aluminiumtrioxid

I'll let the man's own words answer that question: In fact, he feels so strongly about the issue, he wouldn't let a single penny go towards that purpose. It's the principle. If it costs a penny, I WORKED for that penny. I earned it.

You mean prescribed here rather than proscribed- prescribed ~ ordered by a doctor; proscribed ~ banned or very heavily restricted by an order/ law. Wouldn't normally be bothered correcting that since it's an easy mistake to make but using proscribed it means exactly the opposite of what was meant. Edited, thank you for the correction.

Alternative explanation: they hate Ydwin.

...Which is exactly why the procedure is heavily restricted and only prescribed as a last resort when everything else fails. Compare and contrast with nose jobs and boob jobs (an equivalence you have drawn yourself).

...do you hate money, or what?

Somehow I have a hard time viewing "death at the ripe old age of 55" as an outcome to strive for

*Edér-kun weeb correctly, scrub

I wasn't planning on justifying this nastiness with a response but what the hell. I am feeling combative today. Reading this you make it sound as if I have some problem with gender reassignment as a valid medical treatment. I don't. I couldn't care less either way. If someone thinks this will make them happy and a doctor and psychiatrist agree then by all means go for it. But lets not confuse this with what health insurance is supposed to be about. Health insurance is about keeping people alive and healthy. It is not intended for "elective" things like this, or a nose job, or a boob job. And yes they are all the same kind of thing. I'm not entirely sure what is nasty about pointing out that you're quibbling over a tiny fraction of the money you earn while walking from your cubicle to the water cooler, or that SRS has nothing in common with nose jobs and boob jobs. Unless, of course, boob jobs have become a legitimate and strictly regulated way to treat conditions that pose a danger to one's mental health since the last time I checked. Still? We don't agree. To continue that conversation we're going to have to dive into the particulars of whether or not Gender Reassignment Surgery is a valid treatment or not, which all leads right back to the thing I KNOW we are not going to find common ground on: who gets to pay for it. It's a long, OT conversation and I'm disinclined to dive into it. So let's agree to disagree. You were characterizing my post as "nastiness that shouldn't be justified with a response (but I am feeling combative today)". I'm not calling you to debate the issue, I'm asking you to explain why you feel that challenging your viewpoint via a quick and extremely rough cost-benefit estimate based on the prevailing opinion among mental health professionals should be viewed as "nasty" and "not deserving a response".

Even if it literally costs a fraction of a cent to you, as an individual taxpayer? It's the principle. If it costs a penny, I WORKED for that penny. I earned it. Every dollar someone gets without working for someone else worked for without getting it. I'm glad that your principles are so important to you that you feel personally offended if a fraction of a cent of your tax money goes toward helping people who have been diagnosed by multiple licensed professionals who agree that their symptoms literally can't be alleviated in any other way. I mean, those fancy-ass psychiatrists might consider the treatment to be necessary, but by God, you worked an entire fraction of a second* for that money, you really had to pour your blood and sweat into it, so you definitely know better than those parasites who never worked an honest day in their entire lives! (The intense study required to successfully complete pre-med, followed by four years of med school, followed by three to eight years of residency technically doesn't count as work.) *Based on average annual income data for electrical engineers, assuming two weeks of vacation, it takes 0.78 seconds of work for one to gain a penny. And we're not even talking about an entire penny, just a small fraction of that! I wasn't planning on justifying this nastiness with a response but what the hell. I am feeling combative today. Reading this you make it sound as if I have some problem with gender reassignment as a valid medical treatment. I don't. I couldn't care less either way. If someone thinks this will make them happy and a doctor and psychiatrist agree then by all means go for it. But lets not confuse this with what health insurance is supposed to be about. Health insurance is about keeping people alive and healthy. It is not intended for "elective" things like this, or a nose job, or a boob job. And yes they are all the same kind of thing. I'm not entirely sure what is nasty about pointing out that you're quibbling over a tiny fraction of the money you earn while walking from your cubicle to the water cooler, or that SRS has nothing in common with nose jobs and boob jobs. Unless, of course, boob jobs have become a legitimate and strictly regulated way to treat conditions that pose a danger to one's mental health since the last time I checked.

