The Gaming Den

Kaelik wrote:

Laertes wrote:GnomeWorks, I think you're a smart guy. I thought you handled the Zak S thread very well. But if you're going to argue that the Tragedy of the Commons is not a real thing, and that it will not lead to clear-thinking rational sociopaths totally wrecking any society with a statistically significant number of them in it, then my respect for you lessens.

I do not understand this argument at all. The tragedy of the commons exists in non sociopaths. I have no idea how you think it would be a bigger deal with sociopaths, because we have laws that exist for the express purpose of dealing with the tragedy of the commons because regular people cannot do anything without those laws.

I mean, there is no particular reason that Hobbesian social contracts can't be formed by sociopaths since the entire argument of Hobbes is based on a simplification of humans into Sociopaths in effect anyway.

The point of the tragedy of the commons is that the rational move is to screw the other players until there's nothing but dust left, and then move on to pastures new. The only way for a stable, long-term community to form is for you to all play relying on empathy rather than rationality, and more importantly to rely on the other players to do the same.

Crucially, it has to work based on mere social pressure rather than coercive law, because if it's based on coercion then the sociopaths will simply gravitate towards controlling the levers of lawmaking and enforcement and then you're fucked. I invite you to read a history of the Soviet Union if you don't believe me on this one.

Normal humans can sort of function in smallish groups in the absence of laws, because in smallish groups our desire to have other human beings think well of us and our desire to avoid hurting people within the in-group combine to make us cooperate. As soon as a statistically significant percentage of the people don't care about these control mechanisms, the base trust of society breaks down.

In short, I assert that the opposite of what you said is true. Regular people can do things without those laws, witness any retail shopping experience. Sociopaths cannot.

GnomeWorks wrote:If that's your point (or at least in the same direction), I'd argue that you could try to encourage the sociopaths to care about their legacy in the society. Doing the whole "you will be remembered" thing may be enough to influence some - probably not all - into continuing to not act to society's detriment.

Isn't the very point of a sociopath that they don't care what other people think of them? That you can control them or bribe them, but not actually make them care what others think?

The point of the tragedy of the commons is that the rational move is to screw the other players until there's nothing but dust left, and then move on to pastures new. The only way for a stable, long-term community to form is for you to all play relying on empathy rather than rationality, and more importantly to rely on the other players to do the same.

Is this "ramble on about subjects you know nothing about" week on the Den? Did I miss a memo?

The point of the tragedy of the commons is that the rational move for an individual actor is to make heavier use of the common resource but if everyone does that they ruin the resource and screw themselves over. So the real rational move is to accept and enforce a set of standards where everyone uses it a sustainable amount and they don't ruin it.

Laertes wrote:The point of the tragedy of the commons is that the rational move is to screw the other players until there's nothing but dust left, and then move on to pastures new. The only way for a stable, long-term community to form is for you to all play relying on empathy rather than rationality, and more importantly to rely on the other players to do the same.

No, the point of the Tragedy of the commons is to show that people do in fact act on the short term rational screw everyone system even when they do have empathy for the other people.

The solution is not to act with empathy instead of rationality and hope everyone else does the same, because that results in everyone fucking each other. The solution is to create rational incentives to fuck people who do the thing that everyone knows is bad.

Sociopaths in the law making system are not in fact any worse than other people, because they can be prevented from fucking everyone who is not them in the same ways as other non sociopath humans would do if they aren't stopped.

Russia is an example of that. Most if not literally 100% of the people that created the problems in Russia were not sociopaths. The Romanovs are not sociopaths, Stalin was probably not a sociopath, Lenin definitely wasn't, all the assorted minor officiaries also weren't. But the system was shitty so the system allowed people who are not sociopaths to fuck things for everyone because of their non sociopathic selfishness.

name_here wrote:

The point of the tragedy of the commons is that the rational move is to screw the other players until there's nothing but dust left, and then move on to pastures new. The only way for a stable, long-term community to form is for you to all play relying on empathy rather than rationality, and more importantly to rely on the other players to do the same.

Is this "ramble on about subjects you know nothing about" week on the Den? Did I miss a memo?

