Originally posted by wolfmann The internet is a lawless place, where there's rarily any real consequenses for your actions, thus those who couldnt care less for anyone but themselves, take the oportunity to do whatever they please
This is the main culprit in my opinion, and may be as much a product the times we live in as anything. The Net really just seems to be a gross exageration of the way people really are (i know this is a genarlizaton) and certainly I for one have noticed an overall lack of concern for ones fellow man in all aspects of life....
Enter, the individualistic society.
(a): I need help. Nobody helps me. So I won't help anyone. (b): I need help. Maybe (a) will help me. No, he doesn't help anyone. I won't help anyone either. (c): I need help. Maybe (a) or (b) will help me. No, they don't help anyone. ... (z): I need help. Nobody helps anyone, so I'll help myself.
This behaviour can easily be modeled in mathematical terms. Each person has an 0.5 chance of helping others. But, depending on outside factors, this value is slightly biased between 0.4999999 and 0.50000001. But since there's so many people in society, this quickly adds up. If each person is confronted with 1 such decision daily, in a society of several million this bias will quickly rise to 0.6, 0.7 or even highers, causing entire society to become either helpful or unhelpful.
The rate of this change is directly proportional to feedback. When training neural nets, you establish an artifical feedback loop, that feeds the data you define as "right" and "wrong". After putting the net through 1 million or so cycles, the neural net has "learned" to distinguish these on its own. Neural nets are modeled after the way human brain works, so it's a very good aproximation of human behaviour.
But in real life you cannot make 1 million cycles. In many cases, you will only have several cycles upon which you must base what is right and wrong. This allows for random deviations to propagate.
In addition, the feedback in real world is not immediate, if it exists at all. For every action you perform, it may take hours, days, or even years, to get some feedback on how you did. And that is only if you can correlate the feedback you received with your original action.
This results in a very unreliable and mostly undeterministic perception of ones action. This is why people trust instincts more than facts. Bringing us back to square one, that the human is essentially a glorified beast, driven by the most basic of their instincts.
Ok I dont mind reading, but math is not an option....LOL.... In regards to your last sentence though, I will add that yes we are driven by our most basic of instincts, but that doesnt mean we have to be ruled by them....
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Originally posted by wolfmann The internet is a lawless place, where there's rarily any real consequenses for your actions, thus those who couldnt care less for anyone but themselves, take the oportunity to do whatever they please
This is the main culprit in my opinion, and may be as much a product the times we live in as anything. The Net really just seems to be a gross exageration of the way people really are (i know this is a genarlizaton) and certainly I for one have noticed an overall lack of concern for ones fellow man in all aspects of life....
Enter, the individualistic society.
(a): I need help. Nobody helps me. So I won't help anyone. (b): I need help. Maybe (a) will help me. No, he doesn't help anyone. I won't help anyone either. (c): I need help. Maybe (a) or (b) will help me. No, they don't help anyone. ... (z): I need help. Nobody helps anyone, so I'll help myself.
This behaviour can easily be modeled in mathematical terms. Each person has an 0.5 chance of helping others. But, depending on outside factors, this value is slightly biased between 0.4999999 and 0.50000001. But since there's so many people in society, this quickly adds up. If each person is confronted with 1 such decision daily, in a society of several million this bias will quickly rise to 0.6, 0.7 or even highers, causing entire society to become either helpful or unhelpful.
The rate of this change is directly proportional to feedback. When training neural nets, you establish an artifical feedback loop, that feeds the data you define as "right" and "wrong". After putting the net through 1 million or so cycles, the neural net has "learned" to distinguish these on its own. Neural nets are modeled after the way human brain works, so it's a very good aproximation of human behaviour.
But in real life you cannot make 1 million cycles. In many cases, you will only have several cycles upon which you must base what is right and wrong. This allows for random deviations to propagate.
In addition, the feedback in real world is not immediate, if it exists at all. For every action you perform, it may take hours, days, or even years, to get some feedback on how you did. And that is only if you can correlate the feedback you received with your original action.
This results in a very unreliable and mostly undeterministic perception of ones action. This is why people trust instincts more than facts. Bringing us back to square one, that the human is essentially a glorified beast, driven by the most basic of their instincts.
Ok I dont mind reading, but math is not an option....LOL.... In regards to your last sentence though, I will add that yes we are driven by our most basic of instincts, but that doesnt mean we have to be ruled by them....
