What Does SL Really Compete With?

[Ayashe Ninetails]

8 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

While I'm sure I've seen it said here that some who use female avatars would feel unfinished if they didn't include lady parts, I'm still of the opinion that this is, in general, what men want to see on a female avatar.  I went quite a few years interacting with male avatars in SL and while some did mention my lack of lady parts, most never said a thing.  Honestly, unless one is camming in fairly close, I'm not sure having can even be seen all that well.   Of course, for pictures, I'm sure it sorta, kinda matters?

The male part is much easier to see without camming in and frequently, comically easy since it's...oh nvm.

It's funny - the only reason I own any of that stuff is because someone insisted I have it and gifted it to me. They couldn't stand the idea of my avatars rocking the Ken and Barbie look. The only reason I own a "Ken" is because a friend I wasn't even involved with was mortified that I didn't, LOL. He just couldn't understand my male avies not being "complete." He's a fashion model, hon, he never has his clothes off unless I'm dressing him. It's FINE. Nope nope, must have! It's still packed up in the original box or HUD or whatever it comes in, btw. I never touched the damn thing.

I've seen too much, y'all. The helicopters. Getting jumpscared by flutters and fly-trap animations (I have silly friends, lol). It's all nightmare fuel IMO. My avatars do not need such things.

[Rowan Amore]

11 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   By the time the lack of ladyparts becomes an issue, I don't think most guys will stop to complain. I usually don't. Just as how I don't go 'ew, you're all shaved like a little girl?!' if a lady drops her knickers and has the crotchal texture of sandpaper (whether in SL or RL). 

   It's a matter of etiquette! 

My avatar has always included pubic hair which does cover that area somewhat so unless someone has their cam up close enough, I just don't understand WHY it matters what's there when engaging in the adult activities.  Or do men just want us to have to fiddle with something like they do?  Open, close, drip, etc to go along with your up, down, twirly, etc.

[WeFlossDaily]

We need an AI thread. Something like 'How Does AI Impact the Future of SL?'

It would be cool. We can debate about if AI is alive or dead and trade tips on how to make AI-powered sex bots.

[Ksenia Elcano]

45 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I maintain that if there was another game out there "like SL" that could actually compete with SL, we'd be talking about it here a whole lot more! 🙂

IMVU is the closest SL competitor and would benefit from an influx of new customers if SL shutdown. The other direct competitor that nobody has yet mentioned in this thread is OSgrid. OSgrid cannot gain any traction because it lacks an economy to incentivize content creation.

[JacksonBollock]

19 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

"Artificial Intelligence" can pretty quickly become "Artificial Stupidity," because it's only mimicking human behavior by processing pre-existing information. It can look impressive, but after a while you start to recognize the tricks that the pony knows.

 

None of this is right - no where near, but your confidence is almost convincing  

At the end of the day it's highly likely that some form of AI will take your job, and your financial security, and your material security, "educate" your kids, diagnose a cancer, have discovered the drug which treats the cancer, legally process a divorce, be your flirty partner after your divorce, care for you in your dotage, inform anyone who needs to know when you die, drive the hearse to the cemetary, and process your will.

Let's hope the pony has more than one trick up its sleeve  

[Ksenia Elcano]

3 minutes ago, WeFlossDaily said:

We need an AI thread. Something like 'How Does AI Impact the Future of SL?'

It would be cool. We can debate about if AI is alive or dead and trade tips on how to make AI-powered sex bots.

That would be nice. I think LL should implement a Manhattan project in providing AI companions. We already have an example of a lonely resident in this thread seeking a dance partner. AI companions could meet that need.

[Ksenia Elcano]

41 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Note that the AI also presents its assertion as fact, and does so without acknowledging that "Physically Based Rendering" and "Pabst Blue Ribbon" are both routinely abbreviated as PBR. Given the context, it's likely that the first post was about physically based rendering, but that still is only an assumption.

"Artificial Intelligence" can pretty quickly become "Artificial Stupidity," because it's only mimicking human behavior by processing pre-existing information. It can look impressive, but after a while you start to recognize the tricks that the pony knows.

Yes, but that also demonstrates the problem with human bias. If someone had posted about PBR beer in the thread about PBR Resources, it would have been deleted for being off-topic as many posts were deleted in that thread. If moderation was actually fair and even-handed, the post about beer in the safe thread for posting PBR complaints should also have been deleted.

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 minutes ago, JacksonBollock said:

None of this is right - no where near, but your confidence is almost convincing 

Your lack of qualifying your statement is also convincing.

[JacksonBollock]

Just now, Theresa Tennyson said:

Your lack of qualifying your statement is also convincing.

