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    Posts made by Coin

    • RE: Life... in outer space!

      @arkandel said in Life... in outer space!:

      @coin Hrm? Linear doesn't only mean something is sequential, but also that it extends along a straight line.

      So on a X/Y graph plotting advancement over time, human progress is anything but linear. It'd be full of long flat plateaus, raising now and then, going down a couple of times and there'd be a few spikes in the mix as well.

      Edit: Look at this shit!

      That's cuz you see it as a sline that spikes when advancement happens, while I was viewing it as a line that simply does not continue UNTIL advancement happens. 😛

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Life... in outer space!

      @arkandel said in Life... in outer space!:

      @coin said in Life... in outer space!:

      Humans today might seem as incomprehensibly basic to those future "humans" as ants seem to us now.

      Also let's keep in mind that although time is (probably...) linear, advancement isn't. The human species has been around for roughly 200,000 years according to earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans, which is a tiny bleep in the range of time, but consider how much more we've progressed technologically within say, the last 200 years of those? If you lived in 1100AD and in 1300Ad, other than for political changes your lifestyle would be more or less the same, but if you took a person from the 1800's and plugged them into today they'd barely know how to use the toilet or get out on the street without hurting themselves.

      Now consider where, given this rate of advancement and all the things in our actual, current short term horizon (anything from self-driving cars, automation putting a potential end to work-for-a-living, 3D printing with the potential to change our lives again, gene editing which can change our biology, etc) our rate of advancement is accelerating.

      Assuming there is life Out There relatively tiny timeline changes can make enormous differences. A thousand years is absolutely nothing on the cosmic scale, but we can't fathom what life will be like on earth a thousand years from now - we can't even really imagine what it will be like in fifty!

      So a different civilization that just got that little bit of a head start on us? Maybe we wouldn't be like ants in comparison, but who knows.

      Nitpick: that's still linear, advancement-wise. It's just not consistent or constant.

      I mean, unless you're implying we go backwards, technology-wise, which is possible.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Life... in outer space!

      @bored said in Life... in outer space!:

      @arkandel said in Life... in outer space!:

      @bored said in Life... in outer space!:

      @arkandel I have some issues with the anthill thing. Human explorers may not have stopped to talk to ants, but they knew that they were there, alive, and in some way part of the same existence. Fast forward only a very short while, and we sure try talking to apes, whales... dogs, cats (and some entomologist, probably, yes, ants).

      That's kind of the point though. To an alien life form capable of reaching out to us in the first place we would be the ants in that scenario, not the apes or dogs and cats.

      I get the analogy, but I think its scale is incorrect. It seems improbable that a sentient, type II+ civilization would be technologically incapable and/or disinterested in communicating with a sentient, type .7 civilization, particularly having gone through the very same process and questions. It only real works with some arbitrary, Star Trek prime directive style narrative, or if the other life form is incomprehensibly alien.

      At the same time, we scrutinize every grain of dust we recover within our own solar system. We're not just looking for ants, but microbes.

      I would say the chance is very high that we might miss a theoretical life form when we first (or second or third...) encounter it because we are looking for a paradigm similar to our own. It could be anything - and as for any communication, a good example from that OP article was taking ten years to say 'hello'; to us it would sound like white noise.

      I feel like this hits the same problem. Their tech is vastly better, they probably understand (and have previously used) something analogous to our tech. They can surpass ridiculous, possibly absolute limits like relativity, but they can't work out how to communicate with a lesser life form that nonetheless possesses structured language, EM communication technology, etc?

      This presumes that advancement in technology comes qwith a consistent and uninterrupted understanding of how that advancement came to be, but we're talking about a hypothetical civilization/species that has thrived technologically for (if we're using the hypothetical Planet X from the OP link) billions of years. It's easy for mne to imagine them communicating in a way that makes our communication seem painfully and impossibly primitive, much the same way we see ants communicating. Ants communicate via pheromones, IIRC, something that the ancestors of humans may or may not have done--we certainly didn't always communicate via verbal speech and writing.

      I feel like your assumption also includes that the civilization stops evolving biologically once it starts developing technology, but that's probably not right either. In the past, what, million years, we've evolved quite a lot--imagine what we might look like, be like, how we might communicate and process basic thought in a billion years.

      Humans today might seem as incomprehensibly basic to those future "humans" as ants seem to us now.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Life... in outer space!

      @arkandel said in Life... in outer space!:

      But I mean! From the scenarios described in the Fermi Paradox (the OP link!) which one would you say is closest to what you subscribe to?