So true chlaos. I don't think that any true moralist would say that rightness and wrongness have much to do with how popular or unpopular we are. A lot of gamers think they do, both in terms of playing games, and using game theory to model behavior.
I have little doubt that behavior can be modeled in neat "if/then" causality, given of course that you assume that there is no will, or inherent beliefs that are unique to the subject. It is what behaviorists try and do with their models, but the things they teach are both descriptive, and perscriptive. They describe a world where human beings are just fleshy computers following some programming, and then perscribe that we disassemble and unplug them when their programming becomes unproductive, or not useful.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
@jrscott (In lieu of using full quotes, filling up the pages with repeats) Yes we are agreeing in our arguments about parents, the part I didn't fully agree with was
"What you seem to fail to realize is that a child's mind and neural pathways are still developing and are less capable of distinguishing between reality and virtual. Exposure to some of the actions described in games, TV, and music can and will be used to establish the neural pathways these people will have to live with for the rest of their lives. It has nothing to do with willpower. It has to do with Biochemical patterns etched into your brain forever."
I should explain a bit, it's not only her but myself, I was raised in violence. Race riots in the street, Vietnam on TV and relatives fighting there, daily beatings at home, daily fights in school and the neighborhood (I lived in a mostly pro nazi neighborhood, while I may be white I disagreed with their beliefs about other races and this resulted in a lot of fights). At heart I am a peaceful man, I rejected all that violence of my own accord. I studied history and world religions trying to make sense of what I saw as a world based on a culture of violence (oddly enough even my study of WWII got me branded as a nazi by one teacher who beat me while two other history teachers had me teach their classes). It was the study of martial arts (this was before Kung Fu made martial arts popular) and eastern religions that allowed me to contain and control my own rage.
Any man or woman is capable of rising above their situation, I am nothing special so anyone can do it. It just takes a bit of will and one thought, "Is this how I would want my child to be raised?". I have no children of my own, my wife can't have any due to medical reasons, but I was given the chance to help raise one child, and she's a sweetheart.
@chlaos I have you penciled in for one argument with God and Satan, would you prefer to keep it denominational or should I schedule a mix of other deities too?
As to the Trolls, there's good trolls and there's bad trolls, I know the kind you mean and I agree but I myself often troll boards on games to offer tech help to players, find interesting arguments (like this string), and slap around doomsayers
Originally posted by TimeViewer @chlaos I have you penciled in for one argument with God and Satan, would you prefer to keep it denominational or should I schedule a mix of other deities too? Either way sounds cool with me. Hell, I guess the more the merrier. As to the Trolls, there's good trolls and there's bad trolls, I know the kind you mean and I agree but I myself often troll boards on games to offer tech help to players, find interesting arguments (like this string), and slap around doomsayers
I certainly dont want to come off holier than thou in this thread. I am guilty of many of the things I rail against in this thread. In fact, my motivation for starting it wasnt someone else's nasty post, but rather wondering why I behaved so much differently than in real life. I just found the obvious anonymity/no consequences answer too shallow, but then again quite often the simplest answer is the correct one and I am probably way over analyzing things (as usual). Perhaps it is just the lowering of inhibitions that occurs from those factors, and for me with too much alcohol as well.....LOL
Oh and cool pic...
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
I really don't think you could over analyze this particular issue, there's no one solid reason for all, just generalizations. For some people it's an on and off thing, bad day at the office/school/home/alien ship "probing" your neighborhood. Sometimes it's just too many griefers ruining your game and you snap and go a lil crazy and bite the head off some poor unsuspecting newbie who accidentally KSes you.
Many are pros at it though, they want nothing more out of a game than to make someone's life miserable. Part of it could be the "Little Wee Wee Factor" after all their johnson's only like 1 pixel long in the game.
Personally, I think there's one missing peripheral needed for online gaming, a mechanical arm that can pop out of the keyboard and slap some smartarse upside their head, that or USB Taser.
The only other option is a hard one to maintain, I use to GM The 4th Coming for jungleii.com (the game there is now long closed) They had a policy of actually calling people to confirm their accounts. It was slow and hard to maintain but we did have some of the best behaved players I've ever seen in my years of gaming. I know it's a bit unrealistic for most mmorpgs due to the sheer volume of players but that kind of accountability really made a big difference.
