Photographs and memories don’t have souls either. Nor do paintings, statues, or death masks. At least in my tradition, most things don’t have souls. I only see that as an issue if the creator insists the VR representation has a soul.

All of these conditions that psychics use to operate are not true for VR. You wrote a lot to admit, finally, that psychics are lying. People who create VR are not lying about the status of the creation.

In this case, the mother seems to have benefited from it.

Their status as recordings makes them admissible in court, but doesn’t draw a strong difference in the ability to evoke memory or give closure compared to a simulation.

That’s a bad comparison.

This. The promise of the military, to both my grandfathers, to multiple uncles and cousins, was that they would (a) serve our country and (b) be put anywhere, but in return (c) earn a decent living and (d) acquire skills that would better them when they got out. For example, one grandfather retired E8 (US Army),…

The historical context is present as soon as people read the title, because it refers to a place as savage, thereby rendering the exploitation of a world as entertainment.That’s a rhetorical misstep - people hearing the title for the first time don’t know what the game has. (Its creatures, of course, are inhabitants.…

I’ll quote what I said again:

Chrono Cross. I love the game, but its twists are among the favorite I have ever experienced. I would love to play without thinking so much about what character I would get access to based on my choices in the early game, or without knowing what would happen in Fort Dragonia, the Dead Sea, and other locations.

I want him to go to therapy irrespective of what he does with her. On the question of actually breaking up I’m petty neutral. People have stayed together for more and broken up for less. That’s his call, just like if she wanted to break up it’d be her call.

We don’t know that this relationship hasn’t worked out because the letter writer is conflicted.

Yeah, I’m too tall to ever serve on a submarine.

Most relationships fail. The age gap itself isn’t the issue.

He’s 30. (He had his first girlfriend at 26. Four years have passed.) I wouldn’t call a 30 year old still a kid.

it’s not an emotional issue, or communication issue, or compatibility issue that can be fixed from a therapist

Yes, the therapist may likely advise him to break up, but only after helping him figure out his feelings, what’s causing them, and how he can deal with them in the future. That’s the benefit of therapy and communication.

I find the word choice fascinating. Is dating someone 11 years older than you “settling?” Is the problem the lack of “age-appropriate fun”? It sounds like your “brutal reality” is only projecting ageism onto the OP’s own uncertainty about the situation. OP seems more conflicted than that.

I mean, I hear the words “submarine” and “wheelchair” and my mind’s already like, “LOL, no.” Even setting aside that Nazis would not be ones for accessible design or universal design, a submarine is one of the last places I’d expect a wheelchair to operate well in.

I’m somewhat mystified that the response to the first letter writer is “break up” first, and not “talk these issues through with a therapist” or “figure out why you feel like a child in the relationship and have a talk with her about how to feel more equal as partners.” Yes, people respond to differences in age and…

Republicans demonstrate that if you tell lies big enough and often enough - taking credit for an economic boom that they didn’t cause, blaming immigrants as a great threatening Other, pretending they haven’t been working to strip healthcare and other benefits from Americans for the past several decades - that enough…