Race idea
Krice
races are dwarfs,
elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
etc.
Races would of course have different abilities and even professions.
Asians
would be mages, whites are dumb barbarians, arabs are thieves..:) I had
this
idea when I was planning level themes. Some of the themes are cultural,
so
it makes sense to have different races and maybe quests related to that
culture and race.
I hate it when you have to be white hero always. So, isn't this a nice
idea?:)
Timothy Pruett
submitting, so I had to rewrite this post, without knowing whether or
not the original went through or not.
Krice wrote:
> I got this idea..:) It's untested, but it could just work. Fantasy
> races are dwarfs,
> elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
> etc.
> Races would of course have different abilities and even professions.
> Asians
> would be mages, whites are dumb barbarians, arabs are thieves..:)
I'm a pretty laid back guy, and don't get offended easily. But I think
this would offend a lot of other people. Allowing race as an option,
for description/flavor purposes is fine. But when you give them
gameplay differences, you condone the belief that there is a difference
between races besides skin color. That's racist, and only helps further
perpetuate stereotypes. I don't think this idea will be warmly welcomed
by most people.
> I had this
> idea when I was planning level themes. Some of the themes are cultural,
> so
> it makes sense to have different races and maybe quests related to that
> culture and race.
> I hate it when you have to be white hero always. So, isn't this a nice
> idea?:)
Who says you always have to be a white hero? Most RLs don't mention
race, leaving it up to the player's imagination. Either you play one of
the rare RLs that do mention race, or you subconsciously want to
roleplay a white hero.
I booted up Angband and ADoM, and created human characters in each. As
flavor text, I saw mention of hair color, eye color, and complexion. No
specific mention of actual skin color, just "darker" or "fair".
copx
"Krice" <pau...@mbnet.fi> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1133264686.1...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>I got this idea..:) It's untested, but it could just work. Fantasy
> races are dwarfs,
> elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
> etc.
Steamband has something like that; ethnic groups instead of races though
(Africans, Germans, Russians, etc...)
>Asians would be mages, whites are dumb barbarians, arabs are thieves..:)
Very un-PC, again just like Steamband. According to it Africans are dumb and
ugly but at least they are strong... Not that I've a problem with that but
I've always wondered whether Steamband is even legal in states like Canada
where "hate speech" (this includes assigning negative attributes to a human
race, ethnic or cultural group) is a criminal offense. The "it's just a
game" excuse doesn't count here. Neither does "it's based on fiction"
('cause in that case it would be based on racist fiction). I think only
Steamband's extreme obscurity keeps the author out of trouble. I mean
imagine Bioware releasing such a game with mass-market compatible shiny
graphics, a PR campaign and race attributes like in Steam... No way in hell.
Krice
> But when you give them gameplay differences, you condone the belief
> that there is a difference between races besides skin color. That's racist
Well, the differences would have to be exaggerated in order to work
better in the context of a gameplay. But I don't think that is racist.
> Who says you always have to be a white hero?
Isn't that obvious.
Gerry Quinn
says...
> Krice wrote:
> > I got this idea..:) It's untested, but it could just work. Fantasy
> > races are dwarfs,
> > elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
> > etc.
> > Races would of course have different abilities and even professions.
> > Asians
> > would be mages, whites are dumb barbarians, arabs are thieves..:)
It would not be a politically sensitive game design, and I would
suspect that anyone embarking on it had interests other than improving
the roguelike genre.
> I'm a pretty laid back guy, and don't get offended easily. But I think
> this would offend a lot of other people. Allowing race as an option,
> for description/flavor purposes is fine. But when you give them
> gameplay differences, you condone the belief that there is a difference
> between races besides skin color. That's racist, and only helps further
> perpetuate stereotypes. I don't think this idea will be warmly welcomed
> by most people.
But of course, despite the claims of various people who certainly know
better, there ARE statistically significant differences in average
capacities of various sorts between the geographic races.
It offends me to hear people who acknowledge this fact being called
racist. Not wishing to harp on it does not make one a racist for
accepting what is a fairly well-known truth.
Unless you believe that if one wants not to be a racist, one must
choose to believe politically-motivated lies.
- Gerry Quinn
Krice
> I've always wondered whether Steamband is even legal in states like Canada
> where "hate speech" (this includes assigning negative attributes to a human
> race, ethnic or cultural group) is a criminal offense.
I guess they can still have negative attributes for white race. Because
we
whites destroyed their ancient cultures and we are bad people, even
now,
and we must pay back everything we did back then etc..:)
> The "it's just a game" excuse doesn't count here.
I think it's a good excuse. Games aren't real. They are fiction.
Wild Halcyon
Gerry Quinn wrote:
> In article <53Yif.5811$7p7....@fe06.lga>, drakalor...@gmail.com
> says...
> > Krice wrote:
>
> > > I got this idea..:) It's untested, but it could just work. Fantasy
> > > races are dwarfs,
> > > elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
> > > etc.
> > > Races would of course have different abilities and even professions.
> > > Asians
> > > would be mages, whites are dumb barbarians, arabs are thieves..:)
I'll be honest. I dont like it at all. Wouldn't download it. Probably
wouldn't even visit the homepage.
> It would not be a politically sensitive game design, and I would
> suspect that anyone embarking on it had interests other than improving
> the roguelike genre.
> > I'm a pretty laid back guy, and don't get offended easily. But I think
> > this would offend a lot of other people. Allowing race as an option,
> > for description/flavor purposes is fine. But when you give them
> > gameplay differences, you condone the belief that there is a difference
> > between races besides skin color. That's racist, and only helps further
> > perpetuate stereotypes. I don't think this idea will be warmly welcomed
> > by most people.
>
> But of course, despite the claims of various people who certainly know
> better, there ARE statistically significant differences in average
> capacities of various sorts between the geographic races.
But, almost unanimously, the differences in statistics are far more
minor than people are led to believe. Almost all of the noticable
differences between the races are cultural, not racial.
> It offends me to hear people who acknowledge this fact being called
> racist. Not wishing to harp on it does not make one a racist for
> accepting what is a fairly well-known truth.
The problem is that people tend to blow the statistics out of
proportion. People are very sensitive of these types of stereotypes.
People make illogical conclusions based on those facts.
Take the fact that there are many more african americans in prison than
european americans. Is it because they're african american? Not really,
but it was fifty years ago, and the sort of cultural stigmas that were
around then linger for a long time... it will take a lot of concerted
effort to bring the two cultures back together - if that's even what
they want.
> Unless you believe that if one wants not to be a racist, one must
> choose to believe politically-motivated lies.
I don't believe I am a racist, but I do acknowledge that stereotypes
are a basic foundation of our way of thinking. We are, as humans,
designed to recognize patterns. Stereotypes are patterns that we
observe in people. They are not 100% accurate, but they tell us a lot
about a person. If someone calls you on the phone and says "Hey, Im in
the NBA" you might start thinking he's incredibly tall. He doesn't need
to be - there have been several NBA players who are normal height.
I think, as far as gameplay is concerned, there is practically no
racial distinction between european, asian, african, etc. races.
Jim Strathmeyer
> Timothy Pruett wrote:
>> But when you give them gameplay differences, you condone the belief
>> that there is a difference between races besides skin color. That's
>> racist
> Well, the differences would have to be exaggerated in order to work
> better in the context of a gameplay. But I don't think that is racist.
Actually, I think that's the definition of racist...
--
Jim Strathmeyer
David Damerell
>copx wrote:
>>I've always wondered whether Steamband is even legal in states like Canada
>>where "hate speech" (this includes assigning negative attributes to a human
>>race, ethnic or cultural group) is a criminal offense.
>I guess they can still have negative attributes for white race. Because
>we whites destroyed their ancient cultures and we are bad people,
[Who says "we" are white? News to me.]
As Gerry puts it, "I would suspect that anyone embarking on it had
interests other than improving the roguelike genre." Specifically, I am
suspecting that of you now.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Gloucesterday, November.
David Damerell
>But of course, despite the claims of various people who certainly know
>better, there ARE statistically significant differences in average
>capacities of various sorts between the geographic races.
>It offends me to hear people who acknowledge this fact being called
>racist.
Generally that's because they acknowledge it VERY LOUDLY and with a clear
implication that hence if Alice is white and Bob is black Alice must be
smarter than Bob, which... doesn't follow.
I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
you will be called a racist.
Ray Dillinger
> I got this idea..:) It's untested, but it could just work. Fantasy
> races are dwarfs,
> elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
> etc.
> Races would of course have different abilities and even professions.
The only way to even think about doing this would be with a random
reshuffling of the race-to-stereotype mapping each game. Otherwise,
it will turn into a screamfest between racists of various stripes
and be no fun.
Bear
R. Dan Henry
<drakalor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Krice wrote:
>> I got this idea..:) It's untested, but it could just work. Fantasy
>> races are dwarfs,
>> elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
>> etc.
>> Races would of course have different abilities and even professions.
>> Asians
>> would be mages, whites are dumb barbarians, arabs are thieves..:)
>
>I'm a pretty laid back guy, and don't get offended easily. But I think
>this would offend a lot of other people.
It was a delicate subject for Steamband. That's one reason the stats
were renamed. It's far better to say a culture/race has a penalty to
Schooling than to Intelligence. Even so, a bit of period racism had to
sneak in to allow exaggerated differentiation (although the human types
are all still fairly close, esp. when compared to the non-humans).
My unreleased Dangband has several human types, but not divided by race.
I think it is far better to have Nerds, Jocks, etc. or Intellectuals,
Athletes, Socializers, etc. than attempt racial differentiation unless
racism is alluded to as a piece of "period atmosphere" as in Steamband
(and it is very watered down in Steamband compared with actual
historical attitudes, of course).
>> I had this
>> idea when I was planning level themes. Some of the themes are cultural,
>> so
>> it makes sense to have different races and maybe quests related to that
>> culture and race.
>> I hate it when you have to be white hero always. So, isn't this a nice
>> idea?:)
>
>Who says you always have to be a white hero?
Yeah, I don't get this either. Sounds like he should be making some
alternative graphic tiles, maybe?
--
R. Dan Henry = danh...@inreach.com
Krice
> Otherwise, it will turn into a screamfest between racists of various
> stripes and be no fun.
People can't be that dumb, can they? I mean books and movies have
members of different race. Why not games? The differences in my
game would be cultural and related to quests and equipment.
Besides all humans in my game have same intelligence, because
the scale is larger. So I don't see why that would offend anyone.
Of course, there are fundamental people who get offended once
they see anything that they could interpret as racism.
SZDev - Slash
David Damerell wrote:
> Quoting Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi>:
> >copx wrote:
> >>I've always wondered whether Steamband is even legal in states like Canada
> >>where "hate speech" (this includes assigning negative attributes to a human
> >>race, ethnic or cultural group) is a criminal offense.
> >I guess they can still have negative attributes for white race. Because
> >we whites destroyed their ancient cultures and we are bad people,
>
> [Who says "we" are white? News to me.]
Off course, the White Race has a superior rl development skill!, and
that led him to believe we are white :p (hehe just kidding)
>
> As Gerry puts it, "I would suspect that anyone embarking on it had
> interests other than improving the roguelike genre." Specifically, I am
> suspecting that of you now.
I guess its just that the newsgroup has been a bit quiet these days...
