DataNinja's Scintillating Digital Random Banter #231

[Peelee]

Considering that the conceit of this discussion is "is it bad that if vampires were real I'd want to try ad retro engineer vampirism's benefits while minimizing downsides and if successful market the results as a miracle drug" and vampires typically do not age or suffer the consequences of already accumulated age, I feel comfortable in making that assumption.

That's an excellent point. I retract my objection.

[Anonymouswizard]

At some point I want to sit down and write a Star Wars fanfic where the original (new canon) Sith are just wandering warrior-mystics seeking to learn and train. But I don't know enough about Star Wars to properly fit it into the universe.

Like, going by the Legends timeline this would likely be a pre-Old Republic era, as distant to that time as that era is to Palpatine's Empire, so I wouldn't have to worry about characterisation, but I have a feeling that I'd get three chapters in and get a thousand comments thing me that I've done a bad one because I've forgotten that the book Vestiges of the Wookieees that's a follow-up to episode 17 of the fourth series of the Clone Wars cartoon establishes that the planet Flarwaffen was only settled eighteen years and five months after the Battle of Yavin or something.

[Peelee]

At some point I want to sit down and write a Star Wars fanfic where the original (new canon) Sith are just wandering warrior-mystics seeking to learn and train. But I don't know enough about Star Wars to properly fit it into the universe.

Like, going by the Legends timeline this would likely be a pre-Old Republic era, as distant to that time as that era is to Palpatine's Empire, so I wouldn't have to worry about characterisation, but I have a feeling that I'd get three chapters in and get a thousand comments thing me that I've done a bad one because I've forgotten that the book Vestiges of the Wookieees that's a follow-up to episode 17 of the fourth series of the Clone Wars cartoon establishes that the planet Flarwaffen was only settled eighteen years and five months after the Battle of Yavin or something.

By current Canon, you're pretty set, actually. Not much to worry about on that front yet.

[Jasdoif]

At some point I want to sit down and write a Star Wars fanfic where the original (new canon) Sith are just wandering warrior-mystics seeking to learn and train. But I don't know enough about Star Wars to properly fit it into the universe.

Like, going by the Legends timeline this would likely be a pre-Old Republic era, as distant to that time as that era is to Palpatine's Empire, so I wouldn't have to worry about characterisation, but I have a feeling that I'd get three chapters in and get a thousand comments thing me that I've done a bad one because I've forgotten that the book Vestiges of the Wookieees that's a follow-up to episode 17 of the fourth series of the Clone Wars cartoon establishes that the planet Flarwaffen was only settled eighteen years and five months after the Battle of Yavin or something.

By current Canon, you're pretty set, actually. Not much to worry about on that front yet.

I wouldn't say it's worth worrying about in general, particularly with as mutable as Star Wars' canon has been over the decades. Anyone who's going to raise a point over something so obscure had already decided not to like what you were writing before they even started reading, you couldn't have satisfied them with the extra minutia anyway. Especially since The Box was centered around a convoluted competitive evaluation for a job, administered to bounty hunters and a disguised Obi-Wan.

[Rawhide]

I am running up-to-date waterfox and flash works. I have to manually allow it on a page, which can be a problem. I am fairly certain I am running the most recent version of Flash (which is like 3 years old).

Yeah, uhm, no. Flash has had about 45 updates in the last 3 years. Most of them security fixes. Many of them in the last year.

[enderlord99]

Especially since The Box was centered around a convoluted competitive evaluation for a job, administered to bounty hunters and a disguised Obi-Wan.

Is that episode 17 of the fourth series of the Clone Wars cartoon? I'm just guessing.

[Peelee]

Yeah, uhm, no. Flash has had about 45 updates in the last 3 years. Most of them security fixes. Many of them in the last year.

Spoiler: That's an easy fix

Show

[factotum]

I agree with Rater about perfect health being a quality of life thing to be honest. I would much rather stay young and healthy and drop dead at 80 then live to 90 but age naturally.

It happens earlier, but that sounds like "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley--people stay pretty much youthful and vigorous into their 60s, then decline very sharply and die over the course of a few months to a year.

[Somensjev]

Been a fair while since I've posted on the forums, mostly been lurking for the past however long

I've moved house since the last time I posted, so that's nice. How has everyone been?

Also, posting from phone, so formating might be weird

[Rater202]

A common trope in fanfiction and original web fiction is the concept of "Soulmate Alternate universes" where everyone in the world has one soul mate that they're destined to meet and fall in love with.

Ignoring that these stories are usually about as romantic as Twilight of 50 Sades and, in fanfiction, usually exist to pair up characters who have no business being in a romantic relationship in the canon, that's just kind of an existential hellhole, yeah?

Free will objectively doesn't exist in those worlds.

