Interesting Links for 15-10-2017

[andrewducker]

Analysing hundreds of terror interrogations, two scientists revolutionise the art of extracting the truth

(tags: torture crime terrorism psychology )

Why the assholes are winning: money trumps all.

(tags: money economics society )

Hogwarts Express rescues family stranded in Highlands

(tags: harrypotter trains scotland )

An environmental journalist on why they never write about overpopulation

(tags: population environment )

UPS drivers take cute pictures of the dogs they meet

(tags: dogs postage usa photos )

Online dating connected to increased interracial marriage

(tags: usa dating relationships race society )

Orc Slavery Made Me Quit ‘Middle-earth: Shadow of War’

(tags: lotr games slavery )

The IKEA Dictionary (Unofficial)

(tags: ikea dictionary )

There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

(tags: thefuture ai predictions )

Comments

[drplokta]

The article on not talking about population and the environment unfortunately mentions one of the other things that shouldn’t be talked about, namely that people in rich countries have a bigger environmental impact than people in poor countries. And the reason it shouldn’t be a talked about is of course that the obvious response is to work to make sure that poor countries stay poor.

[calimac]

There used to be a guy on LJ who'd been a US Army interrogator and who said the same things. I heard him speak at a church conference on torture. All the other speakers were on the immorality of torture. For this guy, torture was so stupid and counterproductive a technique that the moral issue didn't even enter into it.

Surely money doesn't always trump all. The guys at Enron, or Goldman Sacks, or Wells Fargo, had lots of money, but in their case this was trumped by being assholes. Supporters of Trump brush off his being an asshole, but it's not his money that seems to appeal to them, it's his smug certainties.

I've actually seen it positively argued that overpopulation isn't a serious problem any more, because population growth is leveling off. Even if true, that didn't strike me as a very sensible argument.

Like most articles on RPGs, this one is fabulously unclear on exactly how it works. When a character "finds you," does that mean he just pops up on screen, or what? Besides that, it may be set in the "Lord of the Rings universe", whatever that means, but words cannot express how utterly unTolkienian it is. And not just because in Tolkien, it wasn't Celebrimbor who forged the One Ring. Among other things, if in Tolkien you employ an army of orcs, that's a sure sign you've become a bad guy. Remember Saruman?

Article on AI keeps claiming it's not saying that technology always develops faster than expected, but keeps reverting into saying that it does. (Instead of arguing, "What if it does in this case?") Reaches bottom in a passage I cannot refind in which assuming the evolution is slow is characterized as an optimistic view.

[andrewducker]

You're right that money doesn't always trump everything. Sometimes things are too public, and even a Weinstein can go down if enough people stand up at once. But it makes a huge difference. And I saw plenty of people before the election saying that Trump was a successful businessman and that was what the country needed.

Overpopulation is levelling off. But it's slowing down by less than it was, and I'm nervous about how much time it's going to take to plateau. Most of the growth is now happening in Africa however, so it depends on whether they can make their population self-sustaining. Hopefully greater education for women will make the same difference there it's made everywhere else.

Totally with you on how not very Tolkien the Mordor game is. There's some interesting discussion here: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/70777/how-well-does-shadow-of-mordor-fit-into-middle-earth-canon/

[calimac]

Trump did attract initial attention as a plausible candidate due to his business success, which correlates to his wealth though it's not quite the same thing. But heap-big successful businessfolk have attempted to gate-crash US politics in this way before, and have not usually done very well. (Herman Cain, Carly Fiorina, Meg "Megasaurus" Whitman, Al Checchi). Trump's difference was not that he was wealthier than others, but his extreme degree of self-confident bullying.

Are the article in your blogroll and the discussion you link to in your topic talking about the same game? One's called Shadow of War and the other's called Shadow of Mordor. But the descriptions seem to match. I'm rather in despair after reading the comment discussion, because it's focused narrowly on the picayune question of whether it was possible, under Tolkien's subcreational rules, to have a wraith of Celebrimbor or not, and not considering at all whether to write such a story as this one is at all in keeping with Tolkien's spirit and intent.

Not to say that someone writing their own story has to keep to Tolkien's spirit, but then they don't have to keep to Tolkien's subcreational rules either. I'm just pointing out that they don't keep to his spirit.

But most irritating is the clown who claims that Tolkien wanted people to expand on his creation, and therefore anything anybody writes is canon. No he didn't; that's a common but nevertheless entirely mistaken reading of Tolkien's views.