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How to address raiding


RandomInterrupt

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As I mentioned earlier, it keeps me (and thousands of other nations) from getting into the top 5% of nations, barring me from getting nuclear weapons unless I buy a Manhattan Project. The real cost to me of your selfishness is the $100,000,000 that it costs to buy the wonder. So don't tell me that your pursuit of your self-interest is innocent and costs me nothing. There's a dollar amount right there.

Of course, I don't fault you for this, because I take it for granted that your pursuit of self-interest is going to harm me. Non-harm is impossible. But if you're going to argue that you don't harm me at all, then you're just plain wrong and there's the number to prove it.

The cost of buying a Manhattan Project is irrelevant to this argument. Raiding is, plain and simple, the destruction of another nation without provocation. There is a clear and understandable difference between imperceptibly raising the 5% ceiling, something that effects a tiny group of people, and actively destroying someone's nation. By your argument, any action is justified regardless of harm to others because it's impossible to not "harm" someone else whenever you do anything. It's a fallacious and irrelevant assertion when you consider the sheer scale of the damage done by raiding these days, and it's not fooling anyone.

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By your argument, any action is justified regardless of harm to others because it's impossible to not "harm" someone else whenever you do anything.

Almost but not quite. I'm not saying you can do anything because it's impossible to refrain from harm. On the contrary, I personally believe I should strive for morality in everything I do. I'm just saying that it's hypocritical of you to do whatever you want to do, justify it on the grounds of non-harm even when it is pointed out to you in real dollars how much it is costing me, and still use non-harm as a bludgeon for trying to influence other nations' foreign policy.

I'm not saying that anyone can do anything they want. I'm saying that, since you commit harm on a daily basis, you don't have the right to tell other people they can't. You're seeking to justify the behaviors you commit while drawing the line there and condemning anyone who goes further.

Edited by TheNakedJimbo
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Almost but not quite. I'm not saying you can do anything because it's impossible to refrain from harm. On the contrary, I personally believe I should strive for morality in everything I do. I'm just saying that it's hypocritical of you to do whatever you want to do, justify it on the grounds of non-harm even when it is pointed out to you in real dollars how much it is costing me, and still use non-harm as a bludgeon for trying to influence other nations' foreign policy.

I'm not saying that anyone can do anything they want. I'm saying that, since you commit harm on a daily basis, you don't have the right to tell other people they can't. You're seeking to justify the behaviors you commit while drawing the line there and condemning anyone who goes further.

All of human society is based upon being able to draw a line between the superficial and the detrimental. The "harm" done by growing ones own nation is minuscule, and almost immeasurable to the vast majority of players. Raiding is an action that clearly hurts other people. Striving for morality includes protecting the rights of those who cannot protect themselves, something that we should be doing regardless of the justifications offered by the greedy and self-serving.

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The "harm" done by growing ones own nation is minuscule, and almost immeasurable to the vast majority of players.

...and therefore acceptable?

The harm done by nabbing a bit of tech from someone inactive is also almost immeasurable to the vast majority of players. If he doesn't whine in the OWF, there's a really good chance that no one at all will know that it happened. It sets the tech raider back a couple of days and may teach him one of the fundamental truths of humanity, which is that we function better in community and relationship with each other. There is still very little real harm done to him, not that can be measured or quantified, and certainly nowhere near the $100,000,000 that it's going to cost me to buy a Manhattan Project because the selfish people above me won't slow down and let me catch up.

People like you enjoy putting up the front that they care about other people. "Non-harm" is a nice belief system because it creates the illusion that you care about other people. But really, as you've been arguing all along, you care about yourself and your self-interest, even when I can attach a concrete amount to how much your self-interest is going to cost me. You think that anything is moral as long as you're minding your own business, which demonstrates that you're not interested in other people at all, but only in what you can get away with. If you can talk yourself into believing it doesn't harm anyone else, even if it does, then you can rest easy at night.

Again, I don't fault you at all for pursuing your self-interest, because I understand that your pursuit of self automatically negates your concern for me. It is only a problem for you in your own mind because you must either explain why you're not harming me, or else justify the harm you're doing me. You've already admitted that you do harm me, but dismissed it as a "minuscule" quantity, so you've opted for the path of justification. That is okay with me. I'm merely pointing out that you're not really pursuing non-harm at all; you're pursuing self-interest, and if it hurts me, then you'll explain things away and ignore me. That's not non-harm; it's realpolitik at its best.