      I kind of like the ant-hill theory; you have ants living next to a super highway. How would the ants know to recognize it for what it is or figure out the reasons for which it had to be built? Even if the ones who're building it wanted to communicate, how would they? What would there be to talk about?

      Ants!

      I tend to subscribe to this one too.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Dead Celebrities 2018

      3.14

      Pi day.

      He died on fucking pi day.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Pineapple on Pizza

      @arkandel said in Pineapple on Pizza:

      @auspice Our people are everywhere.

      E
      V
      E
      R
      Y
      W
      H
      E
      R
      E

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: What's your identity worth to you?

      Don't really care about any of it.

      I don't even have privacy settings on my FB.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Good TV

      I really enjoyed Season 2 of Jessica Jones. It's not as strong as Season 1 but I think that's mostly because of expectations (we had much less informed expectations for S1, and we had a LOT of expectations for S2 based on S1).

      I still really, REALLY liked it. It has a tight theme across all the arcs, excellent music, excellent directing, and the acting is superb. Even if I did see the big twist coming.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Podcasts? Podcasts!

      Welcome to Night Vale.
      Alice Isn't Dead.
      Myths & Legends Podcast.
      Fictional.
      LORE.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Skills and Fluff in WoD

      wtf did i just read

      i can't leave you people alone for a few weeks

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Good TV

      @packrat said in Good TV:

      So, to follow on from Altered Carbon being turned into a TV show?

      https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17035618/amazon-culture-series-iain-m-banks-television-show

      Apparently Amazon is going to try turning Consider Phlebas into a show. I can only imagine the brain melting degree of budget that would be required to pull it off but am intrigued as to the result.

      Holy forking shirt balls.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Charging for MU* Code?

      @icanbeyourmuse said in Charging for MU* Code?:

      I have yet to meet a mu* creator who doesn't know, almost exactly, what they want and a basic break down of how they want it to work.

      Man, I have yet to meet a MU* creator who knows what they want--who really knows what they want--including myself when I've started games.

      Often the limitations and the reach of code elude the people who it needs to work for. I have had arguments and discussions with @Thenomain that lasted hours--days, even--about this stuff.

      Just because a game owner thinks their mapped out plan is perfect and complete, doesn't mean it is.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Charging for MU* Code?

      If you charge, have a timetable, stick to it, like any other sidejob.

      Volunteering has the advantage that you can decide not to work on it one day and no one will has any right to get huffy.

      You can poke me in private for more personal thoughts on the matter, when I've got the time. But everything everyone else said is also true.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Birthday GIF Game

      alt text

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Book Recommendations

      @cupcake said in Book Recommendations:

      The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by FC Yee. It's YA and definitely just the brain equivalent of popcorn, but once I realized that the Monkey King was a major character my brain immediately went WHERE IS @Coin?????

      Have not read it.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings

      @lithium said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

      @coin Spoilers tag, jeeze, some of us aren't that far into The Strain

      I mean that seriously!

      I am slowly making my way through the show still.

      Yep. Sorry.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings

      @jennkryst said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

      @tinuviel said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

      @sg Open immigration, universal healthcare, disarming the police force...

      ... this upsets me, because it's one of those obvious-but-not things. Gotta keep your food source healthy and not killing eachother.

      ***NSFW content***

      click to show

      One of the only things that The Strain did well-enough was how it portrayed a post-apocalyptic vampire-ruled U.S., where humans were slowly, secretly, and systematically herded into concentration camps, and how women of a certain blood-type were inseminated with semen from men of a certain blood-type to have children with a SPECIFIC (and preferable to the vampires) blood-type. Literally making people that taste better.

      It would've been creepy if they had done it WELL, but it was effective enough.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Skin Bug

      These are the skins NOT affected:

      Default
      Sandstone
      Paper
      Readable

      So, basically, the default and all the color variants. Anything else is fucked.

      posted in Suggestions & Questions
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Skin Bug

      I just refreshed and it happened to me too.

      posted in Suggestions & Questions
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Good TV

      @auspice said in Good TV:

      @coin said in Good TV:

      @arkandel said in Good TV:

      @coin I didn't even know there was a book. But the first episode of Altered Carbon kicked all kinds of ass.

      Yes, yes, I've already seen it all.

      I am asking to see if I can read the book without already being spoiled.

      I'm hoping to watch the show in the next couple days (off work + less homework). I'll be able to let you know then.

      Just from briefly scanning the wikipedia article without spoiling myself it seems they changed some key things.

      Let me know once you've watched it.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
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