Pitboss 18 Lurker Thread of Infinite Wisdom

[Lord Parkin]

I value competence first.

Checks out.

[Lord Parkin]

Turn 92

Cheater Hater continues to build the Hanging Gardens while in the middle of war with Whosit.

Nakor seems content to sit back and let webandit claim the lion's share of the land on their island. This screenshot has both of their capitals at opposite sides of the screen. There's a wetbandit Settler 2E of Hollywood.

OxyBaII declares war on HAK, though I don't see any troops. Just a WB/Galley sniping perhaps? (Also, check out that poor Pig which HAK has stranded. If he'd settled his island city 1N he could have hooked it up.)

[NobleHelium]

Hey man, HG gives culture which will help him defend his reduced borders.

In all seriousness he probably just finished a unit there and will insert another unit in the front of the queue when he plays later.

Is Whosit going to move SE to block the road to stop the 1-movers from getting into the city? Eh eh?

[SevenSpirits]

I should clarify what I said. What I mean is that I don't believe in the term "personal attack" as it's typically used. Any comment on a person (rather than his actions) is often considered to be a personal attack. But the actions cannot be divorced from the person. I often criticize people because I value competence first. It is my person that leads to my actions.

On the other hand, there can be comments that are completely nonsensical that also focus on the person, something akin to "you suck at Civ because you're ugly." Obviously those comments have no place anywhere.

Well, to some extent I agree with this, but I don't think it's as clearcut as I believe you are making it. Or maybe, we disagree on what the words mean.

Suppose you say that Civ Player X is incompetent, based on their play and reporting. I interpret your statement to mean that they are incompetent in general, not just at civ. First of all, I don't think you can extrapolate that far. An experience that has strongly shaped my view on this was working at Google. We had a weekly boardgame night and occasionally played during lunch, too. Mostly, it was a group of regular people, but occasionally, others would stop by. Some of these people are TERRIBLE at boardgames - I mean completely clueless. And I knew that they were very smart and talented programmers and humans, really good at lots of things, really perceptive, good learners, etc. It's easy to forget how much domain knowledge and experience one can accumulate at games, or a genre of games, or a specific game. It's a lot. People can be really good at some things and bad at other things. Now, you may get the impression of incompetence not just from gameplay, but also from attitude and posting style. I know I make a lot of subconscious judgments based on these things. But here too, it's important to remember: People have different posting styles, and having one that you associate with incompetence does not actually mean they are incompetent too. In fact, people often behave very differently on forums and in games than they do in the rest of their lives.

Another factor is age. Would you say that a 2-year-old who can read is incompetent? I wouldn't. But they sure would suck at civ, I bet. This doesn't just apply to infants. I have a different baseline expected in terms of what I'd call competence from 16-year-olds compared to 30-year-olds. In proclaiming incompetence, you might be ignoring things you don't know about the person which should set the baseline for competence for them. A similar factor you might be ignoring is the amount of time and effort someone puts into this. If someone puts 10 minutes a day into reading RB and playing their turns, and they play badly... the bad play doesn't mean they are incompetent. They aren't, like, TRYING to put in an hour every day and somehow fucking it up. They are successfully participating in a game with a certain level of time commitment that was their choice. (And this isn't just based on time spent but also mental energy spent. I'm sure if my job involved grueling mental calculation all day every day and not enough sleep, I would play worse here.)

There are a lot of things we don't know about other people. That's why I prefer to speak about actions and not jump to too many conclusions about the people.

[NobleHelium]

I've never met a good programmer who was bad at board games. Both things are affected greatly by an underlying skill: the ability to thoroughly understand a set of rules and thus theorize what emerges from them.

