Hehe, good point.

people need to read more code, play around with it, break it and fix it to become better programmers.

I think AI bots can help with that. It’s easier now to play around with code which you could not write by yourself, and quickly explore different approaches. And while you might shy away from asking your colleagues a noob question, ChatGPT will happily elaborate.

In the end, it’s just one more tool in the box. We need to learn when and how to use it wisely.

Alright, thanks! I think I understand where you’re coming from, and can relate. I’m an ex-Christian, although I guess for ex-Muslims this process is a whole other beast.

And yes, I know exactly what you mean about culture and critique - as an leftwing, anti-theist leaning atheist, I often have to cringe about my peers. It feels like false romanticizing, like we did with native americans, or other falsly understood cultures. So many things which I despise in fascism are also present in strict Christianity and strict Islam. Although luckily, very few people take their religion seriously here. So our religious nutjobs are a fringe minority and can mostly be ignored.

Refugees welcome, but I hate it when they try to establish religio-fascist areas here, spewing hate and all their nonsense, occasionally killing someone. I mean, if you want to live like that, go back. If you like our way, be welcome.

Yeah, a sensitive topic which can easily trigger people. I try not to care about the boxes they try to put me in. And I absolutely love the freedom of speech we have here. I don’t want that be ruined by migrants who think they speak for Allah, nor by leftists who think every minority shares their values. Like I was one of them. In my youth, with coloured hair and ragged clothes, I was regularly beaten up by (almost exclusively) migrants. Created quite some cognitive dissonance, some effort to justify their deeds, like worse socioeconomic status blabla. Truth is, many people are quite “conservative”, naturally more so in less liberal countries of origin. And still, I vote and speak for open borders. Our society must find better ways than building walls. This issue is challenging European core values, with at least two ways to erode the values; we can lose them by allowing hostile subcultures to grow, or we can lose them by closing us off to the outside.

Good lord, 6 years. Poor Aisha. I guess my brain was happy to forget that detail.

So thanks again for this exchange. Stay safe.

Other person.

I think there are stories in the Quran or the other important texts (Hadid?) about their prophet marrying a 9yo. Although I’ve witnessed controversy around her exact age amongst people in /r/DebateReligion. Like some said it wasn’t too bad, she was almost 14 or so.

Now your turn, what do you think? And why did you want them not to google?

Hey, I know a pretty similar bus stop in Hamburg, Germany: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SMa5unXew4uAfVtPA

Can confirm, it sucks to wait there. Hard to reach (always tempting to risk your life for catching the bus), noisy, stinky, plus ours has bicyclists zooming through the isle.

To optimize the intersection for car traffic. Or maybe rather to minimize signal wait times.

If pedestrians could take the shortest path, it would roughly double the size of the intersection in both width and height. Which then requires clearing times on each signal pass to be longer. Which ultimately makes everybody wait longer at the intersection, including pedestrians.

So, that is one possible explanation. I guess you didn’t really ask for one, and maybe I should also add that it’s just that; an explanation, not a justification.

While possible, it goes against the Mediocrity principle:

The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional, or even superior.[2][3]

Right. Also the speed of transition matters a lot.

Take any devastating effect that climate change might bring. Regions becoming uninhabitable, millions migrating, thousands of houses destroyed, crops failing, species going extinct.

For any of these effects, it helps a great deal if they can be delayed by years or hopefully decades. It gives everything more time to adapt. Like 10 million people migrating in 1 year puts a hell lot more stress on everybody involved (including the receiving countries) compared to 10 million migrating in 10 years.

Or your country might be blessed to deal with wildfires and floods one after the other, instead of both occuring simultaneously.

More time is worth more effort.

Much like that comment. Can you give a better example, or express why it’s a bad example? That would bring some quality in.

FYI you can self-host GitLab, for example in a Docker container.

You can find “piggy power” at the bottom of the article, headlined “How to describe your game instead”.

Pixel Washer is a cozy, zen-like game where you play as a cute *piggy power washing* beautiful pixelated worlds.

I can read it in two ways: Either you’re a ghostly piggy power, who is washing. Or you’re a “piggy”, who is “power washing”. The grammar is ambiguous.

Maybe you meant to take side for the interpretation as a “cute piggy”. I agree that’s the most likely interpretation.

Still, this might confuse or downright misinform some readers. The main point of the article was to communicate what the game is in a clearer, more accessible way. So I found it worthwhile pointing out how it kind of fails there.

The author was concerned somebody might read a description like “Pixel Washer is like PowerWash Simulator meets Stardew Valley”, and partially fail to understand it, because they don’t really know what “PowerWash Simulator” or “Stardew Valley” are. Because they aren’t literate enough in game titles.

But similarly, one can worry readers might not know certain words or grammatical constructions (maybe because they are no native speakers, or for other reasons), to decide wether it’s a washing power or a piggy washing; because they aren’t literate enough in English.

Describing your game by listing other games is tempting, but not a good idea, and I’m about to convince you why.

That did not age so well. I found most arguments rather weak. Here’s an overview of all the three arguments, copied from the article:

1. It requires your audience to be familiar with those games
2. It creates pre-conceived notions, setting high expectations
3. Players prefer to discover the similarities on their own

Generally, we have at least two options for describing thing A: We can relate it to another thing B (“Pixel washer is like Stardew Valley”), or we can relate it to some abstract attribute (“Pixel washer is uplifting”). Either way, we use language shorthands to describe similarities with other known entities.

