Great job! I actually remembered that David Wong article and started thinking about what I was going to have to get rid of to get into shape. (Commenting on Substack maybe?)
Minor point in agreement: I actually remember a while ago I was talking to a leftist about tabletop RPGs, of all things. I mentioned trade-offs as a mechanism and they told me they were unpopular because they drew on the idea of scarcity, which was a precondition for capitalism. I'm not sure if anyone else thinks this way but it may be an example.
One nitpick:
"Decimation was an ancient Roman punishment, where one tenth of the army would be randomly selected to be stoned to death. The idea was that decimation would make the remaining soldiers work harder during the campaigns."
This is technically correct, but it was even worse than that. *Their comrades* would have to stone them to death. Even if the lot passed you over, you were going to have to be one of the nine stoning your army buddy.
You're right. The thing is they've significantly shifted the market to the point where they *are* the market; TTRPGs are much more of an LGBT thing than a nerd thing at this point. The invention of video games meant the straight male nerd population could live out their (OK, our) power fantasies with visuals, so the woke crowd was a big portion of what's left over. The big inflection point seems to be around 2000 if you're looking for old supplements, though these things are never absolute--Sword and Sorcery Studios was pretty mainstream and made some fun stuff into the 2000s.
Yeah it's basically vidya for the autists and ttrpg for the theatre kids. If you're not a theatre kid but you want something with a freeform story and in-depth world and IRL interaction rather than voice chat in your bedroom? You can fuck off! So depressing.
Theatre kids as well as being annoying tend to also make games very boring as any challenge or risk of death or failure is going to pop their little power fantasy bubble at some point and cause whining or tears because HOW DARE YOU LET THOSE DICE KILL MY KWEEYURRR TROO SELF THAT WAS MY ONLY WAY TO EXPRESS WHO I AM BECAUSE THE REAL WORLD IS SO MEAN AND OPPRESSIVE blah blah blah. There's also the fact they demand that every fantasy universe have the same cultural values as the modern west, hence wheelchair accessible dungeons.
I'm trying to picture an evil lich overlord demanding his minions make his evil lair accessible for his wheelchair-bound, blind, and chronic fatigue-suffering enemies to enter his lair and kill him, because he's less scared of that than some more powerful entity that will take all his gold and trash his reputation if his lair isn't accessible. There's no way to encounter this and not find it ridiculous and immersion-breaking.
Quite a good article on the whole, though I'd say there were almost no new points to me personally - I've been preaching the gospel of tradeoffs for at least 2 decades now.
But this one bit annoyed me: "“We” are not pregnant"
I will agree that the verbiage isn't perfect (It's actively annoying in some ways), but there's a very large difference between "I impregnated someone" and "We, as a couple, are expecting a child, and I'm committed to providing for the mother of my child and parenting that child."
I have several children, and I assure you, when my wife was pregnant, at no point was I "sitting around, drinking beer and watching college football with the boys."
You took a break from an otherwise good article to grammar Nazi. Take it out, and the whole article would be better.
Other commentary - "I’ve tricked you"
Eh, it's not nearly that clear cut. There are rules, and there are consequences, and unless you never judge the rules in any way at all, you're going to judge those rules by the consequences.
Exceedingly few people never judge the rules, and exceedingly few people don't blindly follow rules at least some portion of the time. Nearly everyone is a mix.
Consequentialism IS correct - there's literally nothing else to judge by outside of religious conviction.
The problem I think you're missing (especially for those bureaucrats) is that they DO care *A LOT* about the consequences! But only the ones that apply to themselves.
The reason so many of them act the way they do *IS* consequentialist - if I make a decision, I can be blamed for it (something bad), and if I don't, I keep getting paid and possibly promoted (something good). The systemic incentives are broken - for huge amounts of time, there is no penalty to not making a decision, but there might be a penalty if they do.
So, if they keep not making decisions, some time ***WAAAAAAAaaaaaayyyy*** down the road, the company will almost certainly have money problems from the useless 80% of bureaucrats... but if they makes decisions, at least of few of them are guaranteed to be wrong (and for the types attracted to bureaucracy, a LOT of them will be wrong), which will lead to problems for them personally MUCH sooner.
Trade-offs are indeed a big deal, and I preach that gospel, but it's only a small part of a much larger claim, and that is, by large, ---the incentives WILL be followed---.
