Philosophy – Page 10 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

My Second Life and Prejudice Rant

2015/09/01 by Nalates Urriah

Canary Beck is looking at people’s prejudices in Second Life™. She is writing about being on a panel discussing prejudice in SL. Seems prejudices are alive, well, and popular in SL just as it is in RL. She is thinking of studying the SL version of prejudice… but her preliminary questions seem superficial, uninformed, and narrow to me. What annoys me is prejudice is seen as the problem, it isn’t the problem, it is the symptom. So, I take exception to some of her thoughts and ideas.

HelaMiyo - Puppet poses — HelaMiyo – Puppet poses

In this day when political parties and activists have teams of psychologists and marketing types tailoring their messages and delivery systems based on the Lenin/Alinsky model. Looking at any behavior in this limited context is likely to miss the causes of our behavior. But, see Canary’s article: Real versus virtual prejudice comes down to choice in Second Life.

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Climate Change for Thinkers

2015/08/25 by Nalates Urriah

Every so often I have to write something for the Global Warmers that like to deny science, avoid thinking, ignore facts, and are susceptible to propaganda in mainstream media because they are too lazy to think. They typically only respond with Alinsky style ad hominem attacks.

There are more and more under reported articles appearing to reveal the nature of those leaders supporting the Anthropomorphic Global Warming campaign. Principia Scientific International has run such an article: Man-Made Climate Change ‘Not About Science’ Admits Naomi Klein.

Virtual World Directions

2015/08/12 by Nalates Urriah

Ciaran Laval in his blog has an article on Neoliberalism And Cardboard In Virtual Worlds And Games. Despite the title it is about the direction virtual worlds are going. He quotes from Elliot Murphy’s essay on computer games and politics: Always a Lighthouse: Video Games and Radical Politics. This may give us another hint on Sansar’s economic model.

In America I suspect many will confuse the liberalism intended with the popular liberal/progressive ideology the mainstream media touts. In a 1984 style, radicals and socialists have taken over the word liberal for their use in describing socialism/collectivism, which are not liberal. But, in Ciaran’s quote we see neoliberalism is being used in its more classic meaning, i.e., the core tenets of neoliberalism: privatization, deregulation, commodification, and a celebration of personal profit. My kind of thinking.

Thought Controlled Elections

2015/08/09 by Nalates Urriah

Many of my friends and acquaintances in Second Life™ are liberals, socialists, and/or Democrats. I often wonder how that is possible. Communists and socialists have killed more of their citizens and become dictatorships more often than any other political system (look it up). Minorities support the Democrat Party, but it is the party promoting and clinging to separation of economic class, races, sexual orientations, religions, and even recently calling for racial segregation in K-12 schools. (Reference, reference) It was the party of the KKK and a number of famous Democrat politians have been members of the klan. How are these incongruities possible?

A basic truism is united we stand, divided we fall. Thousands of years of history show the validity of the truism. But, every place I look the Democrat party, socialists, liberal organizations, and of course anarchists and radicals are striving to dividing us. But why do so few notice?

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Manipulated: the Defense in Your Mind

2015/06/11 by Nalates Urriah

Canary Beck points us to an article by Auryn Beorn: Defend yourself from manipulators. It is interesting that this pops up now. A friend of mine just pointed me to The Federalist’s article by Stella Morabito titled How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion a day or so ago. Both of these writers are working with the presupposition that people are manipulating us. I’ll expand on that later.

Bobby and the Aversion Therapist by Robert Goldstein, on Flickr

Auryn starts off with entitlement. Auryn describes the entitlement people I have a problem with exactly as I see them. The TL:DR is give an inch and they’ll take a mile, cause you owe them.

Second Life Chat & Abuse

2015/06/10 by Nalates Urriah

Massively OverPowered has an article by Editor-in-Chief Bree Royce titled: Why MMORPG’s Still Need Traditional Chat. The article is about the problems of jerks annoying people in global chat. We have our share of those people in Second Life.

Je suis Charlie.. by VOIDAR // Ashley Carter, on Flickr

I find the article interesting because I think it reflects what is going on in RL. Chat in virtual worlds is different. But, it is still humans conversing. Humans may feel they can get away with more in anonymous chat. But, their basic behavior and thinking does not change at login.

Nor do our solutions for these problems in virtual worlds differ from what we propose and experiment with in RL. People in games seem to be learning that the final step in the progression of language restrictions and attempts to control abuse is removal of the ‘global’ chat system. In RL we are imposing restrictions on Hate Speech just as we try to restrict it in game worlds. It doesn’t work in either place. In both places all forms of conversation are injured.

In RL it gives governments and bureaucrats control of what is said. In games it is moderators that have the last say. Bree’s take is that life is better with messy annoying chat than without it.