Moderator: JC Denton
by Bananadine » 22 Apr 2009 15:19
by icycalm » 22 Apr 2009 15:35
by icycalm » 22 Apr 2009 17:13
Bananadine wrote:What I haven't seen before is all the stuff you're saying here, said in one place at once.
Bananadine wrote:Another thing I haven't seen before is a videogame-related reason to read Baudrillard and the rest--and now, because of you, I have one.
by Bananadine » 22 Apr 2009 22:25
icycalm wrote:lol. You are a rare breed indeed. I can tell from your GDC comments, and the people you namedrop, that you are part of what I like to call the "industry, shmindustry" crowd. I mean the Western, Gamasutra-reading, indie-game-evangelizing crowd that is currently infesting gaming, and flooding the market with hopeless slop like World of Goo.
icycalm wrote:So yeah, I'll be back soon with an extensive reply to all your points, so don't go anywhere. This is a fun little challenge.
icycalm wrote:Bananadine wrote:What I haven't seen before is all the stuff you're saying here, said in one place at once.Bananadine wrote:Another thing I haven't seen before is a videogame-related reason to read Baudrillard and the rest--and now, because of you, I have one.
icycalm wrote:I'll answer everything in detail either way, but this is your chance to back up your one and only claim to fame. After that it's game over, dude. You'll get exactly what is coming to you.
by icycalm » 22 Apr 2009 22:40
by icycalm » 22 Apr 2009 22:43
Bananadine wrote:A lot of people could have compiled such a body of writing as what I've seen of your site.
Bananadine wrote:The philosophy itself may well have enormous value, but the application has little--except maybe for people who are unused to applying rigorously formulated ideas to real life at all. Children, for instance.
by Bananadine » 22 Apr 2009 23:27
icycalm wrote:I am not worth your time? Is that why you spent "the last several days" reading my website, then registered an account in my forum, and posted a complicated and involved series of questions?
icycalm wrote:Compare that with how I see you -- Mr. "Bananadine", who as far as I am concerned has never written a sentence in his life worth reading, and of whom I neither ask for nor expect anything.
icycalm wrote:Wake up and realize your position. Show the appropriate respect, and I will help you with your problems. That, after all, is what this forum -- that's what this site is for.
icycalm wrote:Or else piss off and stop wasting my time you fuckin' imbecile.
icycalm wrote:No one could have compiled such a body of writing as what you've seen on my site. You wouldn't be here asking questions otherwise -- you'd be on someone else's site.
icycalm wrote:You got that right at least -- children like you.
by icycalm » 23 Apr 2009 00:32
Bananadine wrote:I don't think it would be worth spending further time on the reading part, except insofar as you communicate here on the subjects I've asked about.
Banadine wrote:Unlike what I said about you, your claim is that I was never worth your time--and as of that writing, you're still talking to me!
Banadine wrote:You're so nitpicky, yet you make little silly mistakes like that.
Banadine wrote:You're a fascinating character
Banadine wrote:and a puzzle
Banadine wrote:I don't understand you [...] or much of anything else!
Banadine wrote:It seems that, despite having read your thread about posting guidelines, I don't know what respect you consider appropriate. Would it be inappropriate for me to ask?
Bananadine wrote:Okay, yes, to be literal: Almost every person I was referring to would have done it with less scorn, and some of them would have written rather more clearly.
Bananadine wrote:icycalm wrote:You got that right at least -- children like you.
Now you're just flaming me. Are you angry, or are you being casually dismissive?
Bananadine wrote:I'm certainly ready to apologize for being inappropriately rude.
Bananadine wrote:I'm aware that I'm developing a tone of haughtiness, here, that mirrors yours--which, in a way, seems like it's perfectly appropriate.
Bananadine wrote:But then, you're the sovereign and all that, so maybe it isn't. Do you think I should already know whether it is?
by icycalm » 23 Apr 2009 00:37
by icycalm » 24 Apr 2009 22:55
Bananadine wrote:First, I would like to know whether you are aiming to create works of genius.
Bananadine wrote:It's clear, at least, that you employ Schopenhauer's model of genius--and occasionally, in your essays, you mention the great difficulty most people would face in trying to understand what you're saying, which suggests that you consider yourself to be, if not at the top of the hierarchy of ability Schopenhauer describes, at least much closer to the top than almost every other living human is. And I've seen you alluding to your certainty (but maybe you were being facetious at the time) that in a few years (or possibly decades), the world will learn the great value of what you're making here.
