Quote from: GnomeWorks;1122963"I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."

Now quit cluttering up my mental life, you bunch of p-zombies.

I'll go back into my Chinese Room if you will.

I generally do not like RPGs (or LARPS) where you play yourself or a modified version. I've found most players incapable of building themselves as a PC without either turning themselves into superheroes in an ego explosion or envisioning themselves as utter shmucks in the effort to appear the most honest. I was in one hilariously horrid campaign where we played EACH OTHER and it was such a clusterfuck.

When I make a character, I always pick a prime trait that I don't possess. I know that lots of my personality is gonna come out in roleplay unless I'm in full actor mode, so its helpful for me to have that Not-Me Prime Trait to focus the character around.

For example, in real life, I'm an agnostic who laughs at Climate Change as a hoax. So, playing a Gaia-worshiping Werewolf in full climate panic is great fun. Same with playing an evangelical cleric devoted beyond reason to his god. Or a highly dexterous elf who doesn't need to lay off the cheeseburgers.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1122973I generally do not like RPGs (or LARPS) where you play yourself or a modified version. I've found most players incapable of building themselves as a PC without either turning themselves into superheroes in an ego explosion or envisioning themselves as utter shmucks in the effort to appear the most honest. I was in one hilariously horrid campaign where we played EACH OTHER and it was such a clusterfuck.

Oh, god, I remember one time we decided to make up ourselves as player characters, in Call of Cthulhu of all things. It was such a bad idea. I'm not sure which was more disturbing: getting murdered by cultists while playing yourself, or explaining to the GM why you as a character should be good at killing stuff.

In general, my gaming groups have been cautious about who they let in, so we didn't have problems with actual sickos. It tended to be more a matter of people blindly imitating heroic stereotypes without really grasping what the effects of that kind of behavior would be in reality. Like "I want to have my character go to a bar and carouse and gamble" from someone who doesn't go to bars in real life, and really just wanted to act out something from a Conan or Burt Reynolds movie.

Frankly, there aren't a lot of Burt Reynolds characters I'd want to have for a neighbor or a coworker.

This caused immediate friction with players who had been to drinking parties, and didn't care for them, and got back into roleplaying in college so they'd have something to do on Saturday nights instead of dealing with annoying drunks.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1122972I'll go back into my Chinese Room if you will.

Searle is a disingenuous dick.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1122978Searle is a disingenuous dick.

Why do you say that? As I understood it, the Chinese Room is a thought experiment like Schrodinger's Cat; it's designed to demonstrate the absurdity of materialist strong AI theory, not its justification. (Unless that is itself the dickishness you mean?)

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1122979Why do you say that?

Because it's true.

QuoteAs I understood it, the Chinese Room is a thought experiment like Schrodinger's Cat; it's designed to demonstrate the absurdity of materialist strong AI theory, not its justification. (Unless that is itself the dickishness you mean?)

Fine, I guess we're having this conversation.

What is special about the human brain, that it gives rise to a self-aware mental state? That is not to say that bats do not - presumably - have subjective conscious experience, it seems safe to assume that they most likely do, though do keep Nagel in mind (ha). However humans in particular have mental qualities that appear to put us a level above the rest of the animal kingdom, and it is entirely natural to investigate that.

There are two options: we are either special, in the sense that we are privileged in some fashion on some level, or we are not.

By "special" I mean to imply that that position holds that the means by which we have our higher cognitive functions is not directly linked to the state of our brains. Cartesian Dualism would be an example, though I find that position ontologically unlikely. Brains are - cosmically speaking - relatively simple machines, and while we haven't gotten a connectome yet, doing so is entirely within the realm of possibility. We've already identified significant areas of the brain specialized for various tasks (see Broca's and Wernicke's areas, among others), which are largely universal across human subjects.

In short, I am of the opinion that there is nothing special about brains. Minds are natural products of some combination of neurological and hormonal activity, and our particular flavor of mind - one that is self-aware, with our various higher cognitive functions - is just a fluke of genetics and evolution. It is entirely sensible that what nature can build, we can design.

