NormalHumanLikeYou [undecided]

there's no constitutional right to pee pee poo poo

i wish i had even a platonic friend that liked to read at all, let alone specifically leftist theory. i feel like a smug redditor for saying this but the intellectual loneliness is absolute in this barren wasteland suburban hell alienation farm. all anyone wants to do is drink and/or watch youtubers react to shitty reality tv shows. i'm sick of being the only one that knows what fucking words mean, of being the only one that knows anything about history or how to look into sources critically. of being the only person with artistic opinions beyond "i liked the most recent slop". Organize you say? we can't even organize a fucking D&D game that doesn't fizzle out after 3 sessions. i've already found the 2 non-country-music-enjoyers (i.e. non-racists) in the tri-state area (it seems like) and they are already in a relationship together. every girl that ever talked to me or seemed slightly cool already had someone, and the boy i was with for a short time didn't last and moved on to someone hotter (and younger, and without a pesky y chromosome). i just want to fucking die, i feel like an interdimensional prisoner in a libido-based torture system. my existence consists of the comforts of unearned privilege and personal mediocrity. i've been too busy trying to cope with existing in this hellscape to develop any skills, i can't get a job that's not app-based, i'm too fucking tired all the time (despite not having a job) to exercise so i fell like crap about my body constantly, i've failed to put enough time or effort into any of the creative endeavors i have attempted so far, and it all adds up to me not having a very charismatic personality that others want to be around. and without money or the skills to make it there is no escape. i am literally just waiting for my parents to die, and then i might have enough money from selling the house to barely survive another 10 years. i don't want to feel that way about my parents. i feel like absolute shit complaining about any of this while other people struggle just to eat every day, while i have access to treats (high fructose corn syrup and heartburn) and a house i don't pay rent for. i feel like i wouldn't survive long in most people's lives, i'm barely avoiding self fedposting as it is. materially comfortable but maximally alienated. i've never had access to mental health services but i've thought about self fedposting basically every day for my entire life (30 years) and no one i've ever told about this irl has really cared, they just look slightly uncomfortable and go quiet or change the topic. its not like anyone could do anything about it, if i went to therapy they would just gaslight me about politics and tell me to pull myself up harder by my own bootstraps. I pray for the day chinese hypersonic missiles come to liberate me and everyone around me from this mortal coil. i am a shrivelled zombie of disgust and hatred.

anyway back to pretending to be normal

lmfao ukrainian dreadnoughts. Biden signs deal to provide Ukrainians with promethium flamers and arco-flagellant shock troops recruited from US prisons.

idk how feasible it is to actually work on something like this over a lefftist forum with people that likely live in different countries or parts of the country but i'll elucidate my idea for fun. incoming leftist meme of text.

the basic concept is to make an FPS game that intentionally de-emphasizes graphical fidelity to focus on gameplay. I'm talking like, original DOOM style sprite graphics, where the characters (and maybe vehicles) are 2d rotating images in a relatively low-poly 3d world. I'm a huge nerd for vehicle combat, mechs, and combined arms gameplay, so the end goal would be something just about battlefield scale with relatively large player (or just NPC if multiplayer is unfeasible) counts and enterable vehicles. It seems like a game with primarily 2d sprite graphics for characters and vehicles would make it easier to implement this, any vehicle is just a different first person HUD/cockpit screen with different movement rules and scales and weapons and controls and art assets (lol 'just'). A lot of this is inspired by Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri (neat game with trash politics, a major planet or system is named 'Thatcher' if that tells you anything), which was an FPS game focusing on power armor pilots, that had the aforementioned sprite graphics in a 3d world. That game had jumping, sprinting, and jetpack boosters, all improvements over DOOM which couldn't even have floors of a level on top of each other. I don't really have any specific ideas for a story or anything yet, just ideas about aesthetics, as I think the game's development should primarily focus on getting gameplay to work well and feel good before anything else, few people play FPS action games primarily for plot. Another inspiration for this is Brigador, which has an amazing pixelated art style for an isometric tank combat game, and while i doubt i could pull off even a fraction of that games style (i read an article about how they did it, it was wile, they had to convert 3d models into 2d lighting data or something), it has activated in me a hunger for similar graphics but in FPS form.

