Topic

A Potentially Terrible (or Not?) Hypothesis: On Glitch as a Social Experiment, the Early Life of Stoot, and Recent Game Developments.

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? 

Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

Previous 1 2 3
  • I play the game.
    I don't ask why.
    Posted 12 months ago by Volkov Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wat?
    Posted 12 months ago by Sororia Rose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Fair enough. "I have no thoughts" is a thought. Of sorts. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think Stoot's just having fun.  And that's fair.  The rest of us are, too.

    Any further analysis is... well...
    Posted 12 months ago by Parrow Gnolle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Look, I appreciate that not everyone enjoys being thinky. In the real world, MOST people don't enjoy being thinky - but can we all just agree that 98% of the world just wants to peacefully go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch a sit-com, and go to bed (or mine, eat, watch Global, and log out, whatever) and leave this thread to those who might want to talk about philosophy? It's a thought. Don't shut something down because you can't contribute. I'm sure there are hundreds of people who could say tl;dr, "wat?" and "analysis is well" but... Why? Don't worry about it. A very small percentage of the world is made up of philosophy majors. Just pat us on our fuzzy heads and shrug it off. :-)
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Please don't be condescending.  You're not going to encourage discussion by being condescending.

    ----

    Added edit: whoops. I guess a discussion has ensued. Or a big word exposition in any event. I am not going to disturb the exposition by tagging this on at the bottom. But be careful everybody. All them big words and the mutual adulation..... you might fall off your pedestals. Us people who are not smart will help you up, of course. If we can. Floors getting kind of slippery.
    Posted 12 months ago by Parrow Gnolle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Glitch players have been ill-tempered before the reset -- see Tree Wars.
    Posted 12 months ago by Yendor Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Are we getting Burritos or not?  I am really hungry.
    Posted 12 months ago by ☣ elf ☣ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ha I can definitely see Glitch being a social experiment... a "what if" of how the world became what it is of sorts...
    Posted 12 months ago by Sparrow Odele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I am actually amazed that I read the whole text.
    Posted 12 months ago by Louis Louisson Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The Tree Wars are an interesting example of the watch-and-see of the game; Stoot compared it to Starcraft in an interview, iirc. Players called for locks on streets, or timers on the trees (like the one that keeps you from kidnapping more than one pig on a street every X days) and the active choice was to keep things the way they were, just to see how it all worked out. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • im slightly confused by the first part of this post.. do you believe that the dolls are configured to each individual? or do you think they just say the same things to everyone? being that all of the philosophers are "not particularly sunny individuals" why would some say happier things then others?  maybe its just the view said stoot had on the philosophers, they way he interpreted them. Or maybe its not, im just playing a bit of devils advocate :).
    Posted 12 months ago by Rini Subscriber! | Permalink
  • DUDE !
    like, heavy, man.
    Posted 12 months ago by EastCutty Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Aviatrix - "Carebears go to Thunderdome" - I LOVE it!  Having just spent my three (real life) hours in one of the communal herb gardens, I would probably be Grumpy Bear at this point.

    But in response to the hypothesis, postulate, corrolary, observations, etc above...

    1. Huh?
    2. Wow
    3. Possibly (likely?) a case of thinking too much, but I admire that in a Glitch... and why not? 

    A reply from Stoot might be very enlightening... I'm sure he is having fun, but that doesn't mean the rest isn't also possible...

    Definitely food for thought - thanks for the feast!
    Posted 12 months ago by LynnieR Subscriber! | Permalink
  • if i was looking foreward to the future of this game, there needs to be more interaction and competition somehow. right now it's basically possible to play solo, excluding purchases from the auction house. imho tree wars and herb wars are minor resource interactions... there are not enough ways to co-create things/enviroments/social structures like you can in minecraft or eve, to take two different examples. i am curious to see what the new housing brings, and what other plans come up to change this to allow even more interaction as a "social experiment."
    Posted 12 months ago by Ed Anger Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The dolls (I've only seen two) presumably share a script and have around 20 different things that they'll say - I don't think that's individualized (yikes). What I'm saying is that these philosophers were DARK. For the most part. And I find that interesting as far as choice for Glitch's three dolls go. If the Glitch ethos is optimistic and sunny and about imagination, the more intuitive choice might be philosophical symbols of that. But instead, the choice was for dark philosophers. And yeah... I think that's telling. Purposely or not. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ok.... that was way too much to read......
    Posted 12 months ago by Casombra Amberrose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • /adore Aviatrix.
    Posted 12 months ago by Kinkajou Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.
    Posted 12 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "..you voluntarily relinquished any expectations that any other part of the game would remain stable."

