Intellectual Slaking w/
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- Опубліковано 23 кві 2024
- Slake is such a dope word. It sounds so intense. This game gives us such an endless stream of things to talk about. We hit the lower ward and the clerks ward here. Don't forget, the world is founded on belief. Use it well!
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Hey Mike, sorry to hear you've had such a rough time lately, times like that are awful to go through. Please try and take solace in the fact that while you are not as evil as the person/people who were the genesis of that feeling, you still took it as an opportunity to reflect on your own life and better yourself through this horrible experience. That is the mark of a truly good person, none of us are perfect, but those who seek to reflect and improve always, are the best among humanity
The conversation about the Deionarra sensory stone was absolutely wonderful. Experiencing Deionarra's unconditional love, TNO's incarnation's absolute vile manipulations, and TNO's emotional response gave me such a profound experience that I remember after I was done with the sensory stone feeling scared about the potential of committing such an act to any of my close friends/family. Its one of my favorite pieces of written fiction ever.
I truly think a manipulation/betrayal of trust is one of the worst acts a human can commit on an emotional level, and like Mike mentioned, you might not realize you've done it.
Some random thoughts on the episode:
From what I've heard, the actual result of the original research by Dunning and Kruger is that everyone thinks they're about averagely competent (or significantly closer to average than they actually are). That's a lot less memetic than the popular version - that people with no experience think they're experts - not least because it sounds a lot less surprising.
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In terms of figuring out what you can know, and what you should believe, there is no reliable foundation to build off of - you can prove that you exist by observing that you question your own existence, but not anything about the nature of that existence.
But what you can do is to do science - to adopt beliefs experimentally, and see how well they stand up to everyday life.
Practically everyone adopts what I call the "pragmatic assumption", which is threefold: that there is an objective reality that I interact with (something that continues to exist even when I disbelieve in it); that my sensory perceptions are fairly reliably correlated with that objective reality; and that there are other beings that share that reality. From those assumptions, you can build enough to live daily life - a belief in the existence and generally accepted functions and utility of computers and food and beds.
Beyond that, I don't have anything particularly solid to offer - I believe that if you endure long enough, things get better, that the cosmos is not inherently malevolent, and that people are mostly decent. I don't claim to believe in God, but I do still address prayers in that general direction, but only when it's something I think a good person would pray for. I believe that I have the ability to make meaningful choices, even if someone who knows me well enough could predict them.
The note I took for this point was "No guaranteed foundation, but you can try standing on something and see how badly it wobbles". Maybe something there helps someone.
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The concept of three wishes, where something goes wrong as a result of the wishes, has been around for a long time. There's an old joke, which I don't remember well enough to tell properly, and am too lazy to patch up:
A man finds himself confronted with a genie, who explains he has one wish because he used his second wish to make it so the first never happened (thereby removing his own memory of it too). The man thinks for a bit and wishes for something, and the genie remarks, before disappearing "That's funny. That's what you wished for the first time."
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On the closing question, I would say that The Nameless One is not responsible for his past selves' actions - he is a different personality than the one that took those actions, and has no way to affect them - but he can choose to honour their commitments and may inherit a duty to correct past wrongs. The obvious analogy is parent and child - the child is not responsible for things their parent did before they were even born, but they can inherit their parent's debts and obligations along with the rest of their legacy.
TNO can choose to take on any or all of the various responsibilities and benefits coming from his former selves' actions, and he can make commitments on behalf of future selves - but they aren't necessarily bound by those promises either.
We all wrestle with these assumptions we call our fundamental beliefs. Like Casen said, sometimes you just pick a side to stand on and declare "this is good enough for now"
Agreed. From a scientific standpoint, you have to work from the best understanding you have, knowing full well that it will almost certainly be improved upon or changed entirely. If you don't, you won't be able to make the discoveries that advance our understanding.
Amazing discussion. I'm smart enough to know that I'll never be as smart as I need to be, and anyone who speaks with absolute certainty needs the most scrutiny.
Loves me some Alan Watts too.
Can’t believe this game is gonna be 25 years old
I can whenever I get a look at the visuals. People over-exaggerate how "badly" FFVII's graphics have grown over time, but Planescape Torment looks like pure dog barf. Which is a shame because I'm enjoying the writing of the game a lot.
Ff7 looked bad when it came out to be honest. So blocky were their fists
@@Y-two-K Bollocks. It doesn't look that bad at all. It's fine.
@1:20:00 in regards to the 3 wishes story, the way Mike probably inferred that it was the nameless one is because you can get your companions to share stories and in that case it was Morte's story, probably retelling something that happened to TNO.
