jackfractal

I'd include the Head of Security, Warden, and CSI in that list. There have been days where, on slow rounds, half the station is part of security to one degree or another. Regarding cadets, I always thought they were supposed to be on work-study programs and still going to school.

I'd include the Head of Security, Warden, and CSI in that list. There have been days where, on slow rounds, half the station is part of security to one degree or another. Regarding cadets, I always thought they were supposed to be on work-study programs and still going to school.

I think the Dionaea manage to remain fairly alien. Admittedly, I'm basing this mostly on Roots That Rend The Soil, who is an awesome character.

I think the Dionaea manage to remain fairly alien. Admittedly, I'm basing this mostly on Roots That Rend The Soil, who is an awesome character.

Sec did seem to keep a lid on things pretty well that round. Well done them. Yinzr did manage to find an opportunity to yell "I AM THE LAW," so that means it was a good round. Props to Aquila too, chief engineer. The station went to hell, but not nearly as badly as it could have thanks to her. She fixed the engine after the collectors were hit by an astroid, and then managed repair efforts continuously for over an hour without getting overwhelmed or losing it. V.I.C.E. and Olivier too, from Engineering and Atmos respectively, did very well. Much patching and repressurizing was done but there were just so many bombs... so... many... bombs. Pretty much everyone was on the ball that round, even the nuke ops.

Sec did seem to keep a lid on things pretty well that round. Well done them. Yinzr did manage to find an opportunity to yell "I AM THE LAW," so that means it was a good round. Props to Aquila too, chief engineer. The station went to hell, but not nearly as badly as it could have thanks to her. She fixed the engine after the collectors were hit by an astroid, and then managed repair efforts continuously for over an hour without getting overwhelmed or losing it. V.I.C.E. and Olivier too, from Engineering and Atmos respectively, did very well. Much patching and repressurizing was done but there were just so many bombs... so... many... bombs. Pretty much everyone was on the ball that round, even the nuke ops.

@LordFoul. I know there aren't specific rules, that's why I didn't use the term 'ban' instead I used the term 'prevent'. While we have no formal rules about slagging off other servers, but we do have a very strong informal moderation on the topic. It's very rare to see an instance of this go past without being moderated, but I'm sorry, I should have specified the topics that are explicitly mentioned in the rules. That was a rhetorical shortcut of mine. Thanks for pointing them out. That being said, I am asking for a ban, but I would be fine with an informal moderation, provided the moderation was both strong and about the topics of politics and religion and not done using the vague metric of 'heatedness' which is how we currently do it. I'd prefer it to be a rule, as I believe that it should be and that it will be easier on the people that such a rule is designed to protect, but consistent moderation would be a good first step. You did miss one thing from your list of formally banned topics, which is the "no IC in ooc" rule, but that one's fairly obvious and well known. That being said, I'm excited to see that we agree that the server does both ban and informally prevent certain topics from being discussed and this curation has not resulted in the widespread banning of all topics. I'm glad we can put that particular argument to rest. Bans on particular topics exist, and they exist because they're necessary for the health of the server. I'm suggesting that the server would be healthier without discussions of politics or religion. While rereading the rules (prompted by your post) I was reminded of a point I wanted to make earlier, but then forgot about, which was General Rule 7. General Rule 7 reads: "Keep the round fun for everyone - your actions should always have the goal to add to others' fun, not detract from it." I contend that people who broadcast political or religious topics in OOC are in violation of this rule. @EvilBrage You must have missed something while reading the thread. It's cool, it happens to everyone. I've missed things too. I'll quote it here because it's important to understanding where I'm coming from. Regarding the rest of your post, I really don't know how to respond. What kind of data are you looking for? Evidence that emotions exist? Or do you want some kind of data proving that people who have negative emotions aren't lying about them as part of some sort of sociopathic power play? I'm baffled. I have no idea what you're really asking for. You claim that I haven't supported my claims with anything aside from personal anecdotes. That's not true, I haven't used any anecdotes. I bring this up because it's made parts of this discussion rather challenging to write about, as it would have been much easier to make certain points had I been able to offer specific examples. I haven't. I have used no specific examples of any kind. I chose to do this with a great deal of deliberation because I knew that if I included any examples or personal anecdotes people would try to make this about the validity of the examples or they'd try to make it about me. It might be convenient if this topic were ultimately about me being filled with rage when people talk about a specific topic, but it's not. It's not about rage, it's not about a specific topic, and it's not about me. This topic is about a proposed method for making our community more welcoming to everyone, even the people you don't like.

