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1026
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 26, 2021, 07:21:01 am »
Adults with children, especially with a lot of children, are more likely to have a lower IQ and a lower level of education than adults with few or no children. This, of course, doesn't mean they vote worse, it just means they vote stupidly, which I can't use as an argument because I don't believe stupid votes are a problem. But it certainly makes it less likely that they would be some of those truly exceptional geniuses who can actually make good decisions for other people. However, what I can use as an argument is that adults with a ton of children are more likely to be members of certain religious groups that oppose contraception, which creates ideological bias in the voting pool and therefore worse votes.
This line of thinking is really no different from Republican attempts to suppress the vote of people of color. "We don't like how group XY votes, so let's exclude them from the vote as much as we can."

Any solid democratic system needs to be independent from the concrete social situation as that is always subject to change. This is essentially a "veil of ignorance" argument; you want to design the system without any knowledge how what any particular group's biases will be.

1027
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 24, 2021, 03:36:06 pm »
One of my favorite anti-mainstream policy proposals is "lower the voting age to 0".

1028
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 23, 2021, 04:57:15 pm »
The relevant post here is Policy Debates should not appear one-sided.
This is a tangent but I find this sort of thing quite disappointing from a supposedly scientifically-minded person:
Quote
Like it or not, there’s a birth lottery for intelligence—though this is one of the cases where the universe’s unfairness is so extreme that many people choose to deny the facts. The experimental evidence for a purely genetic component of 0.6–0.8 is overwhelming, but even if this were to be denied, you don’t choose your parental upbringing or your early schools either.
I can't be sure where the 0.6-0.8 figure comes from since no source is given, but I assume that this refers to heritability, a common statstic in genetics that, for intelligence, tends to fall in that range (the most recent study I found put it at 50%, but that is from 10 years after the publication of this blog entry).

To say that intelligence is strongly determined by genetics because of this stat is misunderstanding what heritability measures. Heritability measures the extent of deviation that cannot be accounted for by external factors. But that is by its nature dependant on the strength of the external factors. In a strongly segregated society, heritability would decrease, because there are more other factors that impact a child's development. The more egalitarian a society becomes, the more you should see an increase in heritability.

This means that you have no grounds to make a statement like "intelligence is determined mostly by a birth lottery". Heritability is not an inherent biological truth, it depends on the society in which we live. I have not seen any studies supporting the argument that biological differences in intelligence will persist no matter how we organize our society.

1029
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 22, 2021, 03:14:16 pm »
I don't think I get the idea behind arguing with hypotheticals? If they are not sufficiently spcified, just add the remaining details. The point obviously isn't the specific scenario.
My issue is I think that the author attempts to construct scenarios where the only available options are pretty bad, and I assume this is supposed to illustrate that sometimes you need to use policies with serious downsides. But even in those scenarios, there are arguably more options that the author doesn't take into account. If they cannot provide a solid example for a situation where you only have bad options, then the argument that such situations exist pretty much falls apart.

Especially considering that this is more specifically advocating use of violence against others; I don't buy that there are commonplace scenarios where using violence is the best option available.

1030
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 21, 2021, 03:56:21 pm »
These quotes are all from the same source right?

If an army is crossing the border or a lunatic is coming at you with a knife, the policy alternatives are (a) defend yourself or (b) lie down and die. If you defend yourself, you may have to kill. If you kill someone who could, in another world, have been your friend, that is a tragedy. And it is a tragedy. The other option, lying down and dying, is also a tragedy. Why must there be a non-tragic option? Who says that the best policy available must have no downside? If someone has to die, it may as well be the initiator of force, to discourage future violence and thereby minimize the total sum of death.
This is very reductive. Of course in the face of an invading army you have more than two options. Also if you immediately surrender most likely noone would die (at least not due to the conflict; it may be the intention of the army leaders to inflict harm on your population).

And the second example is "a lunatic comes at you with a knife"... like, is this the same person that wrote
If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you’ll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy’s mind.
?

1031
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 20, 2021, 05:10:40 am »
Arguably though, the second review is more helpful than the first, as the first comes from a person who clearly did not watch the show, and contains no information that would not already be available to a potential viewer.

1032
Other Games / Re: Hollow Knight
« on: November 16, 2021, 11:17:17 am »
Just finished the third coliseum of fools challenge. That was brutal. About 2 straight hours dying to it. And in the end I only beat it by taking a break to go get the Weaversong charm and basically cheesing a few of the later fights with it.
Oh I also just did that on the weekend.

My cheese solution for the final fight was Hiveblood; they can't reach you when you're far enough up on the wall, so you can always regenerate there.

