Some Philosophical Bullshit

[NikNakFlak]

Warning:
John Oxford levels of autism ahead.

Ethical theories can be compared a lot to spessmans in general. Many times, the thought process behind a rule or policy is driven by this thinking even if the theories themselves aren't named. What are the best ways to enforce rules or admins to police based on these principals? To understand that question we must first understand the theories and explore them in situations a little.

Utilitarianism is often used when dealing with situations in game. There are two kinds of Utilitarianism: Act and Rule. People who agree with one side of the spectrum tend to disagree with the other side. Act Utilitarianism is basing a situation on whether the outcome of the action that was done did more positive than negative. A lot of times in spessman, this is taken into account. If someone did something in a round that ended up creating more happiness and fun than it did create frustration, negativity, and salt for others; generally this person is either not punished or the punishment is lesser in nature. For example, if someone is running a rather lethal captain gimmick but more people had fun with the gimmick than people who died, generally this could be called a good gimmick and the captain might not get banned. Sometimes however, he might just get banned anyway since even though overall more people had fun, enough people were effected negativity that an admin in question might rule that it's better to punish and cut the situation out completely and therefore not have to worry about the negative because instead nothing happens. Rule utilitarianism is like act utilitarianism but it is with rules instead of judging specific actions. Generalized rules are put into place in which if the rules are followed, the most happiness will occur over negativity. Act utilitarianists generally frown upon rule utilitarianists because sometimes, not following a rule will make happiness or fun than following the rule. In the case of administration for spessmans, rule utilitarianism is used which is why we have rules in place, but act utilitarianism is also used because admins also judge each and every individual situation. Not unfortunately, all admins have different view points and different ways of interpreting these situations so sometimes punishments differ from admin to admin even though the situation may be the same or very similar in nature. Another problem with applying this theory to administration is that how do you measure happiness or positiveness? Some people who are shit think it's fun, and therefore that is happiness for them, but negativity for others. Greytiders are having fun and by their view, they are happy with what they are doing except others who are dealing with them are feeling negativity from the same situation. Do we only measure people who talk about how the round went in OOC? Do we measure how much saltyness is currently being generated from the playerbase? It's rather hard to measure the outcome of a situation when the measurement itself isn't measuring anything tangible. Is this the best way to police a spessman server?

Another theory is Kant's theory or Kantian. There are two main points to this theory. The first is the universal test. The universal test states that if a situation was applied to everyone, would it be ok? This is commonly brought up when dealing with greytiding. Sometimes it's "ok" to greytide to an extent as long as it's not "every round." The problem with this is, what if everyone greytided a single round but didn't do it again in the near future. There's a high likelihood that those assistants would probably be banned for "group rioting" or something like that because they detracted from the round in a heavily negative manner or something. The thing is, if minor greytide is allowed, just not every round, this would fail the universal test. If everyone greytided, would it be ok? The second main point to this theory is more or less, the golden rule; Treat everyone with respect and dignity. We can all start laughing now because in this community, that's just one huge joke. Some people simply outright ignore this rule and shit on others because it is fun for themselves. Sometimes this is required if you are an antag, but non-antagonists do it as well. Sometimes people simply don't like each other and they just shit on others. Generally this would probably be very easy to enforce except a lot of times it might go overboard. It's easy to do some minor shit that doesn't warrant any real administrative action but technically violates this theory. This theory isn't taken into account that much since in general, shitting on other people can be fun and hilarious. However the universal test has been applied in some cases as I mentioned earlier about the greytide example. That's why typically, we say that potentially shitty action "X" is allowed as long as it's not overdone or every round or something like that. IE: Don't regularly toe the line. Thoughts on this?

