mean universal at all. Your average COD player doesn't give a rats ass about Stardew Valley, for instance
Universal implies more than just 50-50 split between sexes, imo. It's an impossible standard to reach for any consumer product
Could you imagine a game mechanic complex enough to have these different audiences participate in the same "universe"?
I.e. the FPS players could embody the military forces in a complex society where more RPG players are doing the diplomacy and strategy, others are playing in engaging "home front" social environments, someone is off doing city-planner/factory logistics stuff, etc. There could be some deep-diving, dungeon-crawling sub-games within all these realms, but also more casual modes too.
But, crucially, it is all tied together in a unified simulation so that these different player groups are actually steering a coherent story and state space for the shared world. The outcomes of diplomacy, warfare, industry, trade, local social groups, etc. should all have impact on each other.
The timescale between shooter and strategy layers sounds too great for that to work. Imagine playing Civilization like that. You build and set your army to attack the enemy but then you have to wait for the hour long shooting match in Battlefield to resolve. Sounds as exciting as playing multiplayer Civ where you have to wait for the others to spend as long resolving their turns as you did yours.
I see. I didn't really think about the temporal, multi-user aspects.
To be honest, I'm mostly a solo FPS player. The immersive feedback loop is pretty much the whole draw. I would be open to a broader range of story/plot genres if they could provide this satisfaction. I don't need the "shoot" part of FPS, just the first-person part where my real-time, 3D movement and perspective gives me agency, objectives, and entertaining experience.
I naively imagined some game universe that could integrate multi-user input to adjust or build the story in a shared fashion. Like some kind of crowd-sourcing variant of a procedural generator. So your high level strategy would go through the filter of people like me trying to enact it.
But, I didn't really thinking about the real-time aspect of coupling user interactions. I wonder if there is some kind of statistical simulation model that could bridge these worlds with latency masking. I don't need a continuous 24x7 real-time simulation. I just need a coherent state model during my session and preferably some coherent story for how the sessions connect together...
From what little I've heard one of the recent MMO shooters is a bit like that. You're fighting part of a larger war so if you win in the shooting game you move the "front line". I think an older one from Sony (maybe?) also had a similar larger conflict.
I might have been thinking too literal with my examples. One could possibly make it work with some sort of averaging of people's play. I can't say what that might be like. I've not played online since Battlefield 2 except a bit of friendly Stellaris (which didn't go well).
I love the idea, in principal, but I think it's impossible in practice.
A good strategist makes the outcomes of individual battles predictable. That makes it terrible for unit players.
I used to play Planetside 2 with a very organized group. Winning was fun at first but you were ultimately a cog in a well oiled machine so it got old fast. It probably got old even faster for the other players who were just trying to play a regular fps.
Not truly universal, but some games like Minecraft get pretty close.
At the same time, it's not realistic to aim for that level of appeal with every game. Most games are going to aim for some sort of niche, just like any other media.
Yep. Majority of games targeted Men because that's who was buying and playing games. That's starting to shift a little.
But there is probably no way to release an Assassin's Creed or Call Of Duty that is going to appeal to women as much as men. That's just not a realistic product goal imo.
Games need to know their audience, and franky they have been very successful targeting young men for decades. My take is that most times they try to target "both men and women" they flop. There are rare exceptions like Baldur's Gate 3 that seem to reach everyone. But it's rare
I mean, I think that can be cool but there really isn't much substance to the games other than the repetitive "shoot people" gameplay and occasionally decent story. I liked Modern Warfare and World at War I guess, but if you've played a COD you've played them all
But also a lot of people go off and try to create competitive businesses and fail, a lot of people also try to completely rework the business they're in and also fail (it's a disease in early stage startups)
> I think social media, in its current ad-infested, addiction-fueled data-harvesting form, is pure poison.
I'm in complete agreement, but I will say that this attitude has left me pretty isolated as I'm getting older. For better or worse, most people use Social Media to stay connected so I have wound up pretty connectionless over time.
I've been thinking about making a new Facebook account just to try and connect with local people playing TTRPGs, because that's apparently still where most of the organizing is. Unfortunately Facebook wants a fucking government ID now so I'm probably not going to do that
even in late March '26, the bookstores and game stores selling TTRPG stuff in my area still have flyers for meetups and I live in ultra unhip/retro Dallas TX. Just go to a place that sells TTRPGs and look around or ask someone.
now that i've posted my flippant remark. Yes, I agree Facebook Groups is a hub for stuff like this and most other hobbies. That is just a fact unfortunately.
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