Sinister Portents

@TheCartoonLoon What if it's you and your pregnant wife. What color should she pick, and which would you pick?

Id imagine that if red wins and the kid did pick red there would be enough people left in the world that someone would be able to look after the kid yes. So if kid picks red he lives for sure If kid picks blue I gave kid a chance to live.

@Imravnos @SpawnYaardReply Because it's a remake. New engine, updated gameplay.

@Count_Dreg @SpawnYaardReply Despite it literally being recycling. You can buy and play AC:BF on every console right now. So explain why it is ok to re-sell a game you can play on PC, PS3,4,5 Xbox 360,Xbone, XBS, NS, NS2, and even on IOS?

What's the point of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced? People go after Last of Us remakes but this is being celebrated like it blew up the gaming world.

I'd go Might and Magic. Love all the series, but Ultima is done for me, I don't see anything new it can say. Bards Tale 3 ended with your party becoming gods. Might and Magic, at its peak just brought the best combination of fun and crunch. Wizardry is a little more crunchy. I'm actually playing Wizardry 7 right now, just started a new run on Steam Deck.

You're rolling a 20 on your D20 - and the RPG gods are granting you the wish to revive one of these four legendary series by being blessed with a worthy, modern sequel; one that truly captures the essence of its soul and lets it shine in all its glory. Which do you pick? ⚔️ Wizardy ⚔️ Bard's Tale ⚔️ Ultima ⚔️ Might and Magic

@ClySuva @joe_shipman It's not a good example, because obviously, if you stay and fight, you may die no matter how many people stay and fight. It's not the same at all.

@joe_shipman Classic case is war. Enemy state attacks yours, you can either take the red option and flee abroad, or you can take the blue option to stay and fight. Red option assures your survival, blue may save your country, but only if enough people remain to defend.

Can anyone come up with a REALISTIC example of the red-blue puzzle which does not require a powerful villain murdering people?

@Staladus What if you are pregnant? Do you have an obligation to protect your unborn child or does the fetus have to vote?

I have no idea why you would press the red button. It's 100% vs 51% the answer is clear here.

There is absolutely nothing realistic about this scenario to immerse yourself in. It's purely abstract. If you try to make it realistic it breaks down immediately. You want a real scenario to see what type of person you are: there's a burning building. There's a baby in the building. If you stay outside, you live and the child dies. If you go in, both of you could live or die. What would you do?

It depends on whether you view this question as a blunt and primitive game-theoretic abstraction or whether you immerse yourself in a realistic scenario and think it through. In a realistic scenario this question is essentially a call for cooperation for the humanity “Lets just vote blue so that no one has to die - don’t be a traitor.” Almost every child would choose the option “all humans stay alive,” i.e. blue. Every father, mother, grandma, or grandpa knows this. That’s why basically no parent would ever risk the scenario where they survive while their red vote helped killing their own children. Therefore, the only way (in a realistic scenario) to vote against the death of billions of people is to press the blue button. However, if we look at it purely through game theory as a group of anonymous participants, then of course you choose red.

It’s funny this person got so emotional with me over the red vs blue thought experiment that they cannot think logically about this. No, in fact red is not guaranteed survival at the cost of others lives. It’s in fact the exact opposite. Blue was the only option that had a qualifier that if people did not choose it, then people died. Making blue the option that is survival at the cost of life. Because if 50% did not choose blue, then everyone who chose blue dies. That is gambling. Red on the other hand was a choice that no matter what anyone else chose, as long as you chose red, you survived. So red is in fact not gambling with your life, but blue is a gamble, blue is a gamble banking on the hope that at least 50% choose blue. But this is heavily dependent on other people’s choices. Again Red never has this stipulation behind it. As no matter the percentage, or the choice, red always survives. There are 4 different variations that this experiment can run 50% select blue= everyone lives 100% select blue = everyone lives 100% select red = everyone lives 50.1% select red = all blue dies So the reality is that there’s a 25% overall chance that it’s guaranteed death by choosing blue as a default. But in no scenario presented in any of the possible combinations of this, can red ever die. So, the only people that are gambling with life, are those who choose blue.

@exQUIZitely Yeah, it was a fun game. High water mark for me, as far as sub sims are concerned is Aces of the Deep. No pun intended.

Most people will probably associate the name NovaLogic with their biggest hits: Comanche and Delta Force. One that gets a bit forgotten sometimes is Wolfpack (1990). I always thought it stood out for its innovative (at the time) "command the entire side" approach - you could direct a full wolfpack or convoy tactically while jumping between individual ships, blending elements of strategy and simulation. In this sense it was different from classics like Silent Service. It's a pretty ambitious attempt at a complex World War II naval simulation set during the Battle of the Atlantic, and it lets you command either German U-boat wolfpacks or Allied convoys (with escorts and merchant ships). The game featured some accurate historical progression: early war gives U-boats the edge, while later years introduce better Allied sonar, and radar - which have a real effect on gameplay and difficulty. Personally, I always come back to Silent Service II (1990 by MicroProse) as the benchmark for submarine sims. Doesn't mean Wolfpack was bad, but didn't quite feel as immersive and tense as commanding a single submarine.

@oldyzach This game is the goat. Best game ever. It's my one game on an Island pick.

😎

@upstatefederlst We did.

People out here acting like 80s and 90s kids regularly watched movies from the 50s and 60s.

