Gamers Are Lame

I recently discovered that gamers who aren't game designers are exceedingly lame. And I realized that the reason I'm not a gamer is simply because I'm not that lame, and because all the games ever made, all the games anyone could make, will always be lame.

There are damned few games where you get to alter the game world. The only ones I know are Minecraft, Second Life and the old MOOs (I consider Second Life a 3D MOO). And of course, the Reality MMORPG (that one's manual is really inadequate by the way).

In World of Warcraft, you don't get to change the outcome of anything at all. Things move around randomly, events happen, and you don't have any say in them. Only an unreachable deity (the Content Programmer) has any say in it at all.

In Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights and other computer role-playing games, you get a choice of a tiny number (usually 3 or less) "endings" which are barely distinguishable. You win and become evil, you win and become good, you lose and die, so on. There isn't any possible way to get off these plot rails you're stuck on.

And aren't you happy with 3 or 4 destinations? Like I said, I'm not that lame. And although in Minecraft and possibly Dungeon Keeper, you get to craft worlds, you only get to do so on a very superficial level. Like a freaking engineer! I look down on engineers, I don't want to emulate them!

So anyways, how did I learn all this? Well, I read a couple of self-insert fics about computer games. It took me a while to figure out their authors were uncreative hacks who were novelizing the games. Cause yeah, I don't play computer games, I just read about them. And then I started wondering what the fuck was wrong with these people.

And I realized! They're cattle and insects. They don't think of anything beyond their own self-aggrandizement. The "sandbox" in Elder Scrolls where you get to acquire power, prestige (social status), and fortune (wealth) is all they could ever want.

None of them ever want to REMAKE the world, putting down railways and signal towers to keep the Tamriel Empire together. None of them want to build aqueducts, public baths and radically improve coal mining to heat the baths in Athkatla.

I suppose Civilization and Railroad Tycoon let you do that to a small degree. But they were crap, because you got bogged down in repetitive micro-management pretty damned quick. And they were over-simplistic. What you could build was exceedingly limited. The plot rails may have been conceptual but they were still there.

My favourite genre of fiction has always been crossovers with reality. And the first question that always comes to mind is what the trade opportunities would be. I think this rant kinda shows that. Healing potions for steam engines, hmm. Steam engines are nearly always possible so long as something resembling human life lives.

Revealing Language

PROGRESS VS SURVIVAL

Fascists and fascism apologists talk about making sacrifices in order to "secure" survival. Not in order to survive but to "secure" it. What does that mean? Well, it means that they make these sacrifices in order to FEEL SECURE. And what is change and progress and growth if not threats to the feeling of security and stability? In other words, fascism apologists aren't really sacrificing anything. Not for themselves. Rather, they are sacrificing YOUR progress and growth, and YOUR desire for justice ... for the sake of THEIR feelings of security.

Because there is no empirical data whatsoever, and copious counter-examples disproving the notion, that survival and progress are incompatible in any circumstance. There are plenty of revolutions that advanced social progress FIRST in order to ensure survival LATER. China comes to mind. France comes to mind. It is only in the minds of would be Fascists that survival is somehow more important than progress. Because in their minds, progress really doesn't matter in the first place, because progress is NEGATIVE in their minds. When as a matter of empirical fact, progress is NECESSARY for survival.

(Simple example: if we don't progress technologically then in a few million years, an asteroid or super-volcano is going to annihilate the human species. Because Nature is just plain evil like that. Of course, that doesn't stop people from worshiping an evil nature in the least, any more than it stops people from worshiping the evil Jehovah. Or Batman. People seem to just like worshiping Evil.)

The would be fascists will claim that survival while not necessarily more important than progress is nonetheless more urgent. But how can it possibly be more urgent when progress is often a logical prerequisite of survival? Ahh, that's right, for a moment I forgot that most people are incapable of logic. And so by being incapable of logic, their perceptions and their actions are effectively fascistic. Wonderful!

HELPING POVERTY

"Helping" poverty is another good one. These people are doing nothing to END poverty. They rather believe ending poverty is impossible. It's why they rarely say "helping end poverty", although some do. I would go so far to say as they don't even believe they are helping poor people, not really. Else why don't they say "helping people in poverty" or "helping poor people"?