Ho-hum.

That belongs in the alternative facts thread. http://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-was-lyle-shelton-right-about-transgender-people-and-a-higher-suicide-risk-after-surgery-55573 How so? The link you provided is proving me right. The suicide ratio is higher. ...Than the suicide ration in the general population. Surely it is not difficult to grasp that a study comparing post-surgery trans people to people who aren't trans to begin with has little bearing on whether the operation helps or not.

Even if it literally costs a fraction of a cent to you, as an individual taxpayer? It's the principle. If it costs a penny, I WORKED for that penny. I earned it. Every dollar someone gets without working for someone else worked for without getting it. I'm glad that your principles are so important to you that you feel personally offended if a fraction of a cent of your tax money goes toward helping people who have been diagnosed by multiple licensed professionals who agree that their symptoms literally can't be alleviated in any other way. I mean, those fancy-ass psychiatrists might consider the treatment to be necessary, but by God, you worked an entire fraction of a second* for that money, you really had to pour your blood and sweat into it, so you definitely know better than those parasites who never worked an honest day in their entire lives! (The intense study required to successfully complete pre-med, followed by four years of med school, followed by three to eight years of residency technically doesn't count as work.) *Based on average annual income data for electrical engineers, assuming two weeks of vacation, it takes 0.78 seconds of work for one to gain a penny. And we're not even talking about an entire penny, just a small fraction of that!

Even if it literally costs a fraction of a cent to you, as an individual taxpayer?

From what I read, the bill aims to develop new and maintain already existing low-cost lodgings, not "subsidize vacations for the poor". Looks to me that you could benefit from that yourself, if you wanted to, but I could be wrong. A band-aid at best, as far as addressing wealth inequality is concerned. Frankly I'm more baffled at the outrage over free gender reassignment surgery what is so baffling about it? Well, the usual argument against any sort of inclusion of trans people in media is that they are such a teensy-tiny impossibly small minority you might as well not bother, right? And to qualify for gender reassignment surgery, not only do you need to be trans, but you actually need a qualified psychiatrist determine that not doing the surgery poses a severe risk to your mental health and HRT and assorted treatments no longer cut it, which makes any people who qualify a small minority of an even smaller minority. I have a hard time imagining that actual taxpayer money spent on this would ever rise above "this is practically chump change" levels. A rounding error.

From what I read, the bill aims to develop new and maintain already existing low-cost lodgings, not "subsidize vacations for the poor". Looks to me that you could benefit from that yourself, if you wanted to, but I could be wrong. A band-aid at best, as far as addressing wealth inequality is concerned. Frankly I'm more baffled at the outrage over free gender reassignment surgery

Chris Avellone's dead? Is that... a joke question?

Actually, Pillars doesn't track objective goodness, and therein lies the answer to your second question as well. It is, frankly, irrelevant whether the PC is actually good or just pretends to be good in a cynical attempt to earn other people's goodwill - and short of a setting where all-powerful mindreading creatures can peer into the deepest recesses of one's soul, I can't really imagine a situation where it would ever be relevant. By all means, let the game track a player's reputation as a goody-two-shoes! It just doesn't have to map to any internal value system held by their character (and the game should probably also offer options to game it, because it's always nice if the difference between reputation and reality is actively acknowledged). Technically he didn't outright say "people like you". He merely strongly implied it Fair enough, I had completely forgotten that I had made that comment, although I'm glad that this distinction wasn't lost on everyone. Apologies. No worries, I appreciate a decent veiled insult delivered with just the appropriate amount of plausible deniability

I'm sorry but isn't this a little bit ridiculous? "perceived wrongs"? Trying to kill someone is wrong. You're reading a bunch of entitlement into him being mad about his goddess who he devoted his life to wanting him dead. I'm not saying he doesn't believe he is entitled to a reward from her but I don't see how your explanation for his anger at her works or is even needed. Well, he sure uses a lot of gendered insults. Not "that backstabbing ****" or "treacherous wench", it's all aboard the whore train with him. Frankly, I'm more surprised at the naivety of devising a god-killing weapon, then being surprised that your god wants to eradicate all knowledge pertaining to how such things are made (including, well, you). Yeah i'm not saying he is not a sexist, or that he isn't entitled. Just him being mad about that specific thing seems perfectly reasonable. You don't have to be entitled to be mad someone stabbed you in the back and literally tried to kill you, even if you are a terrible person who probably deserves it. Sure it is. Nonetheless, I like the Nice Guy Durance interpretation, even if it is off-base in some ways. The author's dead, etc etc.

