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My ass is bleeding!

Consult your nearest medical professional.

An ex girlfriend once gave me a pair of pet rats as a birthday present. I hadn't asked for them.

I didn't complain about the gift, but (particularly in retrospect) I don't feel that it was particularly appropriate.

Maybe there are gifts that are simply given/received and then there are gifts that involve future obligations.

Another example I just thought of that hasn't happened to me:

If you were given a free car but couldn't afford the associated running costs would this give you the right to complain?

If the Borderlands Handsome Collection wasn't coming out next week i'd be seriously considering ESO. As it is, I think i'll save the money (been making some impulsive and ill-considered game purchases this year (Evolve, zombie army...)) and get Borderlands instead. I can't wait to replay BL2 and experience the pre-sequel for the first time.

...musty ass cake-eater...

(snip)

Your english ain't even any good. I CAN FIX THAT!!!
I'll cross your eyes and dot your teeths out for ya!
How about THAT?!?

Love it.

["what kind of person am I and what is my purpose?"]

The late teens and the 20's are an exploratory time for most people; the big question tends to be "what kind of person am I and what is my purpose?"

Pretty much hit the nail on the head there. It's frustrating for me to have questions that don't have concrete answers. Discussing such things is interesting though.

Drugs, alcohol,internet, and video games can be escapism for some people, as can work or relationships or home improvement; you only need to figure out whether you're using it as a form of escapism. The main question is whether you find what you're doing fulfilling... do you, personally, find value in it?

I think questions about being a good person are valuable. We all have to find meaning in our own ways. For myself, I found meaning in my own understanding of human existence and the nature of the universe, which is that there is no reason for us to exist, we simply do, and then we die.

Regarding escapism, I agree with what (I think) you were saying in that all passtimes mentioned can be constructive or destructive depending on your approach and viewpoint. I have been trying recently to introduce more moderation in these areas of my life where previously it's been more of an all-or-nothing kind of deal where I invest heavily into whatever it may be until eventually and inevitably I burn out.

...that there is no reason for us to exist, we simply do, and then we die.

That is comforting and horrifying in equal measure. Rationally I know this to be true but somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain there's something freaking out. Maybe I should turn to religion and get into an afterlife. 

I tend to find happiness and a sense of direction can come from two major sources.

The pleasant source is to find what you are talented at and\or truly passionate about and develop it.
I think this is called Eudiamonia in philosophy. It means 'good mind or thought' and considers excellence to be the source of lasting happiness.
This is a bit amoral in some ways as someone could derive such happiness by being, say, the best baker you can be, or the best hitman, or anything really.
It's not easy or free, but the process is not unpleasant and the concrete advantages of increased ability are a nice bonus.

Then there's the hard road. Looking at yourself as honestly as possible and seeking to understand your weaknesses and overcome them. This is a matter of a lifetime's work as there is ALWAYS room for improvement. Nothing here is pleasant but the outcome. The outcome is by no means guaranteed. If you have successfully identified and overcome a flaw the stronger or wiser you is all that you will get out of it, and it will demand both effort and adaptability to be sure. Entirely worthwhile in my ongoing experience.

I can conjure a third thing. AFTER you have seen to yourself and are relatively fit great joy can be had by helping others by your ability. This can be as simple as helping the illiterate to read or as complex as you like. It's a terrible idea if you don't know yourself very well or are seeking praise or thanks. The desire to help others must be genuine and is best understood after you have felt the struggle yourself and seen that it's worthy.

Very informative post. Thank you. The second point seems to me to be the... truest perhaps? I can't think of the right word to describe what I mean. I think you touched upon it too where you say Eudiamonia could be considered immoral whereupon being the best (or maybe simply good if you don't have that competitive spirit) at something will certainly bring contentment but is it ultimately a layer of distraction from trying to find happiness within oneself?

I would be interested in hearing more about your thoughts/experiences regarding your second point as there is a world of difference between understanding your point and actually being able to put it into practice.

Not much to say on your third point. I completely agree.

Recently I have been struggling with a renewed crisis of identity. It rolls around every so often (late teens, again around 20, and now at 24) and in the past I have dealt with it through various methods of escapism. Relationships, alcohol, video games, weed have all worked pretty effectively throughout the years at staving off that sense of ennui. Furthermore, I have watched others doing exactly the same things and some seem to be content with such passtimes. Why is that enough for some and not for others? Or am I looking at others in a too-superficial level and maybe I have to understand that nobody else has the answers either and they're looking for the same things I am. The combined fallacies of consensus and uniqueness pushing up against each other.

Nevertheless, I feel like these are all imperfect coping mechanisms and are not serving to answer that underlying, nagging question: "Who am I and what am I doing?"

Now, I could tell you a myriad of facts about myself. My nationality,  my occupation, my education, my Myers-Briggs type, what I had for breakfast, etc. etc. But compiling this list of labels doesn't seem to clarify my image of myself within my own mind so I can hardly imagine they are much better descriptors for those who don't know me.

