Philosophy in the New Metaverse ~ Where do you stand?

Don't forget "all of the above".

Consider the unfortunate choice of "Adult", "Mature" and "PG" by LL.
Some terms have so much baggage that they are unsuitable for application outside of their traditional mind space.

/me chuckles..so far I seem to be in my own little niche according to that test.

SL is mostly for socializing "Disagree"
SL is a good place to make money "Disagree" (Good place? Probably not, but it is possible)
I have SL acquaintances from many countries "Agree"
Owning/renting land is necessary to enjoy SL "Strongly Disagree"
I go to n SL arts events per month "Less than 10"
Fixing bugs is more important than a new avatar mesh "Agree"
I spend over half my SL time building and/or scripting"Strongly Disagree"
I collect freebies"Strongly Disagree"

Now what?

Yes, what does it all mean??? lolz

The thing that fascinates me most is the core question to ask both sides: "What are virtual worlds for?"

The "right", by Desmond's definition, have a problem answering that. This closed-source, anonymity-free, landowner-controllled, hard-DRMed world - what do we do with it? "Well, um, it could help the disabled, or maybe it could be a platform." Both are laudable goals, but it's not clear that the first is enough for a market, or that the second is actually successful (yet).

The "left" have a clear purpose: to create a world in which they can be free and anarchic the way they want to be. The only problem is, it's not plain that this world works if everybody in it is like that.

I think this world can work fine with a great deal of freedom and a little bit of anarchy.

The Wiccans seem to do alright with their one rule: "Harm none; do what ye will."

Also my leftie viewpoint leaves enough room for the metaverse to be all the rightie things as well as long as the rules are clear, simple and fair.

I'll definitely go with immersion/augmentation as one of the major axes. For instance, the Voice/Text divide, I think, can be folded into immersion/augmentation. Possibly the identity/anonymity divide too.

I want to say that the paid-user/free-user divide is important too, simply because a paid user might come down in certain places not because of ideology but because of protecting their investment, because if they've paid for a service they should be able to get it.

This test would tell someone that they were average in temperature when their feet were in a furnace and their head in an ice-box.

Pep (Many more dimensions are needed for something this complex to make any sense at all, as I pointed out early on in the thread.

It could mean, if answered in one way that you are a cheap, mean-spirited, philistine who spends lonely days wanking.
OR
It could mean you are at cutting edge of metaversical culture, expanding your mind and entering new realms of relationships, self-realization and epiphanical ecstasies.

Or it could mean you're both, or neither. Surely there are some cheap, mean-spirited philistine wankers who could expand their mind and enter new realms of relationships, self-realization and ... oh what am I saying, Kim Jong Il will never try SL.

I suggest:
Linden Labs should not allow residents to be swindled in SL.
or When SL residents lose money to fraud LL should compensate them.



But not so far from the center, huh?



Wait. Left and anarchic are not synonymous by any means. Stalin, for instance, is a good example of a left wing totalitarian and many right wingers say they want less government regulation.

But if he *is* here disguised as someone we know...

when it affects them, I think you meant to add. Other people's activities need to be regulated, of course.

He's here, in an incestuous ageplaying relationship with his little sister, Rush Limbaugh.

*runs*

LOLz... Let's go with option B

These are great. And to parallel actual tests of this type, the 'opposite' of each could also appear in the test, though of course not right next to the original:



---Simulations of violence can have an effect on viewers as well as on participants.

---Linden Lab is overly intrusive in personal matters between Residents, who should be allowed to work things out among themselves.

---Second Life is purely entertainment; there's no way that anything that happens in SL could have any effect on me.

---If a person's SL identity differs radically from their RL identity, that should have no effect on that person's relationships with people they've met in SL.

---SL land ownership differs from RL land ownership--you're really just renting from a company and so need to abide by that company's rules.

---If you run across something in SL that you find offensive, sometimes it makes sense to just TP away---but that doesn't mean the offender has an absolute right to do as they please, with the burden always on the person who's offended. (LL imposes limits on expressions of racism, for instance.)

---If someone initiates obnoxious behavior against you, it is reasonable that they be the one to be expelled, instead of you being expected to log off.

Well, first, it's an urban myth that Wiccans have only one rule

But I think that behind the split Desmond described are the perceptions that harm _is_ being done.

Closed sourcers think that open sourcers are harming them by breaching security and removing trust in the platform. Open sourcers say that closed sourcers are harming them by lobbying to have all their work invalidated.

Anyone who dares to argue that land owners should not have 100% rights will be accused of wanting people to be harmed. Anyone who argues this will say that they are harmed by land owners ability to interfere with their behaviour.

Content creators say they are harmed by pirates - and also say they are harmed by creators who give content away, whether it's because they like it or because they're building an RL portfolio.

Identifiers say they're harmed by anonymisers because trust is reduced. Anonymizers say they're harmed by identifiers because they're made to stand out.

Well I am familiar with the Wiccan Rede and that is the gist of it but since I am a Buddhist with only a few Wiccan inklings I will let someone else debate that



I'm not sure how this applies here except when the new viewer of the month comes out with capabilities that can be used to rip content... These things should be patched quickly and any harm minimized... Which I believe has been done so far, but I'm not really up on this issue.



We are playing the game of land ownership; the land owners get to have control over their parcels and there is no way for anyone to be legitimately harmed by land controls.



Pirates = harm. Creators giving out their own content free = no harm



People who want to be identified to create trust or for whatever reason can choose to self-disclose and people who want to be anonymous should have that right as long as their actions are not harming others. Don't see the issue here.

I prefer to deal with issues and problems on a case by case basis.

I don't subscribe to the idea of making a gauge, even a complex one, and seeing where people measure on it. Too crude, too easy to direct and abuse. The gauge at http://www.politicalcompass.org is a prime example. Who decides what the answers to the questions mean and where they place a person? What are their leanings? It is all too subjective and open to personal interpretations.

I say, let each person state their views on each subject rather than be pigeon-holed by a labelled into agreeing/disagreeing with a particular stance in some ill-conceived statistical survey.

Except adjacent landowners, people driving down Linden roads, and other people who can't just go somewhere else... either because land isn't portable or because they don't know the land controls are about to kick in and crash them out until too late.

Yeh, this.

Years ago, when I was involved with a magical group (won't call them a coven because they were a bit too free-thinking and unstructured for pure wicca), we had a big screaming fight over the wiccan "and if it harm none, do what thou wilt" versus Crowley's "do what thou will shall be the whole of the law".

The wiccans felt the Crowley version was plainly immoral while the Crowley fans thought that if you tried to prevent harm with every decision you made you would end up doing nothing, ever.

I can't remember who won that one (Crowley probably - fewer scruples ) or even which side I was on at the time. These days I just try to live by the "don't be a dick" rule.

I think the political compass test thing is just a bit of fun really.

If we are still compiling a list of SL related questions, there are probably a couple that could be added to do with people's attitudes to profiles.

I guess I would tend to file that under aggravation rather than actual harm.

All good points... and the "don't be a dick" rule is one to live by