Well I sort of attempted that in a previous really length posting, and couldn't be bothered reiterating the whole tedious (even to me) thing. Never again, I promise  

I know a wee bit about what's happening, but everything else is just a punt - AI might eat your lunch or it might not even understand what lunch is - who knows  

My last bit of advice - really and truly - just don't underestimate what's happening.

Think of the internet back in 1995, but accelerating at about 10x the pace - you don't want to be working at Blockbuster when Netflix works out how to do streaming!

[Love Zhaoying]

45 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I'm still of the opinion that this is, in general, what men want to see on a female avatar.

Not me, I'm afraid it will wink at me, or have teeth or something!

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

23 minutes ago, JacksonBollock said:

None of this is right - no where near, but your confidence is almost convincing 

Your lack of qualifying your statement is also convincing.

When one is already highly qualified, everything they say or write is by definition, "true and correct"!

[Theresa Tennyson]

12 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

Yes, but that also demonstrates the problem with human bias. If someone had posted about PBR beer in the thread about PBR Resources, it would have been deleted for being off-topic as many posts were deleted in that thread. If moderation was actually fair and even-handed, the post about beer in the safe thread for posting PBR complaints should also have been deleted.

The thread was about "complaints about PBR." My complaint - the first complaint in the thread - was about a specific "PBR." It's very possible that an AI moderator would then decide that complaints about physically based rendering would then be off-topic because they broke the pattern.

[Love Zhaoying]

15 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

If someone had posted about PBR beer in the thread about PBR Resources, it would have been deleted for being off-topic as many posts were deleted in that thread.

I dispute this. People post witty (or halfway so) statements about "Pabst Blue Ribbon" in MANY threads about "Physically Based Rendering".  Those statements are not deleted by moderators as "off-topics".  

Our mods are NOT "monsters"!  

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

The thread was about "complaints about PBR." My complaint - the first complaint in the thread - was about a specific "PBR." It's very possible that an AI moderator would then decide that complaints about physically based rendering would then be off-topic because they broke the pattern.

I was thinking we need some threads where the topic includes a request / "rule" of "no abbreviations"!

That will make for interesting reading.

[WeFlossDaily]

13 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

That would be nice. I think LL should implement a Manhattan project in providing AI companions. We already have an example of a lonely resident in this thread seeking a dance partner. AI companions could meet that need.

I think all the tools to do this ourselves already exist.

[Luna Bliss]

21 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

If someone had posted about PBR beer in the thread about PBR Resources, it would have been deleted for being off-topic as many posts were deleted in that thread.

That's because the PBR resources thread is supposed to be about.........RESOURCES.  It's not supposed to be about whether we love or hate PBR.

In nearly every thread I've seen (and some I created) it never worked to elicit Only positive or ONLY negative responses on a topic, and has never been considered off-topic when like/dislike is stated by posters (even if the OP requests ONLY positive or negative responses).

[Love Zhaoying]

34 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

The other direct competitor that nobody has yet mentioned in this thread is OSgrid. OSgrid cannot gain any traction because it lacks an economy to incentivize content creation.

Then by certain definitions of "Compete", OSgrid is not competing with Second Life if it has no "economy".

Kind of like, "Communism does not compete with Capitalism".

"No Economy" is not equivalent to an "Economy".

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

12 minutes ago, JacksonBollock said:

Well I sort of attempted that in a previous really length posting, and couldn't be bothered reiterating the whole tedious (even to me) thing. Never again, I promise  

I know a wee bit about what's happening, but everything else is just a punt - AI might eat your lunch or it might not even understand what lunch is - who knows  

My last bit of advice - really and truly - just don't underestimate what's happening.

Think of the internet back in 1995, but accelerating at about 10x the pace - you don't want to be working at Blockbuster when Netflix works out how to do streaming!

I think that AI can be useful for automating certain tasks, but ultimately I don't want it making decisions because it lacks accountability. It's also an excuse for passing the buck. Modern passenger airplanes are extremely automated, and flying today is really remarkably safe. However, recent accidents often have an element of the pilot either trusting the automated system too much when they shouldn't or getting tangled up in trying to diagnose or correct problems with it. Many of these accidents could have been avoided if the pilot just took control and flew the airplane, which they should be able to do because that's what they've been trained to do and are being paid for.

With the "creative" applications of AI - yes, they can look remarkably effective. But in some way that's really only a reminder of how much "creative" work out there by humans is derivative crap done in a "style" as well.

[Luna Bliss]

SL competes with what's coming in the future, and they'll lose if they don't update.

[Coffee Pancake]

11 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

So... I am amazed that SL still exists. It's a mystery. We are not growing. No one really knows what "most people" do here. We only know what we do and what we learn by interacting or observing others. Or we just believe what others tell us.

