Risk Aversion

Communications Center General Discussion
41

My point is you can’t just say, “Train reading comprehension to level 1” and get somewhere with Solstice. If you want to convince him you have to use reason and logic. That is why I responded the way I did. Sure, from “our” perspective filling your freighter with 8 billion and slapping on cargo expanders is damn dumb. But the guy doing it may not realize how ganking works. From his, more limited perspective, what he is doing makes sense; he is wrong, but it makes sense. He isn’t being “irrational” he just lacks the appropriate information.

That is why I also noted that those who are ganked look like they are risk seeking…given “our” information set. In fact, they aren’t but they are doing a good job emulating it due to insufficient information. And when the game comes and shoves the correct information right down their throats they get upset.

Your OP is pretty much standard risk analysis stuff. You are right in the sense that we shouldn’t be hurling “risk averse” as an insult. I think the idea of a carebear or some similar type of term is better. Players who refuse to admit that their “safety” and “risk” they face in game is their responsibility, not CCPs. Heck even a player who does put 8 billion in his charon, fits expanders, dies in a ball of fire…but then admits he screwed up…that’s a good thing. He learned. Yes, the hard way, but hey better than raging that we are all a bunch of toxic psychopaths IRL.

Goodness what a rather depressing nihilistic rabbit hole… :stuck_out_tongue:

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42

Do you understand the difference between “making a rational decision” and “rationalizing ones own behaviour”?

Seriously … do you understand it? And please, do not respond with “Yes” if you are not 100% sure and can not give an actual explanation of the difference.

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43

I’ll say it again: I’m not sure you possess the reading comprehension ability to understand what I wrote. Either way, you seem to be doing nothing but spouting nonsense, as you are doing yet again right now. I really have no idea what the hell you are saying or going on about.

44

Players rationalizing their disgust of other players making rational decisions.

45

Oh well…I tried… :frowning:

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46

Hey, if you understand the guy, more power to you. I understand you just fine. But when I read his posts, it’s just “blee blah doo da dumm dee…”

47

Indeed. Another similar subject is whether capsuleers are actually immortal or constantly die each time they get podded and the next clone is just that, a clone, just a copy, a different new thing instead of the original. :neutral_face:

48

Why do you avoid simply answering the question?

You made a pretty big mistake in your initial post and you do not seem to understand what kind of mistake you actually made. I am trying to tell you, but if you refuse to accept that you made a mistake, then hey … just keep on keeping on.

There are a lot of people not knowing better, so I guess you can feel “sure of yourself” around all those people who have as much understanding as you do.

vOv

49

His point about rationalizing is that is precisely what people do when they try to argue against (freighter) ganking in game. They screwed up, but instead of admitting they screwed up they want to blame the game, the players, the culture. They’ll toss around words like “toxic”, “psychopath”, and so forth. It isn’t they who made a mistake…no it is the rest of the EVE community that is stunted and evil and driving players away. He’s right. That is rationalizing one’s behavior vs. looking back to see if one’s behavior was rational in light of new information. Oh…on average about 50% of cargo value drops when a ship explodes!!! And so if I put 8 billion in my charon about 4 billion will drop on an expected basis? And with expanders 17 catalysts can burn down my charon…which costs a measly 170 million ISK. Gee, yeah, I turned my charon into a loot pinata. How dumb was I? Yet that is rarely what happens.

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50

Indeed I have posed similar questions to an actual Ph.D. philosopher friend of mine. I asked him if we invented ‘teleportation’ technology which scanned you, and placed the same type of atoms in the same configuration ‘over there’ in order to ‘recreate’ you, while destroying you ‘over here,’ would you enter this teleportation machine? He said yes, which everyone says when I pose this.

Then I said ‘well what if you do this, but you feel as if nothing happens, and then the guy comes in and says whoops - we failed to destroy you over here, so now you are both over there and over here at the same time. Let’s fix this up right away’ and then a door opens in the floor and you see a giant meatgrinder in the floor, and he tells you to go ahead and step into it.’

51

But I said nothing of such people, or such a circumstance. And his quotes of my posts reference no such thing. Again, to me it’s all “bee bah bazz blah bo dee dum…”

52

No, it really isn’t. Even in the text you cited the risk averse person would take the less profitable option because he does not want to take on the risk.

In your example the person takes on the risk but looks for ways to mitigate it. I think that is a pretty different thing.

Well maybe this is just a language thing and I’m off here with the definition of the words. Remind you I’m not a native english speaker :wink:

The point I was trying to make is that op has a fundamemtal issue separating two ways people bahave and is mixing them together or is rather confused about it.

It is as it often is just a semantic issue. My point still stand though.

There are people who manage risk and look for ways in the game to reduce it to a level where they are comfortabel with (which is a subjective thing) which is ok and the way most play and accept EVE, it is in fact a really big part of the game to do that.

And there are people who are not willing to accept the risk and don’t invest time to come up with solution on how to mitigate it, but rather try to offload the responsibility to otjer players or the game developer.

Maybe we should talk about responsibility and not just risk as it is more at the heart of the issue.

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53

No, if you mitigate risk you are risk averse. You are willing to expend effort to reduce your risk…which cuts into your rewards.