@LordFoul. I know there aren't specific rules, that's why I didn't use the term 'ban' instead I used the term 'prevent'. While we have no formal rules about slagging off other servers, but we do have a very strong informal moderation on the topic. It's very rare to see an instance of this go past without being moderated, but I'm sorry, I should have specified the topics that are explicitly mentioned in the rules. That was a rhetorical shortcut of mine. Thanks for pointing them out. That being said, I am asking for a ban, but I would be fine with an informal moderation, provided the moderation was both strong and about the topics of politics and religion and not done using the vague metric of 'heatedness' which is how we currently do it. I'd prefer it to be a rule, as I believe that it should be and that it will be easier on the people that such a rule is designed to protect, but consistent moderation would be a good first step. You did miss one thing from your list of formally banned topics, which is the "no IC in ooc" rule, but that one's fairly obvious and well known. That being said, I'm excited to see that we agree that the server does both ban and informally prevent certain topics from being discussed and this curation has not resulted in the widespread banning of all topics. I'm glad we can put that particular argument to rest. Bans on particular topics exist, and they exist because they're necessary for the health of the server. I'm suggesting that the server would be healthier without discussions of politics or religion. While rereading the rules (prompted by your post) I was reminded of a point I wanted to make earlier, but then forgot about, which was General Rule 7. General Rule 7 reads: "Keep the round fun for everyone - your actions should always have the goal to add to others' fun, not detract from it." I contend that people who broadcast political or religious topics in OOC are in violation of this rule. @EvilBrage You must have missed something while reading the thread. It's cool, it happens to everyone. I've missed things too. I'll quote it here because it's important to understanding where I'm coming from. Regarding the rest of your post, I really don't know how to respond. What kind of data are you looking for? Evidence that emotions exist? Or do you want some kind of data proving that people who have negative emotions aren't lying about them as part of some sort of sociopathic power play? I'm baffled. I have no idea what you're really asking for. You claim that I haven't supported my claims with anything aside from personal anecdotes. That's not true, I haven't used any anecdotes. I bring this up because it's made parts of this discussion rather challenging to write about, as it would have been much easier to make certain points had I been able to offer specific examples. I haven't. I have used no specific examples of any kind. I chose to do this with a great deal of deliberation because I knew that if I included any examples or personal anecdotes people would try to make this about the validity of the examples or they'd try to make it about me. It might be convenient if this topic were ultimately about me being filled with rage when people talk about a specific topic, but it's not. It's not about rage, it's not about a specific topic, and it's not about me. This topic is about a proposed method for making our community more welcoming to everyone, even the people you don't like.

Weeelll... technically if you have the technology to plug a brain into a machine, you probably have the technology to control a brainstem with a computer. It's the same idea as using an artificial neuron to bridge broken nerve connections in people with spinal problems, it's just plugging an AI inside a microcomputer in at one end of the pipe rather than an organic nervous system. We're doing that kind of stuff now, so it isn't completely impossible at a theoretical level. That being said. I'm still not cool with this because of the wider implications of that kind of technology. Putting full resleeving into SS13 would do veeery weird things to the universe.

Weeelll... technically if you have the technology to plug a brain into a machine, you probably have the technology to control a brainstem with a computer. It's the same idea as using an artificial neuron to bridge broken nerve connections in people with spinal problems, it's just plugging an AI inside a microcomputer in at one end of the pipe rather than an organic nervous system. We're doing that kind of stuff now, so it isn't completely impossible at a theoretical level. That being said. I'm still not cool with this because of the wider implications of that kind of technology. Putting full resleeving into SS13 would do veeery weird things to the universe.

