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2010.08.09 04:54 twitchsey /r/Twitch
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2010.05.24 20:10 Gaming News
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Letter from the chairman https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/19848-Letter-From-The-Chairman
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There are a couple of points I want to make about recognizing what comes with a package. First, game packages may include only Star Citizen, only Squadron 42, or both games. Look at the package's contents for "Star Citizen Digital Download" and/or "Squadron 42 Digital Download." I will show you an easy way to add Squadron 42 to a Star Citizen-only package during the checkout process.The second point of interest concerns ship insurance (also found in the package's contents). Ship insurance covers the ship's hull and factory stock equipment in the event of complete loss. As a part of promotional offers, ships are sometimes sold with lifetime insurance (commonly referred to as LTI), but there are tricks to get LTI on almost any ship and many people will advise you to take advantage of them (often at a cost of $20-$35 USD = Token LTI ). To properly assess of the "value" of lifetime insurance, you should know a few things.
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If you don't already have a Roberts Space Industries (RSI) account, you'll want to take advantage of the Star Citizen referral code program. Doing so benefits the code provider and grants only you a bonus 5,000 United Earth Credits (UEC), the in-game currency for Star Citizen!
Thanks!!!
Improved New Player Experience : Play the tutorial
Star Citizen features a beautiful sprawling universe full of wonder, adventure, and action. However, it’s easy for new citizens to feel overwhelmed as they take their first steps into life in the 30th century.So, from Alpha 3.19, a whole-new guided mission will welcome new players to the ‘verse, including showing them how to get around, use the mobiGlas, and fly a ship in atmosphere and in space.
Invictus end free fly Celebration May 17-29 Invictus Launch Week 2954 - Roberts Space Industries Follow the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42
Letter from the chairman https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/19848-Letter-From-The-Chairman
Alpha 3.22 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/19565-Star-Citizen-Alpha-322-Wrecks-To-Riches
Alpha 3.21 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/19477-Star-Citizen-Alpha-321-Mission-Ready
CitizenCon October 21st and 22nd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKWa4WoTkV4&list=PLVct2QDhDrB15f0diWl9YaDmL4Je1BkX3
Welcome Back, Pilot! https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18359-Welcome-Back-Pilot
STAR CITIZEN & SQUADRON 42 EXPLAINED
There are two components to Cloud Imperium Games' (CIG) project. Star Citizen is the MMO component, a first-person experience in a simulated 30th-century universe. Squadron 42 is the single-player component, a story-driven campaign where you enlist as a UEE Navy combat pilot. Our current understanding is you will be given the option of having your Squadron 42 character, who musters out of the Navy at the conclusion of the campaign, carry over into the Star Citizen persistent universe, taking with them the reputation and relationships they've built with NPC entities.
[Customers interested the Squadron 42 standalone only] If you only want the single-player campaign, after creating your account (next section) you can buy
Squadron 42: I Held The Line https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDtjzLzs7V8
UNDERSTANDING THE PLEDGE STORE
There are a couple of points I want to make about recognizing what comes with a package. First, game packages may include only Star Citizen, only Squadron 42, or both games. Look at the package's contents for "Star Citizen Digital Download" and/or "Squadron 42 Digital Download." I will show you an easy way to add Squadron 42 to a Star Citizen-only package during the checkout process.The second point of interest concerns ship insurance (also found in the package's contents). Ship insurance covers the ship's hull and factory stock equipment in the event of complete loss. As a part of promotional offers, ships are sometimes sold with lifetime insurance (commonly referred to as LTI), but there are tricks to get LTI on almost any ship and many people will advise you to take advantage of them (often at a cost of $20-$35 USD = Token LTI ). To properly assess of the "value" of lifetime insurance, you should know a few things.
guide https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18381-New-Player-Guide-Star-Citizen
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submitted by StartingOver226 to marriott [link] [comments]
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2024.05.19 01:35 MountainSuch9747 A Response to Anthony Kingsley's Introduction to Use of the Self
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share with you my response to the introduction found in the only edition of Use of the Self currently in print. I believe it's a rather misleading intro to FM Alexander's work, so I'm sharing this in the hope that I can help clear up misconceptions people may have about the Alexander Technique, not derived only from Anthony Kingsley, but many bland blog posts one tends to encounter when researching the Alexander Technique. That said, this is not intended to be an introduction of its own, but rather something experienced students, teachers, and anyone enthusiastically learning the Technique may find useful. In the tradition of Alexander himself, I've included extensive footnotes, some painfully long. I'm happy to answer any questions or otherwise discuss what I've written. Understand these are my own interpretations and opinions about what some call "the work," so take them as you will. I've taken lessons for a number of years and currently am training as a teacher, so my view of the Technique is based on these experiences, as well as my interpretations of Alexander's writings. Some of these interpretations you may object to, but I hope you find my arguments reasonable.
Response to Anthony Kingsley's Introduction to The Use of the Self
The Use of the Self may be FM Alexander's most important work, since it contains his own account of how he developed what is now called the Alexander Technique. While Alexander's other volumes are available from Mouritz, the only edition of The Use of the Self currently in print is published by Orion Spring. This edition replaces the philosopher John Dewey's introduction—which praises the technique's "genuinely scientific character"—with one by the contemporary teacher Anthony Kingsley, who is heralded on the book's front cover as a "leading Alexander Technique teacher." Therefore it is probable that many readers' first impressions of the Alexander Technique will be framed by Mr. Kingsley's opinions. I submit this is problematic, since his introduction is in my view contradictory to fundamental principles of the Alexander Technique. I write this response to address the introduction's two most dire faults: Kingsley's misrepresentation of the concepts inhibition and direction, and his dismissal of the concept of the primary control. I'll begin with the second, since it is a more straightforward error.
Primary Control
Kingsley opens his paragraphs on the primary control with the opinion that the concept should be "recast," then describes Alexander's definition of the primary control as a "particular relationship of his head, neck and back [that] acted as a master reflex that conditioned his whole organism." Then he discards this definition, claiming the head-neck-back relativity should instead be "regarded as an indicator[sic] of overall health rather than an area considered in isolation." He concedes the "region of the neck and back is a [...] barometer of our state of being," but concludes that "no single element is actually primary," since our eyes, breath, digestive system, and all other psychophysical elements are "simultaneous and interdependent" and also like barometers. Finally, he reveals his "recast" of the primary control, defining it as "the unknown and unseen self-righting and self-healing mechanism that can be restored and vitalized."
In sum, Mr. Kingsley has presented the primary control—which Alexander wrote extensively about and considered central to his technique—with an ill-defined mystical force which, accordingly, Alexander must have unwittingly stumbled upon and mistaken for a certain relativity of the head, neck and back.
Ironically, it is in The Use of the Self where Alexander wrote of discovering the necessity to first free his neck in seeking a better condition for his vocal apparatus, since that was the sine qua non of taking his head forward and up, of widening the back, and so forth, which are in turn the necessary conditions of freedom and stability in the limbs. This is the genesis of Alexander's use of the word "primary" in describing the head-neck-back relationship, and in my experience, as in Alexander's, it holds true: the sequence of directions given to oneself matters greatly, since tense feet, for example, can hardly flatten on the floor if the head is taken back and down, whereas the head can be taken "forward and up"1 to a fine degree even if there is tension in the lower extremities, particularly while sitting. Further, and maybe most significantly, the relativity of the head-neck-back rarely need change during any manner of activity, whereas the arms and legs are constantly bending, rising, stretching, and so on. Small wonder Alexander considered this relativity primary.
Of course, Kingsley is not wrong to point out the interdependence of all processes in the body. It is certainly true that undue tension in the feet creates a downward pull on the head, neck and back. Yet what is crucial to understand here is that in the context of learning and teaching the Alexander Technique, the primary control is an indispensable concept. It instructs the pupil to guide his or her attention through the body in the sequence most fit to facilitate proper relativity of all the parts, and it names succinctly that natural, visible, dynamic yet enduring relativity of the head, neck and back observable in little children and animals as well as many great musicians and athletes. Thus Kingsley discards a practical concept in favor of a truism about "interdependence;" and so we come to his second, graver error.
Direction
Here it begins to seem that what Kingsley writes of in his introduction is not the Alexander Technique at all, but in fact the Kingsley Technique, since he has redefined not only the primary control, but two other conceptual pillars of the technique: inhibition and direction.
First, he takes aim at direction, neglecting to elucidate Alexander's own definition of the concept before setting out the axiom that "aiming for postural improvements using postural directions leads to a bodymind[sic] attitude of effort and trying, which simply reinforces the problem." Dismissing as superfluous all "ideas and images about heads, necks and backs," he declares that "the trying[sic] self is the obstacle, and the shift towards a non-trying[sic] self is the solution." Finally, he offers his own definition of the directions as "the natural flow of energy and vibrancy that exists within the organism," directions which are interfered with "when we are in a condition of stress and reactivity."
Here, again, Kingsley takes a practical concept which Alexander developed based on careful observation of his own muscular action, and replaces it with a kind of mystical or spiritual phenomenon which, implicitly, only the initiated can perceive.2 Thus the famous directions are not, as Alexander described repeatedly, a series of mental orders or intentions projected to oneself before and during muscular activity along lines one has reasoned out in advance, but a "natural flow of energy and vibrancy"—just as the primary control is not, as Alexander saw it, a concrete, observable relativity of the head, neck and back, but an "unknown and unseen self-righting and self-healing mechanism." These pseudo-spiritual definitions do a massive disservice to neophyte readers, and reveal Kingsley's muddled seeing in relation to the central problem addressed by the Alexander Technique: how to shed habit and coordinate the bodymind through reasoned conception and conscious awareness.
But for a moment let us leave aside direction, since a subtler and more misleading error still lurks in Kingsley's presentation: his dismissal of conception itself. He explicitly warns that "ideas, concepts and cognitive efforts reinforce the very mental instrument that is the problem in the first place," he advises us to simply trust that "the prevention or inhibition[sic] of reaction, maintains or liberates this stream of energy [or direction] in the body."
To understand Kingsley's error, we must return to Alexander. In Man's Supreme Inheritance, Alexander sets out four stages to the "performance of any muscular action by conscious guidance and control:"
Yet Kingsley belittles conception, instead leaning on concepts like "ease," "letting go" "acceptance," and the like. He is not alone in this among teachers, but in my opinion, they overlook the influence of what Alexander termed "erroneous beliefs," a concept closely related to that of "unreliable sensory appreciation." Both could be read in the spiritual lexicon alongside "letting go," etc.; but that would place their referent outside the realm of what words and concepts can describe. On the contrary, Alexander was pointing to something concrete and empirically observable: to errors of spatio-motor perception able to be observed phenomenologically and in other people's behavior; not to transcendent truths about observation itself. Thus the classic example of an Alexandrian "erroneous belief" is a person who raises their arm and believes their shoulder has remained still when it has not. The key for the pupil in this instance is to gain an accurate conception5 of their own muscular action, in reference to bodily sensations; not to simply "let go" or "do nothing."3 And this conception must come about through active tutelage—e.g. Alexander Technique lessons—or, dare I say, the way Alexander himself did it: by reasoned experimentation, conceiving hypotheses based on careful register and analysis of his own sensations, and also by watching the behavior of others. John Dewey called the technique scientific for a reason.
All of this is not to understate the importance of concepts like "release" and "effortlessness," including in the context of the Alexander Technique. Seeing more or less what is meant by them is doubtless the key to mastery of all activities, all practices, all techniques. Yet those spiritual concepts should not blot out the very concrete technique Alexander developed for improving what he called "the use of the self:" that coordination of the muscular system, achieved through conscious reason, which influences for better or worse the functioning of the whole organism.4
Inhibition
So much for direction. What about inhibition? Under the heading "Inhibition and Non-Doing," Kingsley describes Alexander's understanding of inhibition as "an artificial pause between stimulus and reaction," after which he could "give directions to himself." Then he lays down the gauntlet, stating that in the "real world […] life does not offer us the choice to inhibit:" since according to neuroscience research, "neural reactions take milliseconds and are faster than conscious thought processes." In other words, "we either react to the stimulus, or not." So, with inhibition proven impossible, Kingsley is left with no choice but to "reformulate" another of Alexander's concepts, offering us a supposedly scientifically enlightened6 view that inhibition is really "a quality of non-doing[sic] that needs to be already available in the organism before the receipt of a stimulus." This is "a way of being[sic] rather than a way of doing[sic]."
This Kingsleyan inhibition turns out to be the essence of the technique, since it is this very "condition of non-doing[sic]" the teacher is supposed to transmit, through a touch Kingsley describes as "a dance of poetry and a symphony of silence." With it, the teacher imparts a "deep sense of acceptance" by which "change emerges in the pupil."7 He goes on to compare the Alexander Technique to "Zen Buddhism, mindfulness and the philosophy of non-duality," identifying the uniqueness of the Alexander Technique in "the transmission of immediate experience." In fact, there is no Alexander Technique as such, but only inhibition:
The Chinese Tao has a concept of Wu Wei[sic], which translates as surrendering to the effortless flow of life[sic], or non-doing[sic] action. Ultimately, the Alexander Technique needs to reinvent itself and relinquish the Technique. The Alexander Teacher really teaches nothing[sic!]. But this nothing or emptiness is in fact the deepest essence of being and the fullness of life. Like grace, it drops onto us and into us when the conditions are ripe.
The problem is that Alexander's own writings indicate that inhibition is not a "quality," a "condition," or a "surrendering to the effortless flow of life." On the contrary, according to Universal Constant in Living, it is "the act of refusing to respond to the primary desire to gain an end, [which] becomes the act of responding (volitionary act) to the conscious reasoned desire to employ the means whereby that end may be gained." As clear as day: inhibition is an action in response to the stimulus of conscious desire: a conscious, continuing refusal to do a thing the way one normally does it. Alexander saw that this inhibitory act had to precede in every instance any attempt to change his habits. Everyone is well familiar with the inhibitory act. The act of not indulging an immediate desire, however small, is it. So, inhibition is not an "artificial pause," but a phenomenologically observable process within the organism, a process that can be made habitual through practice. It is no more abstract and transcendent than blinking or moving one's finger.7
Here Kingsley again takes something ordinary and concrete and makes it mystical, going so far as to "relinquish the Technique." The trouble is that there is a good reason the Alexander Technique came to be known as such. A technique is a skillful way of doing something; a mental tool; a procedure. Ways of doing can be found everywhere: techniques for dance, for romance, for healing, even for attaining nirvana or enlightenment. Each has a goal in mind and is based on what worked in the past; each resorts to concepts to explain itself; each prescribes action, or doing something a certain way. Yet Kingsley dismisses the idea of doing anything at all. Equating the Alexander Technique with "nothing," he tosses out the concepts Alexander spent decades refining, when Alexander's genius was precisely to conceive a useful, coherent way of doing things through patient observation of the phenomena he termed inhibition, direction, primary control, and the rest.
So, the technique may encompass all the acts of living, but it is still a technique. Alexander often used the term "procedure" to describe it, and I think procedure is as apt a word as any to describe the application of his technique to the acts of living. He constantly stressed the technique's sequential, stepwise nature and recorded countless practical examples of it in action, both in hypotheticals and accounts of lessons. The technique is not a metaphysics or a philosophy like non-duality; it is a practical procedure with a clear purpose: restoring
advantageous, natural relativity of the head, neck and back.
Conclusion
The technique is blindingly simple but surprisingly subtle and difficult to master; and, as far as I am aware, it is unique. Unfortunately, Kingsley is not alone in overlooking the uniqueness and subtleties of the technique in favor of spiritual truisms and platitudes. I suspect there are two main reasons for this.
The first is the tendency of serious pupils of the technique to become more open to "spirituality," both philosophically (e.g. non-duality) and in terms of sadhana (e.g. meditation, yoga, self-inquiry). Many are enthusiastic about the similarities between the Alexander Technique and, for example, mindfulness practice. It is certainly true that the technique requires the pupil to have some degree of "mindfulness," or the ability to realize when the mind has wandered; and it is also true that a few people who devote themselves to the technique come upon some of the same insights one might find in spiritual practice. Yet spiritual insight is not the purpose of the technique. In my opinion, the Alexander Technique is a relative of energy practices such as Hatha yoga, qigong, and TRE (trauma release exercises). Such techniques are often used in tandem with spiritual practices meant for the cultivation of insight, but their purpose has traditionally been preparatory and salutary, not "spiritual." One need not stray too esoteric to encounter the idea that the real goal of spirituality has nothing to do with "ways of doing." On the other hand, Qigong explicitly aims to regulate qi in the body; kundalini yoga is concerned with the flow of prana; the Alexander Technique seeks to restore the good use of the primary control. More practically, the technique teaches mental discipline, and ultimately the ability of the nervous system to regulate itself. Such a practice may lay the groundwork for spiritual realization, but it is by no means indistinguishable from it.
While there is no point speculating about Alexander's private insights, one thing can be certain: he left us a definite procedure with a practical, concrete purpose—not a transcendental one. Yet Kingsley's introduction continually implies the Alexander Technique is an essentially spiritual practice with heavenly fruit. Disparaging the core concepts that constitute the Alexander Technique, he invites us instead to simply "surrender," "let go in faith," and blindly trust that its real essence—nothing less than Wu Wei—will be transmitted through the "rare, "unconditional" touch of the teacher.
The second, more obvious reason Alexander has been so misunderstood is that he rarely wrote concisely, and in any case, recognition and conception of the primary control can never be refined through words, but only through unfamiliar sensory experiences—either reasoned out, as Alexander did, or in the hands of a good teacher. Hence there is more than a kernel of truth to Kingsley's view of the "supreme value of guidance with the hands;" yet I differ from him in that I insist the Alexander Technique cannot be divorced from intellectual understanding and, indeed, conception.
The Use of the Self and Alexander's other works certainly were not without their flaws, but at their best they illuminate concepts which are nuanced, rich, and useful when applied. Primary control, direction and inhibition are three such concepts. Whatever their flaws, Alexander's books point the way to a wonderful technique, and they deserve thoughtful, probing introductions like Dewey's—not dismissals.
1 Like many other Alexandrian terms, the concrete meaning of "forward and up" seems incredibly controversial among Alexander Technique teachers. While I conceive it roughly as freedom of the atlanto-occipital joint, the term cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of the parts—namely, from one's conception of the primary control. It seems to experience it, one must discover it, as Alexander did, or be shown it by a teacher.
2 This is not to say there are not phenomena only some people perceive.
3An overemphasis on "letting go" and the like obscures the fact that Alexander always described the technique as consisting of stages or sequential steps, which in my opinion constitute the "means whereby" he wrote of.
