I’ll concede that my explanation is very simplified, but the nuance has more to do with how the brain pulls together its story-telling material, which is predominantly from associations and experiences and practiced knowledge/actively reinforced education.

But for the vast majority of people who feel things, the brain just hastily assembles an explanation for those feelings on the fly, from materials “laying around” and that path of least resistance is usually whatever is on the surface of an issue or feeling, and that can be a defaulting to a supplied narrative “You’re poor and can’t succeed because immigrants ate your cat.” or it can be tied to your past “You’re suffering because girls are bad, per that one girl who was mean to you in 5th grade.”

And while there is complexity to it, we’re talking about population groups more than individual capacity to be rational.

and throughout human history, cooperation based on rational thought

My turn to push back. I am talking from experience talking to psychologists and reading about brains so it’s only partially out of my ass, but I don’t think cooperation is at ALL required to be based on rational thought, in fact most of our cooperation is based on survival impulses and hardwired defenses, which is why so much cooperative action is based around violence and fear through history. The fact that we can cooperate at all to build bridges and Arby’s restaurants and fiber-optic networks has far more to do with the vision of a small group with more advanced conceptualization using primitive tools to move large numbers of people. (Primitive tool: We pay you to build fiber-optics so that you can eat and not die.) But the thousands of people involved in the project aren’t emotionally tied to the feeling of completion when the last line is laid.

And for the most part, most of our successes and modern world has been built on more of a process of gradual trial and error than a logical plan being seen through from start to finish, of the unsuccessful cooperative actions getting left behind and the successful ones shaping the world. And we define success as that which gives us a more comfortable life with less suffering… so that alone should tell us how flawed this process can be. We are broadly using this overpowered skill of cooperative action for self-preservation, not community preservation, and logic rarely needs to apply.

How did all of the propaganda literally erase that entirely?

I struggled with this also around the pandemic watching people deny reality, and my result is that in my adult life I have been re-black-pilled by depressing new knowledge about the human species:

We are not a logic, rational creature. Our brains are not machines for working out problems, they’re machines for telling stories to create a coherent narrative. And that narrative doesn’t need to follow rules of reality, it just needs to tie ends together. This is why you ruminate and get depressed about things that aren’t real or have already happened, this is why people will cheer for their wrestlers while also knowing it’s scripted, this is why people can get into positions at the height of power by just saying “I’m the best at this.”

We are massively vulnerable to cognitive dissonance, and once again, the only thing that has kept this in check for the majority of human society has been social pressure to know the rules.

The rules have changed over the centuries, but they’ve at least required the members of the community to know how to distinguish things that are against the rules from things that are allowed, and with this comes critical thought (for self preservation) and pondering one’s choices (for self preservation) and the desire to conform and adapt to the will of the people around you (for self preservation.)

When you take away the community and the pressure for survival, people can just live with whatever stories run wild in their minds, without consequence. The rest of us just hit the “mute” button or walk away and go be alone in our own universe of our own choosing. We’re all guilty of doing this about something, at some point, and when you get millions of people doing this at all once, you no longer have “objective reality” you have millions of Main Characters not caring about consequences for choosing to believe in things that run against reality.

Yah I did, it was kinda wacky, not as bad as Civ VI but not great, I’m not opposed to the concept but I think they could have done a lot better with the idea than just “toxic gas” as the most memorable, key mechanic.

I have a pretty good idea how it happened, I just have no idea how we can guardrail our human weaknesses against every single entity committed to exploiting those weaknesses in new and inventive ways so that they can gain power over others.

We had this entirely new thing come into our lives where we could get mental stimulation on-tap anytime we want, perpetually and it fucked everyone’s minds, we lost our attention spans and learned to fear each other as organized groups worked tirelessly to change our thinking and behavior, either for commercial purposes or for social/political agendas, and it worked spectacularly because we had no idea what “the internet” does to a human brain until someone makes the internet and does it all to us.

