Today, Gentle Reader, I acquired a Wittgenstein doll. Deeply delighted by my new toy, I pulled its string and catalogued its issuances. Most of the quotes seemed to be from Wittgenstein's later work, more mystical and reassuring than not, while still firmly committed to logical positivism. Interesting.
As will happen when one is delighted by a new toy, I thought I would put my mind toward the acquisition of a Nietzsche doll. The trouble here is that I had spent all of my currants (quite literally, in a trade with a kindhearted Glitch who had an extra and I think was bemused and amused by my offer of ALL THE CURRANTS: "You traded SideBurns 237,637 currants for 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein Doll"). Discussion with friends yielded an amusing anecdote: epid acquired an Ayn Rand doll from a Glitch who loathed her and said "I pulled her string a few times. @#*& be crazy." As I also loathe Ayn Rand, I found this very funny.
Wittgenstein. Ayn Rand. Nietzsche. Sunny, Glitchy sorts? Not even hardly. I love some Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche too - Ayn Rand, well. Let's say that I'm a medievalist (because I am) and let's say that I see Rand's antinomian stance as lacking almost entirely in grace. Personally. Let's not fight about Rand. Here's my point(s):
1. Observation: Stoot read philosophy at Cambridge.
2. Hypothesis: these are Stoot's favorite philosophers. Because it's not like they're the most generally cuddlesome and doll-able. Stoot likes a tiny bit of signature Stootness in game. You would to, if you were the Monad of an undeniably created world. (The demiurges are red herrings, really.) Viz: the SB-1 block - I'd hazard a guess that other stuff you pass every day have tiny signatures in them. [Pratchett fans: cf., Hogfather]
2a. Postulate (because of impossibility of testing hypothesis): These are Stoot's favorites. [ETA: ok, maybe not: but they were chosen].
3. Corollary: These philosophers do not have a particularly sunny outlook on human nature - to say the very, very least.
4. Observation 2: Glitch is a social experiment.
5. Hypothesis: the experiment's hypothesis is "People are basically good, and if you give them a chance to build a world they will generally behave well in it." It strives not to impose on the behavior of others. No moderators, some staff but as a general rule they aren't particularly prescriptive, etc. People are essentially free-range in Ur.
6. Hypotheses about predicates such as "people" or "most people" are neither confirmable nor falsifiable for reasons way too tedious to get into right now. But I can if you make me.
7. This experiment is nevertheless generating massive amounts of data, possibly because someone doesn't agree with #6, [or possibly because I don't know jack about sociology and the data can be usefully digested after all].
8. The subjects of this experiment (Glitches) were recently subjected to three stressors: a) impending displacement (personal destabilization); b) the introduction of a skill-set which requires highly restricted and now wildly inflated resources available to most only in a communal setting (economic); c) return to beta (all playing voluntarily surrender any assumptions of stable game mechanics (metasocial).
9. As many others have observed, the social fabric of Ur has become both itchy and scratchy since the game was quietly, subtly, and not particularly lethally... Nuked? Not to be too dramatic or anything completely typical of me like that.
It's a game and it's not even a "real" game, so the stakes are vanishingly small if they exist at all - but in essence, what happened was that God told you that a) your home would be taken away at some point in the next year and promised you'll really love the new one, which you'll have to build out of presumably the same resources as the other 300,000 (or whatever) players from a limited pool of said resources and then b) demonstrated to you what competition for those resources would look like by introducing the herb megillah as a kind of wargame, and c) you voluntarily relinquished any expectations that any other part of the game would remain stable.
It's like the Carebears Go to Thunderdome in the freaking herb gardens, you guys. What is housing construction going to look like? It's going to be postapocalyptic survival of the fittest cutie sprites. Am I the only one who looks at the herb situation and sees the shape of things to come? Don't tell me I'm just some kind of Nervous Nellie Sings The Jeremiads because seriously: Ayn Rand. Wittgenstein. Nietzsche. So just don't.
I just wonder if all of this happened (and don't think that I'm not hearing the other half of that sentence like it comes out in the Book of Pythia) for a reason. And I'm wondering if that reason might not be connected in some respects to a potential philosophical underpinning to a social experiment being conducted in the form of a game - which assumes that people are basically profoundly self-serving egomaniacs who live in a potentially fabulous world where the only rules are the ones that we inscribe with our assumptions and behaviors.
It would be totally fair to say "You're thinking too much" or "reading too much into this" or "it's only a game"... But I'm pretty sure that the speaker would also be wrong. Game designers often think more about this stuff than people give them credit for.
I think there are easter eggs (like the philosopher dolls, like the Lovecraftian nature of the demiurges, the postapocalyptic backstory of Ur, all kinds of stuff like that) in the game that could potentially allow the Glitches to become aware of how their own actions are being designed by the way the world is being designed. To become self-aware. Not in some kind of creepy Tron-like user/program way, I'm not crazy ("I'm just doing philosophy here"), but in a "Let's get out of this allegorical cave and demonstrate some personal agency" way.
This whole thing is not intended to be reduced to "And so don't be such assholes to each other in the gods-damned herb gardens" but if that's all you get out of it that's ok with me too.
Thoughts?