The point of the tragedy of the commons is that the rational move for an individual actor is to make heavier use of the common resource but if everyone does that they ruin the resource and screw themselves over. So the real rational move is to accept and enforce a set of standards where everyone uses it a sustainable amount and they don't ruin it.

The term "tragedy of the commons" refers to the historical overgrazing of common lands in England, where people would run heavier herds than the land could bear. When they discovered that their neighbours were doing the same, the response was to treat the pastures as a diminishing resource, rather than a renewable resource, and so run even heavier herds to use it up before it was all gone. Tragically, this gave the wealthy gentry an opportunity to swoop in and claim custodianship of the commons before it ended up as a desert where nobody could use it at all. It's a real thing. It actually happened in history.

It's got a game theoretic game named after it which you are referencing (otherwise known as the Herdsman's Dilemma) and you are right that the winning move in that game is to accept a set of sustainable standards if and only if you trust that the other people in the game are also going to obey those standards.

Kaelik wrote:No, the point of the Tragedy of the commons is to show that people do in fact act on the short term rational screw everyone system even when they do have empathy for the other people.

The solution is not to act with empathy instead of rationality and hope everyone else does the same, because that results in everyone fucking each other. The solution is to create rational incentives to fuck people who do the thing that everyone knows is bad.

Sociopaths in the law making system are not in fact any worse than other people, because they can be prevented from fucking everyone who is not them in the same ways as other non sociopath humans would do if they aren't stopped.

Russia is an example of that. Most if not literally 100% of the people that created the problems in Russia were not sociopaths. The Romanovs are not sociopaths, Stalin was probably not a sociopath, Lenin definitely wasn't, all the assorted minor officiaries also weren't. But the system was shitty so the system allowed people who are not sociopaths to fuck things for everyone because of their non sociopathic selfishness.

Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago paints a vivid picture of a system where the levers of power which were supposed to prevent sociopaths from acting, and provide them with rational incentives, fell into the hands of exactly those sociopaths. You'd have a situation where the collective farm chiefs would read a book which said "We must protect the peasants from exploitation by the petty landowners; such landowners must be harshly punished if they refuse to cooperate." Then those farm chiefs would go out and grab the peasants who refused to bribe them, and would have them arrested as "petty local landowners" and sent to the prison system. The possibility that they themselves were the danger that this system was supposed to be guarding against, was at best a black irony.

Another example of this might be the Anti-Corruption Police in Taiwan who routinely top the list of "most corrupt police force", and go around extorting other government officials, threatening to arrest them on corruption charges if they don't pay bribes.

Now, the best solution to this sort of thing is generally to throw open the doors of the agencies to public scrutiny and let everyone watch and see what's happening. You're a lawyer by trade, I believe, so you understand about court transparency and the dangers posed by secret process; and about how when courts and law enforcement agencies end up acting corruptly their first move is generally to clamp down on transparency. Trying to create rational incentives for sociopaths is not a solution and cannot be a solution unless those incentive-creating powers are somehow divinely kept out of the hands of said sociopaths.

Except you in no way prove that the farm chiefs or anti-corruption police are in any way sociopaths, and instead of just normal people, which is his point.

Under a bad system, Average Joe will happily break his neighbor for his own benefit.

My problem with a society of sociopaths is that it should be plagued by chronic lack of trust in its institutions. If everyone is pathologically egoist and think they should get their desires granted at the expense of everybody else, then every soldier is a potential traitor, every citizen is a potential spy, and corruption is everywhere. Everybody will try to take more than their due share from the public thing and there won't be altruistic or charitable people working more to compensate for them.

Sociopaths in our societies have an "easier" time fitting in because they're against a backdrop of normal people, so it's in their best interests to pretend they also care about the others, But if the normal person is a sociopath, how does the "model citizen" evolved in the first place?

Thinking a bit better, I think a society of smart sociopaths could be a thing. The capacity for delaying gratification correlates strongly with intelligence, so I could envision a place where a bunch of evil people are working together, barely trusting each other, each one with some kind of long term plan where they end on top (this is, incidentally, how D&D depicts drow). Now, a society of dumb sociopaths continue to be very problematic: pathological egoism + poor impulse control = place goes boom.

nockermensch wrote:If everyone is pathologically egoist and think they should get their desires granted at the expense of everybody else...

