Quote from: Voros;959936It's not like the social stigma for playing rpgs for teen boys is insubstantial either. It was more accepted in the early 80s, in my experience, but after the fad died it quickly became a marker of supernerdiness for anyone who hoped to get laid before graduation.

My impression, completely on the outside of course, is that it there is actually less stigma right now, at least for pre-teen or tweeners or whatever they call that contingent of kids these days.

Yeah there was social stigma attached to boys over rpgs though IME, for boys that were playing when I was teen it was just one more thing on a list of "nerdy" things about them and/or they were already lumped in with geeks. But yeah, there were allot of guys that were "too cool" to play RPGs and back then most of few girls that did were also in geek circle though even many of them seemed reluctant to be associated with rpgs. But every group has pecking order and that may have been local.

Quote from: Nexus;959912I'd imagine it does a little, at least doesn't cost anything and might keep the usual suspects off your projects case.

The problem is that the SJW extremists are so fickle that today they'll be praising you as great bastions of womens rights and tomorrow they'll be damning you to hell as the most vile misogynists on earth. You cannot win and pandering to these lunatics isnt helping anyone other than a privileged few.

Quote from: Krimson;959956It's the pricing scheme that I find annoying. Charging $20 for a PDF, fine. But if you just forked out $60 for a book, an additional $15 for a digital document seems excessive, especially when shipping is not factored into the equation yet. That's just being greedy and money grubbing is the quickest way to get me to close my wallet.

Same here. But thats a subject for another thread probably.

Although if they always give away the .pdf for free anyway, then it sounds like you're offended that they didn't save you the three clicks it would take to go get it yourself instead of having a link delivered via email when you bought the hardcopy.

For me its more the point of them charging so much for PDF in the Print+PDF bundle. 75$ total before shipping?
More annoying is them charging for stretch goals. Those arent stretch goals then. Those are add-ons. 20-25$

YMMV of course. But Im used to seeing stretch goals as free rewards and add-ons as the pay stuff. I assume others have had different experiences?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;959948I can't tell if you're trying to claim some transphobic variant of "the real racists are the people against racism" or if you just critically failed your reading comprehension check.

By saying 'people with vaginas' you've demonstrated a belief in gender essentialism and erased the experiences of #Transwomen in the hobby. So congratulations \#Shitlord.

And while I'd normally rely on the reader to spot my sarcasm, considering you don't seem to spot the irony of your own labeling of others, I'm just gonna call it out explicitly.

Quote from: Krimson;959956That's just being greedy and money grubbing is the quickest way to get me to close my wallet.

#PostHumanStudios. Greedy and money grubbing.

#IDontEven

Quote from: Omega;959966The problem is that the SJW extremists are so fickle that today they'll be praising you as great bastions of womens rights and tomorrow they'll be damning you to hell as the most vile misogynists on earth. You cannot win and pandering to these lunatics isnt helping anyone other than a privileged few.

And nobody knows this better that the #SJWs themselves.

Quote from: CRKrueger;959981Although if they always give away the .pdf for free anyway, then it sounds like you're offended that they didn't save you the three clicks it would take to go get it yourself instead of having a link delivered via email when you bought the hardcopy.

They don't just give you the PDF for free, they give you the rights to remix and redistribute the work.

I mean come on, what more do people want?

Quote from: Omega;959966The problem is that the SJW extremists are so fickle that today they'll be praising you as great bastions of womens rights and tomorrow they'll be damning you to hell as the most vile misogynists on earth. You cannot win and pandering to these lunatics isnt helping anyone other than a privileged few.

Yep, that's what the rest of the post you quoted talked about.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;959994Nah. It should address the evolution of religion, just like it does with everything else.

It would have to go through major changes as in some of them writing the holy books the religion is based on imo.

Humanity creates the Titans they ravage the Earth forcing humanity to leave it. Prayers to stop them go unanswered. None of the major religious figures God, Allah, etc.. come down from their respective heavenly domain to stop the Titans. The concept of a Heaven of Hell or basically the afterlife is shown to be a lie with Morphs. Praying for ones soul to be saved goes out the window when even if one is shot in the head. They can revive in a Morph with memories intact. The people with wealth can have a trendy morph for every day of the week. When someone consciousness in a piece of software 10-20 years old if not more can be put inside a Morph. With them being able to live again.

Religion either goes to some very major ground breaking changes or it dies out imo. Not because "religion ZXYZ exists because it's more enlightened than others" BS. Personally I think they left a religion intact in the setting to avoid offending those that believe in it.

Quote from: sureshot;960043It would have to go through major changes as in some of them writing the holy books the religion is based on imo.

Humanity creates the Titans they ravage the Earth forcing humanity to leave it. Prayers to stop them go unanswered. None of the major religious figures God, Allah, etc.. come down from their respective heavenly domain to stop the Titans. The concept of a Heaven of Hell or basically the afterlife is shown to be a lie with Morphs. Praying for ones soul to be saved goes out the window when even if one is shot in the head. They can revive in a Morph with memories intact. The people with wealth can have a trendy morph for every day of the week. When someone consciousness in a piece of software 10-20 years old if not more can be put inside a Morph. With them being able to live again.

Religion either goes to some very major ground breaking changes or it dies out imo. Not because "religion ZXYZ exists because it's more enlightened than others" BS. Personally I think they left a religion intact in the setting to avoid offending those that believe in it.

Or followers of Abrahamic religions might conclude that by keeping someone's consciousness preserved a morph, you are trapping them in this world in an imperfect state apart from their Creator.

Buddhists and others with reincarnation central to their beliefs might conclude similarly that this technology is preventing your consciousness from evolving with each reincarnation, thus inhibiting your ability to reach nirvana.