Games also need a good crew running them, a good sysop who actually takes part in the game (company owners and Devs for betas) and a good group of GMs can go a long way to keeping a game running smooth and peaceful (where it should be peaceful that is). I've seen few games where the owners took part, those that did were always more fun and players better informed. The GM issue is another deal altogether, finding a good crew who don't let it go to their heads and do their job isn't easy. Many people turn into ego-monkies and/or favor certian people/guilds over others. This can also turn the general population into buttmonkies. I had the chance to work for some really great people, and with a hand picked crew that did an outstanding job, it really does make a difference.
Originally posted by TimeViewer The only other option is a hard one to maintain, I use to GM The 4th Coming for jungleii.com (the game there is now long closed) They had a policy of actually calling people to confirm their accounts. It was slow and hard to maintain but we did have some of the best behaved players I've ever seen in my years of gaming. I know it's a bit unrealistic for most mmorpgs due to the sheer volume of players but that kind of accountability really made a big difference.
This is one thing that many will forget due to days long gone, but in SWG the mutual dependancy and small server sizes ensured that social rules ensued.
Scammers were kept in check, e-Bayers had hard time finding company, yet accounts shared among friends were accepted based on players. Leet kiddies existed, but once again couldn't dominate. The overall structure of gameplay established rules which were enforced passively.
As all societies, this one wasn't picture perfect and incidents did occur. But to most, the shift in socially accepted behaviour brought upon with NGE (which to this day is incredibly obvious) was what drove them away.
Unlike most existing and upcoming products, which tend to minimize social contact, SWG enforced it by design. While that did bring many issues, it also brought many good sides, which is why the SWG society evolved as it did, well above and beyond the game.
It is this why NGE comes through as a complete failure. By killing off the society and social constructs, the world became exposed for a game that it is. And the game was never that good, let alone perfect.
Originally posted by TimeViewer I really don't think you could over analyze this particular issue, there's no one solid reason for all, just generalizations. For some people it's an on and off thing, bad day at the office/school/home/alien ship "probing" your neighborhood. Sometimes it's just too many griefers ruining your game and you snap and go a lil crazy and bite the head off some poor unsuspecting newbie who accidentally KSes you. LOL...this made whiskey come out of my nose...So quit it. Many are pros at it though, they want nothing more out of a game than to make someone's life miserable. Part of it could be the "Little Wee Wee Factor" after all their johnson's only like 1 pixel long in the game. Dammit, you did it again... Personally, I think there's one missing peripheral needed for online gaming, a mechanical arm that can pop out of the keyboard and slap some smartarse upside their head, that or USB Taser. The only other option is a hard one to maintain, I use to GM The 4th Coming for jungleii.com (the game there is now long closed) They had a policy of actually calling people to confirm their accounts. It was slow and hard to maintain but we did have some of the best behaved players I've ever seen in my years of gaming. I know it's a bit unrealistic for most mmorpgs due to the sheer volume of players but that kind of accountability really made a big difference. Games also need a good crew running them, a good sysop who actually takes part in the game (company owners and Devs for betas) and a good group of GMs can go a long way to keeping a game running smooth and peaceful (where it should be peaceful that is). I've seen few games where the owners took part, those that did were always more fun and players better informed. The GM issue is another deal altogether, finding a good crew who don't let it go to their heads and do their job isn't easy. Many people turn into ego-monkies and/or favor certian people/guilds over others. This can also turn the general population into buttmonkies. I had the chance to work for some really great people, and with a hand picked crew that did an outstanding job, it really does make a difference.
This makes sense too, as sometimes things just hit me wrong and I go off. The people who make a practice of it are a whole nother story tho....
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
The only other option is a hard one to maintain, I use to GM The 4th Coming for jungleii.com (the game there is now long closed) They had a policy of actually calling people to confirm their accounts. It was slow and hard to maintain but we did have some of the best behaved players I've ever seen in my years of gaming. I know it's a bit unrealistic for most mmorpgs due to the sheer volume of players but that kind of accountability really made a big difference.
This is one thing that many will forget due to days long gone, but in SWG the mutual dependancy and small server sizes ensured that social rules ensued.
Scammers were kept in check, e-Bayers had hard time finding company, yet accounts shared among friends were accepted based on players. Leet kiddies existed, but once again couldn't dominate. The overall structure of gameplay established rules which were enforced passively.
As all societies, this one wasn't picture perfect and incidents did occur. But to most, the shift in socially accepted behaviour brought upon with NGE (which to this day is incredibly obvious) was what drove them away.
