The way you describe yourself playing has a name: self-insert. Some NTs like to play self-insert. But there are many who consider self-insert less interesting. After all, the game itself is a fantasy, so the character can be one, too. There is also replay value in going back and making different choices.
I haven't played RDR2 (yet), but I remember when KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic) came out. You can make "light side" or "dark side" choices, and you get specific power boosts if you max out either end of the spectrum. At first I played a light side hero, because that's what came naturally. But as the game progressed, I enjoyed the flavor of the dark side powers more. (C'mon, what's cooler? Stun… or LIGHTNING?) So I decided to build up dark side points. The next quest I did was a side quest where a woman needs money desperately, and all she has of value is this plate that her late husband had. She wants you to sell it for her. But I just took it from her and gave her nothing. She reacted with misery, saying "it's all we had, now we have nothing and we're stuck here." I felt bad. Surprisingly bad. It was just a fictional action I did to a fictional character, but it was to the degree that I thought, ugh, I can't make myself play dark side. I was too much of a softie to even pretend.
Equally surprising to me was how fast I got over it. I didn't feel nearly as bad at the next pretend evil action, and after a few I didn't feel bad at all! Actually it got to be funny, in part due to the absurdity that "I" would do such things. I also loved how my character's face got all gray and distorted.
The whole experience made me think about how deeply empathy is wired into most of us… but also about the mechanisms for overriding it. I mean, there are circumstances where empathic emotions would really get in the way if there wasn't a way to reduce them. Killing and maiming other humans in a war. Giving calm medical assistance to someone screaming in agony. Punishing people who break the law. I really am a softie, so if for instance I think about someone in some shithole prison, it's a very unpleasant feeling. But then if I know they committed some heinous crime, it's like Empathy-B-Gone, suddenly I don't care anymore. (Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist.)
Maybe that's what allows NTs who do evil things IRL to rationalize away guilt or other bad feelings they might otherwise have?
There are lots of reasons I don't do evil things IRL. Sure, when I was a little kid, it was just about the consequences, emotional or otherwise. But over time that changed (presumably because my brain developed). So now in addition to consequences there's a bunch of "higher-level" abstracts involved. A sense of justice. Seeing myself as "a good person," whatever that means. Enlightened self-interest. (Good thing, too, because there is surely a lot I could get away with if I were really motivated to.)
Fiction, though, that's different. This type of game is storytelling. Personally, I want to see everything the writers came up with (assuming the writing is good). If there are multiple endings, I go back to trigger each one. I make different characters based on different concepts, with different appearances. Let's see what happens if I say this or say that. What happens if I attack this guy? What happens if I let my character starve? If I really like a game, I want to see where all the boundaries are.
How do we know that characters in RDR2 are not capable of suffering?
Think about why a person would feel pain if they do something like step on a thumbtack. They only feel it because there is a mechanism -- nerves that fire in response to the injury and transmit the signal to their brain, which then processes it in various ways that results in their experience of pain. If the mechanism is blocked, for example if their foot is anesthetized, then they will not feel that pain -- it's not possible. They could still *act* like they did, but then it would only be a simulation.
RDR2 does not have mechanisms for pain or suffering. The inputs are a mouse/keyboard/controller signal that maps to one of N number of choices at a given point in the game. These in turn map to different parts of the script, which the computer uses to select which content to draw on the screen and output to the speakers, as well as which flags to write to memory. The computer does not have a way to make any other distinction.
There are no pathways inside the computer by which the choices alter or otherwise affect the functioning of the computer. It has no processing to recognize things that are "good" or "bad" for it. No place in memory where anything like that is represented, stored, or retrieved. No social context, experience, or ability to make predictions about its future. No consciousness. Suffering cannot take place.
Do I believe that in the future we might build machines/programs that are conscious, self-aware, and capable of joy or suffering? Sure, but we are a long ways off. We're not exactly in Westworld yet. There might be some question as to whether the Westworld androids can suffer or not, but they do demonstrate that they have the prerequisites. And because of that, I think it would NOT be okay to mistreat them. But characters in RDR2 can only suffer in our imaginations.
Anyway, fascinating for sure, and it was cool to read your perspective on it.
Hm, therein lies the question. If we are nothing but ones and zeros in a simulation, and we feel pain, why wouldn't the ones and zeros in another simulation be any less apt to?
We assume that we are different beings, but really haven't anything past our insistence that its so to back that up.
I would say we have extensive evidence that we are not in a simulation. Go to the beach and sift through the sand, millions and millions of grains. Look at them under a microscope. Look at them from far away. Run any number of tests on them. The results will all be consistent with the laws of physics. You're not going to run into compression artifacts, or invisible walls, or slowdowns due to the Matrix melting while trying to process the extreme complexity of all the grains and air molecules and yourself interacting.
Does this prove we're not in a simulation? No. But if we are, it's necessarily so intricate and on such an enormous scale, I would question that our idea of "simulation" -- or any of our ideas at all -- would be appropriate to describe it.
But aside from that, "nothing but ones and zeros" is not a useful characterization. I think what you're getting at is there's no special limitation on 1s and 0s, and likewise no special property of amino acids (our building blocks) that makes one different from the other when it comes to feeling pain -- is that right? If so, I agree. But it's not very fruitful to focus on this.
It's analogous to talking about how a building made up of "nothing but bricks" can collapse. The phrasing emphasizes the role of the bricks. But that distracts from the important part. It's not the bricks themselves that are capable of collapsing. "Capable of collapsing" is a property of the building. This is regardless of what kind of building blocks it's made of.
