Philosophical ramblings (Was: My single problem with BTW.)

[RezDev]

Wow, I just got caught up on all the posts and it seems like I missed a really interesting discussion (I'm traveling right now and my Internet access/time is a bit limited).

It may be past this point, but I've been thinking about something for the past few days or so, so I guess I'll add my 2 cents about it.

I've been thinking of Steve as more of a Faustian character, and the elements of the mod less as "good versus evil" and more as an internal struggle of power and control. If you really look at it, this point of this mod is to give more power, more options, more control to the player. They may be multi-block, high-resource-cost contraptions and processes instead of "magic blocks" or "god-mode" items, but the point remains: they are there to allow us, as players, more power, and more control, over the game environment.

Power always has a price. Until this point in the mod, that price has been time and resources. Waiting for hemp to grow, grinding with the hand crank, enormous amounts of wood and rope, space for mechanical and redstone systems, the trial and error getting timing systems calibrated: these were the payments for the control we desired, and this is (from what I gather) what most of us like about this mod: the sense of satisfaction acquired from building something by hand and earning that power.

But then we get soul urns. And at this point the price we pay changes. Do we trap the souls of the damned in little clay pots, to be infused in our steel, and our tools of greater power? Was getting concentrated hellfire for our hibachis justified because we were "freeing" these souls and only using the flammable by-product? Is it easier to dismiss because the souls are invisible or represented as green-yellow tinkling balls of light?

And now we are at a point where the price of obtaining more power has risen further: a bit of our own souls. Will we slaughter countless numbers of villagers for a Looting enchantment? Will we factory-process hundreds or thousands of animals and other mobs for resources? Will we delve deeper into the darker arts recently added to further our own quest for power and control?

Yes, we are Faust, and FC is Mephistopheles, dangling ever-greater power in front of us, teasing us with the means to exert greater control over the environment. How far will we go to obtain it?

And yes, I realize that some will not take this path, and that certain things may not be available to those that choose it. I'm totally ok with that. Things of high power should have high costs, isn't that the point of the parable of Faust?

Do we need to lock wolves in a dark room and farm them for poop? No.
Do we need to use the breeding harness and factory-farm animals for resources? No.
Do we need to bind souls to create powerful weapons, armor, and tools? No.
Do we need to enslave souls to create powerful technical blocks? No.
Do we need to mass-slaughter villagers for a Looting scroll? No.

We need do none of these things. This mod adds so much to the game that we can take or leave what we want to of it. I don't know how FC thinks of it, but I don't see this mod as having a "plot" or "story" or "goal" that I have to "beat" or "100%" (wow lots of quotes, lol). While there may be a somewhat linear progression in technology, there is no requirement to use it all to fully enjoy Minecraft or BtW; it is a sandbox game, after all. One can stop the wheel of dharma at any time.

And that is why this mod is so brilliant, and why I like it so much. Instead of reading Faust, discussing it, writing a paper or whatnot, we experience it, become it, own it. It is interactive literature, and I love it.


Wow, that got long, but I'm not particularly known for brevity. Sorry about that.

[Dirdle]

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"But I don't trust the research." Then you've lost a lot of at least my respect, which shouldn't be worth much to you, but obviously means a lot to me. Not trusting scientific research as and when suits your worldview to do so is incredibly arrogant; not trusting scientific research ever is clearly not what you are doing, being as you use all the modern technologies that rely on it. Not trusting only psychology research is an outdated position; psychology has been doing very well at pulling itself into shape as a science. I say that as a physics undergrad, and we have a motivation to maintain our superiority complex.

9 times out of 10 when I take a close look at a psychological study, I spot flaws in the methods applied. Either there's an inherent bias on the part of the researcher attempting the study and trying to elicit particular results through leading questions, there are significant environmental factors present (sometimes the subjects even just being aware that it's a study) that stand a good chance of tainting the results, or what have you. I can't even remember the last time I looked at one where I truly thought the experiment was sufficiently controlled to be considered scientific by any standard that would be applied to other branches of science.

I have a great deal of interest in psychology, and respect for its study. HOWEVER, I don't think that experimental psychology, especially as it is applied to humans, is particularly effective in getting clear results. Given that, I tend to have a lot more faith in my own personal observations and experiences with regards to human nature.

So yeah man, you can keep your respect (and keep it in a dark moist place). Perhaps asking "why" would have been a better approach than immediately going on the attack?

