sc_griffith

i haven't played magic the gathering in ages but i still follow it for some reason. if you're not checked in with the game, here's what's been going on in recent years: it's been enshittifying. i'm fascinated by when gacha games (which this essentially is) start putting the screws to players. here are some of the ways it's gone down

• the game used to have rigorous processes for managing balance, processes which sometimes failed spectacularly, but held up most of the time. empirically, that's pretty much gone. almost all of the cards that have ever been banned in the standard format have come from the last several years, and they printed a mechanic so broken that they errata'd it to cost more. to be clear, this is a game that is played with physical cards that the text can't be changed on. the situation was so dire that they just said "ok everyone should know, ignore the text on the cards, they are too broken the way we made them."
• they thought a bit about how the majority of their playerbase wasn't playing the somewhat competitive 1 vs 1 style the game was originally designed for. instead, most people play several person free for all formats, in particular these days a format called commander. so they've been absolutely shredding these people's wallets and ruining their games by designing rare cards specifically to end up being powerful in commander. recently they printed a commander card so busted in various formats that the former friend of mine who designed it ended up falling on his sword, writing an extremely apologetic essay about how he personally fucked up by letting it slip through.
• there's a whole much larger drama around the commander format that i haven't got the energy to go into here. the most tolerable summary is that they printed a card so ridiculous that the format dissolved and was remade under a wave of death threats when it was banned. i know that doesn't make sense, just trust me, or write your own summary of it.
• they found out that the more cards they come out with, the more cards they sell, so they've just been cranking out designs at greater and greater volume. at any given time there is a massive chunk of cards that are about to hit the shelves, and which they're 'teasing' and fomoing players about. the game is about 30 years old and they've been hitting a pace of printing something like 10% to 15% of all cards ever, every year.
• every once in a while they release joke sets, with weird or silly mechanics like having to yell things or tearing up cards. generally, these cards are not allowed in semi competitive play. well, they thought the most recent one would sell better if that wasn't the case, so they marked as many of these cards as they could as being tournament legal (but to keep the outcry tamped down, not in their standard format). one of these cards in particular, a goblin that makes you put stickers on things, was so miserable to have in tournament play that they ended up backtracking and banning all the joke cards.
• they found out they could make a big chunk of money by ditching their own setting and making cards for licensed IPs. they've been printing ever increasing numbers of cards themed around everything from the walking dead to fortnite to marvel to street fighter to spongebob, which sell like hotcakes. people who are invested in the style and theme of magic the gathering aren't super pleased. again, to placate the haters, these cards are not allowed in the standard competitive format, giving people who want to do wizard shit a refuge.

the last bullet point brings us to today: just kidding, frog boiled, you will now have captain america and kefka fighting each other at your table whether you like it or not. reactions are not entirely positive:

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1gc3w97/universes_beyond_will_enter_through_standard/

something that's quite interesting to me is how few people i've seen bootlick for wizards of the coast in recent years. i've looked at reactions to other games enshittifying and always saw lots of defenders of the company in charge, with four lines of attack being most common:

• they have to put bread on the table
• whew i know this seems bad but i would be ok with it if they just gave us 2% more crumbs. it's sooooo close to the right level of abuse
• stop being poor
• bro, just vote with your dollar bro

i've been seeing very little of that in regards to mtg. some people have denied the pot was getting warmer, but mostly, people have just turned into haters. not sure why; perhaps it has to do with the small scale social aspect of magic. if you're playing marvel snap and having the blood drained out of your neck, you don't really have a group of specific people you're experiencing that in concert with; with mtg you do. it could be the strength of small scale personal ties that both keeps people invested in this game, and makes people angry at how that investment is being treated

unfortunately i don't see any reason that this anger is likely to put a stop to things. after all, arch-enshittifier facebook is still making ultrabucks, despite having destroyed its reputation on every possible level and despite constantly enraging its users. you can do horrible things to people and just coast! it works!