I once tought about it for my game too, but came to the conclusion that
it wasn't worth it... at least not for stats such as 'Intelligence' or
'Beauty', which are subjetive factors after all.
However, we must recognize there are racial differences that lead to
physical stats such as strenght or agility to be biased toward certain
subrace; also, if there is a cultural factor inside the game, raising
racial differences makes a lot of sense to me.
> --
> David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
> Today is Gloucesterday, November.
--
Slash
Krice
> Off course, the White Race has a superior rl development skill!, and
> that led him to believe we are white :p (hehe just kidding)
I was talking about white people when I said "we", not people in this
newsgroup.
> However, we must recognize there are racial differences that lead to
> physical stats such as strenght or agility to be biased toward certain
> subrace
It doesn't even have to be the differences in attributes. Just the
presence of races. It seems that I have to forget that idea and
have just one race in my game: white. Isn't it ironic?:)
SZDev - Slash
I for one would be proud of showing different races in my game, even if
it is just for changing the color of the '@' or the layout of each
town.... after all the variety of cultures is what makes mankind
interesting.
--
Slash
Alexin
That might be useful in creating an abstract roguelike, where even the
races offered each game are randomly generated. Then again, in such a
case, I suppose 'race' would go back to being the typical roguelike
usage. (Or would the distinction between races in the roguelike sense
and races as in heavily exagerated stereotypes suggested by Krice not
even exist in such a game?)
Anyways, what Krice is suggesting is not mechanically unsound for a
roguelike; all he is really doing is renaming what most roguelikes call
elves, dwarves, and so forth. The flavor of a roguelike is just as
important as its mechanics, however, if not more so. While I imagine
that a masterfully crafted roguelike which played with such concepts in
an insightful way could be interesting (if controversial), and perhaps
even be an effective work of social commentary (on what, I am not
certain), just renamings orcs "white" and elves "asian", or whatever,
isn't that.
Really, you would have to make (race/ sex/ ethnicity/ gender/ religion/
nationality/ class/ whatever) more than just a +2 to strength or
whatever; there would need to be social aspect as well. Really, to have
such a game work, you would need a MUCH better system of social
interactions than what I have seen in any roguelike. (Or, for that
matter, in any computer game.)
And, you know, if you can find a way to model social interactions
properly and make compelling gameplay out of that, that would be
wonderful.
Alexin
opening post on this topic was meant to be taken less seriously than
people have done.
I am actually curious: Krice, do you normally play roguelikes in a
tiled mode, or with ascii? If it is tiled, I'll agree that the majority
of graphical tilesets use a peach color for the skin of humans. It
might be nice to have a little variation, although graphical tilesets
are often of such low resolution that variations on color are generally
used to differentiate different races (in the orc/elf sense); maybe
something can be thought up. If you are using ascii, well, race is
almost never described in the game's text, so you're the only one
making everyone white. ^^
Seriously though, people were reacting negatively to your suggestion
that races should be stereotyped along the lines of "arabs are thieves,
asians are wizards", not the idea of having PCs and NPCs with race and
culture. Please DO include races and cultures which are significant in
terms of quests and social interactions; for that matter, make sex,
religion and socioeconomic status significant in terms of quests and
social interactions as well. Such dynamics, well implemented, would
absolutely make for a more interesting game world.
Ray Dillinger
> Ray Dillinger wrote:
>
>>Otherwise, it will turn into a screamfest between racists of various
>>stripes and be no fun.
>
>
> People can't be that dumb, can they?
You really want me to answer that? Seriously?
Even in books and movies, serious racial stereotyping
is not welcome in mainstream culture since about the
1930's. More importantly for your game, it is generally
met with freezing contempt in the hacker culture that
plays RL's.
We developed a medium where it's not immediately obvious
whether you're black or white or for that matter green,
or how long you wear your hair or whether you're tattood
or pierced or branded or naked or clothed. It doesn't
matter how tall or short you are or how thin or how fat.
It doesn't matter where you live or what your parents did
for a living or even (assuming you can afford a computer)
how much money you have. All that crap doesn't matter
any more in cyberspace, and a lot of us *REALLY* really
like it that way, comprende?
What really matters? Our ideas and our work. We are our
ideas. We are our work. We are what we contribute to the
creative whole of mankind, first and foremost, rather than
living under the shadow of preconceptions based on all
these crap physical differences.
Now I understand that your game is not strictly about that
culture or that aesthetic of what does and doesn't matter,
but that's the culture of the people who will consider
playing an RL game - and what you propose will offend us.
Bear
Mechanoid
There is no "black" or "white" race, because on the genetic level,
those two are 99.99% identical. Almost to the point of being clones.
Only 0.01% of the genetic code of a human being is related to our
appearance, and that is the only thing which makes us look different.
Just so we're clear: I am a 99.99% accurate clone of Timothy Pruett, of
Krice, of copx, of Quinn, and of everyone else on this entire planet
minus the 4 people i included here plus myself. The remaining .01% is
what makes me look like me; and even that can be stripped away by
surgical proceedures.
Secondly:
"race" Plays absolutely no part in the way a person acts or in their
abilities as a human being. A child that looks completely different
from another child will be comepletly identical to 0.01% -- their
appearance. That said, when the idea of a "race" is introduced (you are
white; you are black; etc) that will influence how people behave at
that point. Using the two children again, one is told that the other's
appearance makes them less of a human being, or that that childs
appearance makes them more of a human being, then that will influence
how they behave. Ironically, before anyone told the children that they
were identical. But because the society they live in has placed that
idea in their mind, that social construct of race, one of those
children will suffer, and will be held down by that social construct of
race.
Just to be clear: Race is a social construct
And for the original idea of having different races from the species
selection:
No. There is no real-world scientific support of the "race" social
construct, so there should be absolutely no support for it in a game.
Having certain races placed only to do certain jobs only reinforces the
idea of a racist view, which is unacceptable by a huge majority of the
world's population.
For the issue of a character's appearance in a roguelike game... I dont
mind choosing what my character looks like at the player creation
screen, or having the appearance randomly generated ala ADOM, but so
long as it doesn't influence my character's ability to do jack-sht-all
i dont f'ing care what it looks like.
In summation:
As long as my "fair skinned, blue eyed, blond hair, male human fighter"
can hit as well as my "dark skinned, brown eyed, black hair, female
human fighter" at the same str/dex/con/chr/int/wis/mana/etc level, you
wont get killed by someone on the street when they ask you if you made
such-and-such game.
Antoine
Mechanoid wrote:
> First of all, i just want to say this:
>
> There is no "black" or "white" race, because on the genetic level,
> those two are 99.99% identical. Almost to the point of being clones.
I don't know about your premise, but your conclusion is clearly false,
since we can easily observe that there are black people and white
people, and that the difference between the two is inherited. (There's
yellow and brown people out there as well, incidentally.)
> Just so we're clear: I am a 99.99% accurate clone of Timothy Pruett, of
> Krice, of copx, of Quinn, and of everyone else on this entire planet
> minus the 4 people i included here plus myself. The remaining .01% is
> what makes me look like me;
All this proves is that the remaining .01% is a very important part,
out of proportion to its size, since it includes all genetic
differences between individuals.
> Secondly:
> "race" Plays absolutely no part in the way a person acts or in their
> abilities as a human being.
An exaggeration, there are differences (in terms of body proportions,
appearance, vulnerabilities to some diseases and genetic conditions)
> Just to be clear: Race is a social construct
Obviously false (or it wouldn't be inheritable)
A.
Mechanoid
>
> Obviously false (or it wouldn't be inheritable)
- Hair color
- Eye color
- Skin color
- Ear shape
- Face shape
- Body shape
Is that what determines race?
Kostatus
No, there are no real differences between races in physical mental
capacity or abilities. The only differences that you see arise from
upbringing and culture, which is often the same in the same ethnic
group. This is where these statistics come from.
>
> Unless you believe that if one wants not to be a racist, one must
> choose to believe politically-motivated lies.
What lies are you referring to?
>
> - Gerry Quinn
--
Kostatus (kostatus001 at ihug co nz)
http://www.geocities.com/kostatus/ (My project)
http://www.geocities.com/kostatus/reviews.html (My reviews)
Kostatus
> Timothy Pruett wrote:
>> But when you give them gameplay differences, you condone the belief
>> that there is a difference between races besides skin color. That's racist
>
> Well, the differences would have to be exaggerated in order to work
> better in the context of a gameplay. But I don't think that is racist.
This is sickening and disgusting. So you're not only suggesting to make
a racist game, but you're saying that the following are based on truth,
only "exaggerated" (quote):
"Whites are dumb barbarians"
"Arabs are thieves"
If this is not racist, please tell me what is.
Kostatus
But you see, what Krice is proposing there is saying things like: "Arabs
are thieves", this is rather different from changing the colour of the '@'.
Antoine
Nope - race is determined genetically, and can often be distinguished
by looking at some of the above characteristics (though certainly not
reliably)
A.
R. Dan Henry
>All this proves is that the remaining .01% is a very important part,
>out of proportion to its size, since it includes all genetic
>differences between individuals.
On the contrary, there is more genetic variation between subgroups in
the African "race" than between them and other "races". Race is a social
construct. It is not rooted in any biologically significant fact (unless
you are specifically concerned with the amount of sunscreen people need
and even then, it won't break down upon strictly "racial" lines).
Population do vary. Kenyans are far more likely to be great distance
runners than are Frenchmen, and there is more than culture at work.
However, this does not generalize along "racial" lines. There are many
populations in Africa that do not produce great distance runners with
any regularity. If you want someone who functions exceptionally well,
you can take an American from the Andes or a Tibetan, but don't think
any "Native American" or "Asian" will do.
>> Just to be clear: Race is a social construct
>
>Obviously false (or it wouldn't be inheritable)
Wow, money isn't a social construct! Neither is my family name! Or
American citizenship!
Yes, social constructs can be inherited.
Antoine
R. Dan Henry wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2005 19:26:22 -0800, "Antoine" <ma...@guildgame.com> wrote:
>
> >All this proves is that the remaining .01% is a very important part,
> >out of proportion to its size, since it includes all genetic
> >differences between individuals.
>
> On the contrary, there is more genetic variation between subgroups in
> the African "race" than between them and other "races".
True enough, but doesn't disprove my point.
> >> Just to be clear: Race is a social construct
> >
> >Obviously false (or it wouldn't be inheritable)
>
> Wow, money isn't a social construct! Neither is my family name! Or
> American citizenship!
>
> Yes, social constructs can be inherited.
Fair point. But race (as opposed to culture) is different from all
those things because it is 100% determined by heredity. If you adopted
a Cambodian child, you could pass on your money, family name,
citizenship and/or culture to them, but not your race.
Anyway, in the worlds of roguelikes, race definitely exists!
A.
Krice
> This is sickening and disgusting.
You are such a funny guy:)
> So you're not only suggesting to make a racist game, but you're saying
> that the following are based on truth, only "exaggerated" (quote):
> "Whites are dumb barbarians"
> "Arabs are thieves"
Not truth, just stereotype fictional characters. Everyone knows that
kind of characters works best in books, movies and other fiction.
Anyone with a sense of humor would understand that.
I don't understand why some people get offended when their
race is displayed in some imaginary way, which could have
some negative attributes. So what? People tend to have
negative attributes.. I can't see anyone only in positive way.
Kostatus
> Kostatus wrote:
>> This is sickening and disgusting.
