maraki
Member
The second part of the ethics discussion garnered much more sophisticated responses. Which is interesting. Evolution?
It occurs to me though that if the discussion (about ethics) is going to continue, we need to take a step back. To what academics call metaethics. What is the beginning of ethics?
My mentor used to ask me, "On what do you base everything? What is the thing that underpins everything you believe? etc Reason? God? Self-interest? Nature?"
I said, like Rand, "Nature."
But what really underpins all of this is a Humean question: "Is there a RL?"
The best responses so far have targeted (to my surprise) this notion that digital socializing is somewhat irrelevant compared to RL. But what is RL?
I'll preface this by saying that my entire philosophy is based on the idea that there is a tangible world and that everything that makes us better is related to the relationship we have mentally with this tangible world. The mistake made in post-modernity is that we miss this. With that said, Hume's argument is interesting.
No RL can be proven because our interaction with "things" is actually just our interaction with our own thoughts about "things." We don't have direct access to "things," he claims at a lot more length than I am doing here. He follows this up with an explanation. The reason we get tricked into thinking our thoughts are about real "things" is because we have formed habits about doing these things. Actually Barkeley came up with this in its most basic outline. Hume wanted to add that our own "self" was also doubtful.
What does this have to do with our MMO?
Easy. The post-modernists (descendents of Hume, or at least descendents of his subjectivty) want to suggest that (due to this subjectivity) our minds invent reality. If enough time is spent in a "reality"it becomes what we call "real" in the same way that the RL is assumed to be real. The simulacra of Wow is more real than the real. THIS is why the drug dealer in The Matrix is holding a CD or book when Neo knocks on his door. This book is clearly titled "Simulation and Simulacra." It is a reference to Baudrillard and his concept that (maybe after some time) the fake becomes the real, the simulation becomes the tangible, etc.
So the case can be made that what we do in Wow is more important than in RL. It reflects more on how our mind works and where we are headed in terms of belief and ethics than, say, the stupid things we do at our job at Burger King (the people who left dumb comments on my posts no doubt) or at the law firm (the better responses).
It occurs to me though that if the discussion (about ethics) is going to continue, we need to take a step back. To what academics call metaethics. What is the beginning of ethics?
My mentor used to ask me, "On what do you base everything? What is the thing that underpins everything you believe? etc Reason? God? Self-interest? Nature?"
I said, like Rand, "Nature."
But what really underpins all of this is a Humean question: "Is there a RL?"
The best responses so far have targeted (to my surprise) this notion that digital socializing is somewhat irrelevant compared to RL. But what is RL?
I'll preface this by saying that my entire philosophy is based on the idea that there is a tangible world and that everything that makes us better is related to the relationship we have mentally with this tangible world. The mistake made in post-modernity is that we miss this. With that said, Hume's argument is interesting.
No RL can be proven because our interaction with "things" is actually just our interaction with our own thoughts about "things." We don't have direct access to "things," he claims at a lot more length than I am doing here. He follows this up with an explanation. The reason we get tricked into thinking our thoughts are about real "things" is because we have formed habits about doing these things. Actually Barkeley came up with this in its most basic outline. Hume wanted to add that our own "self" was also doubtful.
What does this have to do with our MMO?
Easy. The post-modernists (descendents of Hume, or at least descendents of his subjectivty) want to suggest that (due to this subjectivity) our minds invent reality. If enough time is spent in a "reality"it becomes what we call "real" in the same way that the RL is assumed to be real. The simulacra of Wow is more real than the real. THIS is why the drug dealer in The Matrix is holding a CD or book when Neo knocks on his door. This book is clearly titled "Simulation and Simulacra." It is a reference to Baudrillard and his concept that (maybe after some time) the fake becomes the real, the simulation becomes the tangible, etc.
So the case can be made that what we do in Wow is more important than in RL. It reflects more on how our mind works and where we are headed in terms of belief and ethics than, say, the stupid things we do at our job at Burger King (the people who left dumb comments on my posts no doubt) or at the law firm (the better responses).
