Insight: To Be, or Not To Be

Hey, J., guess what?

I just realized that Hamlet's cryptic "To be or not to be" speech suddenly becomes plain if you think of "be" as an active verb, synonymous with "bide." He's contemplating the risk of rebellion against a king, and trying to persuade himself that the risk is worth it.

To [bide], or not to [bide], that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:

What do you think, makes sense?

-M.

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

What does 'salt that has lost its savor' mean?

I realized recently (within the last few years) that all of these thoughts are connected:

From 3 Nephi 12:

11 And blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake;

12 For ye shall have great joy and be exceedingly glad, for great shall be your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.

13 Verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you to be the salt of the earth; but if the salt shall lose its savor wherewith shall the earth be salted? The salt shall be thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.

14 Verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you to be the light of this people. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

15 Behold, do men light a candle and put it under a bushel? Nay, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to all that are in the house;

16 Therefore let your light so shine before this people, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

Salt that has lost its savor = those who grow contentious and revile against revilers.

Light that cannot be hid = those who remain peaceful and keep the commandments, "wise as serpents and as harmless as doves." That light CANNOT be hid. Sometimes we talk to youth about "letting your light shine", as a way to say "don't be shy," but the real message here is that "revilings and persecutions from those who speak evil falsely will not prevail--God himself will ensure that your example is like a light that he has put on a candlestick, and will shine brightly to those watching."

THEREFORE, our primary job is not to argue but to lead by example.

44 But behold I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Calendars

One of many interesting quotes from this Greg Cochran interview: https://soundcloud.com/user-519115521/interview-greg-cochran 

"Coalition warfare has its problems. Let me give you an example. There was a time in which the Russians and the Austrians were working together against Napoleon, and they were supposed to meet at a certain date, at a certain place. The Russians were eleven days late--can you guess why?"
"What, something with the Tsar not feeling like...?"
"Old-style calendar. They had forgotten to synchronize calendars! They didn't change the Gregorian calendar until the Russian revolution... Napoleon didn't have that kind of problem."

-Max

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

On Character Development, Unexpected Kindness, and Suicidal Teens

On the subject of charity and tolerance: one of my favorite episodes of the family comedy American Housewife is Season 4, Episode 14, A Very English Scandal, for its subplot with Oliver. Bear with me as I explain why because this is a moderately long post and the context matters.

In this show, you've got main protagonist Katie, the mom, who in many ways is a terrible human being in order to generate most of the comedy, who is basically Jerry Seinfeld/George Costanza/Elaine Bennett/Roseanne Barr, and Greg, the dad, who is the easygoing history professor and loving-but-not-one-dimensional husband and father, and their three kids, of whom Oliver is the only boy and the Alex P. Keaton of the family: Oliver is arrogant and self-centered and mostly-one-dimensionally obsessed with making good impressions and making money and getting into Harvard to be better off than the family he comes from.

Prior to this episode and due to a ballet injury, Oliver has had to drop out of ballet (which he has been practicing for three years because Harvard has a ballet team which always needs more men) and took up volunteer work with Teen Help Line, because of the available volunteer opportunities it gives the most prestige with Harvard for the least amount of work. As expected, it mostly involves comforting teens from his rich hometown with ridiculous grievances, but in a previous episode, he got one call from a mysterious distressed caller who emoted briefly about how everyone thinks he's Superman, but he's not, and he's not sure he can take it any more, and then hung up.