About 1: Yes, that is obviously true. And it’s also true for the opposite, when you don’t relate your game to other games. Granted, your description becomes more accessible to a broader audience since it does not require them to know the other games. But instead, the reader now has to be able to understand and visualize what your description might look and feel like as a game (and thus becomes less accessible again). Take for example the first sentence of the proposed better description:

“Pixel Washer is a cozy, zen-like game where you play as a cute piggy power washing beautiful pixelated worlds.”

I’d flag ‘cozy’ and ‘zen-like’ as probably rather less known and/or well-understood terms. I’m also not sure what ‘piggy power’ means. Is it even meant as one thing or is english grammar misleading as so often? Does it involve actual pigs or only their powers, whatever that might mean? But fair enough, even if all that remains not understood, the minimal takeaway is probably that it’s a game with pixels and pigs and washing. So yeah, the alternate description probably works for most people.

But in the same way, a description referring to other games also works for most people.

In case of unclear references, a game-reference wins over a word-description. Like when I look up ‘cozy’ and ‘zen-like’, I may or may not come across definitions and pictures which convey the same idea as the author intended. For example, I might find results about baking cookies or shooting arrows, which have nothing to do with washing pigs. Whereas, when I look up “PowerWash Simulator” and “Stardew Valley”, the results are far less ambiguous.

Argument 2 is the strongest from my point of view. But again, it’s pretty similar for both ways. It should be kept in mind. Maybe it’s best to ask your game testers how they would describe the game, including those who don’t like it, to avoid setting too high expectations because you fell in love with your game while making it.

Argument 3 was entirely new to me. It never crossed my mind, nor did I hear anyone complain about it. I think people very much appreciate language shorthands, if they are used well and are not misleading. If so, they can save time and give a crisp description. And let’s not forget that we are talking about advertisement. We know we are being lied to, that a ‘fast-paced action shooter’ can feel dull and boring quickly. As the author points out, these descriptions serve one purpose only; to generate more sales.

I also wanted to include a reference to Roguelikes or Roguelites. Apparently there once was a game named ‘Rogue’, which no one knows. But it spurred other creators to make something similar, and now we have genres called Roguelike and Roguelite. I think that’s kind of funny in this context, since in this case you somewhat cannot describe the genre without comparing it to another, specific game.

Last but not least, the whole argument is probably less relevant in mainstream games, but more so in indie, or niche, new games in a creative way. When there is almost nothing which is very similar, comparisons to other games might work less well than if you’re just releasing another RTS or FPS.

Hehe, right! (technically). Context matters! When talking about fruit, people usually don’t include stellar objects when weighing their options. Still true when taking in consideration that “apples to oranges” is usually metaphorical and not really about fruit.

I like that, especially this insight:

when two things have very few attributes in common or the attributes they can be compared on are very broad, general or abstract, it is harder to compare them.

A melon and a pogo stick are harder to compare, for their defining attributes hardly overlap except on a very abstract way.

Good on you to say “harder to compare” :D

it’s all semantic subjectivity. Poetry compares dissimilar things and equates unequal concepts all the time.

Another thing worthwhile to point out; subjectivity. I guess that part bothered me too. “cannot be compared” attempts to establish some kind of objective truth, whereas it only can be a subjective opinion.

The reference to poetry was nice, too.

My point works just as well with an arbitrary amount of options. Someone could say “These quintillion things cannot be compared”.

The number of options is irrelevant to what I tried to address. Though my examples were only pairs, so sorry for causing confusion.

Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed reply. I guess you’re right about the equivocation and I can see the irony :D

Though I have not fully understood yet. Following your example, the two different concepts are …

• in case A, we compare the value of a property (different top speed)
• in case B, we compare the purpose or context-dependend usefulness of an attribute (different types of liquid container holders)

What blocks me from fully agreeing is that still, both are comparisons. And they don’t feel so different to me that I would call them different concepts. When I look up examples for equivocations, those do feel very different to me.

I still guess you’re right. If you (or someone else) could help me see the fallacy, I’d appreciate.

Agreed, yeah. Guess I was taking the word too literally.

In contrast to a monarchy, where people cannot choose their leader, in capitalism people can choose from which company they buy, or even create their own.

As another person already pointed out, these are obviously two different categories.

The question then is, why do people choose the way they do, both when buying and when running a company? To me it seems, they don’t because of some external pressure (like monarchy requires).

The point can be summed up as a question: Why don’t people run (more) non-capitalist services and productions, and why don’t they prefer them when looking to satisfy their demand?

These non-capitalist things exist, it’s certainly possible. But as far as I know, they are all very niche. Like a communal kitchen, some solidary agriculture or housing project. Heck, entire villages of this kind exist.

So the alternative is there, but it requires actual commitment and work. I don’t see how capitalism could be abolished in an armed uprising (in contrast to monarchy). But it can be replaced by alternative projects. Partially. Why are they so small and few?

That’s a self fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it? The effect you describe would not be there if it wasn’t for comments like this. Or at the very least, these comments make the effect bigger.

Because religion evolved to thrive in us.

It’s like a parasite, and our mind is the host. It competes with other mind-parasites like other religions, or even scientific ideas. They compete for explanatory niches, for feeling relevant and important, and maybe most of all for attention.

Religions evolved traits which support their survival. Because all the other variants which didn’t have these beneficial traits went extinct.

Like religions who have the idea of being super-important, and that it’s necessary to spread your belief to others, are ‘somehow’ more spread out than religions who don’t convey that need.

This thread is a nice collection of traits and techniques which religions have collected to support their survival.

This perspective is based on what Dawkins called memetics. It’s funny that this idea is reciprocally just another mind-parasite, which attempted to replicate in this comment.

What do you mean? Of course they do. It’s not a contradiction, because they are adversaries.