Unlike most existing and upcoming products, which tend to minimize social contact, SWG enforced it by design. While that did bring many issues, it also brought many good sides, which is why the SWG society evolved as it did, well above and beyond the game.
It is this why NGE comes through as a complete failure. By killing off the society and social constructs, the world became exposed for a game that it is. And the game was never that good, let alone perfect.
Very true, while we had some malcontents come through like any game does, the interdependecy and close knit nature of the servers actually did a pretty good job of policing really bad behavior or at least extended bouts of bad behavior.
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Originally posted by Rekrul Duh! Anonimity.Why do people behave? Why are they good to each other? They might need others at some point in the future.On internet, you will never meet those people again. So who cares how you behave.Hermits, rogues, renegades all tend to be "rude". They don't need others. The closer you are tied to someone, the more thoughtful you'll be. Excluding all the puberty thing, this is best demonstrated in families. Even puberty and the rebellion phase demonstrates that, where the need to move away causes lack of consideration.
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
Why do people behave? Why are they good to each other? They might need others at some point in the future. On internet, you will never meet those people again. So who cares how you behave. Hermits, rogues, renegades all tend to be "rude". They don't need others. The closer you are tied to someone, the more thoughtful you'll be. Excluding all the puberty thing, this is best demonstrated in families. Even puberty and the rebellion phase demonstrates that, where the need to move away causes lack of consideration.
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
OMg....u get it. Im goin to have to get serious again (ive been very out of sorts tonit).... But i think i may have actually found someone who understands my point.... /bravo friend /bravo
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Well, lets just remember, just because you get some bad eggs on the internet doesnt mean everyone only behaves nicely to each other because they want something in the future, or because they are afraid of being punished. The Anonitmity of the internet draws in these rude people, so it would be wrong to say that the internet is a fair representation of 'how people would act if they could get away with it' in real life, because the amount of rude people on the internet compared to in real life is disproportionate.
Also, I think a lot of people just want to vent their frustrations with other aspects of life onto the internet. And hey! It's probably a pretty good place to vent ones frustrations, seeing how impersonal people take insults on the internet, and how used to ignoring these people we quickly become.
I think we might be blowing this out of proportion anyways. Theres lots of good people on the internet. Its just that in gaming, and obviously we are all interested in MMORPGs here, one bad egg can often ruin the experience for many many people. Games that have large group raids and big events that rely on cooperation are bound to attract jerks, seeing how its so much easier to ruin a persons fun in a game than it is in real life.
Why do people behave? Why are they good to each other? They might need others at some point in the future. On internet, you will never meet those people again. So who cares how you behave. Hermits, rogues, renegades all tend to be "rude". They don't need others. The closer you are tied to someone, the more thoughtful you'll be. Excluding all the puberty thing, this is best demonstrated in families. Even puberty and the rebellion phase demonstrates that, where the need to move away causes lack of consideration.
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
Nononononnnnnoo! Can't do that! I would not resist the urge to flirt if I could get away with it....
Originally posted by Aethios Originally posted by Rekrul Duh! Anonimity.Why do people behave? Why are they good to each other? They might need others at some point in the future.On internet, you will never meet those people again. So who cares how you behave.Hermits, rogues, renegades all tend to be "rude". They don't need others. The closer you are tied to someone, the more thoughtful you'll be. Excluding all the puberty thing, this is best demonstrated in families. Even puberty and the rebellion phase demonstrates that, where the need to move away causes lack of consideration.
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
That's a very good point. Seeing how responsible, polite, etc. somebody is when there are minimal consequences for their actions is a good test as to what type of person they really are.
I think the reason change when they are online is that we all wear masks every day, noone shows their true selves on a daily basis, not even to friends, family or loved ones.
How often have you wanted to tell your bf/gf to shut up and let you play ?, but not done for fear of the consequences.
Fear of consequences is what keeps our society how it is, it's the structure that our civilization is built on.
What prevents people from taking what they want ?, it's fear of what will happen if they do, from the "owners", from the cop's, from the law.
What prevents people from being prick's in rl ??, because you risk getting a punch in the mouth or worse.
So it's not so much that it brings out the worst in peeps, it brings out all the frustration that you have to hide in real life.
Now insted of behind and only lashing out when seriously provoked they will last out at anything and also vent their general frustration, maybe living out some "fantasies"
It's often also the reason behind the "hardcore PVP players", it has nothing to do with them wanting hardcore pvp, they can get hardcore pvp without having to ruin it for others, but they want to be able to take it out on others, to cause them to loose stuff.
