#Unituition

[katamarang-art]

Lining kicked my ass, but we're nearly there!

Just gotta do lighting and lettering

[polyamorousmood]

Why did the original polyamorous flag fall out of favor, and why did you pick the one you did for your profile picture?

TL;DR: they called her (the OG) ugly 🥺☹️😟☹️😓

Didn't like the bright, jarring colors. Didn't like the pi symbol for "being unituitive". That's... really it afaik.

These weren't wrong, but I do still love her. Which is why I chose this popular edit. It kept the color symbolism, which I love.

I also... started this blog before the vote, so. I got attached to this one before the other one even existed.

[theworldlookswhite]

programming is something that for every 10 bits of effort you put into it you get one bit of stuff put down. it requires a lot of effort to take an idea and translate it into a way of thinking that is very unituitive that has to be exactly right or else it doesnt work and to when youre learning this constantly translating the terms youre using into something you can actually understand.

for me i had to rework my idea of what making progress was to really understand how much i was putting into it all. like with writing it can be quite simple putting down thoughts as they come.

but with programming its like for every sentence you put down it takes ten times the effort itd appear to due to how strange it is

yeahg.... a lot of things that seem like they'd be, like, trivially easy to do will still end up taking hours or days to make it work at like. the barest minimum level. and like what youre saying abt translating too.. even once you get the essentials down, in order to actually write code you have to twist your brain into little computer-sized chunks to get your idea into something that you can write down.

i guess you could compare it to art in that way, though, where like, for a painting or something, you have to map things out with a sketch before you can even think about how itll get done.. there's a similar idea there, of translating the kind of nebulous thought or concept in your head of what you want to do into something you can look at and touch and iterate on. suppose in programming a similar thing might be pseudocode, or maybe writing down how you want the logic to work w/ a flowchart or w/e. either way it takes a lot of time, and it gets discouraging.

i want to stick with it though. this is all really insightful stuff from you. thank you for sharing it!

[iheartnimbassacity]

Which region has had the worst electrical infrastructure that you've visited?

i would say orre but in the actual towns it was fine. just connecting lines were a bitch

no, fucking galar. idk, something about how their electricity is set up is unituitive and frustrating.

not to mention the dragons damned tea kettles.

[bezogonek]

measuring in feet and inches is so unnatural... inches are way to big to be used as an accurate type of measurment and if you want to go smaller you have to use unituitive fractions like 5/8...

[dukeofriven]

I find games often devolve into freeform RPs when the mechanics of a game prove a poor fit for the story the players and GM find themselves trying to tell— a lot of D&D games fall into this simply because people have wildly incorrect beliefs that D&D is a 'one size fits all' system and they've asked Reddit for homebrewing options to do their steampunk western in 5e rather than look for something designed for steampunk westerns. And because there's such a fundamental disconnect between design and goal, you roll less and less and consult the rules less and less because D&D fundamentally isn't designed to give you a satisfying high-noon standoff, a train chase, or a saloon brawl, and the techno-steam skin you've slapped on D&D's already idiosyncratic Vancian magic feels hopelessly mismatched, and you can put a big black hat and a mustache on a Tarrasque but at day's end 'Lair Actions' just don't feel right for a corrupt local sheriff and his posse of goons whose "lair" is the clapboard back room of a brothel. Best RPG I was ever in was a Lancer campaign, but as the years went on we touched Lancer less and less because outside of the robot fights we kept negotiating ourselves out of fighting, the mechanics gave us nothing to play with in the complex social/political/intra-party stories we were telling and loving (and that the worldbuilding is seemingly designed to encourage, but that's a different gripe)—indeed, the mechanics of Lancer were sometimes an active impediment to anyone having fun. You'd roll for the first time in several sessions, and be cross that the result was so mechanically unsatisfying, or worded so specifically that its use cases made it pointless. The "game" because an RP session because the mechanics didn't engage the players in furthering their own stories and sense of play. Whereas the Fantasy Flight Star Wars games I've run use a cumbersome, messy, hair-pullingly unituitive system - but when it clicks with my players they fucking love not just rolling dice but building their dice pool, leverging every square inch of their character sheets—skills, talents, past experiences, inventory, cunning schemes—that make roles tenses, engaging, fun, wonderful. It's not great at selling its full self to players (I think its a failing of density and layout from an editing standpoint), but man the parts that click really click, and I've had players with no TTRPG experience have a great time both RPing and getting into the mechanics of the system - because the mechanics, the system, and the story we're telling all align.