for gameplay specifics, i would focus on movement abilites (like going prone, leaning, crouching, sprinting, jumping, and ledge mantling for both infantry and humanoid mechs; traditional vehicles would handle as expected, depending on whether they are wheeled or tracked or hover or fly), as well as weapon use. i have several ideas for weapon types and which one should be the 'bread and butter' of the setting, but i think playtesting with experimental builds may be necessary to come to final conclusions regarding this. I've always been intrigued by the idea of an FPS that heavily features 'smart guns' like the smart pistol in titanfall, which would force players to focus more on ranging and maneuvering around their opponents sightlines, rather than just the ability to move a crosshair and click on reflex, which is the central skill in most FPS games. another idea would be to focus on laser weapons, which would all be hitscan weapons (they impact instantly where aimed with no ballistic flight time) and could hypothetically allow for unique gameplay like cutting through buildings/doors, reflecting off of reflective surfaces, or unique damage mechanics like needing to keep a continuous laser beam on target for a while to take it out. Another possibility is emphasizing the use of explosive projectiles with large area of effect, like grenade/rocket/missile launchers or artillery guns, which would focus the gameplay on stealth and awareness (different vision modes? zoomable camera pods? drones?) and would encourage units to spread out farther instead of clustering up. I haven't really decided this and perhaps all these weapon types along more conventional weapons would go well together. I also haven't decided how exactly aiming should work, whether it should be classic FPS style with a immobile (or mostly immobile) crosshair in the middle of the screen, where the screen view is moved with the mouse to change the aim point, or whether more old school RPG controls where keys control both turning and strafing movement as well as angling up/down, and the mouse is used to move an aiming cursor on screen freely, or even to interact with cockpit/HUD elements like periscope covers or light switches or vision modes, etc. Maybe different schemes would be ideal for different classes of playable character/object type (whether infantry or vehicle), or could be separate toggle-able modes for everything.

theres a lot of more specific ideas floating around in my head but this is my attempt at summarizing. i think multiplayer and networking would probably be the hardest task to achieve, with enemy and friendly AI being a close second, and even more mundane parts of the game would likely take a team to accomplish. i could probably do a bunch of the sprite art myself, idk anything about 3d graphics and lighting and animations though. i've dabbled in blender and flash to not much avail. I don't know how much easier game dev has become with new programs and computers, i'm vaguely aware of how much work and people it took to make the games i've referred to, and i'm sure it would be much harder than anticipated especially for an indie dev or even group without much experience.

i've tried to look into making games, and i don't even know where to start, i do shitty drawing tablet art sometimes but every time i look into learning how to code or what engine to use its like an infinitely expanding labyrinth of advanced hyperdorks proselytizing their particular software or programming language. the last time i did programming it was in Visual Basic. I'll probably just keep smoking weed and working instead since i'm not one of the chosen select few with enough free time/resources/connections/natural talent/social support/mental stability to have or learn any real skills, and even if i did it would probably take hundreds of other people working in concert to even make a graphically simple game that works, and there's no way i could ever get into a position of leadership or decisionmaking in that scenario. the working conditions in the industry are so bad i wouldn't even want to do it professionally, i just want to make stupid indie games about robot explosions and lasers as a hobby (or maybe as an exercise in existential dread)

the unknowableness comes from the difficulties of causally explaining the phenomena of subjective experience in terms of physical processes. we can explain information processing, in those terms, we can explain automatic unconscious biological behavior in those terms, but we have yet to develop an understanding of a causal (as opposed to merely correlational) relationship between physical phenomena and subjective experience. obviously the fact that brain damage exists implies that, whatever the nature of consciousness and subjectivity, it is affected when certain physical structures are interacted with.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by absoluteness vs. contingency in this case, but as far as philosophical implications, what the existence of subjective experience MAY imply, is different kinds of metaphysics or ontologies or epistemologies. A physical realist worldview is that ONLY physical matter and physical processes exist and are knowable, and that subjective experience is "illusory" or not real or unkowable. What the existence of Qualia implies, is that there is at least a subjective, and perhaps even semiotic, component to reality, in some fashion, that we have access to in some capacity. Some philosophers use this to argue for Idealism, which posits that ONLY 'mind' or subjective experience really 'exists', and that matter is 'illusory' or 'not real'. I find both of these extremes unconvincing, I personally like Analytic Idealism myself, which is an ontology that posits that physical processes are the extrinsic appearance of mental processes, and that mental processes are the intrinsic appearance of physical processes. Other interpretations may be that there is some hidden, more fundamental reality from which both the mental and physical originate.

scientifically accessible does not necessarily mean directly, empirically, mechanically accessible. we can indirectly access subjective properties of internal subjective experience to some degree by interviewing other subjectively experiencing entities. we can't directly transmit a sujective experience, but we can attempt to incompletely describe parts of them. just like we can't directly measure all properties of a subatomic particle at once, but we can indirectly measure parts of it. i agree with the quote in that it is possible to scientifically study subjective phenomena to some degree. psychologists do it all the time, for example, by interviewing and observing their patients.

edit: to be specific, what i mean by Qualia is any internal subjective experience of phenomena. i make no assumptions about a 'self', a 'soul', a 'mind', or anything else, just the mere fact of the existence of internal subjective experiences.

why do you think that discussions involving the hard problem of consciousness and qualia say 'shut up about it'? it really seems quite the opposite considering wittgensteins argument is essentially that. it isn't preventing any neuroscientist from making progress. no serious proponent of the literal mere existence of qualia would argue for less neurological research or anything like that. any serious theory involving the world has to take physical reality into account. we all agree that consciousnes and qualia are contingent on the brain and nervous system. I really don't understand your view of qualia at all, i feel like we are speaking different languages.

it enters into it because all of the scientists are conscious beings that experience reality in terms of qualia. In fact that is precisely why we need peer review in the first place, because we are not perfect measurement machines but subjectively experiencing entities.

i want to know, do you believe that qualia do not 'exist' (i.e. that your internal experience of reality is 'illusory' or otherwise unreal) or do you think they are simply not useful to talk about?

i'm confused, how did you come to that conclusion about qualia and empathy? Qualia are nothing more and nothing less than internal subjective experiences of phenomena. without those experiences, we could not empathize at all except via pure information processing and automatic reflexive behavior. everyone, presumably, has qualia of some kind, likely similar if they are of the same species. it would be incredibly weird for one to assume that one is the only one that has them, even though every other human and most animals have basically the same central nervous system, especially if one has gone through episodes of unconsciousness or other experiences that prove that consciousness is contingent to some degree on the brain. Qualia can be described, even if they cannot be transmitted. I can describe to you how i feel about various topics, how things look from my perspective, how comfortable or uncomforable i am during a situation, etc. what I mean when I say that all knowledge is founded on qualia, I mean precisely that all objective physical measurements are performed by conscious subjectively experiencing humans, and conscious subjectively experiencing humans are the ones interpreting the results of those measurements. when you or I look at a research paper that contains some kind of data, we are not directly accessing the physical reality of that data, but we are experiencing the qualia of seeing the paper and reading and interpreting the symbols and thinking about the meaning of them, we have our own internal experience of interpreting the data. the scientist looking at an instrument isn't directly accessing the physical reality of what his machine is measuring, he is indirectly accessing it through both the instrument and his own senses and consciousness, and interpreting the data based on his internal subjective experience of it.