>
> You are such a funny guy:)
>
>> So you're not only suggesting to make a racist game, but you're saying
>> that the following are based on truth, only "exaggerated" (quote):
>> "Whites are dumb barbarians"
>> "Arabs are thieves"
>
> Not truth, just stereotype fictional characters. Everyone knows that
> kind of characters works best in books, movies and other fiction.
Which movie that "worked well" did you see where Arabs were stereotyped
as thieves and white people as barbarians? This is sort of irrelevant,
because saying: "It's ok to do it because other people do it" is one of
the worst arguments, but I'm just interested if such movies really exist.
> Anyone with a sense of humor would understand that.
> I don't understand why some people get offended when their
> race is displayed in some imaginary way, which could have
> some negative attributes. So what?
>
Example:
Because even when it's a fictional game that says: "Arabs are thieves",
and with all the negative media that they have received due to the
terrorist attacks, this only adds to the general message of: "Beware of
the Arabs".
Why are Arabs thieves? Do you have some statistics to show that more of
them are thieves than of other races? Actually I doubt that they
statistically are more likely to be thieves, most of them are devoted
Muslims, and Islam forbids theft. So if there are no such statistics,
where did you get this "exaggeration"? Which movie was full of Arab
thieves.
Nevertheless, statistics or no statistics, I doubt that a game where
African Americans were thieves and white people were wizards would be
received kindly by African Americans. The point is being respectful to
people's cultures and races. That you see movies doing the opposite is
no excuse for you not to.
> People tend to have
> negative attributes.. I can't see anyone only in positive way.
But attributing these negative attributes to a race, is racism by
definition.
Max Bolingbroke
> Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> It offends me to hear people who acknowledge this fact being called
>> racist. Not wishing to harp on it does not make one a racist for
>> accepting what is a fairly well-known truth.
>
> No, there are no real differences between races in physical mental
> capacity or abilities. The only differences that you see arise from
> upbringing and culture, which is often the same in the same ethnic
> group. This is where these statistics come from.
Hi Kostatus,
Controlling for the effect of background (e.g. socioeconomic group) in
crime statistics (for example) does indeed show that just being black
does not make you more likely to be a criminal: it is being poor that
does that, and black people are disproportionately poor. This may be one
of the statistics that you refer to above. However, read the following
link for some interesting information regarding measurable differences
between blacks and whites in a field which is obviously partly
biologically determined, athletic ability:
http://www.wweek.com/html/leada030800.html
Skin colour itself would seem to provide evidence for a "real
difference" between races, but I'm sure you'll agree that the article
above provides some more compelling comparisons.
Please note that I'm just providing this as a point of information, I do
not have a racist agenda to push here.. hope you find this interesting,
Max
Timothy Pruett
Movies are full of stupid stereotypes (although the only Arab stereotype
I see is the ignorant "all Arabs are terrorists" one). But, like you
said, that is no excuse for Krice to duplicate this nastiness and spread
it around.
> Nevertheless, statistics or no statistics, I doubt that a game where
> African Americans were thieves and white people were wizards would be
> received kindly by African Americans. The point is being respectful to
> people's cultures and races. That you see movies doing the opposite is
> no excuse for you not to.
>
>
> > People tend to have
> > negative attributes.. I can't see anyone only in positive way.
>
> But attributing these negative attributes to a race, is racism by
> definition.
Krice is a racist in denial. He doesn't quite seem to really understand
what racism means. He goes on giving a textbook example of racism, then
acting surprised when people call him on his bullshit.
Gerry Quinn
wild.h...@gmail.com says...
> Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > But of course, despite the claims of various people who certainly know
> > better, there ARE statistically significant differences in average
> > capacities of various sorts between the geographic races.
> But, almost unanimously, the differences in statistics are far more
> minor than people are led to believe. Almost all of the noticable
> differences between the races are cultural, not racial.
They are a good deal larger than many people would like to believe, or
have others believe.
> I think, as far as gameplay is concerned, there is practically no
> racial distinction between european, asian, african, etc. races.
On that I would agree.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> Quoting Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie>:
> >But of course, despite the claims of various people who certainly know
> >better, there ARE statistically significant differences in average
> >capacities of various sorts between the geographic races.
> >It offends me to hear people who acknowledge this fact being called
> >racist.
> Generally that's because they acknowledge it VERY LOUDLY and with a clear
> implication that hence if Alice is white and Bob is black Alice must be
> smarter than Bob, which... doesn't follow.
> I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
> to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
> you will be called a racist.
No, but if you say that theoretical physicists tend to be white or
asian because a larger proportion of these races have very high
intelligence of the type needed, you may well be.
(Cf. also the hounding of Lawrence Summers over his remarks about
gender differences and science.)
The problem is that when differences in average performance refuse to
go away, those with a political axe to grind will refuse to interpret
them other than as subtle racism - this attitude can go on poisoning
the wells forever whatever is done to create equal (or, in some cases,
greater) opportunity for apparently disadvantaged groups.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
to.get.my.ema...@of.my.post says...
> Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > It offends me to hear people who acknowledge this fact being called
> > racist. Not wishing to harp on it does not make one a racist for
> > accepting what is a fairly well-known truth.
> No, there are no real differences between races in physical mental
> capacity or abilities. The only differences that you see arise from
> upbringing and culture, which is often the same in the same ethnic
> group. This is where these statistics come from.
That is silly. As someone said a while ago, it requires one to accept
as an article of faith that evolution does not apply to the human race.
(At last some common ground between 'left liberals' and creationists,
perhaps!)
> > Unless you believe that if one wants not to be a racist, one must
> > choose to believe politically-motivated lies.
> What lies are you referring to?
Those by a host of commentators such as the late Steven Jay Gould, who
dishonestly attempted to discredit any research into genetically
mediated differences between the races. Or even any measurement
methods that might be used in such research.
For an example of this thinking, here's a quote from the link Max
Bolingbroke gave:
<QUOTE>
"I see this like guns or uranium," says Jeffrey Sammons, a history
professor at New York University. "Some information has a more
dangerous content than others. Only bad things can come from research
into racially based differences in sports performance."
<END QUOTE>
You see where these guys are coming from. Bad things could come from
the research, so the research must be killed. (I could agree with
them, if they were talking about research on supervirulent pathogens
etc. And maybe if I weren't a white male I'd worry more about the
implications of the research in question. Overall I take the view that
better knowledge will ease rather than intensify interracial turmoil.)
They had an easy time for a while when they could write off all
research as the work of nineteenth century racists (though never a
skull measurement did they report themselves - you'd have thought that
if the research was so bad it would have been easier to refute this
way).
Science is advancing rapidly, and their position is collapsing. Recent
results relating to the evolution of microcephalin genes have been
greeted with silence, probably in the hope that they will go away.
They may do - any early result may with time come to have
interpretations very different from the obvious first impressions. But
the genetic genie is well out of the bottle now.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
says...
> Even in books and movies, serious racial stereotyping
> is not welcome in mainstream culture since about the
> 1930's. More importantly for your game, it is generally
> met with freezing contempt in the hacker culture that
> plays RL's.
I play roguelikes and am not part of hacker culture.
However, roguelikes are actually notable for the consistency with which
they characterise different races by nothing EXCEPT huge differences in
physical and intellectual attributes.
(Though there tends to be little in the way of mapping these races onto
specific human races.)
- Gerry Quinn
David Damerell
>dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
>>I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
>>to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
>>you will be called a racist.
>No, but if you say that theoretical physicists tend to be white or
>asian because a larger proportion of these races have very high
>intelligence of the type needed, you may well be.
And if that "because" implies the assertion that societal factors aren't
very significant and it's entirely down to the distribution of
intelligence - which it often does - you had it coming.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Leicesterday, November.
Jim Strathmeyer
> Krice is a racist in denial. He doesn't quite seem to really
> understand what racism means. He goes on giving a textbook example of
> racism, then acting surprised when people call him on his bullshit.
Krice is from Finland, which is like 102% white, which could account for
this misunderstanding.
--
Jim Strathmeyer
Krice
> Krice is from Finland, which is like 102% white, which could account for
> this misunderstanding.
Finland may well be one of the most less racist countries in the world.
We have people of all colors and we also have our own ethnic
groups, too. I'm not a racist and I'm sad when you call me a racist.
Krice
> He goes on giving a textbook example of racism, then
> acting surprised when people call him on his bullshit.
Giving some kind of fantasy attributes to a race? I would do the
same for whites, too. I would do the same if I was black.
I just don't see what is the "racism" here. The differences
between races are not racism. Only when you discriminate
people based on race, that is racism.
Besides I have tried to tell that the differences would be
mostly cultural and basically just having different races in
the first place, but I seem to be talking to deaf, hypocritic
people.
Kostatus
So again, "Arabs are thieves" is not discrimination? A real difference
you say? One step down from "Arabs are terrorists", or "Arabs are
murderers", yet discrimination nonetheless.
Again, if you're claiming you're taking existing stereotypes which are
based on fact, where did anyone tell you that "Arabs are thieves"?
Note: the "Arabs are terrorists" bullshit is not the same, terrorists
blow up civilians, thieves steal.
You seem to be living in a closed community regarding different races.
You can claim that the different ethnic populations are different, but
knowing Europe, generally they all look white and most people probably
can't tell them apart. I live in a very multi-racial city, Auckland,
the 2001 census showed that it is only 65% European, 8% Maori (natives)
and the remaining 27% is all other races. And I tell you, there
definitely are some racists here, but comments like these are definitely
nowhere near acceptable here.
Kostatus
> Kostatus wrote:
>> Gerry Quinn wrote:
>>> It offends me to hear people who acknowledge this fact being called
>>> racist. Not wishing to harp on it does not make one a racist for
>>> accepting what is a fairly well-known truth.
>>
>> No, there are no real differences between races in physical mental
>> capacity or abilities. The only differences that you see arise from
>> upbringing and culture, which is often the same in the same ethnic
>> group. This is where these statistics come from.
>
> Hi Kostatus,
>
> Controlling for the effect of background (e.g. socioeconomic group) in
> crime statistics (for example) does indeed show that just being black
> does not make you more likely to be a criminal: it is being poor that
> does that, and black people are disproportionately poor. This may be one
> of the statistics that you refer to above. However, read the following
> link for some interesting information regarding measurable differences
> between blacks and whites in a field which is obviously partly
> biologically determined, athletic ability:
>
> http://www.wweek.com/html/leada030800.html
>
> Skin colour itself would seem to provide evidence for a "real
> difference" between races, but I'm sure you'll agree that the article
> above provides some more compelling comparisons.
Here are some statistics of gold medal per population, compiled by the
Australian government:
So if you exclude Bahamas as statistical error, then Norwegians and
Australians are the best sportsmen (with us New Zealanders not too far
behind).
I am not too trusting of such findings, like the two links above, to
give an accurate picture - I don't think they show as much about race as
it seems (though I don't deny some physical differences). I still think
that culture and socioeconomic background would play a lot in this.
Russians, and former ex-Soviets, are generally are the best acrobats in
the Olympics. But does this mean that they're more flexible? No, they
just have better training schools and more experienced coaches.
It wouldn't be too bad to have a Black race in your game which runs fast
- it is a positive attribute (though I don't like this idea either).
Having Asians as wizards is also nothing negative. But saying "Arabs
are thieves" is quite different.
