This is the world I want to live in

The world is absurd, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not

I think you’re looking at it the wrong way - triggering the flight or fight response won’t make you able to fight or flight by itself. You have to practice the responses or they’re useless - detrimental even, like a deer in the headlights

Play is a way to exercise those instincts and practice responses, but in a safe way. We even creep into the danger zone a bit sometimes, but most people (and animals) keep the danger measured

Fear isn’t pain - it’s not meant to be an absolute deterrent. It makes us think twice and go into fight or flight mode to handle a challenge - it doesn’t discourage behaviors, it moderates them. Sometimes you do have to face off a rival, or need to take a risk for a reward. It releases endorphins if we come out of it better off

So it’s not weird that we are drawn to it - horror stories/movies/games trigger it artificially, but so does fighting each other or tests of courage

I don’t think it’s weird - we’re animals, mammals and hunters no less, and animals play. If we have unstimulated instincts and free time, we find ways to exercise them

It’s kind of like the zoomies or play fighting, it’s just built into our design, for one reason or another

Now, aliens might come here and be fascinated how Earth vertebrates can even function, assuming this isn’t a common thing. But I’m guessing our social behaviors will be more mind boggling

What about the first month? If you’ve got a buffer in the bank, it doesn’t matter much. But if you were living paycheck to paycheck, those 2-3 weeks might be enough to really set you back

Ideas have both quality and value, and they interconnect to make the backbone of interactive experiences

That’s it exactly. The way the ideas interconnect and the way they’re presented to the player is everything. That’s execution, that’s everything - the ideas are just what’s in your head

Ideas are nothing. Everyone has a million daydreams, the most special and creative idea in the world is worthless if you can’t express it.

Execution is everything. Hell, you don’t even need an idea - you can draw random design elements out of a bag and come up with something great

If you cook it on half power for twice as long, you can do one less thing (also IMO it tastes significantly better)

My point is just that the statement “children do better when their parents stay together” is responsible public health messaging. Elaborating on it is heavily discouraged outside a technical setting, because a lot of people will leave that room with the exact opposite take away if you start talking about counterexamples

What you’re describing is following best practices (although he might also have a punchable face, he doesn’t sound very charismatic)

No, that’s my point exactly… Public health communication is deliberately oversimplified and stripped of all nuance like this. It’s a deliberate technique taught in school

Disfunction isn’t the only scale though - people break up for all sorts of reasons. It can be just as simple as “I’m not in love with you” or “I found someone else” - or just the fact their lives suck and they expected a partner or kids to make it better

Ultimately, when you communicate to the public, nuance doesn’t get across. You can’t say “the COVID vaccine is right for everyone, unless you have certain allergy or autoimmune disorders”. People hear what they want to hear and will latch onto additional detail - the best you can do is distill a message

For another example, we signal “daily flossing is inversely correlated with heart disease”. People who practice hygiene to that level are probably a lot more health conscious, and we’ve never proven a casual relationship - but putting the thought out there does more good than harm

I’m not familiar with the guy so maybe there’s more not mentioned in this thread that would change my mind, but the core message itself is solid - staying together is better for kids. That’s true for most people, and thinking divorce won’t impact your kids is nonsense (ask anyone who grew up through that). That should be part of the mental calculus in people’s heads

If you need professional help, they can deliver the nuance - that’s another public health messaging “see a therapist if you’re having problems”. You can’t get into how some therapists suck and how getting the right match is critical, but most people would benefit from the idea seeking therapy is just self care

I don’t think it’s an unfair thing to say - as a professional doing public communication, staying together for the kids is in the child’s best interest, generally

Obviously, if there’s abuse of any kind anywhere in the house, that’s no longer the case. And it’s not always going to be the best choice, but it’s a good idea to at least try

I wouldn’t read that as “we should make divorce harder, legally or socially” - if they went on to say that they’d be way out of line IMO

The grass here is spiky and horrible. It’ll break the skin, it’s basically walking on occasional thorns. I don’t recommend touching grass in all situations, and I need to move

The grass here is spiky and horrible. It’ll break the skin, it’s basically walking on occasional thorns. I don’t recommend touching grass in all situations, and I need to move

Weirdly, I can spend hours meditating. But meditating before sleep? Impossible. If I can’t have Netflix, I require music

If there’s any chance they’ve heard about a concept, I’ll ask if they’ve heard of it and take them at their word (without comment either way).

And if they’re kinda nodding impatiently, I’ll wrap up the explanation and move on to the deeper level

At first, people will sometimes be defensive or lie about knowing a topic, but after you establish there’s no judgement either way with you I’ve found people become less hesitant about admitting ignorance and will even want to hear your explanation of something to check their knowledge

I also do the flip side - I pride myself on admitting when I don’t know something, so that might play in too

It’s quite possible, although I’m inclined to blame it on turnover and pressures for deadlines

I’ve come to see software kinda like a plant. If you neglect it, it rots, because all software is contextual and the world moves on. If you keep growing it, it starts to rot from the inside. If you carve out down to something smooth and streamlined, it can last a long time and just need TLC to bounce back

Ultimately, if you want something to be big and to last, you have to prune it, transplant it, and continuously work on it. There’s no direct money to be made there though

And it helps a shit ton to have people around long-term. It can take years to learn a big stack, but having someone go “wait, if we do this we need to rexamine how we delete photos” is how you avoid fuck ups like this

In our current economic system? Absolutely, declining population is a huge problem.

As far as physics? The world doesn’t care about imaginary human numbers. Production continues to soar through the roof

We made all of this up. At any point, we could say “hey, this is a dumb game that’s making people suffer, let’s figure out something else”

I had the original with the expansion, I used to play Tony hawk online

There was no psn back then though, you just plugged in and were good to go

Ultimately, do they care? Most shareholders are in it for the stock price, this kind of thing might affect it slightly but I doubt it’d shift the needle much

I feel like I’ve been going crazy, web searching as a developer has become a daily nightmare and all the devs I ask are like “yeah, maybe it’s gotten a bit worse? Haven’t really noticed”