Grand Thumb Auto XVIII! -IGN.com

[toblix]

So, this

Tuesday, 21:00GMT

, who's in? Will that masturbation podcast guy be there?

[toblix]

Oh, so it will be just me? I wonder if I'll even be able to start a game with only one fucking player.

[miffy495]

Unfortunately I have a meeting with a potential thesis advisor for next year during game time this week. Degree takes precedence over GTA, I'm afraid, so I'll be missing my first round in over two months...

[toblix]

Fuck your thesis.

[toblix]

Aww, I can't stay mad at you!

[miffy495]

Good to have your support...?

[toblix]

No problem. If you ever need help with your thesis, I'm your man. I can make diagrams and shit.

[Nachimir]

Soz, away this week.

[toblix]

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nachimir]

There's this thing, with a load of game developers or something. Anyway, I just sit in my hotel room all day. I don't want to go outside, there are people with cars, and guns, and ice cream vans here.

Actually, when the plane was taxiing and taking off, all I could think about was fire engines getting mangled in the landing gear

[toblix]

Okay, I guess we'll skip this one.

[toblix]

Or not. That was awesome. Also, these games have become awesome podcasts of great dialogue.

I wonder how long my microphone has been broken? When was the last time you heard me make a sound?

[James]

You have a mouth? I presumed you were some sort of collection of featureless spheres covered with a thin layer of ooze.

Anyway, the conversation was pretty great this week. I did barely any obnoxiously loud swearing, and I feel everyone had a better time for it. Well, the loudness is generally an indicator that I'm getting quite enthusiastic about things, so the absence would be a downside for me, except for the fact that I got to spout a lot of my pretentious bullshit at everyone with nary a whisper of ridicule (assuming no diligent use of the mute switch).

The final round was particularly fascinating.

[toblix]

So, what headset should I get? Or is there only one?

[miffy495]

Damn, sounds like I missed a great one. On the other hand, I now have a good handle on what my next year is going to consist of and feel prepared for it. Either way, I'm definitely in next week.

[toblix]

So, what's your thesis gonna be like?

[James]

Lame, probably to the max. Trust me on this.

I believe the officially supported headset types come in only two flavours: wired and wireless. However, the wired variety just uses a standard 2.5 mm jack (a smaller version of the 3.5 mm jack used for most headphones and so on), so you should be able to use all manner of stuff. I believe the old ones also plugged into the other little sockets on each side, but I don't believe that actually adds any functionality. If you wanted to be really low-fi about it, you could use one of those splitter thingies and plug in a separate microphone and headphones.

Going by a quick check, the wired headsets are about £13 in the UK. I don't really know whether or not this price is reasonable.

[toblix]

Could I attach a tin with a length of string going through it?

[James]

Possibly. You can actually use a speaker as a microphone and a microphone as a speaker; they'd just be pretty shit at it. I remember trying to record dialogue for things we'd made in Microsoft 3D Movie Maker at my cousin's house by shouting into one of the speakers for this old record player he had that packed away into the shape of a briefcase, because we didn't have a microphone. MY CHILDHOOD.

[miffy495]

So, what's your thesis gonna be like?

You actually want to know? I warn you, I'm a philosophy major, and as such incredibly pretentious. I'll put it in spoiler tags for those who don't give a shit.

In a nutshell, one of the first points that always comes up when discussing the issue of whether or not we have free will is that if we don't, we are then unjustified in criticizing people for their actions as they had no say in the matter. I've written a few papers on this in the past, and from what I've gathered, progress on this has sort of ground to a halt. It is really damn hard to come up with a good reason that we can say someone is wrong in doing anything from a hard determinist perspective. So, I've got an ethicist and a philosophy of mind specialist backing me up and I'm going to do all I damn well can to make some headway into this. Basically, I'm going to spend the next year with expert advisors trying to write a 50 page paper on how ethics can fit into a world without free will. It doesn't matter whether or not you actually are a determinist for this, I'd just like to grant it from the outset and then try and show that this isn't quite as huge a problem for that side of the argument as its opponents say.

So yeah, I get to read tons and tons of books on Ethics and Philosophy of Mind. I wouldn't have chosen the subject if I didn't love both of those things, but damn if it doesn't still seem pretty intimidating at this point.

[toblix]

Holy fucking shit, that's one of my favorite topics. Not in an informed, academic way, though. The way I see it, everything is deterministically predictable because everything is governed by laws. Thus, we don't have free will, and so shit like courtrooms and blame and guilt are ridiculous, but nevertheless unavoidable.

I guess this is some basic philosophical shit right here, but I always get excited when people mention free will.

[miffy495]

Hey, if you're interested I'll keep you updated on what I'm doing. I probably won't get to the serious writing parts until December or so, but if I find particularly interesting readings while doing my research I'll let you know.

It's something that's bothered me for a long time (as in, pre-university) so I figured this would be the perfect excuse to put some work into it. I have a friend who's just wrapping up his own thesis right now on how apologies work and I'm finding it's always a rewarding experience to talk to someone who's dedicated that much time to a topic that interests them. Even if you don't care going in, suddenly you get extremely involved. I hope to have a similar effect on people in a year's time, but there's no way to know til we get there, right?

[toblix]

That'd be awesome. The apology shit sounds interesting too. Is it available somewhere online?

[miffy495]

I don't know if his work specifically will be published or not, seeing as this guy is going into law school right away rather than continuing with Philosophy. This is what my group is doing in order to get our degrees, so job one is to get it in to our department and be dubbed worthy of the BA-Honours that we're all working for. Some people have gone on to publish their honours thesis after graduating, but it's pretty rare. If you're interested in the subject, I believe his paper largely consisted of a response to this book, which came out while he was in the planning stages and both luckily and unluckily pertained to his area of interest. Luckily because he had some recent work to start from. Unluckily because he was all fired up that this was fairly new ground until that point. Oh well.

[DanJW]

Cool stuff. But if there is no free will, then we have no choice but to criticise wrongdoing? There you go, thesis done, you can credit me if you want

But yeah I find this stuff interesting too. Scary, but interesting.