    Yeah, pretty much. For me, the massive rook attacks immediately following the Unlaunch symbolically announced the end of stability and complacency. It was a good reminder to stay flexible and playful.
    Posted 12 months ago by Muug Subscriber! | Permalink
  • really interesting food for thought, thanks...
    Posted 12 months ago by Arietty Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That was awesome stew and khoul beens! Loved it. Please continue. :-)
    Posted 12 months ago by Flowerry Pott Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I personally think that the identity of the three dolls was chosen precisely because they are the antithesis of all things glitchy because irony is interesting and fun. But I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the matter; nothing wrong with a good philosophical thought experiment (and a whole lot right!). 

    And, like LynnieR, I greatly appreciate the phrase "Carebears go to Thunderdome." You have a way with words, Aviatrix. 
    Posted 12 months ago by karibean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well, im not a philosophy major by any means, but i have read Ayn Rand novels and she, in my opinion, doesnt seem particularly dark she is more of an all or nothing type of person. She shows both extremes and that if you even want say... "the american dream" type of standard living she'd consider you a "communist" for wanting the same thing as everyone else.(Not saying communism is bad simply using this as an example, I myself agree with alot of the basis of it) Where as if you were a person who disobeyed the laws of society and lived by the rules you saw as morally correct she may consider you a vision of the Ego- the self.

    A friend of mine had also read her works and thought she was a self-hating woman, because in a novel she had written; at the end the female character was enthralled with herself and the male character wouldn't stop talking about how he knew all there was to know, and that their son (it was set in a place where there was no way to know what the sex was and it was not yet born nor was it positive the woman was pregnant) would follow in his foot steps and that he (the main character) and his wife (the female main) would be known as gods.

    P.s. about them being individualized i kinda was kidding about that but its always fun to think about things like that :). atleast i think so.
    Posted 12 months ago by Rini Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Aviatrix, I really enjoyed reading your post.  This response is longer than I meant it to be, but I am not good at being concise.

    First off, I wanted to thank you for your insights about the philosophical perspective related to each of the "Philosopher Dolls"; I had no idea each philosopher had such a dark outlook on human nature and life.

    In terms of my personal opinion on the subject, there has been many a time while playing this game that I have felt like there was some kind of underlying social experiment being conducted (or, if there isn't maybe there should be one, lol).  

    Combining the elements of online anonymity, scarcity of resources, and limited rules/consequences for anti-social behaviors (e.g. stealing) seem to be creating small pockets of conflict in the Glitch world and also seem to have encouraged griefing behavior.  It almost feels like the developers are standing back and waiting to see what happens; it has got to be pretty interesting from their perspective.  That said, I am not sure what they could do at this point.  I would much rather think that they are spending their time working on improving the game and adding new features vs. trying to constantly police the world of Glitch.

    I have personally seen a very bright side to the spectrum of human nature while playing this game.  Certain individuals have been extremely kind to me, with no gain to themselves.  I guess that those are the people who balance out the behavior of the griefers and actually make me want to keep playing.
    Posted 12 months ago by Riddel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Mugg, you know I never thought of the rooks that way but now it makes alot of sense i suppose they are the symbol of instability in the game and the factor of always keeping people on their toes. But rooks dont frequently attack areas outside their home at the top of the map(world) maybe thats also a sign that things wont change too much in certian aspects of the game but will change drastically in others. regardless I do hope there isnt another reset, but going back into beta may mean its coming, but it also may mean things will stay generally the same and there will just be a bunch of new things added! we never know what the plans will be, and even if there are plans it doesnt necessarily mean that they will go perfectly.

