[MUD-Dev] You, the game of philosophy.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Derrick Jones <gunther at online1.magnus1.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 20 Nov 1997, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:
>> Oh, but the puppet is still me.  You've just killed a part of me. Like
>> cutting off a limb, maybe a part of my brain.  Very nasty, indeed!
>There seems to be a contradiction here.  Your arm is not you.  Your arm is
>a _part_ of you, but not you.  My character can be conscidered part of
>what defines who I am.=20

Hupp.  How much my arm is me is depandant on how dependant my
roles/personalities are on my arm.  My online role/personality is
dependant on my character (puppet).

>IMO, the design has failed if it doesn't; But that doesn't equate players
>and characters.

True, but doesn't negate either. (or whatever the word is) However, I
believe my characters are at least as or more representative for "me"
than what I was as a soldier in the airforce.

>In coding terms, it would be a HAS_A relationship. Player HAS_A character,
>in as much as character HAS_A armor_stat. are armor_stat and character
>equivalent?

Hupp!  I don't believe in simplified boolean relationships on this
level which you assume.

>> Sure, it can do all of this.
>[snip example]
>Ahh I see your point...puppets can perform anything because you believe
>that the puppet performs these acts.  Valid argument, although the same
>can be argued for characters:
>	>think
>	You wear your Thinking Cap on your head.
>	>compute last digit of pi
>	okay.
>	>fly
>	You tike flight.
>You've actually shown how puppets and characters are simular.  Note that
>both puppets and characters are dissimular from players in the same manner
>here.

Mh, but there is still a difference because in a real puppet I am in
control of not only the character but the world (in cooperation with
other actors). (of course, if your mud behave this way...)  I think
there is a difference here because "puppets" are centered around the
characters, the environment adapts to the characters, in a mud,
characters adopt to the environment.  Of course, I would like to see
this being different, hopefully we'll see this in the future.

>> That's the wonder of real Puppets, they can even do what we might
>> otherwise think to be intractable.  It is a matter of artistic
>> freedom.
>Much like characters.  More so on MUSHES than muds generally.

Yeah, if you limit the audience (number of players) then you can
achieve this.  (if people rarely see eachother the environment will
still be dominating?)

Actually, I find this interesting...

>As to feeding other points of view into my game, I have one hard-and-fast
>rule when accepting suggestions:  I will not impliment any design feature
>that will detract from my vision of a game that I would most like to play.
>Administrating by Democracy has proven quite unsuccessful in the past, and
>I plan to learn from others mistakes. ("I think we should have cheap
>potions of full heal sold in every town.")

Yeah, from an artistic point of view democracy will often lead to
average, average is boring. :) However, one can allow for variations
in different areas (with self-government, either a group or democracy
or whatever).  I read an article yesterday that stated the
following. Designing for yourself on the assumption that it would be
useful for other people is reasonable compared to designing for what
you think other people might like, because in the latter case you
might end up with noone being interested. But the danger in this
philosophy is that you as a designer know the construction right from
the first line of code written and therefore will be the only person
in your class.

>> >the designers argue to be a non-realistic game.  But I prefer to approa=
ch
>> >life thru the assumption that I do exist, as does my environment.

>> "as does my environment", but a virtual world is "my environment" !!

>No, it is your character's environment.  Your (extended) environment
>contains the computer on which the character's environment is stored.

Does this really matter?  (Besides, we cannot know for sure ;-) I'd
say that it matters in case of a power failure
(food,blood,oxygen,electricty) or other disruptive events. Those
incidents pull me out of my online role and throws me into another
role, but occur infrequently.

>Once again it is a matter of subsets.  The character's world does not
>include the red light that made me late for work on Tuesday (On a side
>note, I apologize for keep being up that traffic light, but I've been
>cmouting for 3 years the same route, and they added a traffic light that
>adds 5 minutes to my comute...growl).  The mudworld !=3D RL.  Yes, they may
>be simular but simular !=3D same.

In theory, if you can simulate the universe on a computer... then they
are the same.  That makes the real world a special case of a mudworld
:-) Anyways, mudworld A !=3D mudworld B either.

>> The information in a virtual world is just as "real" as the=20
>> information contained in the physical world. If I build a castle of
>Yes, but by definition the mudworld is a subset of the 'real' world
>insofar as the mudworld is merely a collection of 1's and 0's stored
>magnetically completely within the 'real' world.  This is another HAS_A
>relationship.  The dog HAS_A collar, but collar !=3D dog.