4 "Use of the self" is another problematic term. Related to the concept of "good form" and "good technique" among athletes and musicians, it refers essentially to coordination of the musculature along reasoned lines, which is not separate from conception of the primary control. Equal and opposite is the term "misuse," since one's idea of misuse depends on one's idea of good use. Different teachers understand the term differently. Kingsley states that "bodily tensions and distortions become fixed and reinforced as we react to the general stimuli of living." True enough. Yet he goes on to imply it is associated only with fear, anxiety and distress. Again he couples this concept to the language of contemporary spirituality, trumpeting that it "alienates us from our own true nature." This is to completely ignore the point Alexander returned to again and again in his own writing: that the use of the self is inextricably linked with conception. No doubt, tension and imbalance are very often inextricable from fear. But there may be another class of misuse: one based on misconceptions about the body, unexamined movement patterns from childhood which have little or nothing to do with manifestations of stress or emotions in the body. I suspect one may experience profound psychophysical quietude yet still tend to throw their head back and down in relation to their neck and back, especially in movement.
5Kingsley writes that the teacher's touch indicates the "negation of trying and doing within the pupil." Even a token mention of guidance viz. the relativity of the body parts is nowhere to be found. Yet in my opinion this discussion of touch is misleading, since nothing like it can be found at all in Alexander's writings. On the contrary, Alexander stressed that the teacher's role was to demonstrate manually the proper relativity of the pupil's parts, with the means whereby of the technique; not to transmit "a way of being," nor indeed enlightenment or gnosis.
6 Neuroscientific findings relating to will and volition have proliferated in recent years. They may raise fundamental questions about the nature of self and will, but in my opinion they have little to do with the Alexander Technique, no more than they do with dancing or playing an instrument. If there are really recognizable activities Alexander termed "inhibition" and "direction," then his writings are timeless, since they speak from direct observation and experiment, not philosophy about "free will" and the like.
7 In spiritual literature one encounters, almost universally, the idea that there is no "doer" of action, or no "doer" but God. Hence Kingsley is implying that Alexandrian inhibition is somehow related to this concept, which Buddha famously summarized: "Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no doer thereof." In my opinion, the Alexander Technique has nothing more to do with this than does reading, writing, or playing a game. There may be "procedures followed, but no follower thereof."
submitted by MountainSuch9747 to Alexandertechnique [link] [comments]
I wanted to share with you my response to the introduction found in the only edition of Use of the Self currently in print. I believe it's a rather misleading intro to FM Alexander's work, so I'm sharing this in the hope that I can help clear up misconceptions people may have about the Alexander Technique, not derived only from Anthony Kingsley, but many bland blog posts one tends to encounter when researching the Alexander Technique. That said, this is not intended to be an introduction of its own, but rather something experienced students, teachers, and anyone enthusiastically learning the Technique may find useful. In the tradition of Alexander himself, I've included extensive footnotes, some painfully long. I'm happy to answer any questions or otherwise discuss what I've written. Understand these are my own interpretations and opinions about what some call "the work," so take them as you will. I've taken lessons for a number of years and currently am training as a teacher, so my view of the Technique is based on these experiences, as well as my interpretations of Alexander's writings. Some of these interpretations you may object to, but I hope you find my arguments reasonable.
Response to Anthony Kingsley's Introduction to The Use of the Self
The Use of the Self may be FM Alexander's most important work, since it contains his own account of how he developed what is now called the Alexander Technique. While Alexander's other volumes are available from Mouritz, the only edition of The Use of the Self currently in print is published by Orion Spring. This edition replaces the philosopher John Dewey's introduction—which praises the technique's "genuinely scientific character"—with one by the contemporary teacher Anthony Kingsley, who is heralded on the book's front cover as a "leading Alexander Technique teacher." Therefore it is probable that many readers' first impressions of the Alexander Technique will be framed by Mr. Kingsley's opinions. I submit this is problematic, since his introduction is in my view contradictory to fundamental principles of the Alexander Technique. I write this response to address the introduction's two most dire faults: Kingsley's misrepresentation of the concepts inhibition and direction, and his dismissal of the concept of the primary control. I'll begin with the second, since it is a more straightforward error.
Primary Control
Kingsley opens his paragraphs on the primary control with the opinion that the concept should be "recast," then describes Alexander's definition of the primary control as a "particular relationship of his head, neck and back [that] acted as a master reflex that conditioned his whole organism." Then he discards this definition, claiming the head-neck-back relativity should instead be "regarded as an indicator[sic] of overall health rather than an area considered in isolation." He concedes the "region of the neck and back is a [...] barometer of our state of being," but concludes that "no single element is actually primary," since our eyes, breath, digestive system, and all other psychophysical elements are "simultaneous and interdependent" and also like barometers. Finally, he reveals his "recast" of the primary control, defining it as "the unknown and unseen self-righting and self-healing mechanism that can be restored and vitalized."
In sum, Mr. Kingsley has presented the primary control—which Alexander wrote extensively about and considered central to his technique—with an ill-defined mystical force which, accordingly, Alexander must have unwittingly stumbled upon and mistaken for a certain relativity of the head, neck and back.
Ironically, it is in The Use of the Self where Alexander wrote of discovering the necessity to first free his neck in seeking a better condition for his vocal apparatus, since that was the sine qua non of taking his head forward and up, of widening the back, and so forth, which are in turn the necessary conditions of freedom and stability in the limbs. This is the genesis of Alexander's use of the word "primary" in describing the head-neck-back relationship, and in my experience, as in Alexander's, it holds true: the sequence of directions given to oneself matters greatly, since tense feet, for example, can hardly flatten on the floor if the head is taken back and down, whereas the head can be taken "forward and up"1 to a fine degree even if there is tension in the lower extremities, particularly while sitting. Further, and maybe most significantly, the relativity of the head-neck-back rarely need change during any manner of activity, whereas the arms and legs are constantly bending, rising, stretching, and so on. Small wonder Alexander considered this relativity primary.
Of course, Kingsley is not wrong to point out the interdependence of all processes in the body. It is certainly true that undue tension in the feet creates a downward pull on the head, neck and back. Yet what is crucial to understand here is that in the context of learning and teaching the Alexander Technique, the primary control is an indispensable concept. It instructs the pupil to guide his or her attention through the body in the sequence most fit to facilitate proper relativity of all the parts, and it names succinctly that natural, visible, dynamic yet enduring relativity of the head, neck and back observable in little children and animals as well as many great musicians and athletes. Thus Kingsley discards a practical concept in favor of a truism about "interdependence;" and so we come to his second, graver error.
Direction
Here it begins to seem that what Kingsley writes of in his introduction is not the Alexander Technique at all, but in fact the Kingsley Technique, since he has redefined not only the primary control, but two other conceptual pillars of the technique: inhibition and direction.
First, he takes aim at direction, neglecting to elucidate Alexander's own definition of the concept before setting out the axiom that "aiming for postural improvements using postural directions leads to a bodymind[sic] attitude of effort and trying, which simply reinforces the problem." Dismissing as superfluous all "ideas and images about heads, necks and backs," he declares that "the trying[sic] self is the obstacle, and the shift towards a non-trying[sic] self is the solution." Finally, he offers his own definition of the directions as "the natural flow of energy and vibrancy that exists within the organism," directions which are interfered with "when we are in a condition of stress and reactivity."
Here, again, Kingsley takes a practical concept which Alexander developed based on careful observation of his own muscular action, and replaces it with a kind of mystical or spiritual phenomenon which, implicitly, only the initiated can perceive.2 Thus the famous directions are not, as Alexander described repeatedly, a series of mental orders or intentions projected to oneself before and during muscular activity along lines one has reasoned out in advance, but a "natural flow of energy and vibrancy"—just as the primary control is not, as Alexander saw it, a concrete, observable relativity of the head, neck and back, but an "unknown and unseen self-righting and self-healing mechanism." These pseudo-spiritual definitions do a massive disservice to neophyte readers, and reveal Kingsley's muddled seeing in relation to the central problem addressed by the Alexander Technique: how to shed habit and coordinate the bodymind through reasoned conception and conscious awareness.
But for a moment let us leave aside direction, since a subtler and more misleading error still lurks in Kingsley's presentation: his dismissal of conception itself. He explicitly warns that "ideas, concepts and cognitive efforts reinforce the very mental instrument that is the problem in the first place," he advises us to simply trust that "the prevention or inhibition[sic] of reaction, maintains or liberates this stream of energy [or direction] in the body."
To understand Kingsley's error, we must return to Alexander. In Man's Supreme Inheritance, Alexander sets out four stages to the "performance of any muscular action by conscious guidance and control:"
- The conception of the movement required;
- The inhibition of erroneous preconceived ideas which subconsciously suggest the manner in which the movement or series of movements should be performed;
- The new and conscious mental orders which will set in motion the muscular mechanism essential to the correct performance of the action;
- The movements (contractions and expansions) of the muscles which carry out the mental orders.
Yet Kingsley belittles conception, instead leaning on concepts like "ease," "letting go" "acceptance," and the like. He is not alone in this among teachers, but in my opinion, they overlook the influence of what Alexander termed "erroneous beliefs," a concept closely related to that of "unreliable sensory appreciation." Both could be read in the spiritual lexicon alongside "letting go," etc.; but that would place their referent outside the realm of what words and concepts can describe. On the contrary, Alexander was pointing to something concrete and empirically observable: to errors of spatio-motor perception able to be observed phenomenologically and in other people's behavior; not to transcendent truths about observation itself. Thus the classic example of an Alexandrian "erroneous belief" is a person who raises their arm and believes their shoulder has remained still when it has not. The key for the pupil in this instance is to gain an accurate conception5 of their own muscular action, in reference to bodily sensations; not to simply "let go" or "do nothing."3 And this conception must come about through active tutelage—e.g. Alexander Technique lessons—or, dare I say, the way Alexander himself did it: by reasoned experimentation, conceiving hypotheses based on careful register and analysis of his own sensations, and also by watching the behavior of others. John Dewey called the technique scientific for a reason.
All of this is not to understate the importance of concepts like "release" and "effortlessness," including in the context of the Alexander Technique. Seeing more or less what is meant by them is doubtless the key to mastery of all activities, all practices, all techniques. Yet those spiritual concepts should not blot out the very concrete technique Alexander developed for improving what he called "the use of the self:" that coordination of the muscular system, achieved through conscious reason, which influences for better or worse the functioning of the whole organism.4
Inhibition
So much for direction. What about inhibition? Under the heading "Inhibition and Non-Doing," Kingsley describes Alexander's understanding of inhibition as "an artificial pause between stimulus and reaction," after which he could "give directions to himself." Then he lays down the gauntlet, stating that in the "real world […] life does not offer us the choice to inhibit:" since according to neuroscience research, "neural reactions take milliseconds and are faster than conscious thought processes." In other words, "we either react to the stimulus, or not." So, with inhibition proven impossible, Kingsley is left with no choice but to "reformulate" another of Alexander's concepts, offering us a supposedly scientifically enlightened6 view that inhibition is really "a quality of non-doing[sic] that needs to be already available in the organism before the receipt of a stimulus." This is "a way of being[sic] rather than a way of doing[sic]."
This Kingsleyan inhibition turns out to be the essence of the technique, since it is this very "condition of non-doing[sic]" the teacher is supposed to transmit, through a touch Kingsley describes as "a dance of poetry and a symphony of silence." With it, the teacher imparts a "deep sense of acceptance" by which "change emerges in the pupil."7 He goes on to compare the Alexander Technique to "Zen Buddhism, mindfulness and the philosophy of non-duality," identifying the uniqueness of the Alexander Technique in "the transmission of immediate experience." In fact, there is no Alexander Technique as such, but only inhibition:
The Chinese Tao has a concept of Wu Wei[sic], which translates as surrendering to the effortless flow of life[sic], or non-doing[sic] action. Ultimately, the Alexander Technique needs to reinvent itself and relinquish the Technique. The Alexander Teacher really teaches nothing[sic!]. But this nothing or emptiness is in fact the deepest essence of being and the fullness of life. Like grace, it drops onto us and into us when the conditions are ripe.
The problem is that Alexander's own writings indicate that inhibition is not a "quality," a "condition," or a "surrendering to the effortless flow of life." On the contrary, according to Universal Constant in Living, it is "the act of refusing to respond to the primary desire to gain an end, [which] becomes the act of responding (volitionary act) to the conscious reasoned desire to employ the means whereby that end may be gained." As clear as day: inhibition is an action in response to the stimulus of conscious desire: a conscious, continuing refusal to do a thing the way one normally does it. Alexander saw that this inhibitory act had to precede in every instance any attempt to change his habits. Everyone is well familiar with the inhibitory act. The act of not indulging an immediate desire, however small, is it. So, inhibition is not an "artificial pause," but a phenomenologically observable process within the organism, a process that can be made habitual through practice. It is no more abstract and transcendent than blinking or moving one's finger.7
Here Kingsley again takes something ordinary and concrete and makes it mystical, going so far as to "relinquish the Technique." The trouble is that there is a good reason the Alexander Technique came to be known as such. A technique is a skillful way of doing something; a mental tool; a procedure. Ways of doing can be found everywhere: techniques for dance, for romance, for healing, even for attaining nirvana or enlightenment. Each has a goal in mind and is based on what worked in the past; each resorts to concepts to explain itself; each prescribes action, or doing something a certain way. Yet Kingsley dismisses the idea of doing anything at all. Equating the Alexander Technique with "nothing," he tosses out the concepts Alexander spent decades refining, when Alexander's genius was precisely to conceive a useful, coherent way of doing things through patient observation of the phenomena he termed inhibition, direction, primary control, and the rest.
So, the technique may encompass all the acts of living, but it is still a technique. Alexander often used the term "procedure" to describe it, and I think procedure is as apt a word as any to describe the application of his technique to the acts of living. He constantly stressed the technique's sequential, stepwise nature and recorded countless practical examples of it in action, both in hypotheticals and accounts of lessons. The technique is not a metaphysics or a philosophy like non-duality; it is a practical procedure with a clear purpose: restoring
advantageous, natural relativity of the head, neck and back.
Conclusion
The technique is blindingly simple but surprisingly subtle and difficult to master; and, as far as I am aware, it is unique. Unfortunately, Kingsley is not alone in overlooking the uniqueness and subtleties of the technique in favor of spiritual truisms and platitudes. I suspect there are two main reasons for this.
The first is the tendency of serious pupils of the technique to become more open to "spirituality," both philosophically (e.g. non-duality) and in terms of sadhana (e.g. meditation, yoga, self-inquiry). Many are enthusiastic about the similarities between the Alexander Technique and, for example, mindfulness practice. It is certainly true that the technique requires the pupil to have some degree of "mindfulness," or the ability to realize when the mind has wandered; and it is also true that a few people who devote themselves to the technique come upon some of the same insights one might find in spiritual practice. Yet spiritual insight is not the purpose of the technique. In my opinion, the Alexander Technique is a relative of energy practices such as Hatha yoga, qigong, and TRE (trauma release exercises). Such techniques are often used in tandem with spiritual practices meant for the cultivation of insight, but their purpose has traditionally been preparatory and salutary, not "spiritual." One need not stray too esoteric to encounter the idea that the real goal of spirituality has nothing to do with "ways of doing." On the other hand, Qigong explicitly aims to regulate qi in the body; kundalini yoga is concerned with the flow of prana; the Alexander Technique seeks to restore the good use of the primary control. More practically, the technique teaches mental discipline, and ultimately the ability of the nervous system to regulate itself. Such a practice may lay the groundwork for spiritual realization, but it is by no means indistinguishable from it.
While there is no point speculating about Alexander's private insights, one thing can be certain: he left us a definite procedure with a practical, concrete purpose—not a transcendental one. Yet Kingsley's introduction continually implies the Alexander Technique is an essentially spiritual practice with heavenly fruit. Disparaging the core concepts that constitute the Alexander Technique, he invites us instead to simply "surrender," "let go in faith," and blindly trust that its real essence—nothing less than Wu Wei—will be transmitted through the "rare, "unconditional" touch of the teacher.
The second, more obvious reason Alexander has been so misunderstood is that he rarely wrote concisely, and in any case, recognition and conception of the primary control can never be refined through words, but only through unfamiliar sensory experiences—either reasoned out, as Alexander did, or in the hands of a good teacher. Hence there is more than a kernel of truth to Kingsley's view of the "supreme value of guidance with the hands;" yet I differ from him in that I insist the Alexander Technique cannot be divorced from intellectual understanding and, indeed, conception.
The Use of the Self and Alexander's other works certainly were not without their flaws, but at their best they illuminate concepts which are nuanced, rich, and useful when applied. Primary control, direction and inhibition are three such concepts. Whatever their flaws, Alexander's books point the way to a wonderful technique, and they deserve thoughtful, probing introductions like Dewey's—not dismissals.
1 Like many other Alexandrian terms, the concrete meaning of "forward and up" seems incredibly controversial among Alexander Technique teachers. While I conceive it roughly as freedom of the atlanto-occipital joint, the term cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of the parts—namely, from one's conception of the primary control. It seems to experience it, one must discover it, as Alexander did, or be shown it by a teacher.
2 This is not to say there are not phenomena only some people perceive.
3An overemphasis on "letting go" and the like obscures the fact that Alexander always described the technique as consisting of stages or sequential steps, which in my opinion constitute the "means whereby" he wrote of.
4 "Use of the self" is another problematic term. Related to the concept of "good form" and "good technique" among athletes and musicians, it refers essentially to coordination of the musculature along reasoned lines, which is not separate from conception of the primary control. Equal and opposite is the term "misuse," since one's idea of misuse depends on one's idea of good use. Different teachers understand the term differently. Kingsley states that "bodily tensions and distortions become fixed and reinforced as we react to the general stimuli of living." True enough. Yet he goes on to imply it is associated only with fear, anxiety and distress. Again he couples this concept to the language of contemporary spirituality, trumpeting that it "alienates us from our own true nature." This is to completely ignore the point Alexander returned to again and again in his own writing: that the use of the self is inextricably linked with conception. No doubt, tension and imbalance are very often inextricable from fear. But there may be another class of misuse: one based on misconceptions about the body, unexamined movement patterns from childhood which have little or nothing to do with manifestations of stress or emotions in the body. I suspect one may experience profound psychophysical quietude yet still tend to throw their head back and down in relation to their neck and back, especially in movement.
