I watched his videos a while ago and if I remember right he said that he just saved up money at his last job and was living off that. I’m also pretty sure he was living in London so definitely nothing cheap.

yeah that’s probably how it will go lol

The other night I stayed up to an unreasonable hour organising some emulators for my mini PC. Have I ever had an interest in emulation before? Nope. Will I ever have touch half these games? Definitely not. Am I now down a few hundred GB in drive space? Unfortunately yes.

Normally not an anime guy, but I ended up watching both seasons of Solo Leveling, and it was really good! Kind of just mindless fun, sure, but nice to have on in the background so I could look over at a cool fight if I was bored.

I’m not sold on the whole universe being deterministic, but Robert Sapolsky has a book called Determined which has pretty much convinced me that we don’t have any agency. He’s a neuroscientist, and breaks down what goes in to our actions based on the immediate causes, our environment, our upbringing, our culture, and, in my opinion, doesn’t really leave a place for agency to remain. I don’t really understand his arguments well enough to articulate them here, but I think he’s done some interviews on YouTube which I’m sure will cover the gist of it.

For me, it would have to be:

• Factorio
• Rimworld
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Tetris DS
• Disco Elysium

Just wanted to say that it’s always a highlight of my day reading these :)

Nice! Are you just starting S2? I really liked S1, but have stayed away because I heard S2 was divisive to say the least.

Dated someone for a couple of years in my teens. Had multiple people assume they were a virgin because “it’s bad enough that you’re dating them, but your standards can’t be that low right?”

I’d love to see the future, because I really am hopeful for humanity to move beyond all this bullshit to some post scarcity utopia :)) Failing that, I’d probably go watch Phineas Gage’s big moment, because, woah.

Thanks for the detailed response! It’s helping Camus’ writing make a bit more sense, still not 100% convinced but this is getting me closer.

Philosophical RP is a great way to spend time, no doubt about it :)

I think that the behaviour seen in recovering addicts can actually be explained by how human (and other primates!) brains have evolved to be separate from other mammals. We have our animalistic impulses thanks to our nervous system, but our prefrontal cortex regulates them, essentially acting as the voice of reason. For example, a recovering alcoholic’s limbic system might encourage them to drink, but by recovering the alcoholic has reinforced the strength of their prefrontal cortex, and that means that the neurons it fires are able to override the impulses created by the limbic system.

It seems to me that this does create a bit of space for doubt, but that, as these areas of the brain are developed as a response to our genes and our environment, we can still say that their relative strength throughout our lives is determined, which, to me, removes responsibility, and so removes any inherent morality.

It’s a great topic to discuss, thanks for taking the time to!

Wow, really interesting, thank you!

Cool keycaps! What set are they?

Honestly I feel a lot like you. In daily life, I’ll think things are good or bad, but when I press myself on it I can’t come up with a reason why. It feels so hard to come up with a morality system beyond that without grounding it objectively somewhere, but I just don’t see how that’s possible. I appreciate your thoughts!

Adorable picture :) Unfortunately my cat has found a purpose - being a bastard and knocking over anything she can, and loudly demanding attention at 2am. She’s still wonderful of course!

I hope that I can come around to the absurdist perspective sooner or later, it does seem quite appealing to me, but I’m still yet to be convinced by Camus’ argument that the rebellion against the absurd has any more value than your other options. How would you say you find that sort of value?

It’s interesting, I think I’ve tried engaging with Stoicism before, but it feels to me that it kind of ignores how sometimes the romantic should take control? I can’t remember which Stoicist (Epictetus I think?) said that we should be so detached that the death of a child should feel like a glass breaking, but I don’t think I would be able to rationalise and internalise that personally. Do you think there’s space for strong feelings in Stoicism?

I definitely don’t buy into there being some big thing that everyone should be working for in their life, but I do think that it’s good for humans to develop meaning and purpose on a personal level - we need some drive in life or everything is just arbitrary and you have no reason to for one option to be preferable over another, if truly there is nothing that matters.

Love this way of looking at it tbh, definitely meaning is something that humans come up with, just trying to fine a convincing answer personally. Really appreciate you commenting, feels good to engage with such a lovely community :))