Category: Uncategorized

We needed the rain.

I said the difference between emotional and logical arguments is consistency. Let me change that to ‘a difference…’ Also different are the validities of the Appeal to Authority and Ad-Hominem Attacks. In logical arguments, they’re not. In emotional arguments, they are.

An example is whether or not I care about whining. A relative of mine has had a problem. I care about this relative and their complaints were sound, so I cared about their complaints and problem. But I just read a news story of someone complaining about equally valid points, but the person in question struck me as an inveterate whiner. No matter what, they’d be whining about something, so I didn’t really care about what they were whining about now.

Logically, that distinction is meaningless. A logical issue has nothing to do with how many other issues an arguer brings up.

Emotionally, I’ve only got a certain amount of mental energy to care, and once that’s used up, I don’t.

The key distinction here is whether the argument is devoted to the points being sound vs whether I do/should care. Both points were sound (logical) but I cared about the one, not the other (emotional). The logical arguments were effectively won, but I think the news-story arguer was making an implicit argument that something should be done about the issue in the story. Nah. Maybe someone else will.

My project executed. I have a v0.1.

My laptop sounds like a jet engine at full throttle on boot.

I should get a watch.

Male character who just did something stupid for a pretty girl: “I bet girls never make that mistake. Women never do anything stupid for handsome men.”

The joke here is that of course they do. Nigh everyone has. The male character is thinking something wrong.

But I wrote the joke! I know it’s wrong, because I wrote it!

Book discussions often treat authors as, by definition, the sum of their character’s perceptions and opinions. But it’s probably more often the author is the counter-party to their character’s opinions. Especially if the opinion is about to induce some plot.

W.Dafoe was great in the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

There’s a homeless guy who’s fairly regular in my neighborhood. He obviously has serious mental issues and probably substance abuse problems. He won’t take help and won’t go to shelters.

In a thousand years, there will be solutions and things we can do. But for now, other than basic politeness, there’s not much. If there is, I don’t know it.

He does some things, nudity and harassment, so on and so forth, that are possibly disconnected from malice. I don’t think the guy knows what he’s doing. But do you want someone exposing himself even if he’s not doing it out of malice? What do you do?

This is why people talk about thoughts and prayers.

This came up again. I also saw a great set of notes regarding Monty Hall, specifically that he has discretion, but I’m ignoring that. We’re going to pretend Monty Hall is perfectly honest and without discretion. He always opens a door to a goat

After some thinking about it, a better way to go is parse events by inputs and outcomes. For this purpose, I will rename the problem car, red goat, blue goat.

At the beginning, when you pick a door, you will get either a car, a red goat, or a blue goat.

Blue Goat
1/3 of the time, the blue goat will be behind the door you initially pick.

Monty Hall opens a door to the red goat. (remember, he has no discretion)

The other door has the car.

Thus in the blue goat scenario, you should always switch doors. Put another way, 1/3 of the time switching doors is correct. (Chance of a scenario occuring) times (possible outcomes of that scenario) so 1/3 chance switching is correct.

Red Goat
1/3 of the time, the red goat will be behind the door you initially pick. This scenario is largely identical to blue-goat above.

Monty Hall opens a door to the blue goat. (no discretion)

The other door has the car.

In the red goat scenario, you should always switch doors. Identically to above, an additional 1/3 of the time switching doors is correct.

This is identical to the blue goat scenario, so you can add these probabilities. Now we have 2/3 of the time, the contestant should switch doors.

Car

1/3 of the time, the car will be behind the door you initially pick.

Monty Hall opens a door to a goat.

Which door doesn’t matter, nor does which goat, because you already picked the car. In this situation, you should not switch; you should keep you initial guess.

By the same math, 1/3 of the time, you should not switch doors.

Total

Sanity check: Do these odds add to 1? Yes. 1/3 Blue Goat + 1/3 Red Goat + 1/3 Car = 1

Total probability is 1.

2/3 of the time, switching is correct.
1/3 of the time, switching is not correct.

It’s not a 50/50. Switching increases your odds of getting a car.

Again, assuming honest Monty, no discretion, you want the car more than the goat, etc.

I’m GMing a pandemic RPG over Discord. It’s for a bunch of friends.

Due to some bad rolling, the PCs are about to fight a boss they were never meant to fight. I gave them the ‘It’s just a game’ speech and 10xp.

It’s Gurps. 10xp is two and a half sessions.

I may boatkill the group next week.

Edit: Imagine the player group is walking a bridge over a shark pit, and they roll to stay balanced.

Critical fail.

Roll to fight sharks.

Like, is it the shark’s fault when snacks fall into their living room?