One thing I don't get about friends-only LJ's is that most of them have a post saying 'comment here and I'll probably add you'. Isn't that a bit crazy when you think about it? For a few reasons:

a) how are people going to know whether they want to be your LJ friend or not if they don't know what your entries are like? really, what kind of person just says 'friend me!' just based on a user-bio or something? and are they the type of people you want to be LJ friends with?

b) if the point of a friends-only LJ is to keep your entries hidden from the world, aren't they're less hidden if random people who ask to friend you are allowed to see them? wouldn't secrecy be better or at least equally served by keeping particularly sensitive entries friends-only rather than all of them?

I don't have anyone who has a friends-only LJ on my friends list (and I don't think I ever will, due to my hatred of secrecy) so I'm probably just asking questions to the sky. I think the idea of friends-only entries is a great idea, I just think it's a weird custom to make every single entry except one friends-only.

I remember thinking that I feel that my entries have become less personal since I started LJ, and that this is a trend for most LJ's. People start out with well-thought out, thoughtful entries like the kind you can find in arque (also known as the best LJ on LJ), and gradually descend into more plain stuff, like links to Raining McCain videos. Which I used to interpret as a bad thing, but now I'm not so sure.

For awhile I thought it was just habit that led to this, but now I think that it may be more likely that gradually someone covers every topic, thinks things through enough that they no longer need to. Kind of like the basic questions of life and what one believes become resolved more or less, making way for applying them to individual situations. Periodically you may need to think something through in the old level of detail, but for the most part you already did it.

It's strange to remember how arbitrarily I met most of the people I know on LJ, and how chancey it was, how easily I could have never met them. Some of them made sense (such as friends-of-friends or similar LJ communities -- I met miyu_sakura and newedition through Objectivism communities for instance) but others are just totally random and arbitrary.

I think I met wynand because of his strange comments in ishalltriumph's LJ. Now we've made a game together and are working on another and have met each other in a few of his writing group meetings. But why did I even notice his comments there? Maybe it was his strange avatar, which was a picture of him with a turtleneck like shirt pulled up over most of his face, just under his eyes, which made me check out his LJ.

harlockhero and I, years ago, were using the "view random livejournal" button in search of anyone who wasn't boring, and one of the ones we came across was ubermensch. Eventually we'd have hundreds of IM discussions and go to a Skinny Puppy concert, and he let me use his book Raberata (which he sent me a free copy of) for the background universe/setting for one of my games. Yet it was all through a random number generator.

Strangest are those that I don't remember how I met. I don't remember how I found womanonfire's LJ at all for instance.

And even outside of LJ, a lot of my best online friends I met through the Ohrrpgce game engine community, between 1998 and 2002. But I could easily have chosen some other game engine (perhaps the horrible RPG Maker, or whatever) instead, and would have a completely different set of long-term friends. It'd be strange never having met komera or harlockhero or konami or moogle1 or jsangspar or orchard_l or longetech or charbile or fyrewulff or arque or dgowers or eternalhachi or novakaiser or specplosive, considering how much of my experience is related to doing things with them and talking to them.

Year end entry time.

Things I did this year that I liked:
- Made and released Immortal Defense in the first six months, sold 186 187 copies during the next six months, it won independent strategy game of the year on GameTunnel, and most importantly received lots of fan-mail and positive feedback from people who liked it.
- Marginally helped with the Ron Paul campaign through various means such as donations and putting up posters and the like, as well as paying bastardzero to make a few YouTube ads for him (like this one).
- Met Wynand in real life in NYC, met Greg Costikyan and his family once for dinner, met Peter S. Beagle at a picnic.
- New online friends I met this year who are pretty great: Patrick Dugan, Tim W, EB.
- Became an editor on Tim's Indygamer blog and posted a dozen or so reviews and interviews in it.
- Realized I was lactose intolerant and cut out most dairy products from my diet; I probably will cut them out completely soon (except for yogurt occasionally).
- Got much better at Starcraft, but I'm still only about average.
- Wrote the first part of a series on the history of the OHRRPGCE although I didn't finish any other part but the first.
- Managed to obtain a 70 pound 21" CRT monitor for only $100, which is wonderful, they don't make them like this anymore, literally.