That explains, for instance, why so many politicians are corrupt. Effectively, until they are caught, corrupt politicians are paid more than non-corrupt ones (they get all the same pay and benefits... plus the corrupt pay and benefits), and once there are enough corrupt ones, they all work together to make it hard for any of their corruption to be exposed.
Lack of considering trade-offs is indeed a thing, but it's not as far-reaching as broken incentive structures... which can come about through honest error but mostly come about from laziness and bad faith.
Wow, that turned out longer than I meant for it to, sorry.
~~Broadly speaking, the philosophical discussion of ethics bifurcates into two categories:
1. Consequentialism is the idea that we should judge right and wrong based on the results it produces.
2. Deontology starts with following a list of rules, and adhering to those rules no matter what.
For the majority of my life, consequentialism has always been intuitively true to me. We need to judge the morality of an action based on the effect it has on the real world.
But lately I've started to see the pitfalls in this sort of thinking at every level.~~
Ironic, the older I get the more I think the bifurcation is the error.
As you said, the thinking with #1 is fairly obvious. But thinking with #2 also has pitfalls where you start seeing people ignore the consequences and outcomes of things purely based upon the rules. One infamous example is the reaction in the USA around immigrants - that it is the moral thing to permit any and all into the nation regardless of the impact it has upon the citizens. Or you can see the reverse of it in instances of things like "ACAB." There the police are deontologically always and everywhere evil and tools of authoritarianism, regardless of how much criminals victimize people.
I don't have a perfect answer yet, I'm still meditating on it, but I've just seen both ethical categories be abused and exploited by the wicked enough to convince me that neither option is the "perfect one." It seems rather that some kind of combination of them both, to the maximum amount is the better ethics.
The idea of trade-offs helps move beyond these categories, I think. Right and wrong are like the yin and yang symbol, there's always going to be a dot of black in the white, and vice versa. Or they're like Loki's neck and head, different but with no clear line between them.
It's tough to take either a purely deontological or consequentialist approach once you recognize that. You're not going to find a consistent rule set to clearly distinguish right from wrong, and you're not going to be able to act like benefits cancel out costs via simple summation. You're just left with some black in your white, some neck still attached to the head, and some wrong accompanying every right. So you just do your best using everything you've got, knowing that you're not going to get it completely right because completely right doesn't exist. It both takes the pressure off and humbles the righteous.
I read this again because I'm circling something, and a key component is tradeoffs. I kept hearing "the god named tradeoffs" in my head, and I had a feeling I had seen it before. So, I congratulate you on coining a sticky term that has now joined luxury beliefs in my brain. I also learned the following:
1. You are Gen Z
2. You were a management consultant
3. You have a long psychology reading list that I covet
The consequentialism critique reminds me of a similar thought I had about optimization, which led me back to this: optimization doesn't only mean efficiency, but also erosion.
Another problem with consequentialism though is its limited usefulness in judging decisions before they are done. The fact that this is as futile as mathemathizing the real world often makes alternative moral systems as good approximations for consequentialism seem more useful to me.
*Good* rules are essentially consequentialism laid out in an approximating ruleset that can be followed easily and produce good results the most often.
This is useful, because most* people, most* of the time, can't be arsed to do the mental work for themselves.
(* And honestly, "most" should probably be "nearly all" in both places. Yay humanity.)
Exactly. I wouldn't be too pessimistic about humanity in this regard though. Sure, things could be better, but the world's still too rich and complex to think about everything.
I remember ages ago talking to a leftist about tabletop RPGs, of all things. They said they had heard people saying they didn’t like tradeoffs as a game mechanism because it implied the sort of scarcity that kept capitalism going.
I don’t know how common this is but it would fit your thesis.
you tease out concepts like story arcs surprises and drama. again...what a MIND. it's hard to comment beyond gushing because you wrap us up in awe and wonder so well.
i'm madly in love with your MIND! wow. you are so much fun to read. i feel like a pillow queen being fed philosophical concepts like bon bons. thank you! i adore you without knowing you. you've got heart AND logic. whew and wow.
wow. you're really good. i'm glad i found you.
Cheers I’m so glad you liked it
"liked" it? you're so funny. i'm doing the backstroke in everything you've ever written here.
(no need to respond to be polite. just take it.)
As a costitarian I'm liking this post off the title alone, regardless of the contents.
Great job! I actually remembered that David Wong article and started thinking about what I was going to have to get rid of to get into shape. (Commenting on Substack maybe?)
