Comments on: More Broadswords, Less Crime?

By: cw

cw — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 19:03:21 +0000

sigivald: I said “social scientist,” not enviromentalists. Theoretically, social scientists could create games with rules that mirrored present society (which might be tricky, yes, but maybe not so much). Then once that was working, they could tweek the rules. The could give everyone guns, they could create a total socialist nanny state, they could make all males wear hats. Then they they just sit back and watch what happens. Rats in a maze, really. You don’t even have to create a complete mirror societ, you only have to design games that deal with a certain area of behavior. It seems like there’s lots of things to learn. If nothing else this is a good starting point for a SF novel.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 23:26:03 +0000

2nd Amendment and rule of law. A lot of the 2nd Amendment advocates seem to assume that the rule of law has broken down, or will. The intensity of committment to the Second Amendment seems proportional to the intensity of fear of lawlessness. And there sometimes seems to be a rather anarchic preference for self-protection to protection by the state. I personally would feel much better unarmed in a peaceful, well-governed state than I would armed in the US. But the people I’m thinking of really want that gun in their hands. Basically I was writing about the 2nd Amendment advocates I run into, not the 2nd Amendment itself.

By: Sigivald

Sigivald — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 20:45:13 +0000

Zizka: You seem to forget that second amendment thought in the US (at least as regards self-defense and “equalising”) is based on the existence of the rule of law, and is thus not strictly comparable with an anarchic tribal conflict (state of nature, more or less). cw: What kind of data will environmentalists collect from simulations? It seems to me that all they can do (and what they do now with computers) is test their models. The problem with using computer simulation (involving people or otherwise) to model the environment is that your results are only as good as the model – which is why they test models against real-world collected data. The data one might collect from a simulation involving, for example, people’s choices that affect the environment in the simulation, will be coloured (probably to the point of uselessness) by both the terms of the simulation and the fact that they know it’s a simulation… much like MMORPG PKing doesn’t act like real-world murder or war.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 18:07:22 +0000

MMORPGs are more like the highways than anything else. People cut each other off if there is no way for the ones cut off to respond/retaliate. Games like UO and EQ (which I do play) value player’s reputations because that ultimately is what prevents (or at the least slows them dow) players from being jerks to each other. The vast majority of EQ players do not play where they can PvP (kill) each other, yet the consequences of being a jerk can still ruin an evenings play time for up to 80 players. For those of you thinking about simulating different rules/laws, to do so, make it so that players have 1 and only 1 avatar in the game. That way if a person ruins their reputation, there is no way to hide behind some other avatar. Current versions of EQ and UO can model some economic principles, but waving your arms and translating these games to support positions on gun ownership is severe selective amnesia. In real life (meat space if you will), there are consequences for your actions. In the online games, there is a major disconnect. Similar to the disconnect that younger drivers in the US seem to get (my hypothesis suggests that as one gets older, one has less to prove to random strangers and more of a desire to avoid the hassles of insurance/legal paperwork).

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 16:29:31 +0000

Russell—I hope you mean doves as in birds. Jane—What liberal is opposed to stiff penalties for murder? If there’s a “liberal” stance on crime, it probably has to do with attempting to address root causes—which doesn’t seem like it’s tested in UO. (Disclosure: I agree with zizka that the number of guns already out here provides a good argument against gun control in the U.S.)

By: james

james — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 16:25:22 +0000

There are a number of second amendment advocates who simply see a slippery slope. First automatic weapons, then handguns, then riffles, then no guns and a loss of a constitutional right. First hate speech laws, then free speech zones, … loss of freedom of speech and a constitutional right. Losing one constitutional right increases the risks of losing them all.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 15:42:54 +0000

In the Middle East (actually Morocco, I think, from Gellner) clans are military units and are quantified in rifles, i.e. 50 adult males is 50 rifles. The 200-rifle clans bully the 50-rifle clans. The rugged independence you supposedly get by arming yourself disappears. I think that it’s really only a transitional advantage; person x armed is safer than person x unarmed, as long as everyone isn’t armed; but x might be better off unarmed if nobody is unarmed. A good argument against gun control in the immediate future is the number of guns already out there. This isn’t a general argument though. By and large I find second-amendment advocates to be addicted to special pleading and fake statistics, and in many cases I suspect, besides dogmatic political affiliation, personal issues. (But don’t shoot me!)