    @Karibean maybe irony was a factor in the choosing of the dolls but we wont really know until the person (or people) who decided to put them in tell us. So we may be left philosophizing till the end of time... but thats a whole other topic in of itself :)

    Gosh I sure do love things like this there should be conversations like this more often!
    Posted 12 months ago by Rini Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Aviatrix, well thought out. I have long thought of my Glitchian self as a lab rat in Ur.
    Posted 12 months ago by Teena Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not to be completely contrary, but consider the hypothesis that they *aren't* Stoot's favorites.

    There is also a notable sense of tongue-in-cheek levity to the style of Glitch.  As such, maybe the reason that Wittgenstein, Rand and Nietzsche are dolls is on the one hand meant ironic (because they aren't figures who are particularly "cute") or on the other hand to belittle them - to reduce them to dolls in a game.  And really, at least Rand deserves it.

    I think it's impossible to distinguish the structure of Glitch from a social experiment because a well designed game economy will resemble a benignly run command economy.  Mechanism Design implies that you need to hypothesize about the best interests of your agents in order to structure the game for them.

    I do think that your conclusion that it's Tiny Speck's intention to cause conflict is on the money though.  Being able to change out trees is a cute little game feature until you figure out where it plays in the economy: since trees are the sources of resources, and players invest in particular flows of resource processing, there are clear reasons why some players would want, say, more spices trees, and others would want more gas plants.  Notice how part of the complaint is always "why would you want useless gas plants?" - useless to you, maybe...

    So "oh, dear, well we'll see how it plays out," is quite disingenuous.  They built a system that led to predictable conflict, and then the conflict happened.  Likewise making a resource that is time consuming to create into a major input for the new-shiny activity.  Suddenly there's a real scarcity for something, and predictably, there's conflict as a result.

    What's confusing, and I welcome your views on this, is why TS limits the Glitchy resolution to conflict to "report the offenders."  We can't take a swing at playground bullies.  We can, in a still limited way, shun them.  Or we can run to the (omniscient, three eyed) recess lady and point fingers.  That's the part that I can't quite figure out.
    Posted 12 months ago by Yarrow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Best thread in a LONG TIME. Thank you Aviatrix.
    Posted 12 months ago by Mabitha Shimla Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'd like to say something really important and deep but the truth is, I have to go to the CGs and find or plant/harvest some rubeweed before I explode.
    Posted 12 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Here is a deep thought.. just play the game and quit trying think it out all the time! Now time to go harvest my veggies, feed the piggies and take care of my trees.
    Posted 12 months ago by Casombra Amberrose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Fantastic thread! 

    " In the real world, MOST people don't enjoy being thinky"    
    Ohhhhh, how I wish this wasn't so true.

     I've always been a bit curious about the underlying "creepiness" in game and you helped narrow it down a bit.  When I first saw the Gods I remember thinking, "Uh... those are the "Gods"?  They're creepy..."  It made me think of Lovecraftian Elder Gods as promoted by a fellow cultist.  "Yes, this is your great and wonderful God!  Oh, don't worry about the baby hanging from it's mouth.  Just remember, it loves you!"

    In response to the current changes...   Perhaps the social experiment could be viewed as another test of the hypothesis that you have to have some form of conflict for growth, that without growth the human species becomes stagnant and lax? 

    Remember, conflict is not, by nature, bad.  We know biologically that liminal spaces typically have the most diversity of Life.  For instance, the beach, the edge of meadows, the foothills of mountains, coral reefs etc.   It's in those zones where life is not only the most vibrant but also the most competitive.  Perhaps it's all just that with a bit of Lovecraft thrown in for giggles?

    Yarrow - I agree with pretty much everything you said as well.  I've noted the same thing and have also wondered why the conflict ante has been "upped" but there is no way, in game, to retaliate against an offending player.  At least in Eve (who has a similar hands off approach to things) you could shoot back!  :D  Perhaps that it's a PvP Pandora's Box which TS does not want to get anywhere near, let alone open?   Then again... I've seen some things which if used creatively could be placed in an offensive category!
    Posted 12 months ago by Rusty McDusty Subscriber! | Permalink
  • As a secondary thought...