And then, of course, there are all the variations of the concept: "If your soul mate is mad at you, you feel physical agony." "You feel everything your soul mate does." That just sounds like... Like it's very easy for toxic people to get away with being toxic.

My personal "favorites" are the ones where everyone is born with a scar or tattoo on their arm or hand with the first thing their soulmate will ever say to them written out. In stories it's always something like "you have beautiful eyes" or something romantic, but...

I mean, statistically, it's going to be "hey" or "move it" or "I'll take the number 4 with a large Pepsi." Half the planet is going to have "Welcome to *Fast Food Restaurant,* can I take your order" tattooed to their arms.

[Lacco]

My personal "favorites" are the ones where everyone is born with a scar or tattoo on their arm or hand with the first thing their soulmate will ever say to them written out. In stories it's always something like "you have beautiful eyes" or something romantic, but...

I mean, statistically, it's going to be "hey" or "move it" or "I'll take the number 4 with a large Pepsi." Half the planet is going to have "Welcome to *Fast Food Restaurant,* can I take your order" tattooed to their arms.

Yeah, wouldn't want to be the guy that meets his soulmate during a minor car crash. Wouldn't want to have "Hey, [instert favourite expletive]! Where were you looking at?" tatooed on my arm.

Interestingly, it would make meeting my soulmate much harder. My wife would have "Yeah, theoretically I am." tatooed on her arm - which doesn't really help. I'd be worse off. We met through a common friend at university and the first thing she said to me was "Hi, are you the guy who knows how to calculate turning moment of a crankshaft?". It was quite a common question, around 20 people asked me the same and only around 60% of them were girls.

As far as signs go, I'd prefer the ominous sound of thunder complemented by a flock of crows or something like that.

[Anonymouswizard]

A common trope in fanfiction and original web fiction is the concept of "Soulmate Alternate universes" where everyone in the world has one soul mate that they're destined to meet and fall in love with.

Just one soulmate? This sounds problematic. Like, what does this mean for those who just aren't monogamous?

Also how do you tell who your soulmate is? And surely they're randomly distributed, at which point even if they're within half a decade of your age the chances of finding them are so minute that the soulmate phenomenon isn't widely believed in, and the end result is a world that doesn't look that much different. Accept that in this world Ed and Roy share a bunk and love in fear of being court martialed for it.

To anybody who hasn't read it, I recommend Randall Monroe's exploration of soulmates. It is legitimately looking at a distribution that causes most of these problems, but most people talking about soulmates don't bother to stick additional requirements on.

....
I'd have 9.99999 hundred thousand other possible loves
Statistically some of them would be statistically nice

My personal "favorites" are the ones where everyone is born with a scar or tattoo on their arm or hand with the first thing their soulmate will ever say to them written out. In stories it's always something like "you have beautiful eyes" or something romantic, but...

I mean, statistically, it's going to be "hey" or "move it" or "I'll take the number 4 with a large Pepsi." Half the planet is going to have "Welcome to *Fast Food Restaurant,* can I take your order" tattooed to their arms.

How would it deal with internet messages? Would I have a string of binary on my wrist?

Or if multiple soulmates are allowed I'd have multiple strings of binary?

01001001 00100111 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01100010 01110101 01101100 01101100 01101001 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01110100 01100101 01111000 01110100 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01101101 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100011 01100001 01110010 01111001 00101110

[Lacco]

Just one soulmate?

Ah, soulmates. I'm quite skeptical about the concept myself - oftentimes I think the romantic love that people so much seek just creates trouble in relationships and people who approach relationships not wearing "pink glasses" get much longer, even more romantic relationships, and - often - long-term marriage.

When I met my wife, I never thought she's my soulmate. I liked her voice, liked her smile, terribly enjoyed being with her and we could talk for hours on without any stops. She was also one of the few that really enjoyed my weird sense of humor. There were ladies in my past that I was enamored with much more than when we started dating - but this relationship lasted. No "big love", no "oh my god, I'd die without her"... but after those years? I don't know how would I enjoy life without her anymore.

I think there are people that enjoy being together, are compatible enough to be able to understand each other while being sufficiently different to enjoy the challenge. It takes work to build "love" - but not the "crazy stupid" one, but the long-lasting one. As my mother once said: "It's not enough to to love someone to be happy with them. You need to understand them - because when you truly understand them, you will love them."

For polyamory: good luck. I have enough trouble keeping one person romantically happy - if you can manage multiple, good for you! Just be sure it makes you happy.

[Rater202]

Just one soulmate? This sounds problematic. Like, what does this mean for those who just aren't monogamous?

Yeah, the people who write these things tend to buy far too heavily into the "one true love" trope.

And there's a reason why I compare a lot of these stories to 50 shades and Twilight.