So, too, with pain. Neither 1s nor 0s nor amino acids are apt to feel pain. It's all about what's built with them and how it functions. It needs a mechanism to feel pain. Amino acids have a leg up on 1s and 0s because they were able to self-assemble, leading to complex self-replicating structures that in some cases, eventually, got selected into forms that can feel pain. I do believe it's possible to build such a thing with 1s and 0s, too. However, 1s and 0s don't self-assemble; we need to assemble them. Everything we've assembled so far falls short. (And video games aren't even close, not even a little.)
You are basing your comment on our current level of understanding. If this is a simulation then our understanding of technology has no bearing on what is possible. Also, if it is simulation, all the sand is created, and the impulses in you brain that tell you what it feels like, and what it looks like under a microscope are created as well.
If this is a simulation, everything within it is all we have ever known, and therefore would be indistinguishable to us as anything other than reality.
LOL, what else would I be able to base it on? ;) If it's truly indistinguishable from reality, I just call it reality. (Not that that stops my imagination...)
Book (series) recommendation for yah, which made me suddenly remember this post: NPCs, by Drew Hayes. (The series that continues on from that is called 'Spells, Swords, Stealth'.) The basic premise is that the story is told from the POV of NPCs from a D&D style game, who are forced to take over for some dead player characters. There's interaction between the NPCs and the players in various interesting ways, including the players being called to account for how they treat NPCs in general.
Oh, and Drew Hayes is also just a really good writer. This is the third time I'm re-reading this particular series, and I've managed to stay up till 2:30 am yet again reading it. (Book 5 comes out soon! Yay!) He even got me to read a series about super heroes (Super Powereds), which is a theme I'd normally never even think to read about.
As a huge fan of RDR2, and also as neurotypical person, I just popped in to say that this was a great read. I have always thought that the violent things we (or more precisely, neurotypical people) do in games is because it’s fun, but I’ve never thought deeper into WHY it’s fun. I’m not the kind of person to hurt innocent NPCs if I don’t have to, especially in RDR2 (because Arthur owns my heart and I want him to be as good a man as possible), but I can’t deny that letting loose on a first person shooter and blowing up enemies is a lot of fun. But then again to me personally it’s probably more to do with mastering the controls and surviving tough situations, because I’ll have an equal amount of fun with those types of moments where you have to press the right buttons really fast or fail, and when killing blood-thirsty monsters in fantasy games. Scarlet Nexus was a great game precisely because of the battle system where I had to train my hands to switch between superpowers and use them correctly in correct situations to beat the (sometimes massive amounts of) monsters. By the end of the game, when I had all the superpowers the game could offer available to me, and I was switching between them fluidly and in rapid succession to beat the ”level”, I was having more fun than I think I’ve ever had with a game before.
But then again, I’m definitely not the best spokesperson for the stereotypical gamer. I don’t have any interest to mess around a game, hurt NPCs, or go online and call people slurs, lol. Games for me aren’t an excuse to act on some hidden urges — the most violent I’ve ever wanted to be was hit my little brother when he was annoying. Hurting innocent NPCs actually makes me feel guilty, as does accepting payment from a poor NPC, because like, no. You’re a poor farmer barely scraping by?? It’s not right of me to accept money from you, lmao.
Also, 90% of the time, I prefer a game with a solid story (like RDR2, or games like Uncharted, Last of us, and Final Fantasy VII Remake), and those are the games I hold closest to heart. Games like Far Cry, Wolfenstein, and Devil May Cry are fun ways to be entertained for a bit, but at the end, they’re worth one playthrough and then I never touch them again. The fun of the mindless violence is fleeting, if that makes sense, meanwhile a game with a great story and big emotions will make me replay it again and again.
I don’t play this or any digital games, but I think there is something else to why NTs play this the way you say. You said: “This leads up to the question of why it is such an attraction for NTs to do, and I believe that I have an answer. It is because nothing is stopping them.” I think there is something missing from this explanation. I think it releases a ton of stressful emotions for NTs. NTs feel frustration, anger, and helplessness in tons of situations on the daily. The person in front of them doesn’t go fast enough when the light turns green, the fast food server got their order wrong, their spouse is cheating on them, etc. In real life, the consequences of taking violent action against any of these people has consequences that, for most NTs, are to costly. But give them the opportunity to release these emotions in a “safe” way, and they will use every dastardly action at their literal fingertips. The game you describe and the way NTs play it seems designed to give NTs a box to safely rage in. I think, don’t know as it’s not my thing. I know there are a zillion games to choose from and the NTs who play this do so for a reason. I know I would not get an ounce of pleasure from virtually hurting,killing,burning, etc. anyone, but I also don’t carry rage on the daily.
Everything except the cheating example that you just describe as something that makes NTs feel powerless, frustrated, angry, etc, are all things that my immediate response both in reading them, or in experiencing them in real life is, why do they care? It is completely foreign to me for any of those situations to even register on my concern radar
Even with the example of cheating, my response is to remove that person completely from my life immediately. After that there is no need to concern myself with it, they're gone, and with them their bad decisions.
Building on Joni's comment, one thing I've observed from years of tabletop RPG gaming is that sessions built around "killing monsters/bad guys" are fun because of stress reduction. I remember living through weeks filled with frustrating stressful situations where I looked forward to that week's gaming session and told the GameMaster I wanted to Kill Stuff. It was pleasurable precisely because my emotions wanted to let loose on the boss or friend but I also felt I had to suppress those feelings for a variety of reasons in "real life". Which means a build up of whatever that stress hormone is? So Killing Stuff in the game was a way of releasing/reducing that stress hormone--or at least that's my theory of partly WHY the killing sprees felt good. During sessions where that week was not especially stressful, I wasn't into killing-for-the-sake-of-killing. In other words, in those weeks I didn't find it all that appealing and was far more interested in whatever puzzles the GM had created.