You will find them in all games and on many forum's, ingame they are the ones who general kill noobs or others, camp gate's, corpsecamp and so on, because it's the only way they get a rise, by pissing off others.
On forum's they are the ones talking about carebears and hardcore pvp and such.
In real life they are the pasty faced little 12 year old nerds that have been teased in school or the wanna-be hardcore kid that don't have the balls in real life to stand up for themselves
Lack of accountability gives you the choice of acting like a dirtbag, but there's nobody making you be a dirtbag.
I think a major contributing factor is the decrease in the power of the written word, and the more apocalyptic nature of society; that is to say, our voices are now only heard if we are more extreme.
How many times have you read a moderate argument on a political forum? Not many, I'm sure, yet I'm sure most of the people in the world would classify themselves as political moderates. Many people believe, and rightly so, that the best way to get out their beliefs is to come across as angry, antagonistic and extreme.
I think that this concept of extremism as a more effective vehicle for thought combined with the lack of accountability contributes to this phenomenon.
Originally posted by bhagamu Lack of accountability gives you the choice of acting like a dirtbag, but there's nobody making you be a dirtbag.
I think a major contributing factor is the decrease in the power of the written word, and the more apocalyptic nature of society; that is to say, our voices are now only heard if we are more extreme.
How many times have you read a moderate argument on a political forum? Not many, I'm sure, yet I'm sure most of the people in the world would classify themselves as political moderates. Many people believe, and rightly so, that the best way to get out their beliefs is to come across as angry, antagonistic and extreme.
I think that this concept of extremism as a more effective vehicle for thought combined with the lack of accountability contributes to this phenomenon.
I really don't see how you could say there's a decrease in the power of the written word, quite the contrary we're now dealing almost exclusively with written words. As to an apocalyptic society this has been the nature of society for thousands of years, not just recent.
People have obsessed about the end of the world probably since they first came up with the concept of an ending. Every generation spawns it's own groups who either look at everything as an omen of the end from a bottle being tossed from a plane (watch the movie The Gods Must be Crazy) to period wars. We've had so many fingers pointing at every leader throughout history as being the Antichrist that (to me) it's nothing more than a bad joke now.
As to politics, I'd really love for you to point to me any time in the history of the world when political discussions were moderate. Political and religious ideologies have always brought out the worst in people, beatings, riots, wars, even in the few areas on this planet where people have the same beliefs they wind up at each others throats over minor interpretations. Extremism is in no way a more effective way of getting a point across, all that does is create more and more people opposed to an idea.
It's also a good vehicle for a single person to maneuver thier self into a position of power. If you take a good look at most extremist groups it's usually a small cadre of older leaders who hide away while they send the young and gullible out to die. Many times these "leaders" are nothing but the children of the rich who have been abusing their power and are in danger of being dragged down and slain by the poor. They set themselves up as "rebels" and in doing so secure their place in the same seats of power they claimed to protect the poor from, then go about doing the same thing all over again abusing others to keep their seat.
One problem that has arisen over the years in games is the proliferation of griefers who use race and/or politics to cover their cheating and griefing. While I can understand some people advertising their nationality within a game due to their desire to be around people who speak the same language or have a common experience more and more I'm seeing groups causing troubles and then trying to claim discrimination when the community rises against them. This gets very nasty on both sides. I've met people within these games from these various countries who are decent honorable players who want nothing more than we all do, a good game and some intelligent people to talk to. They get dragged into these messes and even banned just because of their nationality even when they do all they can to report and end these abuses.
The other side of the coin is the community winds up very biased against people of those nationalities, it's a sucker trap and people just walk blindly into it everytime. In my view any group who tries to use religion or nationalism to browbeat other players should be immediately removed from a game. I do not mean that every person from that country or ideology should be targeted but just those who are trying to use it (usually it starts with one or two guilds). If it's nipped in the bud it can be controlled, if a company tries to ignore it and be "politically correct" it will always wind up getting way out of hand and destroy the community.
I think it's becuase that some people feel safer talking crap behind a PC rather than in the face. Taking their anger out on the net rather than handeling it in the real world. People like these usually have serious problems. There could be meany reasons, but I like that you think about this, becuase I do every now and then.