I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.

A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.

Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.

Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*

Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?

And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.

(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)

* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.

[mittelfrank-divas]

Help how do I set an adjutant in 3 Hopes again? You have to walk up to the other character and press… something?

[futuresoon]

self-care is looking up a walkthrough for a VN, realizing you’ve already made several mistakes, and deciding to deliberately do the opposite of everything it says from now on because if you’ve already ruined your chances then you might as well go whole hog

[heeltuff]

ok i'm getting the hang of street fighter it's not *that* bad. but man, some of this shit is unituitive and unforgiving

it really sucks that street fighter, the most dogshit feeling unintuitive hard to play fighting game ever, became the biggest one that everyone plays despite no one really seeming to like it after SSFIV

[omgsparklycollectorenthusia-blog]

Homework inside.

Hello Blog, today I’ve been stuck inside mulling over a ton of college work that I’ve been pushing to the side to play video games instead. I had to get over my inability or lack of caring to do said homework and midterms I had to complete, most of them having to do with Indesign and soup?? Why was there so much soup I had to use for the assignments?? All of it was about soup, soup related pictures, inline pictures with soup, heat up soup while you’re doing your assignments. Like they were high quality pictures of soup too, I don’t mind em. But I just do not get the fascination with it

Besides getting soupy toes I’ve been tasked with learning blender and that was cool, took way too long to learn how to drop a monkey head and color it though. I don’t like the UI very unituitive but I’m getting the hang out it. Made a metallic pink monkey looking thing for an assingment. It used like grouping and coloring, god the coloring process was annoying I couldn’t find the lil plus button to add another material but after I did it was super easy.  What I want to get to today is finishin this blog post for a class which has to be over 400 words unforutanately I’m not even sure I’ve hit that yet. One thing I need to get to as well is painting a nose I made for a costume I’ve been working on, It’s been drying for days now so it should be fine now, but I need to sand it down so it’s a fine shape. The texture isn’t bad and it’s made out of cosplay foam, a super cool substance where its super malleable like clay and holds its shape after it’s dried for a while, anyways, I need to sand it down and then apply a nice primer and then coat of paint to it. Which I can only do after I finish the rest of these assignments, which again I am currently working on. Once I finish everything I need to today I’m planning on trying a new recipe with noodles and meatballs which I’ll probably grab tomorrow and try to prepare for my family in the next day, It’s a vegan recipe the meatballs but I’m hoping that It’ll taste better than what I’m hoping as I’ve never had and beyond meat, or plant based meat.

[igb220gameblog]

Week 11 - Playtesting

We had a playtesting session recently in the workshop in which we tried many different games and had many different people play our game and fill out a report.

The reports that the participants filled out gave us much insight into what we needed to change. For example, all 3 stated that the controls were difficult and unintuitive, this of course was an easy fix but one that we would not have known if not for this feedback. 

The Tasks channel in discord was full after this playtesting session leaving us with much work to do each. 

However the end result of the game was ultimately much better off due to the results from the playtesting. 

Here were the most common complaints/feedback we got from the session:

- The game is unituitive to learn how to play. A how to play screen is necessary

- The game is a bit difficult, to a degree that its frustrating

- the controls could be changed, specifically space bar to jump instead of A

- it was not always clear where to move next in the stage.

[raquelallegra]

QRA: RULAN TANGEN⁠ ⁠ "...to be able to be in that state of empathetic listening, observing, unituiting, imagining , connecting to the diverse sensuality of emanations of life force - there are a thousand tiny practices to get there - to enhance the multi-sensory multi -dimensional experience and expression."⁠ ⁠ In watching @rulantangen move I was deeply struck by the way she communicates with her body - that force and connection. Her dance feels so expressive and lyrical. It's an honor to gift a body with comfort and inspiration⁠ ⁠ See + Read More @ Our RA Stories Page⁠ Images + Video captured by @og_nazarova⁠ ⁠ #toliveanddyeinla #womensupportingwomen #taos #movement #dance #selfexpression #empathy

[owlistic]

I’m replaying Ace Attorney again and there’s certain things that I know purposefully simplify the gameplay or make it more challenging, but are clearly unituitive/unrealistic (like a security camera that takes pictures every time someone passes only taking 2 pictures during the day when more than 2 people would have walked by it). But then there are things that I think fit this, but it turns out I just don’t have an accurate perception of. For example, I was thinking, ‘the gun shot came from more than a meter away? well then how could have Edgeworth shot him in the boat? Rowboats aren’t that big.’ And to be fair, the art in the game made it look like they were standing pretty close, but it turns out average two-person rowboats are often around 4 meters long, so them being more than a meter apart in a rowboat is not as improbable as I thought.