Can’t believe the final fantasy order video got taken down. That was a classic of UA-cam.
I think most people (myself somewhat included) flock to the Bleak Cabal not only in part for their philosophy but also the things they do in lore, things like providing aid to the downtrodden, running orphanages, soup kitchens, things of that nature. In that regard I don't feel all that aligned with their belief system but I do find common ground with their actions. I don't see myself running with the Mercy Killers, Xaositecs or even the Sensates, but the Bleak Cabal is definitely more compelling (at least for me)
Can I just say that Maxderrat is a joy to have on the show? Thank you for sharing this experience with him, and with us.
I’ve played every kind of game, from first person shooter, to 100 hour rpg. Very very few moments in any of those games or stories have I felt so completely broken and so mournful as I had felt reading Deonarra’s Longing sensory stone.
Planescape Torment should be remade in the BG3 Engine with full voice acting.
No chance.
And that's probably for the better, anyway.
Planescape - yes, but Planescape Torment would be too much too handle
But to see places like Sigil, other planes of existence, would be great
Theme from PS T is just Top notch, and voice acting would be very hard, just too much text
@@pryca4047 not with AI voices it's not.
Wow, I can't believe Max Derrat looks exactly like his channel picture!
Watts was a major cause for me going down a Daoist path with my beliefs. Love listening to his lectures.
Mike, regarding your thoughts on not being able to describe the psychedelic experience once your ego prism returns reminds me of two relevant things:
Taoism: The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The Named is the mother of all things.
And a Beatles song from their psychedelic era, I Want to Tell You which was about the same thing:
“I want to tell you
My head is filled with things to say
When you're here
All those words, they seem to slip away
When I get near you
The games begin to drag me down
It's all right
I'll make you maybe next time around
But if I seem to act unkind
It's not me, it's just my mind
That is confusing things
Speaking of the no conflict in life thing and related to immortality, in Umineko there are also characters that are so-called voyager witches who are essentially eternal and spend their whole time trying to stave off boredom. Boredom for them is the worst thing imaginable. That's why they love to watch stories unfold and watch people struggle and suffer, which on a meta-level are each of the chapters in Umineko, which they are watching from a sort of removed perspective. It is very interesting and a great story dynamic. You guys need to check it out.
Baatezu and Taanari were originally called Devils and Demons in D&D but then the Satanic Panic happened and TSR tried to rebrand some monsters to make it more family friendly.
The changes ended up expanding upon D&D lore in interesting ways, so I won't complain too hard.
I think part of the reason the differing philosophies HAVE to be extreme and unpalatable is because reasonable people tend to eschew conflict -- and are therefore too boring to be interesting enough for stories. No one tells the stories of their reasonable friends doing something reasonable with other reasonable people because no one remembers or cares enough.
Mike you are so precipice of wisdom. We need strong convictions loosely held. You cannot be a person of action without convictions. Find them, move forward, and humbly adjust as necessary.
Love Alan Watts. Love this podcast! It's such a joy to see some of my favorite youtubers come together and have a longform discussion on this stuff. Speaking of Devil May Cry If you ever get the chance to have TheGamingMuse on the podcast thatd be another dream come true. They've proven that even DMC the wacky woohoo pizza man game even has depth.
This game is massive. Just yesterday I managed to reach the brothel and recruit FFG. Granted I spent A LOT of time on the lower ward quests and talking with Da'kon and Annah for lore purposes.
I think I speak for most of us when I say "Your awesome, Mike!"
I gotta say I really like that you moved the recap to the beginning and then the rest of the video is focused on the analysis. Since you both finished the game already, you won’t miss any crucial details but now there’s less recap and less speculation of what will happen next. It’s a lot more focused.
Hey you three. Thank you for this work on this series and I hope you all are blessed with a myriad of children.
I somewhat disagree with what Casen was saying about there being no motivation to do anything as an immortal. I think if there really were immortal beings, "young" immortals would indeed have periods of profound lethargy, but immortals still live in a finite universe. Others will still die, experiences still only exist in the moment and are forever lost to you. I think its very possible that on a long enough timeline, the immortal could very well end up like The Doctor from Doctor Who as he once said, "I do not run FROM things. I run TOWARD them before they flare and die forever." To behold, and perhaps even touch, the finite becomes itself the motivation even if you possess within yourself the infinite.
"immortals still live in a finite universe" Very very interesting. I like your take
@@CasenSperry Thanks, man. Appreciate what you and Mike do.
Good stuff on this episode. I especially enjoyed the tangents on entropy and the moment of reflection that you got from the Deionarra scene.
