You doing it right?

Entry posted by eyriq March 13, 2011

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I've always enjoyed the morality debate to an extent, so here is my attempt to chime in.

Morality identifies transcendent qualities for appropriate interaction; it recognizes a system wide connection with proscribed purpose and intention. Morality in RL fails as a transcendent concept simply by nature of unique consciousness vs. universal unconsciousness; “I” is by nature separated from “It”, and any transcendent purpose and intention is hidden within the universal unconscious, if indeed it is there at all. We cannot currently know of the meta-system of which we are a small part of due to the limitations of our science.

On Bob this conflict takes on an entirely different nature. There is a clearly identifiable architect (admin) and as such an accessible universal unconscious (the game's code) and a clearly definable purpose and intention (the game's limits, i.e. rules and defined limitations to movement). We can know clearly of the meta-system that makes up this game. “I” can know “It” intimately.

This clear merger of “I” and “It” means that we can determine what is “moral” in terms of game play, what pattern of clicking our mouse or keyboard will provide us with ‘absolute profit’. However, we do not play in a vacuum, and as such the relationship between “I” and “It” covers only part of the behavioral spectrum; there is still the consciousness of “We” and “You”.

“We”, and “You” are meaningless outside of social complexity, and it is through understanding social complexity combined with a correct knowledge of the game that we can find an objective morality for our community.

Social complexity implies the blending of the consciousness’s “I”, “We”, and “You”. This blending is heavily influenced by system. As I said, we can know the system of Bob on a different level than we can the Universe, as I’m pretty sure Hawking is still working on his Theory of Everything. But what allows us to blend “I”, “We”, and “You” you ask? It is that we share in the human condition. We are only different in degree, not type. Our brains and bodies are structured in the same way and produce roughly the same hormones and whatever else physiologically makes us tick. This means we can rationally determine correct social behavior based on empathy, or the ability to feel and experience what another feels and experiences. When you combine rationally derived correct social interaction with awareness of the purpose, intent, and function of the world, you arrive at an objective morality. This is what we have here on Bob.

So what is this morality? Ultimately and broadly it is framed by three levels of interactions: “I” and “It”, or building your nation, “I” and “We”, or interacting in a win-win game with other players, and “I” or “We” and “You”, or interacting in a win-lose game with other players. If you lack an understanding of the game’s core features (what I’ve been describing as “it”) you will build a crappy nation, and if you do merge with other players and they don’t understand the game you will build a crappy alliance, and if you enter into a conflict with someone who does have that knowledge, you get destroyed. You are doing it wrong. So that relationship is fundamental.

I find that while understanding the game is fundamental, it is understanding the nature of the “I” and “We” and the “I” or “We” and “You” relationships that is pivotal. “I” and “We” pretty much comprises the highest level of social complexity that this game has to offer; without the community this game is nothing. On the macro level “I” needs “You” to become “We”. On the micro-level however we are driven by win-lose games. The ranking system drives the micro win-lose level, “I” will have more or less NS than “you”, and “I” will compete against “you” to get ahead. However, the micro-level competition needs to be reined in by the macro-level sense of community. This is due to the need to preserve an environment where those micro-level win-lose games can occur. If “I” were to follow out the drive to gain security and self-replication ad nauseam with no higher order function to rein in “I” the game would eventually reach an end, and this game is not that sort of game by its nature. By its nature following out the drive for security and replication to its logical conclusion is immoral.

-E