In the gaming I do now (which is on the Astral tabletop website system), I find our fights strategically interesting. As in how do we deploy our fighting resources most effectively in order to win this battle? I'm no longer in situations in real life that I find stressful, frustrating, and all that. Therefore I no longer have much impulses to Kill Stuff.
OTOH, the phenomenon you're describing, of going on killing sprees against "good NPCs" is a whole different ball of wax. Possibly the people who do this just have higher stress levels? Though I'm not convinced this is why. I have friends who created "Evil Campaigns" where their PCs were the bad guys going all out for dominance of their game worlds. And yeah, they had a lot of fun with rolling rough-shod over anything that got in their way, possibly going out of their way to do Bad Stuff to Good NPCs. These are the same friends whom I gamed with in other campaigns. I just didn't join that particular game, so don't have much insight into it.
There's also the TV show West World, where the players got to do anything they wanted to the NPCs, who were basically AIs. And then the AIs became not just sentient, but also became able to seize control of their lives. So there's another moral-dilemma example of this sort of behavior, albeit expressed and explored completely in fiction.
So about my cortisol theory (that is the stress hormone, yes?), do psychopaths not have cortisol? Or is there something different about cortisol in NTs and psychopaths? Or possibly my idea here is just not relevant to this discussion.
Psychopaths have lower cortisol levels than neurotypicals. Interesting thought about cortisol levels and possibly people with higher levels are more inclined to participate in such things.
This makes sense to me. One distinction I have noticed , though, between different NTs (at least I assume they're NTs!) is that some, in real life, are more constrained by consequences and learned habit (mostly a product of consequences when young) than by actual valuing of other people / lives / species / whatever. Other presumed NTs do function more from a strong code that they work out over time, somewhat like what I understand you to do, Athena. Many folks likely do both to differing extents. Figuring out which of these is affecting a behavior can be tough for people who have both influences, I think!
We humans are primates, and looking at how other primates respond to lots of social situations (the species differ a lot!), the emotions, dominance, social status stuff, is something I have used to try to figure out some of the weirdest human stuff. Those responses you mention as not making sense, I guess in evolutionary terms they might make sense (like a creature getting impatient when thwarted, having an emotion-level response not "just" a cognitive one) but those arguments are always pretty hypothetical.
I certainly agree. Many things are likely left over from a time when our species lived in very different conditions, and had very different needs. How fast we change our world makes no difference to the speed of evolution.
Yes, I understand that you process that way. However, that makes it difficult/impossible to understand why they are doing what they are doing in the game is my point. It's not just because there are no consequences, it is because IT FEELS GOOD to them to do it in a game, since there are multiple reasons they don't do it in real life. Not always because of things like prison, but because they (usually) know that killing someone or throwing them off a cliff for spilling coffee on you is a gargantuan over-reaction and not justified in a real life situation, but in a game, doing it gets your good feels going. NTs are getting ALL KINDS of feels from playing.
For me, it has to do with situations where I have to put up with something obnoxious either short or long term. Perhaps it's my boss and I can't just quit my job because I have no financial safety net to sustain me while I find the next one. Or it could be a family member whom I'm not prepared to just cut that tie because for whatever reason I want to keep that person in my life.
Once it was a friend who'd borrowed money and was late paying it back and giving me lots of bogus reasons about why. The stress there = it made me late paying my rent! (Yeah, I'd foolishly lent him part of my rent money, believing he would pay me back before my rent was due.) Long story short, yeah, I did remove that person completely from my life, but in the meantime, I wound up taking him to Small Claims Court, whereupon he found the money to pay me back (along with a more believable reason why he'd been late).
Killing someone for getting your food order wrong isn’t something an NT would do in real life even if there were no consequences but it’s fun in a game.
This was a fascinating read. I am not a gamer, so that in itself is interesting to read about. I have not played since the 80s when you had to load games by cassette, clunky things with the most basic graphics. Heck, I even remember TV Tennis! At the time, I was amazed at how immersive and absorbing even the simplest game could be, and I said, I think computer games will become an entire sophisticated art form one day, and it seems that has indeed happened, they are extraordinary, just from what little I see.
The moral questions- it surprises me that people will enjoy being violent in games, it's not something I understand, but yes, I have seen it, back in simpler game times, people at the screen crashing the plane repeatedly or shooting the people that they were meant to rescue. The 'just because I can'. I don't get the fun. Not because I am some wonderful person, but, I suspect, because I am less neurotypical than I had long assumed.
Anyway, lots to think about here, it"s rather like the notion of people's private thoughts, however terrible, not being something that makes them culpable or to be judged in any way. I don't know, but it's an interesting area.
Indeed it is interesting to watch. Perplexing as well. I don't quite know what that emotional link to being able to do anything is, but be it violence that is unnecessary, or the developers obsession with making games so focused on the notion of being able to "do anything", that they over include so much detail that the game itself is a slog, it is vexing behavior to me.