So these days the favoured method of escapism is endless trawling of the internet. I know that it's not a constructive use of my time when there's concrete, material things to be done such as cleaning the house or paying bills or actually doing some work instead of sitting at my computer pretending to be busy. But then I wonder if cleaning/working and the more 'productive' uses of time are just more escapism. I look at my brother who is 22 and has a house with a fiancee and a dog and a job selling houses and don't believe that he is any happier or knows any more about himself than I do. Maybe responsibility is a different escapism.

So then if intoxication isn't the answer, and neither are electronics or responsibilities or relationships or religion then what is? What was the question again?


I hope that made some sense - and apologies if it comes off as angsty and self-centred. It's remarkably hard to translate thoughts into coherent, written-down ideas.

I would appreciate your thoughts though.

Edit: Then you've got questions like Am I a good person? What does it mean to be a good person? Do I need to be a good person? Enough to tie a young man's brain in knots.

I have four minutes.

So the rest of it goes like this: I ask whether there is a reason we are not following the instructions. Several other people chime in to agree that we need to follow the instructions. MUCH BUTTHURT ENSUES, along with the pronouncement that the people who "actually showed up to the meeting" were the people who should get to make decisions. A couple of people complain to the instructor. New guy posts this flaming wall of tl;dr douchebaggery:

BOOM! POW! BANG! CRASH! SHAZAAM!. . .okay sorry, I was having a retro batman moment as I read the email thread, sound effects and all.

Wow, epic. Okay psych majors, lets figure this out.

RE: Blurry Pictures - I agree that the figure pics are kinda blurry, I didn't want to spend group time stretching each picture or trying to re-cut and paste. Each person with a figure slide can re-copy the picture from the PDF of the article and try and make it work better. The blurriness is a conjunction of auto stretch to fit that PowerPoint does and the low base resolution of the image from the PDF. We can address the former but not the later.

RE: Text Being Off - If you open this file straight from the email it will be all whacked out. You need to download the file and open it either in PowerPoint or OpenOffice.

RE: Color Scheme - We changed the text color to a very readable off white.

RE: How Will It Look On the Big Screen - I work at OIT here on campus and my team's conference room has a large projector. I will test out the PowerPoint on that screen tomorrow between class and work to see how it looks. I will report back to the group either way. We don't need to stress about it until then as changing background/color scheme is really easy. It is the generation of the content that takes a bit more time. In reality, 90% of this project is making damn sure we each know our sections and collectively understand the material presented in the study. Fielding questions is something the other groups/members in previous presentations were hit or miss with. Lets look confident and sharp!

RE: Specific Instructions - we followed the instructions listed in the document "Syllabus for My Classes". Here is a cut and paste of the language:

*******
Presentation
In groups of 10 you will present 1 of 5 papers that explore the role of epigenetic modulators in learning and memory paradigms. You will have half an hour to go over the introduction, methods, results, and discussion. The intro should be brief. You should focus most of your time describing the methods, results, and discussion. Figures should be arranged in a power point presentation (nothing fancy, just copy and paste the figures) so that we can go through the results as a class. . .
*******
->Our reading of this, in the larger context of (Instructor's) very informal writing style and obvious 'wiggle room' and consistence use of humor, was as follows:
1) A brief introduction in a 30 min presentation should be no more than a few minutes. Slide 1 names the article and group, Slide 2 presents the question and aim of the study, and Slide 3 provides an understanding of the mechanisms of Alzheimer's Disease that this chemical may address. These 3 slides should fit the bill for 'brief introduction'. The remaining time is all methods, results, discussion etc. so we cover the 'focus' aspect of the instructions.

2) With regards to the figure slides, aside from the stretch issue, we agreed that some text along with it will help serve the visual learners whilst the speeches serve the auditory learners. Moreover, all of our figures are actually numerous figures combined and so some labeling beyond the figure itself seemed useful. This does decrease the overall size of the figure with respect to what the class will see but as they are already blurry this may not be a bad thing. Moreover, the figures themselves are all bar graphs, aside from 5c, so there isn't much detail miss out on.

3) I can't find a mention of 'only a title page', is there a set of instructions I/we today were in ignorance of? It seemed to us that some none 'figure only' slides in the materials. methods and behavioral procedure slides would add some vibrancy to the presentation. The presentations so far felt very sterile. I agree that the figure slides should not be over the top, but the bells and whistles earlier for the folks discussing intro, materials, methods etc. is an opportunity to engage our audience with visual cues, humor (mighty mouse) and cuteness (did you see that the two mice cuddling have a teddy bear!). Christie and Bill are constantly cracking jokes so this is in alignment with their pedagogical approach. Moreover, at this point in the term with how hard this class has been the collective could probably use some softheartedness. It doesn't detract from the legitimacy of our presentation, only our candor and knowledge can do that, it does convey to the audience an acknowledgement of their humanness and the shared stressful context we are all operating within.

