Not at all! Remember, imagination knows no bounds. You can continue making stuff up with no basis in fact pretty much forever.

Please, lecture me more about what my motivations are. Of the two of us, you’re clearly the expert on that topic. I’m dying to hear more.

That’s also something I was told in response to my skepticism during NMS’ pre-release hype phase, and it’s a complete misunderstanding of what’s going on here. I’m not trying to stop people from being happy, on the contrary, I’m trying to help them avoid disappointment by getting them to stop huffing hopium in industrial quantities. But they don’t wanna stop.

Looking forward to the silver lining of a bad event you know to be inevitable is not the same thing as actively wishing for that event to happen.

Reading comprehension, man.

It seems that you need a refresher. I suggest you rewatch those original pre-release trailers and then try playing the game to see if it looks anything like that. I did that a few months ago, and spoiler alert, it did not. Continued support is of course praiseworthy, but it wouldn’t have been necessary if Hello Games had actually kept their promises to begin with. It boggles my mind that gamers so vehemently defend a company that took a decade longer than it should have to deliver some (not all!) of what was promised and also wasted a bunch of time and resources on bloating the game with stuff that was never mentioned and that nobody asked for. Gotta be some form of sunk cost fallacy or Stockholm syndrome or something…

Needless to say, I disagree with you that there’s little reason to believe this will be the same. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that. Due to my skepticism, I was talked down to by people excited by the trailers back then, just like I’m being talked down to by you now. Vindication felt very sweet first time around, so I’m looking forward to round two.

BWAHAHAHAHA! No. I didn’t fall for it the first time, I see no reason to fall for it now.

I don’t see why the shareholders wouldn’t want his head on a pike as well.

You may have asked that, but not of me. More to the point, I didn’t say anything about sects with no supernatural elements, so I’m not sure why you’re asking me to name examples of those. I said some lean more heavily into the supernatural than others. This conversation will go a lot more smoothly if you respond to what I’m actually saying instead of what you imagine I’m saying or what other people in other conversations you’re participating in are saying.

Of course. Because otherwise rich people living a life of leisure might think life isn’t so bad after all and they wouldn’t mind reincarnating to live it again.

Eh… that depends on which particular sect you’re talking about. Some lean more heavily in to the supernatural than others.

That’s not what the term means in Buddhism, though, and reaching spiritual enlightenment doesn’t prevent it.

True, but whether or nor the suffering is caused by a personal god or by impersonal cosmic forces doesn’t really make any practical difference. Both religions claim, without any basis in fact, that the suffering is eternal and that they are the only way out.

Even if I did believe in that, I still wouldn’t care. Trying to destroy your soul by reaching nirvana so that it can’t be reborn seems to me akin to trying to destroy your carbon atoms so that they can’t be recycled into other organisms’ bodies. I mean… you could, I guess, but why on earth would you care about that?

Christianity is “Life sucks and will always suck unless you submit to what we say and only what we say, otherwise you suffer forever”

And Buddhism doesn’t say that? The only difference is that Christianity adds “in hell” at the end of that sentence, Buddhism adds “in the cycle of death and rebirth”.

Reincarnation is not part of that. That’s what I’m talking about, in case it’s not clear.

You could say the same about Christianity. “Life sucks, but you can be happy if you think about the fact that the suffering is temporary.”

Rebirth sucks.

I never understood that part. Maybe the next life does suck, but so what? I’m not going to be there to experience it, and the next guy won’t have any memory of me, so who cares? Reincarnation as a concept never made sense to me. You get a new body, your memories get erased… what is even left of you?

Eh, it’s still based on completely unfounded, unsupported, and nonsensical ideas. Whether or not there’s a personal god doesn’t make any real difference IMO.