Have you as child liked to build something and then make it fall with one motion? Domino, card castles, wooden cubes or other such objects used to build something, makings oemthing spin, chemical reactions like dropping base into something acidic and watching bubbles. And watching volcanic eruptions and avalanches etc. Something happening and how something is and then isn't, plain awe... And also being able to make it happen. It has lot to do with power, but I think also with other things. Not sure how much that applies to differences between how some NT people like pointless violence more and some less. But feeling powerful and invincible is both soothing and ego boosting.
And very good question is what makes falling and such stuff funny. At the moment I just cannot formulate an answer, but I feel like it could tie into some of it.
Perhaps because pretend violence has at least up until recently been an unquestioned part of childhood games. Toy soldiers, toy guns, later paintball. I find those things weird and disturbing, but that is unusual.
Have you heard about Undertale? Much simpler game in mechanics, but boy, does it play with what you described. How real is suffering of characters who are playthings of a player (and some mirror the player in unsettling ways in this ability), what are consequences of killing only some, of killing none, of killing all (genocide run, which some players chose after playing other runs because of it being as-of-yet-unexplored has some interesting features regarding it's ending) and stuff.
I am not a gamer, I found out about it when I came across a lengthy comic (currently close to the finale, I expect only few more episodes) tha intrigued me with character designs and environment. Then I went on to catch up on the setting. It is centered around two characters and some heavy meta, making quite an extrapolation of a backstory about a scientist that decided that to help those, he cares about, he needs to be willing to do some horrible stuff and then finding out he chew off too much. It is about twins dealing with horrific abuse and each other's different responses to it that threaten to alienate them from each other. It is about broken families and trauma from war and about moral outlooks challenged, honor to one's autonomy, guilt and difficulties with dealing with the aftermath. I cannot tell how realistically are those difficult topics treated, but I found zarla a capable storyteller.
Well, then I think few spoilers will not hurt. Anyone scrolling through comments, warning was issued.
Player makes their file and goes on to follow a child that fell into underground system of a certain mountain. There is finds population of all sorts of sentient creatures. There is no way back, only staying with the first one, which would prefer to mommy the charachter until the end of days, or go forward. Forward means meaningpotentially much more hostile beings and eventually reaching thei king in front of enchanted gate that keeps everyone inside and the king will be hell-bent on killing the child. What are the reasons for this hostility?
Monsters long ago lost war with humans, got locked up, somehow it is so that seven human souls will allow the gate to open.
Monsters were rather content to stay inside before, but when the first kiddo ever fell down there and got adopted by the rulling pair and befriended their son, kiddo discovered that through some obscure joining of soul energies with the prince they were able to get out. Reactions outside weren't exactly positive, the pair got mortally wounded and only managed to get back to die. The king in his grief set a new direction - getting out to fight again. Queen would not stand for that and leaved him and everyone thinks she died.
Now our new kiddo in the present is the last needed to open the gate, all other did not survive the treck. What increases chances of survival is amping up stats of through experience, such as experience slaying a monster - increases LV coloquially called love, but standing for Level of Violence. Trying to make friends with absolutely everyone in pacifist run is much harder, but actually leads to being able to free everyone and convince the ing to call off that war. He regrets harvesting those previous souls anyway.
That part ends with player being informed by soem of the characters that they should now let the child character - Frisk be and live their own life - aka the narrative is the player controls someone sentient.
Another characters talks throughout the game about some tampering with stats and saves and deja vo sense and there is mystery machine laying around and basically there is some grasping at sense that they are trapped in a space where someone can unwind the time back and change the course, once killed, once spared, once other stuff...
Also, remember our princ and first child ever, name Chara? Well, turns out we have some ghost hauntings at our hand. From the unfortunate death merger emeged a sentient flower named Flowey that has the same ability to save and rewind, but due to exhausting every possibility of every scenario is bored out of their mind, disconnected from all and just all out that stereotypical image of psychopathic manipulative chessmaster. Frisk'đ arrival changed things, there is an opportunity for moving out, during pacifist run pretty much all souls spared by get collected by this abominable vegetable and I am not sure what is the process of dealing with them, but it is possible. Oh and it is our killed prince reincarnated/transformed, turns out.
And now we are getting to Genocide run. At the end of whichyou meet Chara, yeah, they have not gone away either, they were hijacking the whole journey, more and more through every use of lethal violence and they will kindly inform you at the end of this run you cannot go back. After genocide you cannot run different run. You just wanted to have this at theexpense of all inside and now you unleashed somethign and there is no coming back. You can only delete all your files and set up new ones.
XBOX Series X, however, this trick was done on the XBOX One. I have never tried to do it on the Series X, but since the glitches are on the hard copy of the game itself, there shouldn't be any reason that it won't work. It is still unable to update the game, and patch the glitches if it is offline.
The cheat is awesome. When I have talked to some people they said the reason that they rob people in the game is because of necessity. They are shy of money and want to be able to do certain things. Using this cheat means that there is no shortage of money, so anything that is gained while proceeding through the game is just gravy.
There is also a way to hide Arthur's money for John to collect during the epilogue as well.
The way you describe yourself playing has a name: self-insert. Some NTs like to play self-insert. But there are many who consider self-insert less interesting. After all, the game itself is a fantasy, so the character can be one, too. There is also replay value in going back and making different choices.
I haven't played RDR2 (yet), but I remember when KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic) came out. You can make "light side" or "dark side" choices, and you get specific power boosts if you max out either end of the spectrum. At first I played a light side hero, because that's what came naturally. But as the game progressed, I enjoyed the flavor of the dark side powers more. (C'mon, what's cooler? Stun… or LIGHTNING?) So I decided to build up dark side points. The next quest I did was a side quest where a woman needs money desperately, and all she has of value is this plate that her late husband had. She wants you to sell it for her. But I just took it from her and gave her nothing. She reacted with misery, saying "it's all we had, now we have nothing and we're stuck here." I felt bad. Surprisingly bad. It was just a fictional action I did to a fictional character, but it was to the degree that I thought, ugh, I can't make myself play dark side. I was too much of a softie to even pretend.
