The philosopher’s version of Godwin’s law:
As a philosophy discussion grows longer, the probability of someone asking, “but what is reality?” approaches one.
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My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things.
A similar rule for my philosophy class in first year was that the first to bring up Hitler in an argument as an example loses the debate by default!
I note that Bartle also talked about “time to cock”, where the probability was also 1; it was just a matter of time, which I think he said was often mili-seconds.
Daniel – did you click on the link to Godwin’s Law before you posted? Heh heh.
Ren – yes, I did mention that. It’s not my phrase, it’s someone else’s, but I don’t recall whose. Also, the “cock” part is frequently replaced by other names for male genitalia. It’s always milliseconds or nanoseconds, though…
Richard
Well… but what is reality? ;-)
…maybe reality is the ground of all metaphysics, this beautiful concept that philosophers have been dwelling for over 2k years… and nowadays due to uncountable digital experiences in everyday life it seems to be the time to rethink it all over again…
Yara, it is hard get back on that comment.
What is the rethink that you see?
@Jesper: You are perfectly right about this. BUT: who are the ones asking? Philosophers? I guess not… The problem with any discipline is that people like the way not the goal (because there is usually more way to be had than goal). Philosophers prefer thinking and talking from finding wisdom. Insights are often a biproduct. Most of the true philosophers at the conference had a hard time finding a convincing answer to the question “What do you want to do with this?” This gets even worse of philosophers frame their arguments in philosopher speak. :)
@Daniel: Hitler is a two-fold thing to refer to. On the one hand it is a clear example of what hybris/megalomania can do to people (in the two senses of the English word). On the other hand it can be a clishee frequently abused to make arguments more important.
@Yara: From my pov one part of reality is the patterns of neural connections representing sensual information gathered by exposition to “the world around us”. Which means there is lots of things that differ between people, because – technically – no two bodies can be at the same place at the same time. Apart from that the construction of our brain allows for simple kinds of logical or intellectual categories if you will like cause and effect and negation. Those are built into the brain structure and are hard to overcome.
Coming back to the original question, a philosopher’s happiness is the petting of patterns and the finding of patterns, not finding solutions to problems. Unfortunately, this is what most other people are interested in. ;)
@yara: Jean Baudrillard has some things to say about reality and simulacra, with particular attention to electronic media, in “Simulacra and Simulations”. I also find interesting commentary from Marshall McLuhan in “Understanding Media”, though it’s not to everyone’s taste. Finally as a way of getting back to Ludology I’m also keen on a form of enactive phenomenology as a way of understanding the player’s experience, from which I began with Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception”. As far as biology goes, there are nice connections with the notions of the post-human and cyborgs – see N. Katherine Hayles “How We Became Posthuman” and Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”.
I wrote about these topics in my MA thesis, “Embodied Evil – The Aesthetics of Embodiment in Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition” and am writing this up into a paper for publication later on this year.
It’s 70 pages long and not terribly well written so you might want to wait for the 12 page paper, but here’s the masters piece:
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/gw43/publications/White,%20Gareth.%20Embodied%20Evil%20-%20The%20Aesthetics%20of%20Embodiment%20in%20Resident%20Evil%204-%20Wii%20Edition.pdf
@Gareth R. White: Always check URLs before posting!
Here’s the correction:
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/gw43/publications/White,%20Gareth%20R.%20Embodied%20Evil%20-%20The%20Aesthetics%20of%20Embodiment%20in%20Resident%20Evil%204-%20Wii%20Edition.pdf
A similar phenomenon can be found by WoW players;
“As Barrens Chat grows longer, the probability of someone referencing “Chuck Norris” approaches one.”
Often this makes me wonder why MMO’s sometimes limit the number of other players one can ‘ignore’.
-ben