You've already demonstrated that you're willing to inflict some amount of harm on me in the pursuit of your nation. Again let me stress that I do not fault you for this because I believe that it is the nature of the game. The only question is: how much harm is it moral to inflict? Your answer seems to be "the amount that I inflict but no more." That would be the same as the tech raider's response to the same question. Therefore we can see that a philosophy of non-harm is useless in resolving the tech raiding problem, which was my point in my original post.

Edited by TheNakedJimbo
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You've already demonstrated that you're willing to inflict some amount of harm on me in the pursuit of your nation. Again let me stress that I do not fault you for this because I believe that it is the nature of the game. The only question is: how much harm is it moral to inflict? Your answer seems to be "the amount that I inflict but no more." That would be the same as the tech raider's response to the same question. Therefore we can see that a philosophy of non-harm is useless in resolving the tech raiding problem, which was my point in my original post.

How is it self-interest to argue against people attacking other nations that have no relation to me? Seriously, what the hell are you talking about?

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How is it self-interest to argue against people attacking other nations that have no relation to me? Seriously, what the hell are you talking about?

You --> Grow your nation --> Negative consequences for me --> Moral because pursuit of your self-interest is considered moral by you.

Tech raider --> Tech raids --> Negative consequences for some poor slob --> Moral because pursuit of self-interest is considered moral by tech raider.

Now here is the relevant paragraph again:

You've already demonstrated that you're willing to inflict some amount of harm on me in the pursuit of your nation. (Just a reminder that you admitted to this on the previous page, but dismissed the quantity and quality as "minuscule.") Again let me stress that I do not fault you for this because I believe that it is the nature of the game. The only question is: how much harm is it moral to inflict on other nations? Your answer seems to be "the amount that I inflict but no more." That would be the same as the tech raider's response to the same question. Therefore we can see that a philosophy of non-harm is useless in resolving the tech raiding problem, which was my point in my original post.

Edited by TheNakedJimbo
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You've already demonstrated that you're willing to inflict some amount of harm on me in the pursuit of your nation. (Just a reminder that you admitted to this on the previous page, but dismissed the quantity and quality as "minuscule.") Again let me stress that I do not fault you for this because I believe that it is the nature of the game. The only question is: how much harm is it moral to inflict on other nations? Your answer seems to be "the amount that I inflict but no more." That would be the same as the tech raider's response to the same question. Therefore we can see that a philosophy of non-harm is useless in resolving the tech raiding problem, which was my point in my original post.

Here is the relevant paragraph:

All of human society is based upon being able to draw a line between the superficial and the detrimental. The "harm" done by growing ones own nation is minuscule, and almost immeasurable to the vast majority of players. Raiding is an action that clearly hurts other people. Striving for morality includes protecting the rights of those who cannot protect themselves, something that we should be doing regardless of the justifications offered by the greedy and self-serving.

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All of human society is based upon being able to draw a line between the superficial and the detrimental. The "harm" done by growing ones own nation is minuscule, and almost immeasurable to the vast majority of players.

...and therefore acceptable?

You still keep trying to explain why it's okay for you to be selfish and not for tech raiders to do the same. But you're a hypocrite because you're appealing to a philosophy of non-harm to others in order to justify your selfish pursuit of self-interest. The two are not compatible. If you're really arguing for non-harm then you have to be aware of the ways your pursuit of self-interest (by which I mean nation growth, but there are other examples) harms other people. You have admitted on the previous page that your growth does harm me, but you have decided that the consequences are acceptable to you. The amount of harm you inflict is acceptable to you in light of your legitimate claims to self-interest.

The tech raider would say the exact same thing.

Edited by TheNakedJimbo
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...and therefore acceptable?

You still keep trying to explain why it's okay for you to be selfish and not for tech raiders to do the same. But you're a hypocrite because you're appealing to a philosophy of non-harm to others in order to justify your selfish pursuit of self-interest. The two are not compatible. If you're really arguing for non-harm then you have to be aware of the ways your pursuit of self-interest (by which I mean nation growth) harms other people. You have admitted on the previous page that your growth does harm me, but you have decided that the consequences are acceptable to you. The amount of harm you inflict is acceptable to you in light of your legitimate claims to self-interest.

The tech raider would say the exact same thing.

There is no actual harm done by growing your nation. None whatsoever. The cost of the Manhattan Project is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Practically, the people buying the Manhattan Project do so before they're even close to the 5% mark. Again, it's pointless to try to argue facts with you, because you already understand this perfectly well. The argument that all harm is acceptable because the tiniest amount of harm is unavoidable is complete !@#$%^&*. It's a hollow justification of an overwhelmingly selfish and malicious act.