Equally surprising to me was how fast I got over it. I didn't feel nearly as bad at the next pretend evil action, and after a few I didn't feel bad at all! Actually it got to be funny, in part due to the absurdity that "I" would do such things. I also loved how my character's face got all gray and distorted.
The whole experience made me think about how deeply empathy is wired into most of us… but also about the mechanisms for overriding it. I mean, there are circumstances where empathic emotions would really get in the way if there wasn't a way to reduce them. Killing and maiming other humans in a war. Giving calm medical assistance to someone screaming in agony. Punishing people who break the law. I really am a softie, so if for instance I think about someone in some shithole prison, it's a very unpleasant feeling. But then if I know they committed some heinous crime, it's like Empathy-B-Gone, suddenly I don't care anymore. (Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist.)
Maybe that's what allows NTs who do evil things IRL to rationalize away guilt or other bad feelings they might otherwise have?
There are lots of reasons I don't do evil things IRL. Sure, when I was a little kid, it was just about the consequences, emotional or otherwise. But over time that changed (presumably because my brain developed). So now in addition to consequences there's a bunch of "higher-level" abstracts involved. A sense of justice. Seeing myself as "a good person," whatever that means. Enlightened self-interest. (Good thing, too, because there is surely a lot I could get away with if I were really motivated to.)
Fiction, though, that's different. This type of game is storytelling. Personally, I want to see everything the writers came up with (assuming the writing is good). If there are multiple endings, I go back to trigger each one. I make different characters based on different concepts, with different appearances. Let's see what happens if I say this or say that. What happens if I attack this guy? What happens if I let my character starve? If I really like a game, I want to see where all the boundaries are.
How do we know that characters in RDR2 are not capable of suffering?
Think about why a person would feel pain if they do something like step on a thumbtack. They only feel it because there is a mechanism -- nerves that fire in response to the injury and transmit the signal to their brain, which then processes it in various ways that results in their experience of pain. If the mechanism is blocked, for example if their foot is anesthetized, then they will not feel that pain -- it's not possible. They could still *act* like they did, but then it would only be a simulation.
RDR2 does not have mechanisms for pain or suffering. The inputs are a mouse/keyboard/controller signal that maps to one of N number of choices at a given point in the game. These in turn map to different parts of the script, which the computer uses to select which content to draw on the screen and output to the speakers, as well as which flags to write to memory. The computer does not have a way to make any other distinction.
There are no pathways inside the computer by which the choices alter or otherwise affect the functioning of the computer. It has no processing to recognize things that are "good" or "bad" for it. No place in memory where anything like that is represented, stored, or retrieved. No social context, experience, or ability to make predictions about its future. No consciousness. Suffering cannot take place.
Do I believe that in the future we might build machines/programs that are conscious, self-aware, and capable of joy or suffering? Sure, but we are a long ways off. We're not exactly in Westworld yet. There might be some question as to whether the Westworld androids can suffer or not, but they do demonstrate that they have the prerequisites. And because of that, I think it would NOT be okay to mistreat them. But characters in RDR2 can only suffer in our imaginations.
Anyway, fascinating for sure, and it was cool to read your perspective on it.
Hm, therein lies the question. If we are nothing but ones and zeros in a simulation, and we feel pain, why wouldn't the ones and zeros in another simulation be any less apt to?
We assume that we are different beings, but really haven't anything past our insistence that its so to back that up.
I would say we have extensive evidence that we are not in a simulation. Go to the beach and sift through the sand, millions and millions of grains. Look at them under a microscope. Look at them from far away. Run any number of tests on them. The results will all be consistent with the laws of physics. You're not going to run into compression artifacts, or invisible walls, or slowdowns due to the Matrix melting while trying to process the extreme complexity of all the grains and air molecules and yourself interacting.
Does this prove we're not in a simulation? No. But if we are, it's necessarily so intricate and on such an enormous scale, I would question that our idea of "simulation" -- or any of our ideas at all -- would be appropriate to describe it.
But aside from that, "nothing but ones and zeros" is not a useful characterization. I think what you're getting at is there's no special limitation on 1s and 0s, and likewise no special property of amino acids (our building blocks) that makes one different from the other when it comes to feeling pain -- is that right? If so, I agree. But it's not very fruitful to focus on this.
It's analogous to talking about how a building made up of "nothing but bricks" can collapse. The phrasing emphasizes the role of the bricks. But that distracts from the important part. It's not the bricks themselves that are capable of collapsing. "Capable of collapsing" is a property of the building. This is regardless of what kind of building blocks it's made of.
So, too, with pain. Neither 1s nor 0s nor amino acids are apt to feel pain. It's all about what's built with them and how it functions. It needs a mechanism to feel pain. Amino acids have a leg up on 1s and 0s because they were able to self-assemble, leading to complex self-replicating structures that in some cases, eventually, got selected into forms that can feel pain. I do believe it's possible to build such a thing with 1s and 0s, too. However, 1s and 0s don't self-assemble; we need to assemble them. Everything we've assembled so far falls short. (And video games aren't even close, not even a little.)
