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Author Topic: Medicated  (Read 5525 times)

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Classic

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #40 on: September 17, 2009, 09:16:41 PM »

Did I get off topic!? TIME FOR FOCUS MEDS!
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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #41 on: September 17, 2009, 09:22:20 PM »

Though it leaves me with the impression that you're romanticizing thinkers and the ability for humans to leave a legacy without successors (i.e. they can't).

I was being totally serious. And remember that our successors won't necessarily look like us, or even understand or remember us.

Viewed in terms of the races of the Black and Red (and maybe Silver) Queens, evolution has been a race to develop more useful and flexible forms of computation (at the expense of durability to the forms that information may take -- a star is much more resilient than, let's say, a redwood tree). It makes sense for the next evolutionary step to be, in that same spirit, a race purely of information and computation, with the critical caveat that it can't survive on its own (with the attendant advantage that it also doesn't itself need to eat, shit, or reproduce, and spreads instantly to anything that encounters it, and lives essentially forever -- remember POGs? Well, now you do).
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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #42 on: September 17, 2009, 09:26:23 PM »

also in the actual spirit of the thread (that being, like, drugs i guess) i was away a couple days being diagnosed with major depressive disorder, and getting a prescription for wellbutrin, and since all the outpatient psychiatric facilities run by the state of California have been gutted by our literal woman-hating nazi of a governor, getting this meant that i had to check myself into an in-patient clinic for a few days. i am typing in lowercase because i am elated to be 1: on the track to not feeling bad all the time 2: out of the cuckoo's nest, at last, at last, and i cannot be bothered to worry about capitalization, or anything else, anywhere or anytime.
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Classic

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #43 on: September 17, 2009, 10:44:34 PM »

remember POGs? Well, now you do.

While it is intoxicating in a sense to imagine all of creation as a crucible for either self-propagating (e.g. Life as we know it) or non-uniformly ordered, but locally stable structures (erm... this one's tougher, perhaps a vinyl disk?) and the progress of time invariably leading to the spread and dominance of these physical artifacts of ideas, to call this process writ-large as evolution invites the mad screeching of the mentally infirm (see panel 10). And of course, the reactively and massively anal (see me! wakka wakka).

I'm afraid I'm just letting myself get bogged down in the simple material issues. The cases I'm discussing are obviously pathological, but I find myself wondering: In one or two generations will anyone without access to the net of today have any fucking clue what POGs are? What ideas they reference?

Let's forget about how language and writing (and hell any non-analog encoding scheme) are essentially arbitrary constructions (i do not want to talk about how 2s compliment is not arbitrary i really do not). I'm not sure what keeps the meaning, the "idea" that's competing preserved without a fairly large body of "common knowledge".

My question is: If humans who somehow forgot everything of cultural importance between 1970 and 2010 somehow got ahold of a computer set up to play KQ7, would they understand how much it blows? I say no, I say that they can't know even though they've got the vast majority of the common knowledge they need to appreciate the artifact and the ideas it is an indirect product of.
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Classic

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #44 on: September 17, 2009, 10:45:13 PM »

Note to self: Don't make your great big messes of words this late at night. Sorry everyone more meds in the morning.
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JDigital

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #45 on: September 17, 2009, 10:52:07 PM »

you guys just need more hugs
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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #46 on: September 18, 2009, 01:18:40 AM »

maybe
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Bal

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #47 on: September 18, 2009, 01:31:17 AM »

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yyler

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #48 on: September 18, 2009, 02:04:10 AM »

I don't like hugging people I don't kiss on the mouth
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Mongrel

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #49 on: September 18, 2009, 03:11:58 AM »

POGs for everyone!

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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #50 on: September 18, 2009, 03:21:58 AM »

reading that in zapp branigan's voice is an odd experience
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Classic

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #51 on: September 18, 2009, 04:26:07 AM »

it makes sense because pogs are only useful as ammo for a futuristic railgun
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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #52 on: September 18, 2009, 08:58:15 AM »

slammers are anti-material rounds
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Büge

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #53 on: September 18, 2009, 02:32:33 PM »

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Transportation

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #54 on: September 18, 2009, 04:13:11 PM »

I was being totally serious. And remember that our successors won't necessarily look like us, or even understand or remember us.

