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And I am saying, "define similar". Like, there being potentially over a million different nucleic acids doesn't actually mean anything, if only around 20 easily come about through abiogenic means. Similarity is suggestive of shared ancestry only in the absence of other explanations for the...

Well, it already takes infinite enegy to create the universe we have, so that's not really a problem.

Again you seem to be confusing system and material. I already noted that the system would be different. Saying "DNA" is like saying "protein" or "carbohydrate". It doesn't give you specifics of structure or operation.

? DNA doesn't make base pairs. It is made of base pairs. So, now we get fiddly... Independently developing DNA to encode information would not be strange, because it has the right general characteristics, and tends to form self-organized states even when there is no life present. What is...

Yeah, a week later you want to try this? There is more in gaming and on Oerth than is imagined by your philosophy. The idea that games take skill is not owned by one particular game or playstyle. There is skilled play of Chess, and skilled play of Go, and they are different skills, and the...

He might count as contamination, yeah...

No it doesn't. The building blocks of DNA are commonly available throughout the cosmos. Having two independent sources use them would not be implausible.

Mod note: I am pretty sure you know that's not actually what was said, but the insulting stinger too good to pass up. I am here to make it clear that, for you, this was not good. This was bad, and resisting the urge would have been better. Because now you are getting the hairy eyeball from a...

Mod note: So, this looks like an intentional attempt to insult folks who disagree with your preferences, while perhaps clinging to a shred of plausible deniability. If you want to continue in this discussion, stepping back from the insults would be a good idea.

Mod note: Hey, folks. Less Pentagon, more pentacles - this is a discussion of D&D weapons, not modern warfare.

Hardly. At the moment, AI doesn't even understand consequences, much less have moral compunction against them.

Mod Note: Folks should consider exactly how vehement they want to make their replies in this thread, as some of you are getting very close to making things personal or otherwise actionable.

No, you can compare Team PC to Team Challenges Set by GM. That is the basic question of the tactical game - do the PCs beat the challenges or not?

There is no need to conflate, "play that focuses on use of a set of skills" and "players are in competition over which of them is better at those skills". Indeed, when you get a bunch of people together to play a pickup game of basketball, the main score we are concerned with is between...

Which reminds me - this whole analysis discards the Many Worlds interpretation, in which no timeline ever needs to be (or can be) eliminated at all...

Well, you don't pay opportunity cost to the person who provides the game. So it really isn't relevant to the discussion thus far. Edit to add : Whoops. Didn't see this had been locked. Sorry.

Actually, that doesn't logically follow. For this to be certain, logically, two things are required: 1) Not just that time travel is possible, but that it can be attempted infinite times. 2) A timeline in which it never happened or could happen is actually possible.

The ones with ads in them are not actually free-to-play. You pay by allowing yourself to be exposed to ads. Actually free-to-play games are either actually gifts, data-mining opportunities, or are loss-leading marketing ploys hoping that you'll pay them at some point. Pokemon GO, for example...

Hr. I'm not sure that logic works as well as the article suggests. It says, "But maybe the biggest paradox of all is also the simplest one: If time travel were possible, wouldn’t we encounter these temporal tourists all the time?" But, no! That's not a paradox! Paradoxes are things that...

If you mostly play with strangers at conventions or your FLGS, I suppose this can be an issue. If you play with folks you know... the trust part should not just be for the GM. If you can't trust your players to not try to abuse things, why are they at your table?