Except - Multiple degrees of potential benefits can exist (am I "good" if I forego to ask for an increased reward if the game offers me the means to do so? what if it only gives me the option to ask for more, but no indication about the expected success of doing so? is it in any way "good" to decline a reward that is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to your character?) - I'm not entirely sure why you would even want the game to check whether a character is "good" or not, and - I seriously question the relevance of whether it's possible for an outside observer to verify one's motivations in a discussion about good and evil. The whole thing strikes me as if you had the seed of a good idea there ("let's not meaninglessly slap the 'good' label on characters just for acting in accordance with the incentives the game gives them"), but you got a seriously bad case of tunnel vision halfway through, and let that idea grow out of scope and devour considerations for anything else (like asking yourself the question whether the game should even track "goodness", and if not, why should you even be concerned about verifying purity of intent?). Technically he didn't outright say "people like you". He merely strongly implied it

I'm sorry but isn't this a little bit ridiculous? "perceived wrongs"? Trying to kill someone is wrong. You're reading a bunch of entitlement into him being mad about his goddess who he devoted his life to wanting him dead. I'm not saying he doesn't believe he is entitled to a reward from her but I don't see how your explanation for his anger at her works or is even needed. Well, he sure uses a lot of gendered insults. Not "that backstabbing ****" or "treacherous wench", it's all aboard the whore train with him. Frankly, I'm more surprised at the naivety of devising a god-killing weapon, then being surprised that your god wants to eradicate all knowledge pertaining to how such things are made (including, well, you).

Your "I'm a delicate little flower and anybody who challenges my ideas is dishonest and disrespectful" routine is starting to wear a bit thin, but I'll indulge you. Someone who isn't willing to make the sacrifice and still wants to be considered virtuous would say that, yes. Here we have you implying that actions taken with the intent to maximize utility can't be considered good unless some sort of personal sacrifice is involved (and also such attempts are inherently hypocritical). Here you outright say that mutually beneficial actions can't be viewed as "good" (in the moral sense), someone has to benefit at your expense for a trade to be considered "good". From this, it logically follows that someone who sacrifices their life to ease the suffering of others is "good", while someone who eases the suffering of others without making such a sacrifice is not (let's assume they're both paid industry standard wages for their work in the hospital). Now, it is entirely possible that your actual ideas are more nuanced than the posts in which you've written them down imply, but if your goal is to have a productive discussion, it would be more helpful to elaborate on those ideas instead of accusing those who challenge them with arguing in bad faith.

Fix'd.

[citation needed] Surely the connection between rest-gating via tedium and the player's ability to tolerate tedium (ie. patience) isn't so obscure as to require extensive proof?

I dunno, trying to maximize the amount of happiness that results from your actions sure sounds like a workable practical definition of "good" to me, but I guess it doesn't really count unless you also make your own life miserable in the process? "Good" doesn't have to be stupid. Someone who isn't willing to make the sacrifice and still wants to be considered virtuous would say that, yes. By your definition, someone who sees the suffering of people infected with a deadly illness, rushes in to help them to the best of his ability, then gets infected and promptly dies in a few months is a "better" person than someone who actually puts in the time and effort to devise an effective way to help those people, invents a cure, and saves countless lives without getting himself killed in the process. If your goal is to explicitly portray good as stupid and ultimately self-destructive, I guess that can work as an artistic statement, but otherwise it's no less cartoonish than the currently prevalent portrayal of evil as "someone who is rude to people and occasionally kicks a puppy for no good reason".

Luckily I did neither of those things. (A lesser man would undoubtedly add something about not appreciating poorly-thought-out accusations based on nothing but the reader's inability to distinguish between calling a statement idiotic and calling the person who made that statement an idiot, but I'm going to resist that temptation here.) Pick one. "Tedium is necessary" and "player patience isn't a currency" are mutually incompatible statements.