I obviously disagree with you. The real world is an instance of a
subclass of the superclass "virtual worlds".  And I don't agree with
your classification scheme ("IS_A", "HAS_A"), object oriented
methodology is a result of human abstraction and only one way to build
a simplified representation of the physical world?  The mudworld is
executed on a physical computer, true.  But the physical entitites are
only carrying information, simply a representation, an encoding or
whatever.  Your argumentation is too aristotelic for me, I find
Plato's ideas to be more powerful.

In this case, the computer is a black box, I can view it as a separate
system as long as it is working properly (within it's boundaries).
>From the moment I connect to the computer (login) I can also view my
brain as a separate system.  I don't see external entities having any
significant impact on this system in the ideal situation.  So,
therefore, you can view the combined computer/brain system as separate
from the rest of the world, given no irregular events occur.  Thus the
virtual world exists in it's own space. (given you accept the notion
of significance) :-)

>> bricks and somebody pulls it down to annoy me, I will get terribly
>> upset. I will get equally upset if this happens in a computer world.
>
>Yet in the following senario:
>	>light dynamite
>	The 5 second fuse begins to burn.
>	>swallow dynamite
>	With a Herculean effort, you try to swallow the dynamite, but fail.
>	You're dead.  Better luck next time.
>
>You're still alive.  Your character isn't.  if character =3D=3D player, th=
en

In theory, physical after-death is not a problem that can be answered
with logic, so I could simply dismiss your point on this basis.

However, you NAME character death "death", but it isn't, what it is
conceptually, is a termination of that particular role.  Just as if
somebody kills all your kids, then you are no longer parenting.  Don't
tell me it won't affect you! If someone chops off your arms then you
are no longer a pick-pocket.  This might be influencing all of your
other roles as well, I don't think we can say for sure that what
happens in one role won't affect other roles in the general case.

The death of a player, however, is a termination of ALL his roles.
Virtual worlds may or may not allow for recovery (which only
strengthens my point that this world is a special case of a virtual
world).

>the same fate should befall both.  My parents call me 'son'.  My friends
>call me 'Derrick'.  I propose that the particular son of my parents in
>question is Derrick.  If Derrick is late for work, then so is that
>particular son.  As a matter of fact, any fate befallen Derrick also
>befalls upon that same son.  If something could concievable happen to one
>and not the other, then the are not the same entity.

I think you are confusing the role "son" and the role "employee" here.
If you are late for work then you are not (usually) late AS a son.
However if you are late for dinner...

How tight the connection is between your role as a son and your role
as a "game-entity" is not a consequence of virtual worlds as such.  It
is a consequence of your beliefs and that particular instance of a
virtual world (and of what happens in it) among other things.

For instance, I've seen a daughter and father chatting and hugging in
a game environment, very real.  Physical world roles transfered into
the gameworld.  I've also played characters that has had external
consequences in other players.

>> >However, there is seemingly inconvrovertable evidence that the world
>> >simulated in the code I wrote is not real (I'd be real impressed if I
>> >managed to create a real universe).
>>=20
>> It is real, if the user deals with it that way.  Maybe not PHYSCIAL,
>> but just as real.  What is "a real universe"?  Something equal to what
>> you belive you KNOW about the physical universe you live in?

>Hrm...you concede that the mudworld isn't physical and that the 'real'
>world is.  They are different, so they cannot possiblly be the same thing.
>And, to expand this line of reasoning, I assert that every being is
>influenced by its environment.  Given this assumption, it follows that two
>beings in different environments cannot be _EXACTLY_ alike.

Almost nothing compound is EXACTLY alike by pure probability.  I don't
see the relevance, maybe if you included some notion of significance.

>  If a
>character differs in any way from a player, then they connot be
>equivalent, and since the character and player are shaped by different
>(one physical the other not) environments, they cannot be the same.
>Therefore player !=3D character.

Wait, I change over time, does that mean that I don't exist in time?
Well, what is a player then?  You can hardly argue your point unless
you define what "you" are.  And I've got a feeling I would have to
dismiss your definition because it either isn't on a conceptual level
or isn't valid in the general case. (I'm not getting into my
definition because it would be verbose and bring the discussion
totally off topic)

>No, different.  I'm stating that the mudworld !=3D the 'real' world.

The mudworld is a real world. Not the physical, but real.  I never
assumed that they were equal. I said "the puppet is me".  I didn't say
"the puppet is me and only me and I am the puppet and only the
puppet".  THAT would be an equivalence relation (in strict logic I
guess you could do with either part of that statement)

>Nor do I deny that characters exist and are real.  It would be a rather
>fruitless venture to create a mud without acknowledging that characters
>exist.  I should know better than anyone that characters exist. I defined
>them...Last I checked every character in the mudworld is described by the
>C struct char_data.  Characters don't (physically) exist outside that
>struct.