You are basing your comment on our current level of understanding. If this is a simulation then our understanding of technology has no bearing on what is possible. Also, if it is simulation, all the sand is created, and the impulses in you brain that tell you what it feels like, and what it looks like under a microscope are created as well.
If this is a simulation, everything within it is all we have ever known, and therefore would be indistinguishable to us as anything other than reality.
LOL, what else would I be able to base it on? ;) If it's truly indistinguishable from reality, I just call it reality. (Not that that stops my imagination...)
You wouldn't, but that wouldn't make you any more real if you are a construct of a program. You would just believe that you are.
Book (series) recommendation for yah, which made me suddenly remember this post: NPCs, by Drew Hayes. (The series that continues on from that is called 'Spells, Swords, Stealth'.) The basic premise is that the story is told from the POV of NPCs from a D&D style game, who are forced to take over for some dead player characters. There's interaction between the NPCs and the players in various interesting ways, including the players being called to account for how they treat NPCs in general.
Oh, and Drew Hayes is also just a really good writer. This is the third time I'm re-reading this particular series, and I've managed to stay up till 2:30 am yet again reading it. (Book 5 comes out soon! Yay!) He even got me to read a series about super heroes (Super Powereds), which is a theme I'd normally never even think to read about.
That does sound very interesting. Thank you for the recommendation
As a huge fan of RDR2, and also as neurotypical person, I just popped in to say that this was a great read. I have always thought that the violent things we (or more precisely, neurotypical people) do in games is because it’s fun, but I’ve never thought deeper into WHY it’s fun. I’m not the kind of person to hurt innocent NPCs if I don’t have to, especially in RDR2 (because Arthur owns my heart and I want him to be as good a man as possible), but I can’t deny that letting loose on a first person shooter and blowing up enemies is a lot of fun. But then again to me personally it’s probably more to do with mastering the controls and surviving tough situations, because I’ll have an equal amount of fun with those types of moments where you have to press the right buttons really fast or fail, and when killing blood-thirsty monsters in fantasy games. Scarlet Nexus was a great game precisely because of the battle system where I had to train my hands to switch between superpowers and use them correctly in correct situations to beat the (sometimes massive amounts of) monsters. By the end of the game, when I had all the superpowers the game could offer available to me, and I was switching between them fluidly and in rapid succession to beat the ”level”, I was having more fun than I think I’ve ever had with a game before.
But then again, I’m definitely not the best spokesperson for the stereotypical gamer. I don’t have any interest to mess around a game, hurt NPCs, or go online and call people slurs, lol. Games for me aren’t an excuse to act on some hidden urges — the most violent I’ve ever wanted to be was hit my little brother when he was annoying. Hurting innocent NPCs actually makes me feel guilty, as does accepting payment from a poor NPC, because like, no. You’re a poor farmer barely scraping by?? It’s not right of me to accept money from you, lmao.
Also, 90% of the time, I prefer a game with a solid story (like RDR2, or games like Uncharted, Last of us, and Final Fantasy VII Remake), and those are the games I hold closest to heart. Games like Far Cry, Wolfenstein, and Devil May Cry are fun ways to be entertained for a bit, but at the end, they’re worth one playthrough and then I never touch them again. The fun of the mindless violence is fleeting, if that makes sense, meanwhile a game with a great story and big emotions will make me replay it again and again.
I don’t play this or any digital games, but I think there is something else to why NTs play this the way you say. You said: “This leads up to the question of why it is such an attraction for NTs to do, and I believe that I have an answer. It is because nothing is stopping them.” I think there is something missing from this explanation. I think it releases a ton of stressful emotions for NTs. NTs feel frustration, anger, and helplessness in tons of situations on the daily. The person in front of them doesn’t go fast enough when the light turns green, the fast food server got their order wrong, their spouse is cheating on them, etc. In real life, the consequences of taking violent action against any of these people has consequences that, for most NTs, are to costly. But give them the opportunity to release these emotions in a “safe” way, and they will use every dastardly action at their literal fingertips. The game you describe and the way NTs play it seems designed to give NTs a box to safely rage in. I think, don’t know as it’s not my thing. I know there are a zillion games to choose from and the NTs who play this do so for a reason. I know I would not get an ounce of pleasure from virtually hurting,killing,burning, etc. anyone, but I also don’t carry rage on the daily.
Everything except the cheating example that you just describe as something that makes NTs feel powerless, frustrated, angry, etc, are all things that my immediate response both in reading them, or in experiencing them in real life is, why do they care? It is completely foreign to me for any of those situations to even register on my concern radar
Even with the example of cheating, my response is to remove that person completely from my life immediately. After that there is no need to concern myself with it, they're gone, and with them their bad decisions.
Building on Joni's comment, one thing I've observed from years of tabletop RPG gaming is that sessions built around "killing monsters/bad guys" are fun because of stress reduction. I remember living through weeks filled with frustrating stressful situations where I looked forward to that week's gaming session and told the GameMaster I wanted to Kill Stuff. It was pleasurable precisely because my emotions wanted to let loose on the boss or friend but I also felt I had to suppress those feelings for a variety of reasons in "real life". Which means a build up of whatever that stress hormone is? So Killing Stuff in the game was a way of releasing/reducing that stress hormone--or at least that's my theory of partly WHY the killing sprees felt good. During sessions where that week was not especially stressful, I wasn't into killing-for-the-sake-of-killing. In other words, in those weeks I didn't find it all that appealing and was far more interested in whatever puzzles the GM had created.
In the gaming I do now (which is on the Astral tabletop website system), I find our fights strategically interesting. As in how do we deploy our fighting resources most effectively in order to win this battle? I'm no longer in situations in real life that I find stressful, frustrating, and all that. Therefore I no longer have much impulses to Kill Stuff.