5Kingsley writes that the teacher's touch indicates the "negation of trying and doing within the pupil." Even a token mention of guidance viz. the relativity of the body parts is nowhere to be found. Yet in my opinion this discussion of touch is misleading, since nothing like it can be found at all in Alexander's writings. On the contrary, Alexander stressed that the teacher's role was to demonstrate manually the proper relativity of the pupil's parts, with the means whereby of the technique; not to transmit "a way of being," nor indeed enlightenment or gnosis.
6 Neuroscientific findings relating to will and volition have proliferated in recent years. They may raise fundamental questions about the nature of self and will, but in my opinion they have little to do with the Alexander Technique, no more than they do with dancing or playing an instrument. If there are really recognizable activities Alexander termed "inhibition" and "direction," then his writings are timeless, since they speak from direct observation and experiment, not philosophy about "free will" and the like.
7 In spiritual literature one encounters, almost universally, the idea that there is no "doer" of action, or no "doer" but God. Hence Kingsley is implying that Alexandrian inhibition is somehow related to this concept, which Buddha famously summarized: "Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no doer thereof." In my opinion, the Alexander Technique has nothing more to do with this than does reading, writing, or playing a game. There may be "procedures followed, but no follower thereof."
2024.05.19 01:34 Initial-Hurry8026 Thoughts on what an extraordinary achievement Helldivers 2 is, from a veteran live service game developer
Hail, fellow Helldivers!
I’m a game dev with over 20 years experience, half of that on live service games or MMOs, all of it on core combat for action games, on game teams ranging from 10 people to over 600.
I play a ton of hard co-op action games, and I was a huge fan of Helldivers 1. I’m honestly in awe of how good Helldivers 2 is, even after the hundreds of hours I’ve put into it, and how they’ve sustained the pace of updates for so long after launch.
Yes, this is a throwaway Reddit account, I wanted to share some of my thoughts without inviting death threats.
Development
This game must have been in development since shortly after Arrowhead’s last released game, Helldivers 1 (plus whatever DLC and maintenance), so, 8 years give or take (I sent Pilestedt a congratulatory email, but presumably he’s drowning in them, haha).
I ran into the devs at GDC 2019, shared a few drinks and we talked shop about our similar games. They were super cagey but very excited about what they were working on, even moreso when they found out I was a huge fan of HD1. They were clearly already deep in development of HD2 at that point.
This has been discussed elsewhere, but it adds to how impressive this game is: this is the same engine (Autodesk Stingray) as Helldivers 1, a top-down game with 2D gameplay and much lower visual fidelity. Stingray is no longer supported by Autodesk as of sometime after 2018, so most of the features HD2 required would have been built in-house by Arrowhead. To my knowledge there’s only one other studio actively using the engine, and that’s Fat Shark, the developers of (most recently) Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.
The AH team has grown massively in size over the past 8 years. I don’t have the exact numbers, but it’s a 5x to 10x increase in size. Scaling up that fast and not ruining your company culture is super hard, and you can see plenty of other studios that have tried to grow so they can build bigger games and have fallen apart doing it.
Helldivers 2 easily has a AAA level of polish. I’ve gone back to HD1 recently, which at the time looked and played super well, and the improvements are night and day. HD2’s production values compare favorably to any random AAA game released in the last few years
Weapons
Building first or third person weapons to this level of quality is extremely expensive. A unique gun for a AAA first person shooter might take 4-6 weeks of artist time and the same (or more) of designer time to set up and tune the gameplay. For any completely new type of weapon, factor in around 6 months of animator time, and a few weeks for a variant that has a different reload animation or similar. E.g. all rifle-sized shotguns might use the same base shotgun animation set, but the continuous reload shotguns would have a different reload animation than the Breaker family. Then you need VFX and audio too.
Vehicles are even moreso, taking months for each, more if they can seat multiple players or have points that contact the ground (e.g. wheels).
Environments
Building environments that look this good is expensive even if you know what you want, having built a prototype version, you then have to iterate on it while you refine the gameplay and then build the final art. Building environments that look this good and are procedurally generated in as freeform a way as in HD2 is mind-boggling. Let alone doing that in a way that runs fast enough. Sure once it’s all up and running you have a ton of variety for relatively cheap, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the proc gen create a serious gameplay problem, and that indicates very clever design and thorough testing.
AI
AI that works as well as this is expensive to build, and typically computationally expensive at runtime too. In games like Call of Duty or whatever, you have a static environment, with maybe 10-20 active AI at a time, prebuilt navmesh (which is a hand-drawn or generated map that allows AI to move around the environment without having to calculate valid geometry constantly at runtime), and level or encounter designers have hand scripted a lot of what looks like emergent AI behavior. HD2 can’t do any of that; there can be hundreds of enemies active at once, the environments are procedurally generated, AND terrain can be deformed, buildings can be destroyed etc. The AI can’t be scripted to the same degree as on a static map, probably the devs have hints that are procedurally added to the world and not much more. It helps that all of the enemies we’ve seen so far are the “implacably advancing” kind, typically they don’t have any complex behaviors, and instead the design of the character themselves and their attacks carries the gameplay. Smart design. The Illuminate in HD1 were much sneakier, it’ll be interesting to see how that faction translates to a full 3D game with a lot more enemies active at once.
UI
This game has a lot of quality of life features that it’s easy to take for granted, but are hard to build, and hard to retrofit to an existing game, for example:
· A zoomable, pingable minimap (IMO this is a best-in-class minimap implementation)
· A ping system
· Battlepass implementation allowing for not expiring old battle passes.
And all of this is UI-heavy, where UI is one of the most expensive things to make in AAA games. Every project I’ve shipped, UI has been a bottleneck. It doesn’t help that every company basically builds a UI system from scratch, since engines rarely have something shippable built in, and Scaleform (the most prominent UI middleware) went away. And then it takes a ton of iteration to get to a point where a feature is powerful and intuitive to players.
Gamefeel
If you play much of the most highly-regarded AAA shooters, you might not like the feel of some of the weapons in Helldivers 2 by comparison. They often feel slow to use, hard to aim, and punishing of misses, bad timing or bad positioning. Some of this is a polish thing and probably isn’t intended, e.g. scopes that look janky in first person, misaligned reticles and similar stuff. Most of it though looks deliberate, and supports the gameplay they’re laser-focused on building. The weapons are largely useful in very specific situations, and are not power fantasy moments for the player. There are serious tradeoffs, including “if I’m caught by a melee enemy with a Recoilless Rifle out, I’m in trouble”, the most powerful support weapons preventing you from bringing a shield, the snappiest weapons typically only being useful against weak enemies, etc. Most mass-market shooters sacrifice this extreme level of tradeoff in service of making the game feel better to play, and can lack gameplay variety as a result.
Given all of the above, most of the content that Arrowhead has released post ship must have been built alongside the rest of the game. It’s unlikely that they’re able to turn around 3 new weapons, new giant enemies, new mission types etc every month for several months in a row building them from scratch since ship. And yet, the game at launch still felt complete. This is a hard balance to strike. I wonder how much near-shippable content they have in their war-chest, and whether they’ll be able to generate more quickly enough to satisfy the appetite of the community on an ongoing basis.
Balance
Typically on a live game, the same designers build gameplay, ship it, and then balance it in patches post-ship. Sometimes a studio will have a separate “live team”, either dedicated, or rotating members of the dev team through it, but this isn’t common and it doesn’t look like Arrowhead splits the team up like this.
In any case, players always ask why developers ever nerf anything, and it’s for three reasons:
· Typically only a small number of things (weapons, abilities, heroes) are dominant, and a very large number are OK or weak in the current meta – buffing everything else would be extremely expensive, and since it’s the same people doing this work and building new content, it’d reduce the amount of new content the team could make. So it’s much more efficient to tamp down the overpowered things as a priority, and buff some other options at the same time.
· “No nerf, only buff” results in player power creep over time, which makes the game easier, and eventually will require a correction either in the form of a large scale nerf pass or buffs to enemies – both of these are bad: players hate widespread nerfs, and buffing enemies can put the game in a degenerate state where lethality is skewed, or only the best players can compete because they have all the best gear, or you end up in an arms race between player design and enemy design as both teams try to react to player feedback or overall game difficulty.
· Having a small number of overpowered things is much more destructive to a varied meta than a small number of weak things. Say you have 100 abilities and 3 of them are overpowered. Well, now everyone’s only using 3% of the possible content. Say you have 100 abilities and 3 of them are too weak.The other 97% is viable. Overly simplistic, clearly there’s a gradient, but you get the idea.
BTW the pace at which Arrowhead has updated balance is extremely fast for a large PvE game. Some small PvP-only games can react this quickly to a developing meta, but on large-scale games it takes weeks or months of testing and platform certification to ship balance updates on consoles. And “hotfixes”, i.e. very quick responses to critical issues, have a high level of scrutiny on them, i.e. lots of justifiable red tape, and often require crunch.
Community Interaction
It’s extremely rare for developers from large studios at any level to talk directly to the community, mostly because the gaming community burned those bridges long ago, by doxing devs they don’t agree with, sending them death threats, or just generally abusing them publicly and anonymously. No way in hell would I be public facing, and no one at any studio should be required to unless it’s explicitly part of their job. And even then, I feel for community managers. Direct communication from devs is a precious thing, and not one that should be taken for granted or used as an avenue for abuse.
*Salutes* to Arrowhead
Huge, huge kudos to Arrowhead. This game is an absolute triumph. To go from a small team making top-down games, to a medium-sized AAA team that shipped a game that catapulted right to the top of the most-played charts and game of the year lists and has stayed there is a massive accomplishment. I hope you’re all seeing a big payday from this success!
submitted by Initial-Hurry8026 to Helldivers [link] [comments]
I’m a game dev with over 20 years experience, half of that on live service games or MMOs, all of it on core combat for action games, on game teams ranging from 10 people to over 600.
I play a ton of hard co-op action games, and I was a huge fan of Helldivers 1. I’m honestly in awe of how good Helldivers 2 is, even after the hundreds of hours I’ve put into it, and how they’ve sustained the pace of updates for so long after launch.
Yes, this is a throwaway Reddit account, I wanted to share some of my thoughts without inviting death threats.
Development
This game must have been in development since shortly after Arrowhead’s last released game, Helldivers 1 (plus whatever DLC and maintenance), so, 8 years give or take (I sent Pilestedt a congratulatory email, but presumably he’s drowning in them, haha).
I ran into the devs at GDC 2019, shared a few drinks and we talked shop about our similar games. They were super cagey but very excited about what they were working on, even moreso when they found out I was a huge fan of HD1. They were clearly already deep in development of HD2 at that point.
This has been discussed elsewhere, but it adds to how impressive this game is: this is the same engine (Autodesk Stingray) as Helldivers 1, a top-down game with 2D gameplay and much lower visual fidelity. Stingray is no longer supported by Autodesk as of sometime after 2018, so most of the features HD2 required would have been built in-house by Arrowhead. To my knowledge there’s only one other studio actively using the engine, and that’s Fat Shark, the developers of (most recently) Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.
The AH team has grown massively in size over the past 8 years. I don’t have the exact numbers, but it’s a 5x to 10x increase in size. Scaling up that fast and not ruining your company culture is super hard, and you can see plenty of other studios that have tried to grow so they can build bigger games and have fallen apart doing it.
Helldivers 2 easily has a AAA level of polish. I’ve gone back to HD1 recently, which at the time looked and played super well, and the improvements are night and day. HD2’s production values compare favorably to any random AAA game released in the last few years
Weapons
Building first or third person weapons to this level of quality is extremely expensive. A unique gun for a AAA first person shooter might take 4-6 weeks of artist time and the same (or more) of designer time to set up and tune the gameplay. For any completely new type of weapon, factor in around 6 months of animator time, and a few weeks for a variant that has a different reload animation or similar. E.g. all rifle-sized shotguns might use the same base shotgun animation set, but the continuous reload shotguns would have a different reload animation than the Breaker family. Then you need VFX and audio too.
Vehicles are even moreso, taking months for each, more if they can seat multiple players or have points that contact the ground (e.g. wheels).
Environments
Building environments that look this good is expensive even if you know what you want, having built a prototype version, you then have to iterate on it while you refine the gameplay and then build the final art. Building environments that look this good and are procedurally generated in as freeform a way as in HD2 is mind-boggling. Let alone doing that in a way that runs fast enough. Sure once it’s all up and running you have a ton of variety for relatively cheap, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the proc gen create a serious gameplay problem, and that indicates very clever design and thorough testing.
AI
AI that works as well as this is expensive to build, and typically computationally expensive at runtime too. In games like Call of Duty or whatever, you have a static environment, with maybe 10-20 active AI at a time, prebuilt navmesh (which is a hand-drawn or generated map that allows AI to move around the environment without having to calculate valid geometry constantly at runtime), and level or encounter designers have hand scripted a lot of what looks like emergent AI behavior. HD2 can’t do any of that; there can be hundreds of enemies active at once, the environments are procedurally generated, AND terrain can be deformed, buildings can be destroyed etc. The AI can’t be scripted to the same degree as on a static map, probably the devs have hints that are procedurally added to the world and not much more. It helps that all of the enemies we’ve seen so far are the “implacably advancing” kind, typically they don’t have any complex behaviors, and instead the design of the character themselves and their attacks carries the gameplay. Smart design. The Illuminate in HD1 were much sneakier, it’ll be interesting to see how that faction translates to a full 3D game with a lot more enemies active at once.
UI
This game has a lot of quality of life features that it’s easy to take for granted, but are hard to build, and hard to retrofit to an existing game, for example:
· A zoomable, pingable minimap (IMO this is a best-in-class minimap implementation)
· A ping system
· Battlepass implementation allowing for not expiring old battle passes.
And all of this is UI-heavy, where UI is one of the most expensive things to make in AAA games. Every project I’ve shipped, UI has been a bottleneck. It doesn’t help that every company basically builds a UI system from scratch, since engines rarely have something shippable built in, and Scaleform (the most prominent UI middleware) went away. And then it takes a ton of iteration to get to a point where a feature is powerful and intuitive to players.
Gamefeel
If you play much of the most highly-regarded AAA shooters, you might not like the feel of some of the weapons in Helldivers 2 by comparison. They often feel slow to use, hard to aim, and punishing of misses, bad timing or bad positioning. Some of this is a polish thing and probably isn’t intended, e.g. scopes that look janky in first person, misaligned reticles and similar stuff. Most of it though looks deliberate, and supports the gameplay they’re laser-focused on building. The weapons are largely useful in very specific situations, and are not power fantasy moments for the player. There are serious tradeoffs, including “if I’m caught by a melee enemy with a Recoilless Rifle out, I’m in trouble”, the most powerful support weapons preventing you from bringing a shield, the snappiest weapons typically only being useful against weak enemies, etc. Most mass-market shooters sacrifice this extreme level of tradeoff in service of making the game feel better to play, and can lack gameplay variety as a result.
Given all of the above, most of the content that Arrowhead has released post ship must have been built alongside the rest of the game. It’s unlikely that they’re able to turn around 3 new weapons, new giant enemies, new mission types etc every month for several months in a row building them from scratch since ship. And yet, the game at launch still felt complete. This is a hard balance to strike. I wonder how much near-shippable content they have in their war-chest, and whether they’ll be able to generate more quickly enough to satisfy the appetite of the community on an ongoing basis.
Balance
Typically on a live game, the same designers build gameplay, ship it, and then balance it in patches post-ship. Sometimes a studio will have a separate “live team”, either dedicated, or rotating members of the dev team through it, but this isn’t common and it doesn’t look like Arrowhead splits the team up like this.
In any case, players always ask why developers ever nerf anything, and it’s for three reasons:
· Typically only a small number of things (weapons, abilities, heroes) are dominant, and a very large number are OK or weak in the current meta – buffing everything else would be extremely expensive, and since it’s the same people doing this work and building new content, it’d reduce the amount of new content the team could make. So it’s much more efficient to tamp down the overpowered things as a priority, and buff some other options at the same time.
· “No nerf, only buff” results in player power creep over time, which makes the game easier, and eventually will require a correction either in the form of a large scale nerf pass or buffs to enemies – both of these are bad: players hate widespread nerfs, and buffing enemies can put the game in a degenerate state where lethality is skewed, or only the best players can compete because they have all the best gear, or you end up in an arms race between player design and enemy design as both teams try to react to player feedback or overall game difficulty.
· Having a small number of overpowered things is much more destructive to a varied meta than a small number of weak things. Say you have 100 abilities and 3 of them are overpowered. Well, now everyone’s only using 3% of the possible content. Say you have 100 abilities and 3 of them are too weak.The other 97% is viable. Overly simplistic, clearly there’s a gradient, but you get the idea.
BTW the pace at which Arrowhead has updated balance is extremely fast for a large PvE game. Some small PvP-only games can react this quickly to a developing meta, but on large-scale games it takes weeks or months of testing and platform certification to ship balance updates on consoles. And “hotfixes”, i.e. very quick responses to critical issues, have a high level of scrutiny on them, i.e. lots of justifiable red tape, and often require crunch.
Community Interaction
It’s extremely rare for developers from large studios at any level to talk directly to the community, mostly because the gaming community burned those bridges long ago, by doxing devs they don’t agree with, sending them death threats, or just generally abusing them publicly and anonymously. No way in hell would I be public facing, and no one at any studio should be required to unless it’s explicitly part of their job. And even then, I feel for community managers. Direct communication from devs is a precious thing, and not one that should be taken for granted or used as an avenue for abuse.
*Salutes* to Arrowhead
Huge, huge kudos to Arrowhead. This game is an absolute triumph. To go from a small team making top-down games, to a medium-sized AAA team that shipped a game that catapulted right to the top of the most-played charts and game of the year lists and has stayed there is a massive accomplishment. I hope you’re all seeing a big payday from this success!
2024.05.19 01:30 MisoVicious Eight years ago, I got an email from Barbara. Here’s the story:
TL;DR at the bottom.
So, for those of whom don’t remember, there was a time where RT Sponsor dues were just $10 every six months. And when you’re thirteen years old, without a source of income aside from the very rare allowance your mom gives you, $10 is a lot of money. I was neck deep in my love of RT content, but I was dying to take it to the next level with Sponsor exclusive content. So, I bartered with my mom to cover the payments in exchange for chores. Hindsight, she probably got the better end of the deal, but I was over the moon. I got that star next to my name, and that was all that mattered.
Cut to a few years later, they’ve upped the cost from $10 every six months to $19.99 every six months. But, people like me who signed up prior to the price change were grandfathered in and were still paying the old price. However, Chelsea did state that if there was a lapse in payment, you’d lose your grandfather status. Easy enough, right?