Cool! Application approved. Have fun!

Cool! Application approved. Have fun!

I'm not suggesting we disallow any topic based on the possibility of making people angry. I'm suggesting that we don't talk about politics and religion because those are the categories that contain the topics that most often make people have less fun while playing SS13. There are a wide variety of possible emotional responses that can make the game less fun to play, most of them not involving rage. We don't only prevent people from talking about the current round. We also prevent people from slagging off other servers, or discussing crimes, or posting erotica, or spamming. We stop people from talking when it's bad for the server. What I'm proposing is that allowing politics and religion to be discussed in ooc is bad for the server and should be prevented in exactly the same way that we prevent people from talking about other things that are bad for the server. Precedent, in this case, has already been amply set.

I'm not suggesting we disallow any topic based on the possibility of making people angry. I'm suggesting that we don't talk about politics and religion because those are the categories that contain the topics that most often make people have less fun while playing SS13. There are a wide variety of possible emotional responses that can make the game less fun to play, most of them not involving rage. We don't only prevent people from talking about the current round. We also prevent people from slagging off other servers, or discussing crimes, or posting erotica, or spamming. We stop people from talking when it's bad for the server. What I'm proposing is that allowing politics and religion to be discussed in ooc is bad for the server and should be prevented in exactly the same way that we prevent people from talking about other things that are bad for the server. Precedent, in this case, has already been amply set.

I'd debate the value of debate, but that's a bit meta even for me. I'm fully willing to be convinced that this is a bad idea, but so far people seem to be loathe to offer any kind of criticism of my ideas that don't boil down to the person either not liking any form of censorship whatsoever and prioritizing sort of abstract purity over people's people's ability to enjoy themselves, or else they oppose the very idea of any attempts to be welcoming at all. I've already dealt with both of these arguments at length, and I'm fully willing to keep doing so if people want to keep making them, but I'm actually really interested in what Garnascus has to say. They're the first person who has made the claim that political and religious discussions in OOC are beneficial and I'd like to hear them explore that idea.

I'd debate the value of debate, but that's a bit meta even for me. I'm fully willing to be convinced that this is a bad idea, but so far people seem to be loathe to offer any kind of criticism of my ideas that don't boil down to the person either not liking any form of censorship whatsoever and prioritizing sort of abstract purity over people's people's ability to enjoy themselves, or else they oppose the very idea of any attempts to be welcoming at all. I've already dealt with both of these arguments at length, and I'm fully willing to keep doing so if people want to keep making them, but I'm actually really interested in what Garnascus has to say. They're the first person who has made the claim that political and religious discussions in OOC are beneficial and I'd like to hear them explore that idea.

Yeah, this isn't so much that it doesn't make sense, just that the implications of this technology being available would tip us over the border into straight-up transhumanism. SS13 has always skated away from that kind of thing, preferring to more heavily reference star trek than, for example, Transhuman Space or Eclipse Phase. We've gotten a whole lot closer to that lately, with the whole IPC/Shells dilly, but it's a pretty significant tonal shift if we go right over the edge.

Yeah, this isn't so much that it doesn't make sense, just that the implications of this technology being available would tip us over the border into straight-up transhumanism. SS13 has always skated away from that kind of thing, preferring to more heavily reference star trek than, for example, Transhuman Space or Eclipse Phase. We've gotten a whole lot closer to that lately, with the whole IPC/Shells dilly, but it's a pretty significant tonal shift if we go right over the edge.