And this strikes a chord with Oliver, to realize that there's someone in his hometown who is actually suffering, and he and his extremely wealthy best friend Cooper spend time trying to figure out who it is, and go out of their way to befriend the school's nerdy comic pariah who always wears Superman shirts, on the theory that it's probably him. He rebuffs their initial attempts to reach out, so they try even harder and dress up with their own nerdy superhero shirts to join him in the school cafe at lunch, whereupon he rebuffs them hard enough to persuade them that he genuinely doesn't want friends and has never heard of Teen Help Line.
And then they realize from an overheard conversation that it was actually the popular school athlete (and maybe quarterback? I'm not sure) who had called in, and he calls in to Teen Help Line again and Oliver is able to talk him into saying what's on his mind, and it turns out he's stressed because he's gay (and has never said it out loud before). Oliver tries to reassure him that it's not a big deal, but in the process Oliver gives away that not only is Teen Help Line staffed by people from their hometown, but that he actually knows who the guy is (Will something?), and the guy hangs up in a panic, and then later threatens Oliver in person that he better keep his mouth shut or else. Then he posts a fake Instragram account under Oliver's name confessing to the entire school that Oliver is gay.

And that's where this A Very English Scandal begins. In one of the B-plots of this episode, Oliver, selfish Oliver, is a little nervous about going back to school today to see everyone's reaction to "his" post, but has decided that denying it and denouncing the false post would just confirm Will's fears about becoming a social pariah. So he and Cooper just kind of ignore all the people whispering about them, and the comments from Oliver's ex-girlfriend about how that "explains a lot". Will comes by with his friends and makes some rude comments about Oliver's gayness, and one of Will's friends calls him on it, says that what Oliver did took a lot of guts, and that it's none of Will's business and to leave him alone, and then they walk off--and Oliver and Will make eye contact, and Will seems to understand. And at the end of the episode Will posts a confession about faking Oliver's "confession", and that it's actually Will and not Oliver who is gay, and thanking Oliver for showing him that it's okay.

And I think that is a great bit of character development and a great message! See, you don't need to be into superheroes and Superman to want people who are pariahs for being geeks to have the chance to be accepted (if they want to be), and you don't need to think homosexuality is a good thing to want people who have it to be treated well as human beings. (I doubt that Oliver's character thinks it's a problem either--but even people who do think it's a practical problem which often creates moral problems, such as me, can and do believe in kindness towards those who suffer from it.) I just love the way the whole Teen Help Line subplot was handled in this show: it's all about kindness and charity. And it's especially surprising because, well, it's Oliver, a.k.a. Alex P. Keaton, who is actually being kind to someone, without getting anything in return.

Also, the show is hilarious and the characters are just great. (I recommend starting at Season 4, the most recent, for a few episodes and then restarting at Season 1 if you like what you see.)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07YGG7KNQ/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s4  

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

D&D adventure design: Why can't campaigns last to level 20 and beyond?

Known fact: D&D games tend to die out long before PCs reach 20th level, and based on what I've seen and read, too often it's not because the PCs die but because the campaign just ceases to be fun for either the DM or the players. A common observation is that "game balance" stops working before 20th level, but I think the real problem is that people keep trying to apply "game balance" long after PCs have reached a point where managing difficulty should be the players' problem and not the DM's problem. Posit: campaigns fail because players and DMs attempt to run adventures for high-level (roughly 13th-20th level) PCs with the same mentality and techniques that they use for low-level PCs (roughly 3rd-8th), and they don't scale.

From a power perspective, I think it's healthy to view reaching level 11 as basically reaching PC maturity, in a sense: once you get to Tier 3 there's really no threat or adventure that you can't potentially handle, with the help of your fellow PCs and some creative thinking. Level 11 PCs, working together, generally have the tools they need to kill demon lords and flood river-valleys. In general level 11 PCs and level 20 PCs can go on 20th level-style adventures together and both have a chance to survive. The 20th level guys may be worth as much as two level 11 guys put together, sometimes less, sometimes more, but they're all playing in approximately the same ballpark unless the 20th level guys are abusing broken spells like Planar Binding, Simulacrum, True Polymorph etc.--and even then, the 11th level guys can abuse them to some extent as well.

When it comes to adventures, I think it's worth designing them in basically four bands:

Novice Adventures [Levels 1-2]: Everyone is pretty fragile. Face low-level threats like zombies and goblins.

