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<H1>RE: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</H1>
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<LI><em>To</em>: "'<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>'" <<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Subject</em>: RE: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</LI>
<LI><em>From</em>: "Geoffrey A. MacDougall" <<A HREF="mailto:geoffrey#poptronik,com">geoffrey#poptronik,com</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Date</em>: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 23:43:03 -0500</LI>
<LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
<LI><em>Sender</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev-admin#kanga,nu">mud-dev-admin#kanga,nu</A></LI>
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<ADDRESS>Title: <STRONG>RE: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</STRONG></ADDRESS>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I'd like to preface this posting with the qualifying statement that my background is in political theory, and I am therefore want to find this stuff overwhelmingly interesting. :)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Ola wrote:</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> That is one of the weaknesses of democracy. Rather stable, </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> but incapable</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> of changing, and when something changes it does so in a </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> rather slow and</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>> inefficient manner.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Actually, that is a strength of democracy, not a weakness. In fact, most western democracies are designed to render the process of implementing fundamental change as slow and as cumbersome as possible. Reason being that it limits any one group's ability to implement change before there has been adequate time to scrutinize those changes from every possible perspective, i.e., the dialectical process. The US is a prime example. The Canadian system, through the use of "party whips", is more susceptible to the tyranny of the majority. (I am Canadian, btw.)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Authoritative systems are the most agile - but not always the in the right ways. </FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Having said this, however, I think it is also important to acknowledge that value judgements pertaining to strengths and weaknesses are highly context specific. It all depends upon what it is you are trying to achieve.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I won't go into further detail because these points have already been touched upon earlier in this thread...</FONT>
</P>
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Matt wrote:</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>Further, beneficial to WHICH players? I think you'd have</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>a hard time finding ANY wide-spread program that is beneficial to all the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>players (or citizens in a democracy). And again, define beneficial. Is</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>giving money to the poor beneficial to them? Not such an easy question to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>answer.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>That's because it's not up to the provider to answer the question. It's up to the receiver to decide for themselves, and a good system design will accomodate both positive and negative responses.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>>If you are truly concerned about the players, then shut down your</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>mud and urge them to go do things that will more efficiently improve their</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>lives. I, for one, am not convined that the players spending thousands of</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>dollars to play my game are truly benefiting. They are enjoying</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>themselves, but frankly, I suspect that they would benefit more in the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>long run from doing other things with the money and time. </FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I believe social interaction to be a benefit in and of itself. And in accordance with my previous point, if your players believe themselves to be better off, then they are. If you don't agree with their decision, then any responsibility you have to them begins, but also ends, with informing them that there _are_ alternatives. Any other course of action would imply that you do not believe your players to have the same capacity for decision making as you do.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>>The search for a single system of</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>beliefs that is best for everyone is futile.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I wholeheartedly agree. But implicit in that statement is a belief that leads to a specific and universally applicable conclusion about a preferred course of action, and is therefore subject to dismissal by its own logic.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>>Isaiah Berlin wrote an</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>excellent essay on this called 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' in which he</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>talks about how most ethical thinkers throughout time have implicitly (and</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>without good reason) assumed that if only certainy could be established in</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>our knowledgeof the external world by rational methods, then surely the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>same methods would yield equal certainty when we speak of human behavior</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>-- what we should be, and how we should live.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I like this point because it reaffirms my own assertion that there is no such thing (beyond basic animal instinct) as human nature - and therefore any attempts to design systems around premises such as "humans are basically greedy" are doomed to failure.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>>I'm not a Christian, and I don't believe in God. I think the entire</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>concept of natural rights is a joke. So where do these rights derive</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>from? Your arguments, it seems to me, presuppose that the Christian</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>ethical structure is right, and that is entirely as arbitrary as any other</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>system of ethics.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I am also an atheist, but I *do* believe in rights..."rights" (in accordance with Dworkin's position) as trump cards against the will of government. Government, in this case, representing a group that is empowered by its citizens to act on their behalf. Rights - and I mean civil rights - stem not from God, but from the Social Contract that one accepts by the act of affirming citizenship to any given country - or, for country, read MUD. By accepting the social contract, you do not gain the right to perform certain actions, but the right to be protected from others wishing to perform acts upon you.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Therefore, to answer the question "So where do these rights derive from?" - They derive from the body populace of any given society. They are self-imposed and self-affirmed. There is no need for an external power. People grant rights to themselves.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>The nature of rights, therefore, has a fundamental and implicit contradition that renders them difficult to understand. A right is an inalienable power that I grant to someone else to stop me from doing something. If I grant it, how can it be inalienable? And how does any of this relate to the discussion? :)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Well... The point I'd like to make is that rights are not set in stone. They are a function of the needs and beliefs of the society from which they originate. Therefore, if a MUD player base acknowledges a right, then they have a right. End of story. These rights, therefore, can be different for every MUD. You don't need to get into abstract discussions of rw vs vw legal jurisdiction. If the MUD community says it is, it is. That's their social contract. If a player base says that people cannot be banned, then people have the right not to be banned.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>This is all assuming, of course, that the admins choose to honour the wishes of their players - and that depends upon whether or not admins consider themselves to be a part of the community. If they are, then they have to respect the rights of the players, if they aren't, then who cares...</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Basically, if a player understands the conditions under which they surrender their personal freedom to the government of a MUD, then all's fair.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>>Unlike in real life, where escaping</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>oppression is hard, it is easy to escape oppression in a mud. Just</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>>leave.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>A number of leading thinkers in this field have already addressed this point, so I'll simply paraphrase. Leaving an oppressive rw or vw scenario requires an individual to sacrifice, among other things, their social network. If more people were willing to desert their families and friends, there would be less oppressive rw environments. The value most people place upon meaningful social interaction is what causes them to remain. And assuming rw and vw social interaction are equally rewarding, you have your answer as to why people are not free to "just leave" a MUD.</FONT></P>
<BR>
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Some thoughts...</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Cheers,</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Geoffrey</FONT>
</P>
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<ul><li>Thread context:
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<LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM>
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<LI><strong><A NAME="00199" HREF="msg00199.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Matthew Mihaly <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Fri 21 Jan 2000, 04:37 GMT
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<LI><strong><A NAME="00189" HREF="msg00189.html">Re: Re[2]: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Rahul Sinha <a href="mailto:rsinha#glue,umd.edu">rsinha#glue,umd.edu</a>, Thu 20 Jan 2000, 23:42 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00191" HREF="msg00191.html">Re: Re[2]: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Matthew Mihaly <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Fri 21 Jan 2000, 02:24 GMT
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<LI><strong><A NAME="00172" HREF="msg00172.html">RE: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Matthew Mihaly <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Thu 20 Jan 2000, 02:34 GMT
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<LI><strong><A NAME="00177" HREF="msg00177.html">RE: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Geoffrey A. MacDougall <a href="mailto:geoffrey#poptronik,com">geoffrey#poptronik,com</a>, Thu 20 Jan 2000, 05:59 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00198" HREF="msg00198.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Fri 21 Jan 2000, 03:52 GMT
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<LI><strong><A NAME="00203" HREF="msg00203.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Matthew Mihaly <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Fri 21 Jan 2000, 04:51 GMT
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<LI><strong><A NAME="00205" HREF="msg00205.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Fri 21 Jan 2000, 06:37 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00208" HREF="msg00208.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Community Relations</A></strong>,
Matthew Mihaly <a href="mailto:diablo#best,com">diablo#best,com</a>, Fri 21 Jan 2000, 07:16 GMT
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