That’s a very large assumption. The simplest explanation is that we feel like we have free will because we do. Quantum mechanics suggests some major challenges to determinism, and the best arguments to restore it require a very unsatisfying amount of magical thinking.

Yeah, my bad. I forgot how cool it is to just spout whatever bullshit you want. Hurray for ignorance.

No wonder humanity is doomed.

That an opinion lacks evidence does not alleviate the requirement that its factual allegations be supported by evidence. “I don’t think the surface of the earth is curved” may be an opinion, but it’s a provably wrong assertion, and adding a disclamitory phrase to it doesn’t excuse the statement from evaluation.

Citation needed.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Trailer’s fine–tells the story. This season was always supposed to be about correcting some of the unforced errors they committed on release. Still early to tell whether it will pan out (and this definitely isn’t everything that needs to be course corrected). I’m trying to give it a fair shake, and I’ve been having a good time so far, since I haven’t really spent much time with the game since launch other than to check in here and there. We’ll see if I still feel that way after another ten hours.

If anybody is a fan of trailer music like I am, the track is Hypersonic - Believe the Hype

Yeah yeah, we get it, nothing’s as good as crack. You don’t have to rub it in.

Better late than never, but it still feels like a lot of this stuff (ahem, Codex) should have been in at launch. Unsurprisingly, we’re retreading a lot of the learning that happened in the early days of D3, and I think many of us predicted exactly that.

All the same, it’s enough to get my attention, which is more than I can say for the first three seasons. I hope it indicates movement in the right direction. If it takes a full year to “catch up” with where they left D3, that still leaves plenty of time to push the franchise forward.

As a young teenager: Do not start working until you have to. Once you start, you’ll never stop.

We have not created the heavens and the earth and everything in between except for a purpose. And the Hour is certain to come, so forgive graciously.

15:85 Quran

I’m incredibly fascinated by the ghost comparison. Is the probability that ghosts are a real physical phenomenon higher or lower than the probability that aliens exist or have visited us? That’s an extremely interesting question, and I’m sure someone could do a statistical meta-analysis comparing the incidence of, say, UFO sightings with the incidence of paranormal experiences (if such an analysis doesn’t already exist). Both questions seem like the things that should be generally empirically falsifiable (and indeed, specific instances certainly are), but humanity’s curiosity about both has proven remarkably durable despite centuries of curiosity and myriad efforts to settle (negatively) both questions once and for all.

Not a big fan of the clickbait title either, but this video actually contains a substantive overview of the S4 changes. I’d rather have the clickbait title than ask the submitter to editorialize it to take the question out. [We’re not really in a position to muscle content creators into moving away from clickbait, and I’d rather have the content here than not.]

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to step away. I’m not playing any Diablos at the moment either. But many of us were also done with D3 before it course corrected.

Outright shuttering the community would be short-sighted. If you’re absolutely 100% sure you’re done, then you may want to step down, but I also feel like that might be something you eventually come to regret. The future is uncertain.

Really? I’d be very interested in seeing a peer reviewed article in Nature in which someone reputable claims to have disproven the existence of the soul (especially without making a bunch of other ontological assumptions first). Can you point me to one?

As far as I can tell, the existence of a soul, like the existence of God, is inherently a non-scientific proposition–i.e., it is not falsifiable. But correct me if I’m wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc38-DeBzPA

Oh absolutely. D3 launch is a profoundly low bar to overcome–and I don’t think anyone sincerely expected an improvement over the last season of D3–but I honestly would have expected more of the hard-learned lessons to remain learned. It feels like the franchise is amnesiac, and in terms of institutional memory and company turnover, it quite literally is. And that’s a shame.

Even D3 had the promise of perpetual marginal progression. Even if you “completed” a season you still had things to chase.

From very soon after starting D4 I felt the “why am I still playing?” question, and that was never a sense I had in D2, D3, or POE. The answer in those games was always, “Because it’s fun!” In D4, by contrast, the sense is instead, “Well if you complete these chores eventually it’ll be fun,” but the fun always feels just out of reach. This isn’t a dig at S3–it was the same even right after launch. I have an hour to play every day–but I just can’t bring myself to care to.

Crime. I’d do crime. I’m too old to join the Navy, too poor to get some debt. So I’d do the same thing the overwhelming majority of Americans who find themselves in the situation do: Crime.

Which crime? Well, the likelihood of this actually happening to many people who are currently gainfully employed and financially stable is uncomfortably high, so some cards I just have to keep close, and you should too.

No war but the class war.

“You look like a good joe.”

Not for me. I want it to become something great, but I’ve resigned myself that it will most likely take the path of D3: They might figure it out by the time an expansion drops. Then again, they might not. Either way, I’ll check in from time to time and maybe play here and there, but it’s not going to be my main game until and unless something substantial changes.