aCosmicWave

The kind of game you daydream about while at school or work because you can’t wait to come home and play some more.

Assuming our simulation is not designed to auto-scale (and our Admins don’t know how to download more RAM), what kind of side effects could we see in the world if the underlying system hosting our simulation began running out of resources?

I see the human organism as a layering of different levels of consciousness. Each layer supports mostly automated processes that sustain the layers beneath it.

For example, we have cells that only know what it’s like to be a cell and to perform their cellular processes without any awareness of the more complex layers above them. Organs are much more complex than cells and they perform their duties without any awareness of anything above them either. And the complexity keeps increasing with various systems like endocrine, cardiovascular, etc. Then we have our subconscious and finally our conscious.

At our level, we do not consciously control any of the layers beneath us. Our primary task is to keep our bodies alive.

This got me thinking… isn’t it a little too self aggrandizing to think that we have a near infinite layering of consciousness beneath us and then it just stops at our level of awareness? What if there is some other conscious process that exists above us within our own bodies?

When people take psychedelic drugs they often describe achieving a higher level of awareness akin to ecstasy. Well what if this layer is always there actively ”living” within us but we are just the chumps that go to work, do our taxes, and exercise, while it doles out just enough feel good chemicals to keep us going (sometimes not even that)?

About 3 years ago I dreamt that I was in a downtown Chicago office interviewing for a fancy new job. For whatever reason my mom came along for the interview and was patiently waiting for me in the office lobby. About half way through the interview it began to dawn on me that my mom passed away over a decade ago. This realization effectively transformed my dream into a lucid one. I quickly ditched the interview, grabbed my mom, and we spent the rest of the day enjoying downtown Chicago. I took her out for tea, caught her up on my life, and we made the absolute most of the little time we had together.

The memories from this dream are as vivid as the memories from my real life and I treasure them dearly.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/3486735

I have been playing this adorable little game for the past few evenings. It is Playstation only but it's completely free since they're giving away the base Dreams game as part of Playstation Plus this month.

The levels are all based in a large attic filled to the brim with nostalgia-- think old toys, classic computers, portable cassette players, etc. It's so cute AND the gameplay loop is fun!

From the very first moments you can tell that that this thing was lovingly crafted. I highly recommend it!

The more I think about it, it seems that long-term happiness is something many people spend their lives seeking OR they believe it’s something they used to have and lost.

That makes me wonder if we are truly ever happy? Or if it’s something that is always just out of reach (in the future or in the past).

It really grinds my gears when there’s an c/asklemmy question and the top most responses are single word answers.

For example, a question asking for the most mind-bending movie will often have the same few movies upvoted to the top (“The Matrix”, “Inception”, “Finding Nemo 2”, etc).

Those truly might be the most popular mind-bending movies, but what I really want to know is why the person answering the question feels the way that they do. Otherwise these types of questions can become stale very quickly, as can be seen on other platforms.

Thoughts?

I just watched the first episode of the new Futurama season and the running gag was their attempt to make fun of the Hulu streaming network (Fulu)… in the year 3023. Not only that, but they also parody Black Mirror which itself parodies Netfix (Streamberry) in their latest season.

What is up with all of this meta stuff? Does anyone actually enjoy it? Is this really the quality of TV prior to AI taking over the writing?

I feel like an old man yelling at the clouds right now ☁️, but look at how they massacred my boy, Futurama!

Instead of focusing too much on all of the things that are currently wrong, could you please help paint a picture of what a future utopian society could look like?

My vision is heavily inspired by Terence McKenna. I imagine a world as it might have existed during prehistoric times. Lush forests teeming with exotic wildlife, clean air, and crystal clear water. No highways full of billboards, no parking lots, no shopping malls, and no cars. Just safe grounds and paths for humans embedded deep within all of this nature.

At a birds-eye view, it may look as if humanity has completely abandoned technology and regressed back into its childhood. Yet if you were to look out through the eyes of one of these utopian people, you would see the most wonderful augmented reality display.

Information, communication, entertainment, education, global economies… almost everything has been de-materialized. Humanity’s ceaseless pursuit of technology has been mostly divorced from our physical environment and mother earth is bustling with life again.

The only technologies that remain in the real world are those that help all of us live happy and healthy lives (modern medicine, delicious food, solar power, etc) all the while the shared virtual reality in our eyes is limited only by our collective imaginations.

We are finally living in accord with nature without having to forsake our innate desire for knowledge and progress.

For me it is Cellular Automata, and more precisely the Game of Life.

Imagine a giant Excel spreadsheet where the cells are randomly chosen to be either "alive" or "dead". Each cell then follows a handful of simple rules.

For example, if a cell is "alive" but has less than 2 "alive" neighbors it "dies" by under-population. If the cell is "alive" and has more than three "alive" neighbors it "dies" from over-population, etc.

Then you sit back and just watch things play out. It turns out that these basic rules at the individual level lead to incredibly complex behaviors at the community level when you zoom out.

It kinda, sorta, maybe resembles... life.

There is colonization, reproduction, evolution, and sometimes even space flight!

I can imagine people having fun getting lost in the flow of playing a competitive sport. I've also heard some people experience a post-workout high. But does anyone actually feel pleasure in the moment while lifting weights, jogging, cycling, etc?

If so... what does it feel like? Is there anything the rest of us can do to cultivate such a mindset?

How many times have we seen people create throwaway accounts on these types of platforms? People often want to share something valuable yet intimate without having it be tied to their online identity for privacy reasons. Some folks create new accounts for this reason. Others decide to remain silent.

Why doesn't Lemmy offer a simple checkbox when creating a post to indicate whether the OP wants their username to be publicly displayed or simply show up as anonymous? Furthermore, any comment that the OP makes on their anonymous post should be anonymous as well.

Benefits

• fewer throwaway accounts in the Lemmy database
• user will have ability to track their anonymous post(s) from their primary Lemmy account
• potentially less bot activity because anonymous posts will be originating from established Lemmy accounts instead of new accounts with no history.