Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Kippershy]

Damn, that's rough.
The stuff I go through is just exceptionally strange that it happens, though even more-so that I show such little damage from it.
Like P-21 said in this chapter, physical pain is a lot easier to deal with then mental pain.

....though the toe scraping does sound hardcore.

[Ironmonger]

Happened usually once to three times a week.

But I think the point is we all have bad shit happen to us and there are people who can relate. AmIright?

[Cptadder]

I thought that I'd share this with you. Previously I was aware that the US Chamber of Commerce was unsavory, but reading the reasons being voted on there makes me consider that perhaps voting it out of existence would be less appropriate than giving it a generous donation of tungsten telephone poles shipped direct from orbit.

One most make a note of difference between the local Chamber of Commerce in every American town and the National Chamber of Commerce which is just a big business conglomeration with a firm belief in fighting any and all regulation and helping business chase the maximum amount of profit.

You might ask what the difference is between say the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and the National US Chamber of Commerce and it's simple, the National Chamber wants to make money and if that involves moving a car part factory from Ohio to Ecuador that's fine by them as the National Chamber of Commerce is not National but International. The US Chamber of Commerce does not have the interests of the US in mind, only Commerce, which is why we still have a line in the law that says I get to cut my taxes if I fire Americans and send a plant overseas, the cost of moving that plant can be written off on my taxes so even if I might make only a tiny sliver of profit more from having the factory in Ecuador, it might make excellent tax sense to move it there.

[O. Hinds]

Your avatar is fine, Hinds. If you think back to S2E4 - Luna Eclipsed, Zecora has her hair down and free flowing.

Hm... That could have been a wig, but maybe it's just different biology from Earth zebras. Though the color's different... though I suppose that that could be dye. Thanks!

There's still the tail thing, of course, but that, again, is just a case of "the pony creator doesn't have the right parts, and even my stick figures come out deformed."

[Kippershy]

Eeyup.

The shit that's affected me, strange as it is, is mostly emotional.
I mean, the cleft palate didn't leave me without my troubles, but nothing that I've been through has really changed me as a person in a bad way on the physical side of things.

The mental side of things? Absolutely, but even then, I do my best to simply ignore my problems.
In real life, I'm often told I'm a very strong person for being able to deal with my problems the way I do, not allowing myself to succumb to them, but I personally think I'm weak.


Speaking of chapter fifty, I really took one thing in particular, and that's the whole "You don't value yourself enough, so how can I love you?"

I don't value myself at all. If I was in Blackjacks place, I would do the same and I would be risking my life for anyone else simply because I too don't feel as if I'm worth a damned thing.

Lately I've been sort've longing for another relationship now that it's been some time since my last one, but this overwhelming part of me says no, despite that, I'm not worth enough.
I'm not good enough for anyone else, it would be a waste of their time and I'm not worth it.
I have zero self worth, so yeah, I can relate.

[Kippershy]

Your avatar is fine, Hinds. If you think back to S2E4 - Luna Eclipsed, Zecora has her hair down and free flowing.

Hm... That could have been a wig, but maybe it's just different biology from Earth zebras. Though the color's different... though I suppose that that could be dye. Thanks!

There's still the tail thing, of course, but that, again, is just a case of "the pony creator doesn't have the right parts, and even my stick figures come out deformed."

I'm going to go with dyed.
Look at this picture:



reference 1 is a different shade to reference 2, and obviously the same hair.
While yes, it COULD in theory be a wig, if her hair was so rigid, wouldn't it be a little too hard to hide?
I therefore propose that zebra hair is naturally rigid to some extent, but with a little effort, can be made soft and workable like a ponies mane.

Don't forget that real life doesn't matter to MLP, because as we all know, ponies don't really speak, let alone have magic or wings.

[Icy Shake]

Well, a new chapter is a good way to start the day. Sadly, after reading everything my computer crashed, so I lost all my notes, and probably a couple of hours! That means no thoughts as I go through the chapter, and no edits. Maybe someday, but not now. And overall thoughts on the chapter will be abbreviated, and less accurate, and less organized, than originally intended. Lesson for next time: always save. Always. With alarming frequency. Even if I'll never need the file past today.

Spoiler:

Well, thank you to Somber and the brushing team for another great chapter; keep up the good work, and I hope that things will go well as the school year commences further.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

So I read up to medley then I had to go to work. It hurt... I needed to finish

[Tytan]

Is it just me, or has Scotch gotten a lot more worldly in the last few days without Blackjack?

[Caoimhe]

I was out all day and just finished. Skipped the last two pages just so I can briefly comment because I'm impatient.