Bananadine wrote:In spite of all this, I'm uncertain about your basic intention in this regard. Maybe you've made it explicit somewhere on the site, but if so, I haven't seen it. Could you make it explicit here?
Bananadine wrote:A related question: Whether or not you're aiming to produce works of genius and publish them on this site, do you think that you have already done so?
Bananadine wrote:Again, this isn't clear from your writing. I've read your statement about how you "recycle" the work of other philosophers, Pauline Kael, etc. because you wish to use them as a starting point, and then go further. But have you gone further?
Bananadine wrote:Here is why I ask that: On the one hand, you're a smart guy and you seem to think you have gone further. On the other hand, I came to your site having never read a word of Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, Baudrillard, or Kael--and still I have yet to encounter any major point in any of your essays that surprises me, or any substantial model that's new to me. I understand that there are many humans for whom the idea that a JRPG has no roleplaying in it is not just surprising but unthinkable heresy, that people are often virulently resistant to the prospect of working to improve their skill at playing complex games, and so forth. But, as you seem to recognize, these are not difficult ideas. Do you further recognize that they aren't extremely rare, either? I, simply via my own thought, and ordinary game-playing experience, and occasional exposure to the words of intelligent people--people like Chris Crawford, Ernest Adams, Frank Lantz, and miscellaneous speakers at the Game Developers Conference (no, of course not ALL speakers there) and writers on certain online forums--have reached the point where I can read one of your essays and feel like the stuff you're saying, while good enough, is just normal.
Bananadine wrote:I may even develop the urge to skim
Bananadine wrote:because, although I agree with what I'm reading, I've seen it before. Does this make <i>me</i> a genius?
Bananadine wrote:I don't believe a person has to think at Wittgenstein's level in order to grow the ability to understand what icycalm says. Am I wrong?
I wrote:"Fairness", in the way humans use the concept, is fundamentally unfair. Similarly, what humans mean by "unfairness" is the only way that fairness can be defined.
Bananadine wrote:What I haven't seen before is all the stuff you're saying here, said in one place at once.
Bananadine wrote:There is value in that--is that the value you're aiming to produce? That is, are you trying to build a solid, though not extraordinary, basis for further thought--perhaps one on which you intend to build extraordinary things?
Bananadine wrote:Another thing I haven't seen before is a videogame-related reason to read Baudrillard and the rest--and now, because of you, I have one.
Bananadine wrote:But I will still have one more question: Why do you put so much of your scorn <i>into your very work</i>?
Bananadine wrote:If you're aiming at someone who thinks like you, someone for whom your ideas are just natural and ordinary, then surely you would do well to increase the clarity you claim to value by removing these unhelpful little blasts of scorn
Bananadine wrote:--because otherwise a person like that wouldn't have <i>time</i> for your work.
Bananadine wrote:And if you're trying to evangelize your ideas to the people at the fringe of the moron blob, in order to pull a few over to your side, then surely you're not helping your cause by distracting them with regularly delivered insults!
Bananadine wrote:Why do you write this way?
Bananadine wrote:That's the last question I will ask you. Your answers, should you provide them, will help me determine the answer to one more question: that of whether, if I ever come back to the non-Schopenhauer, non-Baudrillard (etc.) sections of this site in the future, I will find more than a scorn-poisoned expression of a lot of good ideas I've mostly already thought of myself.
by icycalm » 24 Apr 2009 23:20
Nietzsche wrote:Foreword
This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them is even living yet. Possibly they are the readers who understand my Zarathustra: how could I confound myself with those for whom there are ears listening today? -- Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.
The conditions under which one understands me and then necessarily understands -- I know them all too well. One must be honest in intellectual matters to the point of harshness to so much as endure my seriousness, my passion. One must be accustomed to living on mountains -- to seeing the wretched ephemeral chatter of politics and national egoism beneath one. One must have become indifferent, one must never ask whether truth is useful or a fatality... Strength which prefers questions for which no one today is sufficiently daring; courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. An experience out of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most distant things. A new conscience for truths which have hitherto remained dumb. And the will to economy in the grand style: to keeping one's energy, one's enthusiasm in bounds... Reverence for oneself; love for oneself; unconditional freedom with respect to oneself...