I definitely agree that the Practical Incarnation was the most heinous of the bunch. Avellone did masterful writing when he deftly weaved in and out of perspectives-current Nameless One’s, Practical Incarnation’s, Deionarra’s-in the scene. I believe even a “Chaotic Evil” Nameless One tears up in this scene, a testament to how diabolical the Practical One was.
Love all the questions that you raised up. This is really the Western equivalent to something like Cloud’s and Fei’s integration in FFVII and Xenogears respectively. Are they the same person? If they are, on what grounds? If not, why not? Can you integrate something that is not “you”?
Bearing in mind that the Nameless One’s story is intended to be some sort of roleplayer’s experiment, the player is at that point engaging in deep rewriting-to determine the Nameless One, and beyond that, who he wants to be.
thanks for another great episode, i cannot wait for yall to get your desk setup back the close camera feels so claustrophobic, im sure yall are ready too
Nice surprise !
Hey guys, thanks for the Fallout engine correction. Not sure who told you about that, but I did I asked Tim Cain in one of his video's comment section about that after you said that in Episode 1, and he confirmed that indeed the Fallout engine was an engine he made himself from scratch in C, back when he was working for Interplay, not the Infinity engine. No problem getting one or two things wrong sometimes, love your podcast.
I can relate so much to Mike right now.
Same.
I do feel that quite often these difficult choices feel incredibly artificial and that's why I bounce off quite a few games that feature them. If this was an actual tabletop RPG I'd definitely dig in my heels and look for other solutions until the DM was tearing their hair out!
Mike might really benefit from a okayish movie with a good message. Bickford Smeckler’s Cool Ideas was a movie about an intellectual who wrote a book about ideas so profound it gives people intellectual orgasms. And it was released to the world before he felt it was complete. Near the end of the movie, the love interest tells him he’s full of it, and he realizes regardless of how smart he is, it’s just an idea. Don’t lose the trees for the forest and so on.
Another thing I’m glad Casen confirmed with his conversation with Max was that they were doing Xenosaga 2/3. It might do Mike some good considering Monolith likes writing about characters healing from their fatal flaws. Both games are heavily flawed but the Xeno games have something that, in my opinion, Final Fantasy lost when it became a series obsessed with killing God.
37:37 the mike says a line word for word from the leftover. I wish they would talk about that show sometime.
Maxderrat really has to get his audio issues worked out
Speaking of murder mysteries (1:27:23), pleeease play Umineko for the podcast guysss
I think in terms of the conversation Mike was talking about with his mom and the conversation in this episode that emerged out of that, about assumptions and truths, perceptions and shifting/changing knowledge that changes with new evidence, new experiences, new epiphanies, etc (and even the foundation of modern Rational Philosophy, which you can pretty much pin on Descartes even if it was better developed by thinkers after him, literally came to him in a mystical vision that he felt was coming even before he went to sleep that night, a very irrational/unrational wellspring for the eureka moments of modern rational thought, very much Everything Found In Their Opposites To Some Degree type stuff but I digress), I maintain a pretty strong epistemological nihilism and even meta-epistemological nihilism in my own life, but not an edgelord blackpilled doomerism type of nihilism but an active, joyful nihilism. This might be a bit of an extensive rant but bear with me!
I would argue the same thing re: ethics (and meta-ethics) and ontology (and meta-ontology), where I maintain a strong nihilist position there but I think the implications of that are not some "do whatever and fetch everyone else over who cares" type of thing, which I think is kind of an emotional toddler understanding of nihilist positions there. Active, joyful nihilism for me is about embracing the ways in which all is in a constant state of Becoming, of flux and flow rather than static Being, and that it is fundamentally ungraspable for us even if we can in certain moments grasp fragments of a snapshot of that flux and flow, and thereby sort of piece together some kind of cartoonish approximation...but at the end of the say, the functional result of that is that we live in a universe where there either isn't meaning at all or it's impossible to know with any amount of certainty.
We're all in a universe whose implications terrified Lovecraft so much he invented cosmic horror with his weird fiction venting of those fears and terrors about those implications...but I think those same things are wondrous and evoke a lot of joy in me and, very importantly for the intersection of a nihilist ethics and a nihilist ontology, if that's what reality is for all of us, it makes bridging that infinite void between your mind and the unknowable mind of any given Other a task with a lot of beauty in it. That's ethics to me, that the act of reaching across that infinity towards each other is impossible is actually what makes it worthwhile. Things captured in possibility can quickly become boring, but an impossibility? That's awe-inspiring, beautiful, always fresh and new! To know that we're all in this universe together on this little rock floating in space that's not going to be habitable in a few billion years, and that we're all only here together for a maximum of 120ish years (if you and someone you know are both RIDICULOUSLY long-lived and roughly the same age), that engenders a lot of compassion in me for everyone in the same position as me, but coming at it from their own unique perspective that might bring less or maybe MORE suffering down on them as they peel back the layers of the onion that is living as a mostly hairless ape in this weird meaningless (or meaning-truth-inaccessible) universe. It could be very lonely, very crushing, very hard...without connection! Without care, compassion, empathy, extending of understanding, not EVEN across infinite unbridgeable gaps but ESPECIALLY across infinite unbridgeable gaps to the unknowable mind of the Other...this would be a hard place to exist in! It can be hard even WITH care and compassion and people who love you and who you love.