Searle's assertion that no component of the Chinese Room understands Chinese misses the point that the system as a whole "understands" Chinese. Nevermind that the term "understand" is already nebulous and ill-defined in that context. Hell, the existence of those stupid Amazon machines that do NLP when you ask them to play music or buy trinkets and manage to follow your instructions more than half the time implies that the system "understands" English. I will generally grant that yes, the machine doesn't have the same kind of grasp of the meanings of the words as we do, what with vectorization being weird and the fact that we don't have a machine with all the modalities of a human at the moment, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. Alexa is to strong AI what a squirrel might be to us.

Quote from: jeff37923;1122967" Are You What You Pretend To Be? "

Obviously not, because then it wouldn't be pretend would it?

(This place takes naval gazing to a new level sometimes.....)

Except that is the problem. There are some that want to, try to, or actually do start blurring the line between character and player.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1122973I generally do not like RPGs (or LARPS) where you play yourself or a modified version. I've found most players incapable of building themselves as a PC without either turning themselves into superheroes in an ego explosion or envisioning themselves as utter shmucks in the effort to appear the most honest. I was in one hilariously horrid campaign where we played EACH OTHER and it was such a clusterfuck.

Oh the first LARP I ever attended we were playing ourselves at a con playing an RPG. Then our actual characters jumped into our bodies from the future and the LARP technically began from there. It was a pretty innovative approach and the rest of the players did not know what was going on. Some were playing characters attending an RPG session at a convention. The time traveller players were the exception.

My old copy of Villains & Vigilantes actually has chargen start with you statting yourself out. I think TSR's MSH and TORG had that as an option too?

Quote from: Omega;1122997Oh the first LARP I ever attended we were playing ourselves at a con playing an RPG.

I actually had a badge made for the LARPs that the Living Arcanis team ran that said "My PC has Bluff +X, Diplomacy +Y, Intimidate +Z; the player does not."

The team in charge actually said, "Your character's stats don't matter. You have to actually say it yourself."

"Then why the hell are you having us play our characters? What's the point of playing a social character if my Charisma 18 and appropriate skills don't actually do anything in the biggest social-based adventures of the Living campaign that you actually hold to determine how the political events of the next season's modules will unfold?"

If you want to make the players actually act everything out and solve actual puzzles themselves, don't use a system that gives stats to their mental/social abilities.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1122981I guess we're having this conversation.

No need to if you don't want to; I was just curious about the rather vehement response. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1123002I was just curious about the rather vehement response.

At least you didn't bring up Hume.

I never play idealized versions of myself, and most of my characters possess various traits that are significantly different than me (such as most of them being the opposite sex). That being said, in terms of personality and morality and such, I usually find it easier to play "good" or virtuous characters than evil characters. But my "virtuous" characters are usually more virtuous than I usually am in real life, and they may still have some believes I don't (such as different religious/spiritual or ideological believes, etc.). I think part of the reason for that is that most stories involving action-adventure tend to portray virtuous characters, or characters of questionable morality that end up turning a leaf and being virtuous by the end (like Riddick in Pitch Black). So if you're falling back on entertainment media for inspiration (either consciously or subconsciously) it tends to be easier to conjure up virtuous personalities (or people who want to/end up being virtuous) when coming up with your character's behavior than not, because protagonists are usually written to have redeeming qualities, even if they start out as questionable individuals.

Writing adventures with "virtuous" characters in mind (rescue the hostages, recover a stolen artifact, stop the evil sorcerer from summoning a demon hoard, etc.) also tends to be easier than writing adventures for "evil" or criminal characters, which tends to incentivize playing "good" characters.

I have had issues with players who like to play "evil" characters, though. I don't think that these people are necessarily "evil" or criminal "deep down", however. I just think that different people look for different things in RPGs and some people take it more seriously than others or have a better grasp of RP and world immersion. And players who play "stupid evil" characters tend to come from the perspective of "this isn't real/I can get away with anything!", so they end up making stupid decisions and derailing the game with random killing and stealing cuz they're "evil", but the player doesn't know how to think things through or care enough about disrupting other's play.