If only it could’ve lasted forever. But my mom’s debit card expired, and as you could imagine, this lead to a lapse in payment. Obviously, I was distraught. I was a broke college student, my daily lunch was a bag of microwave popcorn and a can of Arizona Iced Tea. I emailed support and begged them for help, but they told me there was nothing they could do. I told my mom what had happened, and how sad I was, but she insisted I should call and ask to be transferred to whomever was in change. That there had to be someone who could change the price back. I called, got to the supervisor, and they told me the same thing: they couldn’t do anything to help me, and that they were sorry for my predicament. I blamed myself, and wallowed in my self-loathing for a few days.
Imagine my surprise when I’m having dinner with my parents, and I’m telling my dad this whole story, when my mom tells me she’s going to straighten it out. The exchange goes like this:
Mom: It’ll be okay, honey. I’m going to fix this. Me: Wait, what does that mean? Mom: Don’t worry about it. I’m taking care of it. Me: I’m very worried now. What are you talking about? What did you do? Mom: I just emailed support, told them I was your mother, and I wasn’t going to let them treat you like this. You’ve been a loyal customer and fan for too long, you deserve better treatment. Me: … Please tell me you’re joking. Mom: I just told them the truth. You’re a good kid. And you shouldn’t be punished for something that was an accident. Me: I’m not being punished, it’s just their policy. Punishment would be banning me from the site because my mother is harassing their support staff via email. Mom: Oh it’s not harassment. I was very polite, but I made it clear that I wasn’t going to let you go down without a fight. Me: Without a fight?! Mom! What did you say?
Here’s something you need to know about my mom: she’s never one to take something lying down. Especially when it comes to her kids. The admin in our schools knew her by name, and knew she wasn’t one to be trifled with. She was like an urban legend. Whenever she felt we weren’t being treated fairly or got in trouble for something that wasn’t our fault, it would only take one phone call before the school was apologizing to her for their “mistake” and hope she would forgive them. I’m pretty sure she was on some sort of call list that immediately routed her to the head of school. Crazy parents wish they could reach my mother’s level. She’s capable of destroying people like a hurricane destroys a city.
So, I knew what it meant when my mom said she was “taking care of it”. It meant she was going to put the fear of god into them. And if they wouldn’t relent, I think she would have got on the first plane to Austin and “taken care of it” in person, which is the nuclear option. Your only choice at that point would be to move out of her way or get rolled over. It’s a terrifying sight.
She showed me the email, and it was everything I feared. It mentioned like ten times that she was my mom, how sad I was, how I cried, how wrong they were, how she wasn’t going to let this happen, they were going to fix this, and how this wasn’t how you treated a child (I WAS IN COLLEGE). Needless to say, I was horribly embarrassed. I needed to leave the country, assume a new identity, get plastic surgery to change my face, then make a new account on the site. The best I could hope for was that her email would go into a junk folder for crazy moms and they would never read it.
I was not so lucky.
A few days later, my mom shows me how she got a response from someone who was at the top of the food chain.
God strike me down, for it was the people’s Queen herself.
Barbara Dunkleman.
Her response to my mother’s unhinged email was nothing short of polite. She apologized for what happened, explained that her team, while growing in size, was still quite small. So they weren’t able to give my case the care it deserved. But reiterated what we heard from four different people at customer service: there was nothing that could be done.
But, Barbara graciously offered a year of free membership to compensate for my “distress”.
I was mortified.
Twelve years I was the girl with the terrifying mom in school, now her terror has spread amongst the RoosterTeeth staff.
If I knew this was how it would end up, I would’ve suffered through the loss of my grandfathered Sponsorship in silence instead of sharing my feelings with my mom.
To be perfectly honest, I actually avoided meeting Barbara at RTX because I was afraid she would remember my name. Realistically, she probably wouldn’t have. She meets so many fans and dealt with so many users on a daily basis, I was probably just a distant memory to her. But I wasn’t willing to take that chance. Go to a signing, introduce myself, then Barbara starts slowly backing away in case my mom is in the area.
And I thought I would take this story to my grave. But with everything that’s happened, and everyone sharing their stories, I thought what the heck.
Barbara, if you’re reading this, please know that I am sorry for my mother. Wish I met you irl at RTX when I had the chance.
TL;DR: Lost my grandfathered sponsor rates due to an expired debit card. My mom decided to intervene when I gave up hope, and sent a SCATHING email to RT support. Barbara herself responded and was very nice and helpful. I’m still embarrassed about this.
submitted by MisoVicious to roosterteeth [link] [comments]
So, for those of whom don’t remember, there was a time where RT Sponsor dues were just $10 every six months. And when you’re thirteen years old, without a source of income aside from the very rare allowance your mom gives you, $10 is a lot of money. I was neck deep in my love of RT content, but I was dying to take it to the next level with Sponsor exclusive content. So, I bartered with my mom to cover the payments in exchange for chores. Hindsight, she probably got the better end of the deal, but I was over the moon. I got that star next to my name, and that was all that mattered.
Cut to a few years later, they’ve upped the cost from $10 every six months to $19.99 every six months. But, people like me who signed up prior to the price change were grandfathered in and were still paying the old price. However, Chelsea did state that if there was a lapse in payment, you’d lose your grandfather status. Easy enough, right?
If only it could’ve lasted forever. But my mom’s debit card expired, and as you could imagine, this lead to a lapse in payment. Obviously, I was distraught. I was a broke college student, my daily lunch was a bag of microwave popcorn and a can of Arizona Iced Tea. I emailed support and begged them for help, but they told me there was nothing they could do. I told my mom what had happened, and how sad I was, but she insisted I should call and ask to be transferred to whomever was in change. That there had to be someone who could change the price back. I called, got to the supervisor, and they told me the same thing: they couldn’t do anything to help me, and that they were sorry for my predicament. I blamed myself, and wallowed in my self-loathing for a few days.
Imagine my surprise when I’m having dinner with my parents, and I’m telling my dad this whole story, when my mom tells me she’s going to straighten it out. The exchange goes like this:
Mom: It’ll be okay, honey. I’m going to fix this. Me: Wait, what does that mean? Mom: Don’t worry about it. I’m taking care of it. Me: I’m very worried now. What are you talking about? What did you do? Mom: I just emailed support, told them I was your mother, and I wasn’t going to let them treat you like this. You’ve been a loyal customer and fan for too long, you deserve better treatment. Me: … Please tell me you’re joking. Mom: I just told them the truth. You’re a good kid. And you shouldn’t be punished for something that was an accident. Me: I’m not being punished, it’s just their policy. Punishment would be banning me from the site because my mother is harassing their support staff via email. Mom: Oh it’s not harassment. I was very polite, but I made it clear that I wasn’t going to let you go down without a fight. Me: Without a fight?! Mom! What did you say?
Here’s something you need to know about my mom: she’s never one to take something lying down. Especially when it comes to her kids. The admin in our schools knew her by name, and knew she wasn’t one to be trifled with. She was like an urban legend. Whenever she felt we weren’t being treated fairly or got in trouble for something that wasn’t our fault, it would only take one phone call before the school was apologizing to her for their “mistake” and hope she would forgive them. I’m pretty sure she was on some sort of call list that immediately routed her to the head of school. Crazy parents wish they could reach my mother’s level. She’s capable of destroying people like a hurricane destroys a city.
So, I knew what it meant when my mom said she was “taking care of it”. It meant she was going to put the fear of god into them. And if they wouldn’t relent, I think she would have got on the first plane to Austin and “taken care of it” in person, which is the nuclear option. Your only choice at that point would be to move out of her way or get rolled over. It’s a terrifying sight.
She showed me the email, and it was everything I feared. It mentioned like ten times that she was my mom, how sad I was, how I cried, how wrong they were, how she wasn’t going to let this happen, they were going to fix this, and how this wasn’t how you treated a child (I WAS IN COLLEGE). Needless to say, I was horribly embarrassed. I needed to leave the country, assume a new identity, get plastic surgery to change my face, then make a new account on the site. The best I could hope for was that her email would go into a junk folder for crazy moms and they would never read it.
I was not so lucky.
A few days later, my mom shows me how she got a response from someone who was at the top of the food chain.
God strike me down, for it was the people’s Queen herself.
Barbara Dunkleman.
Her response to my mother’s unhinged email was nothing short of polite. She apologized for what happened, explained that her team, while growing in size, was still quite small. So they weren’t able to give my case the care it deserved. But reiterated what we heard from four different people at customer service: there was nothing that could be done.
But, Barbara graciously offered a year of free membership to compensate for my “distress”.
I was mortified.
Twelve years I was the girl with the terrifying mom in school, now her terror has spread amongst the RoosterTeeth staff.
If I knew this was how it would end up, I would’ve suffered through the loss of my grandfathered Sponsorship in silence instead of sharing my feelings with my mom.
To be perfectly honest, I actually avoided meeting Barbara at RTX because I was afraid she would remember my name. Realistically, she probably wouldn’t have. She meets so many fans and dealt with so many users on a daily basis, I was probably just a distant memory to her. But I wasn’t willing to take that chance. Go to a signing, introduce myself, then Barbara starts slowly backing away in case my mom is in the area.
And I thought I would take this story to my grave. But with everything that’s happened, and everyone sharing their stories, I thought what the heck.
Barbara, if you’re reading this, please know that I am sorry for my mother. Wish I met you irl at RTX when I had the chance.
TL;DR: Lost my grandfathered sponsor rates due to an expired debit card. My mom decided to intervene when I gave up hope, and sent a SCATHING email to RT support. Barbara herself responded and was very nice and helpful. I’m still embarrassed about this.
2024.05.19 01:28 dana-0802 question about changing password
I have had my google account for 9 years I believe and for some reason have never thought to change my password which is something I am really needing to do. I do not have a recovery phone or email set (I didn't know if this would link my other account together) but I am worried about somehow being locked out of my account if I do change my password. This has happened to my on another platform. Has anyone had any issues changing their passwords without a recovery method? If I set a recovery phone or email will it be public at all or link to my other accounts? Thank you.
submitted by dana-0802 to GMail [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 01:21 Various_Pear599 Japanese app is a Virus?
 | So… my new ipad mini 6 started to lag like crazy… yesterday everything was 100% fine. Yesterday it was 100% fine but today I noticed intense lags !! submitted by Various_Pear599 to ipad [link] [comments] So I started to think, what have I done today or yesterday with my iPad? Played my usual cat game today, probably not the issue!… But yesterday I downloaded a couple of Japanese learning apps !! After deleting some, nothing changed and I still had 30+GB free… I looked in the files if I downloaded something wrong… tho there was files for “Renshuu” called something about allocating storage. I deleted the app and the iPad stopped to lag o.o ! There is lag residues it feels, as if the app caused damage in the files or hardware o.o ! Tho without this SPECIFIC app, my iPad isn’t as laggy… it’s scary honestly ! I only charge my iPad with official apple cables… but the iPad does get really hot when charging. Idk what happened there, I am worried honestly…. I switched from android to apple because android sucks in snappiness… I don’t want the same experience over again ! |
2024.05.19 01:18 itsaname42 PSA on Razer warranty loophole.
It's been a little while, so time to repost this:
On principle I would say just don't buy a Razer product, but if you are going to, make sure you buy it directly from them, they have a loophole in the warranty policy so they don't have to honor claims for most products purchased on Amazon. I got a Razer Naga X as a gift for my birthday, and after about a year it developed a bunch of scroll wheel bounce (going up when I scroll down and vice-versa) and then one of the thumb buttons stopped registering consistently, so I filed a support ticket, and they told me they wouldn't be honoring the manufacturer's warranty b/c it was sold by an 'unauthorized reseller'. The problem is that it was bought on Amazon (which IS listed as an authorized reseller - my girlfriend, who purchased it, had made sure to check that) but apparently there are TONS of '3rd party sellers' that make up the vast majority of the Amazon listings, even Prime listings (something I didn't even know until all of this) and apparently that gives them a loophole to not honor the warranty. I did a search on Amazon for the same mouse, and it wasn't till the 7th result that I found one that wasn't through one of these storefronts. Most of these storefronts are 'Amazon' sales anyways, it's a way for Amazon to outsource the work of creating listings and marketing without hiring people as actual employees - the 'seller' doesn't store or ship the product - all of that is Amazon - they are just getting a cut of the sale for creating the posting/bringing in business. And, by the way, none of this came up when I successfully registered the mouse on the Razer website upon receiving it.
The entire attempt at the warranty claim was a huge mess that took over six weeks, with a TON of back and forth where they promised to take care of me, only for that to be vetoed by the back office (at least three or four different times as the ticket got escalated) ... First, they told me that I had to contact the seller, that they had first obligation on a replacement, but I was told "I guarantee that we have your back on this" and to come back to Razer support if the seller declined to replace it or didn't respond. Well, the seller didn't respond, and when I contacted Razer again, they said 'Sorry, sucks to be you' (paraphrase, lol).
So... I did a bit of research to see if that was even legal and found an instance where someone raised a stink on Reddit and Razer ended up replacing their device... so I did the same thing; the official Razer account quickly reached out and reopened the ticket, support contacted me asking for a photo of the mouse to verify the serial number (and said they'd process the replacement if the number checked out - which it did)... two days later I got a response saying.. they'd get back to me in two days. Another two days later I got another email saying 'Sorry, that's out of the warranty period' (it's not, it was slightly over one year into a two year warranty) I responded with proof of this, their reply completely ignored the warranty timeframe issue and just went back to the 'unauthorized reseller' line. They also told me that there was no repair option, but if I subscribe to their newsletter I can get $10 of my next purchase and a whole bunch of other marketing spam, which was just salt in the wound if you ask me. I contacted the Reddit account again to tell them how useless and frustrating that had been and they responded that I should "keep replying so the ticket doesn't auto-close from inactivity"... pretty pointless if you ask me since they are dead set on not honoring the warranty. I did keep the ticket open for a while anyways, but they started to auto-respond with the same boilerplate response.
Every other warranty claim I have ever made has been based on the serial number and whether the defect was the result of misuse or happened through normal use. This has been the most absurd experience I've ever had with a company's customer support / warranty department; I certainly will never do business w/ Razer again, and I'd recommend the same to everyone else.
Apparently, they want my experience to be an example of their customer experience, since, in their own words: "as much as we would like to proceed in replacing your device, we're afraid that the Warranty Policy we have in place is too important, as it will remind all customers that Razer has exclusions and limitations on its warranty." So... I'm going to continue to share it with as many people as I can. The ironic thing is that they have probably spent more money on payroll dealing with me than they would have if just honored the warranty in the first place (and they would have continued to get positive word-of-mouth from me instead of these PSAs - I'm quite active in the endgame community of a major MMO, I host a lot of training runs and am constantly recommending that new player go get an MMO mouse for all the extra buttons - I used to sing praises about Razer mice before this, my first Razer mouse lasted almost eight years - but now I tell them to get anything but a Razer)
submitted by itsaname42 to razer [link] [comments]
On principle I would say just don't buy a Razer product, but if you are going to, make sure you buy it directly from them, they have a loophole in the warranty policy so they don't have to honor claims for most products purchased on Amazon. I got a Razer Naga X as a gift for my birthday, and after about a year it developed a bunch of scroll wheel bounce (going up when I scroll down and vice-versa) and then one of the thumb buttons stopped registering consistently, so I filed a support ticket, and they told me they wouldn't be honoring the manufacturer's warranty b/c it was sold by an 'unauthorized reseller'. The problem is that it was bought on Amazon (which IS listed as an authorized reseller - my girlfriend, who purchased it, had made sure to check that) but apparently there are TONS of '3rd party sellers' that make up the vast majority of the Amazon listings, even Prime listings (something I didn't even know until all of this) and apparently that gives them a loophole to not honor the warranty. I did a search on Amazon for the same mouse, and it wasn't till the 7th result that I found one that wasn't through one of these storefronts. Most of these storefronts are 'Amazon' sales anyways, it's a way for Amazon to outsource the work of creating listings and marketing without hiring people as actual employees - the 'seller' doesn't store or ship the product - all of that is Amazon - they are just getting a cut of the sale for creating the posting/bringing in business. And, by the way, none of this came up when I successfully registered the mouse on the Razer website upon receiving it.
The entire attempt at the warranty claim was a huge mess that took over six weeks, with a TON of back and forth where they promised to take care of me, only for that to be vetoed by the back office (at least three or four different times as the ticket got escalated) ... First, they told me that I had to contact the seller, that they had first obligation on a replacement, but I was told "I guarantee that we have your back on this" and to come back to Razer support if the seller declined to replace it or didn't respond. Well, the seller didn't respond, and when I contacted Razer again, they said 'Sorry, sucks to be you' (paraphrase, lol).
So... I did a bit of research to see if that was even legal and found an instance where someone raised a stink on Reddit and Razer ended up replacing their device... so I did the same thing; the official Razer account quickly reached out and reopened the ticket, support contacted me asking for a photo of the mouse to verify the serial number (and said they'd process the replacement if the number checked out - which it did)... two days later I got a response saying.. they'd get back to me in two days. Another two days later I got another email saying 'Sorry, that's out of the warranty period' (it's not, it was slightly over one year into a two year warranty) I responded with proof of this, their reply completely ignored the warranty timeframe issue and just went back to the 'unauthorized reseller' line. They also told me that there was no repair option, but if I subscribe to their newsletter I can get $10 of my next purchase and a whole bunch of other marketing spam, which was just salt in the wound if you ask me. I contacted the Reddit account again to tell them how useless and frustrating that had been and they responded that I should "keep replying so the ticket doesn't auto-close from inactivity"... pretty pointless if you ask me since they are dead set on not honoring the warranty. I did keep the ticket open for a while anyways, but they started to auto-respond with the same boilerplate response.
Every other warranty claim I have ever made has been based on the serial number and whether the defect was the result of misuse or happened through normal use. This has been the most absurd experience I've ever had with a company's customer support / warranty department; I certainly will never do business w/ Razer again, and I'd recommend the same to everyone else.
Apparently, they want my experience to be an example of their customer experience, since, in their own words: "as much as we would like to proceed in replacing your device, we're afraid that the Warranty Policy we have in place is too important, as it will remind all customers that Razer has exclusions and limitations on its warranty." So... I'm going to continue to share it with as many people as I can. The ironic thing is that they have probably spent more money on payroll dealing with me than they would have if just honored the warranty in the first place (and they would have continued to get positive word-of-mouth from me instead of these PSAs - I'm quite active in the endgame community of a major MMO, I host a lot of training runs and am constantly recommending that new player go get an MMO mouse for all the extra buttons - I used to sing praises about Razer mice before this, my first Razer mouse lasted almost eight years - but now I tell them to get anything but a Razer)
2024.05.19 01:12 Tha_Rocket Looking for advice, buckle up it's long ride...