OTOH, the phenomenon you're describing, of going on killing sprees against "good NPCs" is a whole different ball of wax. Possibly the people who do this just have higher stress levels? Though I'm not convinced this is why. I have friends who created "Evil Campaigns" where their PCs were the bad guys going all out for dominance of their game worlds. And yeah, they had a lot of fun with rolling rough-shod over anything that got in their way, possibly going out of their way to do Bad Stuff to Good NPCs. These are the same friends whom I gamed with in other campaigns. I just didn't join that particular game, so don't have much insight into it.
There's also the TV show West World, where the players got to do anything they wanted to the NPCs, who were basically AIs. And then the AIs became not just sentient, but also became able to seize control of their lives. So there's another moral-dilemma example of this sort of behavior, albeit expressed and explored completely in fiction.
So about my cortisol theory (that is the stress hormone, yes?), do psychopaths not have cortisol? Or is there something different about cortisol in NTs and psychopaths? Or possibly my idea here is just not relevant to this discussion.
Psychopaths have lower cortisol levels than neurotypicals. Interesting thought about cortisol levels and possibly people with higher levels are more inclined to participate in such things.
Fascinating.
This makes sense to me. One distinction I have noticed , though, between different NTs (at least I assume they're NTs!) is that some, in real life, are more constrained by consequences and learned habit (mostly a product of consequences when young) than by actual valuing of other people / lives / species / whatever. Other presumed NTs do function more from a strong code that they work out over time, somewhat like what I understand you to do, Athena. Many folks likely do both to differing extents. Figuring out which of these is affecting a behavior can be tough for people who have both influences, I think!
We humans are primates, and looking at how other primates respond to lots of social situations (the species differ a lot!), the emotions, dominance, social status stuff, is something I have used to try to figure out some of the weirdest human stuff. Those responses you mention as not making sense, I guess in evolutionary terms they might make sense (like a creature getting impatient when thwarted, having an emotion-level response not "just" a cognitive one) but those arguments are always pretty hypothetical.
I'm typing on and on again, will stop now...
I certainly agree. Many things are likely left over from a time when our species lived in very different conditions, and had very different needs. How fast we change our world makes no difference to the speed of evolution.
Yes, I understand that you process that way. However, that makes it difficult/impossible to understand why they are doing what they are doing in the game is my point. It's not just because there are no consequences, it is because IT FEELS GOOD to them to do it in a game, since there are multiple reasons they don't do it in real life. Not always because of things like prison, but because they (usually) know that killing someone or throwing them off a cliff for spilling coffee on you is a gargantuan over-reaction and not justified in a real life situation, but in a game, doing it gets your good feels going. NTs are getting ALL KINDS of feels from playing.
That's really interesting.
Hmmm, why DO we care? That's such a key question.
For me, it has to do with situations where I have to put up with something obnoxious either short or long term. Perhaps it's my boss and I can't just quit my job because I have no financial safety net to sustain me while I find the next one. Or it could be a family member whom I'm not prepared to just cut that tie because for whatever reason I want to keep that person in my life.
Once it was a friend who'd borrowed money and was late paying it back and giving me lots of bogus reasons about why. The stress there = it made me late paying my rent! (Yeah, I'd foolishly lent him part of my rent money, believing he would pay me back before my rent was due.) Long story short, yeah, I did remove that person completely from my life, but in the meantime, I wound up taking him to Small Claims Court, whereupon he found the money to pay me back (along with a more believable reason why he'd been late).
Killing someone for getting your food order wrong isn’t something an NT would do in real life even if there were no consequences but it’s fun in a game.
Well, something 98% of NT's wouldn't do that in real life. But then there are a few who do. Maybe less than 2% but they tend to make the news.
Thank you! I don't play this game but I love the idea of getting some great horses and going through the rest of it with them!
It is quite a fun game.
This was a fascinating read. I am not a gamer, so that in itself is interesting to read about. I have not played since the 80s when you had to load games by cassette, clunky things with the most basic graphics. Heck, I even remember TV Tennis! At the time, I was amazed at how immersive and absorbing even the simplest game could be, and I said, I think computer games will become an entire sophisticated art form one day, and it seems that has indeed happened, they are extraordinary, just from what little I see.
The moral questions- it surprises me that people will enjoy being violent in games, it's not something I understand, but yes, I have seen it, back in simpler game times, people at the screen crashing the plane repeatedly or shooting the people that they were meant to rescue. The 'just because I can'. I don't get the fun. Not because I am some wonderful person, but, I suspect, because I am less neurotypical than I had long assumed.
Anyway, lots to think about here, it"s rather like the notion of people's private thoughts, however terrible, not being something that makes them culpable or to be judged in any way. I don't know, but it's an interesting area.
Indeed it is interesting to watch. Perplexing as well. I don't quite know what that emotional link to being able to do anything is, but be it violence that is unnecessary, or the developers obsession with making games so focused on the notion of being able to "do anything", that they over include so much detail that the game itself is a slog, it is vexing behavior to me.
Have you as child liked to build something and then make it fall with one motion? Domino, card castles, wooden cubes or other such objects used to build something, makings oemthing spin, chemical reactions like dropping base into something acidic and watching bubbles. And watching volcanic eruptions and avalanches etc. Something happening and how something is and then isn't, plain awe... And also being able to make it happen. It has lot to do with power, but I think also with other things. Not sure how much that applies to differences between how some NT people like pointless violence more and some less. But feeling powerful and invincible is both soothing and ego boosting.