@Lady_of_Ravens Actually no, it's not like those things at all. You asked why having 'mute ooc' as a response to this entire problem isn't valid. If you're told by a community that the proper response to a situation that negatively impacts your ability to participate in that community, is not to ask the staff to stop it, not to try to stop it yourself, and not to try to get the rules changed to avoid the situation in the future, but instead your only recourse is to remove your ability to both speak and listen to that community. I feel pretty confident calling that type of behavior ostracism. In short, the fact that you muted OOC is not ostracism, the fact that you were told that it was the only valid response to an issue you were having is ostracism. @1138 I agree, you're right, if you have certain political views you will definitely be shut down if you start trying to talk about them. If you have other political views you won't, because politics is power dynamics in action. Your method basically gives free reign to people with dominant political viewpoints, while encouraging them to stifle and shut down non-conforming discussion. That doesn't sound like a great situation to me, and I doubt anyone is going to change their political opinions based on talking about them in a spacemens game. Even if they did, that's not the point of the game. That's not what we're here for. Removing politics and religion from ooc is not going to substantively change SS13 for most people, but it will make it easier to play for some people. Given that metric, why not do it? @Garnascus That's interesting. Could you unpack that?

@Lady_of_Ravens Actually no, it's not like those things at all. You asked why having 'mute ooc' as a response to this entire problem isn't valid. If you're told by a community that the proper response to a situation that negatively impacts your ability to participate in that community, is not to ask the staff to stop it, not to try to stop it yourself, and not to try to get the rules changed to avoid the situation in the future, but instead your only recourse is to remove your ability to both speak and listen to that community. I feel pretty confident calling that type of behavior ostracism. In short, the fact that you muted OOC is not ostracism, the fact that you were told that it was the only valid response to an issue you were having is ostracism. @1138 I agree, you're right, if you have certain political views you will definitely be shut down if you start trying to talk about them. If you have other political views you won't, because politics is power dynamics in action. Your method basically gives free reign to people with dominant political viewpoints, while encouraging them to stifle and shut down non-conforming discussion. That doesn't sound like a great situation to me, and I doubt anyone is going to change their political opinions based on talking about them in a spacemens game. Even if they did, that's not the point of the game. That's not what we're here for. Removing politics and religion from ooc is not going to substantively change SS13 for most people, but it will make it easier to play for some people. Given that metric, why not do it? @Garnascus That's interesting. Could you unpack that?

@LordFoul I guess we'll have to disagree. We ban topics currently and we don't ban all topics therefore banning some topics clearly do not result in banning all topics. That's pretty basic. I think everyone would agree on that. We are allowed to talk about things in ooc. The idea that if we forbid discussions of any topic, which, I will remind you, we already do it will suddenly and irrevocably lead to forbidding all topics is demonstrably false. Therefore, the cause (forbidding a particular topic) and the effect (all topics are forbidden) are demonstrably disconnected. We forbid a variety of topics in OOC already, and all topics have not been banned. This means that the inevitability of the first action leading to last action is broken. By your own quoted description, doesn't that make your argument a slippery slope? What will happen if we ban politics and religion in ooc? We won't talk politics and religion in OOC. That's it. The argument that, due to precedent (which again, I remind you, already exists) the server staff would be forced to ban all other topics suggested until all discussion is stifled is also demonstrably false. It's kind of funny to point out, but this very thread is a clear demonstration of your argument being incorrect. We ban topics, by your logic this means that the staff are morally obligated to ban any proposed topic, I've suggested we should ban politics and religion in OOC and those have not yet been banned. My current inability to convince the server staff to implement this suggestion is literally proof that what you're saying is false. The server staff are not lawyers, their 'job' is not to play some complex game of gotcha, it is to, theoretically, create a server where it's fun to play SS13 in the particular way they've decided to support playing SS13. That is the one and only metric that it makes sense to judge them, or their decisions, by. Does banning the discussion of previous rounds make the server better? No. That's part of the game. We need a decompression period following most rounds, and OOC is what lets us do that, in addition to providing a bunch of different benefits such as congratulations, learning opportunities, analysis, and just blowing off steam. Removing this topic from ooc would have a noticeable negative affect on the experience of playing SS13, therefore we shouldn't do it. Does banning the discussion of ice-cream make the server better? No. That's just silly. Banning the discussion of ice-cream would have no positive or negative affect on playing SS13, therefore we shouldn't do it because it adds an unnecessary rule. Does banning the discussion of religion and politics make the server better? Yes, and I'm offering what I hope are coherent arguments to explain why. I say 'hope' because it seems that I'm not communicating clearly enough again. I'm not, in any way, suggesting that we ban everything that makes people angry, and in fact, the specific emotions of the people affected have never been particularly relevant to my suggestions or why I think we should implement them. I'm suggesting we avoid talking about politics and religion in OOC. I'm doing that because, overwhelmingly, the topics that make people have less fun and not want to come back to SS13 are covered by those categories. I want people to have fun. I want people to play the game. I want people to play the game on this server. Therefore, I think we should avoid things that make that less likely to happen. One of those things is talking about politics or religion in OOC, so maybe we shouldn't do that. It costs us nothing and it would make our server more welcoming. @Lady_Of_Ravens Sure. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to engage with the community because all players have equal value, even those are don't want to hear about religion. Being forced to avoid the communication channel that talks directly to other community members and not to their in-game avatars means that one does not have an equal opportunity to engage with the community. It is a type of ostracism.

