Messages

2601

Chatterbox / The Meaning of Life

« on: May 09, 2009, 01:49:45 AM »

I know we're talking about viruses now, but this is still fairly recent...

(Sorry for the confusing quote format; GTM doesn't do nested quotes apparently.)

I think that is a rather pessimistic look at life on Earth.  In no way does life "suck".  Life is amazing (in the true sense of the word)!  Sure, there are a lot of horrible things that occur (genocide comes to mind), but to say that life sucks doesn't sit right with me.

I just mean that there is a lot of stuff in life that sucks.  I was paraphrasing an argument against God that I've heard on several occasions.  (Incidentally, I don't agree with it.)  Namely that if God is perfect, then life should be perfect, but it's not.

The story of the forbidden apple (or pomegranate, depending on who you ask) doesn't sit well with me, either.  What kind of tyrannical dictator would set up such a trap?  God created Adam and Eve with the "flaw" of curiosity.  He then tells them that they can eat from any tree, except that one.  Of course with the inherent flaw of curiosity, the built in desire to learn, they'd go for the apple (and since God is all knowing, he knew they would before he even made such "flawed" beings).  Then, like a true fascist, God punishes them and all of their descendants by making them feel pain, shame, and marked them with original sin.  If what God did wasn't evil, what is?

It wasn't a trap and God is not a fascist... in fact, quite the opposite is true.  God gave man the choice whether or not to obey him.  If he didn't put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden and tell Adam and Eve not to eat from it, there would be no way for them to disobey, and they would be forced to love God without even knowing there was an alternative.  God could have easily just made us his loyal slaves... but he didn't.  At the risk of ruining his own creation, God gave us the choice of obedience.  Last I checked, not too many evil dictators will do that.

Going off on a tangent here, God is still giving us that choice.  People often wonder why God doesn't just reach down and smite the bad guys with a lightning bolt.  Or why Jesus hasn't returned yet.  Well it all makes sense if you consider that he's giving us as much time as possible to repent.  He wants to smite as few people as possible.

What makes you believe it was the Christian God that created all?  Why do you subscribe to this supernatural being, and not Zeus, Thor, Mithra, Horus, Krishna or any of the other gods?

I'll admit it, that's a difficult question.  Mostly because I don't know much about other religions and can't make informed statements about them.  But there's a couple of reasons why I think Christianity is "the right one".  Quickly: One, the Bible was written over hundreds of years by several different authors who sometimes had no contact with each other, yet the message remains consistent throughout.  Two, after Jesus was crucified, the disciples were scattered, disheartened, and depressed.  It doesn't make sense for them to be so enthusiastic about the idea that he rose from the dead if he didn't really do it.  And three, Christianity actually changes lives.  Maybe I'm biased, but I haven't heard many stories of addicts and criminals repenting and finding a better life and staying that way after coming to faith in some other religion.

"Doing God's Will" can be a pretty dangerous statement.  So much evil has been done for that cause.  On the Muslim side of the fence, there was the Armenian Genocide, the genocide going on in Sudan, the September 11th hijackings, and a whole lot of violence in between.  On the Christian side of the fence, there was the holocaust (Hitler was raised a Roman Catholic, and used Christianity to rally people together), the genocide in Rwanda, the genocide in Bosnia, and a whole lot of violence in between.  

All of these atrocities were backed by passages out of their respective holy books.  While the more sane members of the religion tend to dwell more on the cheery and uplifting passages, it cannot be denied that the justification is there.

True.  Religious teachings, like anything else in the world, can be misinterpreted.  It's hard to know God's will and some people get it grossly wrong.  That's why I chose not to get into that particular issue.

While organisms do serve as nutrition for other organisms, that doesn't mean that we serve a purpose other than spreading our DNA far and wide.  In fact, many organisms are intentionally eaten so that they can better spread.

Supporting higher forms of life really isn't the purpose, though.  If I was eaten by a bear, my purpose on Earth wasn't to become brunch for a bear.  My purpose was still to spread my DNA (which means I would have failed as I have no children.  That's beside the point, though).  The bear evolved in such a way to take advantage of my slow running speed and small physical stature to eat me, and thus increase its chances of having [more] babies.

