Walsingham

I can't believe this Chirac thing even got news time. "Frenchman rude about English cooking" I mean, duh. And yeah, you can laugh. Provided you are ready for about two weeks of disrupted food supply, hundreds dead, and anti-muslim riots across the midlands.

Well, this thread went to hell pretty conclusively. I think Ender deserves a bloody medal for keeping his cool. I for one don't approve of blatant flaming, particularly where we are talking about real issues, not cars or cheese or anything. I'm also disturbed by Nur's use of Islamist doctrine by claiming that democracy is alien to Islam. Democracy is nothing more nor less than the belief that individuals should have the right to choose the laws by which they are governed. It is an inalienable concomitant of human rights, and human dignity. Islam, and educated muslims, last time I checked have no problem with either of these things. Only the violent and the ignorant believe the semi-fascist credo of rule by clerical 'wisdom'. You all know my feelings on Iraq*. To keep this post short I'll sum up my views on Israel and the US by saying: - Judaism has a fascinating ethic of scholarly learning, and questioning of authority. Whose thinkers have benefitted all mankind. The cooking's not bad either. - The creation of the state of Israel was mistake. One that Great Britain deserves greater blame for than the US. A better solution would have been universal tolerance of judaism worldwide, and acceptance of jews into all nations. - Israel was itself created by applying terrorist pressure on Britain. So no high-horses, please. - The US is constrained by the importance of the Jewish and Fundamentalist Christian lobbies. That comes with being a democracy. - Israel is constrained by having a proportional representation system that means the mainstream HAS to pander to extremists. - Nevertheless elements in both the US and Israel are interested in peace. - Palestinian interests would be better served by peaceful demonstrations than by violence. Only by using completely peaceful means can the one-sided nature of the occupation, and the parallels with human rights struggles in America and South Africa, be made clear to the public in the US and Israel. Every bomb that kills Israeli civilians prolongs - not shortens - the conflict. * Steve, that's a pretty bizarre claim that WW2 veterans didn't support it. I can believe some didn't. But I know for a fact that was hardly a consensus.)

Well, I think I know where the next big terrorist attack will be...

I've been looking into this a bit more, and found at leasta couple of interesting extra points. Stress: - Individuals appear to have different 'comfort zones' of stress. - Stress is accrued through sensory overload, and motivational dissonance (that is, doing anything contrary to your motivations). - The transition from very low stress to very high stress (i.e. surprise combat) greatly hinders complex decision making, and group coordination. Emotions: - The principle identified emotions are: Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Lust, Love, Happiness. - Being in a specific mood makes the individual more likely to perceive things consistent with their mood. It also makes memories associated with the mood more accessible. Wounds: - Wounds, because they threaten the survival motive, cause stress, and generally increase anxiety and depression. - Wounds also cause stress through the pain swamping the sensory pathways. Intellect/Wisdom: - Most individuals cope with stressors and environmental factors (like being surprised on the toilet by a dragon) the same. Bearing in mind that learned reflexes can help the individual react while their mind lags behind due to the psychological iompact. - Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to cope with stress, wounds, and emotions. Most persons are able to rationalise and deal with disturbances from these sources to a greater or lesser extent. Age and experience contribute to this process. Intellectual understanding, and philosophical wisdom also play a part. ~~~ I think from an RPG perspective this is pretty challenging. You are talking about dynamically changing the ways people can interact, perceive their environments, and address problems. I don't see how pre-scripted encounters could adequately include this. Any ideas?

Charisma wise, I reckon Bob Geldof has it in spades. I don't agree with everything he says, but he says it so well, I feel happy going along.

Cheers.

Meta's pretty much on target. Altrhough I'd say you CAN try to optimise for things like justice and peaceful coexistence with nautere. The trouble is you get squashed, by the angst ridden 'barbarians' across the way who think civilisation is a warm assegai. Or you get culturally swamped. The exception to this is that having a firstrate civlisation leads to helpful thinsg like adequate logistics for your troops, egalitarian battlefield leadership, and freedom of expression for your scientists, and non-attritional forms of warfare (eventually). Which even things out a bit more. I just don't think you can get away from the fact that in a clash of systems, war will always be there. How does Fallout begin again? "War never changes..."