@LordFoul I guess we'll have to disagree. We ban topics currently and we don't ban all topics therefore banning some topics clearly do not result in banning all topics. That's pretty basic. I think everyone would agree on that. We are allowed to talk about things in ooc. The idea that if we forbid discussions of any topic, which, I will remind you, we already do it will suddenly and irrevocably lead to forbidding all topics is demonstrably false. Therefore, the cause (forbidding a particular topic) and the effect (all topics are forbidden) are demonstrably disconnected. We forbid a variety of topics in OOC already, and all topics have not been banned. This means that the inevitability of the first action leading to last action is broken. By your own quoted description, doesn't that make your argument a slippery slope? What will happen if we ban politics and religion in ooc? We won't talk politics and religion in OOC. That's it. The argument that, due to precedent (which again, I remind you, already exists) the server staff would be forced to ban all other topics suggested until all discussion is stifled is also demonstrably false. It's kind of funny to point out, but this very thread is a clear demonstration of your argument being incorrect. We ban topics, by your logic this means that the staff are morally obligated to ban any proposed topic, I've suggested we should ban politics and religion in OOC and those have not yet been banned. My current inability to convince the server staff to implement this suggestion is literally proof that what you're saying is false. The server staff are not lawyers, their 'job' is not to play some complex game of gotcha, it is to, theoretically, create a server where it's fun to play SS13 in the particular way they've decided to support playing SS13. That is the one and only metric that it makes sense to judge them, or their decisions, by. Does banning the discussion of previous rounds make the server better? No. That's part of the game. We need a decompression period following most rounds, and OOC is what lets us do that, in addition to providing a bunch of different benefits such as congratulations, learning opportunities, analysis, and just blowing off steam. Removing this topic from ooc would have a noticeable negative affect on the experience of playing SS13, therefore we shouldn't do it. Does banning the discussion of ice-cream make the server better? No. That's just silly. Banning the discussion of ice-cream would have no positive or negative affect on playing SS13, therefore we shouldn't do it because it adds an unnecessary rule. Does banning the discussion of religion and politics make the server better? Yes, and I'm offering what I hope are coherent arguments to explain why. I say 'hope' because it seems that I'm not communicating clearly enough again. I'm not, in any way, suggesting that we ban everything that makes people angry, and in fact, the specific emotions of the people affected have never been particularly relevant to my suggestions or why I think we should implement them. I'm suggesting we avoid talking about politics and religion in OOC. I'm doing that because, overwhelmingly, the topics that make people have less fun and not want to come back to SS13 are covered by those categories. I want people to have fun. I want people to play the game. I want people to play the game on this server. Therefore, I think we should avoid things that make that less likely to happen. One of those things is talking about politics or religion in OOC, so maybe we shouldn't do that. It costs us nothing and it would make our server more welcoming. @Lady_Of_Ravens Sure. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to engage with the community because all players have equal value, even those are don't want to hear about religion. Being forced to avoid the communication channel that talks directly to other community members and not to their in-game avatars means that one does not have an equal opportunity to engage with the community. It is a type of ostracism.