Is not the purpose of food to nourish?  So if you become food, your purpose is to nourish the organism that eats you, so that organism can reproduce.  I won't belabor the point, though, since "The Meaning of Life" is no more to be food than it is to reproduce.

Survival of the Fittest explains domesticated pets perfectly.  We used cats for ridding our homes of pests.  Cats used us to get a warm home and guaranteed meal.  We were mutually helping each other to survive.  While things have changed a bit, the premise is about the same.  Cats relieve stress, which helps us avoid heart and other health problems.  We still provide them with a warm home and meals.  Thus, mutual survival.

We used dogs to help us hunt, navigate, and to give us company.  Dogs used us for protection, guaranteed meals, and a warm home.  Mutual survival, again.  Now, it's about the same.

Yes, domesticated pets were originally bred for that purpose.  But what about now?  What about all these "purebreed" cats and dogs people can enter into contests and such?  Some modern pets would be very unfit for life in the wild.

No, because I don't believe they have those purposes.  I think you're treating pets as if they are material things that are here for the purpose of entertaining us.  While it's fun to pretend that cats sit on our laps because they love us, the truth is that they are just wanting some warmth, and our laps happen to be a very good, and comfortable, source of that.

Yes, but a wild cat won't sit on your lap no matter how warm it is.  We've bred modern cats so that they will, and serve the purpose of comfort.

We are simply animals, so our existence is the same as any other animals.  Just because our nervous systems are more complex, that doesn't mean that our biological instincts are any different from the days of Lucy and before.

Technically, humans are animals, but our existence is vastly different from other animals.  I don't think I need to make a list of human accomplishments to make that point.  And while our biological instincts may be the same, we have higher thought processes that can (and often should) override those.  When confronted with a plate of food, for instance, we can choose whether or not to eat it.  An animal guided by pure instinct will just gobble it up as long as it's hungry.
 

Dolphins, great apes, bears, octopods, and many other animals are also highly intelligent.  While they may not be as smart as us, they are certainly intelligent.  And any species (including species outside of the animal kingdom) can change the world for better or worse.  It'll take longer, but you mentioned nothing about time being a factor.

I didn't say intelligence is unique to humans.  Intelligence and self-awareness, however, is.  As I said before, we have the capability to ignore our instincts.  Also, while it's true that any species outside of its native range can have drastic global effects, none of them could do damage on the scale humans are capable of.  Imagine if we did not restrain ourselves from exploiting the environment as much as we wanted (which is to say, restrain ourselves from obeying our instincts).  Whole biomes would collapse.  The ozone layer would vanish.  The Earth would turn into a radioactive oven.  I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up killing everything bigger than algae.

Why?  I agree that we should intentionally try to kill off any species, and that we should keep our pollution to a minimal, but that doesn't mean that we have to prevent species from going extinct.  If a species can no longer cut it, it's their time to join the 90% of creatures that ever existed.

Earth supported life just fine before us.

The Earth has always had the metaphorical bumper sticker that says, "Adapt or GTFO!"  If they aren't surviving, perhaps it's because they're not the fittest.  If we can't adapt to life without them, perhaps we're not so great after all.

That's just callous.  Suppose rice were threatened with a new disease that was wiping it out.  Would you condemn it to extinction then, and cause mass starvation all across Asia?  That seems to go against your belief that the meaning of life is to procreate.  By preserving the Earth's ecosystems, as opposed to ruining them, we increase humanity's own survival.

Why would that be depressing?  Why must you serve a tyrannical space dictator by worshipping and preventing weaker species from going the way of the dodo?

Because if the purpose of life is to procreate and nothing more, there is absolutely no reason for our ability to override our instincts.  We might as well live as animals, mating with as many people as possible and killing our rivals.  There is no reason for creativity.  Art, entertainment, love, it all just gets in the way of our primary purpose.  Nothing we do matters except how many kids we can overpopulate the Earth with.  No kids, you might as well be dead.  Everyone on this forum, in fact, is wasting their time with meaningless distractions when they could be out raping women!

If you don't think that view of life is depressing, man, you have problems.