Things I did or didn't do that I didn't like:
- Repeatedly failed to meet my own deadlines to make and finish the level editor for Immortal Defense.
- Went long periods without taking vitamins, exercising, or doing anything productive other than internet/information addiction and depression-like lying in bed doing nothing, and was generally lazy for the latter half of the year.
- Fought too much with Harlock online (partly his fault, but I could have avoided him more instead of arguing so much).
- Talked too much on IM programs in general.
- Didn't read enough, I think I only finished like 20 books this year, whereas my average is more like 100. Though at least one of them, the Radical Honesty book (and its sequel which I'm still reading) had a strong effect on me.
- Didn't finish some stories I wanted to write for Komera.
- Didn't finish my Game Maker winter game that I started work on for their December contest.

Goals for 2008:
- Exercise every day at least 20 min. Take vitamins every day. Work on some game project every day. Of course absolutely every day is probably unattainable, so I'll settle for doing all three of those on at least 90% of days.

My favorite LiveJournal entries of 2007:
- A review of the Atari 2600 game Yar's Revenge, with a great comment by abi dierecte.
- An entry about playtesting.
- An article about the shared aesthetics of "game engine" games.
- An entry on Miyamoto's framework (as distinguished from the previous arcade game framework), the entry was even mentioned to Miyamoto himself by Patrick Dugan when he met him.
- A short review of the Harry Potter series after I had finished reading the 7th book.
- A review of my first game, a terrible dungeon crawler I made in QBASIC about 15 years ago.
- "My argument against Ray Kurzweil's idea of accelerating change and the singularity."
- "Complex Economics / Economics Complex."
- I don't know how to describe this entry.
- An extensive quote that I still like.
- On story and gameplay being myths.
- Some prevalent science ideas I disagree with.
- Reasoning in communication as usually useless.

(There are probably many others I missed, I write too many LJ entries every year to re-read them all for year's end.)

Did anyone else notice that we can EDIT COMMENTS now? It's one of the things I was really wanting them to improve.

I just finished the 'anger chapter' in Radical Honesty so as a fun entry I thought I'd mention what I get angry at you all for. If I forget you, comment and I'll think of something. I'll go in alphabetical order by LJ name.

bastardzero - I can't ever really remember getting angry at you really, you're more like a joke that I laugh at openly, but you know this.

charbile - I can't remember being angry at you since that alterpoint fiasco, where you worked on the game and then quit halfway through. Of course I did the same thing with troublespot, but anger isn't supposed to be rational.

elisaeres/haggard/nanamihero/i_am_carrie - I think I'll leave you people out of this entry because children growing up together are obviously going to have a million things they've been angry at each other about; and Carrie spent enough time with us that she's almost like a sibling too.

eternalhachi - For saying you'd make an ID trailer similar to your excellent Alphasix trailer and then disappearing for months without doing anything.

harlockhero - For turning into a joke and giving up your aspirations in practise but not in mind; it's worse to become one rather than to start as one. For becoming crazy/neurotic. For promising countless times to finish the ID enemy graphics and repeatedly missing deadlines. And again, yes I miss deadlines too, this is not supposed to be a case against you.

komera - That you act too passively, let others run your life in a lot of ways, and seem resigned to this rather than assertive.

miyu_sakura - Too many things to list, but you said once that you don't like me talking about you in LJ so I won't mention any of them.

moogle1 - Perhaps for being friends with CN and Shaede, both of whom are evil fools.

newedition - For putting more important things aside for less important things and calling it being busy. Of course it's hard for me to judge something like that from afar, but as I said w/ charbile above, anger isn't always rational, I'm not trying to present a good case that I'm justified in feeling angry over these things.

norwegian_wood - I can't think of anything. Perhaps for feeling too badly over something that it doesn't help to feel bad over (you probably know what I mean there).

novahero - For being lost in abstract-world and talking endlessly on instant messenger building floating abstraction on top of floating abstraction and making it all incomprehensible to read, and for hypnotizing yourself into thinking that this represents enlightenment.

orchard_l - The last time I got angry at you was years ago when you defended some abstract art statue as real art because it was created by a professor of art and said I couldn't call it not art just because I didn't understand it. Which is possible, but of course you can call something something even if you don't understand it, there's no reason a person should withhold judgment until they've satisfied everyone else that they understand it.

papertygre - For still not deciding on any life purpose and/or deciding that there's no such thing.

taernost - For not being precise in language and making me read through 100 words when 10 would work (same complaint as novahero above but in a different way).

ubermensch - Generally for using pessimism about the world as an excuse to not care about it too much, or change it.

womanonfire - The only time I remember being angry at you was when you said something like Will Wright isn't creative because Spore has violence in it and in some ways looks like other games, which still makes no sense to me, although I'm not saying you were wrong.

wynand - I can't really think of anything, you're a Good Guy.