Egoism is not part of the differential for APD.

I'll agree that it winds up being an emergent property in some sociopaths, but it's not a necessary component.

I think you may be confusing it with narcissistic personality disorder.

Thinking a bit better, I think a society of smart sociopaths could be a thing. ... Now, a society of dumb sociopaths continue to be very problematic: pathological egoism + poor impulse control = place goes boom.

This is largely the point I was trying to get at. I don't have a problem with people saying that a society composed entirely of inherent sociopaths is likely to explode, because that's probably very true. But it's not a necessary thing.

Voss wrote:Except you in no way prove that the farm chiefs or anti-corruption police are in any way sociopaths, and instead of just normal people, which is his point.

Under a bad system, Average Joe will happily break his neighbor for his own benefit.

I'm not sure about your definition of "normal person." Most of the people I have met would not send me to the gulags for a small monetary bonus. I know this because it's actually really fucking easy to get away with murder in this country:

In 2012 in the UK, 327,000 people went missing and of those, 6500 never turned up again. In just 225 cases (out of that 327,000) the person turned up dead. The recorded murder rate in Britain that year was 635 people, some ninety percent of which made no serious attempt to conceal it. So in roughly 63 cases someone was killed, it was concealed and a murder investigation proceeded. In 225 cases (roughly four times as many) a body was found but it wasn't recorded as a murder, just a "person went missing and then was found dead." And in one hundred times as many cases, the person was simply never seen again. Look at those numbers and then tell me that you think you couldn't get away with murder.

There's people who owe me more money than they are able to repay. I'm still alive, and indeed am able to be alone with those people without fearing for my life, even though we both know that if they killed me they would profit materially and would probably not be found out. The rational incentives are in favour of murder and yet they don't do it because social norms are more powerful.

So yeah. I don't believe that "normal people" are capable of sentencing their next door neighbours to the gulags because they refused to pay bribes. To me, that's evidence of a person who doesn't give a shit about other human beings; and if you're going to draw a distinction between that and a sociopath then I'm going to accuse you of meaningless hairsplitting.

Yeah no, it is not easy to kill people just because a bunch of murders go unsolved. It is in fact really hard to like, grab a fucking pair of scissors and jam it in someone's eye without them stopping you. It is much much much easier to sign a piece of paper.

Laertes wrote:So yeah. I don't believe that "normal people" are capable of sentencing their next door neighbours to the gulags because they refused to pay bribes.

Have you heard of Eichmann? You may want to investigate that a bit; Hannah Arendt's whole "banality of evil" thing is really interesting. And... the Milgram experiment pretty well illustrated the point, too.

The point being there being that normal people really are quite capable of doing horrendous things to each other. It doesn't take a sociopath to be an asshole on that scale.

I mean, think about the numbers, here. Sociopaths make up about 1-2% of the population; there is no way that all the horrible shit that has happened in the past has been perpetrated solely by sociopaths. It's just not mathematically feasible. Which means that normal people are totally able to commit unspeakable atrocities against their neighbors, given sufficient motivation (and "sufficient" is sometimes mind-bogglingly small).

To me, that's evidence of a person who doesn't give a shit about other human beings; and if you're going to draw a distinction between that and a sociopath then I'm going to accuse you of meaningless hairsplitting.

Then you're not willing to understand psychology and some of the finer points of diagnosis of various mental disorders, at which point you need to shut the fuck up about sociopathy.

"Not giving a shit about other people" and "having an inherent lack of empathy" are two different things. Believe it nor, empathy can be learned; some sociopaths manage to approximate empathy through using the same tools other sociopaths use to manipulate people. It has limitations, though, it's not like a sociopath is going to be able to relate to people on the empathic level through trying really hard.

But trying to say that all sociopaths necessarily do not give a flying fuck about other people and are incapable of even bothering to try to give a fuck about them is just bullshit.

Laertes wrote:

Voss wrote:Except you in no way prove that the farm chiefs or anti-corruption police are in any way sociopaths, and instead of just normal people, which is his point.

Under a bad system, Average Joe will happily break his neighbor for his own benefit.