No, the idea that people will simply throw up their hands and say "Oh noes, we were wrong all the time!" is unlikely and reflective of a poor understanding of humans.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;960085Or followers of Abrahamic religions might conclude that by keeping someone's consciousness preserved a morph, you are trapping them in this world in an imperfect state apart from their Creator.

Buddhists and others with reincarnation central to their beliefs might conclude similarly that this technology is preventing your consciousness from evolving with each reincarnation, thus inhibiting your ability to reach nirvana.

No, the idea that people will simply throw up their hands and say "Oh noes, we were wrong all the time!" is unlikely and reflective of a poor understanding of humans.

In context, the bolded is so spot on. Out of context it's a fundamental transcendent Truth.

Either way, sold gold.

Fair point.

I also never said I had a perfect understanding of humanity. I still think worship of religion while not disappearing completely will suffer somewhat imo.

Though hopefully the the devs of Posthuman Studios do a better job with religion in their second edition of their rpg. They need more than " all the other religions have fallen by the wayside except for Islam because it's somehow more enlightened" that they put in their edition.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;960085Or followers of Abrahamic religions might conclude that by keeping someone's consciousness preserved a morph, you are trapping them in this world in an imperfect state apart from their Creator.

Buddhists and others with reincarnation central to their beliefs might conclude similarly that this technology is preventing your consciousness from evolving with each reincarnation, thus inhibiting your ability to reach nirvana.

No, the idea that people will simply throw up their hands and say "Oh noes, we were wrong all the time!" is unlikely and reflective of a poor understanding of humans.

This is granting the premise that consciousness even works that way. The more realistic response is, IMO, that they are soulless simulcra. They are philosophical zombies that mimic the responses of a conscious being. Resurrecting someone's "consciousness" won't give you any information about the afterlife because the neurons that you are emulating haven't been there. If you ask it if it's conscious, it might say it is, but only because that is what the original person would have said. It doesn't need to possess the ability to experience to say the words.

Particularly as a Christian, I think one could say that simply making an AI copy of someone's brain isn't inherently sinful. But doing it as a means of immortality is sinful because not only are you trying to cheat the natural order but also because you're putting your faith in what is essentially a fraud. It could be seen as a form of idolatry. I'm sure dharmic religions would also have some thoughts about how it might be bad for your karma and such as well. Trying to stay attached to worldly things rather than escaping the cycle, etc.

Sure, in setting it might be stated as fiat that transfer of consciousness is totally possible and it totally disproved religion. But I'd just say in that case it's a really dumb setting (not to mention incredibly ignorant of religion). Why answer all of the hard questions? Intellectual masturbation? I really don't like transhumanism though so feel free to ignore my opinon.

Quote from: areallifetrex;960128Particularly as a Christian, I think one could say that simply making an AI copy of someone's brain isn't inherently sinful. But doing it as a means of immortality is sinful because not only are you trying to cheat the natural order but also because you're putting your faith in what is essentially a fraud. It could be seen as a form of idolatry.

One could argue that if an Omnipotent being was also Omniscient, it/they would have known from the Beginning that we would split the atom, mess with DNA and hack consciousness as well as make our own. If we were created in God's image, then why would we not aspire to grow up as a species just as a human child grows into an adult? Immortality in this sense means "Does not die from preventable causes", such as aging or having a weak body made of meat. In fact, I could imagine entire sects could see transition to a more Solid State form as being a way to deal with weak flesh but a willing spirit. Being able to live for centuries or millennia does not negate faith or belief in a Day of Judgement. All it does is change the scale and timeframe. For all we know, the Almighty could be up there thinking, "Well it's about time you worked that out."

Quote from: areallifetrex;960128I'm sure dharmic religions would also have some thoughts about how it might be bad for your karma and such as well. Trying to stay attached to worldly things rather than escaping the cycle, etc.

Bodhisattvas renounce Nirvana so they can continue to help free living beings from the Wheel of Samsara. Having a form that doesn't start falling apart after half a century could be very handy in long term plans of cultivating Dharma.

Quote from: areallifetrex;960128Sure, in setting it might be stated as fiat that transfer of consciousness is totally possible and it totally disproved religion.

Why would it disprove religion? Science may provide evidence that a Creator is not necessary in a Space/Time with no beginning and no end because some funky juju involving Entropy and Singularities (the mathematical sort, not the point where Artificial Intelligence surpasses human intellect) means that there is no definitive moment of Creation. So just because the evidence says a Creator isn't necessary it doesn't mean a Creator doesn't exist. A twelve dimensional model of the multiverse requires two dimensions of time to work, which would be perpendicular to one another and since only three physical dimensions are unfolded we don't know if entropy has an effect on Implicit Space/Time as it does on Explicit Space/Time.

The real danger to religion from Transhuman society is not one of being disproven but one of obsolescence. The thing is though, believers are there and they are living through those changes and people who have faith will find ways to adapt. There is absolutely no reason that religion would not continue in the future. Technology can cause social upheaval but then eventually those people die and new generations freak out over new technologies and they die too and we have all this stuff with no clue that maybe there was a big fuss about it at one time. The only think that could be different is when that technology becomes capable of making decisions which may not be in agreement with the intentions of it's creator. Also, we do run the risk of making machines that are smarter than us which is the other Singularity, the non mathematical one where we can no longer predict our path because we no longer make the decisions.

Quote from: Krimson;960131Why would it disprove religion?

Most major religion is built around the notion of 'The Soul', a spirit or being that is tied to a body of flesh, and it's a semi-mystical thing that is assumed that we will never understand it fully.  So to be able to move it around from shell to shell, to turn it into mere numbers, by HUMAN hands means that all those religion that believes in the indelible soul are wrong.

As long as I can keep downloading EP products for free, I don't care who does the artwork. The new PDFs are still going to be free to download, right?