Very well! These alone are my readers, my rightful readers, my predestined readers: what do the rest matter? -- The rest are merely mankind. -- One must be superior to mankind in force, in loftiness of soul -- in contempt...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
by Doctor Fugue » 25 Apr 2009 03:40
by Doctor Fugue » 25 Apr 2009 09:40
by icycalm » 08 Jul 2009 18:20
Eidoloclast wrote:Hey, man. Thanks for splitting the Spelunky post off into its own thread and adding the link/screenshot. I went back and added in a little more detail about the game now that it's a free-standing thread. Not my best work, in terms of writing, but maybe better than nothing.
I really enjoy that this site exists, even if I'm not sure I agree with everything you say, and I'm glad to have become a part of it, even in a small way. There's a lot of learning that I can do here.
(Thanks for turning me on to Baudrillard and Schopenhauer, by the way. As well as giving me impetus to continue my readings of Nietzche. Fascinating stuff, and the main reason that I'm not sure that I agree with you is because I haven't caught up to you yet. If I do, I'll let you know what I think.)
Eidoloclast wrote:...just re-read the posting guidelines and saw that you hate PMs.
Sorry about that.
And this.
icycalm wrote:Eidoloclast wrote:even if I'm not sure I agree with everything you say
No one cares. You are just some nameless cunt on the internet -- why would anyone care whether you agree with anything? The only thing I care about is arguments. If you have none of those shut the fuck up.
I am sick of people like you. Every other comment has to be a retardation of some kind. WAKE THE FUCK UP!
Eidoloclast wrote:Fine, then. I'll clarify what I mean.
Your essays on videogames are, one and all, excellent works with which I can wholeheartedly agree. I acknowledge that you are a visionary, and make no claim that anyone else could draw the same connections that you did between Neizche, Schopenhauer, Baudrillard, Wittgenstein and gaming.
This site has been incredibly important to my development as a human being recently, both in influencing my design philosophy when it comes to attempting to organize my friends to create good games, in influencing my desire to be a video game critic, and in pushing me to read more philosophy, and actually think about it. I had read a good deal of Plato, and some Nietzche, but the rest of your influences were unknown to me.
I am one semester away from completing an undergraduate degree in Physics at a liberal arts college, and I have a minor in Political Science, through which I've been explosed to some philosophy. I have also spent a fair bit of time in English and Art History classes. I want to be a science fiction author, a video game designer, and a journalist.
I do not feel that I have the necessary background in philosophy to either agree or disagree with certain of your notions unreservedly, but my instincts tell me that there may be types of phenomena which your deductive genius is not best suited to describing--situations in which your reductionist method may not be able to describe the emergent complexity of a system in a reasonable amount of writing-space.
There is a type of holism that emerges in poetry and the very very best of 'New Games Journalism' that can sometimes tell me more about a game than the most exhaustive feature-by-feature bulleted review. This is not to say that NGJ is, in general, good. Quite the opposite.
I am going to use this paragraph as an aside: I know exactly what I mean when I say 'emergent', and do not intend it to be a vague, catch-all term. The emergent properties of a system are the properties of a system which are not immediately apparent from its rules. You have commented about the possibility space of games, claiming that nothing can happen in them that the developers did not intend. That there are no possibilities present in the game that were not intentionally coded in. Certainly, a game cannot perform actions other than what it was programmed to, but often in sufficiently complex games, such as Dwarf Fortress, behaviours emerge that the creators never intended or expected. I don't have the quote I'm thinking of handy, and you may not have meant to imply that the coding of a possibility must be intentional.
Where I can no longer be certain that I agree with you is when you discuss human nature, human society, and justice. As someone with more than a passing interest in political science, I believe that the world can be made a better place, not just for me and a select group of my friends, but for everyone, or at least most people most of the time.
I also understand that this sort of world may not be desirable, but I'm enough of an idealist to keep clinging to the idea that a better world that does not constrain the ability of human beings to be great is possible.
I understand what you mean when you say that (from memory, so I may paraphrase) 'Justice (as it is popularly conceived) is anything but just, and the thing that is actually most just is what is popularly termed injustice.' I understand the logic inherent in the strong deserving to be strong and the weak deserving to be weak. "All that matters is the quantum of power you are. The rest is cowardice."