Originally posted by chlaos This is a serious question that I have been wondering about for years. What is it about internet mesage boards or even live games, that seems to bring out the very worst in people. To a large degree you have people that are relatively palatable in normal life becoming complete pricks on the net. But what changes basically good people into jerks? Is it just the anonymity? Im sure thats part of it, but i dont think that is all. Is it the ability to step out of yourself and be someone else? Or maybe the chance to be your real self without any consequences? Regardless, why cant we all just be ourselvs"
It's because half of these little 15 year old losers who like to talk junk over their computers wouldn't even let out a peep in person.
Comments
Enter, the individualistic society.
(a): I need help. Nobody helps me. So I won't help anyone.
(b): I need help. Maybe (a) will help me. No, he doesn't help anyone. I won't help anyone either.
(c): I need help. Maybe (a) or (b) will help me. No, they don't help anyone.
...
(z): I need help. Nobody helps anyone, so I'll help myself.
This behaviour can easily be modeled in mathematical terms. Each person has an 0.5 chance of helping others. But, depending on outside factors, this value is slightly biased between 0.4999999 and 0.50000001. But since there's so many people in society, this quickly adds up. If each person is confronted with 1 such decision daily, in a society of several million this bias will quickly rise to 0.6, 0.7 or even highers, causing entire society to become either helpful or unhelpful.
The rate of this change is directly proportional to feedback. When training neural nets, you establish an artifical feedback loop, that feeds the data you define as "right" and "wrong". After putting the net through 1 million or so cycles, the neural net has "learned" to distinguish these on its own. Neural nets are modeled after the way human brain works, so it's a very good aproximation of human behaviour.
But in real life you cannot make 1 million cycles. In many cases, you will only have several cycles upon which you must base what is right and wrong. This allows for random deviations to propagate.
In addition, the feedback in real world is not immediate, if it exists at all. For every action you perform, it may take hours, days, or even years, to get some feedback on how you did. And that is only if you can correlate the feedback you received with your original action.
This results in a very unreliable and mostly undeterministic perception of ones action. This is why people trust instincts more than facts. Bringing us back to square one, that the human is essentially a glorified beast, driven by the most basic of their instincts.
Ok I dont mind reading, but math is not an option....LOL.... In regards to your last sentence though, I will add that yes we are driven by our most basic of instincts, but that doesnt mean we have to be ruled by them....
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Enter, the individualistic society.
(a): I need help. Nobody helps me. So I won't help anyone.
(b): I need help. Maybe (a) will help me. No, he doesn't help anyone. I won't help anyone either.
(c): I need help. Maybe (a) or (b) will help me. No, they don't help anyone.
...
(z): I need help. Nobody helps anyone, so I'll help myself.
This behaviour can easily be modeled in mathematical terms. Each person has an 0.5 chance of helping others. But, depending on outside factors, this value is slightly biased between 0.4999999 and 0.50000001. But since there's so many people in society, this quickly adds up. If each person is confronted with 1 such decision daily, in a society of several million this bias will quickly rise to 0.6, 0.7 or even highers, causing entire society to become either helpful or unhelpful.
The rate of this change is directly proportional to feedback. When training neural nets, you establish an artifical feedback loop, that feeds the data you define as "right" and "wrong". After putting the net through 1 million or so cycles, the neural net has "learned" to distinguish these on its own. Neural nets are modeled after the way human brain works, so it's a very good aproximation of human behaviour.
But in real life you cannot make 1 million cycles. In many cases, you will only have several cycles upon which you must base what is right and wrong. This allows for random deviations to propagate.
In addition, the feedback in real world is not immediate, if it exists at all. For every action you perform, it may take hours, days, or even years, to get some feedback on how you did. And that is only if you can correlate the feedback you received with your original action.
This results in a very unreliable and mostly undeterministic perception of ones action. This is why people trust instincts more than facts. Bringing us back to square one, that the human is essentially a glorified beast, driven by the most basic of their instincts.
Ok I dont mind reading, but math is not an option....LOL.... In regards to your last sentence though, I will add that yes we are driven by our most basic of instincts, but that doesnt mean we have to be ruled by them....
So true chlaos. I don't think that any true moralist would say that rightness and wrongness have much to do with how popular or unpopular we are. A lot of gamers think they do, both in terms of playing games, and using game theory to model behavior.