    Another form of a social experiement?  Place a philosophical question aimed at the underlying tones of a game structure on said game's forum board and count how many people post, "Don't think so much I just want to drone out and click things."   :D

    Which I think is hilarious cause those people took the time to click on the forum link, read at least a few sentences and then decided to expend the mental energy (IE - Thinking) to type something like, "Don't think so much."   It's pretty funny when you think about it.

    Makes me think of a movie called "Wall-E."
    Posted 12 months ago by Rusty McDusty Subscriber! | Permalink
  • For the record, although I didn't agree with all of this (I think the dolls are the dolls because it is hilarious that in a world of limitless whimsy, babyglitches play with dolls that are super stern), I love this thread. I enjoyed reading this post and especially the thoughts on planned resource scarcity/conflict.

    I would say that the tree wars / patch scarcity were more successful than what's happening with herbs because for whatever reason, herbs are making a critical mass of people so miserable and so indignant about thieves and so VOCAL about the injustice that even people who don't mind, who think it's fine that one wee aspect of the game is mutually exclusive, get super peeved and defensive.

    I don't see the point of swinging by to tell you you're wasting your time. They probably think they're maintaining the spirit of the game, but as far as I can tell, "you will be way happier if you shut this down and start enjoying the things I enjoy, by looking at this game in my correct way!" isn't particularly in that spirit.
    Posted 12 months ago by Pomegrandy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This post makes me deeply happy.
    Posted 12 months ago by Arii Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm also of the mindset that the dolls are not favorites but instead that in a world of imagination and cooperation, these are the dangerous things we often turn into toys in order to learn how to deal with them. Toy guns, toy soldiers, monsters in fairy tales and role-playing games, and the like give us an opportunity to mentally explore our responses to these dangers. So, too, with Rand, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein in a world of shared, positive imagination.

    Even if it wasn't conscious on the part of the designer. ;)
    Posted 12 months ago by Credulous Ralph Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hmmm...nah.

    To take the entire run of points seriously for three seconds, Stoot's supposed effort would be a crap experiment because it isn't documenting or excluding preexisting biases in the subject population. Also, systematic selection of the test population. Also, no control group. Also, no double or triple blind. Also, too many uncontrolled variables and at least one correlation-for-causal confusion right off the top. Also...Well, you get the idea.

    I see you're positing that Stood knows from his philosophy. Now, I've noticed that most decent students of philosophy are savvy enough to recognize that, when they play the empirical experiment game, they have to play by empirical experimental rules or they're actually playing, I don't know, mumbletypeg or something. So why would he bother with a set-up too deeply flawed to experimentally demonstrate anything? All he'd end up with, given Glitch as it stands, is a fancier version of the kind of argument from personal experience you run into at parties and in magazine lifestyle articles where people tell you everyone they know does X, so obliviously everyone does X.

    But this was fun! Can I try? Am I a human considering the life of glitches, or a glitch daydreaming about a universe of human gnosis?
    Posted 12 months ago by Perry Helium Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What are you non-philosophy majors doing in this thread?! Get out, you non-thinky people. You aren't qualified to talk about a video game until you have a PhD in philosophy and have written 5 books.
    Posted 12 months ago by Effigy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah! Stop complaining that people are complaining that you're having fun talking about the game in a way different from the way they enjoy talking about the game! Only people who complain about people talking differently about the game have the right to complain about people talking differently about the game!
    Posted 12 months ago by Pomegrandy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ___
    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.
    *****

    Given a sufficiently large group of people, situations can be designed in which certain outcomes are fairly predictable, even though the behaviour of any given individual in the group is not at all predictable. The designers at TS either know this or they don't. Either way, I do wonder about some of the recent changes to the game. The "Nash equilibrium" of Ajaya Bliss was fairly predictable.  The conflict in the herb gardens was fairly predictable. 

    Notice, though, that I said "fairly predictable" -- by which I mean to imply a different level of predictability than, say, F = ma.