[Lord Raziere]

....And in this exhibit we see such outdated concepts of romance like "soulmate" next to "love potion" and "love at first sight". Continuing on our tour of the Love Museum we shall examine the exhibit on Knights in Shining Armor and Chivalric Romance.....

Love Museum: We display what love isn't and never was!

[Rater202]

....And in this exhibit we see such outdated concepts of romance like "soulmate" next to "love potion" and "love at first sight". Continuing on our tour of the Love Museum we shall examine the exhibit on Knights in Shining Armor and Chivalric Romance.....

Love Museum: We display what love isn't and never was!

Yeah. The romantic ideal simply isn't realistic.

Considering that the traditional western marriage was essentially an exchange of chattel, part of me wants to be a cynical jackass and say that the ideal was manufactured as a narrative to convince women to be okay with effectively being property or make them think that they're the one that's wrong if they're not okay with it.

[Lacco]

Yeah. The romantic ideal simply isn't realistic.

I'd say it's highly improbable (I have known people that fulfill most of the requirements for "soulmates" or "one true love" - not saying they did not work hard to achieve that status) and the society is moving towards alternatives, some of which may or may not be rather destructive for the people involved.

It's rather sad that love seems to have become a battlefield of ideologies. It's one of those things you don't really enjoy even if you are just standing on the sidelines and commenting on it.

part of me wants to be a cynical jackass

Don't be.

[Rater202]

Part of me wishes I was better at memorizing formulas and complex equations: I was good at algebra and geometry in high school but then I got to college and that was a huge leap.

Part of this is becuase my original "plan" was to join a pharmacology program so I could go into research into cancer drugs and my inability to do stoichiometry off the top of my head prevented me from being able to get the advanced chemistry stuff I needed down... Even though in real life you're always going to be able to double-check the formulas and would ideally be encouraged to do so multiple times to make sure your results are accurate.... But I digress.

Part of it is also becuase I really like those videos on youtube where people pick apart the science of various pop culture things and I kind of wish I could do that myself.

[Jasdoif]

Is that episode 17 of the fourth series of the Clone Wars cartoon?

Yes.

The romantic ideal simply isn't realistic.

No effective ideal is "realistic". The whole point is that it's possible to achieve beyond your imagination's limits of "realistic", if you strive for the ideal and don't settle for that limit; of course ideals are lofty, asymptotic things.

[Rater202]

Yeah, but in this case, the ideal is telling you not to strive, it's telling you to do nothing and a storybook romance will fall into your lap.

Which leads to people being miserable when they marry someone within less than a year of dating and then hey, turns out she's lazy or he's a mean drunk or her father's a drug dealer who doesn't approve of him or his cousin's a Mafioso who needs a place to lay low for a while.

[Jasdoif]

Yeah, but in this case, the ideal is telling you not to strive, it's telling you to do nothing and a storybook romance will fall into your lap.

Huh, I thought it was telling you "yes, you can have romance, even if you're not sure you deserve or understand it; don't insist to yourself that it will never happen, or it will never happen". Then again, there's how many centuries' worth of "romantic ideals" competing at this point?

And yes, the sad truth that not all ideals are ideal; it's not ideal.

[Rater202]

Huh, I thought it was telling you "yes, you can have romance, even if you're not sure you deserve or understand it; don't insist to yourself that it will never happen, or it will never happen". Then again, there's how many centuries' worth of "romantic ideals" competing at this point?

And yes, the sad truth that not all ideals are ideal; it's not ideal.

We're specifically talking about "True Love and Soul Mates, you meet them and immediately you both know you're destined to be." Not the ideal "healthy, functional relationship."

[Jasdoif]

We're specifically talking about "True Love and Soul Mates, you meet them and immediately you both know you're destined to be." Not the ideal "healthy, functional relationship."

In that case, I'll go out on a limb and say the former's not even an ideal; it's simply conflating lust and romance. Not exactly uncommon in fanfiction.

Actually I think all the other fanfic stuff you mentioned ties in there too....

And then, of course, there are all the variations of the concept: "If your soul mate is mad at you, you feel physical agony." "You feel everything your soul mate does." That just sounds like... Like it's very easy for toxic people to get away with being toxic.

My personal "favorites" are the ones where everyone is born with a scar or tattoo on their arm or hand with the first thing their soulmate will ever say to them written out. In stories it's always something like "you have beautiful eyes" or something romantic, but...

These are all attempts to forcefully emulate an emotional connection between two characters via shared experience; the culmination of "I want to write a story about romance, but I don't have the patience/skill to actually write about the romancing. So I'll change the fundamental nature of my universe to skip all the interim stuff; as long as they end up ****ing no one will care, right?"...and it comes off as cheap and hollow (and coercive) as it sounds.