Veteran Adventures [Levels 3-4]: Twice as hard as Novice. Everyone is less fragile, but only moderately more [I]powerful[/I]. You are competent at facing enemies like ghouls and werewolves, but hill giants are still an impressive enemy at this point.

Delta-Force Adventures [Levels 5-10]: At this point you're basically operating as special forces. Much harder than veteran tier. Players begin to have lots of strategic options. Start to face vampires, mind flayers, hobgoblin armies, dragons. Beholders are an impressive and rare threat.

Superhuman Adventures [Levels 11+]: DM takes the kid gloves off, everything is full Combat As War, "encounter balance" ceases to be a concern. At this point you're just dealing with a gameworld, and whatever makes sense to be there in that world. You may face one beholder, or you may face a crashed Tyrant Ship full of dozens of beholders and a whole colony of Stone Giants whose minds they've taken over, and it's up to you to find a way to deal with the consequences. You may face a lone Death Slaad, or an exponentially-multiplying swarm of thousands of Blue Slaads and Red Slaads taking over the southern half of the continent. You may face betrayal from trusted NPCs, you may play enemy factions off against each other, you may have enemies whose existence you aren't even aware of even though they regularly Scry on you and seek ways to return your old defeated nemeses to life. Spell research, founding and running a kingdom, setting up a merchant empire... you can try anything here. There is total freedom but also a total lack of plot armor (although random tables may still imply structure to the chaos--if you are alone for a few weeks doing spell research when a random encounter table yields a wandering Demon Lord who potentially kills you and loots all of your magic items off your body, that random encounter result is still rare, it's just not unfair).

I'm still working on procedures for running Superhuman-level adventures, but I think it does make sense to smoosh them all together, conceptually, because that's the only way your campaign won't stall at high levels: you need to have been playing "at 20th level" all along, and actually reaching 20th level is just a reward for surviving repeated adventures which makes it less likely that you'll die in this week's adventure.

And if players want to stick to Delta-Force adventures with plot armor indefinitely, or even lower, there should be ways for them to signal the DM that they intend to do that, e.g. by remaining low-ranked within certain organizations instead of top-level operatives, or by not venturing into wildspace/Outer Planes/wherever the Superhuman stuff is mostly going on.   
 

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Gone With the Wind

Keywords: Gone With the Wind, novels into movies, original book, anthropology

Just after the opening credits of Gone with the Wind and before the start of the film proper is a title card that reads as follows (ellipses in the original):

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South . . .

Here in this patrician world the Age of Chivalry took its last bow . . .

Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave . . .

Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind . . .

These are four very important sentences, because they're intended to shape the way we view the entire 238-minute movie. Down through the decades, they've continued to serve that function. But those four sentences were not written by Margaret Mitchell, the author of the 1936 novel on which the film was based. They aren't even remotely based on anything in the novel.

...Many people who've seen Selznick's movie but who've never opened Mitchell's novel have acquired the impression that the book is just what Hecht's title-card suggests: a gauzy, romantic take on the pre-war South. In fact, when the novel is mentioned in passing in accounts of the movie, it's often summed up by a statement to precisely this effect. For example, in a 2005 biography of Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in the film, Jill Watts, a professor of film studies at csu San Marcos, wrote that "In Mitchell's view, the antebellum South was an era of greatness." In 2004, Matthew Bernstein, a professor of film studies at Emory, described the racial politics of Selznick's movie as "less-than-progressive," while adding that "the film is less offensive than Margaret Mitchell's novel."

Did Watts or Bernstein read Mitchell's novel before they wrote those sentences? I doubt it. Because in the novel Mitchell doesn't depict the pre-war South as "an era of greatness."

The book sounds more interesting than I thought. I don't like sentimental takes on the South but from the article it indeed isn't one.