Yeah, I'm gonna say I was mistaken to take such an aggressive stance. Sorry, FlowerChild. This is one of those apologies that comes with a "but," though- You say 9/10 psych. studies are flawed. I don't disagree; in fact, I can think of flaws in the one I cited. But I find that 9/10 people who express a distrust of science do so for stupid, stupid reasons; asking them "why" elicits answers like "because they're trying to impose a communist world government" (or stupider). Being diplomatic is obvious BS in such a case: you play your hand out and hope it's enough to get through to them.

Though, I can't think of any studies supporting that as a course of action.

[TheAnarchitect]

Great analysis Rezdev.

I also think it can be good training. One of the things we as a species desperately need to learn is how to say no to power. Perhaps practicing this in a game context can help us do the same when there's real shit on the line.

[Sarudak]

Ha! No man I wish. Everyone has desires and impulses that are selfish and need to be controlled. What I'm saying is that I don't really get angry. For the most part the only thing that makes me really angry is injustice and I tend to be less lenient about it when it's directed at other people than me. Partly through nature and partly through introspection and self training I've come to a point where I just don't have the desire to lash out in anger and I don't really hold grudges. Part of my motivation in that is selfish too because I want to be happy and I believe that anger (and especially long standing anger like when you hold a grudge) is the poison of the heart. It's ultimately self destructive and you tend to hurt yourself more than the target of your anger.

See, I view anger and other "negative" emotions as being an important part of being human, and of motivating change. Without recognition of the things that are making you unhappy, positive change is far less likely to occur.

To me, training oneself not to feel such things, and not to express them, amounts to repression, which is inherently unhealthy and destructive in the long term.

I don't think I said I trained myself not to get angry ever. I'm just naturally slow to anger as a person. Anger over certain things is perfectly reasonable and healthy. I've trained myself to not lash out in anger or to hold grudges. If someone does something that makes me angry my first response now is to ask why they're doing that and if there's a reasonable explanation for their actions. I also give people the benefit of the doubt which in my experience there's usually quite a bit of in any situation. That's why I don't get mad when people cut me off because maybe they're late for work and their boss said they'd get fired if they were late again or something.

The problem being, that there is no purely rational justification for doing anything at all.

The desire to live itself is inherently emotional. A purely rational creature is a rock.

Taking excessive action based on any emotion (positive or negative) will have negative consequences, but I don't think aspiring to taking none at all based on them is productive either.

This is very true and something I struggled with a lot when i was a teenager. When I was in middle school I got picked on a lot. So much so that I was filled with anger most of the time. I began to detest my own emotions and the way they affected me to the point where I felt I would be better off not being driven by them at all. But as I approached my goal and reasoned on it I eventually reached a point where I realized that I was seeking to destroy myself. Without emotion I am nothing. All our fundamental desires are emotionally based. Thus in an ideal state we will always be driven by emotions but that drive will be channeled and tempered by reason and logic. In such a way we can seek out that which will do us the most good and by that I mean bring us the most happiness.

Thus I believe that our emotions are like plants in a garden and our logic and reasoning abilities like the gardener. If you try to stamp out all the plants in your garden then you will have at best nothing or your garden will be overrun with noxious weeds that are hard to root out and thus you have nothing. If you do not tend to the garden at all the strong plants will dominate and wipe out the weak ones. But the truth of gardening is that the weaker plants are often the ones that produce the more desirable fruit. Some plants grow easily but need to be heavily controlled and guided or they will choke out the others. Some plants need to be nurtured and sheltered.

Thus without emotion we will be nothing and cannot know happiness or joy. But without control we will reap a poor crop and never find true happiness in life either.

[Blazara]

Great analysis Rezdev.

I also think it can be good training. One of the things we as a species desperately need to learn is how to say no to power. Perhaps practicing this in a game context can help us do the same when there's real shit on the line.

Ah but you see, it's not natural to deny the chance of power. No matter how much we struggle against it we can't completely sever the ties to our biology and physical history. As human beings we desire to be better than our rivals, whether that be on a subconscious level or as a urge in our wakening hours.
If you possess more power, you're more attractive to a mate, your seed is spread further ;)

I think the human hunger for power isn't something to be subdued. What modern society lacks is a competitive streak, especially among the lower end of the IQ / earners. Unfortunatley, we are now taught to suppress ourselves and behave as we are told to. We have our possibilities for the future set in front of us by a 3rd party. If anything, I think attempting to overcome the urge to resist power, at least on a very large scale, could potentially be incredibly unhealthy.

