Wormholes

Presentation: Acquired political behavior

Aim: participants will understand how political behavior has influenced the mindset of human groups

Objectives: to acquire data on resistance to change generated by political behavior

Introduction:
EVE Online is a multiplayer online game, claiming to use the sandbox model. Users are allowed anonymity and to engage in otherwise societal condemnable behavior, seemingly making them more susceptible to express themselves freely.  Ten years after the launch of the game, the maker, CCP is the largest IT company in Iceland, a country that showed special preference for democracy and chosed to react differently to the effects of the economic crisis. CCP publicly admitted that employs economists, however no data on the use of sociologists or behavioral specialists is available.

The player community has evolved and organized itself, moving at a fast pace from anarchy to a form of feudal society. CCP is accelerating the development of society by forcibly inserting representative democracy into the game, in the form of CSM.

In order to attain the objective, the researcher should introduce into the public debate a subject that is controversial but unfamiliar to most participants, making possible the analysis of transfer of users personal experiences to a field not enough understood. The activity will be facilitated by the information fed by the media, the misleading texts put in the forums,  and users lack of in depth knowledge on the meta mechanisms acting in the field.

The opportunity for gathering relevant data sets is in the period before the official launch of the election procedures, as any character can make claims without being forced to decline its identity as is the case for election cycle.

The driver must be based on a fallacy in order to promote data generating conflict. Proposed subject is direct democracy, in the context where CCP pushes for representative democracy thru its CSM method. While direct democracy in the electronic environment serves the purpose of efficiently gathering input from large masses of individuals, the concept is mutually exclusive and cannot be applied in a representative system. Also, the feudal type game society has not been yet been decisively influenced by the ideas of democracy. From the information available via player forums, no change of system is foreseen for the current cycle.

Initial steps:
1. Launching a platform based on direct democracy, Liquid Feedback software.
2. Use previously identified relations between groups in order to attract attention and involve as many individuals as possible.
3. Support trolling and anticonstructive behavior
4. Gradually increase the level of discussion and identify the possibility to use individual positions in order to generate discussions

Method:
1.Data collection: previous data from forums, blogs and social networks, data generated by new topics purposely initiated
2.Data analysis

Tools: 1. data sets representing relations between groups 2. data sets showing patterns in behavior of involved individuals 3. data sets on the impact of various stimulus on the research subjects.

Deliverable: Case study paper and presentation.

-The end result will show with clear data that some people have difficulties in accepting change and are stuck in a mindset imposed by the mainstream media.

-Also will show how the cult of personality coming from feudal ages is still present in modern day representative democracy and how the next political system cannot come gradually, but thru a sudden change. Kind of like CCP scraping CSM and putting direct democracy instead.

In August I will present the paper to a as a keynote speaker at summer camp for youths in a political organization.