Whether or not Jesus actually existed is debatable, but due to the needlessly complicated (and utterly false) story moving him from Nazareth to Bethlehem, I'll concede that the Jesus in the Bible is at least partially based on the life of a man of that time. Anyways, biologically speaking, their purpose was to spread their seed.  Just because Einstein was a whiz at physics, that doesn't mean his biological urge to have lots and lots of sex went away (though shackin' up with his cousin probably helped).

Einstein's sexual behavior has nothing to do with anything; I was just using him as an example of someone important who didn't have any kids.  The same with Jesus.  Even if you don't believe he was God, you would have to agree that he was important.

Why must one fulfill his/her biological purpose in order to be significant?  Besides, Einstein did quite a bit to further our species by expanding our knowledge in physics.  We've been able to survive because of our expansive knowledge, and expanding it further will only help us survive better.  Besides, his work in relativity may someday save our sausages.

That's exactly my point!  You don't need to fulfill your "biological purpose" in order to be significant.  That is the Meaning of Life I'm getting at--significance beyond simply reproducing.

You forgot something!  Our sun might also swell up into a nice red giant.  Or we could get swallowed by that red giant that's heading this way.


We have always had the same amount of energy.  Energy, like matter, cannot be created or destroyed.

But energy can be lost as heat.  Things always move from a higher energy state to a lower state.  Entropy is always increasing, and the only way to decrease it again is to put energy into it (thus increasing entropy somewhere else.)  My point is that, one way or another, Earth and probably the entire universe will eventually cease to support life.

If we are here to serve a fascist and to prevent dud species from dying out, how will that matter once "the universe runs down"?  And what do you mean by that?  Do you mean once the universe is no longer inhabitable by us?


You want to live under a ruthless dictator who demands that you worship at his feet, despite providing no evidence to his existence, or suffer the consequences of eternal punishment?  To me, that would be bleak.

It matters if you believe in an eternal afterlife.  Only in the context of eternity does anything at all have any meaning whatsoever.  If you die and that's it, that's all she wrote, then the Earth might as well explode tomorrow for all the difference it makes, because it's going to end anyway someday, and it won't matter how many children you have or how fit your DNA is.

I could say more about God and how the concept of him being a cruel dictator is a gross misconception, but I've already talked about that and I'm really tired now.  I'll probably wake up and notice a bunch of mistakes in this post... meh.

2602

DSL TC Showcases / Naryar's DSL freaks

« on: May 08, 2009, 11:02:08 PM »

You might try something more like Fight or Flight in BBEANS2.  Put the hammer motors on the flipper, so you can perform a grab and lift.  That was the original idea behind the design, but I didn't really get it to work well until I made FoF.

2603

Tournament Archives / BBEANS5 Brackets and Videos

« on: May 08, 2009, 10:53:24 PM »

I'll post it in parts again.  I get videos up more frequently that way.  First it will be the first and second half of the winner's bracket, then the first and second half of the loser's bracket.

2604

Stock Showcases / somestrangeguy's showcase

« on: May 08, 2009, 10:49:22 PM »

Wouldn't that mean that chassis that are respectively pointing up and down will both be slower and less stable, and have respectively worse/better wedges if they have?

In theory, yes, but only while you're driving forward.  That's why my bot Heroic Sacrifice has such good wedges, and when I tried putting wedges on Slaying Mantis V, it didn't work (couldn't even get under a chassis wedge).

Firebeetle made a VS (first new bot in a long time) that takes advantage of this theory once he figured it out.  Still needs some finishing tweaks, but it has promise.

2605

Stock Showcases / E://System32/showcase

« on: May 08, 2009, 10:14:30 PM »

It's not the first, ianh05 has a good memory.  Let's see if I can scrounge up a pic of Mini Knasty...

HERE

However, yours definitely looks a lot more resilient than Mini Knasty, what with that plow and four (!) iron spikes and everything.  How well does it throw bots, though?  Small-diameter weapons like that are generally better suited for grinding and chewing than delivering a few massive hits, like chained VS are known for.

Also, you might want to try tankcat's method of chaining motors, it will make the Z-teks less of a target and save you 1 kg to boot.  (You'll need to put the first Z-tek directly on the baseplate anchor.)