No, what they are doing is perpetuating poverty, helping poverty to exist. By papering over it and making it palatable to others, especially to the middle class and the poor, they try to prevent a revolution or other definitive actions that would actually eradicate poverty. I know that if I had a goal it would be to end poverty or eradicate poverty. It would certainly not be "helping" it. It takes some special kind of fucked up person to want to help poverty. But then, there is no shortage of evil-minded retards among the general population. It seems rather that's the overwhelming majority of them.

And if you believe otherwise then I have but a simple question for you: if people really believed that it were desirable to reduce or end poverty, then why would they make not a single goal towards that end? The fact that people are insects does not explain why their hive-mind hasn't come up with a single idea to reduce or end poverty. The fact the overwhelming majority of insects are cattle following the herd who are ultimately following freethinkers, doesn't explain why the freethinkers didn't lead the cattle towards reducing poverty or perhaps why the cattle didn't glom onto reducing poverty as a goal. The only thing that explains the fact of near-universal apathy towards poverty is this ... people like poverty.

The Value Of Knowledge

I have encountered twice the erroneous belief that knowledge is somehow important, let alone important for psychological growth and self-knowledge. This ridiculous notion must be uprooted as it is ludicrously false. It is a simple matter of economics, but first I will deal with another misconception, omnipresent amongst the idiots studying psychology and AI. That emotions somehow matter and are the root of personality.

EMOTIONS

Emotions are trivial and meaningless. They are instantly changeable using the Emotional Disciplines I have invented. Not like pathetic Buddhist meditation or Kolinahr where some neutral emotion like tranquility or calm is targeted and great efforts are made to achieve it. No, using the Emotional Disciplines it is trivial to cancel any emotion within 6 seconds AND you can also SUMMON any emotion within 6 seconds. It doesn't even take any real practice, all it takes is knowing exactly how to do it.

Now, if emotions are completely unimportant then why would one's reactions to various situations be important? Why would one's memories be important to one's self?

KNOWLEDGE

Getting back on track now, there are 800,000 words in the English language. Say that 10^5 = 100,000 are concepts, and there are (10^10) possible ideas (agglutinations of concepts). You can see the combinatorial explosion starting. Well, among the 100,000 possible concepts, there are maybe 10,000 that can be universalized as core values. So that's 10^4 possible core values, out of which an Angel will typically have *SIX* for their whole entire lives. I myself hold exactly TEN, being a total freak of nature and far more passionate and caring than others.

Those 6-10 core values determine HALF of your personality and 97% or so of its individuality. A SINGLE core value determines MORE THAN 5% of your personality. Think about that. And now compare it to individual bits of knowledge which has a TOTAL weight upwards of 10^10 so that a single idea has a weight only of 10^-10! Upwards of 5% compared to less than one tenth of a billionth. Core values versus knowledge. There is no contest.

Knowledge just doesn't matter.

META-LEVELS

And then of course there is the argument from meta-levels. If you do not know what meta-levels are, you should look it up. Suffice to say that higher is better. That transcendance is meta-meta-leveling. And that the higher you go, the more leverage you can have.

Knowing the value of 3.14159 is less valuable than knowing it's the ratio of a circle to its circumference, which is itself less valuable than knowing that it exists as an important mathematical constant called pi. Knowing how to work the political system is less valuable than knowing how to change the political system is less valuable than knowing how to abolish it in preference for a completely different political system.

Similarly for IS versus OUGHT. There is what is. There is what you want or desire (although those are misnomers for low-level values as 'want' and 'desire' are specific emotions thus insignificant). And then there is what OUGHT to be (high level values - core values).

IN REAL LIFE

The way this manifests in practice is thus, you can divide your life horizontally between intellectual, work and personal. And you can divide it up vertically between lower and higher:

intellectual: knowledge about the world and knowledge ABOUT knowledge (about how to acquire knowledge, about how to determine what knowledge you require, about what knowledge is valuable, about what knowledge you ought to have).

work: doing something to get paid and be financially sound versus doing meaningful work to effect a change in the world.

personal: knowing your desires, thoughts & hobbies versus knowing your Core Values, your mind, & Life Dreams. HAVING Life Dreams. Knowing how to discover and produce them systematically and at will. Being an insect versus being a giant (and knowing not to imitate insects).

interpersonal: having friends versus having the kinds of friends that will make you happy and a better person besides, growing and furthering those relationships, strengthening and broadening those bonds, learning how to do all this, learning how to pick great friends.