Some other theories are rather minor but we can still explore them.
Ethical Egoism is in general, doing things for your own happiness and self advancement. In general, in spessmans, that means playing for your own personal fun and self fulfillment. This rarely works in spessmans because this egoism usually involves heavily shitting on other players and as I stated earlier, with Utilitarianism, admins tend to rule and ban which maximizes fun and minimizes salt. However, this can be seen with antag hunting a little bit. These players only play to hunt antags and shit on them and really play for themselves. This does have the effect that sometimes an Antag already did bad things (because of the nature of antags) and therefore produces good from their self egoism because by killing said antag, they helped reduce un-happiness from other places. However this also can have the opposite effect. Sometimes an antag is doing an interesting gimmick and an antag hunter will either kill the antag, or attempt to. By killing this antag, they ruin the fun for other people and indulge their own self egoism. I can tell you now, that this has happened on the server before. Another situation similar to that is if an antag hunter tries to kill an antag who is running an interesting gimmick and ends up being killed by the crew for attempting to do so. Technically speaking, according to the rules, these crew members who killed the antag-hunter are in the wrong because they murdered a guy who was acting "technically" completely within the rules. Typically this results in heavy salt for the antag hunter who may adminhelp in which an admin will judge the situation and either apply act utilitarianism and say that the guy was attempting to kill fun and let the antag hunter sit in salt or the admin will rule in the antag hunters favor. It can be hard to judge because the antag in question may have done some dickish things in his gimmick or what not or maybe personally wronged some player in to which they believe revenge or retaliation is justified. However, we can apply Utilitarianism to that too. Even though on a personal level, the antag or player in question might have negatively impacted a specific player and said player retaliates, they might still be killed if the majority of the crew enjoys the gimmick and wants the antag to stay alive to continue their actions. Who is in the wrong in this situation? Should anything be done on an administrative side?

Situations in spessmans can be vastly different simply because of the scope of the game. It's why the game is so damn great for something as shitty as a 2D byond game. Branching away from ethical theories when dealing with situations in game. Another point to talk about is "roleplay" or as ausops put it, "sportsmanship". In general, I think these words can be used interchangeably because enforcing more roleplay standards, probably will enforce more sportsmanship and enforcing more sportsmanship will probably result in more roleplay. Technically speaking, unless someone breaks the 4th wall, we are really just all roleplaying at the same level as other servers. The only difference is the standards that are enforced or how much sportsmanship is enforced. Should we enforce more roleplay standards in an attempt to make people more sportsmanlike and more respectful and such or should we enforce more sportsmanship (which may or may not also be enforcing a roleplay standard) in an attempt to breathe more roleplay-like situations into the server? Should anything even change? /Tg/station itself is one of, if not the largest server out there which could very well say that people like the way we do things the most. It could also mean we were the best at one time and we are simply people carried by long lasting reputation or momentum. What is everyone's thoughts on this?

Naturally, you can assume I've been taking an ethics class and naturally I just had to apply everything specifically to spessmans. It's autism at it's finest but even without all the names, these thought processes of these theories are applied to how administration does things. It can be rather complicated but it can also be rather simple. No one should really get super invested in all this philosophical bullshit but I suppose I just had to type it up anyway.
Disclaimer: Any and all awful English or spelling errors I blame on writing in one take and not proof reading because who does that on a forum website for a video game lmao


TL;DR:Autism

[oranges]

Your intelligence turns me on like nothing you would believe.

[bandit]

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

wat

[TechnoAlchemist]

aight

[DrPillzRedux]

Did you make this just to insult a player?

[invisty]

I dont see why you cant have both a simple set of Rules and then moderate by Act-based decision-making - which is in the rules and is supposedly something admins do already.

The problem is that the rules and policy are enormous and stifle player creativity and choices. Why not permit one AI to be a door cockblocker as much as the AI who opens airlocks for clowns? Where's the harm (figuratively speaking) in permitting more grey areas? Accordingly, should not a captain be permitted to upload silly laws without getting rule-slapped unless he completely fucks up and gets everyone killed?

[J_Madison]

Here's something I noticed among CS, cod, battlefield, and assfaggots players.

Whenever they learn things, they get more fun and enjoyment out of it.

Think ranking up on csgo, getting a new prestige, or that new gun or cosmetic item.

When you get that, your happiness shoots up and you enter what I call the honeymoon stage. Think of it as the day you went from assistant to cargo and learned all these neat tricks.

But, good times don't last, and you're soon back to your usual mood.

How can I keep happy you ask?
You learn to learn something new approximately once every 5 or 6 rounds.

But, as you rank up to higher and higher in CSGO, hit prestiege, run out of guns, and fill up your slots, you might think it gets more fun when you're on top of the world.

This isn't the case. Once you hit max prestiege, unlock all the guns, go global elite, or fill those hero cosmetics, the opposite happens:

Disaster.
And the only way to remedy that is to take others' fun. You can't generate fun anymore.