2606

Tournament Archives / BBEANS5 Brackets and Videos

« on: May 08, 2009, 08:51:01 PM »

Last video set's up!  Round 1 is now complete.  Whew, that's a lot of work with 53 bots.  The winner's bracket in Round 2 is still going to be the size of a regular 32-bot tourney.

I'll update the bracket in a couple days now, and start up a ranking after round 2, once all the bots have fought at least once.

2607

Chatterbox / The Meaning of Life

« on: May 05, 2009, 01:02:46 AM »

Well here's my 2 cents.

1st cent: Regarding Creation vs. Evolution.  First off, contrary to popular belief, creation and evolution are NOT mutually exclusive.  God may have created the first life forms, true, but it makes sense that they would have changed somewhat since the beginning of time.  Evolution, in other words.  Especially when you factor in the Fall.  People often ask, "If God created life, then why does it suck so much?" although usually in more words than that.  Well originally, it didn't suck.  But as soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, evil entered the world, and you got stuff like disease and aggression and all that nastiness.

However, what I want to say here is that it doesn't matter how life on Earth came about, or to what degree evolution played a part.  All that matters is that God did it.  How, why, when, we can never know any of those things for sure and I really don't think God cares whether we believe he created the universe in six literal days or whether it was over billions of years, as science suggests.  Just that God is behind it all, however it happened.

2nd cent: Regarding the meaning of life.  Even Christians will give you widely varying answers to this, and frankly I'm not 100% sure of it myself.  I think it's safe to say that our purpose on Earth is "To Do God's Will", although that is an oversimplification and gets into the issue of what is God's will, which is a totally different gnarly religious issue.

While I can't say with any clarity what exactly "the meaning of life" is (unless you count 42), I can say that it's NOT just to procreate.  Even the lowliest of animals have a greater purpose than that.  Down to the smallest bacterium, it will at least provide a food source for some other organism higher up the food chain, some more advanced lifeform that could not survive on its own.  Smaller organisms keep on providing sources of nourishment for larger ones on up the food chain until you get to the top, where humans are.  We are entirely dependent on bugs and germs for our continued existence.

The purpose of the lowliest organisms, therefore, could be said to be "to procreate and to support higher forms of life."  However, even that is an incomplete definition.  Many more advanced forms of life exist for less scientific reasons.  What is the purpose of a domestic dog or a cat?  Perhaps originally they were kept nearby to control pest populations, but today their main purpose is to bring happiness to their owners.  Survival of the fittest alone cannot explain the existence of many domesticated breeds of cats and especially dogs.  Pets are something we humans have artificially--I hesitate to use the word "created"--guided the evolution of, recently for the sole purpose of companionship and/or beauty.  Sometimes, we even preclude the most basic purpose of life--procreation--by sterilizing our pets, in order to focus on those last qualities, and we always prevent them from becoming food (unless you're either a sadist or starving).  Therefore, the purpose of pets could be said simply to be, "to bring happiness, companionship, and/or beauty into the world."

Now if mere cats and dogs have such a noble purpose as that, don't you think humans should have a purpose at least as noble?  I'm not going to try and get into exactly what that nobler purpose might be, but I will say that to assert "the purpose of life is to procreate" is to reduce humanity lower than the most basic, animalistic level of existence.  We have something no other life form has--intelligence and self-awareness--and with it comes the power to change the world for better or for worse.  I don't want to sound cliched, but... with great power comes great responsibility.  We have a responsibility to care for the world and protect its life for the sake of future generations.  To simply Exist and Procreate is to ignore that responsibility, with the inevitable result that the world will be less able to support life.  It's happened many times before on a small scale, every time a pest organism invades new territory and drives local species to extinction.  Only with humans (which, if you change the definition of a pest to be "harmful to Earth's welfare" instead of "harmful to human welfare", fit every aspect of it) the scale is the whole world and the local species are worldwide.

Not to mention that the idea of our sole purpose being procreation and the perpetuation of microscopic strands of peptides is just plain depressing.  What about people who never reproduce?  Einstein never had any kids.  Neither did Jesus, for that matter.  Did they have no purpose then?  Just inconsequential blips in the course of history that may as well have never existed for all the difference it makes?  In that case, nothing we do matters.  "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," in the words of the Bible.

