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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5653477" data-attributes="member: 54707">Just as a philosophical point Janx, this is  something I think Geeks and Nerds accept just on face value, but it isn't  objectively true at all.  All computers and programs are designed by people.  They therefore arise from the biases and design assumptions of either the  designers/programmers or the team of designers/programmers. (As others have  hinted about the game itself.) A computer software application is merely a  programmed system of human thought, it is not independent of human thought, it  is just systematized human thought. A code. A particular kind of systematized  human thought, just like mathematics is. But all human codes arise from human  beings, math included.  A lot of Geeks and Nerds and modern people (and  I'm not being critical in a harsh fashion, merely pointing out something about  the way modern people think and look at the world - a world they created)  reflexively think that if you wash human thought through a machine or device or  some type of technology it gains automatic and pristine objectivity. It doesn't.  It remains as subjective and biased as the human thought processes that produced  it, it merely becomes systematized. (Some human thought processes and methods of  thought are more objective than others I suspect, and some more subjective than  others, but I can't think of any human thought process, system, or invention  that's really objective. All human inventions, systems, and processes serve  human ends. That is their function. It is a logical function because they were  created by and for humans. But that doesn't make them objective, merely  logically human.)  I'm not trying to open a can of worms just  pointing out the fact that Geeks and Nerds just oftentimes reflexively and  uncritically assume that because of current human society that our way of doing  things (the modern way) is automatically more objective. I suspect that isn't  necessarily true at all, as much as maybe we'd like it to be true. And  scientists and inventors and mathematicians and statistical analysts all have  their own biases as well, because they are all human, both individually and en  masse. It's just impossible to fully rid ourselves of our subjective viewpoints,  and although technology may help to mitigate our subjectivity somewhat, it does  not eliminate it.  Nor, do I think it necessarily important to  eliminate it, but merely in certain circumstances, to try and adjust and expand  our own subjective viewpoint.  That being said I'd say D&D is subjectively  illusory, but then again so what, what isn't? That doesn't make it any less  real. Or anymore real, for that matter.  By the way if you, or anyone else, wants to  disagree with what I just pointed out about human science and technology and  invention then go ahead. It was just my opinion anyway.</blockquote>

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