Minor point in agreement: I actually remember a while ago I was talking to a leftist about tabletop RPGs, of all things. I mentioned trade-offs as a mechanism and they told me they were unpopular because they drew on the idea of scarcity, which was a precondition for capitalism. I'm not sure if anyone else thinks this way but it may be an example.
One nitpick:
"Decimation was an ancient Roman punishment, where one tenth of the army would be randomly selected to be stoned to death. The idea was that decimation would make the remaining soldiers work harder during the campaigns."
This is technically correct, but it was even worse than that. *Their comrades* would have to stone them to death. Even if the lot passed you over, you were going to have to be one of the nine stoning your army buddy.
These kinds of leftists have ruined TTRPGs and yet are the one kind of toxic player you're never allowed to acknowledge
You're right. The thing is they've significantly shifted the market to the point where they *are* the market; TTRPGs are much more of an LGBT thing than a nerd thing at this point. The invention of video games meant the straight male nerd population could live out their (OK, our) power fantasies with visuals, so the woke crowd was a big portion of what's left over. The big inflection point seems to be around 2000 if you're looking for old supplements, though these things are never absolute--Sword and Sorcery Studios was pretty mainstream and made some fun stuff into the 2000s.
Yeah it's basically vidya for the autists and ttrpg for the theatre kids. If you're not a theatre kid but you want something with a freeform story and in-depth world and IRL interaction rather than voice chat in your bedroom? You can fuck off! So depressing.
Theatre kids as well as being annoying tend to also make games very boring as any challenge or risk of death or failure is going to pop their little power fantasy bubble at some point and cause whining or tears because HOW DARE YOU LET THOSE DICE KILL MY KWEEYURRR TROO SELF THAT WAS MY ONLY WAY TO EXPRESS WHO I AM BECAUSE THE REAL WORLD IS SO MEAN AND OPPRESSIVE blah blah blah. There's also the fact they demand that every fantasy universe have the same cultural values as the modern west, hence wheelchair accessible dungeons.
I'm trying to picture an evil lich overlord demanding his minions make his evil lair accessible for his wheelchair-bound, blind, and chronic fatigue-suffering enemies to enter his lair and kill him, because he's less scared of that than some more powerful entity that will take all his gold and trash his reputation if his lair isn't accessible. There's no way to encounter this and not find it ridiculous and immersion-breaking.
OK, actually, that would be a hilarious fantasy world.
You need to write this.
I would if Wizards of the Coast hadn't already created it while 100% serious!
It's easy to fuck around if you never have to find out.
Quite a good article on the whole, though I'd say there were almost no new points to me personally - I've been preaching the gospel of tradeoffs for at least 2 decades now.
But this one bit annoyed me: "“We” are not pregnant"
I will agree that the verbiage isn't perfect (It's actively annoying in some ways), but there's a very large difference between "I impregnated someone" and "We, as a couple, are expecting a child, and I'm committed to providing for the mother of my child and parenting that child."
I have several children, and I assure you, when my wife was pregnant, at no point was I "sitting around, drinking beer and watching college football with the boys."
You took a break from an otherwise good article to grammar Nazi. Take it out, and the whole article would be better.
Other commentary - "I’ve tricked you"
Eh, it's not nearly that clear cut. There are rules, and there are consequences, and unless you never judge the rules in any way at all, you're going to judge those rules by the consequences.
Exceedingly few people never judge the rules, and exceedingly few people don't blindly follow rules at least some portion of the time. Nearly everyone is a mix.
Consequentialism IS correct - there's literally nothing else to judge by outside of religious conviction.
The problem I think you're missing (especially for those bureaucrats) is that they DO care *A LOT* about the consequences! But only the ones that apply to themselves.
The reason so many of them act the way they do *IS* consequentialist - if I make a decision, I can be blamed for it (something bad), and if I don't, I keep getting paid and possibly promoted (something good). The systemic incentives are broken - for huge amounts of time, there is no penalty to not making a decision, but there might be a penalty if they do.
So, if they keep not making decisions, some time ***WAAAAAAAaaaaaayyyy*** down the road, the company will almost certainly have money problems from the useless 80% of bureaucrats... but if they makes decisions, at least of few of them are guaranteed to be wrong (and for the types attracted to bureaucracy, a LOT of them will be wrong), which will lead to problems for them personally MUCH sooner.
Trade-offs are indeed a big deal, and I preach that gospel, but it's only a small part of a much larger claim, and that is, by large, ---the incentives WILL be followed---.