Hello, boys and gals. I am just about to start re-playing the Baldur's Gate series, and was considering going fighter -> cleric. Fighter until I had got 3 or 4 points in blunt weapons, then switching across. I was wondering if I would get to keep the points. The same question I suppose would apply if I went fighter -> wizard, and took short swords. Also, when I go on to play BG2, will my imported character get to retain the points in the right classes, or will the redistribution system cap them? Many thanks in advance.

Well the next time I get bladdered I will be sure to try and start a drunken thread. thinks: I should go get bladdered RIGHT NOW I've been quite influenced by Zen philosophy, so from that standpoint I would define wisdom as a sense of detachment from the self. Thus wisdom permits us to act contrary to infantile or bodily desires. To help others, or undergo pain for selfish or even violent ends. It assists in the clear understanding of problems. It also helps us rationalise stressful or emotinoaly disturbing situations so they are less disruptive. I think that one reason people seem to get wiser as they get older is the realisation that the self is neither so important, nor so permanent as we think. The body we inhabit changes shape and desire. The things we believe in so passionately as youngsters are revealed as less clear-cut. We come to realise that many things simply do not matter as much as we thought. The exception to this, Meta, is the mid-life crisis. Where we start dating women who are far too young for us, riding motorcycles, and getting bladdered for no good reason.

Prince Charles is OK. I mean he doesn't go out on the lamm and hit old ladies ...as far as we know. Stay away from Ebay and Paypal. I am distinctly edgy around their account handling monkeys. Long story, and since you won't believe me anyway, I shan't relate it.

Er... Kaftan. I don't mean to be rude, which means I will be, but nazi uniforms are bad, m'kay? All that the uniform stands for is brutality, and the destruction of civilised behaviour by force. It is not well-cut, black, with shiny things on it. oh alright it is, but that doesn't make it less repellent. And as for bashing Germans, it makes me extremely annoyed to hear about fools attacking people like that. Speaking for myself I know that German troops are working extremely hard in Afghanistan to try and restore some peace and democracy to the poor country. They are doing so with superb professionalism, and no lack of human feeling. As for holding over issues from the war, that is equally if not more stupid. I know several veterans, many of whom lost every childhood friend they had fighting the Germans. And they don't hold a grudge. If they can forgive, then so can we.

I don't know of any papers that might help you. But have you considered the possibility that caffeine might be helpful to some people and not others? From what I recall caffeine boosts levels of activity in the frontal lobes. The bits of the brain that control learned responses, and basically most everything else going on in your bonce. Increased control COULD be useful, depending on whether it was needed. On the other hand, if the person was uptight in bed, then it might just make things worse. :">

Like this is a _surprise_ political debate thread... :D I really liked Ender's tribute and I say nuts to anyone who bashes America at the moment. It seems to be all to fashionable, and frankly it seems possible to be racist about Americans where no other nation would get the same treatment "Americans are dumb. Americans are fat. Americans are violent." Try that as "The Irish are dumb. Russians are fat. Nigerians are violent." Stings, don't it? Yeah, they have a screwy President, and a questionable administration. Boo-fething-hoo. They have also given us so many things, from mass-production (the Springfield Armory), to big budget Sci-fi channels, and the atom bomb. So what if Americans think they invented everything, and won every war they ever fought in. They DO go to school for one less year than Europeans. Yet ultimately they come out wanting the same things we do: beer, greasy food, people to rabbit with, and something to watch in between. America gets things wrong. But we all do. But they also occasionally get things right, and I think that when they do they come through in spades. A fair-and-square Republican democracy (you civ-heads should know the difference), fighting a war for (among other things) emancipation, three times coming to Europe's aid (eventually) against the Germans and the Russians, and putting mankind's feet among the stars. I'm not saying ignore anything they do wrong. I'm just saying don't be blind to the good stuff.