    "Don't experiment with cats.  They'll only screw up your data."  After hearing this in a lecture by a well-known psychologist, I went home and immediately tried to teach my cat to paw at my right hand to get a small reward.  It was starting to work -- and then, I swear to god, the cat realized I was attempting to manipulate her.  Breathing heavily, with ears back and tail flashing, my cat sat glaring at me for several minutes before stalking away.  It took a while to repair the relationship.
    ___
    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.
    *****

    Don't experiment with cats, TS. They'll only screw up your data.
    Posted 12 months ago by Splendora Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm going to have a much longer and complex statement on this later when I've got more time to think it through.  In the meantime: I don't believe that the current stresses on the system (housing redesign, return to beta) were planned in advance.  I believe that there was the intent to introduce conflict to the world, but that conflict is currently arising in ways that were unforeseen and/or unplanned.  I don't see a particularly driving force behind herb scarcity either -- people complained that herbs weren't being used and requested more uses for them (and suggested tinctures and potions no less!).  Most people had no herbs, because they weren't being used.  Now that there's an artificially large spike in demand (this happens whenever new content is introduced in any MMO), there's conflict, which generally lessens over time as the demand decreases.

    I do, however, believe that this is a social experiment.

    @Pomegrandy -- babyglitches? Who said there are babies or children? As far as I can tell, everyone is imagined fully grown. =)
    Posted 12 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • While it's entirely possible your hypothesis is a bit paranoid, it makes a lot of sense (perhaps not to the level of detail you go into, but that tends to be the case with any theory - even if it gets the basics right, there are a few comically inaccurate conclusions or assumptions). 

    I came into this game under the assumption that it was a social experiment. Here's what tipped me off: 

    1) The emphasis on Glitch being a social game. Any game designer who says this is putting a lot of thought into social dynamics. This isn't a glorified chat room. Sociologists have written enough papers to stack to the moon and back on the subject of online communication and communities. It would be remarkably naive for this group of intelligent, experienced people to come in without an understanding and expectation of social dynamics. 

    2) The lack of moderation. To your point, there aren't a lot of moderators or forum goons going around cleaning things up, or laying down the law. Blanky's role as "forum admin" is minimal at best, and afaik, that's not her primary responsibility.

    3) The open-ended nature of staff communications. A lot of the stuff that's laid out, from the community guidelines to the updates about the beta and what the potential consequences may be are open to interpretation. There's ENOUGH that remains unsaid that people can twist that into their own "letter of the law" definition, if they so choose.

    For example: "Don't call out other players on the forums." Is interpreted as, "I will call out other players on the forums, but I won't identify them by name."

    This isn't to say that everyone takes advantage of the laid back administrative style. To the contrary, the majority of players are equally laid back. The non-laid back folks just tend to be the loudest.

    My assumption about the open-ended communication is two-fold: a) it allows for enforcing the spirit of the rule, rather than the letter of the rule. Evaluating incidents on a case by case basis, and b) in the context of a social experiment, it's interesting to see how people choose to interpret the rules without an explicit level of definition.

    On the flip side, this is just smart community management. Having written rules / guidelines for communities before, I think this is the best way to go. The only one backed into a corner by hard and fast rules is the administration. By creating a lot of definition, you inherently create a lot of loop holes, and people tend to get much more upset when you enforce THIS, but not THAT in the rule you yourself wrote.
    Posted 12 months ago by Xev Subscriber! | Permalink
  • An interesting original post, Aviatrix.  Thank you for that.  I have the Wittgenstein doll.  I would be very interested if anyone is able to let me have, or direct me to, the list of quotes from the Nietzsche and (if I must) Ayn Rand doll, please.  I would like to check something, and I will need the other quotes to do that.

    Many thanks in expectation.
    Posted 12 months ago by stripe/shrimp Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have really been enjoying reading the thoughtful responses in this thread. It was the result of a bunch of things kind of popping and locking at the same time, and realizing (after reading the "who should be the fourth philosopher doll?" thread that I *could* venture this conversation-starter, and that I really wanted to see how it would go. I was expecting some hostility to the ideas, and am really happy not to see much of it. And heck, probably the most hostile response I got was from a friend who is writing a dissertation on Kant - and a friend who has a Ph.D. in religious studies told me - more charmingly, but in the same spirit - to "lay off the purp". So it's not like all thinky people will love it, and suggesting that they would was specious. So there's that retraction, first of all.  :-)

    Yarrow: "consider the hypothesis that they aren't Stoot's favorites" = you know... I think you're right. I think it's most likely that Stoot (and not some other dev) chose them, but that doesn't mean he *likes* them. You're right - that was a sloppy inference in my original post. That said, they were chosen. And I think they were chosen by him. And I doubt they were chosen entirely at random. Whether or not the dolls and what they say constitute a kind of meta-easter-egg is questionable (and I'm raising the question). 

