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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Well I don’t know what you are referring to, but I’m not going to argue about your perception. I listened to the whole thing again (there are usually things that pass me by the first time, so I don’t mind doing that for the interesting episodes) and I don’t know how he could have done a better job at steering the conversation. He’s a podcast host; he needs to pick at the parts that are of particular interest to him and his audience in a limited amount of time, as well as keeping the level of technicality just right so as to be digestible.

    For someone familiar with the topic, it’s natural to feel like they could have gone on about something at a more advanced level, and for someone entirely unfamiliar, it’s natural that they would want to linger on things they don’t quite get instead of moving on to something else.

    Anyway, I’m not really going anywhere with this. Just curious about your perception since I tend to think of SC as someone quite smooth and approachable around people (unlike me). I guess even he can’t be smooth enough for everybody all the time.


  • I’m relistening to that episode now because I’m curious about what it is you perceived.

    He interjects sometimes to help tie things together (“and this is interesting because of [earlier observation]”) or to adjust the level of technicality to suit his intended audience (“we’re allowed to use the word torus here”). Not all Mindscape guests have a solid feel for the podcast and default to giving popscience breakdowns with analogies and leaving out technical jargon, and so he has to set the bar a bit by explicitly allowing the introduction of technical terms and bringing together of complex related topics.

    Don’t know if that’s what made you feel like he was trying to show off.



  • I use LLMs for having things explained to me, too… but if you want to know how much salt to pour in that soup, try asking it about something niche and complicated you already know the answer to.

    They can be useful in figuring out the correct terminology so that you can find the answer on your own, or for pointing some very very obvious mistakes in your understandings (but it will still miss most of them).

    Please don’t use those things as answer machines.






  • A game can offer an experience that leaves the player feeling satisfied or at least content with how they spent their time. There is a large space of possible interactive experiences that extend far beyond the simple dichotomy of fun vs educational or productive.

    A game can certainly be considered predatory if it exploits psychological vulnerabilities to hook someone on engaging gameplay that gives the player very little in return in terms of fulfillment or mental recovery. Whether or not it takes the opportunity to swindle the player on top of that is a matter of degree in severity. Wasting a player’s time (or worse, induce stress or other harmful mental states for no good reason) is not a particularly nice thing to do.