>
> Please note that I'm just providing this as a point of information, I do
> not have a racist agenda to push here.. hope you find this interesting,
>
> Max
Timofei Shatrov
<to.get.my.ema...@of.my.post> tried to confuse everyone with
this message:
>It wouldn't be too bad to have a Black race in your game which runs fast
>- it is a positive attribute (though I don't like this idea either).
>Having Asians as wizards is also nothing negative. But saying "Arabs
>are thieves" is quite different.
I don't see how it is different. Saying "Blacks are faster" is just a
different way of saying "Whites are slower".
One way to implement human races in a game is to make them relevant to
the game world. For example in a hypothetical "Wild West RL" if you
start as black then you're probably an escaped slave and as such you are
uneducated (stupid) and strong. If you're white, you can chose different
classes (cowboy, sheriff, bartender and so on), which determine your
skills. And if you're Indian, then you're proficient with bows and
stuff.
--
|a\o/r|,-------------.,---------- Timofei Shatrov aka Grue ------------.
| m"a ||FC AMKAR PERM|| mail: grue at mail.ru http://grue3.tripod.com |
| k || PWNZ J00 || Kingdom of Loathing: Grue3 lvl 18 Seal Clubber |
`-----'`-------------'`-------------------------------------------[4*72]
Antoine
Timofei Shatrov wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:38:33 +1300, Kostatus
> <to.get.my.ema...@of.my.post> tried to confuse everyone with
> this message:
>
>
> >It wouldn't be too bad to have a Black race in your game which runs fast
> >- it is a positive attribute (though I don't like this idea either).
> >Having Asians as wizards is also nothing negative. But saying "Arabs
> >are thieves" is quite different.
>
> I don't see how it is different. Saying "Blacks are faster" is just a
> different way of saying "Whites are slower".
>
> One way to implement human races in a game is to make them relevant to
> the game world. For example in a hypothetical "Wild West RL" if you
> start as black then you're probably an escaped slave and as such you are
> uneducated (stupid) and strong. If you're white, you can chose different
> classes (cowboy, sheriff, bartender and so on), which determine your
> skills. And if you're Indian, then you're proficient with bows and
> stuff.
This is as bad as Krice's original post. Where do I begin...?
- Uneducated people aren't stupid
- Some slaves were more educated than their owners
- Not all slaves were strong - malnutrition, beatings and disease were
kinda sapping
- Not all cowboys were white
- Not all Indians spent their time riding round shooting white people
with bows, they did have some other skills
A.
SZDev - Slash
Kostatus wrote:
> Max Bolingbroke wrote:
> > Kostatus wrote:
> >> Gerry Quinn wrote:
> I am not too trusting of such findings, like the two links above, to
> give an accurate picture - I don't think they show as much about race as
> it seems (though I don't deny some physical differences). I still think
> that culture and socioeconomic background would play a lot in this.
>
> Russians, and former ex-Soviets, are generally are the best acrobats in
> the Olympics. But does this mean that they're more flexible? No, they
> just have better training schools and more experienced coaches.
>
> It wouldn't be too bad to have a Black race in your game which runs fast
> - it is a positive attribute (though I don't like this idea either).
> Having Asians as wizards is also nothing negative. But saying "Arabs
> are thieves" is quite different.
I think Krice doesn't mean thieves as in 'persons that *steal* from
people' in the moral, unwanted way (I mean, stealing from somebody is
something bad), but rather as 'individuals that are profficient on
pickpocketing and moving stealthy' which off course, nobody has proven
real life arabs to be... but is not in the same line of terrorists or
stuff
So, in this way, being a thief is a possitive attribute, just as
running faster is.
>
> >
> > Please note that I'm just providing this as a point of information, I do
> > not have a racist agenda to push here.. hope you find this interesting,
> >
> > Max
>
>
> --
>
> Kostatus (kostatus001 at ihug co nz)
> http://www.geocities.com/kostatus/ (My project)
> http://www.geocities.com/kostatus/reviews.html (My reviews)
--
Slash
Kostatus
> On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:38:33 +1300, Kostatus
> <to.get.my.ema...@of.my.post> tried to confuse everyone with
> this message:
>
>
>> It wouldn't be too bad to have a Black race in your game which runs fast
>> - it is a positive attribute (though I don't like this idea either).
>> Having Asians as wizards is also nothing negative. But saying "Arabs
>> are thieves" is quite different.
>
> I don't see how it is different. Saying "Blacks are faster" is just a
> different way of saying "Whites are slower".
This is why I don't like the idea of even positive race-based comments.
But nevertheless, there is a difference: "Whites are slower" is a
comparative comment, it means whites are comparatively slower. Also you
could argue that this is based on fact.
Saying "Arabs are thieves" is not a comparative comment, and it has no
positive side, nor is it anything based on fact. Now I have actually
found some statistics on this:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_bur
If you have a look there you will see *USA in no1 in both burglaries
and car theft* and Saudi Arabia the *LOWEST* on that list for
burglaries, and also very low on car theft! They don't have United Arab
Emirates, which is significantly richer than Saudi Arabia, and I suspect
it would score even lower. But look at the other Arab states - Qatar
and Yemen, also generally the lowest ratings!
So unless you have some racial prejudice against Arabs, you will not
say: "Arabs are thieves" because statistics show the opposite: Arabs
are the *LEAST LIKELY* thieves!
So, yes, this is racist. It is a discriminatory racial stereotype that
has crept into Krice's mind probably as a consequence of the recent
stereotyping of Arabs because of the terror attacks.
If you want to have an offensive game which is based on "fact", why not
not make a game where Americans are thieves, burglars instead?
And since I hear statistics show that Black people are more likely to be
thieves in the USA, then you should go to some black ghettos in the USA,
and yell out: "Black people are thieves" and then try to explain all the
statistics to them.
>
> One way to implement human races in a game is to make them relevant to
> the game world. For example in a hypothetical "Wild West RL" if you
> start as black then you're probably an escaped slave and as such you are
> uneducated (stupid) and strong. If you're white, you can chose different
> classes (cowboy, sheriff, bartender and so on), which determine your
> skills. And if you're Indian, then you're proficient with bows and
> stuff.
>
>
--
Antoine
> positive side, nor is it anything based on fact. Now I have actually
> found some statistics on this:
>
> http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_bur
>
> If you have a look there you will see *USA in no1 in both burglaries
> and car theft* and Saudi Arabia the *LOWEST* on that list for
> burglaries, and also very low on car theft! They don't have United Arab
> Emirates, which is significantly richer than Saudi Arabia, and I suspect
> it would score even lower. But look at the other Arab states - Qatar
> and Yemen, also generally the lowest ratings!
>
> So unless you have some racial prejudice against Arabs, you will not
> say: "Arabs are thieves" because statistics show the opposite: Arabs
> are the *LEAST LIKELY* thieves!
>
> So, yes, this is racist. It is a discriminatory racial stereotype that
> has crept into Krice's mind probably as a consequence of the recent
> stereotyping of Arabs because of the terror attacks.
In all fairness, he may have been thinking of more Aladdin / Ali Baba
sort of stuff.
A.
Brendan Guild
>> capacity or abilities. The only differences that you see arise from
>> upbringing and culture, which is often the same in the same ethnic
>> group. This is where these statistics come from.
>
> That is silly. As someone said a while ago, it requires one to accept
> as an article of faith that evolution does not apply to the human
> race. (At last some common ground between 'left liberals' and
> creationists, perhaps!)
As much as I feel guilty about posting off-topic, I just can't pass this
one up! It's actually an interesting and concerning feature of our world
that evolution has passed the human race over. You don't need to take it
on faith; it's obvious if you look.
Evolution happens by survival of the fittest, the spreading of genes
from the best of the species to the next generation, resulting in a slow
improvement of the species, or at least slowing the deterioration of the
genetic pool.
But think about how the genes are spread in humans. It's not based on
fitness. It's not really based on anything. The human population is
booming because almost everyone has children, fit or not. The people who
don't have children are like that because of social considerations, not
biological ones that might be spread in genes. Therefore our development
as a species is without goals and we can expect it to wander in random
directions, getting worse more often than it gets better.
R. Dan Henry
<dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
>to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
>you will be called a racist.
And yet you'd probably be quite wrong. Outstanding performance in sport
in general is traditionally the role of a minority group with restricted
opportunities outside of sport, at least in the U.S. Jews used to be
quite prominent in basketball.
R. Dan Henry
>One way to implement human races in a game is to make them relevant to
>the game world. For example in a hypothetical "Wild West RL" if you
>start as black then you're probably an escaped slave and as such you are
>uneducated (stupid) and strong. If you're white, you can chose different
>classes (cowboy, sheriff, bartender and so on), which determine your
>skills. And if you're Indian, then you're proficient with bows and
>stuff.
Y'know, there were a lot of black cowboys. Not a majority, by any means,
but far more than you'd think if your picture of the West comes purely
from Hollywood. Even in the pre-War South, there were free blacks.
R. Dan Henry
>Fair point. But race (as opposed to culture) is different from all
>those things because it is 100% determined by heredity. If you adopted
>a Cambodian child, you could pass on your money, family name,
>citizenship and/or culture to them, but not your race.
So? That just tells us about the current, cultural convention applied to
race.
The human races are *not* biological units of any kind; they are social
conventions. And those conventions change quite rapidly and differ
across cultures.
>Anyway, in the worlds of roguelikes, race definitely exists!
In a completely different usage of "race", yes. The "human race" exists
in reality, too, as a biologically meaningful unit. Again, a different
meaning.
Brendan Guild
> However, roguelikes are actually notable for the consistency with
> which they characterise different races by nothing EXCEPT huge
> differences in physical and intellectual attributes.
That's why a racist roguelike seems so strange. The roguelike tradition
is to consider elves as one race and humans as another and even stranger
things for other races. It's a bizarre variation on the genre to divide
races along lines of differences as trivial as we find between various
color groups of humans. Since we are expecting huge differences, a game
with only tiny differences between races is a surprise.
Also, it has been mentioned before that choices are like oxygen in
gameplay. You can't have a game without any choices at all, of course;
how would you breathe? But if you have too much oxygen, it becomes a
poison. If you overwhelm a player with choices, the player starts to
lose the feeling of control and you get the opposite effect, killing the
playability of your game because the player has so many choices that he
or she can't understand what they all mean and the player begins to
choose randomly.
So why would we want to offer the player a choice of race where the
difference amounts to little more than skin color? That's just asking
for trouble. Every choice should be important, we never want to
introduce a choice just for having a choice.
On the other hand, if you allow the player to customize the color of the
@ and you make it clear that this has no effect at all on gameplay, then
when the choices start to overwhelm the player the @ color will be
quickly ignored and a won't be a problem. And no one would accuse your
game of being racist.
Chris Reuter
Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>In article <dmj9t7$1hn$1...@lust.ihug.co.nz>,
>to.get.my.ema...@of.my.post says...
>> No, there are no real differences between races in physical mental
>> capacity or abilities.
>That is silly. As someone said a while ago, it requires one to accept
>as an article of faith that evolution does not apply to the human race.
Or that it happens slowly and that the different racial groups never
interbred and that they never moved from one location to another.
By the way, there are better (or at least more flame-filled)
newsgroups out there for discussing this subject. This is a
complicated issue, both politically and scientifically, and most of
us aren't really qualified to talk about it with any authority, nor is
it useful when writing roguelike games.