@LordFowl Actually, OOC was designed specifically for out of character discussions on an SS13 server. That distinction is vital, as it’s already been established that there are numerous topics that aren’t allowed in OOC already. This means it a curated channel, and while 1138 makes a point that it might not be particularly well curated at times, it is curated and as you can see by the existence of this thread, disallowing certain topics has not lead helter skelter into the banning of all discussion. Likewise, not allowing politics or religion will have a similarly limited effect. What will happen is that we won’t talk about politics or religion in much the same way we don’t discuss who is an antagonist in the current round. That’s it. I’m glad I have evidence for this, as it can be very challenging to refute the argument you make in your post in a coherent manner without diving into a lot of hypotheticals or ignoring it entirely. That’s because it’s a fallacy, specifically the “Slippery Slope” fallacy. We see this argument a lot in the marriage equality debate where people will sometimes make the erroneous claim that “If we allow two men to marry, what’s to stop someone from marrying a horse?!” The idea is absurd on it’s face, and in that case it also has ample contradictory evidence, but similar claims make an emotional appeal by connecting some seemingly innocent first step to an increasingly improbable chain reaction. I don’t have a good video explaining this one, I was hoping I could use one of the Idea Channel ones but they didn’t cover this in their fallacy series. I’d recommend avoiding this argument it in future, as it’s not particularly strong. @1138 Thanks for showing me where the mute OOC button is. I’ve already had that one pointed out to me several times and over the last few pages I’ve explained several times why that’s not really a good solution. If you missed those, the summary is that forcing people to disengage entirely from a community is a lot like forcing them out of that community. I read this as, 'people are going to make themselves a target/a victim if their emotions are overwhelming them on the basis of a conversation that went in a direction the offended party doesn't like, and people will complain about it and call for other people to stamp it out entirely because it's problematic.' Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from a logical standpoint, that's exactly what it is. This is a video game we are all playing here. We do not expect to hear someone bitch and moan about how the cashier at the Starbucks misgendered them, in fact, we're going to laugh at them for taking their suffering to an environment where it does not belong. Ah, it’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to make myself understood better. The way that you took that particular paragraph was not what I intended to communicate at all. That interpretation is in fact a spectacular failure of communications, my apologies. You seem to be assuming the backlash would be against a person starting a political topic, but I was actually referring to the person who was attempting to stop a topic. Such a person is putting themselves out on a limb, and is vulnerable to considerable backlash. I think we kind of actually agree on this one 1138. This is a video-game. When playing, you shouldn’t have to hear about my political opinions any more than I should have to hear about yours, and neither of us should have to forgo all interactions with the community just because we’d rather not talk about that kind of thing in a game. I quite like political debate, as I’m sure some of you have guessed by this point, but when we’re on the server we are, as you say, here to play a game. So, let’s just play the game. A good way of doing that is to not allow political or religious discussions in OOC. Another point where we agree is that we both think the second option in my list up there, that of raising one’s objections personally in OOC, is a terrible plan. It is a terrible plan! I would never suggest actually doing that, I think it’s a really bad and unsafe idea, I was simply pointing out how bad an idea it was because Contextual suggested it as an actual option for people. It’s not. The point of the list of options up there wasn’t to say “These are valid options” it was to say “See? There are no good options here, and these are the only options available.” So, yeah, despite some misunderstandings, I think we actually agree with each other on this one, more or less. That being said, I think it’s a little uncharitable to read my restaurant analogy and say that it’s trying to imply that the people smoking in the restaurant are ‘literally cancer.’ The people smoking are having a good time. I am in favour of them having those good times. As I said, I like a good Cuban myself, but what I’m not in favour of is them having a good time at the expense of other people. @EvilBrage Hmm, I find your response a little confusing. I don’t expect everyone to agree. Where did you get the idea that I want everyone to agree on everything? That’s what this whole thing is about. Of course nobody agrees! Nor am I, in any way, attempting to impose some personal vision of decency. I seem to be having some difficulty in getting my ideas across clearly. I’ll try harder in the future to be more clear. The point I’m actually making is that because nobody agrees about these things and that discussing these things can, in some cases, make people have less fun on the server, we should just avoid having these conversations at all. I know that many people on this server have very strong and divergent opinions on a wide variety of topics, most of them political and some of them religious. However, if we don’t talk about them on the server, then we can all play SS13 together in whatever kind of harmony is available in an atmospherics test project turned paranoia simulator. The problems are not caused by the divergent opinions, the problems are caused when people broadcast their potentially inflammatory opinions when what other people want to do is just play the danged game, or share cat pictures, or talk about dildo’s or whatever they were doing before people started talking about something that is either going to get them into an argument or make them feel like shit. Let’s not make people feel like shit. This is not a complicated idea. The whole thing with the gibs and the pets is another Slippery Slope fallacy. I refer you to the video linked above. @Everyone To summarize my position: Talking about politics and religion in OOC isn’t a part of SS13. We’re on the server to play SS13. All players have value and have an equal right to engage with the community. For some players, listening to certain topics can make things less fun. Those topics are overwhelmingly political or religious in nature. Fun is good. Let’s not make things less fun if we don’t have to. In this case, we don’t have to. Therefore we should remove politics and religion from OOC.

