Your analogy can’t have it both ways. Either the allies saved Germany from itself, implying there was a good portion saved from the fascist portion, OR the Nazi party was the fault of all Germans, those who voted for it, those who enable it, etc., and blaming any portion on Nazis/Hitler is like blaming a toddler. So which is it?

I’m 86% convinced you’re a divisiveness bot at this point. Prove me wrong.

I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. The criticism being made is that no matter which way you look at it, crimes have been committed:

• if we accept the narrative that the US is at war with drug traffickers AND that’s who these people are: then the double-tap is a war crime
• else: it was murder to begin with

The Pentagon knows this. They are now trying to shift all the blame onto a specific Admiral, trying to make it look like he acted of his own accord, trying to retain plausible deniability. This article in particular is attempting to shift it back, to show that the official messaging from the Pentagon has always been encouraging war crimes, and that even if we take everything this administration has said at face value, they’re still culpable by their own standards.

So to be clear, you’re suggesting the reason for allied forces joining WW2 was to save Germany from itself?

I’m not disagreeing that Trump will pardon everyone involved, I’m not disagreeing that no other country cares if the US comes out the other end, I’m just saying, these regimes have a history of not sticking around long term. So I’m disagreeing with the statement that “nothing will happen”. Shit is happening and will continue to happen until their reign of terror is brought to an end, just like WW2.

Fair enough lol, can’t argue with that.

where we didn’t have to assume every single god-damned connection was a hostile entity

But you always did, it was always being abused, regularly. That’s WHY we now use secure connections.

I think I’m just not picking up whether you’re actually trying to pitch a technical solution, or just wishing for a perfect world without crime.

You know that Germany still exists, though, right? Something will happen…

I’m generally not interested in playing a game in any way other than how the dev(s) intended. Ex. for a souls like, I don’t get any enjoyment using mods to access content I’m otherwise unable to on my own. Using cheats to unlock all guns in GTA, or to get infinite rare candies in pokemon, or to time travel in Animal Crossing is fun for all of about 5 minutes, at which point I feel like I’ve deconstructed the fun out of the game.

My unique experience with a game is defined both by what I do and what I don’t experience. If I use cheats to ensure I experience everything, then IMO I’ve effectively dashed anything unique about my experience with the game.

That said, there are games that I feel I’ve experienced all there is that the dev intended, and now I can use it as a platform for my own creation through mods or custom game modes. Those are generally few and far between though. Something like Minecraft, primarily because it works great as a platform for multiplayer interaction.

Well, it’s never been about security, it’s about surveillance. But it is reasonable to assume that REAL ID is their most efficient way to track travelers, and if you make them use their less efficient methods of tracking, they’ll offset the difference by charging you directly.

I think those were mind blowing when I first played hl2, just because real time physics and destruction was novel, but now I think they grind the pacing to a halt. I think they just don’t work in an action shooter IMO.

Oh you mean a Jumbotron?

Adding a reboot button is ONLY necessary if the game isn’t made correctly. There is otherwise no reason to ever need to restart the game. I would see the addition of a restart option as lazy or an admission of failure by the dev.

almost nobody has put an actual maximiser in a game.

Turn based games would certainly have one. Generally it’s easier to create an AI that maximizes utility for the AI, it’s more difficult to tune it to not trounce the player lol.

This reminds me of how L4D does have that sort of indirect dynamic AI that spawns zombies based on the player’s behavior. If the players have a lot of ammo and health, or are going too slow, the game cranks up the threat. If you’re barely hanging on, the game holds back. I guess that’s not quite adversarial though, more like the AI is trying to maximize the players’ perception of a fun/fair challenge.

Yeah, certainly, sorry if that wasn’t clear. Up above I tried to stipulate that I was speaking from a game theory perspective.

And yeah, you can model the AI in a game in whichever way is most useful. I said as long as they have utility functions that differ from the player(s), but then you also can recursively define games in terms of winning games.

Ex. the famous case of the US deliberately losing battles to not give away that they had cracked the German cipher. Each battle could be modeled as a game, and the war could be modeled in terms of battles.

Similarly, a single room in wolfenstein could present an contained “game”, the outcome of which is applicable to which ending you get in the larger “game” (I haven’t played it), and thus the AI would be agents at one level, but state/strategy at another.

Depends if you define game ais as “agents”, otherwise your definition of game only allows multiplayer games.

AIs are agents when they have their own utility to maximize that differs from other agents (including the player).

their “win condition” is overwhelming you with dirt and hiding it in weird places.

Is that a thing? Does the map create more dirt as a function of the player’s actions? Does the player need to account for this and adjust their strategy to counter it? That would change my categorization, yes.

coop breaks your definition too

It depends. If all players have the same motive and there are no competing agents, then it’s a simulation. If players have different motives, then it’s a game. If players compete against AI agents, then it’s a game.

Maybe a better definition of “game” is needed

The formal definition of a game is:

K_a, {x_K}K∈K_a, x,K_i, {≻K}K∈K_i

I’m arguing that if the size of K_a==1 then it’s not a game, but that page is generous:

For games with a single coalition of action, the set of all situations may be taken to be the set of strategies of this unique coalition of action, and no further mention is made of strategies. Such games are therefore called non-strategic games. All remaining games, those with two or more coalitions of action, are called strategic games.

Which would include a person standing in a room doing nothing as a game. I’m saying that’s not a game, hope we agree lol.

You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen…

Red states have been sneaking bans on RCV for years. Remember when Missouri tacked it onto a bill that was marketed as banning non-US citizens from voting (something that was obviously already illegal).

There is a price to pay for being an uneducated, reactionary constituency, and the bill is coming due.

Well that’s not a good argument lol. That’s like saying doing quantum physics is just writing a bunch of shapes on paper and using words that most people don’t understand, so it’s basically the same as what a toddler does every day.

Most FPS games require developing a strategy or skill in order to reach the win condition. If it’s multiplayer, then the strategy development and execution require social interaction or deduction. It fits the definition of a “game” from a game theory perspective. There is more than one agent, they each have win conditions, and their actions prompt reactions from each other.

But this doesn’t, it’s a simulation. I assume it has an end condition, but the strategy is just “move towards it”. Maybe a game like Satisfactory is a more appropriate comparison. In both games you are making optimizations to move toward the end condition faster. You take actions, but there’s no competing agent with its own win condition responding to your actions.

Maybe there’s a compelling story to be had that the trailer is underplaying, idk. I don’t think Powerwash Simulator is hooking people with its story, though.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand why games like this are so successful lol. I guess it’s just the dopamine hits without the microtransactions? It’s not a “game”, though, not in a theoretical sense. More like busy work simulator.

While it may seem to be a smart money move, it can result in a costly productivity and innovation lag for the economy.

For the love of god! Won’t somebody think of the economy?!

Because they know the “party of anti-regulation/anti-nannie state” will never trust people to take care of themselves and someone will be forced to do it. They acknowledge either they will have to do a bunch of work and be liable when it fails, or some middle man will. So they choose the middle man.