Superstition seems a quaint old thing, more suitable for old grannies or the illiterate, but it’s alive and well in the information age. Online computer games, such as World of Warcraft and UltimaOnline, are full of examples of this:
Interesting question, that. I'd guess either in the 1950's or the 1985-1995 period. But I strongly believe that we were rational then for irrational reasons (a blind belief in rationality = science = good, to simplify).
Now we're more irrational overall, but those who of us do embrace rationality are more honest and "rational" about our reasons for doing so.
So when was the zenith of rationality? The Enlightenment? Have we progressed? I argue perhaps, if superstition serves a productive purpose, which I think it does by facilitating trust.
it doesn't pay off to be superstitiousWell, most of the superstitions seem to be very low cost (a little time lost, that's all) so high superstition shouldn't be much of a barrier to success. However high superstition might mean that methods that do really work to improve the players' performance are ignored or not looked for. I'd assume that at the same level of play, superstition has virtually no effect on the performance; but an unsuperstitious player would improve faster.
If the most succesful groups were the least superstitious, could we draw the conclusion that it doesn't pay off to be superstitious, or rather that the smartest (hence succesful) ones are less superstitious?
that this is part of the reason his guild is so successful.
Now that's very interesting. Do they follow up and test the various "myths" floating around? It would be interesting to see whether the most successful groups are indeed the least superstitious.
My son says that in his game, Guildwars, his guild 'does everything by math,' in that they keep a database of actions and consequences and if there is a correlation they do the action in the future, otherwise not. He believes this eliminates the tendency toward superstitious behavior, and that this is part of the reason his guild is so successful.
It is the absolute exceptionless simplicity of our universal physics that makes us confident that superstitions won't work in real life.
That is a concise statement of faith in reductionism.
However reductionism to the Schrodinger equation has not been demonstrated even for all the properties of the simplest chemistry, much less biochemistry, much less biology and morphogenesis, much less behavior. So in the end the faith that all of the complexity in the world can be reduced to a physics equation is simply a belief system, not something demonstrated by science.
In fact there is much evidence that causation works both downwards and upwards -- consider regulation in organisms and in morphogenesis, the effects of placebo and nocebo on healing, and the causal efficacy of thoughts to effect neural firing and ultimately control chemical reactions in muscle cells.
If one abandons an evidenceless faith in absolute reductionism, suddenly the universe begins to make a lot more sense as a series of nested, interacting, and evolving wholes or "holons". All that is needed is to see that the assumed reductions were never once demonstrated -- chemistry was never fully accounted for by the equations of physics, the morphology of protein folding was never fully accounted for by chemical forces, cell morphogenesis was never fully explained by protein self-assembly, organism function and behavior was never fully explained in terms of cell biology.
Once it is seen that the reductions were never actually acheived, not once, but are simply a matter of faith, then a chink can appear in the hermetically-sealed armor of certainty which blocks out all evidence which might challenge the belief system of reductionism.
It would be interesting to see if the same effects would occur in an open-source game, where players can in principle inspect the code and see how the "laws of physics" work for themselves. In practice most are not competent to do so, but there would still be a consensus among technical players about these kinds of rules. And if it were false, there would be a burden of proof on those who claim otherwise to show the code or point out the bug which causes the supposed behavior.
It's kind of like people who claim there are "back doors" in certain security programs. Such claims don't get far with programs like GnuPG (which does encryption) because the source is published and nobody can find a back door. Such claims are harder to refute for closed source programs.
But they still don't believe developers when they say that it currently has no effect. Something different from standard superstition is happening here.
That looks exactly like real-world superstition. People engage in superstitious rituals, claim to accept physics, and claim to accept organized religion, which often condemns the superstition.
Quite generally, I do not think people use coherent theories, even if they can recite several. Superstition is just about the least important consequence of this.
I think that's a first difference. I think that another issue is that a lot of events in video games are truly random. I think we have trouble coping with truly random event and reach for patterns and superstitions.