Anyway, you do realize that I do mostly speak about actions. And it's fine to be wrong when judging someone's personality just as it's fine to be wrong about judging someone's actions. Maybe I misguessed someone's age and drew some conclusions based upon that, which would not apply had I known better. For example I've stated that I think Kuro needs to mature more as a person before he'll become better at Civ. Maybe he's actually 60 years old, I don't know for sure. Why is that any worse than any other incorrect conclusion? I just make the attempt to accurately peg someone's personality because it gives you a better idea of how they will act in a certain situation if you're correct. If you're wrong, then you're wrong. Why is it any more offensive that you think I suck, compared to just thinking that I sucked at a particular time? I can be offended at your assessment of my skill just as I can be offended at your assessment of my decision for a particular choice. Or not offended at all. Saying a person sucks is just saying that you think he's more likely to make sucky decisions more often. Both judgments are equally correct or incorrect as the case may be.

Back when I played World of Warcraft, when I was still part of a larger guild, we had this applicant who was 13 years old (maybe younger, I forget) who seemed like an okay player but I was adamant that he would not work in the guild. Why? Because he couldn't use his computer properly. When you're constantly asking about how to respond to a phishing email and how to solve technical issue X instead of playing the game, that doesn't leave a lot of time to contribute. You might consider him incompetent if he were older with more life experience, but he was young and hadn't accumulated enough knowledge yet. But the end result is the same, he was not fit for the type of guild that we were.

[SevenSpirits]

Ha, I thought this was the obvious part. Many people want to be understood, seen for who they are, and thought well of. They want to have friends and be loved, and this is a very significant part of their lives and happiness.

Publicly hearing that someone is convinced you are incompetent can be a downer. Not only does it appear that that person does not understand you, thinks poorly of you and does not like you, but maybe you get the impression that everyone else agrees because they don't say anything to contradict it. So now you feel lonely and sad, and your day sucks, and you don't have this cool website where you have friends anymore. It could be a major decrease is quality of life. For me, that's reason enough to try to avoid making negative judgments about people.

Let me clarify: giving someone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to stuff like their competence shows respect for that person. It shows you care at least some about that person and are not ready to just file them away as a loser. That small bit of respect is not hard to give and can be worth a lot to a person, even if it's clear you don't particularly like them or think well of their actions. I'm not sure how much this is just how humans tend to work and how much is it being a common social norm, but it's effective in real life, so that's cool.

There are also other reasons to give people that small respect / benefit of the doubt and to not make negative judgments about them so quickly. First, in my experience, if you think better of people by default, the world seems like a nicer place, which I consider an improvement. Second, also in my experience, if you expect better things from people, they tend to try to live up to your expectations, and do better as a result. Third, I think you're more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt in return in situations where people are in turn misjudging you.

I guess a drawback is that you can't be as selective about who you spend time around / drive away if you are less willing to pass judgment with regard to competence. I see that's valuable to you, and I can understand if you find that to be more important than these other things. Ultimately I consider what you live your life by to be up to you. This is what works for me (and I value competence, too).

[MJW (ya that one)]

Okay... I changed my opinion a little. I think you can get left off the hook personally for criticism against you for reasons Seven outlined. But if a criticism is harsh enough you run out of excuses.

I pretty said the same thing as you NH and I can give links to prove it if you want.

[Lord Parkin]

Turn 93

Current state of the Zulu-Viking battlefield. Cheater Hater still has the Hanging Gardens underway, though it looks like Whosit's forces are retreating for the time being.

WilliamLP declares war on MYKI, presumably attacking some unit exploring near his borders.

OxyBaII makes peace with HAK.

[T-hawk]

I'm still of the position that Parkin is Barry (or vice versa).

Hilariously, three months later, it turns out that the civ of Barry is indeed being played by Parkin.

[Lord Parkin]

Turn 94

Whosit's stack is healing on the hill, so we may yet see more conflict. Also, just noticed Cheater Hater has been building the Hanging Gardens all this time without any Stone.

However, he's out of luck because GermanJojo just snagged that wonder. HG before Pyramids, you don't see that every game. Think he's a little optimistic if he expects to pick up the latter as well though.

Bacchus declared war on yuris125 while I was in the game. Looks like this conflict is being fought over a single arctic region. I can't imagine he's making himself any friends, but perhaps he feels he doesn't need to. (This is his second declaration on yuris in barely 10 turns.)