1033
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 16, 2021, 11:14:50 am »
Apparently this is now where people talk when it's night (/between games).

1034
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 11, 2021, 09:50:29 am »
You're not wrong about the nazi analogy, but in the books, the pure bloods *also* clearly believe that Muggleborns are weaker at magic.
They might still be right; after all there is a selection bias. Any child of wizards will be trained in magic, but muggleborns with only a weak magical ability might never get noticed by the wizard "talent scouts" and never get sent to Hogwarts.

1035
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 11, 2021, 08:02:19 am »
Also side note but: it seems pretty clear that two wizards can produce a squib, right? Though one could take the stance that any such occurrence is due to either infidelity or mutation. (Or - since transmutation is a thing -  due to a roleplaying kink of the parents ;) )

Also, is there a distinction between squib and muggle?

This is now my favourite fan theory: squibs are the result of wizards conceiving under the influence of polyjuice potion.

1036
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 11, 2021, 07:52:13 am »
Ah, that's what you're getting at. Yeah, I retract the stronger claim. He could be good at chess. It would just not be likely.

Based on my experience, it's more likely than him being a wizard.
IDK, all children born to two wizard parents that I know are also wizards!

Which reminds me of a fundamental flaw in the racism allegory presented in the Harry Potter books. As far as we can tell, in the Harry Potter universe, wizarding ability is a recessive gene. If that is the case (and it is definitely the case that wizards have a much higher chance of spawning a wizard than muggles do), then the "pure-blood" ideology... kind of makes sense.

In hpmor, Harry hypthesizes that it could be based on exactly 2 genes (or chromosomes?). So each person has 2 wizard genes, they either say "magic" or "no magic". If both say no magic, you're a muggle. If it's split, you're a squib. And if it's magic/magic you're a witch or wizard. If two people have kids, each kid gets one gene from each parent randomly. So two wizards get 100% wizard. Wizard/Muggle always get squibs. And Squib/Squib have 25% muggle, 50% Squib, and 25% wizard. They find that this fits the data.

That's one way where the ideology wouldn't make sense, at least insofar that Hermione has no disadvantage compared to malfoy. If on the other hand it depended on 100 genes and more wizard genes make more wizardy wizards, then it would make sense. Two parents with n/wizard genes each where n > 50 would have kids with an expected number of genes m with m > n.

But in the universe, the data seems to be prett clear on it not making a difference. If anything mudbloods tend to be stronger.
Yes I was less talking about the "mudbloods are bad" side of things and more about the "we must preserve our pure bloodlines and mustn't mix with lesser men" side. Which is at least in part intended as an analogy to the Nazi ideology - but in Harry Potter, the Nazis are right.

1037
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 11, 2021, 05:56:20 am »
Ah, that's what you're getting at. Yeah, I retract the stronger claim. He could be good at chess. It would just not be likely.

Based on my experience, it's more likely than him being a wizard.
IDK, all children born to two wizard parents that I know are also wizards!

Which reminds me of a fundamental flaw in the racism allegory presented in the Harry Potter books. As far as we can tell, in the Harry Potter universe, wizarding ability is a recessive gene. If that is the case (and it is definitely the case that wizards have a much higher chance of spawning a wizard than muggles do), then the "pure-blood" ideology... kind of makes sense.

1038
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 10, 2021, 12:39:10 am »
As far as making the character itself black is concerned, in my opinion that's detrimental to the antiracist allegory because clearly Hermione wasn't written to be someone who has experienced racism in the muggle world. If you're going to make a point about how racism is bad with an allegory, you probably shouldn't also have an actual black character and portray her and her family as though they were completely unaffected by the racism that definitely would have been going on in the UK around that time.

But isn't this, like, way more thought than most people put into it? I could see young black girls being empowered by seeing Hermione without ever thinking through the implications.
It's certainly possible that most people (especially children) won't put that much thought into it., though I don't think that's easy to judge. But anyways isn't the point that as the author that is the level of thought you should put into your characters?

1039
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 09, 2021, 11:47:18 am »
Anyone feel free to debate me on this take.
Not sure what the take is.

It shouldn't matter if a character that is white in the source material is cast as non-white, unless the whiteness of that character is crucial for the plot/character development (e.g. it would be a bit strange to cast a black person as a KKK member). It doesn't matter for the story of Harry Potter whether Hermoine is white or non-white; if anything casting her non-white kind of fits the fact that she is subjected to racist abuse as a "mudblood" in the story.

I don't particularly care what Rowling says about how she imagined Hermoine.

I don't think it's beneficial to make a big deal about one's personal preferences insofar as they might have a negative impact on minority groups.

