Mr. Magniloquent

I'd probably be inclined to kill the other 6. The dog is one of my own, they're not This sort of statement causes me to reflect on what has gone awry with our species. A dog will never write a symphony, let alone appreciate one. They will never provide insight into the nature of reality. Its capacity to produce, appreciate, and relate are so comparatively inferior, yet somehow humans will frequently elevate them beyond their own kind. I don't understand this. Dogs have been selectively bred for social compatibility with humans for hundreds of years. Their affection has been cultivated the same way grapes have been selectively evolved by humans for enjoyment. Pinot Nior vs. Sauvengion Blanc. Doberman vs. Chihuahua. When people start valuing another species more than their own--let alone something as simplistic and inferior as a dog, I begin to suspect projection of a cognitively dissonant self-loathing. Somehow tossing human survivors overboard to their deaths is a sane statement, yet making an equivalent statement like, "I would murder half a dozen innocent sapient beings and feed them to my demonstrably inferior emotional toy should I deem it necessary" would be considered psychopathic. Bizarre.

I lean more towards Namutree's arguments. Value is subjective and both parties are interested. This is why juries are useful. Just because costs are sunk by a party does not unequivocally impart value. If some jerk destroys my asparagus patch that I spent three years cultivating--I am not going to be reasonably entitled to charge him or her my substantial professional rate for all of the hours I had sunk into growing those plants. While the abstract nature of a dog's value gives reason for the plaintiff to make their claims, it also is every bit as justified for the defendants and jury to provide their own contrasting determinations of value precisely because it is abstract. Laws are poor substitutes for human discretion. Whatever the ruling may be, it should not be taken as an applicable standard despite the popularity of doing that. Every case is unique, and we can only hope that in situations like this, human reason prevails. This is what juries are useful for.

I would have preferred that they kept the lead Japanese. I don't much care for it when studious divert from the source. If the ethnicity/gender/whatever is not supposed to matter, then why depart from it? Are we supposed to believe that there was not a single ethnically Japanese female actress that could capture Kusanagi? Why change the formula that was a success? It was like when the DragonBall Z film announced the actor for Goku. As soon as I found out it was a white boy, I knew the rest was going to be garbage. That Scarlett Johannes doesn't encourage me, as I find her to be so much mediocrity in nice packaging. As a related tangent, that a creepy bald eunuch playing either Wong or The Ancient One is a mark of confidence lost in Dr. Strange, which is a film I am greatly anticipating.

Yes, I did. No matter what currency you have at some point machines will be able to do any labor more effectively and at a lower cost than any human could ever compete with, regardless of the finance system. You may have a point that the current system is speeding up the development of such machines, but such machines would be in development regardless. Machine labor potential > Human labor potential This is the be all end all of whether or not human labor will at some point be phased out. If you could have a machine do the labor of a human at 1/1,000 the cost of a human and 1,000 times faster than a human ever could why would anyone consider using human labor? Why wouldn't such a machine be created? There is nothing wrong with that so long as the fundamentals for it are real. Nobody wept for the jobs lost because mules could carry greater burdens. Nobody weeps for the near total absence of travel agents today. If money keeps equilibrium, then any transition to a robotic workforce must pass a total or proportionate amount of gains in efficiency onto the customer. You cannot sell to someone who has no money. Robotized production requires massive capital investments, narrow scope, and mass production to yield the necessary profit margin. Even with continually decreasing automation costs, a stable monetary system would require a nearly reciprocal drop in price for efficiencies gained. No customers means no profit, no matter how efficiently you produce.

It wasn't really a rant. It was an attempt at explaining a problem fundamental to what the video is getting at, yet doesn't mention because the makers of it don't see/understand it. In fact, most people don't (even though it's not even remotely rocket science), which is the #1 reason why it's even a problem to begin with. What the video is getting at is that machine labor is getting more efficient than human labor. This has nothing to do with fiat currency. This is about technology. His post does NOT address the issues of the video in any way. Are you suggesting that if we didn't have fiat currency technological development would grind to a halt and human labor wouldn't be getting replaced my machines? Yes, I did. The video even glosses right over the point at 2:23 when talking about the economics of robotic vs human labor. The incentive to develop these automated systems is because human labor has been out-priced by market distortions. They continue to be pursued because of this. You're not just paying an arbitrated wage (minimum wage), you're paying a large variety of taxes on those wages. You have to provide VERY costly benefits. You have to comply with various regulatory requirements. These are very real burdens. They are the burdens which cause companies to make sure that they never have to hire you. These distortions exist because money has been ruined. They could never exist in a system where money was backed. Never. They couldn't, because the companies nor the taxpayers could sustain it. The author also has a vast overestimation of what actually constitutes "thought". Binary computing is not sufficient. Binary computing languages can't even scratch the surface of thought. Quantum computing provides some potential, but is still far off--let alone developing a quantum language capable of utilizing the hardware. The most painful example is when he talks about robotic stock trading. Stock trading doesn't happen through pattern analysis, it happens through exploiting latency in networks to front-run everyone else. Extraordinary difference. The medical doctor referencing is also absurd, because it totally ignores how tightly and incredibly restricted the medical profession is. The medical profession is artificial constrained in the strictest terms imaginable. These constraints are pricing doctors out of reach by market participants. The video is filled with such fallacies. It makes gross overestimation while ignoring the actual circumstances which drive and develop the situation it seeks to opine about. The OP of this thread doesn't understand why universal income will fail because they don't understand money. The author of the video doesn't understand why robotics are underpricing humans because they don't understand money. You didn't understand my post, because you don't understand money. You can't have a discussion on economics and ignore the basic unit of trade and store of value--let alone all of the ramifications around it.