Spoiler:

Re: Pain: Years ago, my best friend and s/o of many years was struck and killed in front of me by a drunk driver. That fucked me up for a very long time, but I can look back on it as a tragic event flatly without getting upset now.

[RoboRed]

Finally got to the newest chapter. Before I go on typing other stuff and reading missed posts, I saw a couple minor typos:

Spoiler:

[Tytan]

A long while ago my brother and sister thought it would be funny to ambush me while I was sleeping. They got up on my bed and started jumping on my back. I don't know if you've ever had an five and fourteen year old jump on your back, but let's just say it doesn't feel like a massage.

My back hurts if I stand up for too long. I don't know if the two are connected, but it's easier to blame him.

[Tytan]

@Robored

Your location on your profile intrigues me. What part of the great corn state do you inhabit. (You don't need to be specific if you don't want to.)

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

Hey kipper are you hungry? You can eat tytan now...

[Tytan]

Hey kipper are you hungry? You can eat tytan now...

Wait, why? I don't even smell... *sniff* Hold up a sec. *sniff sniff* Damn it! I put on barbecue sauce again. Why do I keep putting that in the medicine cabinet?

[Sindri]

P-21 has a hat, when did he get a hat?

He got Dusty's old hat when she got fed through a rock crusher, remember?

@Kattlarv I can relate to that a little. I have a brother 8 years my senior with an IQ of 240 last time I checked, and while I'm above average myself I feel completely stupid or straight-up mentally disabled when I'm around him.

I do not think that wherever you heard that was an entirely credible source. The standard deviation of the IQ curve is 15. Meaning that if this were correct, your brother would be more than nine deviations from the norm. Approximately one in... 10^19 people would be in that range. That's a one with nineteen zeros after it, ten quintillion (or ten billion billion). The current population is a little over seven billion, and current estimates say that between 100 billion and 115 billion humans have ever lived, so the probability of a single person of your brother's claimed intelligence existing now is about 1/1400000000 and the probability of that single person in all of human history to date is about 1/94000000.

I can easily believe that he took a test that gave a score of 240, but the vast majority if not all IQ tests are bullshit. And if you get a score like that, you should probably run a virus scan just in case.

And Glory is a total dom.... Heh, go figure the quiet little bookworm would have such tastes.

There's a trope for that.

On two other notes:
Do you think that my avatar is okay? Apparently zebra hair is stiffer than pony hair...

I don't see a problem with it. Pony manes tend to be silky if not downright puffy; just treating zebras' like relatively coarse hair is fine as far as I can tell.

Sadly, after reading everything my computer crashed, so I lost all my notes, and probably a couple of hours! That means no thoughts as I go through the chapter, and no edits. Maybe someday, but not now. And overall thoughts on the chapter will be abbreviated, and less accurate, and less organized, than originally intended. Lesson for next time: always save. Always. With alarming frequency. Even if I'll never need the file past today.

If you have a stable internet connection, maybe try taking notes in google docs? It saves to their servers every minute or so so you don't lose progress no matter what happens to your machine. That's what I did when I was operating on a computer which refused to acknowledge the existence of its battery, and thus died every time the power cable was jostled.

[Ironmonger]

@Sindri It wasn't on a computer. He took it when he was 12, I was only 4 at the time. Point being he is near-genius intelligence. Where did you get the idea that he took it on a computer?

[Tytan]

@Ironmonger

They have lots of internet IQ tests. A lot of which put viruses on you computer.

And is it possible that your mom meant 140? Because that would make more sense. That's still pretty smart (supposedly that's what the average military general scores at).

[Ironmonger]

@Tytan

It was a written test since we didn't have a computer at the time (we never had one till I was six). 140 is what I though too, that is around my IQ and my best friend has that very level.

[Tytan]

@ironmonger

Does your brother act like a massive prick about it?

[Ironmonger]

@ironmonger

Does your brother act like a massive prick about it?

He's unaware of it. He's a prick (he yells under stress because he is under a ton of stress) but not about his intelligence. To be fair I'm an unintentional prick on certain subjects.

[Sindri]

@Sindri It wasn't on a computer. He took it when he was 12, I was only 4 at the time. Point being he is near-genius intelligence. Where did you get the idea that he took it on a computer?

Because an even semi-legitimate test would not give a score that high, so it seemed likely that it was intended not to accurately determine intelligence but rather to flatter that taker enough that they become less suspicious of the pop-up they just clicked on. Anyway, background on the IQ test:

The original test was to determine what grade a child should be in based on their personal developmental rate, primarly in order to help those with learning disabilities. It was literally an intelligence quotient, basically mental age/physical age, decreased gradually over the years, and lost all meaning after they got a diploma. By this scale, when your brother was 12 he would have had the mind of a mature, responsible 29-year-old.

