Zero Punctuation: inFamous

[Versago]

>sigh< my feelings are torn: im happy that someone created a game good enough for ZP to like it...
but its on PS3...
which sucks, and i feel betrayed by the universe for this unfortunate yet interesting event

Like when Sonic released that new dark knight game, its interesting that the francise sold it well enough to live on but i still feel that some awful thing has happened in the world

 

[Pellucid]

You've laid out a lot of unsustainable and insane positions, such as that we shouldn't be allowed to punish serial killers. I really like this little gem:

Now THAT is Fascism: the idea that if the government says it, it must be law.

law
?noun
1. the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision.
2. any written or positive rule or collection of rules prescribed under the authority of the state or nation, as by the people in its constitution.

So yes, that's exactly what a law is. You're arguing with the dictionary. Have fun with your little fantasy land where you get to redefine every word you don't like the meaning of in order to suit your own political agenda. It's awfully Orwellian of you.

Does it involve the infliction of pain for any purpose beyond stopping physical resistance to custody with no more force than required? Then it's torture.

Heck, your definition of torture is so bad, gang bang ass rape wouldn't be considered torture as long as you used enough lube.

Rape leaves long-term psychological damage on the victim, so no, gang bang ass rape would be torture by my definition.

And by your definition, an older brother giving a noogie to his younger brother is "torture."

One day you're going to realize how ridiculously unsustainable your position is, but you're going to have to grow up a lot before you do, so this is the last I'm going to attempt to discuss the topic with you. You're simply not in a mature enough mental state to handle a discussion grounded in logic and reason, and I'm neither going to be able to enlighten you, nor you me until you are.

 

[nipsen]

You're simply not in a mature enough mental state to handle a discussion grounded in logic and reason,

+1 You approached this logically, this Cheese clown obviously has no clue about what hes talking about. As for my own philosophy, I am neither right nor left, liberal on some issues and conservative on others. I have stated this to much higher intellectuals than the escapist boards could ever offer.

...Since you're here - how is the counter- revolution going in Bolivia these days, anyway?

 

[valczir]

I would disagree with some parts of the review.

For instance, I disagree on the point that inFAMOUS is a good game. Mostly, what gets to me is how shallow the game is. There's only one way to do anything - you have no stealth or close combat options, so it's almost as if you're playing a third person shooter. With guns. And without decent AI.

I mean, come on, if I'm coming up behind someone, they shouldn't immediately turn around and tear into me with their guns. Bad form! I wanna slit your throat without me knowing! Or, at the very least, I wanna be able to attack you with my melee powers while you're still unaware of my presence. But NOOO! Psychic enemies FTL! That's part of what ruined Oblivion so completely, for me.

With the currently implemented AI, it seems like the enemy's instructions are basically to shoot in the player's direction whenever the player is in range, and to run around a little when they take damage.

Really my biggest complaint about inFAMOUS is the lack of options. It's a sandbox game without the sandbox - you can either be completely evil or completely good, but you don't even have a choice about how to go about being good or evil. You don't get to choose whether you sneak closer to your enemies so that you can better destroy them or run in guns blazing. You don't get to choose to throw on some kind of protective electric armor and then do a dash move to get to melee range, then wipe your enemies out with close range combat. You have a choice of whether to kill them or shackle them to the ground. That's it.

To me, inFAMOUS felt dumbed down. And I hate that. Much as I hate the repetitious side missions in Prototype, I think it's a much better game. You can often make choices about how to go about a mission, making gameplay much more interesting. The storyline is actually starting to pick up to the point where I only want to do the main missions, because I want to see what happens next (it actually shows some similarities to the storytelling elements that made Vagrant Story so good). And the side missions are entirely optional - they give you Evolution Points to customize your abilities, but so does whipping out some weapons and slaughtering everything that moves.

