Videochat June 2021

Most important quote of the stream:

2:15:30

For someone with a degree in psychology, Ross’s faith in humanity is almost cute.

For the vast majority of people, things like slow Internet connection in their apartment are infinitely more important than some catastrophe in the other end of the country. People would choose to rather repair the potholes in their roads than to replace lead pipes in another community without batting an eyelid, and would feel utterly righteous about that too. “Are you saying we should pay for those [insert pejorative here] who can’t take care of themselves, you dirty communist?”.

I mean, I'd less blame individual citizens and more the systems that make helping others incredibly difficult. Nobody likes the military coup in Myanmar, but fixing your internet is a thing you can do right now.

That is to say, you can judge a population all you want, but the well is being poisoned from the top-down, so your results are going to necessarily be biased. Someone who calls any assistance of the disadvantaged "socialism" isn't just saying that because they're an asshole, but because there is a complex network of opportunists and grifters whose livelihood depends on as many people thinking that way as possible.

2 hours ago, ScumCoder said:

2:15:30

 

For someone with a degree in psychology, Ross’s faith in humanity is almost cute.

For the vast majority of people, things like slow Internet connection in their apartment are infinitely more important than some catastrophe in the other end of the country. People would choose to rather repair the potholes in their roads than to replace lead pipes in another community without batting an eyelid, and would feel utterly righteous about that too. “Are you saying we should pay for those [insert pejorative here] who can’t take care of themselves, you dirty communist?”.

Sidetrack-
what is the line between a pothole and a sinkhole, wouldn't you say repairing sinkholes should take precedence over replacing lead pipes in certain cases?

Well I didn't say humanity is saintly, I said it's mostly malleable.  I think most people just kind of go with the flow.  We're not really wired to deal with problems on an abstract and global scale, mostly just immediate ones in front of us.  That people default to just what's affecting their own lives is pretty normal.  We can obviously be much smarter and more effective than that, but that takes systems to implement effectively.

6 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

Well I didn't say humanity is saintly, I said it's mostly malleable.  I think most people just kind of go with the flow.  We're not really wired to deal with problems on an abstract and global scale, mostly just immediate ones in front of us.  That people default to just what's affecting their own lives is pretty normal.  We can obviously be much smarter and more effective than that, but that takes systems to implement effectively.

It's not my job to care about the tidal flow of nations. There are already systems for that but the government operates under little oversight and almost no accountability. 

If an elected official's position was actually tied to KPIs and other performance metrics that are used in the private sector, then we can get a lot more bang for the tax dollar. Citizens should be more akin to shareholders in their relationship with politics.

@Ross Scott

Oh, I almost forgot.

I seem to be one of quite many people who think that RGD awards were an important part of the show, and also that the fact that they (sometimes) repeat is perfectly fine - it slowly builds a "metalanguage" of the show, allowing you to quickly convey your thoughts in a concise and poignant way.

19 hours ago, ScumCoder said:

@Ross Scott

Oh, I almost forgot.

I seem to be one of quite many people who think that RGD awards were an important part of the show, and also that the fact that they (sometimes) repeat is perfectly fine - it slowly builds a "metalanguage" of the show, allowing you to quickly convey your thoughts in a concise and poignant way.

Yeah, make the awards an actual metric... That way I can go through and look for the ones with "biggest waste of dev time ever" awards!

10 hours ago, BTGBullseye said:

Yeah, make the awards an actual metric... That way I can go through and look for the ones with "biggest waste of dev time ever" awards!

Ok awards time!
 

Numbah One: best enemy variety!

That's it!
Stay tuned next episode for the only DirectX game to predominantly feature flying cars!