Eldar, you are quite right. It just shows how pointless psycho-analysing people can be. It's fun, but not to be taken seriously. I apologise. But how come you can't be less serious online? We could have a random drunken thread, only for posting in when three sheets to the wind.

Two questions: 1. What is DS? 2. What is a JRPG?

I'm interested that you feel online stuff is so formal. Maybe you'd like to be a bit more formal and less of the fool in real life, but have got stuck in a way you aren't online? I'm more forhright online than I am in real life. I rarely come right out and tell people they are wrong in my job, but I'll pipe up to you guys. Charisma, is the quality that makes you able to manipulate people, for good or evil <sic> intentions. I know one chap (who works for a major U.S. defence analysis firm) who couldn't be sharper at handling people. But he also happens to be a sick S.O.B. who will pick people up only as a means to gaining their confidence and undermining them in a more serious way. Honestly, I've seen him spend all evening chatting to a girl, just to make her burst into tears at the end because he finds it amusing. The above is may seem fairly innocuous, but I've seen him work to get people into telling him compromising personal details to ensure their 'cooperation' in future. No-one ever takes the threat seriously until they have it actually done to them, either. Clinically fascinating. I suppose the closest approximation I can think of whould be Hannibal Lecter, who in the books is capable of handling just about anyone, and is superbly charming, even to those he intends to eat.

My favourite of all the Fleming stories was 'A quantum of solace'. You'll see what I mean when you get there.

I thought that one of the best things about Civ 3, and by the sound of it, Civ 4 are the leaders. They let you do all kinds of fun stuff, and the capacity to build armies (more accurately corps, but who cares?) was great. I always use my first leader to build an army, since that lets you go down the military small wonders route, with the academy and the Pentagon. Once you begin cranking out armies at will, you can duff just about anyone up. Last night I was playing as Babylon (not a single leader appeared to my chagrin), and developed a new military ethic. Essentially, rather than conduct a campaign of conquest, which creates consolidation problems, I simply collected four of my best defensive units and set off trundling across enemy territory. Knights, cavalry, and artillery follow this lump, and like a biblical plague lay waste to all in their path. A second similar polyglot follows on behind, and assaults cities you have denuded of food support - burning them to the ground. Occasionally, very good sites can be dominated by hilltop cities, built like military bases, but otherwise you just destroy. If the resourecs are available, forts can be built by a corps of sappers, following on behind, that will permit the movement of damaged units out, and fresh units in, in safety. This tactic is much easier to employ than normal fighting methods, and can be used in a Democracy, because you can stop fighting when war weariness goes too far, secure in the knowledge that you have probably crippled one opponent for at least a hundred or so years.

Neuropsychology is indeed very interesting, but not my field. Ender is correct of course, it is the scientific paradigm that makes it a science. Anyway, no-one's having a crack at Wisdom or Charisma. Are attributes even necessary in a game? Could you not have pure percentage skills for everything?

My favourite quote from Unforgiven is when English Bob is ranting about the US President being shot, and how it wouldn't happen if you had a monarch. It goes something like. "I can assure you that if you did [point a gun at the Queen] the sight of royalty would cause you to dismiss all thoughts of bloodshed and you would stand - how shall I put it? - in awe. Now a president? I mean, why NOT shoot a president?" On JFK, I know bullets behave strangely while passing through the different tissues of the human body. But they don't turn right round and come out the same direction they went in. Nor do they wait moments before passing into another individual as can be seen on the footage.

What might be better is a pitched battle/skirmish value like in Fantasy General. Units attack with thei8r best option, and respond wih their matching stat. Damage is taken by reference to attack strength and armour. Thus a terrorist or longbowman has a great skirmish value, but lousy stand up and fight values. A tank has the exact reverse. You don't use skirmishers to hold ground, but to scout ahead, and to soften up enemy units. I think this would be more realistic and it would also add a whole range of new units to play with, from bushmen to sharpshooters to secret agents.