Taking a pause for some Compassion and Ownership:
I'll be frank, the three of us that showed had some frustration about being 3/11. Was that vented aggressively? No. . .but it wasn't processed and released either. Don't worry, we didn't bad talk or anything, but we did kinda share stories of past group projects that were less than ideal. We weren't making a comparison, but the contextual association alone is probably unfair in an objective assessment. Compassion both ways between the 3/11 and the 8/11 is ultimately what we all want. This class is stressing us all out, let alone other classes, work, family, romance, life, the universe and everything else. . .damn this human shit is hard. Lets all support each other and make sure this is something we can be proud of. We don't need to tear done or passively omit the hard work of others, we also don't need to create more work than is needed for others: the middle path is what we need to collectively choose which is work with what we got as efficiently and effectively as possible. Was the candor of the first email sent out today laying a hard line, you bet. The point was to catapult us from creating to concluding this project.

Clarifications of What Comes Next
The instructions were rushed as 1 of us had to get to work and the other 2 needed to get the critiques done by 5. We spent a great deal of our time aggregating all of the information, reviewing the study to ensure accuracy in what slides we had and deciding on what the least amount of work moving forward would be for everybody.

The instructions were a little unclear. Let me try and improve and please feel free to ask for more clarification.

1) Look at the list in the first email and review the slide associated with you.
2) Some slides need the figure picture fixed, some are done, some are empty, some are partially complete. It is what it is. Anyone that needs help or wants some feedback on their ideas of editing/creating their slide please email the group; we are here to support each other. The slides gotta get done though.
2a) In particular the methods/behavioral procedure need some visioning and creation of text and visual aides.
2b) The 'conclusions' and 'critiques' sections don't necessarily need a slide. . .but why not? I mean, it doesn't take that long to make them. A picture, some text, bam, we look better than other groups.
3) Have about a minute of prepped speech for your section. In general folks with say more than they intend so we can error towards being succinct.

Work Smart, Go Team!

About ten minutes later, instructor lays the smack down.

New guy has been quiet ever since. Slide girl is crying about how everyone is mean and disrespectful.

Fuck alla this.

Wow. Well at least his opening lines set the tone for the entire email. 

Soooo

A guy who was for mysterious reasons "unable to present" with his group was added to ours, and he is a FUCKING INSANE DRAMA WHORE and now the whole thing has blown up into crazy.

Sounds like a fun story. Care to elaborate?

Very interesting talk. Thanks for the link!

Another possibility, and you probably shouldn't discount this, is that you are profoundly boring to them.

If anything, I am all-too aware of this.

I think I'm still trying to reconcile the fact that my ways of operating are different with the fact that I'm still a human being, working off the same human base as everybody else. By this I don't mean hurr durr I'm special welcome to my twisted world -- hell no -- I'm aware that the mass called they aren't uniform at all and all have their own differences and quirks, as well. Perhaps others are struggling to understand this too -- how can somebody not be interested in what I'm interested in, not think the way I do, and still be human?

You are describing a tension between two different psychological phenomena; one is a fallacy of thinking called false uniqueness; the idea that what you perceive and think is different from what others perceive and think, and the other is a fallacy of thinking called false consensus; the assumption that what you perceive and think is what others perceive and think.

This is something I have been wrestling with for a while too. It's hard to express (for me - reading so many eloquently written thoughts on this forum make my own seem woefully jumbled and stunted) but I am torn between hoping that there are more layers to people than they express externally and in public and worrying that there aren't and their actions perfectly mirror their inner worlds.

Now, when I think about it in my more optimistic moments I guess that everyone has a lot more going on in there than they make out. I certainly know that I don't express even 1/10th of my thoughts to the outside world so people would be excused for thinking that I am boring. Maybe everyone else is like that too.

But then maybe they aren't.

Thank you for bringing up those two fallacies, Nigel. I will definitely have to do some more reading on those topics. I do wonder how both can apply at once though - would they not be mutually exclusive?

I don't feel like I really even have a personal philosophy right now. That's kind of what draws me to keep coming back here even on a mostly-lurker basis. I enjoy reading all the thoughts that you guys spew and trying to assimilate them into my own personal worldview.

Coupled with:

Not really. Eyes tend to glaze over if you start talking about this stuff to most people.

Makes for real-life philosophising a rarity.

I just said them! Mostly bad ideas.

I'm also interested in ADHD and autism, as well as neurodegenerative diseases.

Ah I just clicked through the last couple of pages and there it was!

I think there is an interesting differentiation between bad ideas and Bad Ideas. Anyone can have the former while the latter ones are those that really shake things up. 

Tangentially related: a good friend of mine developed ataxia in his teens which sounds like a very unpleasant disease. I would be interested to hear if it's something you've come across in your studies.

Interview has happened. "Your research interests are a perfect match", the good doctor said, after listening to me with a perfectly straight face while I explained that I am obsessed with Bad Ideas.

What are your research interests?

That's a really interesting idea. Jericho particularly strikes me as an interesting character - the idea that the church he has devoted his life to still distrusts him on some level could enable some cool RP.

You mentioned that the players would (initially?) be split into three parties and that touches on the only concern that I was going to raise - a lot of the problems that the few games I have played have run into ultimately arise from the fact that none of the characters have any real reason for wanting to work together. What would be your 'hook' for getting the story going (and keeping it going) with such a large cast of diverse characters?