[MUD-Dev] Birthday Cake (or Why Large Scale Sometimes Sucks)(long)

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

Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> hail storm wiping out Farmer Bob's crops. Such things are part of life,
> and quite frankly, if Timmy is basing his livelihood on something so
> tenuous that an admin of a game he plays can accidentally destroy his
> business, then Timmy is a bit of an idiot. Can you say "risk management?"

But does the fact that Timmy is an idiot make the admin less
responsible? I would have thought the opposite!! Some people think
almost everybody but themselves are complete idiots... (Used to be me ;)
What could this type of reasoning lead to? If one design systems that
attracts idiots (or kids or other feeble minds) then one should be
responsible for the detrimental effects of the system on said
population. Some systems are clearly designed for idiots and marketed as
such! >;-}  Your argument only holds if you take sufficient measures to
exclude feeble minds.

> Further, really people, let's stop trying to compare the power of an admin
> in a bloody virtual world with the power of a real government. It's not
> comparable _at all_. I can leave a virtual world at the drop of a hat.

That is debatable.  I doubt that you will leave Achaea at the drop of a
hat. Prove it! ;) And even if you do, you would need to be provoked, to
be "disturbed out of" the situation. If one don't see anything
attractive on the horizon, then there is no subjective reason to leave,
although there may be many objective reasons to leave beyond that
horizon.

I don't think one do justice to the complexity of the psyche by ruling
out manipulative strategies that statistically will yield submissive
behaviour in a significant portion of a population.

> Not
> so damn easy to do in most countries in the world, and in some cases (like
> the filthy Soviets of the cold war), it was damn near impossible. Which is
> more powerful? The ability to oppress an entire people and wipe them out
> if you choose (Hitler and the jews) or the ability to make the orcs you
> bash in EQ stronger? Please.

Depends on whether you are a jew or not, doesn't it? Many people were
happy with Hitler. And the jews could leave too, I knew several old
people who spent time in Germany before the war and didn't at all
understand why the jews didn't leave, but eventually it was too late.
Humans are not very good at dealing with things that slides slowly, or
realizing things they wish were not true, this is pervasive in human
life.

Same thing goes for MUDs, not everybody can embrace the idea that they
can leave. Or they don't see the symptoms, and everybody like to think
of themselves as normal, but eventually it may be too late.

Whether somebody else think they can leave is rather irrelevant, if they
don't see it that way then it does not exist as an option to them?  

(I'm not going to comment on the logic which suggests that some
manipulative/suppressive systems are ok because Hitler was worse)

> Don't ever forget that the virtual worlds we are all involved in creating
> are merely a subset of the physical world. The physical world holds total
> dominion over virtual worlds, and is always going to be far far far more
> important.

Again, this depends. People with disabilities can feel freer in the
virtual world. Some people spend the majority of their "immersed" life
in a virtual world.  For some people the physical world is the prison.
For others the virtual world becomes a prison. For some, both are
prisons.

Of course one may always ask "why is this ability to leave so
important?", and then point at some historic situation which was
considered normal. I could just argue that not being able to leave
Soviet was no big deal, because that has been the norm for most people
in the past everywhere.

If we assume that the physical world is more important than the virtual
alternate realities, then it becomes imperative that people don't spend
as much time there, exactly because that detach them from being informed
about the physical reality. Which in turn is imperative for democracy to
work (which presumably secures your freedom).

I personally don't believe the physical world is more important than the
virtual, because I think information is more vital than matter, and
thinking is more important than existing. Thus I don't see any problem
in people spending their entire life online, actually I think it is much
worse that they spend their entire life with a job that keeps them
"locked". I do however have a problem with systems that don't provide a
fairly continuous creative growth path. (think Flow) Which many amateur
MUDs do in fact provide, you can become an imp, and then run your own
system, and ultimately design and implement your own system.

> Virtual societies are part of "real" societies (rather, they ARE real
> societies).

But how is this consistent with the above idea that the physical is more
important than the virtual? Unless you think that societies are not
important..?

--
Ola  -  http://www.notam.uio.no/~olagr/





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