--Chris
--
Chris Reuter http://www.blit.ca
"To make that name appear justified, [people who are determined to believe that
the entire system is 'Linux'] must see molehills as mountains and mountains as
molehills." --RMS, http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/0520.rms.html
Chris Reuter
Krice <pau...@mbnet.fi> wrote:
>Jim Strathmeyer wrote:
>> Krice is from Finland, which is like 102% white, which could account for
>> this misunderstanding.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that
you don't have any hidden agenda:
>Finland may well be one of the most less racist countries in the world.
>We have people of all colors and we also have our own ethnic
>groups, too. I'm not a racist and I'm sad when you call me a racist.
If this is the case, you are blessed. You live in a society where
racism is so far away that you can treat it lightly, in much the same
way that I, living in Canada, can make jokes about terrorism that
wouldn't be funny in, say, Iraq.
However, most of the rest of the world isn't like that. There are
real, live people who believe that their race is superior to other
races and they use this belief to justify all sorts of violent and
repugnant behaviour. They try to propagate this belief to others and
while (thankfully) most people today are resistant to it (at least in
_my_ culture), there are always a few impressionable souls who'll buy
into it, especially if it gives them someone to blame for their own
failings.
Your game idea is exactly the sort of thing that these people say in
their propaganda. Even if you honestly don't mean to advocate a
racist agenda, you will do so. People who oppose racism will be
disgusted by it and lump you in with the racists, and the racists
themselves will think you're one of them and use your game as a
propaganda tool.
Either way, you lose.
Race is a difficult, complex issue in most of the world. It _could_
be put into a roguelike game in a way that is both interesting and not
propaganda, but it needs to be done by someone with a clear
understanding of the issue (and even then, they need to be careful).
You are fortunate not to be that person.
Please drop this idea.
--Chris
PS: Modern genetics has mostly disproven the notion that race is tied
to certain abilities, so your idea also offends geneticists. You'd be
a lot better off classing players by area of origin (northerner,
southerner, islander, etc.) or by profession (miner, soldier,
academic, etc.) since those are going to be a lot more plausible.
PPS: If you really, really want to let the player chose a race,
let them type it into a text field when creating their character and
then make sure your program immediately discards the value.
--
Chris Reuter http://www.blit.ca
"Every breath you take, every move you make, every cake you bake."
--Sting, _Love is the Seventh Wave_
Thomas
@ symbol but even that seems pointless... there just isnt a need and it
would raise other problems like blending in with the background.
when you say "race" you should say "ethnicity" and not delude yourself
into thinking there WOULD be any difference beyond the color of the @
symbol or maybe its size. I wouldn't care much but i am sure many would
and it would be a silly idea to ruin thousands of hours of work on one
racist feature. Maybe you were just trying to discuss it as a wierd
idea but if you are seriously considering this... think again :)....
-Thomas
RL: CHAZM
Timothy Pruett
There were also quite a few Mexican cowboys, especially back before
America got hold of Texas.
Antoine
And of course Indians managed their livestock as well.
A.
Krice
> I think Krice doesn't mean thieves as in 'persons that *steal* from
> people' in the moral, unwanted way (I mean, stealing from somebody is
> something bad), but rather as 'individuals that are profficient on
> pickpocketing and moving stealthy' which off course, nobody has proven
> real life arabs to be...
Yeah, arabs were just an example. They could be good thieves.
In fantasy role playing game, say. I was thinking more like Prince
Of Persia and that stuff, not the arabs of real world today.
> So, in this way, being a thief is a possitive attribute, just as
> running faster is.
Exactly.
ABCGi
Haha - Krice (and others sadly) have got it backwards. "Real races"
are dwarves, elfish folk etc. The Human Race is only one race, what
you absolutely must call them is Cultures - not Races, unless you
want to live in the 19th Century. The thing I have always loved
about RL's is that you get to pick only a Human Race.
There is also quite a bit of bigotry and racism in Krice's statement
which is either accidental or a troll bait - so either way *bzzzzt*
(to even-handed bigotry as well)! All traits are cultural not racial,
there is no such thing as race.
I read one well-meaning comment say 'you assume race is anything but
skin colour' [paraphrase] - race isn't even skin colour! There are
members of what is now called cultures (but has previously been called
race) that don't, of course, have the skin colour of the majority of
that culture and this does not mean they are not part of that culture
(biologically the only difference has to be that particular
chromosome for skin colour). You might as well differentiate on
eye colour! "Look out here come the green eyes!". That is how
stupid but indoctrinated it is (indeed some1 mentioned movies...).
Finally I overheard a well-meaning fellow after a Nazi documentary
in a movie theatre refer to Jewish "blood" - but of course there
is nothing different in the "blood"!!! It would be more proper
to say "Look out here come those O-Types!".
As Ben Franklin learned and taught us - take offensive words completely
out of your vocab. Never use the word "Race" again - always say
"Culture".
--
ABCGi ab...@yahoo.com
"He who should be working on RLs but is doing RLW instead :("
ABCGi
> Mechanoid wrote:
>
>>>>Just to be clear: Race is a social construct
>>>
>>>Obviously false (or it wouldn't be inheritable)
>>
>>- Hair color
>>- Eye color
>>- Skin color
>>- Ear shape
>>- Face shape
>>- Body shape
>>
>>Is that what determines race?
>
> Nope - race is determined genetically, and can often be distinguished
> by looking at some of the above characteristics (though certainly not
> reliably)
>
> A.
Antoine I find you to be very intelligent but you need to hit the books
(modern ones!) on this topic. You are mixing up "race" with biology - a
19th century mistake. As you would probably discover, or even already
know, the gene pool is way too diverse to sustain the erroneous concept
of "race". There are only cultures.
In order to change your thinking try Ben Franklin's trick of changing
your vocab and never using the word "race" every again (substitute culture).
--
ABCGi ab...@yahoo.com
"Changing the world through Game Makers Ideology [or not]"
Krice
> Saying "Arabs are thieves" is not a comparative comment, and it has no
> positive side, nor is it anything based on fact. Now I have actually
> found some statistics on this:
Your problem is the inability to tell the difference between real
world and fiction. You draw a straight line from fictional game
idea to the real world. People like you are scary. Just like Mr.
Bush, who thinks there are "evil" nations. He is living inside a
role playing game.
> because statistics show the opposite: Arabs
> are the *LEAST LIKELY* thieves!
I know. It's the situation in Real Life today. Games are not real.
> So, yes, this is racist. It is a discriminatory racial stereotype that
> has crept into Krice's mind probably as a consequence of the recent
> stereotyping of Arabs because of the terror attacks.
This is probably how you think of it. It's the same old dumb black
and white thinking that starts the wars. For me there are only
two kinds of people: Those who kill other people, and those who
don't kill other people.
Krice
> Haha - Krice (and others sadly) have got it backwards. "Real races"
> are dwarves, elfish folk etc. The Human Race is only one race, what
> you absolutely must call them is Cultures - not Races, unless you
> want to live in the 19th Century.
What you and Kostatus fail to understand is that I wanted to
use race as a part of gameplay. With exaggerated differences
and fantasy style characters.
Well, I have to stay in all white game heroes now...
Timothy Pruett
ARGHHH!!! Such stupidity is painful. It hurts my head just thinking
about it. What fucking "white game heroes" are you talking about?
Almost every major RL doesn't even mention "race", and just leaves it to
the imagination to determine what "race" you are. So stop with all the
bullshit. If you see all of your characters as "white game heroes",
then it's because you subconsciously *want* to be a white character. Ugh...
And on top of that, the RLs that do mention "skin color" (not "race")
are just as likely to randomly select darker colored skin as fair or
light skin.
Apologies to anyone who gets easily offended at foul language, but when
dealing with Krice's pure concentrated stupidity, I couldn't think of
better words to express myself.
Gerry Quinn
dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> Quoting Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie>:
> >dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> >>I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
> >>to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
> >>you will be called a racist.
> >No, but if you say that theoretical physicists tend to be white or
> >asian because a larger proportion of these races have very high
> >intelligence of the type needed, you may well be.
> And if that "because" implies the assertion that societal factors aren't
> very significant and it's entirely down to the distribution of
> intelligence - which it often does - you had it coming.
But the word is used in precisely the same way as in your sentence.
Whether societal factors are more or less significant with physics than
with basketball, I simply don't know. I would guess that high
intelligence is more important for theoretical physics than tallness is
for basketball.
- Gerry Quinn
copx
"ABCGi" <ab...@yahoo.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:dmmod1$qln$1...@nnrp.waia.asn.au...
[snip]
> As Ben Franklin learned and taught us - take offensive words completely
> out of your vocab. Never use the word "Race" again - always say
> "Culture".
Doubleplusgood!
Gerry Quinn
says...
> Gerry Quinn wrote in news:MPG.1df7c86a2...@news1.eircom.net:
> > That is silly. As someone said a while ago, it requires one to accept
> > as an article of faith that evolution does not apply to the human
> > race. (At last some common ground between 'left liberals' and
> > creationists, perhaps!)
>
> As much as I feel guilty about posting off-topic, I just can't pass this
> one up! It's actually an interesting and concerning feature of our world
> that evolution has passed the human race over. You don't need to take it
> on faith; it's obvious if you look.
No, evolution is obvious if you look.
> Evolution happens by survival of the fittest, the spreading of genes
> from the best of the species to the next generation, resulting in a slow
> improvement of the species, or at least slowing the deterioration of the
> genetic pool.
>
> But think about how the genes are spread in humans. It's not based on
> fitness. It's not really based on anything. The human population is
> booming because almost everyone has children, fit or not. The people who
> don't have children are like that because of social considerations, not
> biological ones that might be spread in genes. Therefore our development
> as a species is without goals and we can expect it to wander in random
> directions, getting worse more often than it gets better.
So why are people in hot countries dark-skinned and people in cold
countries light-skinned? Nothing to do with sunlight? Even the most
ardent opponents of theories of race tend to accept this. (Though I
have seen posters on usenet, on the basis of reviews of a book called
'How the Irish Became White', assert that the Irish were at one point
thought to be black.)
Humans are evolving, like every other species. Possibly if certain
social circumstances persisted for many generations, certain properties
some consider undesireable would become adaptive. If all children
survive, it might be adaptive for women to become more round-heeled and
forgetful, for example. Or just have more maternal instincts and a
desire to have many children.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
cgre...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca says...
> In article <MPG.1df7c86a2...@news1.eircom.net>,
> Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
> >In article <dmj9t7$1hn$1...@lust.ihug.co.nz>,
> >to.get.my.ema...@of.my.post says...
> >> No, there are no real differences between races in physical mental
> >> capacity or abilities.
> >That is silly. As someone said a while ago, it requires one to accept
> >as an article of faith that evolution does not apply to the human race.
> Or that it happens slowly and that the different racial groups never
> interbred and that they never moved from one location to another.
But we *know* that humanity has differentiated into groups with easily
visible variations in size and appearance. So the hypothesis that
evolution does not apply must be nonsense.
> By the way, there are better (or at least more flame-filled)
> newsgroups out there for discussing this subject. This is a
> complicated issue, both politically and scientifically, and most of
> us aren't really qualified to talk about it with any authority, nor is
> it useful when writing roguelike games.
Perhaps so. But I note that this response was made to me, and not the
previous poster.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
ale...@gmail.com says...