Granted, I've only played the demo of inFAMOUS (I played it about seven times through, because I actually enjoyed it the first two times - the next three were because I was trying to figure out what bothered me about it the second time through, and the final two were because I simply couldn't believe that the game was so shallow - I thought I must be playing it wrong), but I've read many reviews, and the rest of the game seems to mirror my experiences with the demo (in spite of the fact that they're all positive).

Yeah, I just wanted to say that. Because I'm putting off cleaning my house. (>")>

 

[Shoqiyqa]

Actually I'm pretty moderate, it's just that "Republicans = Nazis" jokes got old about a year into Bush's first term ...

... and seven years later he still hadn't taken the hint!

 

[Airbear101]

i'm surprised no one started the prototype-inFamous war yet :O Youtube is filled with that!

 

[Pellucid]

Actually I'm pretty moderate, it's just that "Republicans = Nazis" jokes got old about a year into Bush's first term ...

... and seven years later he still hadn't taken the hint!

Congratulations, you're officially funnier than Yahtzee, at least when it comes to political humor. That was a much better joke than his.

No, you're not.

You may occasionally wind up in the middle because of the accident of your extreme views leading to the same conclusion as someone who is a moderate, but no: that doesn't make you a moderate anymore than a broken clock is a working clock if you look at it when the time is 12:00

I really am.

I'm pro-gay marriage (Democrat), anti-abortion (Republican), pro-personal responsibility (Republican), anti-discriminatory (both, really), hawk lobby (usually Republican), pro-federal government (Democrat), and incredibly tolerant of people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds (I'd put that as Republican, but I'm sure you wouldn't).

The catch is that I'm very extreme in all of these positions because all of my political stances are born of pure logic, which tends to force me into absolutes. I think homosexuals (and polyamorists, furthermore) deserve all of the same rights and privileges that heterosexual couples do. I think that taking any innocent human life is a negative unless you definitively save +1 innocent human lives by doing so and there was no other way to save said lives. I think that every man is by definition only responsible for his own mistakes and failings, and it should never be the onus of another man to pay for them in any way.

This thought pattern is necessary when you try to excise all faith and appeals to emotion from ethics, which I personally feel is the only fair way to go about doing things, since emotion and faith vary from person to person, but logic is immutable.

You've laid out a lot of unsustainable and insane positions, such as that we shouldn't be allowed to punish serial killers.

Strawman.

It absolutely isn't a strawman. We're talking about logic and the smooth running of society here. YOUR logic would lead to absolute chaos. Mine doesn't. Your system of thought, therefore, has very serious flaws that need to be examined and rectified before we can even begin to consider it as viable.

Dictionaries focus on descriptive definitions

No, dictionaries focus on real definitions. You, on the other hand, focus on make believe ones. Make believe ones that would just happen to re-enforce your position if they had any basis in reality. Which they don't.

And waterboarding doesn't?

Nope. You know we waterboard our own troops to prepare them for the possibility of it happening in the field, right? So either we're scarring every soldier we have for life or it doesn't cause serious psychological trauma.

In other words, you've dug yourself into a hole, so you're going to throw out a few statements you think might cause me trouble before leaving.

Not at all. In fact, if you'd like I'd be happy to continue running circles around you and making you look ridiculous, it's just that I'm not going to get anything but entertainment out of it and you're not going to get anything at all other than perhaps frustration.

 

[captainwillies]

derp derp derp

orrrr instead of adding another link to the chain of hate, you could just not reply?

 

[Pellucid]

orrrr instead of adding another link to the chain of hate, you could just not reply?

I don't hate anybody here. If you do, I see that as your problem.

 

[captainwillies]

orrrr instead of adding another link to the chain of hate, you could just not reply?

I don't hate anybody here. If you do, I see that as your problem.

woah there. i see your still in "kill mode" after turning my reasonably passive reply into an insult.... actually that was point instead of quoting or replying and there by making more hate, just don't reply. thats what im going to do now

off to taekwondo wooooosh.

