By way of introduction, I started SWG in beta 2, and quit in December of 2004 to play WoW. I have no comment on the NGE, because I've never played it.
In my opinion, Jedi were the downfall of SWG. The problem is that if you have a class which should be more powerful than all others, you have to make it very very difficult to get, and you have to have a limit on how many can do it. The path to Jedi was atrocious from the beginning. Mastering classes? That's no path to Jedi. Questing? That's no path to Jedi either.
Jedi, imo, should have been chosen by GMs specially hired to make other Jedi. They should have been extremely rare, and hunted by other players. During beta, we debated to no end exactly how Jedi would work -- and none of us came up with the absolutely mindless system that ended up in the game.
I don't think Raph's wrong philosophically. Player created content is the way all MMOs ultimately have to go -- there's just no way for a company to keep up with the amount of content that hardcore players consume. I just think his execution on Jedi was assinine.
An instance is a dungeon to which a limited number of people have access, but of which there may be many instances running at once. Take Molten Core, a 40 person instance. At most, you may have 40 people grouped together in a raid (8 groups of 5 people). I may in a group of 40 running the instance, while someone else is in another group of 40 running the instance. We will not interfere or even see one another.
Raid -- group of groups. A group contains 5 people at most. In order to join up with more than 5, you form a raid. The raid itself gives no inherent bonuses. It eases communication, and allows easier access to how other people are doing (in health or mana). At most, a raid may contain 8 groups.
So, a raid instance is an instance which requires a raid.
Some people dislike raids because of the requisite number of people required to experience the content. You have to get 40 relative competent people together at the same place at the same time and sustain the raid for several hours. Others like raids because the bosses are harder and the loot is better.
For smaller organizations, I think they are better served by getting a local resource that they can call for problems and that performs a checkup a few times a year just like that organization would do with legal and accounting services.
We have not, as you said, reached that point yet. I work for a "smaller" organization, and we have a terrible time finding support for OSS applications, even when we pay for it. No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's terribly frustrating to call someone for support and find out that their knowledge ends about the same time yours does.
The larger, national, support providers are our only option. Even were there local support providers, I do not necessary agree that would be a per se better solution. We use legal help from all over the country, depending on what we need and who's best for the job. Our accounting is done in house and locally, but many businesses of even small-medium size are using national accounting firms. It's a matter of efficiency and accountability -- those national firms can provide the services we need as cheaply / quickly / effectively as possible. They also are large enough that if there is a problem, they can bring extensive additional resources to bear.
There's further a generalized business efficiency argument in favor of using a specialized outside source: we should do our business, and hire someone else whose expert at providing the support. There's an overhead associated with having an IT department who can support any and all applications. If the business uses a relatively small number of applications, the benefit of a knowledgeable IT department is overwhealmingly positive. If, however, the business uses a wide variety of applications, it seems better for the IT department and the business that IT support the core, and an outside support group handles the esoteric, but important, 95% of the applications that get used only 5% of the time.
Techies often have a bad habit of adopting a sort of slippery-slope, sky-is-falling, all-or-nothing approach to problem solving (especially if it's a problem they don't really want to solve).
So true, and if I could mod you up, I would. You can excuse people to some extent, because oftentimes techies are required to solve problems that have an exceptionally small chance of occurring. At the same time, for most human endeavors, 99% accuracy / quality / effectiveness is close enough.
Moral discussion are NOT discussions of facts and reason has no baring on them. You can reason from moral axioms, but reason has no influence on what set of moral axioms you start with, and if two people differ in their moral starting points, no amount of logical discussion will make them see eye-to eye. The best they will get is to find out where they differ - the level of moral axioms.
I think, perhaps, that you misundertand what I said, Kitty. Cultural relativism provides no place to reason from, and that invalidates it, at least to my way of thinking. The axiom "Act A is right if sufficient people believe it's right" is not an equal to "Act A is right if it gives the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people".
Let's say you have a society of relativists and a society of utilitarians. The relativists, asked if A is right, cannot give an answer. They can only say that A is believed by group Y. The utilitarians can say A leads to happiness or destruction and therefore our society should engage in it.