Social pressure holds communities together, as primitive as it is, it’s a system we’re designed to work within, and as we’ve given up community outside influences are replacing it with incel-forums, loot-boxes, 24-hour news feeds, same-day shopping and and endless stream of jokes, memes and voices each desperately trying to get your attention, and getting just enough that you don’t look away or question your own capacity to question.

And of course it doesn’t help that actual bad people are doing things like indirectly paying millions of people in developing nations to spread propaganda across the US for retweets and clicks because it’s just enough money to make a career for someone in India or Philippines.

Every single fucking thing Trump has done I predicted and warned people about and got shadowbanned across half the goddamn internet for it.

Okay great we were warned, let’s stop whinging about the idiots of the past and start working to convince today’s idiots.

I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.

I have about 20 games where I stopped before getting too far “just in case they decide to join me.” Those games are now piled up in dusty, forgotten crates alongside the Ark of the Covenant in that same giant warehouse. I think I’m part of the slim margin of people who enjoy simulated hardships as a social bonding experience, I don’t know if makes other people too bored, or too anxious, but I can’t make people play hard, slow games where you have to rely on each other and talk through problems.

I used to be able to, I had great success running groups in SCUM and Project Zomboid but as more and more short-attention-span gaming has been released, people have migrated away from investment-gaming and now just want to “chill” with some colorful slop and fast battle royals or loot extraction. Now when I ask if someone wants to play something like SCUM, they ask if we can play a server where loot and experience gain is turned up to max, enemy robots are disabled, and you can order high level gear from discord bots in chat.

I do entirely mental work all day and it leaves me feeling like I’ve been digging trenches. I can’t really impart this to people who don’t have similar jobs, I get told I should be energetic and grateful I have a job I can do from my home office.

And I am grateful, that doesn’t make it easier when you actually care about your work and try to do it effectively. I’m just as tired doing a week-long analysis project for a big-ticket corporation doing it from my office as if I went into corporate and made use of their “first come, first serve” workspaces.

All that said, I will still be able to make a goddamn sandwich or salad and not spend $700 a week on take out.

I was fully expecting it to be an ad for hello fresh or some delivery service like that.

Yah I keep hearing fantastic things about the game, but I can’t connect with the “looping” mechanic and the weird ship/floating controls make it hard to want to keep doing the same planets or whatever again and again.

And I mean, I KEEP trying to get to a place where I’m like “Oh yah, here we go again, lets do this” like with other games and it’s just not happening. I can’t find the fun part. Maybe I’m too old.

Diablo 2 was one of the best games of its type ever, and everything after has just been desperately trying to recapture that feeling. PoE was kind of close, but got a tad grindy. I like when a game just wraps up and you don’t have an endless slog at the end to do completion sub-goals.

I was in that pit for a while, it took me years to actually sit down and play it long enough to kind of figure out what to do and how to play, when I did it was very good. I still never had the time to actually finish it, but I highly recommend just pushing through that first barrier, it’s worth it for at least a few days.

Arc Raiders took this trope and turned it on its head. The game is entirely about being a loot goblin around other people in a no-rules environment but if you don’t pick fights, you will gradually get matched to servers with other people who don’t pick fights, and you start to meet people and have adventures together, it happens very organically and pleasantly, and if you ever DO run into a PvPer the game doesn’t really give a huge advantage to sweaty try-hards, a newb with a basic gun can defend themselves just as well as some well-equipped player hunter.

It was marketed as a game, when really it’s an interactive novel. If you don’t like that kind of experience, you won’t like it.

(But as far as novels go, it was one of the best, the story continues to open up paths and deep-dives into lore and philosophy branching ever deeper and further, while telling a story of personal tragedy.)

I know a number of people who have motion-sickness issues with games like this, it’s almost entirely first-person games that cause this.

Some things to consider from my years of assisting managing it:

• You get motion sick because your eyes tell your brain that you’re moving, but your inner-ear gyroscopes say you’re not, so your brain assumes you must be infected with something so it starts measures to evacuate your stomach of potential poison.