But to me, all of that is beautiful. I think the fact there is no soul or will or intent(ionality) or mind or self that can't be HOTLY contested if not utterly undercut by certain philosophical arguments and neuroscientific facts is beautiful too, there's nothing frightening about there being nothing but three pounds of meat in my bone cockpit behind my eyes or anyone else's. To me, that makes the "self" a piece of performance art! An aesthetic act of creation, something that some people invest so much of themselves into it becomes art in the sense we've sort of lost in the modern era (like, for example, how so many medieval and Renaissance artworks and sculpture in art galleries and museums remove them from their context, where they previously had been acts of reverence and worship, not conceived of as art so much as faith) where there is True Belief in the self or the mind or whatever you wanna call it, art that is so beautiful in part BECAUSE of how charged it can be with meaning and belief that has retreated from so many conceptual and cognitive and social fronts in the modern world...but it can also be done like modern art for those of us who don't believe in it!
It's like how the Buddha said there neither is a self, nor is there not a self, which is just encapsulating his insight that if the self is an illusion and an attachment that leads to suffering, neither is it something which has no impact on how we live our lives! It doesn't exist, but it also has real concrete impacts on the majority of human lives if not every human life. To me, the Buddha's solution to cease grasping for that attachment to that illusion is just one solution, I think it's CLAY and can be shaped and formed by us (intentionally or, as with most people I feel, unintentionally but again the True Belief in that makes for beautiful aesthetic self-creation in its own way) and idk I think at the end of the day, people get so enervated and exhausted and demotivated by nihilism or nihilistic conclusions in philosophical areas, whether epistemology or ethics or ontology or whatever the case may be, but for me? I think the implications are an infinitely unfolding flower of aesthetic perspectives and orientations, of aesthetic acts and actions, of opportunities for both connection and solitude being generative of so many outcomes that are always in flux and able to be intervened in and shaped and flowed through. It gives me so much appreciation for people who REFUSE to take nihilist stances in different philosophical areas, who take up one philosophy of affirmation or another over my own philosophy of negation, and it makes me DELIGHT in those stances as aesthetically beautiful each in their own ways even where I disagree.
PART 2/2
The dour, depressive nihilist, to me, misunderstands the implications of their own philosophy. There is genuine joy to be found there, and in my own life I am very active and not at all passive! I take the effacing of all norms and values and so on very seriously, I commit crimes where I think the law is unjust or simply not something I personally agree with, I do what feels the best for me and the people I love and who love me, and commit my heart to farflung causes around the world, in particular of human liberation, because I delight in what liberated humans are able to achieve and despise what keeps people immiserated or in chains or under oppression anywhere as stamping out that potential for beautiful self-creation in us all, I am right now in the process of building my own home with my own hands in the wilderness, I have tons of motivation in my life and it SPRINGS FROM my utter nihilism when it comes to truth and knowledge and how we obtain and assess it, and my utter nihilism when it comes to Being and Existence, and my utter nihilism when it comes to moral and ethical precepts being fundamentally true on any level, and etc, and etc.
I had to build it all myself, shape the clay into what that capital letter "I" even signifies, for "me" or for anyone else, and that process has shaped me into the person I am today, and who I am today will be dust to whatever new form this clay takes in a decade just as whoever this clay was a decade ago is as dust to me now. The flux and flow of Becoming is all we ever are, from the first Hydrogen atoms that were all there were in the very first yoctoseconds of the universe to all of the various elements those atoms eventually transformed into as electrons swapped around nuclei until eventually some of them became carbon and then carbon-based lifeforms on this planet and then us. Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, merely transformed, and we are evolutions of those Hydrogen atoms from the first moments of the universe, and those atoms will continue to transform until the eventual death of this universe. That flux and flow is on immense timescales inconceivable to us, and it is on the timescale of an afternoon of good conversation or reading a good book, transforming the meat in your skull. Either way, it's all as beautiful as a sunset, as a configuration of clouds gently moving and transforming across the sky, as the shafts of light in a wooded meadow shifting over the flowers and grasses if you deign to stay in it for hours. We can engage with that beauty without anything meaning a damn thing, and we can even INVEST things with meaning if we really want to!
