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[theinevitable]

oh, also, I spend ridiculous amounts of time making my people. and yet, as my brother laughingly pointed out, they almost always basically turn out the same.

...apparently I have a thing for thin women with short dark hair and glasses, who knew.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I try to recreate people in my own life. Ive made houses with my best friends, my family, my fraternity house, etc. It adds to the entertainment value exponentially.

[jay-ell]

I used to make replicas of people I knew, but it was too unsettling to watch them get old and die. 

I wish I were kidding. 

[AugustWest]

I have really tried to enjoy The Sims.  Really really tried.

But things like doing dishes, cleaning the house, sleeping, taking a dump and a shower or making sure I'm on time for work? Those are the things I play video games to escape.

He says that artists who create based what they feel instead of what they think feel are basically the equivalent of human slugs.

Even accepting that assertion as true, Rand remains a lousy novelist.  Whatever your subject matter, two dimensional characters and 100 page wooden soliloquies are the mark of a hack rather an excellent novelist.

I believe it would be possible to write a good novel based upon Rand's ideas.  However, she was either incapable of doing so or preferred to produce thinly veiled diatribes.

[Drygioni]

NERD ALERT

When playing Oblivion (RPG/FPS hybrid thingy) I put a lot of effort into making my character 'real'. The awesomely complex face design is great but it's not that, it's just making my character like a normal person. Eat at the right time (eating not needed), get plenty of sleep (sleeping not needed), carry realistic amounts of stuff (which is a big disadvantage), never wear/use items which make me look too conspicuously hero-y.

I must be the only person in the world who buys an RPG in order to try ending up just like everyone else in the world.

Judy is a cog.

[theinevitable]

actually, there are plenty of people who do that. I used to play Neverwinter Nights on a whole server where the idea was to remain in character at all times, it was incredibly hard to get magical weapons or armor (to the point that you'd get realistic "oh my GOSH how did you get that amazing shiny sword!" responses) etc.

It got old after a while, but was pretty fun while it lasted.

[Pedro Picasso]

NERD ALERT

I must be the only person in the world who buys an RPG in order to try ending up just like everyone else in the world.

Sounds like you should get into that Persona game a couple of threads over.

The best face business I've ever seen in a game was NHL 2001.  You could import photos, arrange points on them, and what came out was a hockey player with my 8-year-old brother's face, another with my face, another with MOM's face.  (The women looked ridiculous.)  I had so much fun with that.  They took it out in the next year's version.  I've not seen it anywhere since.  *sigh*

Also Ayn Rand thought we should have stayed on the gold standard.  Nuts to that.

[Arachno-capitalist]

The fuck you got against the gold standard? You prefer inflation and backless papers of green paper? Fiat currency never survives.

[Pedro Picasso]

The fuck you got against the gold standard? You prefer inflation and backless papers of green paper? Fiat currency never survives.

Thanks for fighting me on this.  I know you don't have all the time in the world to lecture.  But I think the gold standard is a pretty obviously bad idea at this point, and if you can beat the crap out of me on this issue, I would love to see your argument.  I am not uttering sarcasm.

0. The gold standard leads to a lack of liquidity/deflation which is also bad for the economy.

1. "Fiat currency never survives."  Nothing ever survives.  (i.e. In the long run, we're all dead.)

2. BUT backless strapless steel-belted radial green has been part of our economy since the Federal Reserve Bank Notes of 1933.  We've had a pretty good 70 years, all things considered.

3. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is -- perhaps -- not as solid as gold, but it has been and will continue to be more than adequate. 

4. Because of loans on top of loans, an economic system based on gold isn't that secure in the first place.

5. Is it possible that a huge deposit of gold could be found/released/alchemated that would flood the market and cause inflation?  I know this is possible/imminent with diamonds.

6. Isn't our faith in gold as a standard of value based on everybody else thinking it's of value, and not on its actual usefulness?  Isn't the same said of the green papers?  You can't make your own gold with a photocopier, but its rarity doesn't immediately translate into value.

These have been numbered to make it easier for you to knock them down in turn.

I Am Not Uttering Sarcasm --> i-anus?

[wombat]

6. Isn't our faith in gold as a standard of value based on everybody else thinking it's of value, and not on its actual usefulness? 

We talked about this somewhere else lately. I think I remarked that I didn't see why gold would be better to own when civilization collapsed. I'd much rather have a bunch of bags of rice. Or if I had to pick some kind of metal, at least one that could be made into useful objects - you can't make cooking pots out of gold, can you?

So yeah, gold seems like just as irrational a choice as pieces of green paper if not worse - at least I could burn the green paper to cook the rice with.

[Doc]

My understanding is that gold is just irrational but it is desirable in as much as you can't just make more of it when you want as you can with paper money. There is still the problem of stockpiles being held by individuals or entities of course.
I don't necessarily have an opinion either way.

[wombat]

Sure, you can't make more gold, but if it's no use to begin with why would you want even more?

It's also not all that easy to make more rice. It takes at least a few months and you could starve by then.

[Doc]

Maybe it's more practical to use something inherently worthless to represent value? Like, if you used rice then it's value might be warped depending on how hungry you are etc. money is only ever worth money, it's value varies but $5 for me will buy the same as $5 for you.
Even then that argument seems a bit flawed.

[Ben-San]

Maybe it's more practical to use something inherently worthless to represent value? Like, if you used rice then it's value might be warped depending on how hungry you are etc. money is only ever worth money, it's value varies but $5 for me will buy the same as $5 for you.
Even then that argument seems a bit flawed.

Well, yes, that's the point of currency vs. barter.

All currency is ultimately fiat currency. The sense in which gold is not a fiat currency is that it's a barter good - but it's one with no inherent value.

[Pedro Picasso]

I think I'm onto this.

Gold cannot be created or found in huge quantities (though people have been working on this for millenia), so scarcity is preserved.
Gold cannot be destroyed through conventional means, so radical deflation is unlikely.
The folks who are preparing for world economic collapse are stockpiling gold and guns, thus ensuring gold will be the de facto currency.
People have considered gold valuable for so long, it would be a difficult habit to break. (like Imperial units and not-speaking-Esperanto)

Gold-backed currency is stronger because it will survive world economic collapse.

BUT you'd still have to trust the government that's storing the gold to honor the currency.  It's still based on trust in the nation, so I'm having trouble seeing as truly the better deal.

edit: italic bleeding