Viewed in terms of the races of the Black and Red (and maybe Silver) Queens, evolution has been a race to develop more useful and flexible forms of computation (at the expense of durability to the forms that information may take -- a star is much more resilient than, let's say, a redwood tree). It makes sense for the next evolutionary step to be, in that same spirit, a race purely of information and computation, with the critical caveat that it can't survive on its own (with the attendant advantage that it also doesn't itself need to eat, shit, or reproduce, and spreads instantly to anything that encounters it, and lives essentially forever -- remember POGs? Well, now you do).

While an amusing idea, it only has a single data point (Earth) and even in that case the superior computational organism was nearly wiped out by drought. Progress != Evolution in any sense. Evolution goes for low-hanging fruit and short-term solutions, by definition. Intelligence needs to be locally favorable for something like humans to arise. Which it isn't, necessarily; brains are energy intensive. Adapting our stomachs for grazing or whatever could have been fitter given slightly different circumstances.

You've probably considered this, but your idea of some kind of information ecology seems dependent on these ideas not trying to compel their "hosts" to destroy their competitor's hosts, as it were.

If we're to take this idea to its logical extension, the "perfect lifeform" is a stupid, non-sentient (too much intelligence/complexity generates competing ideas) machine that knows (much like how ants know how to build a colony i.e. with little thought) enough physics and engineering to destroy any other hosts. I'm not sure what the minimum knowledge threshold you need to declare innovation and intelligence obsolete, but I'm sure it exists.

tl;dr meaning of life is to destroy the other

ANYWAY

In some respects, medication for mental issues is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  There's some semi-compelling musing/research recently about depression being an intentional brain mechanism to force focus on fixing a particular problem, but our society allows us to still be very comfortable doing jack shit sitting on the couch all day so our brain stays in that state, leading to eventual semi-permanent altering of brain chemistry and the necessity for anti-depressant medication.

Would not be surprised if a few other common mental conditions were similar.

..do you happen to remember any of these? I've never heard of it. I can't really see crippling self-loathing, constant pain, etc. talked about by any clinically depressed person being helpful for problem solving. Maybe it's a misdirected mechanism that works in other cases? The brain does that a lot, so it would make more sense.

I can't really see how the hallucinating and what not in say, schizophrenia, is supposed to help with that society is preventing, though.
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Mongrel

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #55 on: September 18, 2009, 05:38:51 PM »

Is this where that Terry Pratchett joke about cockroaches being the pinnacle of evolution comes in?
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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #56 on: September 18, 2009, 05:47:05 PM »

You misunderstand, i think; what i'm suggesting is that now IDEAS are the ones competing, not humans. It's ABSOLUTELY in the best interest of any given memetic ecosystem to encourage its host to attack and destroy carriers of competing memes -- the meme of jingoism/nationalism is highly prevalent, and as i hoped (but probably failed, OH WELL) to point out with the POG example, ideas are REALLY hard to permanently kill (sometimes because they form permanent artifacts, like bits of stupid-looking cultural detritus -- but ugly Brutalist government buildings or pieces of artwork, or religious books, all count too).

Faced with an opponent who comes back to life every time you say its name there's little choice, if you want to be victorious, other than to kill not only your enemy in its present form but every other form it could take, and in the case of an enemy idea, everyone who currently has it.
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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #57 on: September 18, 2009, 05:49:48 PM »

In other words, intelligent beings are the ones doing the fighting, but we're fighting on behalf of the ideas. We're basically ammunition.

There are other ways for ideas to fight, though, even if they can't kill each other. Propaganda is a popular one.
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Brentai

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #58 on: September 18, 2009, 05:56:51 PM »

Help guys.  I haven't played MGS4 yet.  Is that where Norondor is getting his philosophy?  Is that why I'm not getting it?
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Norondor

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Re: Medicated
« Reply #59 on: September 18, 2009, 06:17:42 PM »

you are cruisin' for a bruisin' pal
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