 

[Pellucid]

None of those positions are born of pure logic. Logic is like math (it is math, according to some): it can only show you the relationship between things. The value of those things cannot be assigned by math (it can show you positions that necessarily lead to contradictions, but I don't see any of that in what you're talking about).
...
Just because you assign value on the basis of "pure numbers" doesn't mean you're not basing that on faith: you're just basing it on a *different* faith, faith that justice is about numbers and not individual rights.

I can assign value to things logically based on the clear purposes of those things from a natural perspective. Life's clear purpose is survival and reproduction. Therefore, it is in the best interest for any organism to produce a situation which will be most conducive to that. Humans are social creatures, and therefore the best situation for them to survive and reproduce is a smoothly-running society, where people feel rewarded for contributing to that society and set upon for detracting from it.

This is all logic. The only tiny leap of faith I made here is to assume that the primary purpose of life is to do the only thing life is actually capable of doing other than ceasing to be.

Plenty of people believe that. Problem is, how do you use "logic" to determine who is "innocent"? I mean, that's an argument with a logic LOOP in it: how do you know who is "innocent" or not when it appears your method for determining who is innocent--"the ethical thing to do"--depends upon you knowing who is innocent in the first place?

There's no loop here. If a person has not been found to be guilty of detracting from the smooth running of society, then they are an innocent; the default assumption is innocence. That is to say, innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, the only time it is acceptable to harm someone is if they have already very clearly done harm to an innocent.

You'd be correct that this stance would be unsustainable without the presumption of innocence, but once you add the presumption of innocence it becomes quite simple.

Finally, how do you use logic to determine the "best end result"? What logical argument do you have for what is 'best'?

If action A helps more innocent parties than it harms, action A is acceptable. Also, if it harms a guilty party without harming any innocent parties, it is acceptable.

If the 10,000 people who will die if you don't torture are like me--people who would rather die than use torture--the "best end result" is one where we all die. If they are like you, vice versa. There's no way to resolve that with logic: you've got to start assigning value.

Nonsense. I don't need to care about your personal views in any way to make the ethical decision under my paradigm, which is the entire point of my paradigm. I don't need to know what you personally believe or feel; feelings and faith are irrelevant when it comes to a decision like this. Inconveniencing one guilty party to save ten thousand is an incredibly easy choice to make when you stop obfuscating the issue with faith or feelings.

 

[Pellucid]

Maybe. But "position that would lead to absolute chaos" =/= "we shouldn't be allowed to punish serial killers" necessarily.

Strawman: substituting an argument that you've made up for the actual argument of your opponent.

But you actually DID say that we shouldn't be allowed to punish serial killers. I specifically brought up that punishing a serial killer infringes on their right to liberty; their right to do what they want. I assumed you wouldn't object to such an infringement of their liberties. You said you would. Therefore, you object to punishing serial killers.

3) Stop using dictionaries of general usage and use dictionaries designed for a specialized discussion like this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lawphil-nature/

I think it's really hilarious how you mocked my using the dictionary to define words, then you linked me to a site which defined the word I defined the same way I defined it. I really don't think you understood any of those big words in the passage you quoted, because it pretty much said that laws are entirely a facet of society and societal function, which is exactly what I said. If society is a fascist state, then by the definition of law in your passage, the demands of the dictator are the law. When speaking of what is "normative" in law, you're generally speaking of what the law seeks to accomplish. And when you say "legal rights," and then backpedal and try to pretend that such things even exist when you're speaking of normatives it just looks ridiculous on your part. Just admit that you meant "divine rights" (or "inalienable rights" if you're one of those faithophobes) and be done with it.

source: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

Vanity fair: Clearly the most reliable and unbiased source for determining what is and is not torture.

Also, that article is just one man's anecdote. It is in no way a definitive study of the truth of the situation. I mean, some people would be traumatized by being put in jail, but are you going to call lawful imprisonment torture? Sure, a couple of people ever have been traumatized by waterboarding. Somehow, however, I doubt even the man in your article was. It was uncomfortable for him. Very uncomfortable. But he wasn't scarred by a longshot.