@RebeccaNP @langofmind Babies can't vote. People in comas can't vote. That is when this question starts breaking down as illogical.

@langofmind 'Everyone in the world' includes babies, children, people who aren't going to understand what is asked of them.

Love that we're doing this again, but let's settle it for good. This is a linguistic framing effect. Compare current framing to: If you choose red button, you live no matter what. If you choose blue button, you live only if a majority also choose blue.

No, I'm not trusting anyone to press red. I am expecting them to. Because it's simple. Press Red and don't die. There shouldn't be a side. This is an individual decision. Push red to live. Push blue to have the chance to die. In the prisoner's dilemma, your fate is not your own to choose, while in this case, your fate is entirely in your hands.

@Count_Dreg @IterIntellectus You just said it’s not prisoners dilemma but you’re trusting everyone else to press red… That is prisoners dilemma. If you’re on the wrong side, you’re either dying or killing everyone on the other side.

why would anyone even press blue?!?

But it's not the prisoners dilemma. The prisoner's dilemma does not have an option where if both prisoners choose something both go free. IN this scenario, if both prisoners push the red button, they live. If they both push the blue button they live. If one pushes the red button and one pushes the blue button one dies. So it is actually stupid to push the blue button, because that is the only time anyone dies.

@Count_Dreg @IterIntellectus It’s prisoner’s dilemma…if you think a prisoners dilemma situation is “an easy choice” then you don’t understand what the situation is.

@khaliltooshort Well, have fun looking down on me.

I truly do look down on people who play games on easy mode

@BitBrew1 @IterIntellectus It's a stupid question. The only people killing anyone are the ones pushing the blue buttons. You could have faith in intelligence rather than humanity. The intelligent choice is for everyone to push red. Then everyone lives.

@IterIntellectus If you press red, it’s highly possible you end up killing all the blue. If you press blue, you’re killing no one else but a possibility of killing yourself. Profound question….

@RealToddGaines A true legend. Always elevated whatever he was in.

Brion James had a face and presence you couldn’t forget. Towering ~6’3” frame, intense stare, and raw charisma. He was a natural scene-stealer, usually playing the perfect villain. Underrated legend.

@larissaphillip as a kid at the time, it seemed like the greatest time to be alive.

I think it’s worth noting that at the time the 80’s seemed like the lamest, most commercial, superficial, boring decade that had ever happened.

@GermanStrands Hell to the yes.

Will you buy Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced?

@travler_j @nxt888 Yes, I agree, no need to diminish the Western Allies contribution, which was invaluable in defeating the Axis powers. Especially the US.

No. We do know from the amount of supplies we had to provide. They would have been overrun without the food, ammunition, tanks, trucks, and planes the US provided. I’m sick of idiots like the one who posted the above to discredit and malign the USA. The USA has had far more positive effects on the world than negative. He would never admit that. The Russian army did fight and pay the price. Many not willingly. But they did defeat the Germans they faced with our assistance. The totality of the actions of all allies contributed to the defeat of the axis.

They teach their children that America won World War II. Which is, and this is important, not technically false but is also a form of organized forgetting. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people defeating Nazi Germany. Twenty-seven million. The Eastern Front was the war. What happened in Western Europe after D-Day was, from a military scale perspective, the closing chapter. Americans know Pearl Harbor. They know D-Day. They know Hiroshima. They do not, in general, feel in their bones the weight of 27 million Soviet dead as a fact that shaped the outcome of a war they believe they won. This isn't ignorance. It's curation. History gets curated to produce a specific psychological output: we are the people who save the world. We showed up, we sacrificed, we won, we rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan, we were generous in victory. This narrative, repeated for eighty years, produces citizens who experience American power as inherently benevolent by historical nature. And those citizens then cannot understand why anyone resists it.

@travler_j @nxt888 Your confidence in Germany's ability to conquer Russia without western support is understandable. But we'll never know. What we do know is that the Soviet Union broke Germany, with help, and definitely were a major reason Germany was defeated. At horrific cost.

Apparently, you didn’t learn enough. Straight up, without the supplies and logistics of the United States, the USSR would’ve lost. The USSR relied heavily on the United States for logistical support, transportation, and industrial materials through Lend-Lease, receiving over $11 billion (approx. $250 billion today) in aid. While Soviet history downplayed this, the supplies were crucial for mobility and logistics, providing over 400,000 trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 13,000 tanks, 4.5 million tons of food, and over half of all high-octane aviation fuel. Had the Soviet Union not been supplied by the farming, materials, logistics, and industrial might of the United States, had the allies not been supplied by the USA, had the US not won in North Africa, had the USA not spearheaded the second front in Europe, Hitler would’ve won. Hitler had to hold back forces in Europe that would’ve won the war against the Soviet Union. The USA carried the war against Japan. So yes, the USA won the war. Not the Soviet Union. The 27M number isn’t soldiers. Roughly 8.7 million military personnel were killed in action, captured, or missing. The Soviets combine over 18 million civilian deaths resulting from the war's direct effects—such as starvation during sieges (like Leningrad), massacre of occupied populations, bombings, and disease.  Many of the conscripted 8.7 million Soviet military were just bullet sponges in the meat waves. The tactics of the USSR unnecessarily sacrificed millions of lives. It was a good thing they had the 8.9 million to expend. It made up for their incompetence.