>
> I am actually curious: Krice, do you normally play roguelikes in a
> tiled mode, or with ascii? If it is tiled, I'll agree that the majority
> of graphical tilesets use a peach color for the skin of humans. It
> might be nice to have a little variation, although graphical tilesets
> are often of such low resolution that variations on color are generally
> used to differentiate different races (in the orc/elf sense); maybe
> something can be thought up. If you are using ascii, well, race is
> almost never described in the game's text, so you're the only one
> making everyone white. ^^
In MSDOS Rogue, surely the canonical roguelike, the hero - despite
being called Rodney - is clearly oriental, being round-faced and yellow
in complexion.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
> Antoine wrote:
> > Nope - race is determined genetically, and can often be distinguished
> > by looking at some of the above characteristics (though certainly not
> > reliably)
> Antoine I find you to be very intelligent but you need to hit the books
> (modern ones!) on this topic. You are mixing up "race" with biology - a
> 19th century mistake. As you would probably discover, or even already
> know, the gene pool is way too diverse to sustain the erroneous concept
> of "race". There are only cultures.
The concept of 'race' and whether individuals can be reliably
classified by geographic race is more complex than Antoine says. But a
good deal more justified than the essentially obfuscatory viewpoint you
are pushing above - a viewpoint which, as I said elsewhere, has been
promulgated by many who know better.
Even those who dislike the word race accept the existence of
'lineages'. (I believe that some scientific organisations have decided
on a lower limit of required genetic diversity for the use of the word
race in classifying species - this is conveniently set a bit above the
diversity in humans, allowing propagandists to blare 'SCIENTISTS SAY
RACE DOES NOT EXIST'. Including some of those who chose the figure.)
But if we replace every occurrence of the word 'race' with the word
'lineage', no scientific observations or conclusions are altered. And
lineages demonstrably exist. There is more than cultures, unless you
redefine 'culture' to include genotype.
> In order to change your thinking try Ben Franklin's trick of changing
> your vocab and never using the word "race" every again (substitute culture).
As Abe Lincoln observed, calling a tail a leg doesn't mean dogs now
have five legs. I'd guess he wasn't a big believer in 'changing his
thinking' that way.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
> Haha - Krice (and others sadly) have got it backwards. "Real races"
> are dwarves, elfish folk etc. The Human Race is only one race, what
> you absolutely must call them is Cultures - not Races, unless you
> want to live in the 19th Century. The thing I have always loved
> about RL's is that you get to pick only a Human Race.
We don't live in the 20th Century any more either, and certain
postmodern notions have had their day. Including the notion that race
is purely a cultural construct.
> There is also quite a bit of bigotry and racism in Krice's statement
> which is either accidental or a troll bait - so either way *bzzzzt*
> (to even-handed bigotry as well)! All traits are cultural not racial,
> there is no such thing as race.
Pardon me for daring to intrude upon theory with observation, but I
notice that people of African descent who have been born in Ireland
speak with Irish accents, but have noticeably dark skin. Is this
anomaly a consequence of imperfect multiculturalism? Or could it be.
conceivably, that both genetic and cultural factors have a role in the
human phenotype, and that skin colour is mostly governed by the former
whereas accents are mostly governed by the latter? (Seriously, I would
expect both traits to be affected by both types of factor, but in
opposite proportions.)
> I read one well-meaning comment say 'you assume race is anything but
> skin colour' [paraphrase] - race isn't even skin colour! There are
> members of what is now called cultures (but has previously been called
> race) that don't, of course, have the skin colour of the majority of
> that culture and this does not mean they are not part of that culture
> (biologically the only difference has to be that particular
> chromosome for skin colour). You might as well differentiate on
> eye colour! "Look out here come the green eyes!". That is how
> stupid but indoctrinated it is (indeed some1 mentioned movies...).
Some people are wary of redheads. Whether there is any significant
temperamental difference between red-haired people and others I do not
know. But prima facie, the notion is not of necessity absurd -
observation is the way to find out.
> Finally I overheard a well-meaning fellow after a Nazi documentary
> in a movie theatre refer to Jewish "blood" - but of course there
> is nothing different in the "blood"!!! It would be more proper
> to say "Look out here come those O-Types!".
The word 'blood' is often used to refer to genetic heritage in general
(it derives from a time when heredity was less well understood than it
is today). This, rather than the red fluid, was clearly the meaning
intended by the person you mentioned.
> As Ben Franklin learned and taught us - take offensive words completely
> out of your vocab. Never use the word "Race" again - always say
> "Culture".
The word 'race' is not offensive. Nor is 'blood'. The notion of
changing the world by imposing a politically correct Newspeak is a
peculiar one which still has some currency among some left liberals,
but is increasingly obsolete even among them as it becomes apparent to
everyone that even when people agree to do it, it doesn't work.
(All it does is improve the debating skill of those whom you are trying
to silence...)
- Gerry Quinn
Krice
> What fucking "white game heroes" are you talking about?
Avatar;)
> Almost every major RL doesn't even mention "race"
But they are still white boys, because most fantasy is some
kind of "medieval" stuff with knights and all that.
In Nethack the samurai is most probably an asian person, but
it's selected through profession, not the race. I could put only
professions in my game and when you select "stone club hunter"
you would get a black character;)
> And on top of that, the RLs that do mention "skin color" (not "race")
> are just as likely to randomly select darker colored skin as fair or
> light skin.
In those games skin color (or "race") don't play any part at all.
It's just some background information. It might as well be
blue or pink. It doesn't affect the gameplay and it's "politically
correct" (in other words the banned word "race" is not
mentioned or used in any way.)
David Damerell
><dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
>>to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
>>you will be called a racist.
>And yet you'd probably be quite wrong.
I could well be, I don't really care about basketball...
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is Brieday, November.
David Damerell
>dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
>>Quoting Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie>:
>>>dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
>>>>I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
>>>>to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
>>>>you will be called a racist.
>>>No, but if you say that theoretical physicists tend to be white or
>>>asian because a larger proportion of these races have very high
>>>intelligence of the type needed, you may well be.
>>And if that "because" implies the assertion that societal factors aren't
>>very significant and it's entirely down to the distribution of
>>intelligence - which it often does - you had it coming.
>But the word is used in precisely the same way as in your sentence.
The societal factors work in opposite directions here!
Black children in the US are much more likely to be from poor families.
Now when it comes to being a basketball player, being extremely tall is
obviously a help; but poor people are more likely to suffer poor nutrition
which reduces average height. Hence the societal factor works *against*
the observed result - basketball players tend to be black - and it's
reasonable to conclude there may well be a genetic predisposition to
height.
Conversely, poor people often suffer from poor education, which makes it
less likely that a person of a given intelligence will become a
theoretical physicist. Obviously when the societal factor works towards to
observed result, you don't have to invoke genetics to explain it! Unless,
of course, you have an agenda that can't be stated overtly.
Sherm Pendley
> There were also quite a few Mexican cowboys, especially back before
> America got hold of Texas.
Given the current state of politics in the US, I think it's more accurate
to say that Texas got hold of America...
sherm--
--
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Hire me! My resume: http://www.dot-app.org
Gerry Quinn
> Quoting Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie>:
> >dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> >>Quoting Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie>:
> >>>dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
> >>>>I don't think, for example, that if you say that basketball players tend
> >>>>to be black because a larger proportion of black people are extremely tall
> >>>>you will be called a racist.
> >>>No, but if you say that theoretical physicists tend to be white or
> >>>asian because a larger proportion of these races have very high
> >>>intelligence of the type needed, you may well be.
> >>And if that "because" implies the assertion that societal factors aren't
> >>very significant and it's entirely down to the distribution of
> >>intelligence - which it often does - you had it coming.
> >But the word is used in precisely the same way as in your sentence.
>
> The societal factors work in opposite directions here!
>
> Black children in the US are much more likely to be from poor families.
> Now when it comes to being a basketball player, being extremely tall is
> obviously a help; but poor people are more likely to suffer poor nutrition
> which reduces average height. Hence the societal factor works *against*
> the observed result - basketball players tend to be black - and it's
> reasonable to conclude there may well be a genetic predisposition to
> height.
According to Wikipedia, US non-Hispanic whites aged 20-39 average 178.3
cm, while non-Hispanic blacks of the same age average 177.8. So height
is fairly similar, and IF blacks have a greater genetic potential for
tallness, clearly environmental factors negate it. Average population
height clearly does not explain any black dominance of basketball,
though of course it could be that the variance of height among blacks
is greater. One could argue that if environmental factors affet height
in blacks (on average) more than in whites, blacks will have a greater
variance in height. So although average height is about the same,
there will be more extremely tall blacks.
Of course nutrition is not the only environmental / societal factor,
either in basketball or physics-related traits.
The role of variance as well as average is relevant. A small increase
in either can result in a big numeric difference in the top end of the
bell curve, which is where the contenders for pro basketball and
physics get decided.
> Conversely, poor people often suffer from poor education, which makes it
> less likely that a person of a given intelligence will become a
> theoretical physicist. Obviously when the societal factor works towards to
> observed result, you don't have to invoke genetics to explain it! Unless,
> of course, you have an agenda that can't be stated overtly.
Hang on. What you are saying is that if any societal factor can be
proposed, however unquantitatively, to cause a certain effect, then any
genetic factors must be discarded as possibilities, and not to do so
makes one a racist!
That is absurd as claiming that since genetics could conceivably
influence any trait, there is no need to consider environmental
factors, and to even mention them suggests a sinister agenda.
I don't have an agenda. I will say that I find the hypothesis that
there are significant differences in average intelligence between the
geographic races, and that these differences have a substantial genetic
component, compelling. The arguments for this hypothesis are based on
measurement and statistical analysis. The arguments against it seem
for the most part obfuscatory and unconvincing, and largely driven by a
political agenda. It may be said that all scientists have an agenda,
and there is truth in this; it is also true, I believe, that some (but
not most) proponents of the stated hypothesis have a particularly
unpleasant agenda. What is true, however, does not depend on the
agenda of the investigator.
- Gerry Quinn
Sherm Pendley
> What you and Kostatus fail to understand is that I wanted to
> use race as a part of gameplay. With exaggerated differences
> and fantasy style characters.
I think what *you* fail to understand is the number of people who believe
that such a game is somehow "promoting" or "glorifying" racism.
To me, such a belief makes about as much sense as believing that Huckleberry
Finn or Uncle Tom's Cabin is somehow "glorifying" slavery. And yet, there
are busybodies who'd like to see these books removed from our school libraries
for precisely that reason.
Frankly, I think it would make a compelling science fiction book. *What if*
the stereotypes we've all heard were true? What effect might that have on how
we relate to one another? Although, it would be difficult (if not impossible)
to translate such an idea to a roguelike; the primary effects would probably
be in social dynamics and interactions, things that are generally given very
thin treatments in roguelikes.
David Damerell
>>less likely that a person of a given intelligence will become a
>>theoretical physicist. Obviously when the societal factor works towards to
>>observed result, you don't have to invoke genetics to explain it! Unless,
>>of course, you have an agenda that can't be stated overtly.
>Hang on. What you are saying is that if any societal factor can be
>proposed, however unquantitatively, to cause a certain effect, then any
>genetic factors must be discarded as possibilities, and not to do so
>makes one a racist!
No. What I'm saying is that to decide from that observation that genetic
factors are definitely at work, like this;
"No, but if you say that theoretical physicists tend to be white or
asian because a larger proportion of these races have very high
intelligence of the type needed, you may well be."
is distinctly suspect, because there is an obvious other possibility.