As far as being what you pretend,

Quote from: Albert the Absentminded;1122944This isn't going to be the only consideration, but in my experience, players who easily abuse the characters of other players tend to be arseholes in real life as well. The ones who make the excuse that they're 'just playing my character/alignment'. (Chaotic 'good' is no exception, sadly; if anything it's an extra excuse to get away with sociopathy, when it comes to such players.) The ones who are the reason why 'you never let that damn thief out of sight!'

Quote from: amacris;1122943One person might be a murderous bastard in an RPG, and then go home and devotedly care for sick children and work in a soup kitchen. Another person might play a morally conservative paladin in the game and then spend his evenings getting debauched in strip clubs. A person might enjoy being a tyrannical king in an RPG and a committed egalitarian in the ballot box.

I think this is about mixing up causality and correlation. Yes, assholes in real life will tend to play asshole characters. Since there are plenty of assholes in real life, that means there's a fair chance that an asshole character means an asshole player. But that's not causal. There are plenty of perfectly nice players who can have a fun time playing asshole characters. It's a frickin game - people can play all sorts of things that they're not. One of my good friends loves to play Star Wars Imperials - it doesn't make him an evil Sith in real life.

And judging people for the games they play happens across many tastes in gaming.


On an off-topic note,

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1122981Searle's assertion that no component of the Chinese Room understands Chinese misses the point that the system as a whole "understands" Chinese. Nevermind that the term "understand" is already nebulous and ill-defined in that context. Hell, the existence of those stupid Amazon machines that do NLP when you ask them to play music or buy trinkets and manage to follow your instructions more than half the time implies that the system "understands" English. I will generally grant that yes, the machine doesn't have the same kind of grasp of the meanings of the words as we do, what with vectorization being weird and the fact that we don't have a machine with all the modalities of a human at the moment, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. Alexa is to strong AI what a squirrel might be to us.

Exactly. Searle suggests that being able to produce answers about a horse wouldn't give you any real understanding of a horse, but that's because it's asking you to picture an AI as a blind person who's been locked in a room all their life. If it was a true AI with human-level knowledge and capacity, then it would have senses and sense memory -- not just words. It would demonstrate understanding of a horse by being able to identify a horse by it's appearance and behavior. Studying the workings of such a true AI, even in Chinese, one could figure out how visual images are processed and thus what a horse looks like. Or how sounds are processed and thus what a horse sounds like. And so forth.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1122973I generally do not like RPGs (or LARPS) where you play yourself or a modified version. I've found most players incapable of building themselves as a PC without either turning themselves into superheroes in an ego explosion or envisioning themselves as utter shmucks in the effort to appear the most honest. I was in one hilariously horrid campaign where we played EACH OTHER and it was such a clusterfuck.

When I make a character, I always pick a prime trait that I don't possess. I know that lots of my personality is gonna come out in roleplay unless I'm in full actor mode, so its helpful for me to have that Not-Me Prime Trait to focus the character around.

For example, in real life, I'm an agnostic who laughs at Climate Change as a hoax. So, playing a Gaia-worshiping Werewolf in full climate panic is great fun. Same with playing an evangelical cleric devoted beyond reason to his god. Or a highly dexterous elf who doesn't need to lay off the cheeseburgers.

I remember a campaign where the GM handed Jack and I each a character sheet and said "You are playing each other." It was a hoot until I, his character, got us both killed but he, my character, got to say "This is another fine mess you've gotten us int..."

I've played myself in a few games (WoD) had a good time. I became a Black Spiral Dancer... but you know... dancing the Black Spiral can be FUN. (not really. mistakes were made.) But not once did I ever entertain the idea of doing any of the horrors I committed while dedicating myself to the corrupting powers of the Wyrm. You know... because it's *not* real.

Honestly, this is a WEIRD topic. Because *no* one is playing "themselves" in a game of makebelieve. What is being bandied about is the recognition that a LOT of fucked up people with the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy have coalesced in this hobby and *made* it weird.

It doesn't help that the general lack of critical thinking skills alongside a steady diet of pathological forms of post-modernism has cauterized any capacity for critical thinking development, has turbo-charged this phenomenon.

An awful lot of people need to get away from Social Media, stop huffing their farts, play the MMO 'Outside' and chill the fuck out.