The events of Myers/Twixt have caused quite a stir across the MMORPG blogosphere. Leaving aside his particular work or the subject matter of his paper, Myers’ actions have rekindled the ever-smoldering argument over “griefing” in games and areas of games which permit non-consensual pvp. Given that Gevlon provided his thoughts on the matter, I thought I would check in with Ayn Rand and see what she thought regarding griefing. First, we’re going to have to ask her for her core ethical proposition. I believe first we must start with Ms. Rand’s basic moral tenets, the moral tenets of rational egoism. They are not “Take what you can, give nothing back”, sadly, or Mr. Galt wouldn’t have needed a billion word speech to elucidate the philosophy. It is most easily summed up by John Galt in the following statement:
“I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” (from wikipedia, quothe Ayn Rand)
Objectivist ethics begins and ends with humans as rational individuals. That includes other humans, which is what differentiates Objectivist ethics from brutish thuggery. We’ll go ahead and leave aside the fact that the basic premise of most MMORPGs violates core tenets of Randian ethics. To talk about Ayn Rand’s views of griefing, we need to define griefing. Griefing is a meta-game concept…it only makes sense when we’re talking about a game. It would be something along the lines of deliberately harming the game play of another player. It is, in effect, forcing someone else to play your game, rather than theirs. For instance, bullying is a game. It involves annoying other people and necessitates people to be bullied. If the bullied people do not want to play the bullied game, you are inflicting your game onto them without their rational consent. They could leave the playground, of course, but the bully has still forced them, by the bully’s own choice, to a different choice. As it happens, Ayn Rand has a lot to say on this sort of act. Let me turn to Atlas Shrugged and the aforementioned billion word speech:
“Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None–except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don’t, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs. I have nothing to gain from fools or cowards; I have no benefits to seek from human vices: from stupidity, dishonesty or fear. The only value men can offer me is the work of their mind. When I disagree right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.
“Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initate–do you hear me? no man may start–the use of physical force against others.
“To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer action on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder; the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.
“Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim it. There can be no ‘right’ to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
“To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument–is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment; you threaten him with death if he does. You place him into a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life–and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.
“Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: “Your money or your life,” or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: ‘Your children’s education or your life,’ the meaning of that ultimatum is: ‘Your mind or your life’–and neither is possible to man without the other.
The relevant bit of that above quotation to Twixt is here: “Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it.” Griefing falls under this rubric.
You missed the point. I’ve never said “griefing” is smart or “right”. I’ve never said Twixt “lived” a smart or effective life.
I’ve said that those who talk about “griefing” and try to stop it by spamming channels full of hate are just as dumb. They could fight or run but swearing on Twixt was stupid.
The other point is that several “griefing” are not pointless desctruction, just the act of self interest: like the node ninja. If I choose to ninja the node, I’ll have ore, If I choose to be “ethical”, I won’t. For this it is true that: “take what you can, give nothing back”.
to fight or to run or to spam is a choice that is less valuable than the opportunity to make that choice. twixt made the choice to provide the opportunity. those who would deny twixt that choice also deny you that oppportunity. so too does play and game provide, and society deny.
To Gevlon: property rights are not an inherent part of the universe. They are not physical laws which govern behavior of material: they are social rules. Thus the burglar, when faced with the same choice, makes the same decision. The brute, when faced with the option of pleasure from violence and the utility of taking what they want versus acting “ethically” makes the obvious decision.
In the same sense, just because a resource node is not granted territory rights by the game rules does not mean the player society doesn’t see it that way. If it does, then you have commited theft by their definition. You may disagree, but that’s beside the point.
Once you have committed what amounts to an act of theft or violence, the society feels compelled to match your barbarism: it does so not by breaking its own internal rules and stealing back, as that would collapse society, but rather by turning on you, declaring you outsider and driving you out. People feel ok heaping derision upon those who cannot obey their rules.