Anyway, the tl;dr is...don't lose heart, Mike. There are ten thousand ways to approach even a single thought, much less the complex array of thoughts that can make up even a fraction of a personal philosophy, and there are as many personal philosophies as there have been individual hominini on this planet most likely, not even just homo sapiens sapiens individuals. It's all a big, beautiful example of difference and repetition intertwining and overlapping and diverging but ultimately being one big noosphere of human thought from birth to death of our species and your small part in it is as beautiful a gem as anyone else's, and the ability or inability to suss out fundamental truths, of what assumptions feel valid or are assessed as valid to rely on, whether they change with time or stay stable...when you get down to it, there's different thresholds and different orientations towards it all. That's not something to despair at or feel inadequate in the face of, that's something beautiful! It can be frustrating in small moments of it, but don't hyperfixate on those, as they're just one part of that flux and flow throughout your life.
I ain’t reading this but I’m glad you feel passion
I like leaving comments. It helps me justify my suffering.
Useless fact: "Slaking" is also the name of a Pokémon.
:3
...Great conversation, guys.
How is 1 + 1 = 2 an asumption? Am I missing something?
As any good computer knows, 1+1=10.
More seriously, one plus one does equal two, but only in a way that follows directly from the definitions of "one", "two", "plus" and "equal". One plus one equals two because that's what "two" means.
No serious mathematician really believes that arithmetic isn't reliably true, but it has been proven that it's impossible to prove that arithmetic is reliable - that it can't prove falsehoods - unless you use a system more complicated than arithmetic to construct the proof - in which case you can't prove that that system is reliable (unless you use a more complicated system for that proof, and so on...). So there's always the possibility that one plus one also equals three (and if you can prove any contradiction, you can then prove absolutely anything you want, regardless of whether or not it's true).
So any mathematics is always done with that unstated assumption: "assuming mathematics is consistent" (with "consistent" being the jargon for it not being possible to prove two contradictory things to both be true).
What happened to the Final Fantasy reviews?
He's been working on the full redo of the retrospectives. It takes a ton of writing, research, and interviews. Mike has a full time job outside of youtube. He makes time when he can.
A lot happened around FF16 time (I'm sure they were planning things before that but that's when I noticed a change). But everything since has been great 👌
They talk about this in the podcast. They have a good podcast. FF7 is my favorite old game
@@LS1HighwindMost likely life and work. Also, there is such a thing as franchise fatigue.
Maybe it’s something as simple as just needing a break from FF? I don’t know; I’m not Mike or Casen. Just guessing.
@@ejpaladin for sure
Both of you need to take a second look at Lost, your assessment of it was way off! lol
The difference between assuming god is real and assuming the current science of a thing is correct, is that the science had to be demonstrated to get where they are. The assumptions of science are based on evidence and science never assumes anything that is not known to be possible. We don’t know that God exists at all, so how can we assume that is correct? We don’t even know that that is a possible explanation. Comparing science and faith is absurd and not how you find out what you believe is true.
"We don’t know that God exists at all" That's entirely a matter of definition. If the big bang is correct, then science and causality itself lead us to reasonably posit a cause for the universe. Like Einstein said, 'nothing happens until something moves.' This 'cause' being 'good', as I pointed out, IS something that must be assumed. But, as you brought up using the scientific method to prove assumptions, I wonder what can happen in someone's life if they operate on the assumption that the cause of the entire universe is fundamentally good?
Michio Kalu and Neil Degrass Tyson are great.
Neil has gone down the crazy train
@@omensoffate I mean he isn't really someone I'd heard a lot about from my perspective as someone in the UK but I can't help but get a similar impression.
Michio Kaku is a pop physicist. I would take anything he says with a grain of salt.
I thought the same thing when they mentioned him. Sean Carroll has become my go-to source for physics. He'll explain competing theories, what works and what doesn't about each, and where he comes down in the end. Much more informative and less prescriptive at the end of the day.
Waiting for you uguys to cover Disco Elysium, amazing game, incredible story and writing.
I disagree with the conflict take.
You do need to stave off boredom but conflict is a cheap trick not an optimal solution.
That depends on how you are defining conflict. If it seems as if we are using it strictly in the combative sense, let me clarify that that is not the case. We're not using the term conflict strictly as , "A state of open, often prolonged fighting; a battle or war," or even , "state of disagreement or disharmony between persons or ideas; a clash." We're using the term in more like, "An emotional or mental disturbance resulting from the opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, or tendencies."