Science explains the advent of tooth decay, as well as the odds of winning the lottery. But people believe science in the first case, because the explanation gives you a program, a list of things to do. But they remain superstitious in the second case, because all that science says is "it's random" or rather "you cannot do anything to change the odds". Those situations arises often in games, and seem to be the events we have the most superstitions about.
So, to reduce superstitions in games, introduce genuine actions that players can do to change their odds?
You are relying on a particular theory of our world when you claim that game programmers know the rules of online games. While I accept your theory, players need not accept it any more than they accept our standard physics theories.
I'm not sure I can really go with that explanation. If players were asked "could developers rewrite the game so that diplomacy on a treasure chest had an effect (or not)", then I'm sure that most would say "yes".
But they still don't believe developers when they say that it currently has no effect. Something different from standard superstition is happening here.
It doesn't surprise me. People who should know better often partake in it regardless of how much they know about the field they are in. I mean look at professional baseball and all the dances and little rituals that they will do before, or while they are at the bat. They of all people should know that kicking the dirt three times isn't going to cause a ball to fly into their sweet spot to hit.
Its just a psychological reaction on part of people who want to have more control over their lives and what is going on they have online or off line. And sometimes they get lucky.
It is a common problem that developers are wrong about how the game works. There are too many people and too much code for every statement to be accurate. This presents many examples where digital urban legends were mostly true. Asheron Call's "Wi Flag" is perhaps the most famous example.
It is more common that the developers are right. 95+% of the time, the conspiracy theories are wrong, especially since the "new" theory that accuracy is broken is the same one from every week for the last five years (no, you just missed a few times in a row, which happens). We know that everyone else's superstitions are silly, but of course our beliefs are just recognition of oddities in the code.
Another extremely important difference between the "real world" and video games is that video games do not work on universal law. It is the absolute exceptionless simplicity of our universal physics that makes us confident that superstitions won't work in real life. Mind you, I still think those gamers are almost certainly just being silly - people do the same things even in the "real world".
(Scare quotes on "real world" because of course a video game is a continuous part of our reality.)
So when was the zenith of rationality?
Interesting question, that. I'd guess either in the 1950's or the 1985-1995 period. But I strongly believe that we were rational then for irrational reasons (a blind belief in rationality = science = good, to simplify).
Now we're more irrational overall, but those who of us do embrace rationality are more honest and "rational" about our reasons for doing so.
So when was the zenith of rationality? The Enlightenment? Have we progressed? I argue perhaps, if superstition serves a productive purpose, which I think it does by facilitating trust.
it doesn't pay off to be superstitiousWell, most of the superstitions seem to be very low cost (a little time lost, that's all) so high superstition shouldn't be much of a barrier to success. However high superstition might mean that methods that do really work to improve the players' performance are ignored or not looked for. I'd assume that at the same level of play, superstition has virtually no effect on the performance; but an unsuperstitious player would improve faster.
If the most succesful groups were the least superstitious, could we draw the conclusion that it doesn't pay off to be superstitious, or rather that the smartest (hence succesful) ones are less superstitious?
that this is part of the reason his guild is so successful.
Now that's very interesting. Do they follow up and test the various "myths" floating around? It would be interesting to see whether the most successful groups are indeed the least superstitious.
Unless there are false correlations. What confidence level do they use?
My son says that in his game, Guildwars, his guild 'does everything by math,' in that they keep a database of actions and consequences and if there is a correlation they do the action in the future, otherwise not. He believes this eliminates the tendency toward superstitious behavior, and that this is part of the reason his guild is so successful.
It is the absolute exceptionless simplicity of our universal physics that makes us confident that superstitions won't work in real life.
That is a concise statement of faith in reductionism.
However reductionism to the Schrodinger equation has not been demonstrated even for all the properties of the simplest chemistry, much less biochemistry, much less biology and morphogenesis, much less behavior. So in the end the faith that all of the complexity in the world can be reduced to a physics equation is simply a belief system, not something demonstrated by science.