Brendan Guild
news:MPG.1df91633f...@news1.eircom.net:
> countries light-skinned? Nothing to do with sunlight? Even the most
> ardent opponents of theories of race tend to accept this. (Though I
> have seen posters on usenet, on the basis of reviews of a book called
> 'How the Irish Became White', assert that the Irish were at one point
> thought to be black.)
Maybe it is based on sunlight, but maybe it's because light-skinned
people preferred to be a little bit further north than darker skinned
people, or maybe that correspondence is purely a coincidence. One thing
I'm sure of is that a little bit of sunburn isn't going to affect human
evolution. Evolution isn't our mother trying to take away our slightest
discomfort, it is a drunk father who points his gun at his daughter's
boyfriend and tells them to be in by 10pm. Evolution only cares about
sex and violence, who we have sex with and if we live long enough to do
it. Our skin could turn to goo and fall right off and evolution wouldn't
even notice.
Evolution happens in the wild because only the fittest live long enough
to have children, and when they can have children they have as many as
they can until they die. So the fittest, with the best biology and
therefore the best genes, have the most children and then the best genes
become the most common and life gets a bit better.
But we're not in the wild and that situation in no way describes the
world of humans. Evolution is not king amoung us; it no longer controls
where our biology is going. It doesn't even take any research to see it,
because it's not even a close thing.
> Humans are evolving, like every other species. Possibly if certain
> social circumstances persisted for many generations, certain
> properties some consider undesireable would become adaptive. If all
> children survive, it might be adaptive for women to become more
> round-heeled and forgetful, for example. Or just have more maternal
> instincts and a desire to have many children.
That's like saying that your biology determines who you will have
children with and how many. In my case that decision is entirely up to
me and the people I love. Who makes that decision for you?
Specifically, I do not look for adaptive features in the person I have
children with; that doesn't even cross my mind. The only biological
things that might influence my decision are the really important things,
like horrible illnesses and certainly not sunburn. Also, being pretty
might influence my decision. The point is that control of how and where
my genes go is now entirely determined by social factors: even if I have
the greatest genes in the world I'm never going to have more than 2
kids, while the inbred fool next-door has a flock of children, just
because he's crazy like that.
Jeff Lait
>
> Evolution happens in the wild because only the fittest live long enough
> to have children, and when they can have children they have as many as
> they can until they die. So the fittest, with the best biology and
> therefore the best genes, have the most children and then the best genes
> become the most common and life gets a bit better.
>
> But we're not in the wild and that situation in no way describes the
> world of humans. Evolution is not king amoung us; it no longer controls
> where our biology is going. It doesn't even take any research to see it,
> because it's not even a close thing.
You seem to have greatly misunderstood the meaning of "Survival of the
fittest". It isn't "Survival of the strongest" or "Survival of the
healthiest". It is nonsensical to claim anything *except* "Survival of
the fittest" occurs. The definition of "fittest" is "those who are
able to survive".
You are confusing cause and effect here. Evolution is not a cause.
Evolution doesn't cause you to choose to reproduce in certain fashions
that will increase fitness. It is your choice to reproduce in certain
fashions that causes humans to evolve in a certain direction.
This is particularly apparent when running genetic algorithms to try
and optimize for some function. The choice of fitness function is a
control parameter that you tweak. The "evolution" occurs regardless of
the sanity of the fitness function you choose. Which reminds us why
the naive view that throwing a genetic-algorithm to some roguelike
problem like map creation or AI doesn't solve the underlying problem of
creating good maps or good AI.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Gerry Quinn
dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk says...
Where does that observation imply that genetic factors are at work?
Intelligence takes the place of tallness in your original sentence - no
hypothesis is advanced regarding the origin of possible differences in
these traits, on average, among people of different lineages. It is
hypothesised merely that such differences exist.
- Gerry Quinn
Kostatus
> SZDev - Slash wrote:
>> I think Krice doesn't mean thieves as in 'persons that *steal* from
>> people' in the moral, unwanted way (I mean, stealing from somebody is
>> something bad), but rather as 'individuals that are profficient on
>> pickpocketing and moving stealthy' which off course, nobody has proven
>> real life arabs to be...
>
> Yeah, arabs were just an example. They could be good thieves.
> In fantasy role playing game, say. I was thinking more like Prince
> Of Persia and that stuff, not the arabs of real world today.
Though you have stressed on several occasions that you are merely
exaggerating real-life differences.
>
>> So, in this way, being a thief is a possitive attribute, just as
>> running faster is.
>
> Exactly.
>
--
Kostatus (kostatus001 at ihug co nz)
http://www.geocities.com/kostatus/ (My project)
http://www.geocities.com/kostatus/reviews.html (My reviews)
Kostatus
> ABCGi wrote:
>> Haha - Krice (and others sadly) have got it backwards. "Real races"
>> are dwarves, elfish folk etc. The Human Race is only one race, what
>> you absolutely must call them is Cultures - not Races, unless you
>> want to live in the 19th Century.
>
> What you and Kostatus fail to understand is that I wanted to
> use race as a part of gameplay. With exaggerated differences
> and fantasy style characters.
Here you go, in one thread you're claiming that the differences are made
up, but here you're claiming them to be exaggerated. Pick one.
> Well, I have to stay in all white game heroes now...
>
Kostatus
> I got this idea..:) It's untested, but it could just work. Fantasy
> races are dwarfs,
> elves and that, but how about using real races? White, black, asian,
> etc.
> Races would of course have different abilities and even professions.
> Asians
> would be mages, whites are dumb barbarians, arabs are thieves..:) I had
> this
> idea when I was planning level themes. Some of the themes are cultural,
> so
> it makes sense to have different races and maybe quests related to that
> culture and race.
> I hate it when you have to be white hero always. So, isn't this a nice
> idea?:)
>
This will be my last post on this topic, I'm sick of this discussion.
You have asked for an opinion, and you will find that quite a lot of
people, not just me, told you that they find it offensive.
Whether you think this is for good reasons or not, do you really want to
make a game which offends people?
R. Dan Henry
<torespon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>You seem to have greatly misunderstood the meaning of "Survival of the
>fittest". It isn't "Survival of the strongest" or "Survival of the
>healthiest". It is nonsensical to claim anything *except* "Survival of
>the fittest" occurs. The definition of "fittest" is "those who are
>able to survive".
Where "survive" means "lives long enough to have offspring with the
potential to reproduce". You can live a very long and healthy life and
not be "fit" in the Darwinian sense, if you fail to reproduce. Dying is
significant *only* in preventing future reproductive opportunities.
--
R. Dan Henry = danh...@inreach.com
R. Dan Henry
>As much as I feel guilty about posting off-topic, I just can't pass this
>one up! It's actually an interesting and concerning feature of our world
>that evolution has passed the human race over. You don't need to take it
>on faith; it's obvious if you look.
On the contrary, human evolution is occurring. It is just unfortunate
that it currently favors "too stupid to work birth control devices" as a
high indicator of Darwinian fitness.
R. Dan Henry
>What you and Kostatus fail to understand is that I wanted to
>use race as a part of gameplay. With exaggerated differences
>and fantasy style characters.
>Well, I have to stay in all white game heroes now...
Ooh, way to completely mischaracterize what others have posted. I'm
beginning to think you really are trolling.
R. Dan Henry
>I read one well-meaning comment say 'you assume race is anything but
>skin colour' [paraphrase] - race isn't even skin colour!
Very true, traditional "races" don't map all that well to skin color in
any case. Australians are as dark as many Africans, but are quite a
distinct population. Asians vary from quite dark to very light. Focus on
skin color is largely a product of "white"/"black" racial politics.
R. Dan Henry
>In those games skin color (or "race") don't play any part at all.
>It's just some background information. It might as well be
>blue or pink.
Right. Because skin color only matters culturally, or if you are making
the risk of sunburn a major consideration in your game. If you are
wandering around a dungeon, largely hidden behind your armor, shield,
lantern, wands, weapon, special effects from spells, and splattered
blood, killing "monsters" and looting their bodies, it isn't going to
matter if your skin is albino white, ebony black, pale green, blue and
yellow stripes, or plaid.
R. Dan Henry
>Gerry Quinn wrote in
>news:MPG.1df91633f...@news1.eircom.net:
>> So why are people in hot countries dark-skinned and people in cold
>> countries light-skinned? Nothing to do with sunlight? Even the most
>> ardent opponents of theories of race tend to accept this. (Though I
>> have seen posters on usenet, on the basis of reviews of a book called
>> 'How the Irish Became White', assert that the Irish were at one point
>> thought to be black.)
>
>Maybe it is based on sunlight, but maybe it's because light-skinned
>people preferred to be a little bit further north than darker skinned
>people, or maybe that correspondence is purely a coincidence.
Given that the people in those hot countries generally have no other
common feature than the dark skin, I'd say Gerry is right that this does
have to do with adaptation to sunlight. Where he is grossly incorrect is
thinking this one-trait bit of micro-evolution is indicative of a
broader "racial" relationship that makes people with the same skin color
have other traits in common.
>Our skin could turn to goo and fall right off and evolution wouldn't
>even notice.
You really don't think being skinless would lower your reproductive
chances? Where do live? If the women there are happy with skinless
lovers, I should be able to score big time.
>Evolution happens in the wild because only the fittest live long enough
>to have children
Evolution happens when individuals who have a trait have more children
than those who don't. It doesn't require that those who don't have no
children. And living long is significant *only* to the degree that it
influences reproductive success. Dead at 25 with a dozen kids is
evolutionarily more successful than dead at 100 with two kids (assuming
dying at 25 doesn't leave your kids uncared for and thus unlikely to
survive to reproduce).
>But we're not in the wild and that situation in no way describes the
>world of humans. Evolution is not king amoung us; it no longer controls
>where our biology is going.
Yes, it does, until we start genetically engineering ourselves.
>That's like saying that your biology determines who you will have
>children with and how many. In my case that decision is entirely up to
>me and the people I love. Who makes that decision for you?
And the choices you make are partly biological and partly cultural (with
some significant noise from other factors, but not enough to do more
than slow things down a little) and as long as cultural differences are
linked to genetic differences, those will also have an evolutionary
effect.
>Specifically, I do not look for adaptive features in the person I have
>children with; that doesn't even cross my mind.
Not consciously, but that's true with most animals.
>The only biological
>things that might influence my decision are the really important things,
>like horrible illnesses and certainly not sunburn. Also, being pretty
>might influence my decision.
And while there is certainly a cultural aspect to "pretty", most of
physical attractiveness is linked to features of genetic fitness and
reproductive potential.
>The point is that control of how and where
>my genes go is now entirely determined by social factors:
This would only be true in a totalitarian society where reproduction was
planned to a socially-determined goal (artificial selection replacing
natural selection).
>even if I have
>the greatest genes in the world I'm never going to have more than 2
>kids
Then your genes are not *in evolutionary terms* that great.
>, while the inbred fool next-door has a flock of children, just
>because he's crazy like that.
Then his genes are *in evolutionary terms* superior. You are falling
into the mistake of thinking that evolution must favor those traits you
see as beneficial, but it favors only those that lead to reproductive
success. Tapeworms are just as highly evolved as human beings.
