Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3047731" data-attributes="member: 18280">BTW, I find that this bothers me somewhat, and seems to resound with the problems that we are having in this discussion.  Because, deep down, I tend to believe that you are a reasonable sort of person.When we are talking about "fun" we are talking about an emotive response to some stimulus or stimuli.  "Fun" can act as a motive, causing us to take an action that might seem to have a rational motive, such as an action that results in the propogation of the species.  However, emotions are by their very nature irrational.  Our motives in playing games, propogation, etc., are driven by our emotive needs, which are themselves irrational.  If anything, our rationality serves to grant us the ability to determine which (if any) of our emotive needs is paramount at any given time, at to figure out how best to fulfill them.Because we know that our motives and emotions are irrational, and because we know that we can best fulfill those needs through some form of cooperation, we create normative standards that allow us to make rational determinations about our behavior.  The concept of "fairness" is one such normative standard, with the desired end result being that we can see where our emotions (irrational drives) impinge upon our reactions toward each other.  Thus, we are able to sublimate portions of our needs in order to allow the needs of others to be fulfilled and, ultimately, the greater portions of our own needs.At least in theory.However, if we drop the normative (rational) standard, as you seem to declare necessary,  we are left with an irrational standard; to wit, "Fairness is what best suits my needs now."  The problem that I have with this is exactly the same as the problem I have with "Railroading is whatever the player says it is" and similar statments specifically intended to remove the normative standards from our interactions.  Hence the idea of a "false sense of entitlement"; i.e., a sense of entitlement which is not tied into any normative standard.In my opinion, this is just a really bad road to be walking down.RC</blockquote>

Verification