And that's the problem with SS13. People play it too much, to the point they're reduced to playing assistant and validhunting to steal others fun.

The simple solution is to give them a break from doing nothing, but that doesn't work because they will always suicide or refuse to do a job if they're not antag.

Security is just the case. Those that play security are not necessarily the best, but those that get fun from ruining others experiences.

I've had my experience ruined so someone else could have a better time before.
It's always amusing how incredibly salty those players get when the fun they take from you backfires and stabs them in the back. Think of the guy who thinks it's fun to ruin others experiences, only to get cockblocked on his climax. Believe me they are incredibly vocal in OOC.

tl;dr the "robust assistant" are just people who play a game they don't actually enjoy for the purpose of ruining others experiences as their source of enjoyment.

It comes to no surprise when players strike back at opportune times, creating lots of ahelps.

[ShadowDimentio]

tl;dr pls

[callanrockslol]

I think we should just all have a good time playing Sealab in space and accept that sometimes shit happens and other people will wreck your shit. Or maybe you'll wreck theirs. Or maybe both of you get minibombed by a mime while hunting for lings in maint.

[J_Madison]

Assistants/validhunters need to pick a job and do it, instead of playing for themselves and traitors need to believe that they'll face less validhunters so they can have more fun.

Following castle doctrine is fine, but it's shitty as fuck when you can't play because of the validhunting attitude.

It's an endless cycle:

Validhunter ruins antag's experience.
Antags powergame and abuse mechanics to ruin everyone else's experience.
Players don't like getting murderboned and having the round fucked prematurely.
Players turn to validhunt to stop antags in their infancy.

The only way to effectively deal with this implies grudging.

[DemonFiren]

I'm with the consequentialist approach to the Kantian categorical imperative: as a player, act in such a way that everyone else acting the same way results in a server you'd still like to play on.
Now this, of course, needs a few restrictions; else we'll get Bay-tier autists on one hand and Goon-tier shitters on the other, all believing their way is the best way of playing the game.
Ultimately, there are only a few imperatives that I'd put in place: the old "don't be a dick" and "don't line-toe", but also - yes, yes, unpopular - "don't validhunt". Even those are difficult to enforce due to the discrepancy between the spirit and the wording of the rule.

[ColonicAcid]

The only real philosophical author that I've ever read is Nietzche, in which I have read majority of his books. Funny thing to note is that in many ways the rules are in direct contradiction to attempting to follow selbstüberwindung. Do you want to own up to envy? Since any real monetary value in this game doesn't really matter I'll take the value of "envy" as enjoyment. If you wish to hoard all the enjoyment for yourself as a non antag you get banned. I guess in many ways that the admins is Christianity in many ways. And how did Nietzche advice to selbstüberwindung? By removing Christianity, destroying the herd mentality and enjoying all the "vices" that are ostracised to make yourself the Ubermensch.

TLDR; Destroy admins and rules and become the Ubermensch.

You see? Philosophical arguments don't work in a video game where majority of people are under nihilistical values of their characters. When you die in a game you don't die for ever and thus nothing really matters. You can't escape death, but guess what, you can escape a ban. You don't go and apply for an undeath request after a year of being dead. To state that players will be better players as soon as they remove any objections to their own wills is absurd.

Another theory is Kant's theory or Kantian. There are two main points to this theory. The first is the universal test. The universal test states that if a situation was applied to everyone, would it be ok?

Uhm are we thinking of the same Kantian here? You mean his universal law aka:
Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law

Because then yes I would argue that greytiders would still greytide if everyone else were to do so. Even if it occurred to them because at the end of the day they don't care about dying or anything really detrimental happening to them, as long as they get to cause chaos that's all they wanted.

[John_Oxford]

doesnt even know how to autism

autism response:

Spoiler:

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
On May 24th, 2012, an anonymous user submitted a thread to the /pasta/[1] board, claiming he had created the original copypasta two to three years prior (shown below).

honest response:

>implying you know how to copy me
>doesnt even use paragraph tags
>doesnt even into [1.2.406a]
>doesnt even make grammicalar mistakes
>cant even into autism

pls learn from master based nikflak

[NikNakFlak]

your autism response is a copy pasta. 0/10 not impressed
when you say paragraph tags, do you mean maybe indentation because paragraph tags are html, this is a forum.
grammar also has nothing to do with autism.

0/10 your response is shit and I was expecting something more