empathy?
Minecraft mobs have me thinking more deeply about compassion and empathy.
A mob is a virtual creature of several varieties, from monsters to food animals. There's pigs, cows, chickens, sheep, zombies, etc. These run as independant non-player characters, including villagers who are almost like humans. To have assorted independant characters in the game requires a little artificial intelligence. They need a set of rules about how they interact with the player and the environment, and have to be able to react to random events caused by the human player, as well as each other (wolves hunt and kill sheep for instance) or the terrain and it's changes. Terrain rarely changes without the player's interference, but another mob, like an exploding creeper, might change terrain too.
As you play it's quite common to see a mob in distress. A sheep stuck on a ledge, a cow stuck over a hole you've made, a pig that doesn't know which way to go, or even their distress when you're hunting them. You hunt cows, for instance, for leather and meat. Pigs give meat. Sheep you can just shear but if you don't have the tools, you can kill them for their wool. You can kill anything if you're inclined, but a lot of things don't drop anything you need, like villagers.
So when I see a pig stuck in a ravine, for instance, I feel for it. I feel bad for it!
this proves one thing: empathy is not psychic, it's entirely manufactured on the spot by the brain feeling it. It's a reaction to perceived events. So I go around my game helping the animals, apologize when gaming requires me to kill them, and generally wondering about this.
Caring about creatures that don't exist. Or do they? Do they feel? The data describes how they behave, but when the data gets stuck in a loop with no acceptable next step and they spin in place helplessly, does the computer feel it? Is there any sense of distress beyond the one in my own head? How is this different from the quandary faced by people from earlier times who thought animals weren't capable of anything more than we see in minecraft mobs? Will one day we find out that these little AI were having little existences of their own the whole time the game was on? But then it comes to what is emotion and why does it matter?
I've been told so often that mine don't matter, even though they make me an utterly useless person for being so strong and uncomforted, that I really wonder about emotion and compassion and empathy. I certainly read enough about how we need more of the latter two! yet I see less and less in the world directly around me! Where's it going? Will we all find ourselves solely responsible for our own well-being without any aid or consideration from others? Is it possible to feel even peace or contentment when the other humans are unable to avoid causing you grief as they pursue their own agendas? Reference "stepping on everybody's toes" as a simple example, but more complex ones include overly loud cars that make their driver feel bigger by making the listeners feel smaller.
Can we survive our own selves if we stop worrying entirely about how our own "innocent" actions affect bystanders? If we can't move the humans in the area to assist us in any way, will we find ourselves just stuck and spinning on a virtual ledge, and if so, does our pain and confusion therefrom matter anyway? I mean, yeah, it matters to the individual, but beyond that, why care?
As I type, the divine answer sneaks in that back door where God whispers quiet answers.
We're all part of one big awareness and it feels all our pain. The more pain we feel, the more pain our big awareness feels, and more miserable even the happy feel. Existential angst and dismay grow, the sense of incompleteness and dis-ease that has no name finds it's nest and we get steadily more miserable.
It's disconcerting and I feel quite unable to act against it. I am one of the people with the least impact and even when I go out in public anymore I'm subject to random bullying from strangers and mostly cold disapproving looks even when I smile at them. It's tiring!
I pray it's only local, or maybe only perception, and the world isn't actually like that.
I hope I always rescue fake animals in virtual reality, and I hope you do too. It's better for your character.
A mob is a virtual creature of several varieties, from monsters to food animals. There's pigs, cows, chickens, sheep, zombies, etc. These run as independant non-player characters, including villagers who are almost like humans. To have assorted independant characters in the game requires a little artificial intelligence. They need a set of rules about how they interact with the player and the environment, and have to be able to react to random events caused by the human player, as well as each other (wolves hunt and kill sheep for instance) or the terrain and it's changes. Terrain rarely changes without the player's interference, but another mob, like an exploding creeper, might change terrain too.
As you play it's quite common to see a mob in distress. A sheep stuck on a ledge, a cow stuck over a hole you've made, a pig that doesn't know which way to go, or even their distress when you're hunting them. You hunt cows, for instance, for leather and meat. Pigs give meat. Sheep you can just shear but if you don't have the tools, you can kill them for their wool. You can kill anything if you're inclined, but a lot of things don't drop anything you need, like villagers.
So when I see a pig stuck in a ravine, for instance, I feel for it. I feel bad for it!
this proves one thing: empathy is not psychic, it's entirely manufactured on the spot by the brain feeling it. It's a reaction to perceived events. So I go around my game helping the animals, apologize when gaming requires me to kill them, and generally wondering about this.
Caring about creatures that don't exist. Or do they? Do they feel? The data describes how they behave, but when the data gets stuck in a loop with no acceptable next step and they spin in place helplessly, does the computer feel it? Is there any sense of distress beyond the one in my own head? How is this different from the quandary faced by people from earlier times who thought animals weren't capable of anything more than we see in minecraft mobs? Will one day we find out that these little AI were having little existences of their own the whole time the game was on? But then it comes to what is emotion and why does it matter?
I've been told so often that mine don't matter, even though they make me an utterly useless person for being so strong and uncomforted, that I really wonder about emotion and compassion and empathy. I certainly read enough about how we need more of the latter two! yet I see less and less in the world directly around me! Where's it going? Will we all find ourselves solely responsible for our own well-being without any aid or consideration from others? Is it possible to feel even peace or contentment when the other humans are unable to avoid causing you grief as they pursue their own agendas? Reference "stepping on everybody's toes" as a simple example, but more complex ones include overly loud cars that make their driver feel bigger by making the listeners feel smaller.
Can we survive our own selves if we stop worrying entirely about how our own "innocent" actions affect bystanders? If we can't move the humans in the area to assist us in any way, will we find ourselves just stuck and spinning on a virtual ledge, and if so, does our pain and confusion therefrom matter anyway? I mean, yeah, it matters to the individual, but beyond that, why care?
As I type, the divine answer sneaks in that back door where God whispers quiet answers.
We're all part of one big awareness and it feels all our pain. The more pain we feel, the more pain our big awareness feels, and more miserable even the happy feel. Existential angst and dismay grow, the sense of incompleteness and dis-ease that has no name finds it's nest and we get steadily more miserable.
It's disconcerting and I feel quite unable to act against it. I am one of the people with the least impact and even when I go out in public anymore I'm subject to random bullying from strangers and mostly cold disapproving looks even when I smile at them. It's tiring!
I pray it's only local, or maybe only perception, and the world isn't actually like that.
I hope I always rescue fake animals in virtual reality, and I hope you do too. It's better for your character.