And very good question is what makes falling and such stuff funny. At the moment I just cannot formulate an answer, but I feel like it could tie into some of it.
It isn't something that I cared about
Perhaps because pretend violence has at least up until recently been an unquestioned part of childhood games. Toy soldiers, toy guns, later paintball. I find those things weird and disturbing, but that is unusual.
Hi Athena, I am a longtime reader of your answers and articles. I want to say that reading them helped me a lot and I wish you a happy life.
Thank you, Cairo. I appreciate that. I wish you the same.
Have you heard about Undertale? Much simpler game in mechanics, but boy, does it play with what you described. How real is suffering of characters who are playthings of a player (and some mirror the player in unsettling ways in this ability), what are consequences of killing only some, of killing none, of killing all (genocide run, which some players chose after playing other runs because of it being as-of-yet-unexplored has some interesting features regarding it's ending) and stuff.
I am not a gamer, I found out about it when I came across a lengthy comic (currently close to the finale, I expect only few more episodes) tha intrigued me with character designs and environment. Then I went on to catch up on the setting. It is centered around two characters and some heavy meta, making quite an extrapolation of a backstory about a scientist that decided that to help those, he cares about, he needs to be willing to do some horrible stuff and then finding out he chew off too much. It is about twins dealing with horrific abuse and each other's different responses to it that threaten to alienate them from each other. It is about broken families and trauma from war and about moral outlooks challenged, honor to one's autonomy, guilt and difficulties with dealing with the aftermath. I cannot tell how realistically are those difficult topics treated, but I found zarla a capable storyteller.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Undertale
As for comic, this is where it starts, but outside of the links to Next page under the strip there is also number of side things and some jokes in zarla's Handplates folder on DA - https://www.deviantart.com/zarla/art/Best-not-to-look-into-it-575682313
No idea if any of that will be of interest to you.
It really isn't my style of game looking at it.
Well, then I think few spoilers will not hurt. Anyone scrolling through comments, warning was issued.
Player makes their file and goes on to follow a child that fell into underground system of a certain mountain. There is finds population of all sorts of sentient creatures. There is no way back, only staying with the first one, which would prefer to mommy the charachter until the end of days, or go forward. Forward means meaningpotentially much more hostile beings and eventually reaching thei king in front of enchanted gate that keeps everyone inside and the king will be hell-bent on killing the child. What are the reasons for this hostility?
Monsters long ago lost war with humans, got locked up, somehow it is so that seven human souls will allow the gate to open.
Monsters were rather content to stay inside before, but when the first kiddo ever fell down there and got adopted by the rulling pair and befriended their son, kiddo discovered that through some obscure joining of soul energies with the prince they were able to get out. Reactions outside weren't exactly positive, the pair got mortally wounded and only managed to get back to die. The king in his grief set a new direction - getting out to fight again. Queen would not stand for that and leaved him and everyone thinks she died.
Now our new kiddo in the present is the last needed to open the gate, all other did not survive the treck. What increases chances of survival is amping up stats of through experience, such as experience slaying a monster - increases LV coloquially called love, but standing for Level of Violence. Trying to make friends with absolutely everyone in pacifist run is much harder, but actually leads to being able to free everyone and convince the ing to call off that war. He regrets harvesting those previous souls anyway.
That part ends with player being informed by soem of the characters that they should now let the child character - Frisk be and live their own life - aka the narrative is the player controls someone sentient.
Another characters talks throughout the game about some tampering with stats and saves and deja vo sense and there is mystery machine laying around and basically there is some grasping at sense that they are trapped in a space where someone can unwind the time back and change the course, once killed, once spared, once other stuff...
Also, remember our princ and first child ever, name Chara? Well, turns out we have some ghost hauntings at our hand. From the unfortunate death merger emeged a sentient flower named Flowey that has the same ability to save and rewind, but due to exhausting every possibility of every scenario is bored out of their mind, disconnected from all and just all out that stereotypical image of psychopathic manipulative chessmaster. Frisk'đ arrival changed things, there is an opportunity for moving out, during pacifist run pretty much all souls spared by get collected by this abominable vegetable and I am not sure what is the process of dealing with them, but it is possible. Oh and it is our killed prince reincarnated/transformed, turns out.
And now we are getting to Genocide run. At the end of whichyou meet Chara, yeah, they have not gone away either, they were hijacking the whole journey, more and more through every use of lethal violence and they will kindly inform you at the end of this run you cannot go back. After genocide you cannot run different run. You just wanted to have this at theexpense of all inside and now you unleashed somethign and there is no coming back. You can only delete all your files and set up new ones.
END OF SPOILERS
I prefer chess.
So, I don't play any violent games, so I guess I'm no help here. Well unless you count deer hunter, but I haven't played that in years.
What gaming consoles do you use?
XBOX Series X, however, this trick was done on the XBOX One. I have never tried to do it on the Series X, but since the glitches are on the hard copy of the game itself, there shouldn't be any reason that it won't work. It is still unable to update the game, and patch the glitches if it is offline.
I've noticed this sort of thing in a lot of MMO's as well as RDR2. BTW I didn't know about the cheat, thanks!
The cheat is awesome. When I have talked to some people they said the reason that they rob people in the game is because of necessity. They are shy of money and want to be able to do certain things. Using this cheat means that there is no shortage of money, so anything that is gained while proceeding through the game is just gravy.
There is also a way to hide Arthur's money for John to collect during the epilogue as well.