Shivercoin
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Posted - 2010.09.07 03:58:00 -
[2]
Originally by: Xereyn
Originally by: Dzil Do you play poker? Can you bluff? Does that make you a liar?
Curious example, actually.
Bluffing in poker doesn't make you "a liar", but it does require you to be lying.
However, that's one of those areas where a person's situational mindset is going to be very important.
Using myself as an example, although not poker because I don't play it:
I am, in general terms, a terrible, terrible liar. My friends trust me when I'm telling the truth in part because on the rare occasions when I've tried to lie, they can always tell instantly. (In related news, no-one in my social group's tried to hold a surprise party in the best part of ten years, because it all ends in "... well, that was kind of hilarious, but none of us want to live a sitcom, so let's not try that again.")
However, as I mentioned upthread, I've played Diplomacy. And in Diplomacy, I can lie with all the earnest sincerity I usually apply to telling the truth. One friend lost almost his entire country in one year because he believed me when I told him that I would absolutely, definitely, be moving my troops on, we were just going past, hey, didn't we just agree to work together? and so was persuaded to move his forces *out of the way* so I could occupy his territory.
The difference is: In Diplomacy, lying is an essential part of the game; I'm not really lying, I'm *playing*. (Although Diplomacy invariably gives me a headache, and cognitive dissonance may be part of it.)
Am I a liar? I would say no. Am I capable of lying? Apparently, yes. But I'm not comfortable with it unless it's a game where that's the essential and intrinsic nature of play.
For me, EVE isn't that game. I'm playing Spaceships and Industry and Stuff Online. But some people are playing Scams Online, which means that it IS.
Playing Scams Online doesn't make you a bad person; it's within the scope of the game, so it's fine.
For the record, the only people whose approach I think is Genuinely Wrong are people who set out with the deliberate INTENT of making other people feel bad. If you do something like scam, or gank, or whatever, because you want their money/stuff, then that's cool. If you do that because you *want to upset them*, then you are, in fact, a bad person.
We're dealing with the ancient judicial concepts here, actually, when we consider whether someone is committing a crime in moral terms.
Actus reus is the scam. In EVE, that is not breaking the rules, so it's fine. Mens rea is required to make this a moral crime - there must be intent to cause harm to the real person, not the character.
If you intend to take someone's in-game assets, it's one thing, but if you're intending to cause someone out-of-game emotional distress, it's entirely another.
It's rather murky and subjective, but that's humans for you, really.
In poker you aren't lieing you're just suggesting you have a good hand. In another way in diplomacy you were sort of lieing you said you were moving on but you didn't say when ... I don't want to go back and read the T4U history, I didn't invest but did BB say how long he was going to bbe giving returns?
Just having a laugh really but I'm sort of inferring that the definition of truth is subjective or which level of truth must be adhered to the qualify it as honest. There is despetion in the business word all the time but there are set rules about whar is scamming and it's illegal...
It's EvE. I don't know if I articulated that as I intended or expanded on it as much I needed to but honestly I need to go to the bathroom and get another drink.
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