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Tenoke comments on How to become a PC? - Less Wrong Discussion
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What do you mean by PC? I am not convinced you are using the term properly (I thought the thread will be about something else entirely).
From reading this thread, I'm thinking PC is used here as "person who does things". This seems to be a broader use of the term than I've seen previously, where it meant "person who does things that influence the world in a significant way"".
Well, before I can get to the latter, first I have to get to the former. :)
"PC" stands for Player Character. This is a term that originated in tabletop roleplaying games, but is now mostly used in videogames. A Player Character is a character the player controls directly. These sort of characters drive the plot and do stuff in the world that changes the world. PCs are contrasted by NPCs (Non-Player Characters). NPCs are only there to give the PCs something to do and generally have a limited amount of actions they can do. A shopkeeper NPC, for example, only serves to sell stuff to the players and won't help you slay the dragon in any meaningful way.
In HPMOR, Harry uses PC and NPC as a way to distinguish between people who are willing to deviate from their role and people who aren't.
I hope that clears things up a bit.
So what would be the term for those of us who never fitted into a role in the first place?
Without additional information, I'd say that they'd gravitate toward being PCs.
Of course, there's also the role of not fitting into a role.
The main meaning I meant to imply was 'Player Character', as opposed to 'Non-Player Character', the pen-and-paper role-playing-game lingo to differentiate between 'main characters' and 'supporting cast'.
I was also trying to imply a secondary pun, using 'PC' as in 'Personal Computer', as in trying to stay healthy enough to stay alive long enough to be around when mind uploading gets invented.
Thanks for explaining. I understood it in the second way only and went "huh?" when I saw that all the comments talked about how to defeat akrasia when it comes to exercising.
Yeah, PC as 'Player Character' is normally used like MathiasZaman said to mean "person who does things that influence the world in a significant way" or 'the person around whom things are revolving".
The way you are using the term seems way, way too broad to me.
Welp, few PCs have their stories start before they're born, so everybody who ends up as one has gotta start somewhere. I'm already a one-in-a-million person, due to being a cryonicist; all I need is a few more orders-of-magnitude of competence, and I very well could end up as someone who influences the world in a significant way. (Possibly by becoming the first mind-upload, and using my first-mover advantage to become the most populous being in the solar system...) But given my state of being as of the end of last year, it's going to take some time and effort to get there, and any trick that can help keep my motivation high is worth asking for. So - here we are.