To dear Dr. Myers: what an absurd contention. Do you really suggest the option to fight, run, or spam did not exist prior to Twixt’s actions? If such a social service was what was being provided, then Twixt could have done the same thing within the confines of the social constructs. You’re essentially making the case that anarchy provides the greatest social value because it imposes absolutely no social rules.
What you neglect is that the very nature of your decisions as Twixt also PRECLUDED the opportunity to do anything else to those impacted. Your “play” denied them their “play”. However, your actions are acceptable and theirs are impermissible? Cursing you, mobbing you, driving you out, and attacking you personally, even IRL, are all also allowed by the game. Why should they be denied their game-sanctioned actions?
I should note that I node ninja, too. I don’t defend the practice though: I’m being an ass. If the other person is irritated with me, I kind of expect them to curse and splutter at me. It’s how things work.
Same thing with griefing. Sure, I’ve griefed people. Sure, I’ve been that jerk PK who refuses to let you play and seems to become more gleeful the more miserable you get. But I am well aware that I am, in fact, being a jerk to you. You have every right to howl at me.
anarchy is not preferable because it imposes, but rather the opposite: because it frees. rules are vital; imposition is venal. when rules are imposed, those rules are debased. when rules are accepted, the mind is free and the body secure.
it is true: there was no fight nor run without Twixt. there was only, for all its benefits, dreariness.
with Twixt came an acceptance of common rules that, even in their displeasure to some, were invigorating to all.
This is fun: you’ve moved into a sort of political mysticism without really understanding mysticism at all. Let’s continue, then! I’m not even sure I believe you’re really Dr. Myers, though having read a bit of some of your other work, Dr. Myers is fond enough of a sort of transcendent, overly obtuse language.
Since the game world consists, as you admit, of rules, and, once you are playing the game those rules are imposed on you, then don’t game rules ALSO impose? Or do you say that playing the game constitutes acceptance? And, if an MMORPG’s game rules consists of playing with other, i.e. that the game world includes other people, then necessarily the impact of others is a a rule. If the game rules are an imposition, so are other people and their actions. If the game rules are accepted by agreeing to play, then so are the people.
If the people constitute a fundamental element of the game world, then their actions do as well. You need not accept their rules, but neither do they need to accept yours. So, they can freely agitate at you, call you names, spam about you, drive you from their zone, and even threaten you and you, in turn, get to grief them. All part of the game world.
However, if you demand that they not do any of those things, then they may demand you not do the thing that bothers them. This is social compromise, not imposition of rules.
And you just made the assertion that Twixt brought PvP upon his back like Prometheus, creating a dynamic and interesting new world! Except he didn’t. PvP predated Twixt. That sort of griefing predated Twixt. You’re just louder than most griefers (which is, by the way, quite a feat).
I like how you go ahead to assert that people “accepted” the rules you brought (i.e. State of Nature pvp) but “imposed” their rules on you. Very cute little rhetorical trick. Can you play dead, too? Given that acceptance and imposition seem to be predicated on the perspective of the rule-taker for you, it appears these are not objectively valid constructs. If they are, wouldn’t that indicate that you were in fact, griefing if the person being griefed felt so that way? Otherwise we are left with: a rule is only a rule if it is objectively existent; that is, does not require acceptance to be in effect. Such rules would be things such as physical laws. Anything else is not a rule, it’s just an emergent phenomenon of social interaction. But that would imply you’re just being petulant.
“without really understanding mysticism”
mysticism is best understood through experience; words distort experience and therefore communicate best when they are analogous to experience rather than definitive of experience.
“don’t game rules ALSO impose?”
clearly not, since there is the choice to break these rules, the choice of many in rv. game rules must be accepted.
“And, if an MMORPG’s game rules consists of playing with other”
You conflate game with order. ‘playing with other’ how and with the acceptance of what set of rules? you seem to limit ‘game’ to define griefing and then broaden ‘game’ to define society. accept the game rules and there is no griefing; impose the society and there is no game.
