Bay 12 Games Forum

Several posters have pointed out the obvious fact that the game is as hard as you want it to be. If you're finding it too easy, you have only yourself to blame. Why not find out what is the minimum number of embark points you can use to survive a year on a terrifying glacier? Or just check the challenges page of the wiki. Or better yet, come up with your own challenges.

Yeah I understand and appreciate the effort. I'm certainly finding myself unable to do it.

No, a minarchist is a minarchist if they believe an ideal government does nothing, and only absolute necessities for maintaining a functioning one should be allowed to cause deviation from that ideal. Basically, if you're allowing stuff that violates your principles just because it helps people, you've endorsed the principles that allow people who like freedom to be socialists.

A minarchist is a minarchist because they think government doing things that help people and make society work better is bad? Only a government that does nothing is good? I can only think that I have not made my question clear enough, because you're effectively trying to answer it by repeating it back to me with a period instead of a question mark. Why is government that does things bad? Why is government that does nothing good?

Sure, that's all true. But say "this law doesn't really involve even one of the government's limited duties, but makes society function a lot better...", well, you've just thrown the barn doors wide open. You're not a minarchist anymore. You've justified pretty much everything the government could end up doing as acceptable providing there's sufficient benefit to be gained from it for society.

You've become an "essentially-what-we-have-right-now-ist" who disagrees not on the role of government, but only on the implementation.

You pretty much nailed it, except I never was a minarchist. If I understand right, your argument is that we should avoid government doing anything even if it benefits us and makes society function a lot better? I'd love to hear your rationale.

What they say is correct though. The majority of the population is reading for entertainment. In fact, almost all of the population is reading for entertainment, what I should have said is that the majority of the population is not entertained by learning, they're entertained by emotion. If you don't break the bullshit meter on every story, no one wants to read it. People who might want to actually get the facts will recognise what you are doing and either take it quite personally because they don't understand why, or try to sift through to see if there is anything of value in what you have written, under the manipulative language.

Almost everyone prefers to read 'news' that tells them something they already believe. You don't watch fox if you're looking for an education on how the democrats are secretly communists trying to ruin america from within, you watch it so that someone who you think is an authority will validate your opinion for you . Same goes for other forms of entertainment. You don't watch the daily show because jon stewart is telling you stuff you never realised about republicans being ignorant bigots, you watch it so that he will validate your opinion on that. It's very polarising, but we do it to ourselves. There are unbiased news services out there, Reuters is pretty good for example, but the only stories that people are interested in are the ones that are highly polarised conflict laden and emotional in and of themselves. If a story doesn't have that, the big networks will add it. People watch the news so they can get outraged at the bad guys and cheer for the good guys, not for information. How does it go? 'Give them the circus'?

Ignoring those facts is setting yourself up to be a Cassandra. The most important story in the world means nothing if no one wants to hear it. Almost every news service does it, people get outraged at fox, but for all the wrong reasons. The real problem with fox is not that they're pushing a line, everyone is pushing a line. The real problem is that fox constantly misrepresents the truth, and slides into 'just make something up' territory occasionally. Other networks will at least tell you the truth while they're telling you how you should feel about it. Although they already know how their readers and viewers feel about it, they're actually just validating those feelings so that people will come back for more.

I hope I'm not the only one who wants ombudsmen to, from now on, carry around high caliber pistols as well as chainswords.

Only if we change the name. From wikipedia: 'Ombudsman is etymologically rooted in the Old Norse word umbošsmašr, essentially meaning "representative".' Give us the Old Norse for 'Emperors mailed fist' and it's a deal.

Again from wikipedia, a better explanation of what the office entails than my own failed attempts:

'In general, an ombudsman is a state official appointed to provide a check on government activity in the interests of the citizen, and to oversee the investigation of complaints of improper government activity against the citizen. If the ombudsman finds a complaint to be substantiated, the problem may get rectified, or an ombudsman report is published making recommendations for change. Further redress depends on the laws of the country concerned, but this normally involves financial compensation.'

So, what, the ombudsmans (ombudsmen? Ombudsmanity?) are the 40k inquisitors, only for government?

If only No, they're just go betweens really, to sort out disputes before they get to litigation and occupy court time. But if someone calls the ombudsman to resolve a dispute and the ombudsman finds something shady is possibly going on, they have open lines of communication with the AFP, which is equivalent to your FBI. In fact I think if you have found something the AFP might want to investigate, you are supposed to contact the ombudsman about it.

There are several different ombudsmans offices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsmen_in_Australia), for example, I called my state energy ombudsman the other day to investigate whether I was liable to foot the bill for a gas leak which occured on the gas companies equipment on my property, since I was having trouble finding the information online. Turns out I'm not, which would have been great except the leaked gas wasn't billed to me anyway