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2020/9/knights-their-ladies-fair 

-Max 

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Spaced Learning and Study Techniques

You may have noticed that when you have to actively recall information in response to a question, your brain learns it better. For example, when I'm watching Bones and the scientists are all like, "The hyoid isn't broken! So it can't have been suicide," and I say, "What's a hyoid?" and look it up and discover that it's a bone in the neck near the larynx, then my odds of retaining that information are much, much better than if I just read a list of bones in the neck in some medical textbook, without integrating that knowledge into a specific context.

It also turns out that there are some other psychological effects you can also exploit which enhance your odds of remembering things without increasing the amount of effort you put into it, and so-called "spaced learning" software exists to help you with this.

The idea is that if you're only going to view a given piece of information like a random list of digits ("555-5452") 5 times, your long-term odds of being able to recall that information ("how many fives are in that number?") are low if you view it 5 times in a row right now, but much higher if you view it now, in an hour, tomorrow, next week, and next month. So if you want to efficiently learn things without having to view the same information hundreds of times, you need something that keeps track of your intended learning and shows it to you only when it's time to give your memory a boost.

Here's the theory: https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition#spacing-effect 

Here's a very basic tutorial for Anki (a free flashcard program using spaced learning) to show you how easy it is to get started. Essentially you just take screenshots or type in whatever you want to test yourself on, then it shows you the flashcard and shows you the answer when you're ready, and you tell it if you got it right so it knows how long to wait before showing you the same card again. Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9GtFLAI2RU 

-Max 
 

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Traps in Dungeons and Dragons 5E

[from another forum, in response to a question about whether having a Rogue with passive Perception 17 in the party makes it pointless for the DM to have DC 15 traps in a dungeon]

Traps have a perception component and a deduction component.

Perception: "Huh. There aren't any footprints on that brick."
Deduction: "Therefore, a poison arrow probably comes out of that hole when you step there."

There's nothing wrong with automatically giving the rogue the Perception component, and leaving the deduction up to the player. If he or she has a sufficiently high Investigation skill you can give them the deduction component too. "You enter the hall and immediately notice signs of a blowgun trap in front of one of the doors in the hall."

Even then, traps still aren't pointless because they are still dungeon features, e.g. the Rogue can potentially turn traps to his advantage by taunting monsters into them. Also, there will be some traps that can't be easily bypassed even if you know they are there (e.g. Glyph of Warding), and in those cases there's still a decision to make about whether or not to risk the trap in exchange for potential reward.

P.S. Additionally, I rather think passive Perception/Investigation is a bad match for traps because they do tend to make things static and boring: there shouldn't be THAT much difference between Perception 14 and Perception 15. Therefore I would recommend also allowing active Perception and Investigation rolls for anyone who is actively searching for signs of traps in a particular place, and if they ask for the specific thing ("are there any bricks without footprints?") I would give that fact to the player automatically without a roll.

In other words, the rather high DC 15 is just to notice signs of a trap automatically, without effort, as something you're always doing in the back of your brain. This justifies using even higher DCs for traps that are actually well-hidden and hard to spot even if you're looking for them, like noticing contact poison on a doorknob by the way it glistens (could easily be DC 25 = unnoticeable to a normal person without special training who isn't looking specifically for it).
 
 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

On the Good Friday COVID-19 fast

I've long had a complicated relationship with fasting. For the longest time, from a religious perspective, I couldn't figure out what it was for or why Heavenly Father would care if you fasted prior to praying. In some ways it felt kind of like a temper tantrum--like holding your breath until you get what you want.

Ironically, the insights I needed came from the secular side of things, especially Dr. Jason Fung's writings on the role insulin and associated hormones play in the metabolic process. I found that fasting, especially extended fasting on the order of two days or more, does seem to quiet the body's urges and increase mental focus and clarity. (For example, my scores on speed reading and associated mental tests go up while fasting and down after eating, consistent with medical research, and probably with your own lived experiences with post-Thanksgiving torpor.)

Understanding the actual physical benefits of fasting puts at least part of the spiritual aspect of fasting into plain and sensible perspective.