The OP is pretty standard risk analysis stuff. Suppose you face a choice: a gamble with a 50-50 chance of winning $100 or $0 and sure thing of $50. If you pick the sure thing you are risk averse. No ifs, no ands, no buts. That’s the definition. If you don’t care and flip a coin, then you are risk neutral. If you pick the gamble you are risk seeking.

Risk mitigation occurs when you face two choices and there is risk with both and the expected pay offs are the same. In one case you can expend effort to reduce your risk, in the other you can’t. If you pick the option where you can mitigate your risk then you are reducing your payoff (expending effort is a cost) then you are still risk averse.

And this is good. Our buddy @Jonah_Gravenstein is risk averse. He plays smarts, mitigates his risk and makes himself a harder target to hit. This makes is more challenging for those of us who want him to be a target. In no way is this a bad thing.

You had me fooled for quite awhile to be honest.

I agree with you that players who want to change their risk via Dev fiat are a bad thing. But calling them risk averse is not what we should call them. “Carebear” works. I can think of a few other names too. :stuck_out_tongue:

Indeed.

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54

If you wake up in the morning, are you still the same person you where last night? Your consciousness was interrupted. Do you think you would notice the difference if you wake up in a perfect copy of your body or the original?

There is only an issue here if you beleive in an immorta soul seperate from the body, which we hopefully can agree belongs to the realm of fiction and not reality.

55

Well, even those of us who do speak English as our first language, are arguing about the definitions of words.

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56

Yeah people do that all the time. Some people have a tendency to get easily confused about the sometimes rather unclear definitions.

Op is a good example for this. He takes the term ‘risk averse’ asserts that it is a bad thing and then slaps it on evetything he does not like and thinks that somehow makes for a good argument.

But it doesn’t. It is not even an argument. It’s just confused ramblimg and a complete inavility to communicate his own position.

57

Please quote me where I did this.

Please quote me where I did this as well.

58

Yes that’s the point and yes not having a noticeable difference does not negate the fact that the original person died.

The case of capsuleer resurrection differs from the previously mentioned subject of there being no coherent “you” just a constellation of atoms because the capsuleer resurrection works much like the one in battlestar galactica and how the cylons resurrect (as far as I know).

Only the “consciousness” is resurrected, the state of mind, it just copies that state, not teleports it, unlike in star trek for example where your actual atoms are transferred through a transporter beam, here (as far as I understand and know the lore, which I may be mistaken though) your brain pattern is scanned (and as part of the process is erased / destroyed), the pattern layout plan / “blueprint” is transmitted through hyperspace or whatnot so basically a simple data transfer through “radio” waves, but not an actual matter transfer, then based on that plan the brain is recreated at the destination (either inside the new clone’s head or made separate then inserted to the clone, not entirely sure of these specifics).

Thus even without the immortal soul / spirit / whatnot (which I deliberately did not mention so is just a purely materialistic philosophical discussion) the original matter and its composition is destroyed which means the original person is dead.

Unlike in case of when you go to sleep and wake up next morning or simply have your cells constantly be replaced by others as part of your biological existance so even without having your consciousness “interrupted” you basically constantly die as an individual but constantly exist still as a whole.

But in case of the capsuleer resurrection you die as a whole as well and are just copied (your brain pattern specifically) but the original composition of atoms is lost, destroyed, thus even the whole “you” is dead and just a copy is created as a substitute.

In a spiritual sense it can be argued that this copy can be considered as part of the whole but that is a different subject altogether and strictly from the whole “you” sense the old person is dead regardless.

I also recall some EVE books / fiction that had a capsuleer (or even several not sure) cloned without the old clone destroyed though I only read people discussing this and not the actual story they discussed so not sure of those details either, though it seems to align with what else I read about the subject so seems fitting, which also confirms that it is not matter that is transferred just the pattern that is then used to construct a new brain at the destination.

So unless your spiritual concept is that copying your brain (and body) even at a quantum level results in You being duplicated it is clear that the clone / copy is not the original person, just a replica.

You may have the “spiritual” standing that the other copy is you as well but that is a whole different argument and requires defining what is “you” even in the realm of materialistic only philosophical discussion (so no soul / spirit / whatnot involved) as the answer whether the copy is you or a different thing depends on the definition.

Arguments can be constructed both in favor and against and which argument is right / correct depends on the definition of what is considered to be “you”.

59

Yes, I mean that is really the point isn’t it? Defining what you mean by person or ‘you’.

But there is nothing complicated here, we just have to define what we mean by it before we start talking about the topic. After all words just express ideas and we have to say what idea we actually mean when we say “person” or “you”.

In the context of a capsuleer when I talk about a “person” I mean the infomorph and the clone is only a vessel. So with this definition the capsuleer does not die when the clone perishes.

However in the real world there is no such thing until we can copy a mind. If we talk about this possibility then we have to clearly define what we mean by person, otherwise we just talk hours about semantic and nothing about the actual topic has been discussed.

60

The problem I have with his post is that it would seem that doing anything other than ‘welping’ is risk averse, and thus renders the phrase ‘risk averse’ rather meaningless.

(And even when I’ve been on one of those fleets where we are expected to lose ships and pods, we still follow some semblance of ‘risk averseness’ as according to the OP)