So yeah. I don't believe that "normal people" are capable of sentencing their next door neighbours to the gulags because they refused to pay bribes. To me, that's evidence of a person who doesn't give a shit about other human beings; and if you're going to draw a distinction between that and a sociopath then I'm going to accuse you of meaningless hairsplitting.

From this lesson in statistics we can conclude you have no idea what it is like to live under a truly bad system, especially during a time of massive social upheaval, not that we can't identify what a normal person is like.

I recommend you to the study of history, because your level of innocence about humanity is actually appalling.

Kaelik wrote:Yeah no, it is not easy to kill people just because a bunch of murders go unsolved. It is in fact really hard to like, grab a fucking pair of scissors and jam it in someone's eye without them stopping you. It is much much much easier to sign a piece of paper.

Be honest: If you possessed a magic piece of paper upon which you could write someone's name and that person would be killed by NSA shadowrunners in a way that you yourself would not have to witness, what fraction of the people you know would end up gone?

In real life countries where people get to do this by denouncing people to their local secret police, the actual number is certainly non-zero but it's actually remarkably low. For example, the number of people which Argentina's junta "disappeared" from 1973 to 1983 during their infamous "Dirty War" is estimated at about 30,000 out of 40 million people. That's roughly 3000 (0.01% of population) per year. By way of comparison, in 2010 Argentina registered 2,237 murders. That's not counting other forms of killing which are not legally held to be murder, for which the number is doubtless much higher. That's also not counting people who died but were registered as missing persons. That's just straight up murder statistics. That's the same order of magnitude as the "disappeared" people during the junta.

So while I share the same knee-jerk belief in the difficulty of murder that you do, the numbers don't seem to support that: we don't see a vastly larger number of murders-by-denunciation than we do murders-by-shooting-someone-in-the-fucking-face. I suspect what actually happens is that once you get used to it, signing that piece of paper (or tipping off the Gestapo or whatever) acquires the same taboo value as stabbing a person does. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to do that.

And you'd be wrong, again. Provably wrong, in fact, since we know from the giant scale atrocities of the 20th century that signing people over to certain death gets easier, not harder. People have actually conducted lots of studies on this, and simple psychological manipulation and pressure pushes people really hard. This is seriously not a mystery to anyone who paid attention to the fucking 20th century. Or the 19th. Or 18th. Or even 21st.

Just being part of the machine of bureaucracy makes it easy, as the first excuse is 'if I don't do it, somebody else will'

My problem with a society of sociopaths isn't that they'd kill themselves. It's about it running at a very low efficiency because everything has to be heavily policed and checked, ideally with competing policing and auditing structures to make sure everybody is doing their supposed duties towards common goals instead of working on their own designs.

I think on a police state like north Korea where things are kept in place by overwhelming fear, only that you can't even appeal to propaganda glorifying selfless workers and heroic leaders to keep your people looking forward because everybody knows that's a lie.

Which brings us to another point: It's hard to imagine a biologically evil people, but it's very easy to imagine an evil culture. It's in fact just a matter of dehumanizing another group and then convincing your people that said group is an acceptable target, something that turns this discussion extra-ironic.

Laertes wrote:For example, the number of people which Argentina's junta "disappeared" from 1973 to 1983 during their infamous "Dirty War" is estimated at about 30,000 out of 40 million people. That's roughly 3000 (0.01% of population) per year. By way of comparison, in 2010 Argentina registered 2,237 murders. That's not counting other forms of killing which are not legally held to be murder, for which the number is doubtless much higher.

IIRC, a large percentage (but certainly not all) of the people who were killed during that period were in fact associated in some way with the urban guerrilla movement that the government was fighting. I understand that one of the several movements (the ERP) later admitted to having 5000 of its active members killed. So, while I have no idea how much investigation was done, I suspect that it was somewhat harder to get someone killed by the government than you might think and hence it doesn't follow that the number of people making fake reports has a lot to do with the number of people who were killed.

I think I prefer the idea that you can become radiated with evilons to the point that you show up on an alignment geiger counter. Worshiping Gruumsh being one way to become radiated, for example. That a Succubi Paladin shows up on your evilon detector only proves that it's not a 100% reliable metric. To a follower of Gruumsh, evilon radiation is just how you get strong in a harsh and uncaring world. To a cleric, benevelon radiation serves a similar purpose.

