D&D 4E Comment about 4E designers loving D&D

[Irda Ranger]

A number of other posters have pointed out that the "yet" introduces a time-dependent element into the sentences in question, which means that the above formalisation of the claim is not sound.

Actually, my analysis is dependent on the 'yet'.

Even someone who knows nothing of D&D knows that (1) the word "yet" means that a times series is being discussed, and (2) in a time series, 4 comes after 3. Thus, "4th edition is the best yet" easily becomes "4th edition is better than 3rd edition."*

So, imagine the statement "4th edition is better than 3rd edition" was phrased as a question, and that the causative statement was the answer.

Q: Why is 4th edition better than 3rd editions?
A: Because the 4th edition designers love D&D.

Since 4th edition is "not 3rd edition", you could "multiply by two nots" to get:

A: Because the 3rd edition designers did not love D&D.

Look, I'm not attacking anyone here. I don't think at all that Greg meant to say that all. Both the statements "4.e will be the best yet" and "the 4e designers love D&D" are perfectly fine. I'm sure one is true, and hope the other will be. It's the "because" that gets him in trouble.

But it's clearly an honest mistake. I'd never have started this thread.

 

[Vigilance]

But it's clearly an honest mistake. I'd never have started this thread.

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's not a freaking mistake, honest or otherwise, except in the hands of folks waiting with bated breath to pounce on your every word.

Saying "this will be the best edition of D&D yet because everyone working on it loves D&D" says nothing about any edition other than 4e.

NOTHING.

It's not a mistake to say that you love your job. That doesn't imply anything about anyone else who worked that same job.

If I am walking down the aisles of Target (let's assume this is the past and I still worked there) and I say "you know why this store is the best, because we LOVE retail!"

Does that mean the guys at Walmart can't honestly think their store is the most face rocking, shoe blasting, mind blowing store in the history of retail?

Nope.

Does it mean THEY don't love retail?

Nope.

Does it mean the guys who worked there before couldn't have done the best job THEY could to make the store awesome?

Nope.

Does it mean that THEY didn't love retail?

Nope.

See how that works?

When someone talks about THEMSELVES being awesome, people only read it as implying something bad about someone else if they are really, really freaking insecure.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I was wondering when this thread would cause someone to finally snap...

But yeah, I totally agree with Vigilance.

Also, Banshee, you might want to go over the WotC boards and ask about the Oberoni Fallacy...

 

[Banshee16]

When someone talks about THEMSELVES being awesome, people only read it as implying something bad about someone else if they are really, really freaking insecure.

Projecting much?

Repeating the same point over and over doesn't make it any more right.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

I was wondering when this thread would cause someone to finally snap...

But yeah, I totally agree with Vigilance.

Also, Banshee, you might want to go over the WotC boards and ask about the Oberoni Fallacy...

Honestly, I don't lend much weight to the Oberoni Fallacy......I think the construct is flawed, because it assumes that you can just keep filling holes in the rules. Indefinitely? I don't know. But I think that rules holes will always exist. The day after a new edition is released, they start to appear, as optimizers begin to familiarize themselves with the rules.

Rule 0 becomes a perfectly valid way to deal with these loopholes until they can be fixed...if fixing those loopholes doesn't in turn cause further problems, or detrimentally affect the game experience in some way.

This doesn't meant that you can't try to improve the game as a whole. But it does mean that rules balance, or the quest for perfect rules is somewhat of a search for a unicorn. It "don't" exist, IMO.

Anyways, debate on if you wish. But I think I'm going to withdraw, because it's evidently not going anywhere. More than one person noticed the double entendre. Does it mean that's what the designer intended? Not necessarily. I'd definitely hope not. And it probably isn't.

Discussion of it has apparently put some people on edge, and generated far more vitriol than I expected. So before tempers flare any further, I'll back out.

Carry on..

Banshee

 

[green slime]

"...need only speak to one of those architects to realize the truth: that 4th edition will be the best yet because the people working on the game, like the fans, love Dungeons and Dragons."

Statement A "People working on the game love DnD"
Statement B "4th edition will be the best"

If you accept that A implies B (A => B) then if B turns out to be false, A simply cannot be true. Seems dangerous, given the subjective nature of B.

Conversely, if B turns out to be true, then we actually can't know anything about the nature of A, because the statement is not biconditional (if and only if).

In other words, a truly pointless statement. Like Ruin Explorer said.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Uh, Green Slime? You do know that the quote in your sig line is incorrect, right? Nobody at WotC said they weren't working on 4E any time in the past two years. The quote was that they weren't working on a 4E that would require miniatures, and the quote was then taken out of context and repeated as gospel across the Internet.

Seriously. The information, and in fact the exact quote, can be found in something like half a dozen threads on this forum alone.

Just thought you might want to know, since you're, at least by implication, accusing WotC of violating a statement they never made.

 

[pemerton]

So, imagine the statement "4th edition is better than 3rd edition" was phrased as a question, and that the causative statement was the answer.

Q: Why is 4th edition better than 3rd editions?
A: Because the 4th edition designers love D&D.

Since 4th edition is "not 3rd edition", you could "multiply by two nots" to get:

A: Because the 3rd edition designers did not love D&D.

I don't object to pedantic reading of statements to derive unexpected implications. I am, after all, an academic lawyer and philosopher by trade.

So let's consider the actual quote the OP cited. It was "4th edition will be the best yet because the people working on the game, like the fans, love Dungeons and Dragons". This is not an explanation of why 4th edition will be better than 3rd edition. It is an explanation of why 4th edition will be the best yet. Indeed, it is likely that the person who made this claim believes the same thing to be true of 3rd edition, namely, that when released it was the best yet, and that part of the cause for that was its designers' love for the game.

An explanation of why something will be the best yet is not necessarily an explanation of what makes it better than its competitors or predecessors. Presumably, the quoted person thinks that the explanation for 4e's superiority to 3E is it's better mechanics, which are themselves the product of design informed by many years of playing 3E.

If you accept that A implies B (A => B) then if B turns out to be false, A simply cannot be true.

"Because" is not synonymous with "necessitated by".

Consider the following statement: I have malaria because I was bitten by a mosquito.

If I have malaria, than that statment is true. But that statement is not equivalent to the false claim: If I am bitten by a mosquito then I will catch malaria.

This is because "because", in statements of causation and explanation, is often used to identify necessary rather than sufficient conditions.

Indeed, in many cases it is actually used to identify what the Australian and Oxford philosopher John Mackie called INUS (= Insufficient but Necessary components of Unnecessary but Sufficient) conditions. For example: The match lit because it was struck on the box. It does not follow from this claim that striking a match is a sufficient condition of its lighting - only that striking a match is a necessary component of one of several sufficient conditions for a match becoming lit.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

You know, interpreting ambiguous sentences can be tremendously funny...as this thread shows.

Incidentally, the sentence could also mean "4E will be the best in the series of D&D games yet because only people who love the game like its fans do can take something good and make it even better."

 

[pemerton]

You know, interpreting ambiguous sentences can be tremendously funny...as this thread shows.

Incidentally, the sentence could also mean "4E will be the best in the series of D&D games yet because only people who love the game like its fans do can take something good and make it even better."

And that's a more sensible interpretation than the one which treats "because" as a synonym for "necessitated by".