I'm a 42 year old male, I met my wife when I was 18, she was 23 and we began 'dating' when I was 21, working a job I hated in the same place she worked (casino workers, if you know, you know). We hooked up at a Xmas party and started a very awkward relationship. I say awkward because we had some weird trouble having sex for the first like 6 months... it's odd when I think back on it, should have been a huge red flag but she was draped in reg flags the entire time and it didn't seem matter to me. Aside from that, when we finally did have sex she got pregnant... she was not at all ready, neither was I really, but are you ever? At any rate, I didn't have too much of say in it, she decided on an abortion and I supported her. We stayed together after that horribly shitty experience, our relationship was never really all that good, lots of petty fighting/arguing and really the only reason it continued was because we worked opposite shifts and barely saw each other which made it easier to sorta get along.
Fast forward a couple years, we decide to buy a house because financially it made sense (this is almost 20 years ago so it was still affordable at that time), she made quite a bit of money, mostly in tips (so not on paper), but she probably made 2-3 times as much as I did so she never really struggled financially (in her life I don't think) while I came out of poverty and lived paycheck to paycheck up until a few years ago (the pandemic was surprisingly good for my career). This was never really an issue for me, I've lived in debt my whole life and I've always had the optimism that I would eventually work my way out of it, it's really the only bit of confidence I have in myself, my ability to learn and become relatively good at almost anything. This was always a point of contention, my wife hated that I had debt so when we bought the house together we were asked if we wanted a joint bank account as most couples combine their finances with cohabitation, my wife scoffed and adamantly told the banker there was no way she's mixing her finances with mine, it was relatively embarrassing at the time but I was also just 25 (she was 30) so I went along with whatever, it was going to be slightly cheaper for me to pay a mortgage than rent at the time so I was in and she'd cover bills. Things were never that great when living together, things must have been good enough for me to stay but I only look back with anger now so it's hard to see anything good but I'm sure there must have been some.
Fast forward another couple years and I feel extremely pressured (by her and her family mostly, they're old fashioned country type folks) to ask her to marry me... so I do. We stay engaged for another few years, I have no desire to waste a bunch on money on a wedding but she's the one with money so we have the big wedding she wanted. I'll admit it was a pretty great party, I don't remember anything good involving her on our wedding day but I have lots of good memories with family and friends. Afterwards we went on a 'romantic' honeymoon at an all-inclusive tropical resort and this is where I'll get into a bit of what I've dealt with for years... our resort was gorgeous, room was nice, just a room but nice... first thing my wife did was complain, about everything, the bed, the fridge, the lights, the balcony... nothing was good enough for her, this would become a common theme for the next decade plus. We also did not have sex on our honeymoon, she was far too busy complaining and being angry for us to ever get in the 'mood', this would be more foreshadowing of what's to come.
Now, this might seem like I'm building up to her becoming really bad after getting married but that's not really the case... she was just as bad before, it didn't really get worse, it just became more noticeable... or maybe I just tolerated things more in the beginning. The truth is when I look back, there were so many signs, she casually put me down and basically treated me like a child from day one, something I just accepted because looking back, I was a fucking child when we got together... she was not really, five years my senior, and she very much took advantage of that dynamic. Over the years she slowly went about convincing me that the things I wanted were silly/ridiculous and that I should want what she wanted (the nice lawn, the house, kids, etc., etc.) because everyone should. I never wanted these things.
I won't get into details here because I could write a novel on the insane shit I've dealt with over the last 20 years that could prove this, but I did do a lot of research in the last few years and have come to the conclusion that she could have BPD with narcissistic traits... I'm obviously not a doctor so it's definitely not a diagnosis or anything but she ticks almost every box from the many many things I've read on the subject, so if you have a moment and you don't know what BPD is I suggest googling it. It's pretty terrible but it might give you a better idea of my life.
At any rate, I dug myself deeper and deeper, thinking that every next move would finally make her happy and bring me some kind of peace, so we had a child about a year after we were married. This is where it gets really tricky... I sincerely regret having a child with this woman, especially because she is not at all "cut out to be a mother" (her words, not mine) but her mother had been sick on and off with cancer for a few years and her older sister couldn't have children so she felt obligated to give her mom a grandchild, bad reasons all around to have a child. That being said, I love my son more than anything in the world. As much as I wish we did not bring him into this horrible world, he's still the very best thing to happen to me and I will take care of him and love him for the rest of my life no matter what.
I should mention, since I've eluded to it, I've always had self-esteem issues, goes all the way back to having acne problems in high school but my wife has methodically picked away at my confidence and self-esteem over the years, cutting me down to this very day... to the point that I feel very much worthless. I know that I'm not, I know I deserve better but another fun thing about my wife is her desperate need for sympathy... So, not only does she make me feel horrible about myself, she also manages to make me feel horrible FOR her... she's overweight, and I'm sure has low self-esteem herself but she has decided to take it out on others rather than internalize and try to make things better for herself. She would rather blame others for any of her short comings, I guess it's easier to convince yourself you can't do anything about it when it's someone else fault.
I apologize, because I feel like I'm a bit all over the place but I guess I'm just trying to set the scene for where I'm at now and give just a small glimpse of the hell I've been living in and how I got here...
The first few years of my sons life were pretty great (comparatively at least), honestly it was probably the best we've ever gotten along, probably because most of my focus (and hers) was on our son. Unfortunately, her mother passed away just after my son's first birthday, this was obviously devastating for her, not unexpected but still devastating. We're lucky in Canada because she had a full year maternity leave and was able to spend time with her mom. She took it very hard, and decided to stay off work for an additional 4-6 months (can't remember exactly). This was all fine and understandable, I supported her through all of it, financially and emotionally. Once she went back to work, this is when things took a real nose dive... she has always been a very entitled person but upon going back to work (part time I should mention) she decided everything was horrible for her so she was going to make it horrible for everyone around her. This went on for around 4-5 years (again, the time frames get fuzzy because it's been so long), it was hell. I really just plowed through for our son, I made him my main focus and I took care of everything. Without going into it too much, I sort of shifted gears with my job and focused on finding something that worked better for raising a kid, I got onto a full time day shift (unheard in the casino world) and we worked opposite shifts. It was pretty good for child care (that we couldn't afford) as one of us was always home. This made her more contentious... again, going back to the entitled thing, she felt it wasn't 'fair' for me to work a good shift, she should be the one doing that. I eventually worked my way out of casinos and into a work from home job (before COVID) and it was great, she could work whatever shift she had to and I would always be around for our son.
Fast forward again, my son's in school, she's still super angry at life and making things hellish but I do my best to make it good for our son. It's difficult to keep a smile on with him while putting up with temper tantrums and fits from my wife... yes, we had a toddler and she was the one who threw fits. For an example, I can recall one specific Xmas where my son and I were playing video games which is his biggest interest, something she absolutely hates, and she made a few comments about how we should be doing family things together for Xmas (it was Xmas eve), so my son and I got off the computer and played a board game in the living room... nice and wholesome fun I thought. My wife throws a fit, full on screaming and slamming things around, I don't even remember what for exactly, it happens so often I can't keep track anymore. Her temper tantrum ends with her storming off and slamming the door to her room. I'll never forget looking at my son right after, him tearing up a bit and asking me "what is wrong mom?" and I just said "I'm really sorry buddy, I don't know" and we hugged... I cried a lot about that that night, one of many times I would have to apologize for her and the way she acts around him. This is just one small example and a terrible Xmas memory that I'll always have, hopefully my son won't. I think the worst part of these 'tantrums' is that she can almost always justify them, only to herself really but usually by blaming me or my son for "making her so upset" or worse, blaming some inanimate object for "not working how it should".
Fast forward to now(ish)... I've basically lived in my basement for the last 5 years, my office and bedroom are there, I stay down there to avoid my wife as much as possible but it feels like a prison cell now. I've retreated from life in general over the years too, I've always been a pretty anti-social introvert, I prefer quiet one on one conversations rather than group settings. Most of my 'friends' over the last 10-15 years revolved around my job (casinos take over your life people, for real) and my wife, I slowly lost any friends that had no connection to her. This was partially due to me retreating and the fact that my wife would insert herself into any friendship that was just mine to the point that I sort shut those people out to avoid them having to deal with her. Sadly, I don't have friends anymore (didn't have many to begin with but still), my son is essentially my only friend and because I work from home by myself I rarely talk to any other adults. My wife and I talk only when necessary... I cannot make eye contact with her anymore. This is probably needless to say but we haven't had sex in over 6 and a half years and I don't cheat, I don't have the confidence, so I've just accepted that I'm celibate now.
One other area of contention that I feel I should explain since I've mentioned it already, through the pandemic there was a serious power shift, financially speaking. She essentially lost her job and is now in a lower paying part time job (more realistic pay compared to her previous job), whereas I made a couple job changes that bumped me up well ahead of her. For comparison, the salaries essentially flipped, almost exactly... to where I make 2-3 times what she makes. This has become an area of contention because this was something she was able to lord over me for the majority of our relationship, she spent money freely while I paid the mortgage and barely ate for the first 5 years we lived in the house but now, for the first time in her life she has to pay attention to her finances and watch her spending... she does not like this so it's just another thing to constantly complain about and make passive aggressive comments about the things that 'dad' can afford to do/buy but doesn't (mainly because I'm paying the mortgage and all the bills now while finally paying down some debt).
Oh, I should probably also mention that it's a regular thing for her to insult me and put me down in front of our son and on flip side of that she also uses him to garner sympathy from me ("shouldn't daddy feel bad mommy has to go to work?") it's very frustrating because I just want to protect my kid but I guess she knows that.
Again, I'll apologize for how disjointed this all is... the more I type, the more I think about shit to type... like I mentioned, I could write a novel on this, mostly because I have no real outlet, just sit in my basement talking to myself about it all... or I guess stewing in it.
So, I guess I should try to finish off with what exactly the advice is that I'm seeking... I essentially hate my wife, the word I use often is 'despise' and over the years we've had brief conversations where I've told her that "I'm done and I'm just here for the kid" and unfortunately she took this as push to work on our marriage harder and 'fix' things, far too little, too late. She makes me feel like the worse person in the world and yet I just can't bring myself to say to her face that I want a divorce... I feel sorry for her, fuck so much so that I bought a house with her, married her, and had a fucking kid with her... I'm sure that's not the case, I must have loved her at one point but I just can't see it anymore. I don't know why I can't say it to her, why I can't just end this... I'm so worried about how she'll react, what she'll do to me, to my kid... how she'll try and turn him against me. I'm just paralyzed with the fear of what could/will happen if I tell her we're getting a divorce.
I've made plans over the last few years to move out, rent an apartment for me and my kid and just continue to pay her bills until we can sell the house and split the profit. I can't afford to do this, it would cause me to go back into debt but I do not care, it would be worth it to get away from her. I have set deadline after deadline... "I'll do it after Xmas" or "after her birthday" or "before my birthday" and these days come and go and I just can't do it... I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, it's like I just don't want to hurt her, even though I'm hurting her by not ending things and she definitely doesn't give a shit about hurting me... I just don't want to face her and deal with it and how she will make the aftermath hell.. and I worry so much about my son, it would have been so much better for him if I would have divorced her years ago, he's fucking 10 now... another fear is having to explain it to him but we're setting a horrible example. One of my wife's favourite ways to use our son against me, is planting it in his head that "family is all that matters", focusing specifically on our little family, and how we have to "stick together no matter what, that's what family does". It's such an underhanded way to prep him for hating me because I'm "breaking up our family".
I would appreciate any advice on how the hell I can get over my paralyzing fear and just end this marriage or maybe you wanna come over and end it for me? I'm at a point where I'd take that... as I mentioned I've not shared most of this with anyone... so feedback would be a really new thing for me.
Oh, and please feel free to call me chicken shit, and tell me I just need to grow a pair and get this done... it's the same thing I've been saying to myself for years, not helpful but I understand the sentiment.
Shit... I'm sorry, this turned into a novel. Thank you.
submitted by Tha_Rocket to Divorce [link] [comments]
Fast forward a couple years, we decide to buy a house because financially it made sense (this is almost 20 years ago so it was still affordable at that time), she made quite a bit of money, mostly in tips (so not on paper), but she probably made 2-3 times as much as I did so she never really struggled financially (in her life I don't think) while I came out of poverty and lived paycheck to paycheck up until a few years ago (the pandemic was surprisingly good for my career). This was never really an issue for me, I've lived in debt my whole life and I've always had the optimism that I would eventually work my way out of it, it's really the only bit of confidence I have in myself, my ability to learn and become relatively good at almost anything. This was always a point of contention, my wife hated that I had debt so when we bought the house together we were asked if we wanted a joint bank account as most couples combine their finances with cohabitation, my wife scoffed and adamantly told the banker there was no way she's mixing her finances with mine, it was relatively embarrassing at the time but I was also just 25 (she was 30) so I went along with whatever, it was going to be slightly cheaper for me to pay a mortgage than rent at the time so I was in and she'd cover bills. Things were never that great when living together, things must have been good enough for me to stay but I only look back with anger now so it's hard to see anything good but I'm sure there must have been some.
Fast forward another couple years and I feel extremely pressured (by her and her family mostly, they're old fashioned country type folks) to ask her to marry me... so I do. We stay engaged for another few years, I have no desire to waste a bunch on money on a wedding but she's the one with money so we have the big wedding she wanted. I'll admit it was a pretty great party, I don't remember anything good involving her on our wedding day but I have lots of good memories with family and friends. Afterwards we went on a 'romantic' honeymoon at an all-inclusive tropical resort and this is where I'll get into a bit of what I've dealt with for years... our resort was gorgeous, room was nice, just a room but nice... first thing my wife did was complain, about everything, the bed, the fridge, the lights, the balcony... nothing was good enough for her, this would become a common theme for the next decade plus. We also did not have sex on our honeymoon, she was far too busy complaining and being angry for us to ever get in the 'mood', this would be more foreshadowing of what's to come.
Now, this might seem like I'm building up to her becoming really bad after getting married but that's not really the case... she was just as bad before, it didn't really get worse, it just became more noticeable... or maybe I just tolerated things more in the beginning. The truth is when I look back, there were so many signs, she casually put me down and basically treated me like a child from day one, something I just accepted because looking back, I was a fucking child when we got together... she was not really, five years my senior, and she very much took advantage of that dynamic. Over the years she slowly went about convincing me that the things I wanted were silly/ridiculous and that I should want what she wanted (the nice lawn, the house, kids, etc., etc.) because everyone should. I never wanted these things.
I won't get into details here because I could write a novel on the insane shit I've dealt with over the last 20 years that could prove this, but I did do a lot of research in the last few years and have come to the conclusion that she could have BPD with narcissistic traits... I'm obviously not a doctor so it's definitely not a diagnosis or anything but she ticks almost every box from the many many things I've read on the subject, so if you have a moment and you don't know what BPD is I suggest googling it. It's pretty terrible but it might give you a better idea of my life.
At any rate, I dug myself deeper and deeper, thinking that every next move would finally make her happy and bring me some kind of peace, so we had a child about a year after we were married. This is where it gets really tricky... I sincerely regret having a child with this woman, especially because she is not at all "cut out to be a mother" (her words, not mine) but her mother had been sick on and off with cancer for a few years and her older sister couldn't have children so she felt obligated to give her mom a grandchild, bad reasons all around to have a child. That being said, I love my son more than anything in the world. As much as I wish we did not bring him into this horrible world, he's still the very best thing to happen to me and I will take care of him and love him for the rest of my life no matter what.
I should mention, since I've eluded to it, I've always had self-esteem issues, goes all the way back to having acne problems in high school but my wife has methodically picked away at my confidence and self-esteem over the years, cutting me down to this very day... to the point that I feel very much worthless. I know that I'm not, I know I deserve better but another fun thing about my wife is her desperate need for sympathy... So, not only does she make me feel horrible about myself, she also manages to make me feel horrible FOR her... she's overweight, and I'm sure has low self-esteem herself but she has decided to take it out on others rather than internalize and try to make things better for herself. She would rather blame others for any of her short comings, I guess it's easier to convince yourself you can't do anything about it when it's someone else fault.
I apologize, because I feel like I'm a bit all over the place but I guess I'm just trying to set the scene for where I'm at now and give just a small glimpse of the hell I've been living in and how I got here...
The first few years of my sons life were pretty great (comparatively at least), honestly it was probably the best we've ever gotten along, probably because most of my focus (and hers) was on our son. Unfortunately, her mother passed away just after my son's first birthday, this was obviously devastating for her, not unexpected but still devastating. We're lucky in Canada because she had a full year maternity leave and was able to spend time with her mom. She took it very hard, and decided to stay off work for an additional 4-6 months (can't remember exactly). This was all fine and understandable, I supported her through all of it, financially and emotionally. Once she went back to work, this is when things took a real nose dive... she has always been a very entitled person but upon going back to work (part time I should mention) she decided everything was horrible for her so she was going to make it horrible for everyone around her. This went on for around 4-5 years (again, the time frames get fuzzy because it's been so long), it was hell. I really just plowed through for our son, I made him my main focus and I took care of everything. Without going into it too much, I sort of shifted gears with my job and focused on finding something that worked better for raising a kid, I got onto a full time day shift (unheard in the casino world) and we worked opposite shifts. It was pretty good for child care (that we couldn't afford) as one of us was always home. This made her more contentious... again, going back to the entitled thing, she felt it wasn't 'fair' for me to work a good shift, she should be the one doing that. I eventually worked my way out of casinos and into a work from home job (before COVID) and it was great, she could work whatever shift she had to and I would always be around for our son.
Fast forward again, my son's in school, she's still super angry at life and making things hellish but I do my best to make it good for our son. It's difficult to keep a smile on with him while putting up with temper tantrums and fits from my wife... yes, we had a toddler and she was the one who threw fits. For an example, I can recall one specific Xmas where my son and I were playing video games which is his biggest interest, something she absolutely hates, and she made a few comments about how we should be doing family things together for Xmas (it was Xmas eve), so my son and I got off the computer and played a board game in the living room... nice and wholesome fun I thought. My wife throws a fit, full on screaming and slamming things around, I don't even remember what for exactly, it happens so often I can't keep track anymore. Her temper tantrum ends with her storming off and slamming the door to her room. I'll never forget looking at my son right after, him tearing up a bit and asking me "what is wrong mom?" and I just said "I'm really sorry buddy, I don't know" and we hugged... I cried a lot about that that night, one of many times I would have to apologize for her and the way she acts around him. This is just one small example and a terrible Xmas memory that I'll always have, hopefully my son won't. I think the worst part of these 'tantrums' is that she can almost always justify them, only to herself really but usually by blaming me or my son for "making her so upset" or worse, blaming some inanimate object for "not working how it should".
