Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[dragoner]

Casinos, business, etc have also done studies.

 

[TiQuinn]

Higher is better unless you go to high in Blackjack and then you bust.
Lowball is a game in Poker where you try to have the lowest hand.

It's all kind of irrelevant. You either understand the math behind rolling high or not, or you don't.

 

[dragoner]

Doesn't matter, people like roll high, it is not from dnd; just a fact of life. People have complained about roll under forever too.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Wouldn't it be nice to actually get a side of tech with our dystopia main course?

I mean, we kinda did. Cyberpunk means different things to different people, but it tended to have some broad categories:

1. An integrated information network bringing surveillance and control (or insurmountable influence, depending on if it was soft or hard control by the megacorporate overlords)
2. Cybernetic limbs, artificial eyes, and human-shaped robots of some variety
3. Flying cars, monowire blades, and sometimes laser pistols

The third was never going to be real, either because they are predicated on misunderstandings of physics, were always possible but never practical, or aren't more practical in that application than what we have now. The second we are getting now, slowly but surely. It just doesn't look like BladeRunners in the Neuromancer's Mnemonic Shell. And the first, man, boy howdy did we get it in spades. Ask any insurance adjuster how prevalent video cameras are. People now suffer panic attacks when separated from their 1984 telescreen. Multinational information/social media corporations are so big and powerful that when a nation actually tries some anti-monopolistic controls against them the debate because whether it even matters. Corporate social control is so refined people don't even complain about the advertising which shapes their minds anymore, so much as the algorithm which dictates which advertising which shapes their minds.

So my premise is that we did get our tech with the dystopia, it just looks more like Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net and Max Headroom than Bladerunner.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

So my premise is that we did get our tech with the dystopia, it just looks more like Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net and Max Headroom than Bladerunner.

And we didn't even get to wear mirrorshades and be fantastically cool! (Well, I'm 1 for 2, of course.)

Spoiler: Quote from the interview with Mieville

Notionally, to say something like “Neuromancer” — and this is not me dissing “Neuromancer,” which I think is a wonderful book. But when people talk about it as this terrible warning, there’s a part of you — especially as a teenager, which to some degree or other, all science-fiction people are — you’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s a terrible warning that we’re all going to get to wear mirrorshades and be fantastically cool?” So something that purports to be negative and a warning [can actually be] a deeply desirable thing.

 

[Scribe]

And we didn't even get to wear mirrorshades and be fantastically cool! (Well, I'm 1 for 2, of course.)

Anything else you want to conclude with?

This is for TechCrunch, isn’t it? I think social media is one of the worst things to happen to humanity for a long time, but I’m hardly radical for saying that. I know everyone’s like, “Oh ha ha, it’s awful, I’m addicted.” But I really do increasingly feel like, “No, this is making us sick. This is destroying our brains.”

 

[trappedslider]

First, eat some popcorn floating in a bowlful of melted butter, then reconsider your opinion. Then share it with us.

…if you survive.

people used to do it with actual milk back when @Ryujin was a kid in February of 1630

I mean, we kinda did. Cyberpunk means different things to different people, but it tended to have some broad categories:

1. Cybernetic limbs, artificial eyes, and human-shaped robots of some variety

This is pretty cool

 

[Ryujin]

people used to do it with actual milk back when @Ryujin was a kid in February of 1630

This is pretty cool

Those prosthetics are pretty cool but I think that the biggest advancement in that area isn't the electronics involved in that, but rather this:

 

[Staffan]

I mean, we kinda did. Cyberpunk means different things to different people, but it tended to have some broad categories:

1. An integrated information network bringing surveillance and control (or insurmountable influence, depending on if it was soft or hard control by the megacorporate overlords)
2. Cybernetic limbs, artificial eyes, and human-shaped robots of some variety
3. Flying cars, monowire blades, and sometimes laser pistols

The third was never going to be real, either because they are predicated on misunderstandings of physics, were always possible but never practical, or aren't more practical in that application than what we have now. The second we are getting now, slowly but surely. It just doesn't look like BladeRunners in the Neuromancer's Mnemonic Shell. And the first, man, boy howdy did we get it in spades.

I suppose that since the tweet is 12 years old now, it should probably be updated to 70.

 

[el-remmen]

What's that thing where a poster is taking both sides of an argument no one else in the thread seems to be making?