    Also in re: Yarrow's reply - I'm glad to see that someone is agreeing about it being TS's intention to create conflict. This is so transparently obvious to me that I find dissent on the topic (or calling it a conspiracy theory) puzzling. I'm not saying that the creation of conflict is an act of bad faith as Rusty McDusty evocatively pointed out in his reply, conflict and competition isn't always a bad thing in emerging systems. That said, Yarrow's observation that "What's confusing...is why TS limits the Glitchy resolution to conflict to "report the offenders."  We can't take a swing at playground bullies.  We can, in a still limited way, shun them." is something that vexes many people - but I think it is possibly the most important mechanism of the experimental apparatus

    To wit: there are ways to screw people over in this game, and TS is amplifying competition and creating fragile trust networks (with the keys etc.), which generates more incentives and mechanisms to screw people over. There are also ways to buff people (and these way, way outnumber the screwing mechanisms). You can give, share, help, boost; there are a few intentional communities totally dedicated to altruism, but most altruism in the game is of an ad-hoc, individually initiated, fuzzy, feel-good nature (and that's what attracts me and keeps me coming back - happy pigs and interesting people). But there is no mechanism to punish evil or force people to be nice in order to receive reward. No mechanism, in other words, to create a social contract.

    Oh man. It's Hobbesian. It's totally Hobbes' Leviathan if you remove the variable of violence. I just realized that. And I hate myself for doing this, but I'm gonna quote wiki for the sake of expedience: 

    "Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and the passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes)..."

    How would humans duke out his war of all against all without violence (no "nasty, brutish, and short" lives lived in fear), without government, and without any real motivation or chance to create negotiating leverage of any sort? Glitchdom is drifting closer and closer to the bellum omnium contra omnes but without any of the historical mechanisms of conflict resolution relied upon by humans. 

    Tree wars. Herb wars. Soon, I wager, wars over the materials that will be needed to construct the houses which constitute "a safe place to put the fruits of your labor." I've heard that people have *tried* to figure out how to use violence to get what they want in the herb gardens - splanking as a distractor during a grab-and-dash, raiding parties that use sneezing powder to incapacitate everyone on a street while unaffected raiders run in from an adjoining street, etc. Very creative. Probably also a bad sign. 

    There are some ineffective shunning tools, as you observe. The forums are read by a possibly vanishingly small percentage of the actual players. I thought it was very interesting to see a player in the middle of a tiny Tree War attempt to claim that he had personally been raped in a phenomenologically real and emotionally damaging way in order to try to get TS to ban a player. I think that we can all safely assume after the Messy Monster debacle that TS would have taken this very seriously if there had been any merit to the claims of a verbalized intention to violate; I personally believe that player was pushed to a point of frustration in the game with the unwinnable nature of his own personal tree war (call it the Battle of Wickdon Mood) that he basically snapped and took it to the Real World (tm) and tried to do to the player what he couldn't do to the Glitch: make him go away. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "That whereof we cannot speak we must pass over in silence." — Ludwig Wittgenstein (…In his first major work, which he later moved on from quite decisively. It is deliciously ironic that he is now known primarily as a philosopher of language, indeed someone who believed that language is philosophy.)

    Any social anthropologist worth her salt would LOVE to get hold of the data being generated in real time by real people in the context of Glitch. And there's material to make folks who study the psychology of economics weep with joy. It's absolutely fascinating stuff and I hope someday people will get to learn from it.

    Glitch is a game of abundance, not scarcity. There's never a reason for any Glitch to lack for food, shelter, and opportunity to explore and learn. There's effectively no poverty and no inherited social or economic inequality. Even a purely solitary Glitch can survive and thrive just fine. It is quite difficult for one Glitch to exploit another—except in ways explicitly banned by the ToS (griefing, fraud, etc.).