General people who are friends-of this LJ who I consider idiots or weaklings in one way or another but haven't actually gotten angry at ever: zorprime1985, zakharov, travellingzinda (yes, I know he's dead), the_spengler, rin_asano, stellarx, longetech, fyrewulff, cwoxviii.

If I didn't mention you it doesn't necessarily mean I have no complaints, only that I couldn't think of anything and/or that you don't read my LJ enough for me to expect you'll read this entry.

And yes, I probably should balance this with 'what I love about each of you' entry, I'll do that eventually.

One major difference I've noticed is that MySpace doesn't allow unrequitted friendship -- they always have to be mutual, whereas LiveJournal allows one-way friendships. I'm not really sure which is a better system, but I don't doubt the difference has vast repercussions everywhere, even deeply psychologically, in the people who use the those sites.

Another thing I'm thinking is that nationalism requires that people of different nations feel different from eachother. The internet lessens that. It's hard to agree to invade any country if you have MySpace or LiveJournal friends in that country. The effect isn't that great yet, because the internet is still pretty small, but it will be important later.

sashatheelf made me make one. Go friend it if you have one.

http://myspace.com/rinkuhero

The founder of MySpace lists Nietzsche first in his list of heroes. I wonder if Nietzsche would be happy with MySpace.... Maybe.

Anyone else think it's weird that that pencil is drawing in a circle? THAT'S NOT HOW YOU WRITE IN A JOURNAL. NO LETTER IS SHAPED LIKE THAT.

There's been a dearth of entries here lately and consequently a lack of stretchiness exercise for my writing & thinking ability. Comment here with a suggestion for an entry you'd like me to write, and I'll write at least a paragraph-length entry about it (no matter how bad the suggestion). However, I reserve the right to instead link you to an entry if the entry you're requesting has already been written (I do have thousands of entries, afterall), so this is also a type of challenge for my long-term readers, to figure out something I've *not* written an entry about.

Konami objected that closing comments limits discussion among commenters and that I could always choose not to reply or read the comments if I wanted to save time. I explained to him this (which I should also explain here): I think that leaving comments open implies that the author of the entry will reply to questions and comments about that entry, and to leave comments open while not reading nor replying to them would be much ruder than keeping them entirely closed.

When I transition to my weblogs (which will shortly be after A6 is done) I will allow comments in those. For some reason, weblog authors can get away with not replying to comments a lot easier than LJ authors can.

Unfortunately I've experienced no net gain in productivity from closing comments so far. I suspect this is because I still comment in the LJ's of others and respond to comments there. I'll have to quit doing that, except when absolutely necessary, or when the LJ friend is very close.

In lieu of comments (which as you know I turned off to save time and avoid huge comment threads), I'll include this at the end of every entry, behind a LJ cut. What do you think?

( Read more... )

I see two and only two benefits of an entry or a journal being friends-only.

One, it cuts down on too many comments which waste your time in reading and replying to them.

Two, there's actually a benefit to people in *not* being able to read certain entries, entries which they would not care about or not understand, because they don't have the necessary close association with the person writing it. So in many cases making an entry or a journal friends-only is a favor to the people whose time would be wasted by reading something they couldn't understand and don't have the background knowledge for anyway.

But the reasons most people make their LJ's friends-only is of course stupid: they do it out of undue secrecy, or out of trying to hide information from others. Those I don't support.

Here are (without further explanation) a few comments that I've posted recently in LJ and want to save, because I've not expressed these ideas in LJ before.

*

An interesting thing about porn that I've recently discovered is that it basically *didn't exist* in the 60s and early 70s. I mean the entire industry didn't exist, there were of course the odd pornographic novel and video here and there, but there were no porn shops, no porn companies, no porn actors/actresses, no porn magazines, no porn publishing houses, and so on. It's a very new industry, and today it's one of the top five industries in the world in terms of earnings (the other four are oil, recreational drugs, medical drugs, and the arms trade).