. Posted in error. Mods, please delete.

I just finished Trine 3. I don't see what the complaints were about. The puzzles weren't as great as previous games, but was still a thoroughly enjoyable game. Perhaps I was just entranced by the most magnificent graphics and art work of any game ever. Frozenbyte has superb art direction. If they could make an open world adventure/rpg with the same aesthetic, I'd probably freak over anticipation. I especially enjoyed the look of the portion of the game where you get trapped within a book. Frozenbyte understands fantasy and adventure.

There is nothing isolationist about peaceful trade and travel. Nothing. Get it right. Sorry for the intrusion. You may all now resume squabbling over which leg of The State gets to stand on your neck.

You fail to understand the root, because you do not understand what money is. Money is a technology which facilitates trade by acting as an abstraction for tangible wealth and labor. To do this, the money needs to be firmly cemented in reality--because goods and labor are both real. Gold and silver have been the best medium for this for many reasons. See The Regression Theorem for more. The problem today, and for the last century is that money has been destroyed. It is no longer money--a store of value, it's a debt based currency. Fiat. By command. When the link between money and tangible reality (scarcity) is broken or corrupted, it becomes a "something for nothing" scheme. Think Wiemar Germany. You create something of value, I trade you paper...or today, ephemeral electronic bits at zero cost for your very real good/service. This has destroyed pricing, capital accumulation, and investment. Those most closely connected to the spigot enjoy at scenario where "Heads they win, Tails you lose" by buying assets (which nominally appreciate) before the currency is debased. This is the principle reason why the wealth divides have increased so significantly. It's also the reason why the world economy has ground to a halt. Prices are massively distorted, and capital is not self-preserving in this environment. It forces people into assets, creating bubbles and malinvestment writ large. Your guaranteed income doesn't solve this problem. It actually exacerbates it. Not only that, but it creates perverse incentive and requires even more State interference to function. To work, an economy would effectively have to formally and fully Sovietize, where this guaranteed income stipend would function as a system of rationing. There are alot more reasons. Every economy in the entire world is onerous burdened by extraordinary (cascading) levels of taxation and regulatory burden. Outside of black markets, there is not a single free or capitalist economy in the entire world. That's a huge part of the equation, but money is at the root. The use of robotics is only a symptom, because human capital has been out-priced by these market distortions. I could elaborate for a very long time on each of these, but it's money. Money is broken. That's the root.

I probably won't buy this. PoE was a disappointment to me. Unless they radically change the class/talent/spell system, I'm likely to stay away. It looks like this game might have a strong PS:T influence, which is encouraging--but Obsidian no longer has the benefit of the doubt for me. As an anecdote, the trailer gave me strong Conan The Barbarian vibes. I'm not entirely sure why.

Wow. That price is insulting. Breathing thin air from standing upon the shoulders of giants has addled Beamdog if they think this is value.

@BruceVC To put your own figures in perspective, that percentage would mean that any primary school sized group of immigrants would have 1 to 2 rapists amidst them. Does that seem like a small percentage to you?

I did a caster build, and I believe I killed him in maybe 4-5 shots with Soul Arrow or Soul Ray? I can't remember which. He was basically dead by the time he reached me, one tumble, one more shot. Gone. My friend was outraged, because his tank always got stomped. The final boss did give me some grief though, while being quite easy for my friend.

The Persians are about as evil as any Western state, their reach is just not as great. I'd rather deal with them than The House of Saud, that's for sure. Also, the Iranian government is about as representative of the people living there as the US Government is of its captives. That we can now begin moving past the farce that was the nuclear charade is all the better.

I immediately wrote off the new Homeworld when it didn't take place in the void of space. Having looked at it since though, the game appears to have a great deal more in common with Ground Control than its namesake, but that's not a complaint. I loved both series. I may give this one a chance.

Yeah, unfortunately the artists and programmers don't digitally end up with food on the table when people digitally duplicates their work. You bringing up crowd funding is ridiculous. You don't want to pay for a digital product because it can be duplicated for free, but you want to pay someone to create a digital product with little guarantee that it will be completed? Okey Dokey. The publisher model may stifle creativity, inflate costs and create a general mess, but it gives both the developers and consumers security in an open market. It may change as we move to a more digital age with crowd funding and other factors, but it most likely is not going away. You don't weep for the Monks who no longer charge small fortunes for hand written books. The printing press crashed the price of publications, and the world has been far better off for it. I haven't pirated a game in ages, but that doesn't change the facts. Copyright laws are legislated scarcity. It's the prohibition of perfectly replicating something with the same degree of tangibility as a memory or concept. If we could so easily replicate any other form of good, the world would be collectively rejoicing. Copyright laws are a fraud to keep you paying.