    The Herbal revolution finally evened up some (non-critical) resource disparities between bog-dwellers and others. In fact, nobody suffers from lack of access to herbs or is at some existential disadvantage in the game. It's pure 'keeping up with the Joneses" and/or feeling the pain of having made the choice to pursue one line of the game at the cost of postponing or making another 'more expensive.'

    I find it mind-boggling that in a game of abundance, people are still trying to win by amassing currants or having a 'bigger' house or hoarding virtual stuff to manipulate markets. People are replicating their RL relationship with money and status and material possessions in a context where it is totally unnecessary.

    I desperately hope that Glitch—having begun from an unusual game premise of abundance—will break the gaming mold and find a way to make (or help us make) creativity, generosity, and humor the true engines of satisfaction in Ur. Now THAT would be an interesting and ground-breaking social experiment.

    I, for one, look forward to living in a world which is definitively POST-Randian, POST-Nietzchean, and even POST-Wittgensteinian. It is salutary (and fun) to treat the views and ideas of philosophers as intellectual playthings!

    Thanks for a stimulating post, @Aviatrix!
    Posted 12 months ago by Pascale Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Pascale: ita, ita, ita! 

    THIS. What you said. 

    Also just realized that the Latin "ita" and the Internet "ITA" are pretty much the exact same thing on every level while having no linguistic commonalities beyond the common ordering of three letters. Cute. 

    Credulous Ralph said: "I'm also of the mindset that the dolls are not favorites but instead that in a world of imagination and cooperation, these are the dangerous things we often turn into toys in order to learn how to deal with them. Toy guns, toy soldiers, monsters in fairy tales and role-playing games, and the like give us an opportunity to mentally explore our responses to these dangers. So, too, with Rand, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein in a world of shared, positive imagination." Agreed! So how do we mentally explore and shape our responses to these dangers? 
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Splendora: I really enjoyed reading your response. And looked up Nash equilibrium - that was definitely something I'm glad to have learned about. 

    "Don't experiment with cats, TS. They'll only screw up your data." 

    I guess my goal is to be a cat. Or philosophically cat-like. Because we all know (worst case ever: Milgram experiments, etc.) that humans are way less awesome than cats when it comes to consenting to experimental protocols without reflecting on the experimental design. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Perry Helium - as a statistician, I applaud your concern about the structure of Ur as a controllable experiment. Science should be repeatable - Glitch is not.

    That said, how do we know that we are not classified as members of various socioeconomic groups by the Giants? Perhaps those Glitchen who harvest walloping diamonds and rare music blocks are not random at all, but are pawns in this social experiment.

    With tens of thousands players to subtly manipulate, it would be easy enough to structure control groups and test populations. Will those who are "lucky" become economic despots and hoard the scare resources or will they become benevolent? Will the downtrodden proletarian rebel and run rampant in the community gardens, stealing and harassing or will they work ever harder to attain the dream of a cozy bog home and a still?

    What say you Stoot?

    ps. If I get an Ayn Rand doll, I am going to bury her under bales of grain.Yes she is dark, in the sense that "most of humanity are worthless puppets deserving of whatever horrible fate awaits them" is dark.
    Posted 12 months ago by Kookaburra Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wittgenstein makes me really happy, but I don't see the point of having an Ayn Rand doll that I can't actually stick needles in or feed to the dog. 

    I made a group for people to start and participate in games of pick-up philosophical scrimmage and the like - now without the "WAT?" and 95% less "HUNH?" 

    I called it Inveniemus for maximum philosophical pretentiousness and membership is open. I sent invites to a ton of people who seemed like they might be down for it, but that turned out to involve a lot of clicking so mostly I'm just hoping people will find their way in. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Aviatrix Subscriber! | Permalink
  • All three philosophers chosen for the dolls are ones who don't fit well into standard philosophy curricula. Nietzche often gets lumped into German studies. Wittgenstein is heavy on math, and math does not fit well into standard philosophy courses. 

    ... And then there's Ayn Rand. Neither academic philosophers nor anyone doing literary studies want to touch her with a 10-foot pole. 

    I don't know what this means, but it was the common thread that immediately came to mind when I tried to figure out why those three people were chosen for the dolls. 
    Posted 12 months ago by Little Poundcake Subscriber! | Permalink
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