Fast forward to now(ish)... I've basically lived in my basement for the last 5 years, my office and bedroom are there, I stay down there to avoid my wife as much as possible but it feels like a prison cell now. I've retreated from life in general over the years too, I've always been a pretty anti-social introvert, I prefer quiet one on one conversations rather than group settings. Most of my 'friends' over the last 10-15 years revolved around my job (casinos take over your life people, for real) and my wife, I slowly lost any friends that had no connection to her. This was partially due to me retreating and the fact that my wife would insert herself into any friendship that was just mine to the point that I sort shut those people out to avoid them having to deal with her. Sadly, I don't have friends anymore (didn't have many to begin with but still), my son is essentially my only friend and because I work from home by myself I rarely talk to any other adults. My wife and I talk only when necessary... I cannot make eye contact with her anymore. This is probably needless to say but we haven't had sex in over 6 and a half years and I don't cheat, I don't have the confidence, so I've just accepted that I'm celibate now.
One other area of contention that I feel I should explain since I've mentioned it already, through the pandemic there was a serious power shift, financially speaking. She essentially lost her job and is now in a lower paying part time job (more realistic pay compared to her previous job), whereas I made a couple job changes that bumped me up well ahead of her. For comparison, the salaries essentially flipped, almost exactly... to where I make 2-3 times what she makes. This has become an area of contention because this was something she was able to lord over me for the majority of our relationship, she spent money freely while I paid the mortgage and barely ate for the first 5 years we lived in the house but now, for the first time in her life she has to pay attention to her finances and watch her spending... she does not like this so it's just another thing to constantly complain about and make passive aggressive comments about the things that 'dad' can afford to do/buy but doesn't (mainly because I'm paying the mortgage and all the bills now while finally paying down some debt).
Oh, I should probably also mention that it's a regular thing for her to insult me and put me down in front of our son and on flip side of that she also uses him to garner sympathy from me ("shouldn't daddy feel bad mommy has to go to work?") it's very frustrating because I just want to protect my kid but I guess she knows that.
Again, I'll apologize for how disjointed this all is... the more I type, the more I think about shit to type... like I mentioned, I could write a novel on this, mostly because I have no real outlet, just sit in my basement talking to myself about it all... or I guess stewing in it.
So, I guess I should try to finish off with what exactly the advice is that I'm seeking... I essentially hate my wife, the word I use often is 'despise' and over the years we've had brief conversations where I've told her that "I'm done and I'm just here for the kid" and unfortunately she took this as push to work on our marriage harder and 'fix' things, far too little, too late. She makes me feel like the worse person in the world and yet I just can't bring myself to say to her face that I want a divorce... I feel sorry for her, fuck so much so that I bought a house with her, married her, and had a fucking kid with her... I'm sure that's not the case, I must have loved her at one point but I just can't see it anymore. I don't know why I can't say it to her, why I can't just end this... I'm so worried about how she'll react, what she'll do to me, to my kid... how she'll try and turn him against me. I'm just paralyzed with the fear of what could/will happen if I tell her we're getting a divorce.
I've made plans over the last few years to move out, rent an apartment for me and my kid and just continue to pay her bills until we can sell the house and split the profit. I can't afford to do this, it would cause me to go back into debt but I do not care, it would be worth it to get away from her. I have set deadline after deadline... "I'll do it after Xmas" or "after her birthday" or "before my birthday" and these days come and go and I just can't do it... I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, it's like I just don't want to hurt her, even though I'm hurting her by not ending things and she definitely doesn't give a shit about hurting me... I just don't want to face her and deal with it and how she will make the aftermath hell.. and I worry so much about my son, it would have been so much better for him if I would have divorced her years ago, he's fucking 10 now... another fear is having to explain it to him but we're setting a horrible example. One of my wife's favourite ways to use our son against me, is planting it in his head that "family is all that matters", focusing specifically on our little family, and how we have to "stick together no matter what, that's what family does". It's such an underhanded way to prep him for hating me because I'm "breaking up our family".
I would appreciate any advice on how the hell I can get over my paralyzing fear and just end this marriage or maybe you wanna come over and end it for me? I'm at a point where I'd take that... as I mentioned I've not shared most of this with anyone... so feedback would be a really new thing for me.
Oh, and please feel free to call me chicken shit, and tell me I just need to grow a pair and get this done... it's the same thing I've been saying to myself for years, not helpful but I understand the sentiment.
Shit... I'm sorry, this turned into a novel. Thank you.
2024.05.19 01:12 Ryan_kleym How to Set Up pCloud WebDAV for RetroArch Cloud Sync on Apple Devices
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a step-by-step guide on how I set up pCloud with WebDAV to enable cloud syncing for RetroArch on my Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV). After some trial and error, I found a method that works seamlessly, though it requires a premium subscription to pCloud for WebDAV access. Here’s how you can do it:
Why pCloud?
pCloud offers reliable WebDAV support, which is essential for cloud syncing with RetroArch. It also has dedicated apps for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, ensuring a smooth experience across all Apple devices.
Steps to Set Up pCloud WebDAV for RetroArch:
This method allows you to securely back up your RetroArch saves to the cloud and access them across all your Apple devices. Although it requires a premium subscription to pCloud for WebDAV access, the setup is straightforward and works reliably.
submitted by Ryan_kleym to RetroArch [link] [comments]
I wanted to share a step-by-step guide on how I set up pCloud with WebDAV to enable cloud syncing for RetroArch on my Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV). After some trial and error, I found a method that works seamlessly, though it requires a premium subscription to pCloud for WebDAV access. Here’s how you can do it:
Why pCloud?
pCloud offers reliable WebDAV support, which is essential for cloud syncing with RetroArch. It also has dedicated apps for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, ensuring a smooth experience across all Apple devices.
Steps to Set Up pCloud WebDAV for RetroArch:
- Create a pCloud Account and Upgrade to Premium:
• Sign up for a pCloud account if you don’t already have one. • Upgrade to a premium plan to enable WebDAV access. - Set Up a Folder in pCloud:
• Log in to your pCloud account via the web or app. • Create a new folder named “RetroArch Saves” (or any name you prefer). - Configure WebDAV Manager App on iOS:
• Download and install the WebDAV Manager app from the App Store. • Open the app and tap “Add server.” Fill in the server details as follows: • Name: pCloud RetroArch • Hostname: webdav.pcloud.com • Port: 443 (default for HTTPS) • Base Path: /RetroArch Saves (or the path to your designated folder) • Secure Connection: Ensure this is enabled • Username: Your pCloud username (email address) • Password: Your pCloud password • Save the configuration and test the connection to ensure it can access the pCloud folder. - Configure RetroArch for Cloud Sync:
• Open RetroArch on your Apple TV (or other Apple device). • Navigate to Settings > Saving > Cloud Sync. • Toggle “Enable Cloud Sync” to ON. • Set “Destructive Cloud Sync” based on your preference (OFF for safer backups, ON for direct overwriting). • Set “Cloud Sync Backend” to WebDAV. • Enter the WebDAV details: • Cloud Storage URL: https://webdav.pcloud.com/RetroArch Saves • Username: Your pCloud username (email address) • Password: Your pCloud password - Testing and Verification:
• Save a game in RetroArch to create a save state. • Log in to your pCloud account and check the “RetroArch Saves” folder to verify that the save file has been uploaded.
• Regular Checks: Periodically check the “RetroArch Saves” folder in pCloud to ensure saves are being uploaded as expected. • Backup: Keep a local backup of your save files just in case you need to restore them.Conclusion:
This method allows you to securely back up your RetroArch saves to the cloud and access them across all your Apple devices. Although it requires a premium subscription to pCloud for WebDAV access, the setup is straightforward and works reliably.
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2024.05.19 00:59 GoAheadMMDay UPDATE 3: Torment Techniques Used by Canadian and US Militaries
 | Update #3 appears at the bottom. submitted by GoAheadMMDay to Liberty [link] [comments] Due to numerous disparaging comments by multiple individuals, I have reposted my article. Heckling does not change what occurred. People need to know these truths, especially those who have experienced the same. They need to know they are sane, that such things are indeed being perpetrated, and the perpetrators use shame to silence them and protect their activities. I write to encourage them not to listen to disparaging people who speak without knowledge. February 10, 2024 I am Joseph Cafariello, a Canadian citizen and ex-member of the Canadian military. Of sound mind, not on medication, not a drug user, not a marijuana smoker, not an alcohol drinker, with no mental disorders. I recently posted to this Liberty subreddit experiences of harassment by Vancouver's police and fire departments (Vancouver, BC, Canada). I’m the fellow who was repeatedly ordered by police to stay out of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and was continually harassed whenever I visited the park (which I do every second day on my early morning walks). Immediately following that post, they changed some of the techniques they use in my case. They were either informed of my post or found it themselves, seeing as my internet activity, and phone activity for that matter, are under continuous surveillance (plenty of proof which I will not include here to avoid running off-topic). In this post, I would like to shed some light on other harassment which is still ongoing, since it occurs in private, away from potential observers. It involves the Canadian and US militaries. Havana Syndrome In 2016, numerous employees of the Canadian and US embassies in Havana, Cuba, started experiencing head injuries ranging from mild headaches to concussions. It happened in their sleep, and came to be called Havana Syndrome. Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana\_syndrome): “Havana syndrome is a cluster of idiopathic symptoms experienced mostly abroad by U.S. government officials and military personnel. The symptoms range in severity from pain and ringing in the ears to cognitive dysfunction and were first reported in 2016 by U.S. and Canadian embassy staff in Havana, Cuba. Beginning in 2017, more people, including U.S. intelligence and military personnel and their families, reported having these symptoms in other places, such as China, India, Europe, and Washington, D.C. The U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, and other federal entities have called the events "Anomalous Health Incidents" (AHI). Of over a thousand purported cases, the majority of US investigative bodies found only a few dozen cases to be suspicious.” Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you exactly what happens, because I have been experiencing this since I first joined the Canadian military back in 2002, and am still experiencing these “torments” (as I call them) to this day, already 3 years after leaving the military. I go to bed. In about 15 minutes, just as I am on the cusp of falling asleep, a hear and feel a heavy thud reverberate and ultimately strike my skull. My body releases a sharp burst of adrenalin, my heart starts racing, and my blood’s circulation speeds up significantly. Depending on the severity of the blow, it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep again. Though there have been times I could not return to sleep for more than 2 hours. A strong headache is felt immediately, and lasts for hours. There have been times when my heart felt like it was going to burst, having been startled as such. The pulse to the head sometimes reverberates through the wall and my bed’s headboard. I distinctly feel as though I have been hit on the top of my skull. At other times, it feels as though the pulse has come through the air, striking the side of my skull. This is not a sleep disorder, for it does not occur regularly. At times, my sleep is disturbed in this manner 3 or 4 days in a row. At other times, there is no disturbance for up to a week. But they never let me go more than a week without such interruptions to my sleep. Neither is it sleep apnea, as I do not awaken gasping for breath. The pounding headaches, sudden release of adrenaline, and heart palpitations I experience are caused by external impacts of sound waves or air bursts. Sonic Weapons How these pulses are produced is not easy to identify. As Wikipedia explains: “Once the story became public, various U.S. government representatives attributed the incidents to attacks by unidentified foreign actors, and various U.S. officials blamed the reported symptoms on a variety of unidentified and unknown technologies, including ultrasound and microwave weapons.” Sonic weapons have been in use for many years by militaries, and by police in crowd control. As Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic\_weapon): “Some sonic weapons make a focused beam of sound or of ultrasound; others produce an area field of sound. As of 2023 military and police forces make some limited use of sonic weapons.” (Do not believe the 2023 timeline. The Canadian military has been using these weapons since the early 2000’s at the latest.) Wikipedia continues: “Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually sufficient to incapacitate a person. Less powerful sound waves can cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort.” The users of these technologies must also be using thermal detection equipment to monitor the target’s sleep. As I mentioned, I most often feel these blows the moment I am falling asleep. Body temperature drops when we sleep, and brain activity slows. Heat-detection equipment is likely being used to identify the point at which the target is falling asleep. Why they prefer to strike at the start of someone’s sleep as opposed to the middle of their sleep, I do not know. Perhaps their intent is to deprive the body of early sleep, limiting the amount of deep sleep available to the person before their alarm rings in the morning. Ordinary Hammers Not all such “torments” (as I call them) are caused by high-tech equipment. I have heard and felt distinct hammer strikes running along the 2x4 beams inside my walls. These strikes can be a single hard strike, or several strikes in a row. It is definitely caused by a person with a hammer because the intervals between strikes are equidistant in time; that is, the time spacing between strikes is not random and does not change from strike to strike, but is constant between strikes, exactly as when someone is hammering. And no, it is not someone hanging pictures at 1:30 am, multiple times a week, for years. On one occasion, when I was standing at my kitchen sink, I felt the floor-board directly under my feet pulse so sharply it felt like a brick had struck the soles of my feet. In this case, my military neighbour likely used a hammer to strike the floorboard on his side of the wall. It is the only plausible explanation. Surveillance This leads to surveillance of one’s activities at home. I have plenty of proofs of that. They seem insignificant on an individual basis. But when you put them all together, they present a clear picture of home surveillance. My laptop computer’s lid cracked one night, at the bottom left corner of the screen. The next day at work, I heard my military supervisor relate to another co-worker that the night before, his laptop computer’s lid cracked at the bottom left corner. I swear to the Lord in Heaven, I am being truthful. I tested my suspicion of being surveilled. At home one night, I blurted out-loud, “VW Passat. What an ugly sounding word, ‘Passat’”, I said. A few days later, my military colleagues at work started playing a card game at lunch, invented by one of them. The name he gave his game was “Passat”, and when he spoke it, he looked at me for a reaction. If you ever contact the Halifax military base, ask for the Claims Department and ask them if they are still playing Passat. On another occasion, at a time when I frequented the gym every second day for a few years, I suspected my van had been fitted with a listening device. I suspected so because a number of things I had spoken with people about on my phone while in my van (nothing illegal) were repeated by people at the gym in conversations among themselves. Too many times, parts of other people's conversations matched parts of conversations I had had with others while I was in my van. I already knew my phone was being tapped, but I also suspected my van was bugged. So one evening while driving in my van, I blurted out-loud a number of things I said I hated. "I hate (this or that)"; "I hate it when...". One of them was, "I hate when people chew gum with their mouths open." I then vocalized an exaggerated gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw." The very next time I went to the gym, 2 days later, while I was at an exercise, a fellow sat at an exercise directly behind me. And sure enough, he started chewing with his mouth open, vocalizing that gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw." I didn't look behind at him, because I knew what was going on, and I wanted to avoid playing into his hand. So he repeated himself again and again until I was done and moved to a different station. Now, honestly, who chews gum at the gym? You can't. Or you run the risk of choking for the heavy breathing, not to mention when laying down on benches. And with precisely the same exaggerated vocalized gnawing sound I had made in my van just 2 days prior. Their whole intent is to let you know you are being surveilled. They want you to know, as both a warning and a provocation. They want you to say something, to launch accusations, which they would readily deny, making you look paranoid. If you react too strongly, they could even have you diagnosed with some kind of disorder, and put you on medication, which further plays into their hand. (More regarding medications in the last section of this post.) This is why, as I mentioned in my previous post, they would park their cars shining their high beams on me as I walked past them during my morning walk. And why on some occasions, a group of 3 or 4 would exit their cars and stand on my path just as I approached, forcing me to go around them. They would then remain standing on the path until my return trip through, and after I had passed by the second time, then would then return to their cars - making it absolutely clear I was their interest. Their intent is not only to make me aware, but also to present themselves in close proximity to me, within easy reach, in the hope I would confront them, resulting in an altercation that could land me in a lot of hot water - 4 witnesses against me, all pleading innocence. Again, it is all designed to make you look bad, and to warrant some kind of legal measure against you - preferably a medical diagnosis, discrediting you in everything you say about them. If they can't refute your claims, their only remaining option is to discredit you. That's what all of these tricks are designed to accomplish. Who would believe anything you say, once you have been diagnosed with a disorder? There are plenty more examples. But who would really believe them? I’ll save them for the future. Home Invasion Both during and after my military service, I have had my apartments entered without any signs of break-ins. How? Lock-picking and duplicate keys. Indications? Missing objects; ie: money, phone adaptor, etc. Nothing major. Just something to make us understand we are being watched, and to make us understand what they can do. But it is always something small, something for which you would be ridiculed for divulging. Two more examples: I found my razor, which I always lay-down razor-end to the wall, turned around, razor-end toward me. Also, in one of my house slippers I found a small shoe sticker on the up-side of the heel. I had those slipper for years, and never had any shoe stickers on them. Yet there it was, clearly visible on the top surface of my slipper, not the bottom. Could I have stepped on a shoe sticker when barefoot in my apartment, only to have the sticker transfer itself to my slipper when I wore it? How many shoe stickers do you have laying around your apartment that you can accidentally step onto? If I had stepped onto a sticker in my apartment and had it stick to my heel, that means the sticky side was up against my skin. This means the sticker would have had to flip upside down such that the sticky side would then be down, allowing the sticker to stick to the slipper. Do you really think that happened? That sticker was not there when I left my apartment, but it was there when I returned. And it was the wrong sticker, wrong brand, wrong size. Again, what is their intent? To make someone look ridiculous so no one will believe them should they speak of other more sensitive things. Staged Incidents The above incidents clearly point to coordinated and staged events (at my work, my home, on my walks, etc). This is so frequently met with incredulity. "But that would require coordination on the part of so many people," the public dismisses. "They wouldn't do that." Oh yes they would, and they have, as explained in https://fightgangstalking.com/. Note the documented cases involving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, Canada's equivalent to the US' CIA) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, Canada's national police force) in the second quote, which were reported in national newspapers. From https://fightgangstalking.com/: “Disruption operations often involve tactics which are illegal, but difficult to prove. These tactics include – but are not limited to – overt surveillance (stalking), slander, blacklisting, “mobbing” (intense, organized harassment in the workplace), “black bag jobs” [home invasions], abusive phone calls, computer hacking, framing, threats, blackmail, vandalism, “street theater” (staged physical and verbal interactions with minions of the people who orchestrate the stalking), harassment by noises, and other forms of bullying. Many of these tactics were used by the FBI during its illegal COINTELPRO operations, as documented by stolen official documents and subsequent Congressional investigations. "Although the general public is mostly unfamiliar with the practice, references to “disruption” operations – described as such – do occasionally appear in the news media, even though that fact would apparently be news to the editors of The New York Times. In May 2006, for example, an article in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used “Diffuse and Disrupt” tactics against suspects for whom they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute. A criminal defense attorney stated that many of her clients complained of harassment by authorities, although they were never arrested." She can add me to that list too. For the Benefit of Others The experiences I have recounted here seem so trivial, so insignificant, they make you look ridiculous if you talk about them. But if we don’t talk about such things, no one will ever know about them. Other people have experienced the same, and are forced to endure such torments in silence. They need encouragement to talk about their own experiences, and so I write about mine in the hope they will talk about theirs, even if I do look ridiculous. The perpetrators are more ridiculous for doing them. I remember a military colleague being hauled away by military police one morning, as she was struggling and having a violent fit. A fellow on her floor told me she was throwing chairs at her walls screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”. When he mentioned that, I knew exactly what they had done to her. She was considered unruly, and was being watched intently. They wanted her out, and that is how they accomplished it. Through wall tapping and sleep deprivation, they push you to the breaking point. And when you finally lose control and do something rash, they pounce on you, and you’re out. Now she has a criminal record, considered a criminal when in reality she was a victim. Welcome to the Canadian military, and other militaries besides, I am sure. There are dozens upon dozens of experiences I could present. But who will really read them? Worse still, who will really believe them? I overheard my military supervisor in Halifax whisper to another, “Do you think he knows?”, after I had mentioned one of the many “coincidences” I experienced, but with a tone of my being aware it was not a mere coincidence. As I turned my face to my computer screen, I whispered under my breath, but still loud enough for him to hear, “Yes, (rank) (name), I know.” A few minutes later, as he walked past my desk, he leaned in by my ear and whispered, “We’re just trying to help you.” I should have pressed him for answers right then and there, but you just don’t know how much trouble you can get into when making such accusations in the military. So I let it go. But I will never forget. Should anyone reading this ever decide to launch some kind of inquiry, I can mention names of over 100 people to contact, including military personnel, family members, neighbours, building managers, and others who have been contacted by military personnel with false narratives about me. They flash their ID’s and other credentials, and people believe anything they say. They turn family, friends, co-workers and neighbours against you, even recruiting their participation. Your acquaintances not only participate, but actually feel justified and emboldened playing tricks on you. It isn't their fault, though; they have been misled. I would reference them solely for corroboration. As a final thought, here are explanations of two military programs in which certain persons (sometimes military, sometimes civilian) are kept under constant surveillance, and are in some cases subjected to conditioning in an attempt to turn them into what is called a “sleeper agent”. Almost all of the tactics presented below have been experience by me, including constant surveillance (ie: my previous post here regarding being harassed on my morning walks) and sleep deprivation (as per the top portion of this post, which other military members in Cuba and elsewhere around the world have also experienced). Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program See Newsweek’s article: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881 Some excerpts from that Newsweek article, plus more background information on the Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program, can be found here: https://fightgangstalking.com/ “The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called “signature reduction.” The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies. “…a little-known sector of the American military, but also a completely unregulated practice. No one knows the program’s total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture. Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability. “…The signature reduction effort engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations. "Federal spy agencies are using Americans to spy on their fellow citizens – the same approach to governance famously employed by communist East Germany." How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent By Dantalion Jones / Masters of Mind Control The following “was” on the web, but has been removed. Surprise, surprise. But I saved its web files to my computer years ago, knowing that sooner or later it would be removed. I made a jpeg image of the web page as it once appeared, attached here. Note that I have experienced almost all of the tactics described below, including the stalking I mentioned in my previous post here (regular walks in the park), the sleep deprivation noted at the top of this post, and the surveillance and intrusions described here as well. Quoting the now-removed webpage: “How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent” (from here to end of post): Amid all the conspiracy theories one of the most feared is that there exist "sleeper agents" in our society who are programmed to come into service when they are triggered by a phone call or key word. These alleged sleeper agents don't even know they are programmed to become saboteurs, soldiers, suicide bomber, etc because of the thoroughness of their programming. They are the feared "Manchurian Candidate" that the movies portray. The question is "Are they real?" If they are true sleeper agents there is no way of telling until they are activated. One can however theorize exactly how they are made. Indoctrination Using indoctrination a person can be made to embrace a religious or philosophical belief that would make becoming a sleeper agent possible. This would be a person so committed to an ideal they would be willing to wait patiently as a member of society until they are called into action. These people would know their mission and consciously hold it secret while interacting with the rest of society. Conditioning Conditioning is a repetitive process where the desired responses are enforced and rewarded and unwanted responses are punished. This can be done consciously as part of training drill and it can be done subconsciously using hypnosis or drugs to create amnesia. Hypnosis It has been demonstrated that hypnosis can create "amnesia walls" in which the subject has no conscious memory of what happened in the hypnosis session. It has further been demonstrated that hypnosis can give post hypnotic instruction to be carried out automatically in the waking state without the subject knowing it or questioning the behavior. What follows is conjecture and theory based on testimonials of people who were alleged to be sleeper agents and soldiers. Continuous Supervisions Continuous supervision doesn't mean that the subject is cut off completely from society. It means that they are constantly overseen and every aspect of their lives are managed (without their knowledge or consent) to support their hypnotic programming. This would include: • Repeated reinforcement of all hypnotic conditioning. • Handlers. Handlers are people who help maintain the subjects environment to maintain all the programming. They can play the role of family, friends, lovers, psychologists, coaches or any roll the subject perceives as supportive. The truth is the handlers are their to support the successful fulfillment of the programming and not the subject as a person. • Minimal sleep so that the mind/brain does not process all the sleeper conditioning during sleep. • Creating constant environmental challenges like unemployment or poverty. This gives the subject something other than their programming to focus on. • Frequent hospitalization. This gives overt opportunity to sedate the subject for conditioning. If the subject has a history of hospitalizations for mental disturbances all the better. No one will take them seriously. Joseph Cafariello PS... Today is the second day after this post (February 12, 2024). A garbage truck just slammed into my parked car. PPS... I finish writing this post because I am satisfied with its shape and content; not because of what happened to my car. It is similar to when you are reaching for your coat, and someone tells you, "Take your coat." Since you have to take your coat, your brain tells you it's ok to obey them, and you comply. They just created an instance where they led you, and you followed them. And your brain accepted it. It's a technique the military uses all the time. It trains you to accept instructions from that person or group. Done enough times, you become comfortable obeying them. I just say, "I take my coat because I choose to, not because you tell me to." It's important to make that clear, to block the conditioning and affirm our self-governance; not just to them, but to ourselves as well. Now our brain realizes we took our coat by our own choice; we are still in command. So too, I say regarding today's event. "Thanks for the warning, but I had already finished writing my post. I finished by my own choosing." UPDATES 1 & 2: February 26 & March 07, 2024: My apartment was once again entered while I was out. Either a key was used or the lock was picked. This may or may not have included assistance from building staff. Home invasions are included in the list of their techniques noted above, referred to as "black bag jobs". All tenants on my floor received new fridges a couple of weeks ago. I removed the tape securing the bins inside my new fridge, and also removed all styrofoam pads from the corners of the glass shelves when I repositioned them. The person(s) who have been invading my living space on a regular basis have struck again. As you can see in the photo below, the styrofoam pads on the corners of my fridge's shelves were restored when I was out of my apartment. I had removed all pads when I repositioned the shelves. Yet now they are back. It is a tactic used to undermine our observational awareness in an attempt to make us second-guess and doubt ourselves. The aim is to cause people to feel less sure not only of the things we have done, but also feel less sure of the things others have done. They want us to question the accuracy of our observations and memory. The idea is to train you to dismiss any anomalies you may observe as being your own misperception of things. Once they convince you not to trust your own judgement, they are free to do whatever they want to you, and you will simply accept it without questioning. UPDATE 3: May 18, 2024: Confrontations with individuals keep occurring, at times potentially violent. Following are just 3 such encounters as of late. 1 - Kick-boxer in the park: As I parked my car in one of the parking lots in Vancouver's Stanley Park one night, another vehicle drove up behind me and parked several spots away. A tall man exited that vehicle, and walked hastily along the path I always walk, down some steps to the water's sea wall path. I took my time and followed my usual walk, also down the steps down to the sea wall. The man knew my routine, and was in a hurry to get ahead of me. As I walked along the sea wall, I saw the same man sitting on a bench, playing a loud Persian-sounding religious sermon on some device I did not clearly see. As I walked past him, he called out to me to stop and chat. I ignored him and continued walking past him. He rose and started walking behind me. I opened my umbrella, turned, and walked past him the other way, returning to the stairs back to the parking lot. He also turned and continued following me. I started running. He also started running. I ran up the steps, as did he. Being taller than I am, his legs are longer than mine, and he quickly caught up to me on a grassy patch at the top of the steps. I turned to him and asked, "Why are you following me?" He did not reply, but stood profile to me, the same stance a kick-boxer uses when ready to kick someone. He was tall, thin, and in excellent physical shape as you would see in a kick-boxer. He did not speak at all, but was just waiting for me to make a move. I turned, entered my vehicle and left. The encounter continued with a chase through the park in our cars. Yes, that is correct. He chased me out of the park in his car. 2 - Told to keep quiet: The perpetrators need to operate with as little detection as possible, and they repeatedly warn their subjects to keep their mouths shut about their experiences. On another of my recent nightly walks, a man stood on the sidewalk ahead of me about half a block away, looked at me, and shouted into the sky at nobody, giving the appearance of being a homeless person shouting for no reason. He then started walking in my direction. I continued walking straight. As he passed me, he leaned into my face and shouted into my ear, "Shut the f_ck up!" I continued walking in my direction, and he resumed walking in his. The idea is to make it seem as though he is just a deranged man wandering the streets at night, shouting at nothing, so that when he shouts at me, any observer would simply dismiss his actions. But in reality, he was sent to send me a message to stop publishing posts like this, which I had done many times on many sites, and continue to. They don't like it when we reveal their methods. But the truth must be known. 3 - You'll be sorry: On another occasion, while returning from grocery shopping one afternoon, I walked past a man sitting by a storefront. He was clean-cut, wearing clean clothes, without any carts or wagons or any belongings of any kind. As I passed him, he asked me for some spare change. I replied, "I'm sorry," and continued walking past. He replied, "You will be." There are numerous other experiences, like two seemingly unassociated men standing on the sea wall about 100 meters away from each other, each of them spitting just as I walked past each one. There are too many experiences to mention. Looking at each experience individually, one would easily dismiss them as being unrelated and simply coincidental. But put them all together and a picture starts to form, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. As I hand you each piece of the puzzle one by one, you dismiss each piece, saying, "This could be anything." And you discard it. You keep discarding each piece as I hand it to you. By the end of it, you look down at the table and say, "You have nothing." That's because you looked at each piece as a separate item and threw it away. But if you leave the pieces on the table as I hand them to you and do not hastily discard them, you will see they form a clear picture when put all together. We must look at all these events as a whole. Individually, each one could be anything. But when all of these experiences are put together and considered as a whole, they form an undeniable picture. Do not be quick to dismiss each piece. Leave the pieces on the table and look at the whole. The picture I present is sound. Remember, I have all the pieces; you do not. I see the picture more clearly than you do. https://preview.redd.it/we31ymcsm91d1.jpg?width=966&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d56ac3dd3558a60d477ba9315104d1b66b139f8 |
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2024.05.19 00:57 honeypuppy Are Some Rationalists Dangerously Overconfident About AI?
AI has long been discussed in rationalist circles. There’s been a lot of focus on risks from artificial intelligence (particularly the idea that it might cause human extinction), but also the idea that artificial general intelligence might happen quite soon and subsequently transform society (e.g. supercharging economic growth in a technological singularity).
I’ve long found these arguments intriguing, and probably underrated by the public as a whole. I definitely don’t align myself with people like Steven Pinker who dismiss AI concerns entirely.
Nonetheless, I’ve noticed increasingly high confidence in beliefs of near-term transformative AI among rationalists. To be fair, it’s reasonable to update somewhat given recent advances like GPT-4. But among many, there is a belief that AI advances are the single most important thing happening right now. And among a minority, there are people with very extreme beliefs - such as quite high confidence that transformative AI is just a few years away, and/or that AI is very likely to kill us all.
My core arguments in this post are that firstly, from an “epistemic humility” or “outside view” perspective, we should be suspicious of confident views that the world is soon going to end (or change radically).
Secondly, the implications of the most radical views could cause people who hold them to inflict significant harm on themselves or others.
As a very prominent and very “doomy” rationalist, I worry that he may have convinced a fair number of people to share similar views, views which if taken seriously could hold its holders to feel depressed and/or make costly irrevocable decisions.
But though I think Yudkowsky deserves the most scrutiny, I don’t want to focus entirely on him.
Take Scott Alexander - he frames himself in the aforementioned link as “not as much of a doomer as some people”, yet gave a 33% probability (later adjusted downwards as a result of outside view considerations like those I raise in here) to “only” ~20%. While this leaves enough room for hope that it’s not as potentially dangerous a view as Yudkowsky’s, I agree with how the top Reddit comment in the original post said:
Other examples can be seen in (pseudo-)prediction markets popular with rationalists, such as Metaculus putting the median date of AGI at 2032, and Manifold Markets having a 17% chance of AI doom by 2100 (down from its peak of around 50% (!) in mid-2023).
But I think his case is increasingly weak the more radically immodest your views here. I’ll explain with the following analogy:
Suppose you were talking to someone who was highly confident in their new business idea. What is an appropriate use of a “modesty” argument cautioning against overconfidence?
A strong-form modesty argument would go something like “No new business idea could work, because if it could, someone would already have done it”. This is refuted by countless real-world examples, and I don’t think anyone actually believes in strong-form modesty.
A moderate-form modesty argument would go something like “Some new business ideas work, but most fail, even when their founders were quite confident in them. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you should think your chances of success in your new venture are similar to those of the reference class of aspiring entrepreneurs”.
The arguments against epistemic modesty in Inadequate Equilibria are mainly targeted against reasoning like this. And I think here there’s a case where we can have reasonable disagreement about the appropriate level of modesty. You may have some good reasons to believe that your idea is unusually good or that you are unusually likely to succeed as an entrepreneur. (Though a caveat: with too many degrees of freedom, I think you run the risk of leading yourself to whatever conclusion you like).
For the weak-form modesty argument, let’s further specify that your aspiring entrepreneur’s claim was “I’m over 90% confident that my business will make me the richest person in the world”.
To such a person, I would say: “Your claim is so incredibly unlikely a priori and so self-aggrandising that I feel comfortable in saying you’re overconfident without even needing to consider your arguments”.
That is basically what I feel about Eliezer Yudwosky and AI.
Let’s take a minute to consider what the implications are if Yudkowsky is correctly calibrated about his beliefs in AI. For a long time, he was one of the few people in the world to be seriously concerned about it, and even now, with many more people concerned about AI risk, he stands out as having some of the highest confidence in doom.
If he’s right, then he’s arguably the most important prophet in history. Countless people throughout history have tried forecasting boon or bust (and almost always been wrong). But on arguably the most important question in human history - when we will go extinct and why - Yudkowsky was among the very few people to see it and easily the most forceful.
Indeed, I’d say this is a much more immodest claim than claiming your business idea will make you the richest person in the world. The title of the richest person in the world has been shared by numerous people throughout history, but “the most accurate prophet of human extinction” is a title that can only ever be held by one person.
I think Scott Alexander’s essay Epistemic Learned Helplessness teaches a good lesson here. Argument convincingness isn’t necessarily strongly correlated with the truth of a claim. If someone gives you what appears to be a strong argument for something that appears crazy, you should nonetheless remain highly sceptical.
Yet I feel like Yudkowsky wants to appeal to “argument convincingness” because that’s what he’s good at. He has spent decades honing his skills arguing on the internet, and much less at acquiring traditional credentials and prestige. “Thinking on the object level” sounds like it’s about being serious and truth-seeking, but I think in practice it’s about privileging convincing-sounding arguments and being a good internet debater above all other evidence.
A further concern I have about “argument convincingness” for AI is that there’s almost certainly a large “motivation gap” in favour of the production of pro-AI-risk arguments compared to anti-AI-risk arguments, with the worriers spending considerably more time and effort than the detractors. As Philip Trammel points out in his post “But Have They Engaged with The Arguments?, this is true of almost any relatively fringe position. This can make the apparent balance of “argumentative evidence” misleading in those cases, with AI no exception.
Finally, Yudkowsky’s case for immodesty depends partly on alleging he has a good track record of applying immodesty to “beat the experts”. But his main examples (a lightbox experiment and the monetary policy of the Bank of Japan) I don’t find that impressive given he could cherry-pick. Here’s an article alleging that Yudkowsky’s predictions have frequently between egregiously wrong and here’s another arguing that his Bank of Japan position in particular didn’t ultimately pan out.
But I do still worry that the ability to contrast with super confident people like Yudkowsky lets the “not a total doomer” people off the hook a little too easily. I think it’s admirable that Scott Alexander seriously grappled with the fact that superforecasters disagreed with him and updated downwards based on that observation.
Still, let’s revisit the “aspiring entrepreneur” analogy - imagine they had instead said: “You know what, I’ve listened to your claims about modesty and agree that I’ve been overconfident. I now think there’s only a 20% chance that my business idea will make me the richest person in the world”.
Sure - they’ve moved in the right direction, but it’s easy to see that they’re still not doing modesty very well.
An anti-anti-AI risk argument Scott made (in MR Tries the Safe Uncertainly Fallacy) is that appealing to base rates leaves you vulnerable to “reference class tennis” where both sides can appeal to different reference classes, and the “only winning move is not to play”.
Yet in the case of our aspiring entrepreneur, I think the base rate argument of “extremely few people can become the richest person in the world” is very robust. If the entrepreneur tried to counter with “But I can come up with all sorts of other reference classes in which I come out more favourably! Reference class tennis! Engage with my object-level arguments!”, it would not be reasonable to throw up your hands and say “Well, I can’t come up with good counterarguments, so I guess you probably do have a 20% chance of becoming the richest person in the world then”.
I contend that “many people have predicted the end of the world and they’ve all been wrong” is another highly robust reference class. Yes, you can protest about “anthropic effects” or reasons why “this time is different”. And maybe the reasons why “this time is different” are indeed a lot better than usual. Still, I contend that you should start from a prior of overwhelming skepticism and only make small updates based on arguments you read. You should not go “I read these essays with convincing arguments about how we’re all going to die, I guess I just believe that now”.