“Twixt brought PvP upon his back like Prometheus”
pandora. the game does not arise like wisdom. the game is locked within society until it is played.
“Can you play dead, too?”
the hard rock of death cannot be feigned. therein both game and society fail.
Actually, mysticism is utterly inexplicable without experience, as mysticism specifically deals with the understanding of mystery, which is, by definition, inexplicable. Why that leads to a discussion on the relation of semantics to reality is beyond me, though.
Actually, if you are playing the game, is there a choice to break the rules? Are you still playing chess if you switch pieces behind your opponent’s back? However, I was referring to game world rules, not socially dictated game rules. For instance, in a computer chess game, presuming it is uncompromised, there is no way to switch pieces behind an opponents back. That rule is imposed by the world without your consent, beyond your consent to play that particular game. Those are the rules I meant. Things like being unable to (generally) move through walls in most MMORPGs.
It is to those rules, the laws of the game world, which I refer when I refer to when I note the world imposes other people as part of its condition. That is a rule: a condition of the worlds existence, that other people could be there. That condition doesn’t say anything about griefing, but it also doesn’t say anything about lack of society. If the people feel like making a society, and then using their power against you, no rules stop them, just as no rules stop you from repeatedly killing other people in a pvp area.
Quibble: Pandora did not bring the box to anyone: she was the one who opened it. The rest of your statement is drivel.
That’s heady stuff there…except for it being absurd. Death is declared upon the properties of the subject. It may or may not be metaphysically valid to even discuss death, but one can enumerate the properties of death and state that something matching them is dead. That would imply that something could demonstrate most of those properties, knowing an observer would miss out on seeing the properties of not-death, and convince the observer that the thing observed is dead. That should qualify as feigning death, I think.
This is fun, keep going.
re [semantics vs. reality] + [game in P’s box]
to emerge from words is to play inside experience. to emerge from society is to play inside game.
“This is fun, keep going.”
alas, i see a pattern of griefing, driveling, and absurdity.
death also comes in how we use our words to simulate it.
/sigh
It sounds like you’re leaving. Oh well.
Words are as much a piece of experience as anything, as ephemeral as our experience of things and our experience of ourselves. The problem arises when making words things. A language is a model, and sentences contrast with their linguistic framework to create new models. The use of a word, then, is a work of art: an analog for picking out some point of information, either negatively or positively. The semantic of the word depends entirely upon its context. A symbol has no meaning inherently; it gains meaning through its placement within a broader symbolic system.
Experience as we have it is equally bounded, with the divisions gaining meaning only from their relevance to other meanings. Experience via phenomena is a series of abstractions: a model. Words within language also form a model. As long as you divorce yourself from the words and accept them as inherently meaningless, you can explore the model they delineate without trapping yourself in the illusion of their truth.
I see no gain to rising through abstractions: the illusion of experience is as false as the illusion of words. My experience and my words are my greatest lies and my finest works of art. The indescribable currents which drive and shape them, the unseen hands which sculpt them, that is their meaning and their worth.
Society is another language, another experience, another description of symbols, a set of rules with a starting point and and ending point, arbitrarily set. Society IS a game. You impose society on yourself. To suggest that society imposes itself on to you is to grant it metaphysical value, when society is an illusion even more insubstantial than the world. You choose to play society’s game, or you do not.
But if you do not care to play the games of entities which can affect you, do not be surprised when the boulder playing the Physical Laws game rolls over you.
Yours is a small mind, too deeply proud to see it’s own folly and laugh at itself. How else can I respond but with absurdity? What else is there? It is a reply in kind.
If you think there has been death in my words, how funny! I have enjoyed this dance, which is why I want it to continue. I’m sorry your feet are sore, though. Perhaps you should practice your steps more.
Also, sadly, I’m pretty sure you’re a troll speaking for the good Dr.
Thanks for the entertainment though. If you hop back by, you still have the chance to invoke Godwin’s Law!