Does anyone else think that this discussion should be split off into its own separate thread?

I find the discussion of theoryhammering a society of sociopaths interesting -- much more interesting than discussing what's become of Mike Mearls' being a WotCfare queen for two years in fact -- but, we're getting waaaay the hell off topic. And this shouldn't be polluted by the utter fail of 5E D&D discussion, I think.

Laertes wrote:Be honest: If you possessed a magic piece of paper upon which you could write someone's name and that person would be killed by NSA shadowrunners in a way that you yourself would not have to witness, what fraction of the people you know would end up gone?

If it is a true death note, maybe 30%. If I can write down stuff that isn't their name because I just saw them and they pissed me off, a lot more.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Does anyone else think that this discussion should be split off into its own separate thread?

I find the discussion of theoryhammering a society of sociopaths interesting -- much more interesting than discussing what's become of Mike Mearls' being a WotCfare queen for two years in fact -- but, we're getting waaaay the hell off topic. And this shouldn't be polluted by the utter fail of 5E D&D discussion, I think.

Sure, but since this is still one topic, a society in which magic can make oaths really binding changes matters. If you will explode if you bang your lords daughter or pawn his silverwear it really does change the cost/benefit ratio whether or not you are a sociopath or not.

Probably a good idea to split it.

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:I think I prefer the idea that you can become radiated with evilons to the point that you show up on an alignment geiger counter. Worshiping Gruumsh being one way to become radiated, for example. That a Succubi Paladin shows up on your evilon detector only proves that it's not a 100% reliable metric. To a follower of Gruumsh, evilon radiation is just how you get strong in a harsh and uncaring world. To a cleric, benevelon radiation serves a similar purpose.

Eh. The problem with this approach is there are 101 other D&D races that live the exact same way orcs do, including various subsets of humans, elves & etc. Any group without sufficient infrastructure and magical bullshit is going to gather needed (or extra) supplies through raiding. It is even appropriate for city states* to send out the army to the neighboring villages and demand tribute in the form of animals/timber/ores/slaves (but you pick a different direction next year so you can keep farming them). That orcs get evilons but lizards get neutralons and wild elves get prickulons for the same behavior is pretty unreasonable.

And I'd argue that raiders from the badlands, sea, or whatever is pretty much a default assumption of a D&D campaign setting, and has been since the Wilderness Survival Guide back in 1e, when people realized they could do campaigns that were more than just 10x10 rooms with orcs in. You can do low level games with raiders/bandits and whatnot, but it would be an exception.

*historically, Babylon and Mesopotamia in general. All sorts of inscriptions record the histories of the glorious campaigns of kings, where each year they set out with an army. 'Seized the village of Bumfuckery, and claimed 8 horses, 2 camels and enough hardwood to build the temple doors. Next, travelled north to the copper mines of Mining Town, and seize 3 horses, 6 camels, and five hundred weight of copper. ' There is seriously centuries of this crap.

Voss wrote: Huh. I see it the other way. Creating an obvious expy of a real group of humans is the offensive trivialization, not the realization that people are actually doing so.

Okay this is the last I'll say on this matter, because we have gotten far from the origin of the thread. But what I find offensive and confusing is that people find orcs to be a clear analog of a real racial group. Looking at the 3rd ed monster manual they have wolf ears, a pig nose and tusks, also they have a penchant for dressing garishly. The 4th ed monster manual has no description because that entire edition read like an IHOP menu where you have to point a picture, but they have the same features in the picture. I can't find my 1st or 2nd manuals at the moment (likely they are gone because those books were falling apart). Now I don't know about you, but pig-wolf-tusk man monster with poor fashion sense doesn't scream any ethnicity on earth.

The Picts from Conan are an offensive racial stereotype. Orcs aren't, unless there are a whole bunch of stereotypes I'm unaware of.

@Laertes -

In East Germany, nearly everybody was denouncing everyone else they knew to the Gestapo. Now, not everyone disappeared! They just built large files and noted all the 'reports'. If you didn't report on your neighbors, you'd feel that the authorities would believe that you weren't being honest and that would invite punishment.

Denouncing people is easy - sticking up for them even when you know they're innocent is hard; especially if you may be punished as a result.

Just ask the Apostle Peter.