Ethics (as defined in one of my other posts by Mariam-Webster or Reference.com) requires some guide to decide what is right. Relativism is no such guide -- utilitarianism, or Christianity, is. I myself am Christian and believe myself to be quite reasonable and logical (though this is slashdot, and that's considered a contradiction, I realize). Given what I believe is a base, I attempt to reason what is good for myself, and my family, and my country.
So perhaps you and I agree, only I was not as clear in my statement.
your infatuation with reason and logic is impotent against morality as it actually occurs in nature.
And perhaps we don't. I don't think logic and reason are impotent against morality as it actually occurs. That implies that no one could be pursuaded under any circumstances that utilitarianism leads to exploitation, or absolutism leads to intolerance. You appear to dislike Christianity based on your perception of the actions of God, and I imagine that is based in some reason, even though I would disagree with it.
Perhaps for many people, reason and logic are impotent, but that is not, I think a law of nature, but one of socialization.
I'd disagree with you here, if the slavery of one could produce
the greatest happiness for the greatest number, Utilitarianism would
advocate slavery...
True, you got me there. I'm presupposing that even the slavery of one
cannot produce the greatest happiness, but that is probably an open
question. I would argue that the slavery of one inevitably leads to
the slavery of many, which in turn cannot be justified, but I guess
that too is open... At the same time, at least utilitarianism provides a basis for argument -- each of us could pick a side and say that slavery, in any form, does not produce the greatest happiness because it leads to overthrow of the civilization by the oppressed, or devaluation of life by the society, or a number of other arguments.
My biggest problem with utilitarianism, though I think it has its uses, is the short term focus that many of the arguments are based on. To argue properly that slavery does not produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number, you have to look at a longer term than a few years, or even a few lifetimes.
I think you missed his point. I don't think he was saying slavery was acceptable, but instead saying it was deemed ethical. We are talking about ethics, not absolute right and wrong.
ethics (from dictionary.com) # A set of principles of right conduct. # A theory or a system of moral values
ethic (from Marriam- Webster) 1 plural but singular or plural in construction : the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation 2 a : a set of moral principles or values b : a theory or system of moral values c plural but singular or plural in construction : the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group d : a guiding philosophy
Ethics at least concerns itself with defining right or wrong, so I'm not sure what you're saying.
I have a problem with this, because it was what crazy people say (I don't care if 90% of the population says I'm insane, I am sane). You yourself said you have to draw a line, that line should be in line with the 90%. Or are you the one supporting tryanny, saying that 10% should enforce their will on everyone?
Kant says there are absolutes in ethics -- that there are certain things which are not done. So do Jesus, Buddha, and many others who might be considered wise.
I am not at all saying the 10% should enforce their will -- that would itself be a wrong. However, it does not make them wrong or insane to believe in the right thing.
Pathological insanity is a measurable disease in that it prevents someone from functioning due to an imbalance in brain chemistry. Disagreeing with 90% of the world does not make you pathologically insane, but having bad brain chemistry does
Legal insanity is a different issue (IAAL), and is a societally constructed idea. It may or may not relate to chemistry.
Fair enough, I think it's more of an implied point than a stated one.
That is, humanity is advanced, or at least has an idea of where to go and what to do, via utilitarian ethics. There is logic and reason behind saying "this produces the most good for the most people, and is therefore itself good" in contrast with saying "most people like this because it's easy/fun/profitable, and is therefore itself good." The former statement is at least based on some logical principle, and provides some guidance as to what someone should do. The latter does not tell you what to do, except in the case it's been done by many.
The world's ethics are not set by you, or me, or any individual. They are the current mood of the population. Sure, now the whole concept of slavery seems barbaric, but back in the day, slavery was deemed acceptable/ethical. That's the whole point!
Bravo to you for taking cultural relativism to its absurd extreme. The idea has moved from a challenge to be open minded, to the conclusion of all of philosophy. Gone are thousands of years of thought on what mankind could acheive, and we, in our profound wisdom, have replaced it with the "philosophy" that what is moral is what the majority of people say is moral.
Slavery isn't acceptable, no matter what time or what place. I don't care if 90% of people agree to it, those 90% are wrong. Whether you take a utilitarian, or absolutist, or just about any doctrine I can think of besides cultural relativism, it's wrong.
