Heh, and you just made my day, have some rep to go with the whoosh.
Is it wrong to prey on the weak??
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Heh, and you just made my day, have some rep to go with the whoosh.
I want to be a long distance trucker in real life? No, no I don't.
I respectfully disagree with that premise. Those hollow squares on the radar are real players. And if it really is the case of not being a real person, why bother going after the hollow squares? Heck, theirs plenty of solid ones to pick on.
Internet trolls post for the purpose of annoying (or getting attention from) a real person on the other side of the connection. Otherwise they could just type out their stuff on the keyboard and watch the stuff materialize on the screen. Why bother going thru the effort of finding an online connection?
Perception is what drives trolls as well as cyber bullies.
And perception is reality.
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That certainly is a convenient fiction, isn't it?
There are a lot of social science experiments that argue that, I'm afraid. Milgram's famous electric shock/authority experiement would be one. Generally, humans appear willing to be much less fair to strangers, and even less fair to anonymous entities.
When Milgram's experiment was published there was a wave of people who said "they only did that because it was an experiment..." as in "they only did that because it was in a game." The issue is that the subjects believed that they were doing something horrible, yet did it.
In-game we have the simple turn-around: if someone ganks you, does it bother you? If it bothers you in the slightest, then you ought'n't gank others (because you can simply project and acknowledge that if the roles were reversed, it would bother you)
The standard nihilist counter-move to that argument is to say "nyaa nyaa I don't care if it happens to me" which is nonsense, because if they didn't care they wouldn't be playing at all -- because playing at all requires the player to care about their ship not being destroyed.
Have you read 'The Lord of the Flies' as well as 'A Critique of Pure Reason' (which I think you already have read).You might enjoy it.
Of course.
The sad thing about "Lord of the flies" is that an experiment was done in the 70s which basically replicated it.
Unquestionably, humans are horrible, scary creatures. ( ref: The Robbers Cave Experiments )The one way out of the conundrum is to argue that the game's underlying structure forces one to be cruel. But that's a specious argument, too, since the player always has the option not to play such a game at all.*
(*I'm the only person I know who never finished Wing Commander II because I refused to drop the Temblor bomb on Kilrah and quit playing because there was no acceptable path to complete the game)
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What we might next see is established players going to Eravate to hunt down other players who take out Noob Sidewinders, now THAT would be interesting to watch
I have literally never found anyone to interact with at all since I started playing. I am in some ass-end of empire space, but I spawned there randomly. Space is big. Really big.
I suspect that, if you have a real life job, you are diligent enough to keep it, honest enough not to wind up unemployed or in prison, and peaceful enough that you haven't been bulldogged and imprisoned by the police. The fact that you have access to a computer and internet connection indicates that you've not been living the life of a riever.
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I have, but it's been generally positive. Because I like to avoid the philosophical problems presented by rievers, I tend to stick to the outskirts of human space, or in deep unexplored space.
Humans are nasty horrible creatures, best avoided. And the anonymity of game-space and the freedom from consequences attending on actions - gives some of them room to flourish their true horribleness.
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Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine today?
He has read philosophy. Trust me it does that to you.
What we might next see is established players going to Eravate to hunt down other players who take out Noob Sidewinders, now THAT would be interesting to watch
Yes it would and it would also add another human element to the game.
Does it? For all you know I could a be a Real World criminal.
Kill or don't kill, the game doesn't judge, posting on the forum however, will lead to people saying you kill and torture cats.
Here's another way of thinking about it:
Humanity has made it to the stars!! The nearly infinite vastness of the galaxy is ours to explore! There are infinite resources and the vastness of billions of years is before us to sing, dance, play, make cool tchotchkes, and love.
But, instead - there are those among us so weak, so nasty, so cowardly - that all they can think to do with that amazing opportunity is to gank those less powerful than they are.
Rational conflict theory argues that humans will array themselves to control scarce resources. But in a universe where there is no scarcity, there would be literally nothing preventing a family from hopping in an Asp Explorer and going to live on an Earth-like planet on the other side of the galaxy. Of course, "human companionship" would be lacking. But who longs for such horrible companions as these?
Humanity has made it to the stars!! The nearly infinite vastness of the galaxy is ours to explore! There are infinite resources and the vastness of billions of years is before us to sing, dance, play, make cool tchotchkes, and love.
But, instead - there are those among us so weak, so nasty, so cowardly - that all they can think to do with that amazing opportunity is to gank those less powerful than they are.
Rational conflict theory argues that humans will array themselves to control scarce resources. But in a universe where there is no scarcity, there would be literally nothing preventing a family from hopping in an Asp Explorer and going to live on an Earth-like planet on the other side of the galaxy. Of course, "human companionship" would be lacking. But who longs for such horrible companions as these?
There is no conundrum. You live in fear of wrongdoing in the game (lol), because of apparent confusion when considering what is game and what is reality. Also, trying to convince others that they should adopt your viewpoint by trying to shame them, unconvincingly. Look, buddy, it's a cutthroat galaxy, where people fly around in battle space ships and kill each other & NPC's according to their own role-playing desires within rather wide boundaries laid out by developers. Live with it.
Or you can always mail Braben: "Why oh why did you stimulate people's desire to kill each other by creating this game. Shame, shame, shame on you, David."
Do it, do the right thing before it's too late!
The last part of your answer is typical; (of a ganker). Of course you may be only 'toying' with the notion; your getting there...
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Anarchy is a political system in which there is no formal government.
It does not necessarily mean Hobbes' playground: the war of each upon eachother. There are plenty of anarchists (you're talking to one, actually!) who feel that one of the worst sources of conflict is massive organization (i.e.: government) and prefer individual autonomy. Epicurus was an anarchist. Socrates was an anarchist. Anarchism is a choice to live autonomously, not a choice to live in a bloodbath of reivers. Indeed, in a world where there are reivers, the reivers fill the role of government - they come from outside of the community and ruin its autonomy with force.
So, what's going on in ED is not anarchy at all: it's chaos, with Nietschean nihilists who want to claw their way to .. whatever .. at the expense of others. They aren't anarchists - they are proto-monarchs. They are barbarians.
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