I also understand that you are sometimes too hasty to dismiss, too reticient to believe in the capacity of other human beings, and that patience is not your strong suit. I hope you'll forgive me for being forthright with you in your own home.
If I had a specific argument for why you were wrong, and where, and how, I would have presented it immediately. I do not, possibly because no such argument exists, but also possibily because I just haven't found it yet, due to a lack of knowledge, vision or time.
I am becoming more knowledgeable, and sharper sighted. If I see anything, I'll let you know.
In the mean-time, I have many other responsibilities besides establishing my philosphical street-cred on an internet forum, even if it is the best video gaming forum in the world. Thank you for making this place, and thank you for always pushing back on your readers. The world, I'm sure you would agree, needs more real arguments.
I hope to have one of consequence for you some day.
by Eidoloclast » 04 Sep 2011 05:58
by icycalm » 04 Sep 2011 14:57
Eidoloclast wrote:I do not feel that I have the necessary background in philosophy to either agree or disagree with certain of your notions unreservedly, but my instincts tell me
Eidoloclast wrote:that there may be types of phenomena which your deductive genius is not best suited to describing--situations in which your reductionist method
Eidoloclast wrote:There is a type of holism that emerges in poetry
Eidoloclast wrote:and the very very best of 'New Games Journalism' that can sometimes tell me more about a game than the most exhaustive feature-by-feature bulleted review.
Eidoloclast wrote:I am going to use this paragraph as an aside: I know exactly what I mean when I say 'emergent', and do not intend it to be a vague, catch-all term. The emergent properties of a system are the properties of a system which are not immediately apparent from its rules. You have commented about the possibility space of games, claiming that nothing can happen in them that the developers did not intend. That there are no possibilities present in the game that were not intentionally coded in. Certainly, a game cannot perform actions other than what it was programmed to, but often in sufficiently complex games, such as Dwarf Fortress, behaviours emerge that the creators never intended or expected. I don't have the quote I'm thinking of handy, and you may not have meant to imply that the coding of a possibility must be intentional.
Eidoloclast wrote:Where I can no longer be certain that I agree with you is when you discuss human nature, human society, and justice.
Eidoloclast wrote:As someone with more than a passing interest in political science, I believe that the world can be made a better place
Eidoloclast wrote:not just for me and a select group of my friends, but for everyone, or at least most people most of the time.
Eidoloclast wrote:I also understand that this sort of world may not be desirable, but I'm enough of an idealist
Eidoloclast wrote:to keep clinging to the idea that a better world that does not constrain the ability of human beings to be great is possible.
Eidoloclast wrote:I also understand that you are sometimes too hasty to dismiss, too reticient to believe in the capacity of other human beings
Eidoloclast wrote:If I had a specific argument for why you were wrong, and where, and how, I would have presented it immediately.
Eidoloclast wrote:I do not, possibly because no such argument exists, but also possibily because I just haven't found it yet, due to a lack of knowledge, vision or time.
Eidoloclast wrote:I am becoming more knowledgeable, and sharper sighted. If I see anything, I'll let you know.
Eidoloclast wrote:In the mean-time, I have many other responsibilities besides establishing my philosphical street-cred on an internet forum
Eidoloclast wrote:I meant no disrespect in my response, above
Eidoloclast wrote:I'll still be around, reading and thinking, growing richer, whether or not I can speak here.
Eidoloclast wrote:You're still not entirely right about emergence, or about the solving of the possibility space of Go, or even about progressive rock. But these are all minor issues. I'm years away from being able to challenge you on anything substantive, I suspect.
Eidoloclast wrote:Did you have a hard time overcoming whatever sense of morality your parents or community attempted to instill in you, or was it effortless?
Eidoloclast wrote:How much poison was there in you, and of what type?
Eidoloclast wrote:Do you really think yourself the Overman, or just another heavy drop?
Eidoloclast wrote:Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a much better Roguelike than ADOM, by the way, as can be seen by the fact that there is a thriving competitive community for it.
Eidoloclast wrote:Thanks again, for everything. Some day, I hope to destroy you--or at least to lift the weight of your ideas off my chest.