By: cw

cw — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 15:16:49 +0000

More on social scientist designing games to test/observe human behavior. It occured to me later that computer games would ideal evnvironments for collecting data as well. Every move could be recorded, quantified. The data base would be created and could be interpreted in real time. The more I think about it the more obvious it seems.

By: Jane Galt

Jane Galt — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 15:08:01 +0000

Let me put it this way: trying to prove that libertarianism is wrong because anarcho-capitalism doesn’t work is like trying to prove that social democracy doesn’t work because communism failed. dsquared, your point is true, but not interesting, since we don’t have the power to rewrite the physical laws of the universe to prevent people from killing others. The assumption that laws banning the ownership of weapons is substantially the same as making it physically impossible to use those weapons to kill others reveals, in my opinion, exactly what is wrong with the thinking at the heart of the gun control movement.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 07:12:19 +0000

My understanding of usage today is that “libertarianism” is minarchism and “anarcho-capitalism” is something close to what David Friedman believes. Someone did a bit on the economics of these games on SSRN, though I must say I found it pretty terrible: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828

By: Russell L. Carter

Russell L. Carter — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 06:15:01 +0000

Hi reg, What about surprise? How do guns make a difference when the main problem is the gun pointed at you? How do you ‘equalize’ that? The fatal presumption people with little or no experience with the real act of killing reveal when it comes to debates on guns as safety aids is: they don’t understand the meaning of surprise. Now I out myself. I only killed and cooked 13 doves this season. Every last one of them was surprised. In view of these facts, this is positively silly: “In the real world, guns make everybody equal. Sure the rich can hire bodyguards, and better protection, but its not the same as being untouchable to nearly everybody. Guns are democratic, a great equalizer, no matter who the person is, that person is in no better or worse position than any other person with a gun”

By: Reg

Reg — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 05:56:30 +0000

“The massive disparities in both abilities and power look just like real life to me.” The gameworld allows people to become so powerful that they are untouchable by all but the other elites. Some level 99 wizard doesn’t need to worry unless he is ganged up on or some other superhigh level character attacks him. In the real world, guns make everybody equal. Sure the rich can hire bodyguards, and better protection, but its not the same as being untouchable to nearly everybody. Guns are democratic, a great equalizer, no matter who the person is, that person is in no better or worse position than any other person with a gun. The gameworld is completely different. I’ve never played one where the weapons are basically equivalent and there is no advancement in strength.

By: Bradley Rhodes

Bradley Rhodes — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 05:55:48 +0000

Dark Age of Camelot went for a two-tiered approach that works fairly well. There’s no player-vs-player violence in the main part of the game, but as you go up in levels you’re encouraged to go to the “frontier” where you engage in combat with two other realms in team-vs-team combat. The three realms (loosly based on Britain, Ireland and Scandanavia) can’t communicate with eachother and the whole plotline pits them as bitter enemies, so it all fits into the game. A little less than a year ago there were enough requests to do a “let me kill anyone” version that they opened up two servers where they replaced realm-vs-realm with ad-hoc guild warfare, essentially kill anyone not in your immediate socal group. A few weeks ago they merged the two servers because not enough people were playing on them compared to the other 16 non player-vs-player servers.

By: cw

cw — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 04:25:36 +0000

It seems obvious to me that there is something valuable to be learned about human behavior from how the behave in virtual worlds. What is to be learned is how humans behave under a particular set of rules. It’s like each world is a separate experiment. In some form these games ask the question: “what happens when we put a human being in this or that situation?” I agree that you can’t extrapolate to the real worl with just antecdotal evidence, but with systematic study, I think you could come up with some interesting insights to human behavior. Theoretically, a group of social scientist could even set up their own games to test particualr theories. It may be the wave of the future.

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 03:42:09 +0000

“the fact that people are on such varying levels of ability and power make it completely unrealistic” What planet are you living on req? The massive disparities in both abilities and power look just like real life to me.