ABCGi
> In article <dmmp4o$qrr$1...@nnrp.waia.asn.au>, ab...@yahoo.com says...
>
>>Antoine wrote:
>
>>>Nope - race is determined genetically, and can often be distinguished
>>>by looking at some of the above characteristics (though certainly not
>>>reliably)
>
>>Antoine I find you to be very intelligent but you need to hit the books
>>(modern ones!) on this topic. You are mixing up "race" with biology - a
>>19th century mistake. As you would probably discover, or even already
>>know, the gene pool is way too diverse to sustain the erroneous concept
>>of "race". There are only cultures.
>
> The concept of 'race' and whether individuals can be reliably
> classified by geographic race is more complex than Antoine says. But a
> good deal more justified than the essentially obfuscatory viewpoint you
> are pushing above - a viewpoint which, as I said elsewhere, has been
> promulgated by many who know better.
I can see your point there but using the word race people like
Krice immediately don't get it and "exaggerate".
> Even those who dislike the word race accept the existence of
> 'lineages'. (I believe that some scientific organisations have decided
> on a lower limit of required genetic diversity for the use of the word
> race in classifying species - this is conveniently set a bit above the
> diversity in humans, allowing propagandists to blare 'SCIENTISTS SAY
> RACE DOES NOT EXIST'. Including some of those who chose the figure.)
Interesting - but obviously this counter point does exist for a
reason.
> But if we replace every occurrence of the word 'race' with the word
> 'lineage', no scientific observations or conclusions are altered. And
> lineages demonstrably exist. There is more than cultures, unless you
> redefine 'culture' to include genotype.
I'd agree with substituting lineage as it is free of the race
connotations and suggests the more accurate concept that each
persons genetic makeup is more individual than belonging to
a stereotype of an entire culture.
The key is to change the thinking of "lower thinkers" - the masses -
such as Krice with such antiquated 19th century views on race.
>>In order to change your thinking try Ben Franklin's trick of changing
>>your vocab and never using the word "race" every again (substitute culture).
>
> As Abe Lincoln observed, calling a tail a leg doesn't mean dogs now
> have five legs. I'd guess he wasn't a big believer in 'changing his
> thinking' that way.
And you can catch more flies with a drop of honey than a gallon of gall!
--
ABCGi ab...@yahoo.com
"A person has two reasons for doing a thing:
one that sounds good and the real reason"
ABCGi
Clearly some obstinate trolling going on here but I will make
this last comment;
No-one is saying you can't have your game, it would be good
and far more interesting, it is being suggested, to use
cultures - indeed there is far more depth to access to
determine your traits and possible quest items etc AND
it is more accurate when you start extracting traits as
these things are quite often derived non-biologically
anyway and are certainly all influenced heavily by custom.
--
ABCGi ab...@yahoo.com
"I think therefore I am"
ABCGi
> In article <dmmod1$qln$1...@nnrp.waia.asn.au>, ab...@yahoo.com says...
>
>>Haha - Krice (and others sadly) have got it backwards. "Real races"
>>are dwarves, elfish folk etc. The Human Race is only one race, what
>>you absolutely must call them is Cultures - not Races, unless you
>>want to live in the 19th Century. The thing I have always loved
>>about RL's is that you get to pick only a Human Race.
>
> We don't live in the 20th Century any more either, and certain
> postmodern notions have had their day. Including the notion that race
> is purely a cultural construct.
haha - a good point. I will observe though I've noticed the 21st
century has started by going backwards IMO - much like the start
of many centuries perhaps.
But this is the mistake bigots/racists make and that the 19th
Century biology driven scientists made. Simply because it is
a readily observable trait it then takes on an exaggerated
importance not at all correlating to the genetic significance
of it. As I said the gene pool is far too diverse to support
this.
>>Finally I overheard a well-meaning fellow after a Nazi documentary
>>in a movie theatre refer to Jewish "blood" - but of course there
>>is nothing different in the "blood"!!! It would be more proper
>>to say "Look out here come those O-Types!".
>
> The word 'blood' is often used to refer to genetic heritage in general
> (it derives from a time when heredity was less well understood than it
> is today). This, rather than the red fluid, was clearly the meaning
> intended by the person you mentioned.
Clearly I understood this already. I think if you call my stool
a hammock I might correct you.
>>As Ben Franklin learned and taught us - take offensive words completely
>>out of your vocab. Never use the word "Race" again - always say
>>"Culture".
>
> The word 'race' is not offensive. Nor is 'blood'. The notion of
> changing the world by imposing a politically correct Newspeak is a
> peculiar one which still has some currency among some left liberals,
> but is increasingly obsolete even among them as it becomes apparent to
> everyone that even when people agree to do it, it doesn't work.
Nice buy in to the conservative's arguement there that really
appeals to the masses. I didn't ask anyone to be politically
correct.
When used incorrectly both race and blood are offensive,
particularly as we are not that many years from some
pretty horrific examples (which will, Goodwin be praised,
remain unnamed).
> (All it does is improve the debating skill of those whom you are trying
> to silence...)
>
> - Gerry Quinn
Indeed if you weren't so damn intelligent and well read!
*mutter*
--
ABCGi ab...@yahoo.com
"A dog by any other name"
ABCGi
And of course a few standard points I like to make about the "theory
of evolution";
* It's not a great theory and has critics (& not just theologists).
* It's extremely slow so talking about as a current effect is bunk,
"hey we are still evolving" unless we can sustain our way of life
for 10,000 more years we are not going to make much of a dint.
What people are more often talking about is the path to enlightenment
for an individual, a culture and for hu/wo/manity.
* It is more akin in practice to English Premier League relegation
than championship.
* It is a dangerous theory in the hands of racial supremisists.
(As fair a counter arguement as the "all critics of TOE are
just religous - ie not very).
--
ABCGi ab...@yahoo.com
"A person must be taught as if you didn't and things unknown
proposed as things forgot" - paraphrasing a pope [1]
[1] The Da Vinci Code was a great waste of hours of my life.
ABCGi
> In article <0ujlmd...@catarneh.blit.ca>,
> cgre...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca says...
>
>>In article <MPG.1df7c86a2...@news1.eircom.net>,
>>Gerry Quinn <ger...@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>>
>>>In article <dmj9t7$1hn$1...@lust.ihug.co.nz>,
>>>to.get.my.ema...@of.my.post says...
>
>>>>No, there are no real differences between races in physical mental
>>>>capacity or abilities.
>
>>>That is silly. As someone said a while ago, it requires one to accept
>>>as an article of faith that evolution does not apply to the human race.
>
>>Or that it happens slowly and that the different racial groups never
>>interbred and that they never moved from one location to another.
>
> But we *know* that humanity has differentiated into groups with easily
> visible variations in size and appearance. So the hypothesis that
> evolution does not apply must be nonsense.
I believe the opposite to be true.
>>By the way, there are better (or at least more flame-filled)
>>newsgroups out there for discussing this subject. This is a
>>complicated issue, both politically and scientifically, and most of
>>us aren't really qualified to talk about it with any authority, nor is
>>it useful when writing roguelike games.
I disagree strongly - it is *so* important than purveyors of mass
media and entertainment get these things right! SOF applies to
ideas too!
> Perhaps so. But I note that this response was made to me, and not the
> previous poster.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
--
ABCGi ab...@yahoo.com
"I may be wrong, I frequently am, lets examine the facts"
Brendan Guild
news:1133477862....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Brendan Guild wrote:
>>
>> Evolution happens in the wild because only the fittest live long
>> enough to have children, and when they can have children they have
>> as many as they can until they die. So the fittest, with the best
>> biology and therefore the best genes, have the most children and
>> then the best genes become the most common and life gets a bit
>> better.
>>
>> But we're not in the wild and that situation in no way describes the
>> world of humans. Evolution is not king amoung us; it no longer
>> controls where our biology is going. It doesn't even take any
>> research to see it, because it's not even a close thing.
>
> You seem to have greatly misunderstood the meaning of "Survival of
> the fittest". It isn't "Survival of the strongest" or "Survival of
> the healthiest". It is nonsensical to claim anything *except*
> "Survival of the fittest" occurs. The definition of "fittest" is
> "those who are able to survive".
>
> You are confusing cause and effect here. Evolution is not a cause.
> Evolution doesn't cause you to choose to reproduce in certain
> fashions that will increase fitness. It is your choice to reproduce
> in certain fashions that causes humans to evolve in a certain
> direction.
Just to be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that evolution was somehow
controlling us, I meant to say that evolution requires certain
behaviours of us. Specifically, that we let biology affect how and how
often we have children. To say that Darwinian evolution is active in
humans is to say that my conscious mind is not entirely in control of
my reproduction, an idea which I had assumed was ridiculous.
> This is particularly apparent when running genetic algorithms to try
> and optimize for some function. The choice of fitness function is a
> control parameter that you tweak. The "evolution" occurs regardless
> of the sanity of the fitness function you choose. Which reminds us
> why the naive view that throwing a genetic-algorithm to some
> roguelike problem like map creation or AI doesn't solve the
> underlying problem of creating good maps or good AI.
The problem is that the development of humanity isn't like a normal
genetic algorithm. That's because it is our minds that choose which
genetic traits advance to the next cycle and our minds are entirely
independent of our genetic traits. It's like a genetic algorithm where
the fitness function is a roll of the dice, and the result is that
human biological development is totally random.
Imagine a genetic algorithm for monster AI. The goal is to give the
player a challenge, but the fitness function is determined by whether
the sum of the monster's stats is prime or composite, something which
has nothing at all to do with the monster's ability to fight the PC.
You wouldn't end up with smart monsters that way and that's pretty
close to the algorithm that we are using to modify and design the human
body.
Yeti
> No specific mention of actual skin color, just "darker" or "fair".
Isn't the word "fair" racist? My main language isn't English, but
doesn't "fair" mean both blond and beautiful? So I would think that
using the word "fair"is racist as well.
yeti
Krice
> Isn't the word "fair" racist? My main language isn't English, but
> doesn't "fair" mean both blond and beautiful? So I would think that
> using the word "fair"is racist as well.
Yes. Burn those racists!:)
Krice
> Whether you think this is for good reasons or not, do you really want to
> make a game which offends people?
If you begin to fear things that might offend other people then your
artistic freedom is gone..
However I'm going to use "cultural" level themes anyway. I don't
know yet what to do with the race. Some professions could be
better with black skin character (for example), but if it's really
too much for hypocrites to handle, then I must use white
characters:)
My game has graphics so the skin color can be seen clearly.
Timothy Pruett
According to the dictionary, another meaning of "fair" is light skinned.
In the games in question, that's clearly what they are referring to.
It's just a more pleasant sounding way to describe skin color. No
racist conotations implied. "Fair skin" obviously describes skin color,
not hair color, nor does "fair skin" imply beauty.
Timothy Pruett
Seriously, just shut the fuck up. You repeatedly and deliberately
ignore what everyone *actually* says and misinterpret their words on
purpose. You're acting like Twisted One v2.0. Not *once* has a single
person here ever, *ever* said that you "must use white characters", or
that you shouldn't use "black skin characters". In fact, most people
have agreed that race should either be left unmentioned, or used merely
as a description/graphical change. People have only taken offence at
the use of racial stereotypes of any sort, and the application of
gameplay differences associated with race. You're just trolling now. I
think it's safe to say that you're well on your way to inheriting Neo's
crown, as King of the Ignorant.