I wonder if this will stir a response... none of my other posts have :L.

[Rianaru]

Unfortunately, this could lead to ruthless competition, which does no one any good, and ultimately harms many people. As long as competition is who can be the best, and not who can defame/sabotage the most, it would be fine. Competition just gets taken a little too far sometimes.

[Ribky]

Anger is just another emotion. Embrace it like you would any other. If you try to avoid the negative emotions you'll never know what causes them. Every single emotion is there for a reason.

I learned all that in therapy. :)

[Noshery]

This is the most Philosophical board I have ever laid eyes on. Deep.

[Poppycocks]

I am very intimate with my anger, comfortable even. It's a nifty little feeling which is very useful for incinerating any other unwanted feelings in a tiny knot of anger and then exhaling it with a breath. Heck, I've become so good at that, that I can stop it dead after the first syllable and finish the sentence with a smile (oh and the mechanism for that is: "What a silly little angry person I am"). People even think that I'm a cool calm person even when I tell them that I'm not.

But yeah, why feel scared, or sad, or depressed, when you can think a big "fuck this" to yourself and deal with the problem at hand instead?

That's how I deal, it's a strange coping mechanism perhaps - but it works with an almost scary efficiency.

[TheAnarchitect]

That's the whole point: our biology tells us to grab all available power, but we're capable of reaching a point where gaining greater power is counter-productive. This situation didn't exist in our ancestral environment, and so our evolved behaviors don't really handle it well. However, as sapient creatures we have a somewhat unique ability to go against our evolved behaviors and instead rationally assess our situation. It's hard, and we need to practice it to get good at it. But it's possible, and on this possibility does all hope for progress depend. Also, there are 7 billion of us. Whatever genetically coded behaviors we have, there's a good chance there are mutations in the population that don't have that gene. And if the ability to turn down power is as beneficial as I think it is, then that behavior will spread.

It's also important to say that it's not as simple as not having power. Because being powerless isn't the opposite of having to much power, its a consequence of other people having too much power. Sustainable power dynamics is similar to, and as difficult as, managing a sustainable economy. That's one thing I can't stress enough: THIS SHIT IS COMPLICATED. And most people jump strait to trying to "solve" things, without bothering to identify and articulate shared goals, or making any effort to study the subjects. To me, most people's opinions on right and wrong are as misguided and frustrating to listen to as the suggestion forum. On the other hand, finding anyone with ability to actually think about this stuff tends to make me absurdly happy, and cause me to gleefully chat away about ethics for hours.

And to follow my own rule and bring it back to game design. Sandbox games give us an opportunity to try different strategies in a risk-free environment. More importantly, it gives us the opportunity to think about what our goals are, and what we would do with greater power if we had it. If you've ever said "I'd do better if I was in charge" or "society forces me to do this," take a look at your own behavior in game. That's pretty close to how you'd really act. That knowledge itself is valuable. And once you start looking at your game environments in that light, you can start practicing being the kind of empowered person you'd want to be.

[FlowerChild]

I think you might be oversimplifying or engaging in a bit of wishful thinking with the above man. I don't think you can selectively eliminate competition and thereby aggression from the human make-up without it significantly impacting sexual aggression, decreasing the rate of reproduction and making such passive strains less viable than the more aggressive in the process.

Evolution does not favor the more ideologically palatable...just those more likely to survive and reproduce given the environment. I always get a huge chuckle out of the film Idiocracy as a result of them hitting the nail on the head with that. The opening scene in particular where they're following the two family lines and plotting the tree of each on screen always cracks me up.

The line "I'm going to f* all y'all" is a total classic.

To put it another way, I think the above is as simple as asking yourself: who gets laid more? Jocks or geeks?

[Gargantuan_Penguin]

I don't have much to say on this subject... mostly because I honestly have only a very vague idea of what I believe on much of it. But here is what I do know. Humans are self destructive, greedy, and deep down every last one of us is capable of evil. Most of us don't admit that we have "bad" thoughts. Or even if we do it's "ok" because it is "justified". Humans are incapable of achieving any sort of utopia, it just isn't in us. We are always going to want more power and we are all capable of screwing anyone who gets in our way.