"News for nerds" -- aren't nerds supposed to be in favor of logic and reason? No sound logic or tenable reason can arrive at many of the junk ideas that float around here. You tell me how humanity is better by saying "what's moral is what we think is moral" -- give me some sort of reason based argument that isn't premised on "it makes us feel better."
It's this line of thinking that allows extremism, hatred, and tyranny. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and even those originating the ideas of relativism would accept that.
Slashdot Mirror
By way of introduction, I started SWG in beta 2, and quit in December of 2004 to play WoW. I have no comment on the NGE, because I've never played it.
In my opinion, Jedi were the downfall of SWG. The problem is that if you have a class which should be more powerful than all others, you have to make it very very difficult to get, and you have to have a limit on how many can do it. The path to Jedi was atrocious from the beginning. Mastering classes? That's no path to Jedi. Questing? That's no path to Jedi either.
Jedi, imo, should have been chosen by GMs specially hired to make other Jedi. They should have been extremely rare, and hunted by other players. During beta, we debated to no end exactly how Jedi would work -- and none of us came up with the absolutely mindless system that ended up in the game.
I don't think Raph's wrong philosophically. Player created content is the way all MMOs ultimately have to go -- there's just no way for a company to keep up with the amount of content that hardcore players consume. I just think his execution on Jedi was assinine.
An instance is a dungeon to which a limited number of people have access, but of which there may be many instances running at once. Take Molten Core, a 40 person instance. At most, you may have 40 people grouped together in a raid (8 groups of 5 people). I may in a group of 40 running the instance, while someone else is in another group of 40 running the instance. We will not interfere or even see one another.
Raid -- group of groups. A group contains 5 people at most. In order to join up with more than 5, you form a raid. The raid itself gives no inherent bonuses. It eases communication, and allows easier access to how other people are doing (in health or mana). At most, a raid may contain 8 groups.
So, a raid instance is an instance which requires a raid.
Some people dislike raids because of the requisite number of people required to experience the content. You have to get 40 relative competent people together at the same place at the same time and sustain the raid for several hours. Others like raids because the bosses are harder and the loot is better.
We have not, as you said, reached that point yet. I work for a "smaller" organization, and we have a terrible time finding support for OSS applications, even when we pay for it. No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's terribly frustrating to call someone for support and find out that their knowledge ends about the same time yours does.
The larger, national, support providers are our only option. Even were there local support providers, I do not necessary agree that would be a per se better solution. We use legal help from all over the country, depending on what we need and who's best for the job. Our accounting is done in house and locally, but many businesses of even small-medium size are using national accounting firms. It's a matter of efficiency and accountability -- those national firms can provide the services we need as cheaply / quickly / effectively as possible. They also are large enough that if there is a problem, they can bring extensive additional resources to bear.
There's further a generalized business efficiency argument in favor of using a specialized outside source: we should do our business, and hire someone else whose expert at providing the support. There's an overhead associated with having an IT department who can support any and all applications. If the business uses a relatively small number of applications, the benefit of a knowledgeable IT department is overwhealmingly positive. If, however, the business uses a wide variety of applications, it seems better for the IT department and the business that IT support the core, and an outside support group handles the esoteric, but important, 95% of the applications that get used only 5% of the time.
Perhaps people have chosen to see Christian messages in it, but they were also most certainly put there by the books' author.
And by your tone, it seems that you are condemning someone, but I'm not sure who...
So true, and if I could mod you up, I would. You can excuse people to some extent, because oftentimes techies are required to solve problems that have an exceptionally small chance of occurring. At the same time, for most human endeavors, 99% accuracy / quality / effectiveness is close enough.
I think, perhaps, that you misundertand what I said, Kitty. Cultural relativism provides no place to reason from, and that invalidates it, at least to my way of thinking. The axiom "Act A is right if sufficient people believe it's right" is not an equal to "Act A is right if it gives the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people".
Let's say you have a society of relativists and a society of utilitarians. The relativists, asked if A is right, cannot give an answer. They can only say that A is believed by group Y. The utilitarians can say A leads to happiness or destruction and therefore our society should engage in it.