[Tvtyrant]

We're specifically talking about "True Love and Soul Mates, you meet them and immediately you both know you're destined to be." Not the ideal "healthy, functional relationship."

I think these are class and time based though. The true love ideal was in opposition to romanceless arranged marriages and divorceless societies. It was a way of insisting on having a shot at happiness instead of being forced into a cultural strait jacket. The Graduate is a great example of true love as a way of bucking social expectations.

The modern "healthy relationship" is also class and culture dependent. A lot of it is "securing a life long economic alliance" with advice like "committing to the relationship" and "ignoring outside attractions."

All romantic ideals are context dependent and valid within their context.

[sktarq]

Yeah. The romantic ideal simply isn't realistic.

Considering that the traditional western marriage was essentially an exchange of chattel, part of me wants to be a cynical jackass and say that the ideal was manufactured as a narrative to convince women to be okay with effectively being property or make them think that they're the one that's wrong if they're not okay with it.

Actully if you want to become a cynical donkey...find out that it is pretty realistic for some people...it's far worse that way. Not the "instant, bolt from the blue part" but most of classic parts of people in a relationship where they are still deeply in love decades after they start dating, are basically more than themselves because they are in such a partnership (where 2+2=5 kinda thing), seem to know each other's needs-wants-thoughts etc before the other has them, the waiting by the hospital bed because no other idea exists.... Now see that most couples get nowhere close to the "ideal"...for people to try at the impossible and fail is sad but inevitable but to try at the possible and fail is just heartbreaking. Many of my friends used my parents as their image of "true love" especially though my teen and early twenties...

[Rater202]

"All things worth doing are worth doing right."

This is an idea that I think we're all familiar with, and it sounds good on paper...

But I find that, in practice, it needs some corollaries.

"The hardest way is not always the right way"

"More effort does not mean you did a better job."

"Not everything that is worth putting in a lot of effortrequires that much effort"

"Not everything that requires a great deal of effort to do 'right' is worth doing."

You want to take your time and assemble a Ferris wheel properly, but not everything will kill someone if you don't do it perfectly.

[Lacco]

for people to try at the impossible and fail is sad but inevitable but to try at the possible and fail is just heartbreaking.

That pretty much sums it up.

However, I'd take a look at the sources that were used to build that love "ideal". Because I remember some that required countless sacrifices, hard to impossible tasks and lots of work to have a shot at a happy life with the "soulmate" - even if meeting them was "for free".

It's also a sign of human condition: we take shortcuts and enjoy instant gratification. Unhealthy food, destructive behaviour, cheap stuff that breaks. I agree, that many people believe that they'll just meet the soulmate and it's going to be all fine and dandy - and that is a mistake. While I know couples that hit it off perfectly and are still together, loving, caring for eachother through all their trouble, I also know this comes with a price tag.

Not everybody is willing to pay up. And I can't blame them - there are so many other options! And not everybody knows there is the option - thinking they have been lied to via the media. People also get burned - and those that get burnt tend to avoid fire - so they pick another way. Life speeds up, offers another option.

Is there a soulmate for everyone? Maybe. Maybe not - I'd go with "maybe, but your choices matter".

"Not everything that is worth putting in a lot of effortrequires that much effort"

This is a "journey is the goal" vs. "work smarter, not harder"-style things.

If the journey is worth it, take the scenic route. If it's not - work smarter, not harder. But then, when you sacrifice the journey for the result, do not be surprised if the result turns to be underwhelming.

"Not everything that requires a great deal of effort to do 'right' is worth doing."

It's fine to choose your battles, but if you decide to do something, you should do it right. Also, depends on what you are aiming at. Sometimes the bare minimum is sufficient, but oftentimes this breaks under any pressure - and takes more time & resources fixing than doing it right at the beginning.

Interestingly, as I've grown older, I'm more fond of going the scenic route. Also, I've paid my price for using shortcuts - and I've been doing less fixing in my life (excluding fixing the apartment - there I am paying also for the shortcuts my predecessors took).

[Rogar Demonblud]

I'll be brutally honest. I've never known a shortcut yet that didn't cause some kind of problem later. Generally a bigger one than they supposedly saved you from.

[Rater202]

After a bit of introspection, I think part of the reason immortality and eternal youth appeal to me is the idea of outliving all the people who caused me trouble growing up.

I'm not sure how this interacts with my desire to mass market eternal youth to people in order to improve general quality of life.

[sktarq]

I'll be brutally honest. I've never known a shortcut yet that didn't cause some kind of problem later. Generally a bigger one than they supposedly saved you from.

Meh its a shortcut if it causes a higher risk later...its just doing it more efficiently if it doesn't...hindsight being 20/20 also changes the names we use.