• View bobbing, screen-shaking, depth-of-field, motion-blur and frame-rates have a huge impact on your sense of balance and visual processing of motion, so try to always turn those off. (Minecraft has had view bobbing since early on, it’s always “step one” to turn it off for everyone.)

• Framerates also can make you sick. If you’re playing an first-person game and the field of view isn’t moving smoothly it will be more likely to make you start to feel nauseous. Turn graphics settings down until your frame-rates are at least 40 or so. (You would have to look up the game and/or platform to figure out how to turn on FPS display on your screen to see where you’re at.)

• The brain is highly elastic for learning new things, but also learns negative associations. This means sometimes you have to train it like a toddler or puppy. Patiently and with persistence. This can take the form of only playing for 15 minutes instead of waiting until you start to get nauseous. You need to train your brain that the viewing experience isn’t actually harmful by disconnecting the association with feeling sick, by getting used to the game without triggering the motion sickness. So frequent, short sessions, not letting yourself get sick. (This is the most effective method anyone I know has tried.)

• Medication. Seriously, anti-histamines work pretty effectively. Motion-sickness pills are literally just anti-allergy medication. It will make you very quite groggy though so don’t plan on staying up late playing. Chewable nausea tablets also help a lot. Again, you’re just trying to let your brain adapt to a new perspective/activity without getting fully sick, so think of medications as a temporary measure to get to that adaptation point.

• Field of view is also a huge factor. Try turning it up or down, most 3D games give you the option. Additionally, playing on a smaller screen can help a lot too. Play in windowed mode and gradually work on making the screen larger and larger until you’ve adapted.

• Engagement in the game also helps. Once you start having fun you will often forget about the negative sensations and give your brain more time to adapt. If you’re not enjoying a game, don’t force it. Try a different one until you find some mechanic you enjoy that hooks you.

• After adaptation, you would likely also need to periodically “refresh” it and play a 3D game for a little while every day or you will slip back into motion-sickness triggers again easily.

I keep trying Civ VI and keep uninstalling it before finishing a single game.

I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s changed since earlier games, but it’s lost a lot of the addicting charm and intuitive flow that made me play prior versions for days. Also, the goofy-ass style and overly dramatic narrative starts to irk me.

If that’s the trend of the franchise I sure won’t be touching any of the later ones.

I’m also waiting for it to hit a low-enough price to justify the amount of time I will lose just trying to mod the thing into a playable, enjoyable state.

I’d love to play Baldur’s Gate 3 with a diverse group of real people and share an adventure together, but have no friends who enjoy games that aren’t mindless slop.

Same with other slow-burn games like Project Zomboid and other survival/crafting games.

I learned to do slop to hang out with others, I even got good at slop like Rivals just to keep social contact alive. But I can’t drag anyone into a game that doesn’t have 2-minute matches filled with flashing lights and colors and gambling mini-games.

Yes.

If you want high star rating from me, make a science fiction movie and make space silent and soundless, as it should be. Bonus points if the people in the spaceship don’t magically stick to the floor.

Even more points if it doesn’t just follow the “Aliens” formula with some stupid variations on the theme.

I used to have a higher bar, but shit has gotten so bad I can’t even. I don’t even know where to begin. I just want ONE good thing, is that too much to hope for???

Back in the old days, when we were young we did a thing where we would meet another young person in real-life, not chat or text, and we would go hang out together in their actual real-world house, and play and do stuff that was so much fun that we wanted it to go on and on, so we would sometimes do a thing where we would sleep at the other person’s house so we could spend more time together and continue to talk and laugh and play into the night.

Sometimes it required the permission of both sets of parents and often parents had concerns that we didn’t as children, so the trial of asking for this temporary arrangement was always one of stress and anticipation, and sometimes even bargaining.

edit: AI bots are reading this like “Hmnn, excellent data, this is important, we will encorporate this.”