[mholquinn]

Reposted from @beirutbydyke The most difficult and unituitive practice I have ever had to learn is that of befriending my body. If you've been made to disconnect from your internal senses because of a succession of touches you never wanted, how do you begin to recognize and trust a touch that feels safe? How do you allow your body to read the excitation of pleasure if you have had to associate it with the inevitable shame that comes from feeling helpless? One of the most empowering ways to recognize and cope with traumatic reactions is through the support of a partner who is able to recognize the pain lodged in the edges of your muscles and allow you the space and power to dismantle it yourself. https://www.instagram.com/p/CLRAon0giCf/?igshid=1f8k67zqydbzl

[22degreehalo]

On the subject of anti-intellectualism wielded by the powerful:

If you're interested in maths you've probably heard of the book How To Lie With Statistics. It's a super fascinating work that digs deep uncovering all the weird and unituitive and misleading ways people can use real numbers to advance their own interests. It's an absolute classic in the maths world and still recommended to this day.

But did you know that the author of this book was actually highly paid by tobacco companies to spread doubt that smoking caused lung cancer? That he wrote it to make people start doubting the correlations scientists were increasingly talking urgently about, and that he cited the book extensively as an expert witness in a trial on the matter? (Source; skip to around 3:35 to get to the point.)

Science can be an incredibly important tool for uncovering truths - both those that 'everyone in group X knows' and the ones that are genuinely unintuitive to everyone. Blanket skepticism is just 'all sides are equal' type centrism that helps no-one.

I've followed you for some time so I may be more familiar with you than some of the people who are reblogging your post now haha but I have to admit I also had to take a deep breath and reread the last bit to reassure myself that you weren't conflating 'legitimate distrust, skepticism, and anger towards western science systems' (especially, but not exclusively, archeology/anthropology) with anti-intellectualism. Im a researcher as well but it's really hard for me to say that all public distrust and dismissiveness towards the process of science is anti intellectualism and is a Big Problem when the scientific community has still done very little work to repair broken trust/earn respect. Much like the conversation about how deriding all vaccine hesitant people as 'anti-vaxxers' is counterproductive and doesn't acknowledge the role of the medical establishment in engendering legitimate distrust. maybe part of what you were trying to get at is that genuine cross-disciplinary work that doesn't privilege one knowledge system above others is part of doing that work? idk

Okay. First up: I agree with you entirely that the scientific community has big and legitimately earned trust gaps with many people, and also that just saying "why won't people just listen to us when we're right!" achieves precisely nothing to combat that.

But what I see in the popular 'lol scientists' post on this site is not an actual critique of exclusionary science. What I see is that it takes actual examples of interdisciplinary science, times when scientists are doing exactly what these people say they want, consulting with other experts, bringing together different forms of knowledge, and turns it into 'lol scientists are so dumb'. It's not actually encouraging genuine interchange or understanding. It's also eliding the actual complexities and difficulties of research and knowing - as many people have pointed out in the notes, a lot of the popular examples feature alternative hypotheses which are very cool and interesting but still hypotheses. It's really easy to have a cool hypothesis. It takes a lot more work to substantiate it.

Furthermore, I think it's important to remember that anti-intellectualism is not just about a response to the damage science has done. It is used deliberately to further the goals of powerful people. When we go 'lol scientists don't know anything about the real world', what does that do to the ongoing public debate about climate change and how to address it? About COVID-19 and how to end the pandemic? Who benefits? Everybody on here wants to eat the rich but it never fucking occurs to them that it benefits the rich for them to distrust scientists.

The thing is, science, like fandom, isn't special. It is not exempt from the bigotry that permeates our societies. It is done by people, who are often petty and close-minded and suspicious of things they don't know. Like the rest of society its problems are often systemic and if you want a list, I have a list. But when the tools of science are made available to everybody I genuinely do believe it provides us with, you know, some pretty fucking awesome stuff. The way we get more of that is by critiquing the specific problems, and celebrating the people who are doing it right.

