Well, except purchasing power would decrease significantly if wealth was distributed that way.

I know it’s counter-intuitive but the real problem with billionaires isn’t that the poor are destitute. The problem is that economic power is political power, and oligarchies use institutionalized violence to keep the poor destitute forever.

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I think that if you say

In clinical settings, it may serve as an intervention to increase emotional awareness and empathy among individuals who have engaged in harassment, with the aim of modifying their behavior.

then you need your metrics to control for, among other things, “individuals who have engaged in harassment”

But they’re not just testing efficacy either. They’re making a qualitative statement that VR has certain special characteristics when it comes to aiding empathy. That’s a claim that absolutely need to be contrasted against other media, and it’s absolutely “how studies work”.

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Ok lol not sure where this is going, but we’re done.

Here’s how I came to that conclusion.

We hypothesize that this embodied experience will elicit morally salient emotions like disgust and anger. By inducing this moral discomfort, the intervention aims to foster self-awareness and encourage a reconsideration of the behavior’s impact, serving as a potential strategy to promote behavioral change.

Talking about neurology doesn’t automatically validate their method though. I’m not an expert in this field but my impression is that the researchers make a lot of assumptions that I’d describe as shortcuts; gloss over the differences that they found between the experimental and control groups; and then reach a lot with their conclusion.

One thing that stands out to me is the identification of feelings of disgust and anger to support that the VR setting can be used to elicit social change. This implies that the participants would not have felt disgust or anger had their avatar been male; or if it was a normal videogame; or if this wasn’t a game at all but a film instead; or if this wasn’t audiovisual but a book instead…

I don’t think they did anything to substantiate that line of thinking, and I’m not convinced by the various psychological scales that they used to support the connection they made. As far as I’m concerned these same men could have responded with disgust just by hearing a retelling of a similar event by a random stranger. The study at least does nothing to lead me to assume otherwise.

The disgust, fear and anger responses are at the core of the argument to support their central thesis that “first-person virtual embodiment of a female target of catcalling is a useful method for eliciting morally salient negative emotions in male participants”. But my understanding of their methodology leaves me unimpressed and unconvinced.

A lot of people hate Jews completely irrespective of Israel’s actions. I’m sorry that that’s the case, but the rest of us need to be faithful to ourselves in rejecting racism regardless.

If only there were journalists on the ground that could report impartially so we didn’t need to both-sides this issue. Oh right, Israel killed them all.

I’m pretty sure corporate conglomerates and intelligence agencies fund or otherwise aid conspiracy nuts in order to construct cover for real conspiracies.

I mean, there is some nuance to be considered here. The USA has made it abundantly clear that they plan for a major conflict in the South China Sea for over a decade now.

When they finally left Afghanistan, the plan wasn’t to bring the troops home and never go on another campaign again. It was about shifting priorities. That’s what we’re seeing now.

I don’t mean to downplay the aggressive aspects of this military exercise, I’m just saying there are multiple shades of gray here and that we lose some of the power to explain what’s happening if we amp up the contrast too much.

There’s also a thing called dual sim. Which is standard in the Asian market and used to be common in Europe.

I don’t even know what instance I’m posting on but I just wanted to say that I too am amazed how well you moderate your handling of this stuff.

I prefer GOG over Steam for the simple reason that I’m not forced to use a launcher if I don’t want to.

How dare you. My cat is an angel and I’m lucky to get to clean her fur.

I responded to your expectation that Toyota should have become a leader for full EVs. I just tried to explain why I think it makes sense for them to keep doing what they’re good at, which is hybrids. But overall I agree with the points you made, and I think lots of people like Toyota for being no-nonsense and reliable, and some of those people (like you and me) prefer EVs. I’m sure they will make some EVs soon enough though.

Why do you need Toyota specifically to make EVs?

This is 500+ hours of gameplay:

• Half-Life 2 ($2)
• Portal ($2)
• Portal 2 ($2)
• Psychonauts ($1.5)
• Psychonauts 2 ($9)
• Subnautica ($8)
• Hollow Knight ($8)
• Silksong ($16)
• Hades ($8)
• Disco Elysium ($4)
• The Witcher 3 ($3)
• Terraria ($5)
• Left4Dead 2 ($2)
• Kingdom Come ($5)
• Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 ($6)