Subject: Re: Guided Rants
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 19:21:02 -0400
From: "James Whyte" <jamesw@COREL.CA>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

[ISSUE]

Note to Frank: The email address I send this from is not the email
address that I include for responses.  At the any email sent to the
address that I have for responses will be forwarded to me here, but
a month from now the email address that I am writing from at the
moment will be obsolete.  For this reason I wish to use my school
address (jwhyte@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca) instead of my
work address (JamesW@corel.ca) for any correspondance.
Thanks.

What I write here is not very directly magic related, it is related
to the phenomenon of cheating in general.  Although I already believe
that there has been plenty of discussion of cheating, there were a
few points in Will Ayers' post which I felt must be responded to.

>    WoTC only cares about the players enough to get them to buy their
>boxes of product, that's it. A Boycott would work, but thats not going
>to happen.A dream that is dellusional, which will never work because of
>the basis of human nature, just like communism. In both cases, its the
>wanting to be better than others, wheather its manifistation be greed or
>self esteem boosters.

A simple anthropological study will show you that all of those things
that you believe to be human nature do not exist amongst the humans of
one culture or another.  The conclusion of this is that if human nature
exists it can be dominated completely by cultural influences and thus
it is irrelevant to the discussion.
    Also, you claim that all people are selfish, but this claim cannot
truthfully be made in a meaningful way.  You must decide whether by
selfish you mean that they seek out whatever it is they want, or whether
you mean that they seek out particular things.  If you mean the former
then nothing can be deduced from this selfishness because it provides
you no reliable way to predict action, after all, I could want to rub
gravel in my hair all day for all you know.  If you mean the latter then
I simply disagree with you, you can make no comprehensive list of the
things that all people look for in their lives unless you include a word
which is exceptionally vague, like happiness, and in that case you are
back to the problem I mentioned in my last sentence: you don't know
what makes people happy.
    The point of this is that it is not so easy to dismiss the cheating
problem by saying that any attempt to end it is futile.

>    Brian Schnider, many months ago on the IRC, on a private chat with
>me, brought up the interesting point of everybody cheats. If the don't
>cheat, and others do, they are cheating themselves because they are not
>giving themselves a fair chance to win. I encouraged Brian to write an
>article on this, I'm glad he finally did.

I would like to contest this.  I do not cheat myself by refusing to
cheat at magic tournaments.  I would be cheating myself by cheating at
the game because I believe it is more important to play the game fairly
than to win the game.  Your reasoning does not apply to anyone who
shares my belief.

>    Plain and simple, people cheat because their is motivation to do so.
>Why, the same as everywhere else in the world: fame, money and chicks.

Not only do I take some offense at your sexism, but I also take offense
at the fact that you label me and many other people in this way without
knowing them.  Apparently you think that the world does not extend beyond
the capitalist world, and even parts of that are excluded.  There are
people who devote their lives to trying to escape the illusion that they
consider to be reality and I can assure you that they are not searching
after the things you list.  Granted you may say this point is irrelevant
because it is unlikely you will find such a person at a magic tournament,
and that is what we are discussing here, but you may very well find
someone at a magic tournament who is there to have fun and to honestly
see how well they can do under fair playing conditions because it makes
them happy to do so.  People do not only cheat because there is motivation
to do so, they cheat because of that motivation and because they have
their priorities in an order that puts that motivation above a personal
sense of honor, a desire for fair play, or some other thing that would
make them decide not to cheat.
    Not down to what I consider to be the facts of the matter: If you
are playing with your friends and you all like to cheat then go ahead
and cheat all you want.  When you sit down to play against a stranger
there is an implicit assumption that everyone will play within the rules
of the game.  Anyone who violates this assumption by cheating is breaking
the trust that their opponent has placed in them, is being inconsiderate
and, thus, is being a jerk.  It is possible to endlessly justify cheating
in innumerable ways, but all that it shows is that you have decided to
put money, fame and whatever else you think you get out of cheating
ahead of respect for other people.  Do not flatter yourself by assuming
that everyone else follows your philosophy as well.

James Whyte
jwhyte@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca