So, I'd like your opinions on this story
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not to be pretentious but yall should really read this… C.H.A.T. (Come Here for All Talk)
- Thread starter Astra
- Start date
Your perspective comes through vividly and I actually empathize with some very similar frustrating experiences, aside from happening in high school and other things that seem culturally different in the US. But if this marks up to the worst day you ever had only now, then I'd say it's at least happened at a point you could reflect on it more maturely, because I didn't really make much progress for a while not wanting to make a change in myself because of things that other people were causing.
It may sound like trite advice that goes against your instinct, but I would suggest trying to care less/being more stoic, even if it feels completely unjust to let the wrong go unpunished. Like this whole story happened because the guy was making noises and called you a "c#ck"; you don't know why, but he gets reinforcement from your reaction. Would you care as much if a random little kid called you a name? Also this might just be me but I can't really picture the word used in real life with a completely serious meaning so the story may have been less relatable in that area, but I've been upset over more minor things so I'm not really judging.
In the end you tried to get him to stop and he didn't, so if you could do it again, would you proceed how it happened and get justice, or take the moment and try to control your own reaction? In the end it comes down to which you want to focus on, the annoying guy getting told he is wrong or your own feelings. You can still find people annoying and you probably will, but I would say this guy is who you should be giving zero shits towards instead of your benign mentees who at least show up.
The topic of bait is something UnovanZorua put well recently, very mature for the pokemon forums.
I don't have any advice, but I read your story and I'm sorry this happened. Hopefully it doesn't happen again. I'm glad your principal and mom were supportive.
After watching some dubious argumentation in the PS Lobby, I got wondering about various heuristics in the community. A heuristic is like a shortcut in thinking that gets you to reach some conclusion quickly, faster than if you carefully went through the logic. Like, if you don't know proper manners in some situation, you can just follow what someone else is doing, that'll probably work.
Heuristics are often framed in terms of bias, because skipping over logic might lead you to bad choices, and bad choices are interesting. However, sometimes people can overfocus on the whiffs and get a bit too mean-spirited. Everyone uses heuristics, me included, and it doesn't make you less smart or whatever. Heuristics save mental energy–not everything needs our full focus–and lead us down the right path a lot of the time. Sometimes, they're even a better guide than thoughtful logic. Ever take a test and immediately think "C seems right", think through it hard, second-guess yourself, and switch to A, but C was right? Yeah. This is a "People have interesting thought patterns" post, not "People are such knuckleheads." In the good-spirits nature here, I'm skipping some psychological rigor and precision to focus on funner stuff, but you could surely find parallels in that discipline if you wanted.
Anyway, here are 7 heuristics that have caught my eye in this community. To show how they might lead us astray, I show paraphrased/implied examples I saw that led to flawed conclusions, and think how we might reach a better one, if we wanted to.
Critical-Value Luck: Events with a chance at or above some probability threshold are much more likely than events below that threshold. (Common values are 51%, 75%, or 90%. This heuristic can apply even if both events are close to the threshold.)
Upside: Simplifications like this make the complex world of Pokemon play easier to navigate. It encourages a riskier or safer approach than a pure numerical approach would, which can help if the situation calls for that shift.
Downside: This heuristic can hurt when its effect on risk preference is poorly matched to a situation. It can also cause frustration by making unlikely random outcomes seem more unreasonable than they are.
"Stone Edge is a low-accuracy move, and Rock Slide is a high-accuracy move. Therefore, Rock Slide is better."
(Versus Rock Slide, Stone Edge's accuracy matters 1 in 10 attempts, on average. How often / much does Rock Slide's downside, lower power, matter?)
Categorization Leaching: If A can broadly be described as X, then every part of A is X.
Upside: You can think of the broad description as a "rule of thumb" here. If a broad description is appropriate for something, you'd expect most subordinate aspects to share the description. It'd be weird to have a bad game where gameplay, music, story, etc. are all good.
Downside: Like most rules of thumb, this one has exceptions. If it provides some initial expectation on a part, you can become overconfident / anchored in an opinion you don't understand that well.
"Spinda is a very bad Pokemon, so every part of it must be bad. The stats, the typing, the ability, the movepool, all of it."
(Isn't it possible for a Pokemon to be bad while having some advantages, just the bad outweighs the good?)
Synchronization: When a strategy combines traits to create new value from their interplay, it is better.
Upside: When you're trying to maximize value, creating new value by combining independently useful parts is important. Understanding this new value is an important part of performance.
Downside: Also important, though, is maximizing the amount of that new value, and the raw value of the base parts too. Focusing just on the presence of synchronicity, and not the magnitude of its effect, can miss the forest for an especially pretty tree.
"Gyarados baits in Electric moves, and Electivire uses Electric moves to buff itself with Motor Drive, so Gyarados + Electivire is a good strategy."
(A +1 Speed Electivire is better than a +0 Speed Electivire, but is either good?)
Exclusivity: When a strategy is requires specific conditions (or is just harder) to execute, it is better.
Upside: Game design has a pattern of making situational / harder strategies more effective, so this heuristic often matches the facts. One likely reason is that "Put more work in, get more value out" is a generally accepted engagement principle.
Downside: Sometimes, game design doesn't follow this pattern, which can create mistakes. Exclusive strategies can be middling, bad, or awful on purpose as a joke.
"Pawmot is the best Pokemon to use Revival Blessing, so Revival Blessing is its best set."
(If you're going to use Revival Blessing, Pawmot is probably your guy, but is this Pawmot that effective? Is Revival Blessing as a whole that effective?)
Visibility: If something sticks out, it is more important.
Upside: Important things often stick out, so looking for things that stick out can be helpful to find the important ones. Also, unusual things tend to stick out. In game design specifically, unusual things generally require more thought and effort to create, and games rarely spend thought and effort on something that doesn't matter.
Downside: Sometimes things stick out because they are funny, new, or unusual on accident, not because they're important.
"Psychic is accidentally immune to Ghost, instead of weak to it, in RBY. Therefore, Psychic is broken, and RBY is poorly balanced." After all, a mechanic doing the opposite of its intent is unusual, and a good type receiving "extra" help is unusual.
(How much does this immunity matter? How many Pokemon use or would use Ghost moves in RBY? How good are these moves?)
Objectivity: When deciding whether A or B is better, statements that are unquestionably, factually correct are better.
Upside: When trying to build a strong argument, preparing your case for counter-arguments is important. If a statement shuts down counter-arguments that claim the statement is incorrect, that is an advantage.
Downside: Applying facts within arguments often relies on subjective interpretations of the argument's end goal. If A is alphabetically earlier in the alphabet than B, that is a true fact, but we probably agree this fact doesn't make A better. Engaging with some degree of subjectivity is essential for many interesting and worthwhile discussions, and avoiding it entirely can sometimes be unproductive.
"Some people say SV has a good story. That's subjective. The one thing we know for sure is its performance is objectively below-average, so the games are below average."
(How much does performance matter in deciding a game's quality? Because "game quality" itself subjective, isn't it subjective to say that performance matters for deciding it?)
(Suppose we think story is just as important to a game's quality as performance. In this case, isn't it worth forming an opinion on the story's quality, even if this opinion might be wrong?)
Affective Experience: If I had a positive experience with something, it is good. If I had a negative experience, it is bad.
Upside: You have some degree of shared traits and experiences with others. If something was poorly suited for you, it may also be poorly suited for those who share your traits and experiences.
Downside: You have some degree of different traits and experiences from others, so your reaction may not apply to everyone in every context.
"I used Charizard on my OU team and it swept my opponents. Charizard is good."
(What, very precisely, was it good at? Maybe you played low-ladder opponents, and it was good at "sweeping low-ladder opponents". If others want to sweep high-ladder opponents instead, will your success transfer to their experiences?)
Cheers.
Heuristics are often framed in terms of bias, because skipping over logic might lead you to bad choices, and bad choices are interesting. However, sometimes people can overfocus on the whiffs and get a bit too mean-spirited. Everyone uses heuristics, me included, and it doesn't make you less smart or whatever. Heuristics save mental energy–not everything needs our full focus–and lead us down the right path a lot of the time. Sometimes, they're even a better guide than thoughtful logic. Ever take a test and immediately think "C seems right", think through it hard, second-guess yourself, and switch to A, but C was right? Yeah. This is a "People have interesting thought patterns" post, not "People are such knuckleheads." In the good-spirits nature here, I'm skipping some psychological rigor and precision to focus on funner stuff, but you could surely find parallels in that discipline if you wanted.
Anyway, here are 7 heuristics that have caught my eye in this community. To show how they might lead us astray, I show paraphrased/implied examples I saw that led to flawed conclusions, and think how we might reach a better one, if we wanted to.
Critical-Value Luck: Events with a chance at or above some probability threshold are much more likely than events below that threshold. (Common values are 51%, 75%, or 90%. This heuristic can apply even if both events are close to the threshold.)Upside: Simplifications like this make the complex world of Pokemon play easier to navigate. It encourages a riskier or safer approach than a pure numerical approach would, which can help if the situation calls for that shift.
Downside: This heuristic can hurt when its effect on risk preference is poorly matched to a situation. It can also cause frustration by making unlikely random outcomes seem more unreasonable than they are.
"Stone Edge is a low-accuracy move, and Rock Slide is a high-accuracy move. Therefore, Rock Slide is better."
(Versus Rock Slide, Stone Edge's accuracy matters 1 in 10 attempts, on average. How often / much does Rock Slide's downside, lower power, matter?)
Categorization Leaching: If A can broadly be described as X, then every part of A is X.Upside: You can think of the broad description as a "rule of thumb" here. If a broad description is appropriate for something, you'd expect most subordinate aspects to share the description. It'd be weird to have a bad game where gameplay, music, story, etc. are all good.
Downside: Like most rules of thumb, this one has exceptions. If it provides some initial expectation on a part, you can become overconfident / anchored in an opinion you don't understand that well.
"Spinda is a very bad Pokemon, so every part of it must be bad. The stats, the typing, the ability, the movepool, all of it."
(Isn't it possible for a Pokemon to be bad while having some advantages, just the bad outweighs the good?)
Synchronization: When a strategy combines traits to create new value from their interplay, it is better.Upside: When you're trying to maximize value, creating new value by combining independently useful parts is important. Understanding this new value is an important part of performance.
Downside: Also important, though, is maximizing the amount of that new value, and the raw value of the base parts too. Focusing just on the presence of synchronicity, and not the magnitude of its effect, can miss the forest for an especially pretty tree.
"Gyarados baits in Electric moves, and Electivire uses Electric moves to buff itself with Motor Drive, so Gyarados + Electivire is a good strategy."
(A +1 Speed Electivire is better than a +0 Speed Electivire, but is either good?)
Exclusivity: When a strategy is requires specific conditions (or is just harder) to execute, it is better.Upside: Game design has a pattern of making situational / harder strategies more effective, so this heuristic often matches the facts. One likely reason is that "Put more work in, get more value out" is a generally accepted engagement principle.
Downside: Sometimes, game design doesn't follow this pattern, which can create mistakes. Exclusive strategies can be middling, bad, or awful on purpose as a joke.
"Pawmot is the best Pokemon to use Revival Blessing, so Revival Blessing is its best set."
(If you're going to use Revival Blessing, Pawmot is probably your guy, but is this Pawmot that effective? Is Revival Blessing as a whole that effective?)
Visibility: If something sticks out, it is more important.Upside: Important things often stick out, so looking for things that stick out can be helpful to find the important ones. Also, unusual things tend to stick out. In game design specifically, unusual things generally require more thought and effort to create, and games rarely spend thought and effort on something that doesn't matter.
Downside: Sometimes things stick out because they are funny, new, or unusual on accident, not because they're important.
"Psychic is accidentally immune to Ghost, instead of weak to it, in RBY. Therefore, Psychic is broken, and RBY is poorly balanced." After all, a mechanic doing the opposite of its intent is unusual, and a good type receiving "extra" help is unusual.
(How much does this immunity matter? How many Pokemon use or would use Ghost moves in RBY? How good are these moves?)
Objectivity: When deciding whether A or B is better, statements that are unquestionably, factually correct are better.Upside: When trying to build a strong argument, preparing your case for counter-arguments is important. If a statement shuts down counter-arguments that claim the statement is incorrect, that is an advantage.
Downside: Applying facts within arguments often relies on subjective interpretations of the argument's end goal. If A is alphabetically earlier in the alphabet than B, that is a true fact, but we probably agree this fact doesn't make A better. Engaging with some degree of subjectivity is essential for many interesting and worthwhile discussions, and avoiding it entirely can sometimes be unproductive.
"Some people say SV has a good story. That's subjective. The one thing we know for sure is its performance is objectively below-average, so the games are below average."
(How much does performance matter in deciding a game's quality? Because "game quality" itself subjective, isn't it subjective to say that performance matters for deciding it?)
(Suppose we think story is just as important to a game's quality as performance. In this case, isn't it worth forming an opinion on the story's quality, even if this opinion might be wrong?)
Affective Experience: If I had a positive experience with something, it is good. If I had a negative experience, it is bad.Upside: You have some degree of shared traits and experiences with others. If something was poorly suited for you, it may also be poorly suited for those who share your traits and experiences.
Downside: You have some degree of different traits and experiences from others, so your reaction may not apply to everyone in every context.
"I used Charizard on my OU team and it swept my opponents. Charizard is good."
(What, very precisely, was it good at? Maybe you played low-ladder opponents, and it was good at "sweeping low-ladder opponents". If others want to sweep high-ladder opponents instead, will your success transfer to their experiences?)
Cheers.
Good post, but I have a question: It is my firm conviction that hax always favors the player with higher Elo. What category would you say this falls under? I know it's an objective truth, of course, but I'm wondering how you'd classify it.After watching some dubious argumentation in the PS Lobby, I got wondering about various heuristics in the community. A heuristic is like a shortcut in thinking that gets you to reach some conclusion quickly, faster than if you carefully went through the logic. Like, if you don't know proper manners in some situation, you can just follow what someone else is doing, that'll probably work.
Heuristics are often framed in terms of bias, because skipping over logic might lead you to bad choices, and bad choices are interesting. However, sometimes people can overfocus on the whiffs and get a bit too mean-spirited. Everyone uses heuristics, me included, and it doesn't make you less smart or whatever. Heuristics save mental energy–not everything needs our full focus–and lead us down the right path a lot of the time. Sometimes, they're even a better guide than thoughtful logic. Ever take a test and immediately think "C seems right", think through it hard, second-guess yourself, and switch to A, but C was right? Yeah. This is a "People have interesting thought patterns" post, not "People are such knuckleheads." In the good-spirits nature here, I'm skipping some psychological rigor and precision to focus on funner stuff, but you could surely find parallels in that discipline if you wanted.
Anyway, here are 7 heuristics that have caught my eye in this community. To show how they might lead us astray, I show paraphrased/implied examples I saw that led to flawed conclusions, and think how we might reach a better one, if we wanted to.
Upside: Simplifications like this make the complex world of Pokemon play easier to navigate. It encourages a riskier or safer approach than a pure numerical approach would, which can help if the situation calls for that shift.
Downside: This heuristic can hurt when its effect on risk preference is poorly matched to a situation. It can also cause frustration by making unlikely random outcomes seem more unreasonable than they are.
"Stone Edge is a low-accuracy move, and Rock Slide is a high-accuracy move. Therefore, Rock Slide is better."
(Versus Rock Slide, Stone Edge's accuracy matters 1 in 10 attempts, on average. How often / much does Rock Slide's downside, lower power, matter?)
Upside: You can think of the broad description as a "rule of thumb" here. If a broad description is appropriate for something, you'd expect most subordinate aspects to share the description. It'd be weird to have a bad game where gameplay, music, story, etc. are all good.
Downside: Like most rules of thumb, this one has exceptions. If it provides some initial expectation on a part, you can become overconfident / anchored in an opinion you don't understand that well.
"Spinda is a very bad Pokemon, so every part of it must be bad. The stats, the typing, the ability, the movepool, all of it."
(Isn't it possible for a Pokemon to be bad while having some advantages, just the bad outweighs the good?)
Upside: When you're trying to maximize value, creating new value by combining independently useful parts is important. Understanding this new value is an important part of performance.
Downside: Also important, though, is maximizing the amount of that new value, and the raw value of the base parts too. Focusing just on the presence of synchronicity, and not the magnitude of its effect, can miss the forest for an especially pretty tree.
"Gyarados baits in Electric moves, and Electivire uses Electric moves to buff itself with Motor Drive, so Gyarados + Electivire is a good strategy."
(A +1 Speed Electivire is better than a +0 Speed Electivire, but is either good?)
Upside: Game design has a pattern of making situational / harder strategies more effective, so this heuristic often matches the facts. One likely reason is that "Put more work in, get more value out" is a generally accepted engagement principle.
Downside: Sometimes, game design doesn't follow this pattern, which can create mistakes. Exclusive strategies can be middling, bad, or awful on purpose as a joke.
"Pawmot is the best Pokemon to use Revival Blessing, so Revival Blessing is its best set."
(If you're going to use Revival Blessing, Pawmot is probably your guy, but is this Pawmot that effective? Is Revival Blessing as a whole that effective?)
Upside: Important things often stick out, so looking for things that stick out can be helpful to find the important ones. Also, unusual things tend to stick out. In game design specifically, unusual things generally require more thought and effort to create, and games rarely spend thought and effort on something that doesn't matter.
Downside: Sometimes things stick out because they are funny, new, or unusual on accident, not because they're important.
"Psychic is accidentally immune to Ghost, instead of weak to it, in RBY. Therefore, Psychic is broken, and RBY is poorly balanced." After all, a mechanic doing the opposite of its intent is unusual, and a good type receiving "extra" help is unusual.
(How much does this immunity matter? How many Pokemon use or would use Ghost moves in RBY? How good are these moves?)
Upside: When trying to build a strong argument, preparing your case for counter-arguments is important. If a statement shuts down counter-arguments that claim the statement is incorrect, that is an advantage.
Downside: Applying facts within arguments often relies on subjective interpretations of the argument's end goal. If A is alphabetically earlier in the alphabet than B, that is a true fact, but we probably agree this fact doesn't make A better. Engaging with some degree of subjectivity is essential for many interesting and worthwhile discussions, and avoiding it entirely can sometimes be unproductive.
"Some people say SV has a good story. That's subjective. The one thing we know for sure is its performance is objectively below-average, so the games are below average."
(How much does performance matter in deciding a game's quality? Because "game quality" itself subjective, isn't it subjective to say that performance matters for deciding it?)
(Suppose we think story is just as important to a game's quality as performance. In this case, isn't it worth forming an opinion on the story's quality, even if this opinion might be wrong?)
Upside: You have some degree of shared traits and experiences with others. If something was poorly suited for you, it may also be poorly suited for those who share your traits and experiences.
Downside: You have some degree of different traits and experiences from others, so your reaction may not apply to everyone in every context.
"I used Charizard on my OU team and it swept my opponents. Charizard is good."
(What, very precisely, was it good at? Maybe you played low-ladder opponents, and it was good at "sweeping low-ladder opponents". If others want to sweep high-ladder opponents instead, will your success transfer to their experiences?)
Cheers.
And now for something completely different. I was thinking about Super Paper Mario's story by chance and had some interesting understanding about Bleck, Dimentio, and the ideas of failure, happiness, emotional vulnerability, and love. I'll put them here. Like its source material, it gets a little heavy, but it comes from a good place.
Lord Blumiere (Count Bleck) started the game (you find out later) as a character who has given up. Explicitly, he makes clear he is not happy with his role in ending all worlds, but claims that it is too late to turn back on his plan. Implicitly, he shows this by accepting the Dark Prognosticus, a book that promises a bleak future. It basically tells the reader it won't make you happy. He desires happiness, but he believes he will never find it without Timpani, and he believes he will never find Timpani. Therefore, he believes he is doomed to fail.
Dimentio started the game (and ended it) as a character who presents as always in control. Whenever he battles you, he's just playing with you, or testing your capabilities, or trolling, or whatever. He presents total confidence until the moment the Pure Hearts destroy his barrier. You might say he believes he cannot fail. Which is maybe true, but not my point either way. When you do defeat him, he refuses to accept a world where you've won, attempting to drag you down with him and destroy all worlds out of spite. With this, and his general arrogance, I go further to interpret him as a character who cannot accept failure. Even when he has a setback, he sees it as minor, if he sees it at all, bar that one moment the Pure Hearts surprise him. Not that it stops him from believing he can "end the game" on his own terms shortly after.
It's interesting that these seeming opposites–accepting all failure, and rejecting all failure–end up in the same place, no? At least before the climax. Both are working together to destroy everything, at least for the beginning. Sure, Blumiere plans to destroy all worlds, and Dimentio plans to create "perfect new worlds" (worlds where he has all the power, and therefore cannot fail, at least by his perception). I don't think this create/destroy difference is Dimentio's core betrayal, though. It's incidental. If the Dark Prognosticus said Blumiere would be the miserable new god of new worlds, Blumiere would have accepted it. Why, then, do both Blumiere and Dimentio see his disobedience as a deep betrayal?
There are some answers that are kind of plausible but not so thematically rich. Like, sure, any kind of lie can be a deep breach of trust, no matter what it's on. Even then, Blumiere already knew Dimentio was shady. What did Blumiere value so much that Dimentio tried to destroy? A sense of control? I don't think so. Blumiere knew the book was controlling him. Then what?
First, I think both of these characters gave up, in a way. Blumiere gave up agency, embracing (a relatively shallow) vulnerability, and Dimentio gave up vulnerability, embracing (a relatively shallow) agency. But these are two sides of the same coin. Both gave up happiness, that antidote to the Dark Prognosticus, a true and deep kind of happiness deeper than their smiles when they talk about evil plans. I think Blumiere says it outright. Dimentio is less forthright. This kind of happiness, I think, is what Super Paper Mario wants to inspire in you. Actually, a better word, I think, love. Both gave up on love. Blumiere made himself emotionally vulnerable to love another, and he was punished, violently separated from the person with whom he made this connection, so he associated emotional vulnerability with pain. We know less on Dimentio, but he refuses to make himself emotionally vulnerable for anyone, literally hiding behind a mask the whole time. In his dying breaths, he violently lashes out at everyone around him, refusing connection.
However, I think they're different in how they gave up on love. Blumiere gave up on achieving it again. He never gave up on valuing, on esteeming love. He understood that his path of total destruction was not right, because he understood what right was, but he couldn't bring himself to turn away. Even at his lowest moment, when he most embraced failure, telling Timpani they were doomed, he's still open enough in his heart to understand what's important.
- What are you SAYING?! You promised we would find happiness together! Was that all just a lie?!"
-"Blumiere! Snap out of it! How can you think it would end here, after all we have suffered without each other?"
-"We found each other again because we stayed alive... How can you admit defeat?! I will not! I will not give up! You promised we'd find happiness. You PROMISED!"
With this, and the return of his loyal minions, Blumiere reciprocates love again to them all, and the Pure Hearts return.
Dimentio gave up on love entirely. He has fallen so far, he doesn't value or respect it. When Blumiere was defeated and he went in to eliminate, he mocked Nastasia's sacrifice to protect Blumiere out of love, calling her silly and Blumiere pathetic. When he "kills" Luigi, he mocks the idea of this having emotional weight. He outright says he sees people in terms of value to him. Maybe most deeply of all, he thinks the Pure Hearts, the embodiments of love, can be "wasted" like a battery out of juice. By proudly announcing his disgust for the defining theme in Blumiere's life, with his disdain for love, he truly stabs Blumiere in the back. His betrayal is more emotional than physical. Really, he stabs the whole game through, because love was everything it stood for and built up to. He back stabs Fracktail's love for the Ancients, Merlee's love for her pets, Mario and Timpani's love as friends, Squirps's love with his mother, the love of the Floro Sapiens for their king, and the Sammer Guys for their culture. He betrays the love between Luvbi and her parents, and the love of the Ancients that brought the Pure Hearts into bloom, and many more besides. But most of all, he betrays Blumiere's love for Timpani, what he cares about most in his life. For this, for the game to triumphantly embrace love as strong as it does, Dimentio has to be the final antagonist, and he has to be defeated.
Neither making failure your identity, nor making its avoidance your identity, can be the right way. One only has vulnerability, and one only has ego, but alone, both are weak and isolated. When you have ego, your vulnerability is not merely a passive acceptance of cosmic forces, but the true sincerity of the heart. When you have vulnerability, your ego is not a flimsy lie of perfection, but a human being, who is real. Ego and vulnerability make each other strong. A human whose successes take effort and warrant pride, not just some inevitable consequence of superiority. A human whose failures are an opportunity for others to love, not to praise a cardboard cutout of objective superiority, but to fully embrace and love a person as they are.
Best wishes.
Promise - Super Paper Mario (Cover by PaperMikes)
Dideba (Glory)
Dimentio started the game (and ended it) as a character who presents as always in control. Whenever he battles you, he's just playing with you, or testing your capabilities, or trolling, or whatever. He presents total confidence until the moment the Pure Hearts destroy his barrier. You might say he believes he cannot fail. Which is maybe true, but not my point either way. When you do defeat him, he refuses to accept a world where you've won, attempting to drag you down with him and destroy all worlds out of spite. With this, and his general arrogance, I go further to interpret him as a character who cannot accept failure. Even when he has a setback, he sees it as minor, if he sees it at all, bar that one moment the Pure Hearts surprise him. Not that it stops him from believing he can "end the game" on his own terms shortly after.
It's interesting that these seeming opposites–accepting all failure, and rejecting all failure–end up in the same place, no? At least before the climax. Both are working together to destroy everything, at least for the beginning. Sure, Blumiere plans to destroy all worlds, and Dimentio plans to create "perfect new worlds" (worlds where he has all the power, and therefore cannot fail, at least by his perception). I don't think this create/destroy difference is Dimentio's core betrayal, though. It's incidental. If the Dark Prognosticus said Blumiere would be the miserable new god of new worlds, Blumiere would have accepted it. Why, then, do both Blumiere and Dimentio see his disobedience as a deep betrayal?
There are some answers that are kind of plausible but not so thematically rich. Like, sure, any kind of lie can be a deep breach of trust, no matter what it's on. Even then, Blumiere already knew Dimentio was shady. What did Blumiere value so much that Dimentio tried to destroy? A sense of control? I don't think so. Blumiere knew the book was controlling him. Then what?
First, I think both of these characters gave up, in a way. Blumiere gave up agency, embracing (a relatively shallow) vulnerability, and Dimentio gave up vulnerability, embracing (a relatively shallow) agency. But these are two sides of the same coin. Both gave up happiness, that antidote to the Dark Prognosticus, a true and deep kind of happiness deeper than their smiles when they talk about evil plans. I think Blumiere says it outright. Dimentio is less forthright. This kind of happiness, I think, is what Super Paper Mario wants to inspire in you. Actually, a better word, I think, love. Both gave up on love. Blumiere made himself emotionally vulnerable to love another, and he was punished, violently separated from the person with whom he made this connection, so he associated emotional vulnerability with pain. We know less on Dimentio, but he refuses to make himself emotionally vulnerable for anyone, literally hiding behind a mask the whole time. In his dying breaths, he violently lashes out at everyone around him, refusing connection.
However, I think they're different in how they gave up on love. Blumiere gave up on achieving it again. He never gave up on valuing, on esteeming love. He understood that his path of total destruction was not right, because he understood what right was, but he couldn't bring himself to turn away. Even at his lowest moment, when he most embraced failure, telling Timpani they were doomed, he's still open enough in his heart to understand what's important.
- What are you SAYING?! You promised we would find happiness together! Was that all just a lie?!"
-"Blumiere! Snap out of it! How can you think it would end here, after all we have suffered without each other?"
-"We found each other again because we stayed alive... How can you admit defeat?! I will not! I will not give up! You promised we'd find happiness. You PROMISED!"
With this, and the return of his loyal minions, Blumiere reciprocates love again to them all, and the Pure Hearts return.
Dimentio gave up on love entirely. He has fallen so far, he doesn't value or respect it. When Blumiere was defeated and he went in to eliminate, he mocked Nastasia's sacrifice to protect Blumiere out of love, calling her silly and Blumiere pathetic. When he "kills" Luigi, he mocks the idea of this having emotional weight. He outright says he sees people in terms of value to him. Maybe most deeply of all, he thinks the Pure Hearts, the embodiments of love, can be "wasted" like a battery out of juice. By proudly announcing his disgust for the defining theme in Blumiere's life, with his disdain for love, he truly stabs Blumiere in the back. His betrayal is more emotional than physical. Really, he stabs the whole game through, because love was everything it stood for and built up to. He back stabs Fracktail's love for the Ancients, Merlee's love for her pets, Mario and Timpani's love as friends, Squirps's love with his mother, the love of the Floro Sapiens for their king, and the Sammer Guys for their culture. He betrays the love between Luvbi and her parents, and the love of the Ancients that brought the Pure Hearts into bloom, and many more besides. But most of all, he betrays Blumiere's love for Timpani, what he cares about most in his life. For this, for the game to triumphantly embrace love as strong as it does, Dimentio has to be the final antagonist, and he has to be defeated.
Neither making failure your identity, nor making its avoidance your identity, can be the right way. One only has vulnerability, and one only has ego, but alone, both are weak and isolated. When you have ego, your vulnerability is not merely a passive acceptance of cosmic forces, but the true sincerity of the heart. When you have vulnerability, your ego is not a flimsy lie of perfection, but a human being, who is real. Ego and vulnerability make each other strong. A human whose successes take effort and warrant pride, not just some inevitable consequence of superiority. A human whose failures are an opportunity for others to love, not to praise a cardboard cutout of objective superiority, but to fully embrace and love a person as they are.
Best wishes.
Promise - Super Paper Mario (Cover by PaperMikes)
Dideba (Glory)
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This... is a good question! I wasn't immediately sure. Upon reflection, I see that under
Categorization Leaching. In my interpretation, you see more higher-ranked players as accruing advantages in / across play, which is usually true. These players usually have some combination of better skill and luck / volatility advantage than their lower-ranked counterparts. (Skill being proportionally more important on average at more games played, as you'd expect. As a tangent curiosity, I feel like skill would be more impactful at higher level too, independent of game count, but I haven't thoroughly deconstructed this idea.)If you've reached this correct conclusion, you may apply this generality to an overly narrow instance, thinking that, in every confrontation, the higher-Elo player has better skill and better luck. To this end, it'd support the hypothesis if you also believe that higher-Elo players are more skilled, and it would not support the hypothesis if you did not.
Another interpretation is
Visibility instilling a psychological bias. Maybe incidents of higher-ranked players getting hax help were more visible to you. Like, the player expected to win getting unearned help may have read as more unusual and stuck out more, compared to "equalizing" luck that favors the weaker player, which you may have seen as more conventional/natural/normal/etc. Following this logic, in much the same way a player notices their Focus Blast misses and thinks the move will always miss, you noticed pro-higher-rated hax and think it will always happen.A good takeaway is that heuristics, like many psychological tools, are full of interpretation and uncertainty =)
(They could also absolutely stack, to be clear, and both could be firing off. Or neither, or any other combination!)
At first, this struck me as purely a psychological bias versus a heuristic. I arrived at this conclusion, funnily enough, through a heuristic of my own. This isn't something I had immediately conceptualized, but I'll give it a shot.
Cheating Perception Perception: If a perspective (suppressed in your sake) claims that results were not generated according to their prior objective expectation, and that the variance favors actor(s) with situational power, this perspective comes from a place of resentment.However, upon further reflection, I think my rule-of-thumb heuristic led me to a flawed conclusion.
(If this interests you, how I differentiate heuristic and bias: To me, heuristics are an imperfect attempt to reach truth, while biases are a penalty towards reaching the truth in whatever attempt you so choose. I think this interpretation is reasonable, but not objective, in the discipline. Clearly, if that interpretation is correct, your attempt to reach the truth is able to overcome that penalty, but this penalty would be one obstacle in your goal of truth.)
smogbros sounds like dudebros, which now makes me think of "smogmaxxing"
tho considering the origin of smogon's name is german koffing (do the math), idt smogmaxxing is a good thing
tho considering the origin of smogon's name is german koffing (do the math), idt smogmaxxing is a good thing
It was my birthday yesterday! I actually meant to make a post about it, but then I decided to just spend the day doing fun stuff and forgot to make that post. I had a great time, though!
Happy birthday, man! You're one year older! How do you feel?
Now THIS would be a religion I would follow.
I remember the last time you posted about this. To reiterate: What the fuck happens in these games?
Ok so after mogging the personel at the hospital, they actually kept me because my heart is a little off to them. Ultrasound looks good, blood pressure is alright, but my pulse is irregular and I have some markers that shouldn't be there. I have a MRI on Friday and had some blood taken today, if both are cleared, I can go home
This is the first time I stay at a hospital as an adult. Some realizations I have made:
- being a young person in the cardiology department is super rare. All the other people around me are atleast 65, most are closer to 80 than to 70 though. I think the doctors and nurses are happy to get to talk with someone who's a little younger, so they have a lot of small talk with me and invite me on the balcony when they smoke. Very nice people, had some fascinating talks with them over all kinds of subjects
- the food isn't bad, but it's a little strange. I was served fruit with sour cream twice so far, and I had some vegetable broth with dry, unsweetened sponge cake with it that I was supposed to put in? But it's alright, I am mobile and I can go to the hospital supermarket for food. Considering that I just lay in bed all day, I am not particularly hungry either
- The device that tracks my pulse is pretty neat. It's a white box with a display, looks kinda like a fusion between an original GameBoy and an iPod. Hangs around my neck and sends the information to the staff
- I am very grateful that universal health care is a thing in my country. There was an ambulance ride and there'll be at least 4 and a half days of hospital stay for me, with all kinds of tests and screenings being done. I'll go home without having to pay a cent for anything. The WiFi is pretty neat too
So yeah, whilst I want to go home as soon as possible, it could be a lot worse. I hope I have nothing bad, the doctors have ruled out a heart attack, but they theorize that it could be a myocarditis, which isn't the worst thing in the world but I wouldn't like no sports for three months
This is the first time I stay at a hospital as an adult. Some realizations I have made:
- being a young person in the cardiology department is super rare. All the other people around me are atleast 65, most are closer to 80 than to 70 though. I think the doctors and nurses are happy to get to talk with someone who's a little younger, so they have a lot of small talk with me and invite me on the balcony when they smoke. Very nice people, had some fascinating talks with them over all kinds of subjects
- the food isn't bad, but it's a little strange. I was served fruit with sour cream twice so far, and I had some vegetable broth with dry, unsweetened sponge cake with it that I was supposed to put in? But it's alright, I am mobile and I can go to the hospital supermarket for food. Considering that I just lay in bed all day, I am not particularly hungry either
- The device that tracks my pulse is pretty neat. It's a white box with a display, looks kinda like a fusion between an original GameBoy and an iPod. Hangs around my neck and sends the information to the staff
- I am very grateful that universal health care is a thing in my country. There was an ambulance ride and there'll be at least 4 and a half days of hospital stay for me, with all kinds of tests and screenings being done. I'll go home without having to pay a cent for anything. The WiFi is pretty neat too
So yeah, whilst I want to go home as soon as possible, it could be a lot worse. I hope I have nothing bad, the doctors have ruled out a heart attack, but they theorize that it could be a myocarditis, which isn't the worst thing in the world but I wouldn't like no sports for three months
It's here people. My official list of KINO. Everything here is KINO, and if you disagree then there is NO money-back guarantee because you are WRONG and I reserve full legal permission to [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [DATA EXPUNGED]
i have nothing to add but i thought this was a pokepaste at first because of the way the text looks.
Late reply but I'm going to have to disagree with this strategy. While it would get annoying classmate to shut up eventually, keeping quiet wouldn't do anything, because annoying kid would try different tactics to get to annoy me, like touch me or tap my shoulder, which he did but I failed to mention here.
Furthermore, I'd just look more of an idiot. This guy is annoying me, and I keep quiet? Then, it would look like I wasn't bothered by them. I cannot let people just annoy me and think they did not do nothing wrong. People who annoy others like that should be held fully accountable and if possible, rot in the Distortion World forever because they are bullies.
But you are right, I should have been less reactionary. Yeah, yeah, my ADHD is my excuse I couldn't help it, but I will next time. What I should have done is to move seats or just ask to leave the classroom to finish the assignment. Both excuses would've been viable, as the subsitute would understand my condition.
had a fun idea after dying to tainted laz greedier for the 1000th time today: so you know how tainted characters in Isaac have titles as their achievement name that give them character? Tainted Isaac is the Broken, Tainted Cain is the Hoarder, Tainted Eden is the Enigma, and so on and so forth (full list can be found here). It might be fun to do that for some paradox pokemon that I like. Here's how it went:
For the future:
The Ruthless
The Armoured
The Radiant
The Beastly
The Charged
The Weapon
The Lacerating
The Piercing
The Counterfeit
For the past:
The Unyielding
The Wailing
The Fervered
The Seared
The Deceptive
The Adaptive
The Dauntless (tainted maggy doesn't exist shut up)
The Wicked
The Tyrannical
The Unbounded
This was a lot of fun to make, let me know if you think of a better title for any of these guys as there are certain ones that I'm less confident in than others
For the future:
The Ruthless The Armoured The Radiant The Beastly The Charged The Weapon The Lacerating The Piercing The CounterfeitFor the past:
The Unyielding The Wailing The Fervered The Seared The Deceptive The Adaptive The Dauntless (tainted maggy doesn't exist shut up) The Wicked The Tyrannical The UnboundedThis was a lot of fun to make, let me know if you think of a better title for any of these guys as there are certain ones that I'm less confident in than others
i think this one should be called iron jugulisare you fucking kidding me right now???? This thing isn’t even a steel type, so “iron” makes no sense!!!!!! And what even is a jugulis? It doesn’t look like a jug, i bet my pet rock could carry more water than this stupid thing. Bait used to be believable…
to be clear this is /j
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actually "jugulis" is derived from the latin jugulum i.e. throat or neck. not sure what you're talking about jugs for. and the "iron" bit is because iron jugulis is not without a sense of irony
Make music for fun
Make a MASSIVE hit song that became the most sold song in 2012, win a Grammy, be talked about 13 years after releasing said hit (through coincidence)
Never monetize the video for it (despite it amassing billions of views)
Vanish off the face of the earth and never make another song
What a fucking chad