@LordFowl Actually, OOC was designed specifically for out of character discussions on an SS13 server. That distinction is vital, as it’s already been established that there are numerous topics that aren’t allowed in OOC already. This means it a curated channel, and while 1138 makes a point that it might not be particularly well curated at times, it is curated and as you can see by the existence of this thread, disallowing certain topics has not lead helter skelter into the banning of all discussion. Likewise, not allowing politics or religion will have a similarly limited effect. What will happen is that we won’t talk about politics or religion in much the same way we don’t discuss who is an antagonist in the current round. That’s it. I’m glad I have evidence for this, as it can be very challenging to refute the argument you make in your post in a coherent manner without diving into a lot of hypotheticals or ignoring it entirely. That’s because it’s a fallacy, specifically the “Slippery Slope” fallacy. We see this argument a lot in the marriage equality debate where people will sometimes make the erroneous claim that “If we allow two men to marry, what’s to stop someone from marrying a horse?!” The idea is absurd on it’s face, and in that case it also has ample contradictory evidence, but similar claims make an emotional appeal by connecting some seemingly innocent first step to an increasingly improbable chain reaction. I don’t have a good video explaining this one, I was hoping I could use one of the Idea Channel ones but they didn’t cover this in their fallacy series. I’d recommend avoiding this argument it in future, as it’s not particularly strong. @1138 Thanks for showing me where the mute OOC button is. I’ve already had that one pointed out to me several times and over the last few pages I’ve explained several times why that’s not really a good solution. If you missed those, the summary is that forcing people to disengage entirely from a community is a lot like forcing them out of that community. I read this as, 'people are going to make themselves a target/a victim if their emotions are overwhelming them on the basis of a conversation that went in a direction the offended party doesn't like, and people will complain about it and call for other people to stamp it out entirely because it's problematic.' Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from a logical standpoint, that's exactly what it is. This is a video game we are all playing here. We do not expect to hear someone bitch and moan about how the cashier at the Starbucks misgendered them, in fact, we're going to laugh at them for taking their suffering to an environment where it does not belong. Ah, it’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to make myself understood better. The way that you took that particular paragraph was not what I intended to communicate at all. That interpretation is in fact a spectacular failure of communications, my apologies. You seem to be assuming the backlash would be against a person starting a political topic, but I was actually referring to the person who was attempting to stop a topic. Such a person is putting themselves out on a limb, and is vulnerable to considerable backlash. I think we kind of actually agree on this one 1138. This is a video-game. When playing, you shouldn’t have to hear about my political opinions any more than I should have to hear about yours, and neither of us should have to forgo all interactions with the community just because we’d rather not talk about that kind of thing in a game. I quite like political debate, as I’m sure some of you have guessed by this point, but when we’re on the server we are, as you say, here to play a game. So, let’s just play the game. A good way of doing that is to not allow political or religious discussions in OOC. Another point where we agree is that we both think the second option in my list up there, that of raising one’s objections personally in OOC, is a terrible plan. It is a terrible plan! I would never suggest actually doing that, I think it’s a really bad and unsafe idea, I was simply pointing out how bad an idea it was because Contextual suggested it as an actual option for people. It’s not. The point of the list of options up there wasn’t to say “These are valid options” it was to say “See? There are no good options here, and these are the only options available.” So, yeah, despite some misunderstandings, I think we actually agree with each other on this one, more or less. That being said, I think it’s a little uncharitable to read my restaurant analogy and say that it’s trying to imply that the people smoking in the restaurant are ‘literally cancer.’ The people smoking are having a good time. I am in favour of them having those good times. As I said, I like a good Cuban myself, but what I’m not in favour of is them having a good time at the expense of other people. @EvilBrage Hmm, I find your response a little confusing. I don’t expect everyone to agree. Where did you get the idea that I want everyone to agree on everything? That’s what this whole thing is about. Of course nobody agrees! Nor am I, in any way, attempting to impose some personal vision of decency. I seem to be having some difficulty in getting my ideas across clearly. I’ll try harder in the future to be more clear. The point I’m actually making is that because nobody agrees about these things and that discussing these things can, in some cases, make people have less fun on the server, we should just avoid having these conversations at all. I know that many people on this server have very strong and divergent opinions on a wide variety of topics, most of them political and some of them religious. However, if we don’t talk about them on the server, then we can all play SS13 together in whatever kind of harmony is available in an atmospherics test project turned paranoia simulator. The problems are not caused by the divergent opinions, the problems are caused when people broadcast their potentially inflammatory opinions when what other people want to do is just play the danged game, or share cat pictures, or talk about dildo’s or whatever they were doing before people started talking about something that is either going to get them into an argument or make them feel like shit. Let’s not make people feel like shit. This is not a complicated idea. The whole thing with the gibs and the pets is another Slippery Slope fallacy. I refer you to the video linked above. @Everyone To summarize my position: Talking about politics and religion in OOC isn’t a part of SS13. We’re on the server to play SS13. All players have value and have an equal right to engage with the community. For some players, listening to certain topics can make things less fun. Those topics are overwhelmingly political or religious in nature. Fun is good. Let’s not make things less fun if we don’t have to. In this case, we don’t have to. Therefore we should remove politics and religion from OOC.