I think this is good evidence for taking AI risk seriously. One important thing it does is raise AI risk out of the reference class of garden-variety doomsday predictions/crazy-sounding theories that have no expert backing.
However, I think it’s still only moderately good evidence.
Firstly, I think we should not consider it as an “expert consensus” nearly as strong as say, the expert consensus on climate change. There is nothing like an IPCC for AI, for example. This is not a mature, academically rigorous field. I don’t think we should update too strongly from AI experts spending a few minutes filling in a survey. (See for instance this comment about the survey, showing how non-robust the answers given are, indicating the responders aren’t thinking super hard about the questions).
Secondly, I believe forecasting AI risk is a multi-disciplinary skill. Consider for instance asking physicists to predict the chances of human extinction due to nuclear war in the 1930s. They would have an advantage in predicting nuclear capabilities, but after nuclear weapons were developed, the reasons we haven’t had a nuclear war yet have much more to do with international relations than nuclear physics.
And maybe AGI is so radically different from the AI that exists today that perhaps asking AI researchers now about AI risk might have been like asking 19th-century musket manufacturers about the risk from a hypothetical future “super weapon”.
I think an instructive analogy were the failed neo-Malthusian predictions of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Population Bomb or The Limits to Growth. Although I’m unable to find clear evidence of this, my impression is that these beliefs were quite mainstream among the most “obvious” expert class of biologists (The Population Bomb author Paul Ehlrich had a PhD in biology), and the primary critics tended to be in other fields like economics (most notably Julian Simon). Biologists had insights, but they also had blind spots. Any “expert survey” that only interviewed biologists would have missed crucial insights from other disciplines.
Well, suppose you were overconfident about Clinton. You probably didn’t do anything differently in your life, and the only real cost of your overconfidence was being unusually surprised on election day 2016. Even one of the people who was that confident in Clinton didn’t suffer any worse consequences than eating a bug on national television.
But take someone who is ~90% confident that AI will radically transform or destroy society (“singularity or extinction by 2040") and seriously acts like it.
Given that, it seems apparently reasonable to be much more short-term focused. You might choose to stop saving for retirement. You might forgo education on the basis that it will be obsolete soon. These are actions that some people have previously taken, are considering taking or are actually taking because of expectations of AI progress.
At a societal level, high confidence in short-term transformative AI implies that almost all non-AI related long-term planning that humanity does is probably a waste. The most notable example would be climate change. If AI either kills us or radically speeds up scientific and economic growth by the middle of the century, then it seems pretty stupid to be worrying about climate change. Indeed, we’re probably underconsuming fossil fuels that could be used to improve the lives of people right now.
At its worst, there is the possibility of AI-risk-motivated terrorism. Here’s a twitter thread from Emil Torres talking about this, noticeably this tweet in particular about minutes from an AI safety workshop “sending bombs” to OpenAI and DeepMind.
To be fair, I think it’s highly likely the people writing that were trolling. Still - if you’re a cold-blooded utilitarian bullet-biter with short timelines and high p(doom), I could easily see you rationalising such actions.
I want to be super careful about this - I don’t want to come across as claiming that terrorism is a particularly likely consequence of “AI dooming”, nor do I want to risk raising the probability of it by discussing it too much and planting the seed of it in someone’s head. But a community that takes small risks seriously should be cognizant of the possibility. This is a concern that I think anyone with a large audience and relatively extreme views (about AI or anything) should take into account.
Since then I feel there’s a little bit of a vibe shift away from the most extreme scenarios (as exhibited in the Manifold extinction markets), as well as me personally probably overestimating how many people ever believed in them. I’ve found it hard to try to properly articulate the message: “You’re probably directionally correct relative to society as a whole, but some unspecified number of you have probably gone too far”.
Nonetheless, my main takeaways are:
submitted by honeypuppy to slatestarcodex [link] [comments]
I’ve long found these arguments intriguing, and probably underrated by the public as a whole. I definitely don’t align myself with people like Steven Pinker who dismiss AI concerns entirely.
Nonetheless, I’ve noticed increasingly high confidence in beliefs of near-term transformative AI among rationalists. To be fair, it’s reasonable to update somewhat given recent advances like GPT-4. But among many, there is a belief that AI advances are the single most important thing happening right now. And among a minority, there are people with very extreme beliefs - such as quite high confidence that transformative AI is just a few years away, and/or that AI is very likely to kill us all.
My core arguments in this post are that firstly, from an “epistemic humility” or “outside view” perspective, we should be suspicious of confident views that the world is soon going to end (or change radically).
Secondly, the implications of the most radical views could cause people who hold them to inflict significant harm on themselves or others.
Who Believes In “AI Imminence”?
The single person I am most specifically critiquing is Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky appears unwilling to give specific probabilities but writings like “Death With Dignity” has caused many including Scott Alexander to characterise him as believing that AI has a >90% chance of causing human extinction)As a very prominent and very “doomy” rationalist, I worry that he may have convinced a fair number of people to share similar views, views which if taken seriously could hold its holders to feel depressed and/or make costly irrevocable decisions.
But though I think Yudkowsky deserves the most scrutiny, I don’t want to focus entirely on him.
Take Scott Alexander - he frames himself in the aforementioned link as “not as much of a doomer as some people”, yet gave a 33% probability (later adjusted downwards as a result of outside view considerations like those I raise in here) to “only” ~20%. While this leaves enough room for hope that it’s not as potentially dangerous a view as Yudkowsky’s, I agree with how the top Reddit comment in the original post said:
Is AI risk the only field where someone can write an article about how they’re not (much) of a doomer when they think that the risk of catastrophe/disasteextinction is 33%?Beyond merely AI risk, claims about “transformative AI” date back to ideas about the “intelligent explosion” or “singularity” that are most popularly associated with Ray Kurzweil. A modern representation of this is Tom Davidson of Open Philanthropy, who wrote a report on takeoff speeds.
Other examples can be seen in (pseudo-)prediction markets popular with rationalists, such as Metaculus putting the median date of AGI at 2032, and Manifold Markets having a 17% chance of AI doom by 2100 (down from its peak of around 50% (!) in mid-2023).
Why Am I Sceptical?
My primary case for (moderate) scepticism is not about the object-level arguments around AI, but appealing to the “outside view”. My main arguments are:- Superforecasters and financial markets are not giving high credence to transformative AI. Both groups have good track records, so we should strongly consider deferring to their views.
- The transformative AI argument is "fishy" (to borrow Will MacAskill’s argument against “The Most Important Century”). It implies that not only we are at an unusually pivotal time in history (perhaps the most important decade, let alone century), but that consequently, rationalists are perhaps the most important prophets in history. When your claims are that extraordinary, it seems much more likely that they're mistaken.
- The “inside view” arguments do not seem very robust to me. That is, they are highly speculative arguments that are primarily discussed among an insular group of people in usually relatively informal settings. I think you should be wary of any argument that emerges via this process, even if you can’t point to any specific way in which they are wrong.
Why I’m Against Highly Immodest Epistemology
However, maybe appealing to the “outside view” is incorrect? Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a book, Inadequate Equiibria, which in large part argued against what he saw as excessive use of the “outside view”. He advises:Try to spend most of your time thinking about the object level. If you’re spending more of your time thinking about your own reasoning ability and competence than you spend thinking about Japan’s interest rates and NGDP, or competing omega-6 vs. omega-3 metabolic pathways, you’re taking your eye off the ball.I think Yudkowsky makes a fair point about being excessively modest. If you are forever doubting your own reasoning to the extent that you think you should defer to the majority of Americans who are creationists, you’ve gone too far.
But I think his case is increasingly weak the more radically immodest your views here. I’ll explain with the following analogy:
Suppose you were talking to someone who was highly confident in their new business idea. What is an appropriate use of a “modesty” argument cautioning against overconfidence?
A strong-form modesty argument would go something like “No new business idea could work, because if it could, someone would already have done it”. This is refuted by countless real-world examples, and I don’t think anyone actually believes in strong-form modesty.
A moderate-form modesty argument would go something like “Some new business ideas work, but most fail, even when their founders were quite confident in them. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you should think your chances of success in your new venture are similar to those of the reference class of aspiring entrepreneurs”.
The arguments against epistemic modesty in Inadequate Equilibria are mainly targeted against reasoning like this. And I think here there’s a case where we can have reasonable disagreement about the appropriate level of modesty. You may have some good reasons to believe that your idea is unusually good or that you are unusually likely to succeed as an entrepreneur. (Though a caveat: with too many degrees of freedom, I think you run the risk of leading yourself to whatever conclusion you like).
For the weak-form modesty argument, let’s further specify that your aspiring entrepreneur’s claim was “I’m over 90% confident that my business will make me the richest person in the world”.
To such a person, I would say: “Your claim is so incredibly unlikely a priori and so self-aggrandising that I feel comfortable in saying you’re overconfident without even needing to consider your arguments”.
That is basically what I feel about Eliezer Yudwosky and AI.
Let’s take a minute to consider what the implications are if Yudkowsky is correctly calibrated about his beliefs in AI. For a long time, he was one of the few people in the world to be seriously concerned about it, and even now, with many more people concerned about AI risk, he stands out as having some of the highest confidence in doom.
If he’s right, then he’s arguably the most important prophet in history. Countless people throughout history have tried forecasting boon or bust (and almost always been wrong). But on arguably the most important question in human history - when we will go extinct and why - Yudkowsky was among the very few people to see it and easily the most forceful.
Indeed, I’d say this is a much more immodest claim than claiming your business idea will make you the richest person in the world. The title of the richest person in the world has been shared by numerous people throughout history, but “the most accurate prophet of human extinction” is a title that can only ever be held by one person.
I think Scott Alexander’s essay Epistemic Learned Helplessness teaches a good lesson here. Argument convincingness isn’t necessarily strongly correlated with the truth of a claim. If someone gives you what appears to be a strong argument for something that appears crazy, you should nonetheless remain highly sceptical.
Yet I feel like Yudkowsky wants to appeal to “argument convincingness” because that’s what he’s good at. He has spent decades honing his skills arguing on the internet, and much less at acquiring traditional credentials and prestige. “Thinking on the object level” sounds like it’s about being serious and truth-seeking, but I think in practice it’s about privileging convincing-sounding arguments and being a good internet debater above all other evidence.
A further concern I have about “argument convincingness” for AI is that there’s almost certainly a large “motivation gap” in favour of the production of pro-AI-risk arguments compared to anti-AI-risk arguments, with the worriers spending considerably more time and effort than the detractors. As Philip Trammel points out in his post “But Have They Engaged with The Arguments?, this is true of almost any relatively fringe position. This can make the apparent balance of “argumentative evidence” misleading in those cases, with AI no exception.
Finally, Yudkowsky’s case for immodesty depends partly on alleging he has a good track record of applying immodesty to “beat the experts”. But his main examples (a lightbox experiment and the monetary policy of the Bank of Japan) I don’t find that impressive given he could cherry-pick. Here’s an article alleging that Yudkowsky’s predictions have frequently between egregiously wrong and here’s another arguing that his Bank of Japan position in particular didn’t ultimately pan out.
Why I’m Also Sceptical of Moderately Immodest Epistemology
I think high-confidence predictions of doom (or utopia) are much more problematic than relatively moderate views - they are more likely to be wrong, and if taken seriously, more strongly imply that the believer should consider making radical, probably harmful life changes.But I do still worry that the ability to contrast with super confident people like Yudkowsky lets the “not a total doomer” people off the hook a little too easily. I think it’s admirable that Scott Alexander seriously grappled with the fact that superforecasters disagreed with him and updated downwards based on that observation.
Still, let’s revisit the “aspiring entrepreneur” analogy - imagine they had instead said: “You know what, I’ve listened to your claims about modesty and agree that I’ve been overconfident. I now think there’s only a 20% chance that my business idea will make me the richest person in the world”.
Sure - they’ve moved in the right direction, but it’s easy to see that they’re still not doing modesty very well.
An anti-anti-AI risk argument Scott made (in MR Tries the Safe Uncertainly Fallacy) is that appealing to base rates leaves you vulnerable to “reference class tennis” where both sides can appeal to different reference classes, and the “only winning move is not to play”.
Yet in the case of our aspiring entrepreneur, I think the base rate argument of “extremely few people can become the richest person in the world” is very robust. If the entrepreneur tried to counter with “But I can come up with all sorts of other reference classes in which I come out more favourably! Reference class tennis! Engage with my object-level arguments!”, it would not be reasonable to throw up your hands and say “Well, I can’t come up with good counterarguments, so I guess you probably do have a 20% chance of becoming the richest person in the world then”.
I contend that “many people have predicted the end of the world and they’ve all been wrong” is another highly robust reference class. Yes, you can protest about “anthropic effects” or reasons why “this time is different”. And maybe the reasons why “this time is different” are indeed a lot better than usual. Still, I contend that you should start from a prior of overwhelming skepticism and only make small updates based on arguments you read. You should not go “I read these essays with convincing arguments about how we’re all going to die, I guess I just believe that now”.
What Should We Make Of Surveys Of AI Experts?
Surveys done of AI experts, as well as opinions of well-regarded experts like Geoffrey Hinton and Stewart Russell, have shown significant concerns about AI risk (example).I think this is good evidence for taking AI risk seriously. One important thing it does is raise AI risk out of the reference class of garden-variety doomsday predictions/crazy-sounding theories that have no expert backing.
However, I think it’s still only moderately good evidence.
Firstly, I think we should not consider it as an “expert consensus” nearly as strong as say, the expert consensus on climate change. There is nothing like an IPCC for AI, for example. This is not a mature, academically rigorous field. I don’t think we should update too strongly from AI experts spending a few minutes filling in a survey. (See for instance this comment about the survey, showing how non-robust the answers given are, indicating the responders aren’t thinking super hard about the questions).
Secondly, I believe forecasting AI risk is a multi-disciplinary skill. Consider for instance asking physicists to predict the chances of human extinction due to nuclear war in the 1930s. They would have an advantage in predicting nuclear capabilities, but after nuclear weapons were developed, the reasons we haven’t had a nuclear war yet have much more to do with international relations than nuclear physics.
And maybe AGI is so radically different from the AI that exists today that perhaps asking AI researchers now about AI risk might have been like asking 19th-century musket manufacturers about the risk from a hypothetical future “super weapon”.
I think an instructive analogy were the failed neo-Malthusian predictions of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Population Bomb or The Limits to Growth. Although I’m unable to find clear evidence of this, my impression is that these beliefs were quite mainstream among the most “obvious” expert class of biologists (The Population Bomb author Paul Ehlrich had a PhD in biology), and the primary critics tended to be in other fields like economics (most notably Julian Simon). Biologists had insights, but they also had blind spots. Any “expert survey” that only interviewed biologists would have missed crucial insights from other disciplines.
What Are The Potential Consequences Of Overconfidence?
People have overconfident beliefs all the time. Some people erroneously thought Hillary Clinton was ~99% likely to win the 2016 Presidential election. Does it matter that much if they’re overconfident about AI?Well, suppose you were overconfident about Clinton. You probably didn’t do anything differently in your life, and the only real cost of your overconfidence was being unusually surprised on election day 2016. Even one of the people who was that confident in Clinton didn’t suffer any worse consequences than eating a bug on national television.
But take someone who is ~90% confident that AI will radically transform or destroy society (“singularity or extinction by 2040") and seriously acts like it.
Given that, it seems apparently reasonable to be much more short-term focused. You might choose to stop saving for retirement. You might forgo education on the basis that it will be obsolete soon. These are actions that some people have previously taken, are considering taking or are actually taking because of expectations of AI progress.
At a societal level, high confidence in short-term transformative AI implies that almost all non-AI related long-term planning that humanity does is probably a waste. The most notable example would be climate change. If AI either kills us or radically speeds up scientific and economic growth by the middle of the century, then it seems pretty stupid to be worrying about climate change. Indeed, we’re probably underconsuming fossil fuels that could be used to improve the lives of people right now.
At its worst, there is the possibility of AI-risk-motivated terrorism. Here’s a twitter thread from Emil Torres talking about this, noticeably this tweet in particular about minutes from an AI safety workshop “sending bombs” to OpenAI and DeepMind.
To be fair, I think it’s highly likely the people writing that were trolling. Still - if you’re a cold-blooded utilitarian bullet-biter with short timelines and high p(doom), I could easily see you rationalising such actions.
I want to be super careful about this - I don’t want to come across as claiming that terrorism is a particularly likely consequence of “AI dooming”, nor do I want to risk raising the probability of it by discussing it too much and planting the seed of it in someone’s head. But a community that takes small risks seriously should be cognizant of the possibility. This is a concern that I think anyone with a large audience and relatively extreme views (about AI or anything) should take into account.
Conclusion
This post has been kicking around in draft form since around the release of GPT-4 a year ago. At that time, there were a lot of breathless takes on Twitter about how AGI was just around the corner, Yudkowsy was appearing on a lot of podcasts saying we were all going to die, and I started to feel like lots of people had gone a bit far off on the deep end.Since then I feel there’s a little bit of a vibe shift away from the most extreme scenarios (as exhibited in the Manifold extinction markets), as well as me personally probably overestimating how many people ever believed in them. I’ve found it hard to try to properly articulate the message: “You’re probably directionally correct relative to society as a whole, but some unspecified number of you have probably gone too far”.
Nonetheless, my main takeaways are:
- Eliezer Yudkowsky (these days) is probably causing harm, and people with moderate concerns about AI should distance themselves from him. Espousing views that we are all likely to die from AI should not be tolerated as a merely strong opinion, but as something that can cause meaningful harm to people who believe it. I feel this might actually be happening to some degree (I think it’s notable that e.g. the 80,000 Hours podcast has never interviewed him, despite interviewing plenty of other AI-risk-concerned people). But I would like to see more of a “Sister Souljah moment” where e.g. a prominent EA thought leader explicitly disavows him.
- Yudkowsky being the worst offender doesn't let everyone else off the hook. For instance, I think Scott Alexander is much better at taking modesty seriously, yet I don't think he takes it seriously enough.
- We should be generally suspicious of arguments for crazy-sounding things. I have not only become more suspicious of arguments about AI, but also other arguments relatively popular in rationalist or EA circles, but not so much outside it (think certain types of utilitarian arguments that imply that e.g. maybe insect welfare or the long-term future outweighs everything else). I appreciate that they might say something worth considering, and perhaps weak-form versions of them could be reasonable. But the heuristic of “You probably haven’t found the single most important thing ever” is something I think should be given more weight.