Metadigital: Psychology can be a soft or a hard science. I have no affection for those who make no attempt to scientifically evaluate their theories, like pop psychologists, but I also have immense respect for psychologists who persevere in trying to be scientific. It is not like physics or chemistry where one can manipulate the subject matter cleanly and without constraint. We cannot get stuck into it freely, but are always stuck on the outside, trying to infer the interior situation "as through a glass, darkly". If you actually read psychology papers, particularly in cognitive psychology, you would, I am sure, alter your statement. Not all psychologists are content with waffle. Your point about extreme ends is valid. There are variations at the extreme ends due to differences in the biological hardware. I've worked with autistic and Down's syndrome children, so I know what you mean. However, that does not mean that the intervening ground is distributed according to biology. Eldar: Your point is far less distant from mine than 213374U's and I find less to object to. I do think my interpretation is correct, but not so closely that I would be surprised if it turned out you were correct. 213374U: You and I have gone as far as we can into this without getting down to facts, and since I do not have the time to hunt up the references I will, for form's sake, drop the point. However, I venture to suggest that if we did get down to facts we would discover that it is you who are talking through their hat, and I am in fact talking from a standpoint of scientific study. I conducted a 2 months review of this topic in 1999, and have tried to stay abreast of developments ever since. My objection was in any case that I was not simply making stuff up, but had thought about the issue, and it wasn't the stupidest <sic> comment ever made on this board! :D I should also say that you are criticising the wrong man about attacking old ideas simply because they are old. I shan't list the ones I do support, because that would just send this whole thread out of whack with debates. As my final word, you seem to have misunderstood the implications of this notion. It has nothing to do with fairness. Mother nature doesn't give a haemorraghic fever for fairness. It has everything to do with obliging people to go beyond their established mental 'comfort zones' and not be so content or simplistic in their thinking, and with society to cease discouraging them from doing so. It is also pertinent to a discussion on how 'intelligent' you feel you are. ~~~ Does anyone feel that the other attributes can be debated?

Steve: I agree. That would be nice. there's no fun or glory in squashing people who are completely incapable of offering resistance, when you ought to be able to ffer them a peaceful alternative. 213374U: I'd understand not trading tech, since that has a huge investment benefit, and you can't take it by conquest. But natural resources is just daft. And I know about the treaties issue. Took me a while to realise that breaking a treaty in the bronze age mean that no-one would deal with you up and including during the space race, but never mind.

The capacity to acquire knowledge does indeed differ between individuals, but several studies have shown that this varies much more to do with the way the individual treats failure than some basic quality. Basically, a 'stupid' kid who fails to perform a task, says "I failed because I am stupid. Being stupid is a permanent characteristic and therefore there is no point trying again." The 'intelligent' kid says "I have failed because I am missing either a physical or mental tool. I will search for the missing tool be it physical or informational, and try again when I have it." Most importantly, in intervention studies, psychologists have taken kids, explained and trained them to use the 'smart' way of thinking and lo and behold they become 'intelligent'. And simply because everyone talks about intelligence doesn't make it real. In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries they talked about a person having 'breeding' with the same conviction. If someone was the tenth cousin of the Queen then obviously they came from such good stock that they would just be better at everything. All the evidence of such people getting things wrong did not deter the general opinion that breeding was real. The notion of intelligence, like the notion of breeding, is convenient from the viewpoint of social control. I'm not saying it was originally a conspiracy, but its convenience makes it difficult to budge. It says 'You are at your position in life for an unchangeable reason. Nothing can be done to make you any smarter and hence any more successful'. Whereas the thought that we could all be bright 'intelligent' people given the right support is worrying, since it leaves no-one to clean the toilets and move boxes around. NOte: I guess I am a conspiracy nut after all! :"> EDIT: If you are an employer or team leader try out the above on one of your 'dumb' subordinates the next time they are screwing something up. It does take time and determination to show people the light, but I've never had it fail.

I'm amazed you didn't use up your lifetime supply of insulin! That really isn't healthy, mate. I wouldn't advise doing that over drinking ordinary water.