I will be fasting as much as possible this week in preparation for this Friday's fast. I invite you to do so too, and to spend as much time in calm reflection/meditation/thoughtfulness/mindfulness as you can, including mindfulness of other people who are suffering, and seek ways to help. And if you choose to consult with God--whatever your religion, and even if don't believe He's really there or if He's listening to you--I believe that having your body in a fasted state will maximize your chances of perceiving and recognizing the quiet suggestions of the Holy Ghost to your spirit.

My best wishes to you all.

-Max

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

Writing Practice

Write a short story. The second sentence of the story must be, "And then the murders started."

I used to have a lot of friends. And then the murders started.

Don't get me wrong. Nobody ever blamed me, or thought I was responsible. It's just that after a certain point, you start to acquire a "reputation", and a lot of the people you thought were your friends just don't want to deal with it. It's simpler for them to close their eyes and avoid you.

For example, I used to hang out with this guy named Diggy. We were playing soccer, just like we used to do back in first grade, and I was goalie, and our team was ahead for once with twenty seconds left on the clock, but then Diggy gets the ball and he's driving right for me, right? And he fakes left and I buy it and dive in the wrong direction, and the goal is totally open and he kicks the ball... and a fat man's body falls out of a passing airliner and *splats* right on top of the ball, creating a huge mess and winning the game for my team.

Don't worry by the way, the guy was already dead before he fell out. Apparently it was some kind of insurance scheme. The guy's deadbeat brother worked for an airline and thought a plane's landing gear wheelwell would make a good hiding spot for the body. Don't ask--I never do any more.

After that Diggy never played another game of soccer with me. At first he made excuses and pretended to be busy, and then he started pretending not to see me when we passed each other in the halls.

On the other hand, you can tell who your true friends are because they stick with you. Take Elaine, for instance. Not only is she my best friend, but she's also helped me bury more bodies than I can count. It's true that most of them were just roadkill animals, which I also seem to attract, but the severed head we found in the cabin on our 6th grade field trip was definitely human and it was really gross, but she just helped me deal with it and didn't make it all weird or anything. I'd learned by that point not to literally _bury_ any bodies because the police get all upset if you disturb a crime scene, so we just moved the head outside and closed the door so we couldn't smell it as much.

Murders are the things that seem to bother people the most, but there's actually all kinds of weird stuff that happens. I sometimes wonder if these things happen to other people too and they just don't talk about it because they're embarrassed or something. Like that time last Tuesday when I was biking home from school and I found this map marked with a buried treasure X, and I followed the map and found an old treehouse in the woods and two twenty-dollar bills and a rusty old iron dagger with a skull carved on the crosspiece. And then as I was heading home, this raggedy bearded guy runs out of the woods, holds a gun on me, and steals the bike and the iron dagger and rides off. So I walked home. I guess I didn't mind that much--it was a pink girlie bike anyway.

When I got home, my mom said, "How was your day, Vladimir?"

"Fine, Mom," I said. "I got an A on my calculus test, and I made forty bucks adventuring." I went to my room and that's where I found the message from the Mouse King.

"No! More. Spiders! -M.K." read the tiny gold letters on red velvet.

[That's as much as I've got so far. -Max]  

 --

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat

Dr. Nehama Aschenasy, a Hebrew scholar, said that in Hebrew the word which is translated as beguiled in the Bible does not mean "tricked" or "deceived" as we commonly think. Rather, the Hebrew word is a rare verb that indicates an intense multilevel experience evoking great emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual trauma.

Ref: http://www.womeninthescriptures.com/2013/08/what-does-it-mean-that-eve-was-beguiled.html    

Aha! Apparently "beguile" is not an ideal translation. From now on when I read Eve's statement, I'm going to just think of it as "The serpent [complex verb]ed me, and I did eat." She's not making an excuse, she's just stating the facts.

-Max

--

I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.