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Unaligned nations being griefed by tech raiders absolutely has broader implications for the community. I was unaligned for several months before I became involved in game politics (I was not tech-raided once, by the way, because that was a no-no in my day); an unknowable number of such dormant prospective additions to our dwindling community have been driven off in their earliest stages in this game by stuck-up veteran players bombing the crap out of their nations and handing down strict terms that probably make no sense to such casual players. Game losing people = bad!

Putting the kibosh on tech raiding absolutely has broader implications for the community as well. Provide empirical data that shows that the net community "worth" would go up without tech raiding, considering that while more tech-raidable nations would stick around, many tech raiders would also leave the game. Then I will accept this argument. Otherwise, you must assume that nations that do not tech raid are intrinsically worth so much more than nations that do, that the retention of one non-tech-raiding nation is worth more than the loss of any number of tech raiders.

Almost as ridiculous as comparing CN to GTA, even!

Guess what, genius? The people you run over in that game aren't real players that invest long-term to build up their characters. Your comparison of CN to shooters is just asinine. More apt would be a WoW analogy with a level 60 player running around one-shot player-killing a bunch of level 5s on a PvP server then saying, "you have the option to not level your character, then I wouldn't have a reason to steal all your stuff!" (For the holistically-impaired, that's a snipe at the bogus argument that people can avoid being tech-raided with peace mode.)

Actually, WoW is an example of where you can find true griefing. Ganking lowbies doesn't even net any gain, but people will do it regardless. As we can see, WoW's player base is certainly suffering because of this. (It's a bad analogy anyways; comparing the games really doesn't work. The differences are innumerable.)

I still see peace mode as a viable alternative for people who want to play Nation Builder. Your nation doesn't grow as quickly, but you've got all the time in the world, right?

So if you knew you could do it with no consequences, you would beat and rob some random person IRL? That is what it sounds like you are saying.

Absolutely! Well, okay I have to qualify that a bit. Only if there were no negative consequences. If there were no consequences whatsoever, including positive, then I wouldn't be able to gain any money from robbing a dude, which is the whole point. With no negative consequences, give me a good reason I shouldn't.

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There is no actual harm done by growing your nation. None whatsoever...The argument that all harm is acceptable because the tiniest amount of harm is unavoidable is complete !@#$%^&*. It's a hollow justification of an overwhelmingly selfish and malicious act.

The first half of your quote is patently untrue. If you're in the top 5%, or even closer to it than me, that means you can have nukes and I can't unless I shell out fat wads of cash. Your position comes at the expense of me. I suffer because you are higher up the chain than me. That is called harm. You insist that it's not, even though it really is, because it can't be or else your philosophy falls apart. You're saying what you have to in order to remain consistent to yourself but the fact of the situation is that I suffer because you grow your nation.

Now, both of us would agree that it is reasonable of you to pursue your self-interest, by which I mean nation growth, even if it comes at my expense. I have no problem with this, and you have (somehow) worked it into your definition of non-harm. What I'm telling you is, the tech raider sees things the exact same way. He pursues his self-interest, which is to say nation growth, at someone else's expense. In his case it's a little more visible whereas in your case it's indirect. But you'd have to be a fool to say it doesn't happen, and you're not a fool; you're an intelligent person and a good debater.

And like I said earlier, I'm not justifying tech raiding on this basis. I'm not saying anyone can do whatever they want. I have not tech-raided since rerolling my nation, and I don't think I did back in 2006-7 during my last stint in the game. I'm saying, you pursue your self-interest (growth), at other people's expense if necessary, so it is hypocritical of you to tell tech raiders they cannot do the same thing.

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Hai Doc. My nation isnt below your range. I was solo fairly recently. Yes, I knew the risk, so what? Every day that I walk to work I know the risk of getting mugged on the way, you gonna tell me that means it's ok to mug me? It never seemed right to me to even think about joining one alliance while wearing the tag of another - and more than not being right I guess, it is impossible for me. As long as I am wearing an AA I am thinking of that AA first, before my own nations interest. In order to choose a new AA, I need time to think without that effect - time to reorient my thoughts and reëvaluate, well, everything, from the solo position. If it is different for you, ok, but that's no reason to attack me.