I have little doubt that behavior can be modeled in neat "if/then" causality, given of course that you assume that there is no will, or inherent beliefs that are unique to the subject. It is what behaviorists try and do with their models, but the things they teach are both descriptive, and perscriptive. They describe a world where human beings are just fleshy computers following some programming, and then perscribe that we disassemble and unplug them when their programming becomes unproductive, or not useful.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
@jrscott (In lieu of using full quotes, filling up the pages with repeats) Yes we are agreeing in our arguments about parents, the part I didn't fully agree with was
"What you seem to fail to realize is that a child's mind and neural pathways are still developing and are less capable of distinguishing between reality and virtual. Exposure to some of the actions described in games, TV, and music can and will be used to establish the neural pathways these people will have to live with for the rest of their lives. It has nothing to do with willpower. It has to do with Biochemical patterns etched into your brain forever."
I should explain a bit, it's not only her but myself, I was raised in violence. Race riots in the street, Vietnam on TV and relatives fighting there, daily beatings at home, daily fights in school and the neighborhood (I lived in a mostly pro nazi neighborhood, while I may be white I disagreed with their beliefs about other races and this resulted in a lot of fights). At heart I am a peaceful man, I rejected all that violence of my own accord. I studied history and world religions trying to make sense of what I saw as a world based on a culture of violence (oddly enough even my study of WWII got me branded as a nazi by one teacher who beat me while two other history teachers had me teach their classes). It was the study of martial arts (this was before Kung Fu made martial arts popular) and eastern religions that allowed me to contain and control my own rage.
Any man or woman is capable of rising above their situation, I am nothing special so anyone can do it. It just takes a bit of will and one thought, "Is this how I would want my child to be raised?". I have no children of my own, my wife can't have any due to medical reasons, but I was given the chance to help raise one child, and she's a sweetheart.
@chlaos I have you penciled in for one argument with God and Satan, would you prefer to keep it denominational or should I schedule a mix of other deities too?
As to the Trolls, there's good trolls and there's bad trolls, I know the kind you mean and I agree but I myself often troll boards on games to offer tech help to players, find interesting arguments (like this string), and slap around doomsayers
µV
I certainly dont want to come off holier than thou in this thread. I am guilty of many of the things I rail against in this thread. In fact, my motivation for starting it wasnt someone else's nasty post, but rather wondering why I behaved so much differently than in real life. I just found the obvious anonymity/no consequences answer too shallow, but then again quite often the simplest answer is the correct one and I am probably way over analyzing things (as usual). Perhaps it is just the lowering of inhibitions that occurs from those factors, and for me with too much alcohol as well.....LOL
Oh and cool pic...
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
I really don't think you could over analyze this particular issue, there's no one solid reason for all, just generalizations. For some people it's an on and off thing, bad day at the office/school/home/alien ship "probing" your neighborhood. Sometimes it's just too many griefers ruining your game and you snap and go a lil crazy
and bite the head off some poor unsuspecting newbie who accidentally KSes you.
Many are pros at it though, they want nothing more out of a game than to make someone's life miserable. Part of it could be the "Little Wee Wee Factor" after all their johnson's only like 1 pixel long in the game.
Personally, I think there's one missing peripheral needed for online gaming, a mechanical arm that can pop out of the keyboard and slap some smartarse upside their head, that or USB Taser.
The only other option is a hard one to maintain, I use to GM The 4th Coming for jungleii.com (the game there is now long closed) They had a policy of actually calling people to confirm their accounts. It was slow and hard to maintain but we did have some of the best behaved players I've ever seen in my years of gaming. I know it's a bit unrealistic for most mmorpgs due to the sheer volume of players but that kind of accountability really made a big difference.
Games also need a good crew running them, a good sysop who actually takes part in the game (company owners and Devs for betas) and a good group of GMs can go a long way to keeping a game running smooth and peaceful (where it should be peaceful that is). I've seen few games where the owners took part, those that did were always more fun and players better informed. The GM issue is another deal altogether, finding a good crew who don't let it go to their heads and do their job isn't easy. Many people turn into ego-monkies and/or favor certian people/guilds over others. This can also turn the general population into buttmonkies. I had the chance to work for some really great people, and with a hand picked crew that did an outstanding job, it really does make a difference.
µV
Scammers were kept in check, e-Bayers had hard time finding company, yet accounts shared among friends were accepted based on players. Leet kiddies existed, but once again couldn't dominate. The overall structure of gameplay established rules which were enforced passively.
As all societies, this one wasn't picture perfect and incidents did occur. But to most, the shift in socially accepted behaviour brought upon with NGE (which to this day is incredibly obvious) was what drove them away.
