Take A Guess At What I Haven't Been Doing Lately! (hint: The Answer Is Anything Involving Other People)

Take a guess at what I haven't been doing lately! (hint: the answer is anything involving other people)

I have a tendency to find patterns in two steps. This is both a good thing and a bad thing; it means I'm generally quicker to catch on to things than most people, but it also means that I often find patterns where they don't exist.

Let's use a mathematical example, shall we? I love math! Say I'm given two numbers:

1, 8

Here's the order in which I think of what patterns this might fit in:

Sequential cubes - 1³, 2³ (3³, 4³, n³) Add seven to previous number - 1, 1+7 (8+7, 15+7, 1+7n) Multiples of eight - 8⁰, 8¹ (8², 8³, 8ⁿ)

What tends to happen when I point out the first pattern that comes to mind is that I'm often wrong. Even if I go through all the patterns that come to mind, it could still be a different pattern, or it could just not be a pattern at all!

So what I've trained myself to do is wait for a third term to see if I have it right. I've been wrong on the third term before, but far less often. Most of the time my suspicion is correct at that point - except with things like human behavior, which I'm usually more careful about.

...no, I don't treat human behavior like numbers... I look for patterns in different ways...

I've never understood the logic behind a "hivemind" - in other words, thinking that people who share something in common all think the same. It's kind of like stereotypes, or perhaps racism. It's insulting both to the group and to the individual it's applied it to, and it's one of the biggest reasons we argue and bicker all the time.

This religion is all terrorists or all holier-than-thou stuck-ups, those console fanboys think the other consoles have no good games, and people who do this terrible thing can never be trusted again, ever. Even if you have proof that this is primarily the case, it doesn't mean anything, since any one individual can be the counterexample. It's all just generalizing - a logical fallacy. And people take it seriously!

It's especially annoying when two people who are part of the same group have different opinions, and then people say the hivemind is conflicted/never happy (two people who like the same console can't agree on the quality of a first-party game). How can you not see that it's differing opinions from different people? How do you assume that they're supposed to think the same, all the time? Or, sometimes, people insist that one of them is lying, that they actually believe what the other person said and are trying to save face (peaceful Muslims vs. terrorists, for example). Where's the logic? There is none. It's just stupidity.

In the end, it's no better than being racist. All blacks are horrible people, right? Generalization again. It's the exact same "reasoning." And everyone is guilty of it, to a certain extent - myself included, for generalizing that people who expressly think this way are all idiots (among other things).

"But doesn't that make you a hypocrite?" I'll gladly be the hypocrite if it means I help to reduce the problem as a whole. Not all hypocrites avoid changing themselves too.

Keepsakes

There's a weird pocket in the top right corner of my browser that houses a mishmash of various urls. It's called the "Other Bookmarks" folder, and despite its generic name, its contents are carefully chosen. If I deem it intelligent, hilarious, thoughtful, unique, or otherwise extraordinary, it receives the honor of being inside. (The only anomaly is the end, to which is appended the next video in whatever series I'm watching; this is hardly an exception, however, as I wouldn't be watching it if it weren't somewhat entertaining.)

Okay, so perhaps I made it sound better than it really is. But I thought to myself: Why do I do this? To reread them later? No, because I almost never do that with anything. To show them to other people? I rarely get the chance to do so. So why not post them?

Here are its current contents. Be warned that some of these may be disagreeable, distracting, or NSFW.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/top10/2645.html http://www.mother4game.com/ http://www.siliconera.com/2013/12/03/emulating-megadrive-3ds-isnt-easy-enter-3d-sonic-hedgehog/ http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed http://jay-machalani.squarespace.com/blog/2013/12/12/fixing-windows-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtxhSQiduMk http://worldsbiggestpacman.com/ http://tmi.kotaku.com/the-indie-game-reality-tv-show-that-went-to-hell-1555599284/

From the Super Mario Galaxy 2 OST.

Took fourth place in this week's GameXplain tournament. I had first at one point! Then the other players beat me out. Oh well, I'll take it. Congrats to everyone involved!