Human history is full of endless cycles of order to chaos and back again. And quite honestly, just because we have achieved a certain amount of advancement in technology, and even though much of the world is now "civilized" it won't last. Eventually civilization will fall again, for awhile, probably harder than The roman empire did. and then it will rebuild itself, bigger and brighter than before, then it will fall, harder still, and etc. etc. etc.

[simanick]

To put it another way, I think the above is as simple as asking yourself: who gets laid more? Jocks or geeks?

agreed, loved that movie, but i think there's more then just who has more children, we must also consider the likelihood of there success and there by increase or decrease in net stature in society which in turn leads to the likelihood of there genetic propagation. then on top of all that we have the idea of memes and how that determinants what perversely stated "jocks" are.

[FlowerChild]

Human history is full of endless cycles of order to chaos and back again.

Sometimes the periods of order are actually extremely brutal. Take a look at the ancient Roman or Egyptian empires man, and what you wind up seeing is a privileged few living well at the expense of the subjugated masses.

Order then has not been so much typified by good will towards men as much as it has been by successful conquest and subjugation, with the modern era being no exception.

agreed, loved that movie, but i think there's more then just who has more children, we must also consider the likelihood of there success and there by increase or decrease in net stature in society which in turn leads to the likelihood of there genetic propagation. then on top of all that we have the idea of memes and how that determinants what perversely stated "jocks" are.

Sure, but I think what we've run into in modern times is where the rate of reproduction is so heavily biased on one side, that economic standing or even survivability become secondary to it. Plus, without any real external threats "survivability" is more or less a given.

The movie actually covers that in that brief scene where our football player friend leaves his nuts on a fence or something due to an idiotic stunt, and the doctors patch them right up for him.

[Gargantuan_Penguin]

Human history is full of endless cycles of order to chaos and back again.

Sometimes the periods of order are actually extremely brutal. Take a look at the ancient Roman or Egyptian empires man, and what you wind up seeing is a privileged few living well at the expense of the subjugated masses.

Order then has not been so much typified by good will towards men as much as it has been by successful conquest and subjugation, with the modern era being no exception.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to praise the periods of order. I was just voicing my lack of faith in the human race's ability to do anything that is not destructive. in the short or long term.

[Noshery]

Do we need to mass-slaughter villagers for a Looting scroll? No.

that's
how
you
get
t h e m ?

thank you for that little tidbit.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I wasn't trying to praise the periods of order. I was just voicing my lack of faith in the human race's ability to do anything that is not destructive. in the short or long term.

I didn't think you were. If anything, I was trying to emphasize your point that people really suck :)

[Gargantuan_Penguin]

I didn't think you were. If anything, I was trying to emphasize your point that people really suck :)

indeed we do...

:edit:

I recently watched the Matrix again, and I must say I agree with agent smiths views on the human race.

[ada221]

and here i was about to make refrence to the matrix...

its sad that what all the smiths are saying is true... the human mind just cannot accept a utopian society, without competition, struggle, or so called "evil", the mind rejects it as false reality

[FlowerChild]

<shrug> It's what we are, and it's interesting. I'll take interesting over perfect any day.

[TheAnarchitect]

I think you might be oversimplifying or engaging in a bit of wishful thinking with the above man.

Maybe a little. Rather I would say that I honestly believe that certain behaviors are self destructive, and that therefore those behaviors will get gradually weeded out.

I have about a million problems with the premise of idiocracy. I'm not even sure where to start. But I guess I'd lead off by statingthat our current best understanding of human evolutions strongly suggests that increased intellect was primarily driven by mate selection pressure and not survival selection pressure.

To put it another way, I think the above is as simple as asking yourself: who gets laid more? Jocks or geeks?

Artists.

[FlowerChild]

Artists.

Fair enough :)

[Dirdle]

its sad that what all the smiths are saying is true... the human mind just cannot accept a utopian society, without competition, struggle, or so called "evil", the mind rejects it as false reality

How can you possibly know that? There have never been any utopian societies.

[Extreme Boyheat]

No, but there have been numerous failed attempts.

[BuLLZ3Y3]

Man, I've been away from Minecraft and BTW for too long apparently.

But after reading through most of the comments, I have realized something. I don't even blink when I kill a being in Minecraft. And locking creatures into small rooms with no light doesn't even ruffle my feathers.

I'm a horrible human being.

Oh well, I'll continue to run around with my bad ass equipment in my big castle. =D

Hey guys, it's nice to be back.

-BuLLZ3Y3