And eventually, if a meteor doesn't strike the Earth first, or we don't ruin the environment to the point where life is impossible, the sun is going to burn out and go dark, and nothing will be able to live anymore.  All our efforts to preserve the species will be for naught.  In the end, entropy always wins.  There is a limited amount of energy in the universe and it grows less every day.  Even if we eventually settle other planets and continue the human genetic line there, we can't escape that basic, cosmic truth.  A billion, or a trillion, or a googleplex years from now, it doesn't matter, the universe will run down and there will be no meaning or purpose to anything anymore.  In fact, with that in perspective, there is no meaning or purpose to anything now either, if you believe we are only here to procreate.

That's why I don't understand people who believe that about the meaning of life.  If you ask me, I couldn't live without the idea of some higher purpose, some hope of beating entropy.  The alternative is just too bleak.


...Whew.  That turned out more like two dollars than two cents.  If you actually read that whole post, congratulations, you get a virtual cookie or something.  I'm going to sleep now...

2608

Stock Showcases / somestrangeguy's showcase

« on: May 04, 2009, 09:13:12 PM »

Its othervise good bot, if you dont count in that it fails against every bot type and likes to lift the wheels off the ground when moving and that the scrimech is not powerful enought to selfright!

Interesting this bot should be compared to Slaying Mantis, because SM does the exact same thing.  Minus the failing against every bot type, of course... it only fails if you ram a bot at full speed.

The wheels lift off the ground because of the way driving in RA2 works.  When your wheels are touching the ground and you spin them, you aren't actually being moved by the wheels.  The game applies force to your bot's chassis in order to move it.  So if your chassis is pointing up (as yours and Slaying Mantis's are) the game applies force upwards, and lifts your wheels off the ground.

To fix it you need to do one of two things.  Either use lots and lots of forward support, or align the chassis so it stays flat.

The design looks good except for that one problem.

2609

Stock Showcases / Sage's Showcase

« on: May 04, 2009, 09:00:31 PM »

Another otherwise great bot ruined by chronic instability...

Going back to the 6WD Final Destination, could you perhaps give it just one hammer, along the lines of my bot Cheshire Cat?  You could fit more total razors on the weapon, and also have a bit of extra weight for armor.  It would be cool to see a 6WD hammer bot that was effective.

2610

Contests / VOTE BOTM May 2009

« on: May 04, 2009, 08:21:08 PM »

Hmm... tough call.  I like the servos-only, no-battery approach of 6, but I can't imagine that thing beating even a BW version of SFTW.  Form over function is fine, but it should have at least a little bit of combat ability...

So I'm going to go with #4.  The splash leaves much to be desired, but I like the design.

2611

Tournament Archives / BBEANS5 Brackets and Videos

« on: May 04, 2009, 08:00:26 PM »

The next set of videos is up!  These are the fights you've all probably been itching to see--Chernobyl, Seism 13, Mace in da face, The Emancipator, and Cardiac Arrest all fighting.  And I can assure you that you won't be disappointed.  Unless you lost one of those fights, that is.  Then you might be a little disappointed.

2612

Robots Showcase / Near Chaos Robotics

« on: May 01, 2009, 11:54:34 PM »

Fight 7?  I guess you did pretty well then.

I suppose you can't talk about who won or anything since the thing's going to be televised.

Did you run into a hammer bot?  It looks like there's a pretty significant dent in your top armor there.

2613

Tournament Archives / BBEANS5 Brackets and Videos

« on: May 01, 2009, 11:40:57 PM »

not to be a sore loser but that is sooo not fair I had that first match won and I won round 3 I so could have been the person to advance to round 2

guess I have taken the podium of most unlucky person in BBEANS

It was really, really close--another half second and you would have won--but it WAS a fair win for SandStorm.  That's what the hazards are there for.  Your bot is just especially vulnerable to the flippers, I think because of the bursted snow plows which give it some springiness when it lands.

Well ianh05 can no longer claim to be the most unlucky person in BBEANS now.

2614

Stock Showcases / Clickbeetle's bots

« on: May 01, 2009, 10:40:56 PM »

Oh noez. Now I see something more annoying than Express Delivery. How well does it do against VSs? :D

How well do you THINK it does against VSs? :D

Actually it can at least put up a fight after it loses the hammer, with all those ramming spikes, but obviously it's a lot less effective.