EDIT: this is election relevant btw https://awful.systems/comment/5086076

- curtis yarvin

the symbolism is 😗👌

archive link: https://archive.ph/jFO6f

archive link

https://archive.ph/n3Ffq

Judge Mehta’s Google decision is likely to be appealed. “Regardless of who wins or loses, this case probably has a date with the Supreme Court,” Mr. Kovacic said.

ah well

DefendingAIArt is a subreddit run by mod "Trippy-Worlds," who also runs the debate sister subreddit AIWars. Some poking around made clear that AIWars is perfectly fine with having overt Nazis around, for example a guy with heil hitler in his name who accuses others of lying because they are "spiritually jewish." So we're off to a great start.

the first thing that drew my eye was this post from a would be employer:

not really clear what the title means, but this person seems to have had a string of encounters with the most based artists of all time.

also claims to have been called "racial and gender slurs" for using ai art and that he was "kicked out of 20 groups" and some other things. idk what to tell this guy, it legitimately does suck that wealthy people have the money to pay for lots of art and the rest of us don't

I really enjoyed browsing around this subreddit, and a big part of that was seeing how much the stigma around AI gets to people who want to use it. pouring contempt on this stuff is good for the world

the above guy would like to know what combination of buttons to press to counter the "that just sounds like stealing from artists" attack. a commenter leaps in to help and immediately impales himself:

you hate to see it. another commenter points out that well ... maybe these people just aren't your friends

to close out, an example of fearmongering:

This is an essay about 'village' vs 'control' techno-optimism I wrote for a class final in 2016. I was in undergrad etc etc but for 2016 I feel it had a lot of foresight, and there's still some bits here and there I haven't seen anyone else explicate. Thought some of you might be interested

saw this posted by @sailor_sega_saturn at https://awful.systems/comment/3871697

op has a simple question:

Why are trans women so intellectually successful? They seem to be overrepresented 5-100x in eg cybersecurity twitter, mathy AI alignment, non-scam crypto twitter, math PhD programs, etc.

and a skull shaped answer:

My theory is that too much testosterone makes you dumber, particularly during adolescence. You need a little for your cells & organs to work, but past a certain point it does more harm than good (for intelligence specifically — motivation & happiness etc aside). Apparently this is not a new theory and people have posited a U-shaped curve for how testosterone affects IQ. The key (sad) claim is that the vast majority of men are on the too-much-T side of the curve. Maybe trans women get the best of both worlds intellectually — a male skull with female chemistry.

our researcher sets about fending off possible objections:

Why didn't evolution give females big heads if it would make them all geniuses? Another anecdote. My sister has a big head. She was valedictorian in high school I think. She hit her head one day in middle school during gym class by running into a wall. She also fell off a bike and hit her head in high school. I have never hit my head and I think the main reason is that my arms are strong enough to catch myself. So maybe the big headed women would-be-ancestors fell and hit their heads.

cites chatgpt for this:

Do trans men get the worst of both worlds intellectually — female skulls and male chemistry? Yes.

demonstrates the exceptional explanatory power of his hypothesis:

Why are really good tech founders so rare? You have to have very high power-seeking/initiative (T) and very high IQ. This is an incredibly rare combination because the testosterone murders your IQ. You have to be a genius before puberty hits. Helps if your brain/head is giant. Look at eg Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos.

describes the potential impact of his research:

I suspect that some simple electrical stimulation in the womb could make infant females' skulls bigger and result in lots of genius women. If they don't fall off their bikes and hit their heads.

all time great footnotes:

Thought of some more potential evidence. The smartest cis women I've known almost all had lack of butt (women's most visible muscle -- so low testosterone?)

Later that day: i asked my sister. She said all her smart friends (men and women) lack butts too! She and I both have the butt, so we are speaking against our own kind here.

a commenter has an epistemically rigorous counterpoint:

I don't understand why you need to invoke testosterone. Transgender brain is special, for example, transgender women have immunity to visual illusions.

another commenter objects to that, based on a deep dive into the literature:

Can you source this claim? I've never heard it and GPT-4 says it has no scientific basis.

"well admittedly I made it up, but it seems plausible"

Whoops, it's really looks like I imagined this claim to be backed more than by one SSC post. In my defense I say that this poll covered really existing thing like abnormal illusions processing in schizophrenics (see "Systematic review of visual illusions schizophrenia" Costa et al., 2023) and I think it's overall plausible.

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240706165407/https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BBCtWtg44Yeh6fire/is-being-a-trans-woman-or-just-low-t-20-iq

somehow I managed to miss this until now

archive link

https://web.archive.org/web/20240517214034/https://www.404media.co/here-is-what-axons-bodycam-report-writing-ai-looks-like-draft-one/

tl;dr ai will write up officer reports used to help convict people, based on bodycam audio. of course we can expect it to display the usual features of fictionalizing, bias and diffusion of accountability

special highlight: end of the article includes a comment from the EFF, imploring municipalities not to purchase this tech. company responds with a statement pitching the product to prosecutors. make your own inference about who has control over this decision

I'm doing it so skillfully. I'm totally basilisking you. isn't that scary