Humans are Really Pretty Damn Smart

The human mind is really an incredible marvel of nature. We as a species are incredibly intelligent when it comes to understanding and predicting the world around us. No other creature on the planet can come close to our level of understanding of what forces are acting upon us, how those forces work, and how those forces will act in the future.

Humans' ability to model their world is often mind-boggling. Be it a verbal prediction of what's to come, a formal mathematical formula for the movement of planets, or any other kind of modeling system, that's a high-level function near the top of our ability to think.

But I think that's not quite the top. Our ability to recognize ourselves and our place in those models, to me, is the truly amazing part of that. That's why I find self-referential or metafictional works so cool: we're able to predict the future; that's cool and all, but a computer can do that for us. What a computer can't do is conceive of a model of the world that takes into account the computer's modeling of the world—which, in turn, would take into account the modeling of the world itself, instantly creating an infinitely complex system of recognizing that one is recognizing one's role in that system.

How cool is that?

It's difficult to verbalize, but the concept, to me, is endlessly intriguing. As you sit there reading this, think about the fact that you're conscious of yourself as a being sitting there reading some text. And you're also conscious of the fact that you can recognize yourself as being a conscious being. And you're conscious of the fact that you can recognize yourself as recognizing yourself as a conscious being...and so on, ad infinitum. That ability to step back from oneself and view oneself from a detached point of view, all while being cognizant of the fact that you're doing it, is enormously complex and, to me, absolutely amazing.

Sure, humans are brutal, callous animals who destroy each other at the first hint of an opportunity to get ahead; but when baser animal instincts are ignored in favor of embracing our truly astonishing mental capacity, we can accomplish some pretty incredible things. We can predict the future...and our role in it.

--The Almeister
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Thoughts on Piracy, Part 2: Music Piracy, Helping Your Industries, and Being Treated Like a Criminal

As I mentioned before, I pirate music. And I really don't feel bad about it. Now, I don't pirate all music: if there's a new Great Big Sea or Jeremy Fisher album, I'll happily spend money on them. I'll also happily buy cool tracks from individual artists online, such as the music from Play or Ignis Solus (both completely worth watching, incidentally). But the newest tracks from any major artist, from Britney Spears to Kanye West? Limewire for me.

My reasoning behind this is threefold: First, the mainstream artists really don't need more money. It doesn't really hurt them if I download the track in the first place (a topic I'll discuss in another post in this series), and I don't really want to contribute to their disgustingly wealthy lifestyles. A poor, starving artist who produces great stuff or a guy who makes great stuff for fun? I'll absolutely pay for that . But I'm not going to help finance Beyonce's private jet, y'know?

My second reason for pirating music is I'm simply not that into music. I'm a fan of movies (and scared of the MPAA), so I don't download those. Comics? No way I'm going to pirate those; the industry needs all the help it can get, and I want to help because it's an industry that I love. I'm happy to spend money on comics, despite their exorbitant cover prices, because I want to see the industry and the medium thrive. But I don't really care about the music industry, so it doesn't bother me at all to pirate MP3s. Now, for people who love music but don't care much about comics, their attitudes should be the polar opposite. You simply shouldn't pirate files from mediums you care about: spend your money supporting them.

Finally, I'm now going to pirate all mainstream commercial music I would be inclined to buy because of the record industry's idiotic and insulting treatment of their legitimate consumers. When The Dark Knight came out this summer, I really wanted to have the soundtrack. So, since it was a comic movie and created by a director and actors, not to mention composers, I'm a big fan of, I decided to buy the CD. So I bought it, brought it home, and tried to make a copy for my MP3 player, only to find that it was copy-protected such that Windows Media Player wouldn't let me rip it. So as my reward for paying for the CD, I was unable to put a copy of music I bought legally onto my MP3 player, where it would be much more convenient to have than on my computer.

How does this make sense from a business point of view? Obviously pirates are going to break through any copy protection the record industry can throw at us; that's been demonstrated time and time again. Denying the average consumer who wants to support you a copy of the music for their MP3 player is simply idiotic. Sure, no copy protection makes it easier to pirate, but the vast majority of the people who buy the CD aren't going to be throwing it up online for the world to download. All the record industry is doing by adding that kind of restriction is driving their legitimate consumers to piracy; it certainly sealed the deal for me. Incidentally, I did download a copy of the Dark Knight soundtrack for my MP3 player; it was certainly a hell of a lot easier than fighting with their narrow-minded copy protection.

--The Almeister



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Thoughts on Piracy, Part 1: Buying Used Equivalent to Pirating?

In what will be the first of a series of posts discussing the issue of internet piracy, I'm going to talk about an issue I thought of a few days ago: who are we trying to support when buying a product, and who are we hurting when pirating files?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I do pirate music and the occasional application (such as the Adobe suite of programs including Photoshop, Premiere, and Flash). I do not pirate comics (with one sole exception I'll mention in a later post) because I care about the medium too much; I do not pirate movies because I'm scared shitless of the MPAA, and I have only pirated one game, Fallout 3, which was the impetus for this post.

I downloaded a cracked copy of Fallout 3 over the past weekend. As I was downloading it, I felt a twinge of guilt that I wasn't helping to support Bethesda Software. While I don't have any loyalty to the company, as I've never played one of their games (unlike Valve, whose software I will always pay for regardless of their copy protection software), I do think it's awfully low to avoid paying for a game that a large team of developers spent years of their lives working on. But I downloaded it anyway.

Then I thought, “I'm only feeling guilty about this because I'm not giving money to the developers” But the previous weekend I had bought a used copy of LEGO Star Wars II for 10 bucks at a used bookstore, and that sure as hell didn't get any money to Traveler's Tales. So that made me stop and think. When we buy games used, for far cheaper, the only people we're supporting is the reseller. In a case like the local used place I bought LEGO Star Wars, I'll happily support a great business. But do we really want to support a massive corporation like GameStop?

In buying new, I figure the money is essentially spent on two things: 1) supporting the developer, which is a completely legitimate and worthy cause, and 2) having the right to play the game as soon as it's released. But buying the game used trades the right to timely enjoyment for a much more palatable cost; however, it also trades supporting the developer for supporting GameStop.

Now, GameStop and its supposed crimes against nerd-dorm is a topic for another time, but clearly developers should have priority over GameStop in the line to receive your money. So if the goal of buying a game is to support the developer, which I think it ultimately should be, buying used and pirating the game are the same in terms of the developer's revenue. I would argue that, if you plan to wait 6 months to play the game when it's used for cheap, you may as well just pirate the game and enjoy it on its day of release (or as soon as the pirates crack it).

Obviously this doesn't apply to direct downloads from the developer, such as Valve's Steam system, which is both more convenient and removes the retailer's cut. Theoretically this should decrease the cost of games, both due to the lack of discs and packaging and the lack of a middleman, but if it means increased revenue for the developers that's OK too. But if you're going to buy used from GameStop, you're having the same impact on the developers as if you were simply pirating the game in the first place.

--The Almeister



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The Return

This blog started out as an archive of my posts on Waiting For Wednesday, a blog created by some of the people from the Comics and Graphic Novels board from GameFAQs.com. W4W unfortunately fizzled out, and thus this blog sat here untouched for two and a half years.

I decided I'd make the effort to bring it back and use it as blogs are supposed to be used: to write long, wordy posts about my thought processes that no one will read or care about. But hey, may as well give it a shot, I suppose. I'll update whenever I think of something, and it'll last as long as my dedication to this does. Which, to be honest, is likely to be fairly short-lived. But that's just how it goes.

--The Almeister

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