That system hasn't been used in decades and all that remains of it is the term "IQ." Nowadays the test is normalized to have a mean of 100, and a standard deviation of 15 (though some specific unpopular tests use a deviation ranging from 10 to 20 or higher; those are one a different scale and cannot be compared meaningfully to the normal system without translating their numbers). This means that the average person always has a 100, 68% are between 85 and 115, and 95% are between 70 and 130. Scores over 145 and under 55 are about one in a thousand. Scores over 160 or under 40 are about one in thirty thousand.

The main test itself tends to break down below 50 or above 150; it's calibrated to be as close to accurate as it can for 95% of the population, but can't tell you who's smarter between two people who both get max scores or who's stupider between two people who both just guessed. On the low end there are several specialized tests, created to determine a person's specific needs for help in terms of education and in extreme cases survival. On the high end there are also quite a few specialized tests, created to stroke the egos of people in the Mensa society who define their sense of self-worth by a number that says they're smarter than other people instead of actual accomplishments.

I am not aware of any test with any claim to legitimacy that would ever give a score of 240.

[Ironmonger]

@Sindri

Thanks for the info.

[Caoimhe]

The only judge of intelligence I care about is what someone orders at a bar and what someone tips at a bar.

[Tytan]

@Sindri

Wow. Your teachers must have loved you when they gave out essay questions. And I mean that in a good way.

[Ironmonger]

@intelligence

I'm a judgemental person when it comes to intelligence because my friends and I go back and forth with technical specifications, what-if scenarios, and rather complex things. That and most people I meet are book-stupid.

[Icy Shake]

@Sindri: Right, but I'll go a little deeper. You'll generally not see a single number, but rather several. With the WAIS IV, for instance, you'll get scores for full-scale IQ, plus component scores in verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed, and probably a 95% confidence interval for each.

It's also worth noting that the administration of a real IQ test will generally cost around $700 in the US, and as such one of the primary uses is to screen for learning disorders by determining if a student is doing as well as IQ would suggest they could, or underperforming*.

*This is based on what the psychology professor at my undergraduate school said, so I could certainly be off-base on this issue.

[Sindri]

@intelligence

I'm a judgemental person when it comes to intelligence because my friends and I go back and forth with technical specifications, what-if scenarios, and rather complex things. That and most people I meet are book-stupid.

I follow a simple rule of thumb: 90% of everything is shit. This applies to literature, merchandise, and of course people. I avoid them if possible and am polite but generally distant and curt if forced to interact with them. A further 9% is decent. Not good, not particularly lovable, but quite tolerable and sometimes even pleasant. The remaining 1% is awesome (it's further divided on the same 1/10 to level-up kind of scale, but that level of precision is unnecessary to this discussion). That's one in every hundred people, which sounds like a very small number until you realize that it means that there are 70,000,000 awesome people on the planet. And that makes this a pretty cool place to live, especially with the internet allowing me to spend time with the top percent and ignore the legion of imbeciles outside.

[O. Hinds]

Finally got to the newest chapter. Before I go on typing other stuff and reading missed posts, I saw a couple minor typos:

Spoiler:

Ah, thank you. I've been crowded out of the doc again, but I've noted these for later.

[Sindri]

@Sindri: Right, but I'll go a little deeper. You'll generally not see a single number, but rather several. With the WAIS IV, for instance, you'll get scores for full-scale IQ, plus component scores in verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed, and probably a 95% confidence interval for each.

It's also worth noting that the administration of a real IQ test will generally cost around $700 in the US, and as such one of the primary uses is to screen for learning disorders by determining if a student is doing as well as IQ would suggest they could, or underperforming*.

*This is based on what the psychology professor at my undergraduate school said, so I could certainly be off-base on this issue.

True. Some theories are starting to use 9-10 or more separate intelligence scales, since every person is better at different areas of thinking and analysis. In the end you have a very complicated procedure giving you a vague approximation of how well the mind works under testing circumstances. And there are a lot of free tests out there, even ones that try to be legitimate, but a full comprehensive examination is rather elaborate and needs to be administered by a professional.


Unrelated fun fact: if the scale had been kept fixed instead of constantly adjusted to keep the average at 100, the average result of a general IQ test would be increasing at a rate of about 3 points per decade worldwide since the early 20th century. So all those things you hear about humanity getting stupider over time are bullshit.
Most of this comes from underdeveloped nations becoming closer to tolerable, but our education system even in advanced nations actually does look a lot better than it did several years ago, and we've almost stopped telling people that they need to make themselves stupid to survive.

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