Let's go back to climate change. Scientific research has told us how it's happening, and why it's happened, and the basic facts of how to stop it. But it can't tell us which choices to make about how we fix it: that requires knowledge from and of our communities. Do you move the town inland? Do you try and get people in electric cars, or on bikes, or some of each? What crops are growing here that couldn't before, and which are getting wilted by the heat? That requires people engaging with science and science engaging with people. And you do not get to engagement with 'lol this is just common sense'. You just don't.

also please (not you specifically anon, in general) read some fucking words by people who spend time thinking constructively about this stuff I beg you

[22degreehalo]

On the subject of anti-intellectualism wielded by the powerful:

If you're interested in maths you've probably heard of the book How To Lie With Statistics. It's a super fascinating work that digs deep uncovering all the weird and unituitive and misleading ways people can use real numbers to advance their own interests. It's an absolute classic in the maths world and still recommended to this day.

But did you know that the author of this book was actually highly paid by tobacco companies to spread doubt that smoking caused lung cancer? That he wrote it to make people start doubting the correlations scientists were increasingly talking urgently about, and that he cited the book extensively as an expert witness in a trial on the matter? (Source; skip to around 3:35 to get to the point.)

Science can be an incredibly important tool for uncovering truths - both those that 'everyone in group X knows' and the ones that are genuinely unintuitive to everyone. Blanket skepticism is just 'all sides are equal' type centrism that helps no-one.

I've followed you for some time so I may be more familiar with you than some of the people who are reblogging your post now haha but I have to admit I also had to take a deep breath and reread the last bit to reassure myself that you weren't conflating 'legitimate distrust, skepticism, and anger towards western science systems' (especially, but not exclusively, archeology/anthropology) with anti-intellectualism. Im a researcher as well but it's really hard for me to say that all public distrust and dismissiveness towards the process of science is anti intellectualism and is a Big Problem when the scientific community has still done very little work to repair broken trust/earn respect. Much like the conversation about how deriding all vaccine hesitant people as 'anti-vaxxers' is counterproductive and doesn't acknowledge the role of the medical establishment in engendering legitimate distrust. maybe part of what you were trying to get at is that genuine cross-disciplinary work that doesn't privilege one knowledge system above others is part of doing that work? idk

Okay. First up: I agree with you entirely that the scientific community has big and legitimately earned trust gaps with many people, and also that just saying "why won't people just listen to us when we're right!" achieves precisely nothing to combat that.

But what I see in the popular 'lol scientists' post on this site is not an actual critique of exclusionary science. What I see is that it takes actual examples of interdisciplinary science, times when scientists are doing exactly what these people say they want, consulting with other experts, bringing together different forms of knowledge, and turns it into 'lol scientists are so dumb'. It's not actually encouraging genuine interchange or understanding. It's also eliding the actual complexities and difficulties of research and knowing - as many people have pointed out in the notes, a lot of the popular examples feature alternative hypotheses which are very cool and interesting but still hypotheses. It's really easy to have a cool hypothesis. It takes a lot more work to substantiate it.

Furthermore, I think it's important to remember that anti-intellectualism is not just about a response to the damage science has done. It is used deliberately to further the goals of powerful people. When we go 'lol scientists don't know anything about the real world', what does that do to the ongoing public debate about climate change and how to address it? About COVID-19 and how to end the pandemic? Who benefits? Everybody on here wants to eat the rich but it never fucking occurs to them that it benefits the rich for them to distrust scientists.

The thing is, science, like fandom, isn't special. It is not exempt from the bigotry that permeates our societies. It is done by people, who are often petty and close-minded and suspicious of things they don't know. Like the rest of society its problems are often systemic and if you want a list, I have a list. But when the tools of science are made available to everybody I genuinely do believe it provides us with, you know, some pretty fucking awesome stuff. The way we get more of that is by critiquing the specific problems, and celebrating the people who are doing it right.

Let's go back to climate change. Scientific research has told us how it's happening, and why it's happened, and the basic facts of how to stop it. But it can't tell us which choices to make about how we fix it: that requires knowledge from and of our communities. Do you move the town inland? Do you try and get people in electric cars, or on bikes, or some of each? What crops are growing here that couldn't before, and which are getting wilted by the heat? That requires people engaging with science and science engaging with people. And you do not get to engagement with 'lol this is just common sense'. You just don't.

also please (not you specifically anon, in general) read some fucking words by people who spend time thinking constructively about this stuff I beg you