That explains, for instance, why so many politicians are corrupt. Effectively, until they are caught, corrupt politicians are paid more than non-corrupt ones (they get all the same pay and benefits... plus the corrupt pay and benefits), and once there are enough corrupt ones, they all work together to make it hard for any of their corruption to be exposed.
Lack of considering trade-offs is indeed a thing, but it's not as far-reaching as broken incentive structures... which can come about through honest error but mostly come about from laziness and bad faith.
Wow, that turned out longer than I meant for it to, sorry.
~~Broadly speaking, the philosophical discussion of ethics bifurcates into two categories:
1. Consequentialism is the idea that we should judge right and wrong based on the results it produces.
2. Deontology starts with following a list of rules, and adhering to those rules no matter what.
For the majority of my life, consequentialism has always been intuitively true to me. We need to judge the morality of an action based on the effect it has on the real world.
But lately I've started to see the pitfalls in this sort of thinking at every level.~~
Ironic, the older I get the more I think the bifurcation is the error.
As you said, the thinking with #1 is fairly obvious. But thinking with #2 also has pitfalls where you start seeing people ignore the consequences and outcomes of things purely based upon the rules. One infamous example is the reaction in the USA around immigrants - that it is the moral thing to permit any and all into the nation regardless of the impact it has upon the citizens. Or you can see the reverse of it in instances of things like "ACAB." There the police are deontologically always and everywhere evil and tools of authoritarianism, regardless of how much criminals victimize people.
I don't have a perfect answer yet, I'm still meditating on it, but I've just seen both ethical categories be abused and exploited by the wicked enough to convince me that neither option is the "perfect one." It seems rather that some kind of combination of them both, to the maximum amount is the better ethics.
The idea of trade-offs helps move beyond these categories, I think. Right and wrong are like the yin and yang symbol, there's always going to be a dot of black in the white, and vice versa. Or they're like Loki's neck and head, different but with no clear line between them.
It's tough to take either a purely deontological or consequentialist approach once you recognize that. You're not going to find a consistent rule set to clearly distinguish right from wrong, and you're not going to be able to act like benefits cancel out costs via simple summation. You're just left with some black in your white, some neck still attached to the head, and some wrong accompanying every right. So you just do your best using everything you've got, knowing that you're not going to get it completely right because completely right doesn't exist. It both takes the pressure off and humbles the righteous.
I read this again because I'm circling something, and a key component is tradeoffs. I kept hearing "the god named tradeoffs" in my head, and I had a feeling I had seen it before. So, I congratulate you on coining a sticky term that has now joined luxury beliefs in my brain. I also learned the following:
1. You are Gen Z
2. You were a management consultant
3. You have a long psychology reading list that I covet
The consequentialism critique reminds me of a similar thought I had about optimization, which led me back to this: optimization doesn't only mean efficiency, but also erosion.
A wildly entertaining and thoughtful trick you pulled there. And of course, pretty much all wrapped around my favorite Thomas Sowell quote.
I was just about to say this.
Cool stuff.
Another problem with consequentialism though is its limited usefulness in judging decisions before they are done. The fact that this is as futile as mathemathizing the real world often makes alternative moral systems as good approximations for consequentialism seem more useful to me.
*Good* rules are essentially consequentialism laid out in an approximating ruleset that can be followed easily and produce good results the most often.
This is useful, because most* people, most* of the time, can't be arsed to do the mental work for themselves.
(* And honestly, "most" should probably be "nearly all" in both places. Yay humanity.)
Exactly. I wouldn't be too pessimistic about humanity in this regard though. Sure, things could be better, but the world's still too rich and complex to think about everything.
I remember ages ago talking to a leftist about tabletop RPGs, of all things. They said they had heard people saying they didn’t like tradeoffs as a game mechanism because it implied the sort of scarcity that kept capitalism going.
I don’t know how common this is but it would fit your thesis.
you tease out concepts like story arcs surprises and drama. again...what a MIND. it's hard to comment beyond gushing because you wrap us up in awe and wonder so well.
what a skill and talent as a writer.
i'm madly in love with your MIND! wow. you are so much fun to read. i feel like a pillow queen being fed philosophical concepts like bon bons. thank you! i adore you without knowing you. you've got heart AND logic. whew and wow.
xxxxxx...etc
So many don’t seem to realize that raising the minimum wage causes job loss.