I want to push back a little bit on the "morally transformative technologies" bit. It does not agree with essentially any of my personal historical experiences. Firstly, the idea that brutal competition is seen as a negative thing in American society is simply false. At worst, it may be seen as an unfortunate truth that life is inherently competitive, but there is very little public pushback to the idea that it is. Homeless shelters have to compete for grants. Children compete to get into college. Social media is essentially a giant competition to grab as many eyeballs as you can. Americans in aggregate do not have moral qualms against competition, or our society would look pretty different.
This leads us to the second point, which is that competition is morally permissible when everyone is going to have a desirable experience, and this desirable experience is dependent on a game's players trying as hard to win as possible, within the confines of the rules. As I stated above, in my opinion, the idea that people have moral qualms about competition is pablum, but the idea that they might post-hoc justify themselves by saying that the point of the game is not winning but moral edification seems plausible. It is possible to approach a game as an optimization problem, and at each point within the game to make the moves most likely to lead to success. However, to claim that such behavior is desirable or necessary to give people plasticity of being is a pretty bold claim. You're just encouraging that person to view as many things in their life as possible as optimization problems. Someone who competes as hard as they can in gym class and then in chess club and then online at CoD is learning that competition is the point.
You make some good points! I think there might be not much real disagreement, and it's more a case of "things from the book that I didn't include in the review".
Regarding how society views competition, I'm not sure the author ever made a claim about the views of society as a whole. I saw it more as him tailoring his argument to a specific audience. Two possible ways he could be doing that:
1. Tailoring his argument for people who don't like competition, since the people who love competition don't need to be convinced that games are good.
2. Tailoring his argument to philosopher-types who have thought a lot about what is morally good. For example, a person who believes in some sort of utilitarianism would prefer to interact with people in ways that are mutually beneficial rather than playing zero-sum games, so they would need convincing that competitive games can be morally good.
Regarding the dangers of treating life as an optimization problem, the author does say something similar in the chapter on the potential drawbacks of games. I touched on this chapter a little bit (See the sentence about "Interacting with games may give us the false sense that life as a whole has clear goals and clear trade-offs..."), but I didn't write it up in detail. Elsewhere in the chapter he says:
"
In games, we are permitted to temporarily inhabit a motivational state where only one thing is valuable. Crucially, this means that we don’t need to treat others’ interests as valuable. We need not treat them with, as the Kantians might put it, dignity and respect. We are permitted to manipulate, use, and destroy. This attitude is permissible in some games because our opponent’s ends in the game are disposable, because our opponents have consented to the struggle, and because the design of the game can convert our purely selfish attacks into a delightful struggle for our opponents.
There is a significant danger, however, if these attitudes leak out and infect one’s life outside the game. When we leave the gaming context, treating every other resource and person in the world as a mere instrument would be, obviously, morally terrible.
"
The two of you are viewing it from slightly different angles (danger of seeing people as mere instruments vs danger of treating life as an optimization problem) but overall I think it's a similar outlook — games can be good but balance is necessary.
I'd love to talk more about the idea of competition sometime!
Hey Luke,
I want to push back a little bit on the "morally transformative technologies" bit. It does not agree with essentially any of my personal historical experiences. Firstly, the idea that brutal competition is seen as a negative thing in American society is simply false. At worst, it may be seen as an unfortunate truth that life is inherently competitive, but there is very little public pushback to the idea that it is. Homeless shelters have to compete for grants. Children compete to get into college. Social media is essentially a giant competition to grab as many eyeballs as you can. Americans in aggregate do not have moral qualms against competition, or our society would look pretty different.
This leads us to the second point, which is that competition is morally permissible when everyone is going to have a desirable experience, and this desirable experience is dependent on a game's players trying as hard to win as possible, within the confines of the rules. As I stated above, in my opinion, the idea that people have moral qualms about competition is pablum, but the idea that they might post-hoc justify themselves by saying that the point of the game is not winning but moral edification seems plausible. It is possible to approach a game as an optimization problem, and at each point within the game to make the moves most likely to lead to success. However, to claim that such behavior is desirable or necessary to give people plasticity of being is a pretty bold claim. You're just encouraging that person to view as many things in their life as possible as optimization problems. Someone who competes as hard as they can in gym class and then in chess club and then online at CoD is learning that competition is the point.
You make some good points! I think there might be not much real disagreement, and it's more a case of "things from the book that I didn't include in the review".
Regarding how society views competition, I'm not sure the author ever made a claim about the views of society as a whole. I saw it more as him tailoring his argument to a specific audience. Two possible ways he could be doing that:
1. Tailoring his argument for people who don't like competition, since the people who love competition don't need to be convinced that games are good.
2. Tailoring his argument to philosopher-types who have thought a lot about what is morally good. For example, a person who believes in some sort of utilitarianism would prefer to interact with people in ways that are mutually beneficial rather than playing zero-sum games, so they would need convincing that competitive games can be morally good.
Regarding the dangers of treating life as an optimization problem, the author does say something similar in the chapter on the potential drawbacks of games. I touched on this chapter a little bit (See the sentence about "Interacting with games may give us the false sense that life as a whole has clear goals and clear trade-offs..."), but I didn't write it up in detail. Elsewhere in the chapter he says:
"
In games, we are permitted to temporarily inhabit a motivational state where only one thing is valuable. Crucially, this means that we don’t need to treat others’ interests as valuable. We need not treat them with, as the Kantians might put it, dignity and respect. We are permitted to manipulate, use, and destroy. This attitude is permissible in some games because our opponent’s ends in the game are disposable, because our opponents have consented to the struggle, and because the design of the game can convert our purely selfish attacks into a delightful struggle for our opponents.
There is a significant danger, however, if these attitudes leak out and infect one’s life outside the game. When we leave the gaming context, treating every other resource and person in the world as a mere instrument would be, obviously, morally terrible.
"
The two of you are viewing it from slightly different angles (danger of seeing people as mere instruments vs danger of treating life as an optimization problem) but overall I think it's a similar outlook — games can be good but balance is necessary.
I'd love to talk more about the idea of competition sometime!