i don't see how it has anything to do with solipsism, and i also think it matters because qualia are the foundation of all of our other knowledge. we can only access 'objective' measurements through qualia. it is especially relevant when AI bazingas claim their math parrot is 'True Sentient AI'. it is relevant when we consider that our fellow humans and living beings mean more to us than the sum of their physical parts. it is relevant when we experience empathy for another person because we can experience some of their pain internally. Furthermore any argument against exploring an avenue of investigation is to be discarded in my opinion, it amounts to saying 'shut up about it'. Besides, there are just as many financial and egotistical and emotional incentives to promote pure phyiscal realism as much as any alternative. I haven't seen an argument that convinced me personally that the hard problem doesn't exist, so some statistic of academics believing one way or another is not likely to sway me, especially about a topic like philosophy. its not like either side of the philosophical debate has 'work' to show for their efforts beyond published books. and to say that qualia don't exist seems like much stronger of a claim than wittgenstein's "we should stop talking about it". speaking of wittgenstein i was unimpressed by the beetle in a box argument. by nature of the metaphor's qualities, it is quite a different situation than with qualia. the 'beetle' in the box, whatever it is, is already presumed to be a physical object, not a semiotic or logical principle or concept or situation. if we can look into our own boxes we could easily describe the contents in terms of abstract ideas we are familiar with to others, like shape and number and so on. the entire point of qualia is that they are not reducible to physical objects we can describe concretely, they are not an 'object' at all, or even a subject, but the conscious experience of percieved objects and subjects.

a lot of things indeed may be sentient in ways we can't know in terms of physics. i consider myself entirely agnostic on the subject. i am more concerned with the reality and fact that i am facing at any given moment. I am constantly inside of my internal experience, i am constantly experiencing it. i can't stop experiencing it, i can't access any other experience. in that way i am doing nothing BUT 'measuring' or 'researching' Qualia. I'm interested in Human experience and what it may or may not mean. qualia as a concept helps us understand sentience by associating it with that internal experience we are all experiencing at any given moment, and differentiating that particular aspect of reality from information processing or electrochemistry. it elucidates the boundaries of the potential for human knowledge with our current tools and ways of thinking. Qualia are not unknowable, they are simply not measureable in an external physical sense as we understand it. we are all constantly 'inside' of them. it is just not a subject that can be analysed with only physics, like many other subjects. i don't really know what else to say and i feel like i am repeating myself. i am a historical materialist in the sense that, whatever matter is or isn't in an ontological sense, it seems to determine the environment and potential outcomes of reality. Maybe there is some paradigm to reality that would explain it that we are unaware of. that seems at least as plausible as assuming we will eventually in the future figure out enough math and physics to somehow explain that our internal experience we all feel doesn't actually exist, even though its the only thing we have direct access to as sentient conscious beings.

edit: and to be clear i do agree that the example in the OP is silly and oversimplified. we have similar eyes and brains and therefore we probably see colors and experience other experiences similarly if not identically. regardless on the nature of consciousness it is very heavily correlated to physical structures in many ways.

let me put this a different way. what the hard problem of consciousness asks, is why do sentient beings like ourselves have any internal, private experience at all? we know from computers that pure information processing does not require an internal experience, we know from microorganisms and plants that lack a central nervous system that instincts and biological behaviors do not require an internal experience, and we know from physics that lifeless matter does not have an internal experience, so where do they come from, and how can they be explained in purely physical terms? why is pain associated with any internal experience at all?

that is irrelevant, it is more like a logical parameter than a phenomena. we cannot do a test to find the definition of '3', we define it ourselves for the purpose of providing a useful logical framework to operate with.

these kinds of abstract discussions can define the terms of our engagement with a topic of study. for example, considering the specific nature and qualities of consciousness can help to decide which avenues of research a neuroscientist or AI researcher or psychologist should or should not devote resources to, which kinds of questions can be answered, and can determine how research and experiments are interpreted.

it is a topic of logic rather than empiricism. that doesn't mean that purely logical pursuits are worhtless. math is also non-empirical, defined by reason rather than measurement.

i'm not a professional philosopher or an academic, but i think they do sometimes do important work. are you one of those people that thinks any academic field outside of STEM is worthless?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

it is a logical concept, not an empirical physical phenomena. it is as non falsifiable as the number 3 or the concept of 'Up'

brought to you by Veggo's Meatoids