Physically?  But physical representation doesn't matter unless you run
out of energy or run into a dysfunctional situation (like hardware
failure).

>> Ah, but where is the "thrill" coming from?  Not from a realistic
>> (probability based) judgement.

[...]

>But still, the very fact that people can be deluded does not prove either
>point.  It merely means that the logic of the situation must be examined
>before you can declare one viewpoint 'more correct' than another.

Well, the problem is, I don't accept that generic human reasoning is
based on logic at all.  I see it as based on sufficiently usable
approximations.  Their correctness is of no concern, only that the
resulting behaviour is profitable in the general case and
nondestructive in the cases where it leads to counterproductivity.

>> >	player--the human being sitting at the computer.
>> >	character--a virtual being existing only within the confines of

>> Where is this simpleminded "atomic" classification scheme coming from?
>Granted, these are merely the physical constructs used to represent the
>two things.  However, that since the definitions are not interchangable
>without changing the meanings of the words, the two cannot be the same
>thing.=20

I don't think your logic is sound.  "player" and "character" could be
projections.  (just like two pictures, same thing, different
viewpoints)

>> Where is the human mind? Are you suggesting that my character does not
>> exist in my head?  If that is the case, why bother to play at all??
>> :^)
>The human mind, as generally defined throughout the philosophies (c.f. the
>mind-brain duality argument that's been raging for centuries) does not
>exist.

How can you say this.  Does this mean that you don't agree with "I
think, therefore I am"?

>Yes, your brain stores a copy (not always perfect) of your character and
>embellishes it with combinations of objects from your environment.

Call it copies or whatever, it stores information based on my
perception (and cognition) and in that information there will
(hopefully) be plenty of references to the gameworld. Thus, the
gameworld itself is activly "involved" with my memory (or to phrase it
another way, it is also acting as memory for my cognition).  My idea
of what the character is, is dependant on my memory, the gameworld and
my cognition.  I guess I would need the "copy" in my brain to
recognize changes though...

>People have metal lates in their heads. Are you suggesting that therefore
>person =3D=3D metal plate? I fail to see the logic in asserting that playe=
r =3D=3D
>character.

Because you are focusing on representation.  Besides I never wrote
"equals", I wrote "is".

>Hrm...perhaps agruing on purely philisophical terms we will never _prove_
>that (player =3D=3D character) or (puppet =3D=3D character).   It comes do=
wn to
>which object (puppet or player) resembles a character more closely.

Well, my point is that how muc the "character" is "me" is dependant on
what the user believes, that is how important the information (or
access to information) associated with the "character" is to the user.

>A puppet can compute pi.  (see your own argument above)
>My character can compute pi.
>I cannot compute pi.

But you mix roles and concepts.  That will obviously fail. Your "I" is
not representing all of your roles, because if your character is "you"
then you can compute pi when you are in the role of the
character. What you are able to do is context sensitive, isn't it?

>And, the whole point of this argument can be summed up in the following:
>
>Assumption: If a _is_ b, then everything that happens to a will happen to
>b and in the exact same manner as it happens to a, and those occurences
>will affect b in the same way as they affect a.
>
>Insert 'the player' for b and 'the character' for a, and you should see
>the dangerous consequences of believing the statement that the character
>is you, especially if the character has no real reason to fear death.
>
>Therefore, the mudworld is not harsh towards the _player_ just because it
>is harsh towards the _character_.  Quite the opposite can be argued, and
>has been many times.  It would be quite sadistic to create a game where
>the players died, and very few people would willingly play such a game.
>
>I hope that the distinction between player and character is becoming more
>clear.

It isn't essential.  Information is.  Whether the mudworld is harsh
towards the other (physical world) roles of the player when it is
harsh towards the character DEPENDS on what the player believes in
those other roles AND the nature of the mudworld.

To make it simple.  A player is thinking about commiting suicide.  He
try to forget about the physical world by playing another role, a
character on a mud.  The character dies.  The player disconnects and
commits suicide.  The death of the charcter was terminal to the
player.  You might even be able to predict the outcome before he
logged on, it is just a matter of thresholds and predictability.  I
don't care about the MECHANICAL side (aristotelian), but the
conceptual side (platonian).  The important question is: "what made a
significant contribution to the outcome?".  The answer is neccessarily
fuzzy.

Ola.