Last part is too much? How? Anyhow, I stand by my assertion - video games are a luxury item and you don't have to spend any money on them at all. I won't assert that there cannot be positive benefits of piracy, but any use of cost of legal game vs "quality" or "household income" is a rationalization because at the end of the day no one has to have a video game. Intellectual Property laws are a farce. If, with the click of a button and a few electrons, I could duplicate any worldly good in minutes--I would be hailed as the savior of humanity. Vehicles, homes, medical supplies, click-click-click. See: Cornucopia. Every "pirated" game is not in fact stolen. Each copy is perfectly replicated. The quantity of games in existence increases. The whole fact that any digital good is no more material than memories within my skull. It would not be desirable to try and incarcerate every person who acquired an idea without having first purchased it. That's absurd. If anyone needs that explained, I will do so in a very belittling fashion suitable to the stupidity of needing to ask such a question. That copyright laws are needed to incentive development and production is an outright falsehood. Copyright laws are an attempt to create an artificial scarcity and are an impediment to mankind's development. The ease of crowd-funding is now making this argument entirely disprovable, and we should all rejoice. Artistic diversions are important, but entirely superfluous to survival. Finally these things can cease be profit motivated abominations like EA and go back to being people whose creation stems from passion. The printing press revolutionized the world because it dramatically lowered the cost of print. Digitization has now reduced the cost of many goods to essentially zero. This is a good thing.

MDK II. Very good soundtrack. Mostly drum & bass techno, but a great deal of wonderful ambient and scifi tunes as well.

Um.....GRIM FANDANGO #1. I'm stunned that one hasn't been mentioned yet. Arcanum is also excellent--probably #2. As mentioned by others, all of the IE games had pretty good music too. Crypt of the Necrodancer is pretty great, I've been listening to that lately--but that feels like cheating.

I've been playing Chaos Reborn. It's a worthy update to one of my favorite favorite classic games. I'd like to see it expanded a bit in all categories with more spells, creatures, environments, music, but it's still an awesome game. It's frequently described as equal parts wizard chess and poker, which is apt.

I tried the free demo. I played maybe...3 hours. I'm a big fan of 5th edition, and I just couldn't get into the cooldown/skill tree mechanic they did. It just felt so very bland.

I doubt I will buy PoE 2 outside of a sale nd major recommendations. I have yet to finish PoE. I was on my way to Twin Elms and decided to clear the rest of Old Nua. Then I just....meh. I had already gotten to the point of "meh" well before that. My biggest gripe with PoE was the class system. If they went classes and unrestrained magic, I would probably have been a lot happier. Overall, it's not that I didn't like PoE so much as it left me with no reason to want more of it.

You just described my dream game, pretty much. Take ToEEs combat, Arcanum's setting and tone, Arcanum's open class system with magic vs tech theme, slam them together, say good bye to real life. w0rd. I did prefer PS:T plot and narrative to Arcanum's though. Thus far, Divinity: Original Sin has taken up the torch. If they could improve their writing and perhaps strike a dramatic rather than farcical tone, they will be king of the hill. That being said, I did enjoy D:OS for what it was--pure fun!

Planescape: Torment is a wonderful game. I don't know if it takes my top stop for RPG, but it is a contender. You will only be able to play it properly once though, so take your time and savor the details when you do. There were moments were reading struck me emotionally--the writing is that good. I ended up playing as a Chaotic Evil, though that wasn't my intention. That's one of the many ways in which the game is a gem. I did a fair amount of grinding early on, which made the combat go quickly later. I don't feel that it was as bad as the reputation merits, but it wasn't dreadful. The worst part about combat was the spell casting animations that I could not skip. Wisdom > Intelligence > Charisma > Else. Don't bother playing as a warrior or rogue. Also, play it in as many extended sessions as possible. It's not a game that can be enjoyed if you pick it up casually over the course of weeks or months. There is a lot of investigating and plot to keep up with. Maintaining immersion is also crucial to the experience.

I think you might like the original Deadlands RPG. It contains many of the qualities you are seeking. I think it's an excellent system. Essentially, all of your skills have a die value assigned, where the number of faces represents the magnitude of your ability and the sum of dice rolled represents the reliability/experience of the ability. Take a Streetwise value of 3d8. You will roll a 1d8 die three times, taking the highest value. If any of those die were to roll the maximum value of 8, then you could retain that value, roll 3d8 again, and add the highest value once more. This can continue indefinitely. A player with say, 5d6 Streetwise has a very reliable and practiced talent that will statistically roll to its upper potential often and almost never roll poorly. However, a 2d10 Streetwise has the potential to do great things, but a lot less reliably. Catastrophic failure is also more of a threat. These two aspects are purchased independently via "Fate Points" which can be acquired in various manners. Of very important note, if I remember correctly, is that HP never changes. Defense can improve, but HP always remains the same. This makes for an interesting mechanic where no matter how powerful, everything can potentially be slain by anything. It's a kind of natural bounded accuracy that gets overlooked all of the time. I have no idea why CRPGs do not use more Deadlands inspired systems.