That looks pretty cool. Do you have it AI'ed yet? I want to see how my bots do against it :P

I've had enough of AI'ing for now, after doing BBEANS.  But I do want to AI the Cat just to see if it can beat AC AI-on-AI.

2615

Stock Showcases / Some of my bots- All stock components.

« on: May 01, 2009, 10:16:15 PM »

Problem:  In theory, when you drive forward, the mass of those blades will want to move back, therefore lifting your wedges off the ground ever so slightly (but ever so slightly can make a big difference, as I've seen on several bots before.)  I've noticed that it's generally not a good idea to put a lot of extra stuff on the same burst motors as your wedges, unless you can stabilize them in the back so they don't lift off the ground.  Perhaps try putting some short extenders touching the ground underneath those blades.

However I'm making a big deal out of a relatively minor problem.  That's a great bot.  So is Serious Cat; you're a very fast learner.

2616

Stock Showcases / Clickbeetle's bots

« on: May 01, 2009, 09:48:43 PM »

Thought I'd try a slightly different kind of hammer bot.



DSA, 2 Supervolts, everything else visible.

Almost every other hammer bot I've seen has two hammers and two wedges.  Like everyone just accepts it as dogma that "HW Hammers Must Have Two DDT Hammers."  But after seeing Flying_Chao's Vetearn Destroyer (the inspiration for this bot, though I hope you can't tell by looking at it) I realized that using a single hammer in order to beef up the front armor might have its merits.  I ended up using a single wedge too, just because it fit better in the chassis, with the added bonus of being lighter and being able to get under dual-wedged bots like NWB easily.

The design works great.  Cheshire Cat is nearly as powerful as any dual-hammer bot, but it's a lot more durable and better at trapping bots with those plows and V-shape of spikes.  It can consistently beat most HS's; the only one I've fought that gives Cheshire Cat problems is Spin Doctor (because it's hard to trap for some reason).  I've tested it against some BBEANS bots too, and Cheshire Cat can even beat Absolute Chaos quite handily.

It's called Cheshire Cat because Firebeetle pointed out that the front spike arrangement looks sort of like a huge, toothy grin, like the Cheshire cat.  And it does.

Now if only I made this bot a couple months earlier and entered it in BBEANS... ah well, win or lose, Heaven's Sawmill's fights are going to be entertaining.  That's what I entered it for.

2617

Tournament Archives / BBEANS5 Brackets and Videos

« on: May 01, 2009, 08:51:49 PM »

If you really want to know, ask it in PM or at least in the DSL forum, not in every topic I post in.  This is about BBEANS.

And, the answer is, I haven't made any progress since remaking Hypno-Disc.  I've been busy.  But I'll start working on it again as soon as I have more time.

2618

Tournament Archives / BBEANS5 Brackets and Videos

« on: May 01, 2009, 08:43:23 PM »

The next set of videos is up!

Some pretty good fights, although nothing really spectacular.

Edit:

Sorry, I screwed up with the controls.

Huh, I thought it was intentional after I saw how effective it is.  Having the weapons counter-rotating decreases speed, true, but it makes it a lot harder to stop.  I think it might actually be better.  If you still want me to "fix" the controls I'll do it.

2619

Stock Showcases / Oggie's showcase

« on: May 01, 2009, 08:23:10 PM »

Why isn't it invertible?  Couldn't you easily use a 90 degree baseplate anchor and put the motors in the front to make it invertible?

Otherwise it looks like a pretty good bot.

2620

Stock Showcases / Weirdo's showcase

« on: April 25, 2009, 06:01:20 PM »

Welcome to the forums.  Some very simple advice for Reaper would be:

-You might as well put another two iron spikes on the disc, since you have weight and attach points.

-Static components like spikes work just as well as wheels on axle mounts for stabilizing bots, and they're more durable.  Try replacing the shiny wheels with iron spikes or something.

-Try to get as close to 800 kgs as possible, or else try to cut stuff out until it's a MW.  Underweight HW's aren't very effective against full-weight opponents.

There are other ways you can improve Reaper too, but I'm not going to overcomplicate things right now with glitches and stacking and stuff...

I like the design though, invertible VS's aren't seen very often.