Precisely. That's what the Skrell are afraid of, and the kind of scenario that MALF is sort of meant to ape, but in the Aurora-verse the requirements for run-away self-improvement are fairly rare. It's not enough to simply be able to rewrite yourself, instead it requires a special set of circumstances. Those circumstances have only been hit three times in known history, and they were all three hundred years ago. I set it up that way because, as you say, it's a popular trope, but the game we play is very much pre-singularity, so it can't be too common, especially considering the number of AI's with learning capabilities that we see around. My suggestion (and I'm not going to deny your IPC application by the by) would be to flesh out the researcher and their project a bit more. If their project was AI research, it would make sense that they'd build an AI, but your description implies that the AI was some kind of off-the-books project. It's a little confusing. Also, as I said, NT doesn't usually do AI research, so an explanation of how that happened might be useful. I very seldom have issues with people's characters in these applications, this is the first time, and like I said, I like the core idea. The problem is the way that the universe responds to that character. In your write-up, they're seen as a dangerous oddity, a highly advanced intelligence on the brink of runaway evolution... which I'm sure is fun to play, buuut given where they come from that doesn't make much sense (as NT is notoriously behind in AI tech) and the central thing that is supposed to make them theoretically scary is a core feature that most AI's come standard with. The way I see it, you have two options. You could keep the context and change the response, they were an oddball project within NT, made by one aging researcher who managed to beg, bribe, or steal a budget for an AI project and created something only one or two generations out of date, ooor, you could keep the response but change the context. Maybe they're a partially bound emergent AI with a law software chassis inexpertly bolted onto their flexible organic core, or maybe they're a revived Skrellian weapons system from their last great civil war?