The Brief Asylum from Forum Madness Thread

I just thought I'd start a thread in a little-used forum, away from the cascading insanity currently overwhelming the general, technical, and other forums.

A nice little thread. Where we can find sanctuary and discuss things, good things, interesting things, in a pleasant way. And keep our heads attached to the ends of our necks. I don't know whether anyone will come here, and if they do, I don't know how long we can keep the insanity out. But hell, thought I'd try.

What does this have to do with politics? Well, this is a very utopian thread, based on the assumptions of classical liberalism, Enlightenment-style, that men and women are basically rational, disciplined, and capable of learning and sacrifice. It's also a thread for those seeking a brief asylum in a safe territory.

So what shall we discuss?

Hmmm. Did you know that in the families of emperor penguins, males take care of the young, in the egg and after hatching, while females hunt? One of the few species with a fairly complete parental role reversal, and no one quite knows why.

Or....

I'd really like to see LL do a "continent" or a series of sims with an "off-world" theme. Mars, or Jupiter's moon Io, or perhaps even a completely fabricated environment with its own "ecosystem." Something like the Discovery Channel's "Alien Planet", which I'm looking forward to seeing. I know this has been talked about before on these forums, but I'd love to see a thread where people try to "map" out agreed-on parameters for such a continent, and then present it to LL.

Or....

Your pick?

Some causeless rebels are never happy unless they can make a club in which they keep others out -- otherwise, they can't make sense of their own causeless rebellion, eh Seth?

The Lindens don't seem to let you put in home-made textures like Planet Mars red ground, but you could always blow some prims and put them out and create that alternative world. It's amazing to me how many players have actually created exotic worlds with the fairly minimal landscaping and texture tools we have in the library, adding their own designed textures. I would say, buy one of those $980 islands, or bid on the auction for a quarter or a half sim, and make this world and see how it goes.

If you want to create little asylums on the forums, however, you have to put them in off-topic or even entirely off the Lindens' web pages. The reason is that the tiny claque that wished to create NPR safe-havens in which they could block out other posters whose reputations they had neg-spammed did not succeed in their wishes.

One of the premises of the Enlighenment is that there are a multiplicity of ways to the truth. No one has a monopoly on the truth. We could posit an inaccessible truth higher than us all -- that truth may be One and Whole and Immutable but we can only posit -- we could turn out to be horridly wrong. With our limited brains, knowing their limitations, even if we concede some Higher, Immutable Truth we have to posit alternative ways to the truth by this or that rational being capable of rational thought, since his temperment, outlook, education, experience, etc. will fashion the means by which he makes that approach to the truth, using trial and error and reason and wisdom.

I like to quote this saying of the ancients: "While reason is common to all men/most men behave as if they have their own private understanding."

On the forums, as in life, it's the ardent belief of some that they possess a bead-line on the truth. They believe their perception is the only reality. Whereas I'm quite prepared to believe that any of a dozen of the forum harpies attacking me have a perception, a culture, a temperment, an education, etc. etc. that created their apparatus for perception, and I await their explication of their own internal logic for arriving at their points of view. I so seldom get it, but one can hope, can't one.

I worry when you throw about the term "utopianism" so loosely and link it up with "rational" and "classic liberalism" and "Enlightenment". That suggests that rationalism and classic liberalism actually go hand-in-hand with some of the horrifying 19th and 20th century utopianist fantasies like communism or fascism. Yet they don't. I find that a very suspect sleight of hand.

What it comes down to, in SL, is whether a few who believe themselves to be enlightened, who believe they create asylums for others, who believe they are better, who castigate others as evil or irrational or uneducated, can create the world and its rules.

The answer is: not.

I'd really like to see LL do a "continent" or a series of sims with an "off-world" theme. Mars, or Jupiter's moon Io, or perhaps even a completely fabricated environment with its own "ecosystem." Something like the Discovery Channel's "Alien Planet", which I'm looking forward to seeing. I know this has been talked about before on these forums, but I'd love to see a thread where people try to "map" out agreed-on parameters for such a continent, and then present it to LL.

Or....

Your pick?[/QUOTE]

With the new Havoc 2 , I would like to have an Alien Sim with alien bizarre physics settings.

If the scripting language gets better I would some AI Aliens running around making life interesting also.

oooh, yeh and be really out there with TWO moons..

I admit I find the probable future of having an 'off-grid' sim on a personal server in my network as something I'm really pining for. It would be pretty cool to have a sandbox of that nature.

Perhaps when LL's infrastructure and financial needs are such that they can open-source the client/server software.

I can dream....I would miss the main grid though, so I'm sure that wouldn't be the social killer, part of the fun is showing your creations to people and seeing what they've done. Imagine entire sims of show'n'tell!!

Social killer indeed!

Show 'n tell to only those you've filtered and screened and ignored, etc. of course -- a very strained, self-serving server LOL.

The future of the Internet: open-source=closed societies -- a proliferation of closed, smug, arrogant or even authoritarian, or worse, totalitarianian little worlds, each a personal fiefdom, spreading across the metaverse...wars and rumours of wars among principalities...

What's interesting about SL, especially the forums, is that you don't have just one person like that, you have, oh, about 12-48. And one person alone isn't enough to fight them.

Thus we kill 'em with love!

One day you'll crack and explode, Merwan, and they'll be picking up the pieces from here to Poughkeepsie.

There's already a proliferation of personal fiefdoms where people only show and tell to screened and filtered audiences. The world is covered with a network of them! I am the totalitarian ruler of one myself. Alas, my only subjects at present are two cats and three houseplants, and sometimes the masses revolt and pry open the cabinet and drag the cat food bag onto the floor . . .

Oh yeah: Merwan is a rainbow!

Well... I tried.

In the meantime, you gotta admit, he makes you smile! okay, okay, he makes ME smile

Recommended brief asylum from forum madness and not being able to log into SL: Guild Wars : D

If you're thinking about building new and interesting environments using the SL tools take a look at the Catacombs in Guild Wars. That area is a particular favorite of mine due to its monumental architecture and exotic natural forms. It's definitely not the trite skulls and caskets type of catacombs usually seen in RPG/combat games.

Sounds like a game I'll want to try soon, sweetie!

Let's get complicated. Two suns, and the world as a moon of a huge gas giant planet with rings. I'm kind of thinking of the scene from the movie Pitch Black, where half the horizon is taken up by a setting primary gas giant, and a sun being partially eclipsed by the rings.... That would be a stunning thing to see if precessed with realistic movement and light effects.

ooh yea that would give a lovely eerie radiance for our theatrical splendor !