1040
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 08, 2021, 05:13:06 am »
Did you read the books?
No; I played one of the games but it didn't entice me enough to want to read a book set in that world.

1041
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 07, 2021, 04:04:59 pm »
Is this an RPG that accidentally transformed into a tv show? Only ever seen something with this computer game vibe in anime.
Yes, pretty much.

I mean, the Witcher is originally a book series that was first adapted into a series of RPGs and then was picked up as a TV series. I find it funny that you can see this background if you don't know about it.

1042
Forum Games / Re: RIP Quicktopic
« on: November 04, 2021, 05:35:26 am »
I mean, if we are listing out features, a discord server for managing the private conversations would allow:
What formatting options does Discord allow?

1043
Forum Games / Re: RIP Quicktopic
« on: November 04, 2021, 05:32:52 am »
I had to dig a little bit, but it seems that Chatzy deletes rooms after 14 days of inactivity (see Chatzy FAQ). That means we'd have to create our own archive.

1044
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 03, 2021, 08:06:17 am »
What are the odds that the USA still has anything resembling a democracy in 40 years?
It's debatable whether the US has anything resembling democracy today.  8)

1045
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 03, 2021, 05:13:34 am »
Agree that could work but doesn't in her case bc she really likes Trump and thinks he's pushing into the right direction by being a nationalist
Well if she likes Trump then the argument that he's stupid probably won't convince her either.

1046
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: The Necro Wars
« on: November 03, 2021, 02:17:52 am »
Probably everyone who reads this is going to agree with me on this but

my sister who is ridiculously smart and talented and could have probably succeeded in just about any profession now thinks that

- the world is ruled by some kind of social elite
- most big events like covid are coordinated
- - vaccines are a way to control the public and maybe reduce the size of the population

This theory is so completely and utterly trashed by the existence of Donald Trump. The political elite in the USA are too incompetent to prevent this guy who probably literally has < 100 IQ and no strategic bone in his body from winning in 2024 even though they had/have four years to do it. This so infinitely far away from the power they are supposed to have under this world view
I feel like it isn't hard at all to incorporate that into the theory; the social elite is just fine with Donald Trump. That was their plan all along. You have some grounds to argue this, as Trump pushed through tax cuts for the wealthy and is generally opposed to any measure that would empower the disadvantaged.

Well of course non-falsifiability is a key feature of conspiracy theories.

oh how I wish that the world really was ruled by a social elite.
This statement is all kinds of terrifying.

1047
Forum Games / Re: RIP Quicktopic
« on: November 02, 2021, 03:44:05 pm »
I made a virtual room in Chatzy to test it out, and I think it has the features we need.

http://us25.chatzy.com/88177764337625

From what I can see, there are two restrictions to the free version that might be problematic:
- free rooms have a maximum capacity of 10 people. That's fine for most things, but will be a problem for speccys.
- it's not possible to access the entire chat history. This is a bigger issue.

1048
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #133: A Time to Feast
« on: November 02, 2021, 11:52:43 am »
Quote
Mill Town: Action, $5
+1 Card
+2 Actions
You may play one or more Treasures from your hand to gain a card, costing up to $1 per Treasure played.

This is a bit ambiguous if you use it to play Counterfeit-Copper; can you now gain a card costing up to $3 or up to $1?

It seems clear to me that the answer in that situation is "up to $1" because Counterfeit played that Copper twice, Mill Town didn't play the Copper at all. And any rewording necessary to avoid all doubt also seems minor, such as adding "in this way" or "with Mill Town" at the end.

I would have interpreted it as “up to $3” in this scenario so it would be great if LFN could clarify.

It would be "up to $1" in that case. I'm not super keen on adding more words just to clarify it on the card, though it also matters for Crown, so maybe. So far I think this is a FAQ thing.
It also matters for Venture, and potentially Capitalism.

1049
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #133: A Time to Feast
« on: November 02, 2021, 07:36:18 am »


Quote
Mill Town: Action, $5
+1 Card
+2 Actions
You may play one or more Treasures from your hand to gain a card, costing up to $1 per Treasure played.
This is a bit ambiguous if you use it to play Counterfeit-Copper; can you now gain a card costing up to $3 or up to $1? Unfortunately any way I can think of to make that ambiguity go away makes the design also more clunky, like
Quote
You may set aside one or more Treasures from your hand. If you did, play them in any order, then gain a card costing up to $1 per Treasure you set aside.

1050
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest #133: A Time to Feast
« on: November 02, 2021, 07:09:53 am »


Quote
Monk - $4
Action

Trash a card from your hand. If there are no other copies of it in the trash, gain a card costing up to $5. If there are, you may replay this.

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