Scrivener wrote:

Voss wrote: Huh. I see it the other way. Creating an obvious expy of a real group of humans is the offensive trivialization, not the realization that people are actually doing so.

Okay this is the last I'll say on this matter, because we have gotten far from the origin of the thread. But what I find offensive and confusing is that people find orcs to be a clear analog of a real racial group. Looking at the 3rd ed monster manual they have wolf ears, a pig nose and tusks, also they have a penchant for dressing garishly. The 4th ed monster manual has no description because that entire edition read like an IHOP menu where you have to point a picture, but they have the same features in the picture. I can't find my 1st or 2nd manuals at the moment (likely they are gone because those books were falling apart). Now I don't know about you, but pig-wolf-tusk man monster with poor fashion sense doesn't scream any ethnicity on earth.

The Picts from Conan are an offensive racial stereotype. Orcs aren't, unless there are a whole bunch of stereotypes I'm unaware of.

Orcs were invented by J.R.R Tolkien, and as such a race, pre-exist any D&D specific modifications. A 'seedy character' in Bree was described as being part orc (and I believe he was described as having a sallow complexion).

I have always been told that orcs were inspired in part by tales of Turkish assaults on the Byzantine empire, and most notably the fall of Constantinople. Considering the similarity in name (turk/ork), it would not surprise me if that were true.

Combined with the penchant for people to include animalistic features with races that they considered inferior, the general ugliness of orcs is no defense against a perception that they were intended as a stand-in for a particular race or ethnic group.

Blacks, in particular, have been depicted in art as very similar to monkeys, chimpanzees, and gorillas. Claiming that the offensive artwork could not possibly be intended to represent a particular human ethnic group because it does not, in fact, look anything like said ethnic group completely fails to understand why it is, in fact, offensive.

Scrivener wrote: Orcs aren't, unless there are a whole bunch of stereotypes I'm unaware of.

Apparently there are. Which, since you can obviously use the internet, is a little baffling.

If you want easy mode, stick 'Hobgobla Khan' into google.
Or 'Jew Dwarf'
Or even 'gypsy halflings'

Scrivener wrote:

Voss wrote: Huh. I see it the other way. Creating an obvious expy of a real group of humans is the offensive trivialization, not the realization that people are actually doing so.

Okay this is the last I'll say on this matter, because we have gotten far from the origin of the thread. But what I find offensive and confusing is that people find orcs to be a clear analog of a real racial group. Looking at the 3rd ed monster manual they have wolf ears, a pig nose and tusks, also they have a penchant for dressing garishly. The 4th ed monster manual has no description because that entire edition read like an IHOP menu where you have to point a picture, but they have the same features in the picture. I can't find my 1st or 2nd manuals at the moment (likely they are gone because those books were falling apart). Now I don't know about you, but pig-wolf-tusk man monster with poor fashion sense doesn't scream any ethnicity on earth.

The Picts from Conan are an offensive racial stereotype. Orcs aren't, unless there are a whole bunch of stereotypes I'm unaware of.

One: the people who are going to compare your inherently evil race of inferior bestial men to actual minorities are not us, it's the racists. The Stormfront crowd faps to Tolkein specifically because in Middle-Earth their brand of racism is justified and the Stromfronters will tell you orcs are [whatever race(s) they don't like].

Two: how sheltered a life have you led? You realize that Western intellectuals justified their racism for hundreds of years by claiming "the negroids" and "the mongroloids" were closer to beasts than men and that they could not be trusted in a modern society for they had no ethics and no decency and yadda yadda so on and so on. The only thing I'd have to do to turn your pig-wolf-tusk man monster into an actual racist stereotype is change the specific animals invoked.

But fundamentally, you need to remember that racists actually believe that some of the cosmetic variants of human that exist on this planet are inherently evil and inferior. And when you introduce a race in your setting that is basically a cosmetic variant of human and declare that it is inherently evil and inferior, you're telling them that this is a fantasy world in which they're right. And you're not really getting anything out of it, because you can still have evil dudes and evil organizations without declaring that entire races are evil. And if you want villains that are completely 100% pure evil, you should turn to the supernatural - like demons and horrors and undead and whatever. Things that you don't describe as "basically like humans, but greener and meaner."