*

I don't really think voting in general is a good idea (the best presidents were almost never very popular during their presidency, for example, and the worst presidents were sometimes very popular), so I wouldn't use that system if I had to build a country myself. I suspect voting should be used for two things, and only those two things: electing local officials (mayors and city councils, who would then elect higher officials), and constitutional ammendment.

The reason for the locality is that if you *never meet* someone, as most people who vote for their governor, senators, house members, presidents, etc., never meet those people, you are merely going on media propoganda and hearsay, you are not and can not be going on actual knowledge of a person. In other words, I don't think anybody should vote for someone they don't personally know, because knowledge of others is very limited when you don't know someone personally.

*

One can unconsciously deliberate. For example, when you are talking or writing (such as when you are teaching a class), your word choice is almost totally unconscious. You do not fully deliberate over what word to use for every single word you say, your unconscious decides which word you will use, and it uses delibration, and it chooses from alternatives.

Likewise, when you are eating -- let's say you're eating some grapes. You don't consciously decide which grape you will eat next, your unconscious decides. There is some deliberation, it is choosing from alternatives and selecting the best one (based on automatic rules, such as which one looks the nicest, which is the closest to your hand, and so on). Likewise, when you are combing your hair, you don't consciously decide exactly where each stroke will fall, your unconscious delibrates and then makes a decision about it.

*

No, the justificatin for immigration is not economic nor is it ethical, and it makes no sense to talk of a "justification" for immigration in any case. The point is simply that if you send all illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin, it would not only be unethical (you'd be sending people back into slave labor camps in many cases) it would be self-destructive (the economy would collapse). This is not, however, a justification.

*

Implied in the idea of award is that there are others who also recieved the award. That's why I don't like awards -- by definition, someone has already done something about as good as what you did, and also by definition, the person or people giving out the awards are recognized as being able to judge the best at something -- implying they are better. For example, a professor who claims that you are the best student they've ever had is not saying you are better than they themselves.

*

The difference between what you call good people and bad people is simply in a) how much they desire life / alertness / activity vs. how much they desire death / sleep / passivity, b) how long-term vs. short term thinking they are (which related to how capable they are of abstract thought and how strong their imagination is and how ends-oriented they are vs. means-oriented they are), and c) how strongly they've been attacked by mind-control environmental factors, such as the education system and so on. But it's a mistake to call the masses evil; they are not, they are simply weak and stupid, which although that overlaps evil, is not exactly the same thing. As for whether they were determined to be the way they are, yes, but they were determined to be the way they based on many factors, including their own choices.

*

Whether determinism is true or not has absolutely no effect on morality. Being heroic means doing heroic acts and making heroic choices, both of which would be possible under either determinism or free will. You still don't seem to understand that just because a choice had to happen does not mean that it was not a choice. I don't know how many other ways to say it or how else I can clearly express it. Determinism simply means that you could not have chosen otherwise, it does *not* mean that you did not consciously choose what you thought best. And it's true that your behavior had to happen, but it had to happen *because* the person chose what they did. A person is still fully responsible for his choices, even if those choices could not metaphysically have been other than they were. Thus, one can still praise or blame a person for his choices, because he was responsible for them and chose them.

*

I also want to save this study: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ewp_04.htm

* Urban and suburban high schools are virtually identical in terms of widespread sexual activity. Two thirds of all suburban and urban 12th graders have had sex; 43% of suburban 12th graders and 39% of urban 12th graders have had sex with a person with whom they did not have a romantic relationship.
* Pregnancy rates are high in both suburban and urban schools, although they are higher in urban schools; 14% of suburban 12th grade girls and 20% of urban 12th grade girls have been pregnant.
* Over 60% of suburban 12th graders have tried cigarette smoking, compared to 54% of urban 12th graders; 37% of suburban 12th graders have smoked at least once a day for at least 30 days, compared to 30% of urban 12th graders.
* Alcohol use followed a similar pattern; 74% of suburban 12th graders and 71% of urban 12th graders have tried alcohol more than two or three times; 63% of suburban 12th graders and 57% of urban 12th graders drink without family members present; 22% of suburban 12th graders and 16% of urban 12th graders have driven while drunk.
* About four out of ten 12th graders in both urban and suburban schools have used illegal drugs; 20% of suburban 12th graders and 13% of urban 12th graders have driven while high on drugs.
* Urban and suburban students are about equally likely to engage in other delinquent behaviors such as fighting and stealing.