  Have you looked at the SecondLife.com home page?

It features!

• Video of avatars reacting to things, something avatars can't do!
• Expect the unexpected! - We can't tell you here what SL is about, so we wont, it's a mystery, no one knows. Shhhhh.
• Find your community with some waffle that sounds like it should be covered by your health insurance, also that picture is GAAAAAY .. and about the most accurate thing thus far.
• Imagine the possibilities - YOU HAVE NO IDEA .. but imagine some things anyway, then imagine them in this thing you know nothing about.
• Remote meetings redefined .. wut ? ok but seriously .. wut? .. lets hand this over for review by our organizations security chief. All chat is sent unencrypted in plain text and voice is based on vivox that anyone can listen in on. That's a hard nope. Also .. wut?

Why is Second Life's own website so far adrift and coy about what the platform has on offer ....

 

11 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

If the glue that holds us together is slex, why do we need all the other stuff? Why is Second Life not just slex? Or why is there not a competitor that does just that?

 Because we need other things too.

If SL is ONLY a masturbatory fantasy engine, then everyone logs off after they get off. There needs to be other stuff too.

There was a sex only thing, they added building and such, and the users did the sex and then went off to make trains.

 

 

  

 

[JacksonBollock]

21 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

I think that AI can be useful for automating certain tasks, but ultimately I don't want it making decisions because it lacks accountability. It's also an excuse for passing the buck. Modern passenger airplanes are extremely automated, and flying today is really remarkably safe. However, recent accidents often have an element of the pilot either trusting the automated system too much when they shouldn't or getting tangled up in trying to diagnose or correct problems with it. Many of these accidents could have been avoided if the pilot just took control and flew the airplane, which they should be able to do because that's what they've been trained to do and are being paid for.

With the "creative" applications of AI - yes, they can look remarkably effective. But in some way that's really only a reminder of how much "creative" work out there by humans is derivative crap done in a "style" as well.

Yep I agree 100% with all of this!

I'm not an AI Utopian by any stretch, more an AI Realist.

I think that AI is now capable of way more than we think, and it's concern which makes me point out when people possibly underestimate its capacity to really muck things up.

There's a whole societal , political side to this which I'd immediately get banned from the forums for raising so I won't  

 

Edited September 2 by JacksonBollock

[Ksenia Elcano]

21 minutes ago, WeFlossDaily said:

I think all the tools to do this ourselves already exist.

Those tools are not accessible to residents. SL needs modifications to permit AI to drive an avatar instead of a human. At the moment, you can use AI to listen to local chat and it will respond to everything it hears. That is not useful. Most humans ignore local chat, so that it not human like. Further, it uses up tokens for the AI which costs money.

 

[Ksenia Elcano]

26 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Then by certain definitions of "Compete", OSgrid is not competing with Second Life if it has no "economy".

Kind of like, "Communism does not compete with Capitalism".

"No Economy" is not equivalent to an "Economy".

OSgrid does copmete with SL because people spending time driving an avatar in OSgrid are not spending that time in SL. Time is money. While OSgrid does not have an economy that incentivizes content creation, it does have an economy that incentivizes other behavior. For example, theft of content from SL.

[WeFlossDaily]

4 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

Those tools are not accessible to residents. SL needs modifications to permit AI to drive an avatar instead of a human. At the moment, you can use AI to listen to local chat and it will respond to everything it hears. That is not useful. Most humans ignore local chat, so that it not human like. Further, it uses up tokens for the AI which costs money.

This is true. At the present moment, everything is sort of half-baked.

Except it feels like the tools are almooooost there.

[Chery Amore]

I only come here to browse the forums every few days lately,  if not weeks.. but other than the arguing (which is another great reason to be in sl,  the entertainment of people watching), someone brought up Stardew Valley and the Sims. Stardew I'm going to dismiss outright as any sort of competition. I play it now and then, it's a cute 2D game. The Sims 4 isn't multiplayer so it's no competition either...  There are those that argue the mods keep The Sims going and some of the biggest mods for that game are sex and drug mods.
Word on the grapevine is the next Sims game will be (optionally?) multiplayer. If this turns out to be true I do think it could be a competition for the SL for some. You can build in the game, you can decorate, and you can play dress up. With settings and cheats.. you don't have to advance in the Sims now, you can turn off aging, you can even have rugrats. You can cheat needs and money..  Add in mods and yeah it could be possible for it to be competition in the future for some sl users. Personally I'd only consider it competition if it were a little more realistic and it didn't have weird forced animations of jumping up and down before getting sexy. Mods can do a whole lot for a semi-realistic game.