4 ms·

My translation: don’t blame the player, blame the game. I say blame both.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
It makes no sense to blame a game, that always seemed like an even shittier variant of "just following orders" to me. A game only exists because people play it, and only for so long as they do. It doesn't have agency, or consciousness, or responsibility, or anything. Let's say I "blame the game". Okay, then what? What does that even mean? The "game" is an abstract idea, so how do I punish it, how do I reason with it, how do I anything at all with it? I can't, so I don't.
- thristian 8y ago
  In the same way that most actual games won't let a player declare victory by fiat whenever they want, people in a social system (like "journalism" or "politics" or an open-source software project) can't always do the right thing, even if they want to. Economic constraints, or opportunity costs, or the time required to establish consensus all put limits on what people can do, and often require people to do nothing, or even negative things (like writing clickbait articles or supporting unpopular policies) so they'll have more resources to pour into the positive things they really care about later. "blaming the game" in this context means understanding that such constraints exist, and as for "then what": work to change the economics of that situation. Give money to support organisations doing proper investigative journalism, educate yourself on political issues and educate your friends so fewer voters will be swayed by populist rhetoric, volunteer to do some menial task so resources can be put towards longer-term goals.
  - CodeWriter23 8y ago
    > Give money to support organisations doing proper investigative journalism IMO that's a completely different game.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    > people in a social system People interacting with other people. Which is why good things to do are, as you said > Give money to support organisations doing proper investigative journalism, educate yourself on political issues and educate your friends so fewer voters will be swayed by populist rhetoric, volunteer to do some menial task so resources can be put towards longer-term goals. because that's kinda interacting as a molecule, with the other molecules of the social system -- not "the body as a whole", which is more an idea than anything one could do in practice. > Economic constraints, or opportunity costs, or the time required to establish consensus all put limits on what people can do, and often require people to do nothing, or even negative things That's absolutely not the case for Relotius. Jörg Thadeusz is actually pretty pissed off at those excuses, he says they need to end and I agree. https://www.welt.de/kultur/medien/article185920966/Podcast-Wie-sehr-schadet-der-Fall-Relotius-dem-Spiegel.html https://www.welt.de/kultur/medien/article185920966/Podcast-W... For every excuse, you can often find dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions of people who are in the same or worse situation as the excusee, but have not resorted to what they're excusing.
- danso 8y ago
  "Don't blame the game, blame the player" seems an apt summary of the TV series, "The Wire", in which cops and drug dealers and teachers and politicians are seen as being cyclically screwed by systemic failure. So "blaming the game" ostensibly says that we should focus on fixing the system, and not blaming its individual "players" who are incentivized or even forced to fail/act wrongly. I'm sure you're aware that every professional sport has had in its history a number of rule changes to make the game safer or more well-run, and these rule changes have had far more systemic effect than just penalizing players and coaches.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    > So "blaming the game" ostensibly says that we should focus on fixing the system, Which is people interacting with people, and calling some of that "system". I asked, now what, what does it mean in practice... actually unpack these abstractions, and think through what those abstract words mean in practive step by step: it's all just people dealing with people. When the rules in a sport change, that means people discuss with others, maybe write stuff down, then referees learn their job based on those agreements, and actively enforce the rules. > these rule changes have had far more systemic effect than just penalizing players and coaches. That's like saying a beach has more of a systemic effect than the grains of sands it consists of. When "the rules get changed", that boils down to nothing but interaction between rule committees (or whatever the mechanism may be), refs, players and coaches.

It makes no sense to blame a game, that always seemed like an even shittier variant of "just following orders" to me. A game only exists because people play it, and only for so long as they do. It doesn't have agency, or consciousness, or responsibility, or anything. Let's say I "blame the game". Okay, then what? What does that even mean? The "game" is an abstract idea, so how do I punish it, how do I reason with it, how do I anything at all with it? I can't, so I don't.

thristian 8y ago
In the same way that most actual games won't let a player declare victory by fiat whenever they want, people in a social system (like "journalism" or "politics" or an open-source software project) can't always do the right thing, even if they want to. Economic constraints, or opportunity costs, or the time required to establish consensus all put limits on what people can do, and often require people to do nothing, or even negative things (like writing clickbait articles or supporting unpopular policies) so they'll have more resources to pour into the positive things they really care about later. "blaming the game" in this context means understanding that such constraints exist, and as for "then what": work to change the economics of that situation. Give money to support organisations doing proper investigative journalism, educate yourself on political issues and educate your friends so fewer voters will be swayed by populist rhetoric, volunteer to do some menial task so resources can be put towards longer-term goals.
- CodeWriter23 8y ago
  > Give money to support organisations doing proper investigative journalism IMO that's a completely different game.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > people in a social system People interacting with other people. Which is why good things to do are, as you said > Give money to support organisations doing proper investigative journalism, educate yourself on political issues and educate your friends so fewer voters will be swayed by populist rhetoric, volunteer to do some menial task so resources can be put towards longer-term goals. because that's kinda interacting as a molecule, with the other molecules of the social system -- not "the body as a whole", which is more an idea than anything one could do in practice. > Economic constraints, or opportunity costs, or the time required to establish consensus all put limits on what people can do, and often require people to do nothing, or even negative things That's absolutely not the case for Relotius. Jörg Thadeusz is actually pretty pissed off at those excuses, he says they need to end and I agree. https://www.welt.de/kultur/medien/article185920966/Podcast-Wie-sehr-schadet-der-Fall-Relotius-dem-Spiegel.html https://www.welt.de/kultur/medien/article185920966/Podcast-W... For every excuse, you can often find dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions of people who are in the same or worse situation as the excusee, but have not resorted to what they're excusing.
danso 8y ago
"Don't blame the game, blame the player" seems an apt summary of the TV series, "The Wire", in which cops and drug dealers and teachers and politicians are seen as being cyclically screwed by systemic failure. So "blaming the game" ostensibly says that we should focus on fixing the system, and not blaming its individual "players" who are incentivized or even forced to fail/act wrongly. I'm sure you're aware that every professional sport has had in its history a number of rule changes to make the game safer or more well-run, and these rule changes have had far more systemic effect than just penalizing players and coaches.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > So "blaming the game" ostensibly says that we should focus on fixing the system, Which is people interacting with people, and calling some of that "system". I asked, now what, what does it mean in practice... actually unpack these abstractions, and think through what those abstract words mean in practive step by step: it's all just people dealing with people. When the rules in a sport change, that means people discuss with others, maybe write stuff down, then referees learn their job based on those agreements, and actively enforce the rules. > these rule changes have had far more systemic effect than just penalizing players and coaches. That's like saying a beach has more of a systemic effect than the grains of sands it consists of. When "the rules get changed", that boils down to nothing but interaction between rule committees (or whatever the mechanism may be), refs, players and coaches.