Unlike most existing and upcoming products, which tend to minimize social contact, SWG enforced it by design. While that did bring many issues, it also brought many good sides, which is why the SWG society evolved as it did, well above and beyond the game.
It is this why NGE comes through as a complete failure. By killing off the society and social constructs, the world became exposed for a game that it is. And the game was never that good, let alone perfect.
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Scammers were kept in check, e-Bayers had hard time finding company, yet accounts shared among friends were accepted based on players. Leet kiddies existed, but once again couldn't dominate. The overall structure of gameplay established rules which were enforced passively.
As all societies, this one wasn't picture perfect and incidents did occur. But to most, the shift in socially accepted behaviour brought upon with NGE (which to this day is incredibly obvious) was what drove them away.
Unlike most existing and upcoming products, which tend to minimize social contact, SWG enforced it by design. While that did bring many issues, it also brought many good sides, which is why the SWG society evolved as it did, well above and beyond the game.
It is this why NGE comes through as a complete failure. By killing off the society and social constructs, the world became exposed for a game that it is. And the game was never that good, let alone perfect.
Very true, while we had some malcontents come through like any game does, the interdependecy and close knit nature of the servers actually did a pretty good job of policing really bad behavior or at least extended bouts of bad behavior.
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
OMg....u get it. Im goin to have to get serious again (ive been very out of sorts tonit).... But i think i may have actually found someone who understands my point.... /bravo friend /bravo
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Also, I think a lot of people just want to vent their frustrations with other aspects of life onto the internet. And hey! It's probably a pretty good place to vent ones frustrations, seeing how impersonal people take insults on the internet, and how used to ignoring these people we quickly become.
I think we might be blowing this out of proportion anyways. Theres lots of good people on the internet. Its just that in gaming, and obviously we are all interested in MMORPGs here, one bad egg can often ruin the experience for many many people. Games that have large group raids and big events that rely on cooperation are bound to attract jerks, seeing how its so much easier to ruin a persons fun in a game than it is in real life.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
Nononononnnnnoo! Can't do that! I would not resist the urge to flirt if I could get away with it....
would ruin my image of being a grump!
The best way to find out person's character, is to see what they're willing to do when they KNOW they can't get caught.
That's a very good point. Seeing how responsible, polite, etc. somebody is when there are minimal consequences for their actions is a good test as to what type of person they really are.
I think the reason change when they are online is that we all wear masks every day, noone shows their true selves on a daily basis, not even to friends, family or loved ones.
How often have you wanted to tell your bf/gf to shut up and let you play ?, but not done for fear of the consequences.
Fear of consequences is what keeps our society how it is, it's the structure that our civilization is built on.
What prevents people from taking what they want ?, it's fear of what will happen if they do, from the "owners", from the cop's, from the law.
What prevents people from being prick's in rl ??, because you risk getting a punch in the mouth or worse.
So it's not so much that it brings out the worst in peeps, it brings out all the frustration that you have to hide in real life.
Now insted of behind and only lashing out when seriously provoked they will last out at anything and also vent their general frustration, maybe living out some "fantasies"
It's often also the reason behind the "hardcore PVP players", it has nothing to do with them wanting hardcore pvp, they can get hardcore pvp without having to ruin it for others, but they want to be able to take it out on others, to cause them to loose stuff.
You will find them in all games and on many forum's, ingame they are the ones who general kill noobs or others, camp gate's, corpsecamp and so on, because it's the only way they get a rise, by pissing off others.
On forum's they are the ones talking about carebears and hardcore pvp and such.
In real life they are the pasty faced little 12 year old nerds that have been teased in school or the wanna-be hardcore kid that don't have the balls in real life to stand up for themselves
µV
Lack of accountability gives you the choice of acting like a dirtbag, but there's nobody making you be a dirtbag.
I think a major contributing factor is the decrease in the power of the written word, and the more apocalyptic nature of society; that is to say, our voices are now only heard if we are more extreme.
How many times have you read a moderate argument on a political forum? Not many, I'm sure, yet I'm sure most of the people in the world would classify themselves as political moderates. Many people believe, and rightly so, that the best way to get out their beliefs is to come across as angry, antagonistic and extreme.
I think that this concept of extremism as a more effective vehicle for thought combined with the lack of accountability contributes to this phenomenon.
www.draftgore.com
Gore '08
---------------------------------------------
Don't click here...no2
µV
-In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08-
|
RISING DRAGOON ~AION US ONLINE LEGION for Elyos