In fact there is much evidence that causation works both downwards and upwards -- consider regulation in organisms and in morphogenesis, the effects of placebo and nocebo on healing, and the causal efficacy of thoughts to effect neural firing and ultimately control chemical reactions in muscle cells.
If one abandons an evidenceless faith in absolute reductionism, suddenly the universe begins to make a lot more sense as a series of nested, interacting, and evolving wholes or "holons". All that is needed is to see that the assumed reductions were never once demonstrated -- chemistry was never fully accounted for by the equations of physics, the morphology of protein folding was never fully accounted for by chemical forces, cell morphogenesis was never fully explained by protein self-assembly, organism function and behavior was never fully explained in terms of cell biology.
Once it is seen that the reductions were never actually acheived, not once, but are simply a matter of faith, then a chink can appear in the hermetically-sealed armor of certainty which blocks out all evidence which might challenge the belief system of reductionism.
It would be interesting to see if the same effects would occur in an open-source game, where players can in principle inspect the code and see how the "laws of physics" work for themselves. In practice most are not competent to do so, but there would still be a consensus among technical players about these kinds of rules. And if it were false, there would be a burden of proof on those who claim otherwise to show the code or point out the bug which causes the supposed behavior.
It's kind of like people who claim there are "back doors" in certain security programs. Such claims don't get far with programs like GnuPG (which does encryption) because the source is published and nobody can find a back door. Such claims are harder to refute for closed source programs.
But they still don't believe developers when they say that it currently has no effect. Something different from standard superstition is happening here.
That looks exactly like real-world superstition. People engage in superstitious rituals, claim to accept physics, and claim to accept organized religion, which often condemns the superstition.
Quite generally, I do not think people use coherent theories, even if they can recite several. Superstition is just about the least important consequence of this.
video games do not work on universal law.
I think that's a first difference. I think that another issue is that a lot of events in video games are truly random. I think we have trouble coping with truly random event and reach for patterns and superstitions.
Science explains the advent of tooth decay, as well as the odds of winning the lottery. But people believe science in the first case, because the explanation gives you a program, a list of things to do. But they remain superstitious in the second case, because all that science says is "it's random" or rather "you cannot do anything to change the odds". Those situations arises often in games, and seem to be the events we have the most superstitions about.
So, to reduce superstitions in games, introduce genuine actions that players can do to change their odds?
You are relying on a particular theory of our world when you claim that game programmers know the rules of online games. While I accept your theory, players need not accept it any more than they accept our standard physics theories.
I'm not sure I can really go with that explanation. If players were asked "could developers rewrite the game so that diplomacy on a treasure chest had an effect (or not)", then I'm sure that most would say "yes".
But they still don't believe developers when they say that it currently has no effect. Something different from standard superstition is happening here.
It doesn't surprise me. People who should know better often partake in it regardless of how much they know about the field they are in. I mean look at professional baseball and all the dances and little rituals that they will do before, or while they are at the bat. They of all people should know that kicking the dirt three times isn't going to cause a ball to fly into their sweet spot to hit.
Its just a psychological reaction on part of people who want to have more control over their lives and what is going on they have online or off line. And sometimes they get lucky.
It is a common problem that developers are wrong about how the game works. There are too many people and too much code for every statement to be accurate. This presents many examples where digital urban legends were mostly true. Asheron Call's "Wi Flag" is perhaps the most famous example.
It is more common that the developers are right. 95+% of the time, the conspiracy theories are wrong, especially since the "new" theory that accuracy is broken is the same one from every week for the last five years (no, you just missed a few times in a row, which happens). We know that everyone else's superstitions are silly, but of course our beliefs are just recognition of oddities in the code.
For some reason, I'm reminded of this comic.
Another extremely important difference between the "real world" and video games is that video games do not work on universal law. It is the absolute exceptionless simplicity of our universal physics that makes us confident that superstitions won't work in real life. Mind you, I still think those gamers are almost certainly just being silly - people do the same things even in the "real world".
(Scare quotes on "real world" because of course a video game is a continuous part of our reality.)