[MUD-Dev] Psychology, psychiatry, and other such

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

>Writing as list owner:
>
>This is one of the few times that I will allow personal beliefs to
>impact this list.  
>
>I view psychiatry, psychology, and their derivatives as implicitly and
>literally evil and destructive on a scale which no other villainy has
>dreamed of approaching.  I accord much of the decline of western
>civilisation, most especially that of education to these false
>studies.  As such, discussion, negative or positive, of this area is
>expressly defined as off-topic for this list.  

Erhmm.. Does this include:

-social-psychology: for instance, how MUDs affects society, the mechanics
            of society, how a society transforms over time, addiction etc
-group dynamics: how people act when they meet, how they create norms,
                 how they perform when they are alone compared to when
                 they are watched. etc.
-perception: how our vision and auditory systems work, very relevant for
             creating illusions, 3D sound, userinterfaces etc.
-cognition:  how we structure information, longterm- shortterm-memory..
-usability:  guidelines for creating usable designs, understanding failure

>This topic and decision are not open to debate on the list.

But I think you have to clarify, because MUDs are inherently imaginary
and as such are "penetrated" by topics covered by psychology.  The only
non-psychology discussion the past week has been the "persistence"
stuff. Psychology is a huge field, but is most visible in treatment etc,
because of the jobs you find there (and because they deal with the
public).

Ola.