Ethics (as defined in one of my other posts by Mariam-Webster or Reference.com) requires some guide to decide what is right. Relativism is no such guide -- utilitarianism, or Christianity, is. I myself am Christian and believe myself to be quite reasonable and logical (though this is slashdot, and that's considered a contradiction, I realize). Given what I believe is a base, I attempt to reason what is good for myself, and my family, and my country.
So perhaps you and I agree, only I was not as clear in my statement.
your infatuation with reason and logic is impotent against morality as it actually occurs in nature.
And perhaps we don't. I don't think logic and reason are impotent against morality as it actually occurs. That implies that no one could be pursuaded under any circumstances that utilitarianism leads to exploitation, or absolutism leads to intolerance. You appear to dislike Christianity based on your perception of the actions of God, and I imagine that is based in some reason, even though I would disagree with it.
Perhaps for many people, reason and logic are impotent, but that is not, I think a law of nature, but one of socialization.
And don't call me Kitty.
True, you got me there. I'm presupposing that even the slavery of one cannot produce the greatest happiness, but that is probably an open question. I would argue that the slavery of one inevitably leads to the slavery of many, which in turn cannot be justified, but I guess that too is open... At the same time, at least utilitarianism provides a basis for argument -- each of us could pick a side and say that slavery, in any form, does not produce the greatest happiness because it leads to overthrow of the civilization by the oppressed, or devaluation of life by the society, or a number of other arguments.
My biggest problem with utilitarianism, though I think it has its uses, is the short term focus that many of the arguments are based on. To argue properly that slavery does not produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number, you have to look at a longer term than a few years, or even a few lifetimes.
ethics (from dictionary.com) # A set of principles of right conduct. # A theory or a system of moral values
ethic (from Marriam- Webster) 1 plural but singular or plural in construction : the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation 2 a : a set of moral principles or values b : a theory or system of moral values c plural but singular or plural in construction : the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group d : a guiding philosophy
Ethics at least concerns itself with defining right or wrong, so I'm not sure what you're saying.
I have a problem with this, because it was what crazy people say (I don't care if 90% of the population says I'm insane, I am sane). You yourself said you have to draw a line, that line should be in line with the 90%. Or are you the one supporting tryanny, saying that 10% should enforce their will on everyone?
Kant says there are absolutes in ethics -- that there are certain things which are not done. So do Jesus, Buddha, and many others who might be considered wise.
I am not at all saying the 10% should enforce their will -- that would itself be a wrong. However, it does not make them wrong or insane to believe in the right thing.
Pathological insanity is a measurable disease in that it prevents someone from functioning due to an imbalance in brain chemistry. Disagreeing with 90% of the world does not make you pathologically insane, but having bad brain chemistry does
Legal insanity is a different issue (IAAL), and is a societally constructed idea. It may or may not relate to chemistry.
Fair enough, I think it's more of an implied point than a stated one.
That is, humanity is advanced, or at least has an idea of where to go and what to do, via utilitarian ethics. There is logic and reason behind saying "this produces the most good for the most people, and is therefore itself good" in contrast with saying "most people like this because it's easy/fun/profitable, and is therefore itself good." The former statement is at least based on some logical principle, and provides some guidance as to what someone should do. The latter does not tell you what to do, except in the case it's been done by many.
Bravo to you for taking cultural relativism to its absurd extreme. The idea has moved from a challenge to be open minded, to the conclusion of all of philosophy. Gone are thousands of years of thought on what mankind could acheive, and we, in our profound wisdom, have replaced it with the "philosophy" that what is moral is what the majority of people say is moral.
Slavery isn't acceptable, no matter what time or what place. I don't care if 90% of people agree to it, those 90% are wrong. Whether you take a utilitarian, or absolutist, or just about any doctrine I can think of besides cultural relativism, it's wrong.
"News for nerds" -- aren't nerds supposed to be in favor of logic and reason? No sound logic or tenable reason can arrive at many of the junk ideas that float around here. You tell me how humanity is better by saying "what's moral is what we think is moral" -- give me some sort of reason based argument that isn't premised on "it makes us feel better."
It's this line of thinking that allows extremism, hatred, and tyranny. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and even those originating the ideas of relativism would accept that.