So if you knew you could do it with no consequences, you would beat and rob some random person IRL? That is what it sounds like you are saying.

lawlz. wow. just wow. i also stated that RL muggings and beatings are nowhere near the same as tech raiding. i made a comment about the consequences part in response to someone stating that there should be consequences for alliances that raid.

anyways, if all you anti-raiders got is comparing tech raiding to RL muggings and beatings, then you are taking this way to seriously. if you invest that much emotion into some 1s and 0s and pixels and all that, then seriously, walk away from the computer and take a long hard look at your life. i am tired of the comparisons to RL muggings and beatings as it is nothing like that whatsoever. what i would or would not do in RL has nothing to do with what i would or would not do in a game. as one is not real and has no bearing on my real life, nor does it do anyone any actual physical harm, while the other is real, has total bearing on my real life, and does do actual physical harm to someone.

so if your whole argument is that, then just lawlz. that argument is tired, pathetic, weak, and useless. get a new one that actually compares to tech raiding and then we can go somewhere. otherwise, seriously, there is a war function in this game. people utilize it. get over it. if you don't like it, see that war function that is part of the game, unlike what Doitzel thinks, that is the only way you are gonna get rid of raiding.

either man up and do something about it, or sit back and do nothing but whine and !@#$%*. but comparing me as a raider to someone who mugs or randomly beats up someone else is not worth my time anymore. also, sigrun, if you wish to go with this "So if you knew you could do it with no consequences, you would beat and rob some random person IRL? That is what it sounds like you are saying. "

then i take it, that if you saw someone being mugged or beaten up, you would sit back and whine and moan about it and tell the offender how wrong he is, without doing a damn thing to actually stop it. cuz that is exactly what you are doing right now.

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And like I said earlier, I'm not justifying tech raiding on this basis. I'm not saying anyone can do whatever they want. I have not tech-raided since rerolling my nation, and I don't think I did back in 2006-7 during my last stint in the game. I'm saying, you pursue your self-interest (growth), at other people's expense if necessary, so it is hypocritical of you to tell tech raiders they cannot do the same thing.

Hypocrisy would be accepting a different standard of harm for myself as opposed to others, which is not the case. I'm arguing for a uniform standard, one that argues that tech raiding causes an unacceptable level of harm.

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TNJ, you are missing the distinction between 'doing harm' and 'preventing from some part of growing'. The first is a direct imposition on the sovereignty of a nation. The second is not stopping the other from doing anything or taking anything from him, it is at worst making it a bit harder to get something extra.

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Hypocrisy would be accepting a different standard of harm for myself as opposed to others, which is not the case. I'm arguing for a uniform standard, one that argues that tech raiding causes an unacceptable level of harm.

I wonder, though, how such a standard is concieved, other than arbitrarily?

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TNJ, you are missing the distinction between 'doing harm' and 'preventing from some part of growing'. The first is a direct imposition on the sovereignty of a nation. The second is not stopping the other from doing anything or taking anything from him, it is at worst making it a bit harder to get something extra.

This is a good observation, but I don't think it's totally accurate. The $100mil that I plan on spending on a Manhattan Project is going to cost me an awful lot in economic growth. That's several hundred or thousand infra, several thousand or tens-of-thousands of people that I pass up in order to make up for the negative consequences of other people growing their nations. The cost to the tech raidee is maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, of recovery time. Possibly even less if the raidee is a member of a small alliance and can get rebuilding aid.

The presence of larger nations growing faster than me is still an invasion of my sovereignty, albeit an indirect one, whereas war is a direct one. I'm still being forced into a particular economic policy decision - buying a Manhattan Project - because other nations have pursued their own self-interest at my expense. I consider this harm but I do not fault them for it because I think that pursuing their own self-interest is their own prerogative. There seems to be a general agreement that a nation's self-interest will sometimes harm other people. Tech raiders would agree, and this belief forms the whole basis for tech raiding.

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Thought process:

Q: Should we attack people without provocation?

A: No.

To what standard of morality can you appeal to demonstrate that "no" is the only valid answer, or even a more valid answer than "yes" at all?

edit: leaving for a party at the moment, responses will be delayed for about eight hours.

Edited by TheNakedJimbo
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I did.

Oh, so you're not appealing to non-harm at all, but rather to the second system of morality that I described, that morality is individually determined. In that case I declare tech raiding to be moral for me. And we're at an impasse again.

edit: or to the fourth system, that morality is dictated by a higher power, in which case you have just claimed to be God, rendering you absurd and your claims about morality unreliable.

Edited by TheNakedJimbo
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Oh, so you're not appealing to non-harm at all, but rather to the second system of morality that I described, that morality is individually determined. In that case I declare tech raiding to be moral for me. And we're at an impasse again.

No, I asserted that I have the right to be the arbiter of morality for everyone. So tech raiding is still immoral.

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I did.
No, I asserted that I have the right to be the arbiter of morality for everyone. So tech raiding is still immoral.

Too late, I declared myself high adjudicator of high arbiters last thursday, and I overrule your decision. It's totally okay to attack people without provocation now.

Edited by ktarthan
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