EVE General Discussion

Sometimes I like to play this strange game were we are simple regular people living on Earth 23000 years ago. It's easy to get into, just CTRL-Q and you are there.


What I learned from Eve is NOT to have distrust, but HOW to have distrust.

There is a very very big difference. And from relationships to business, the inability to regulate trust and suspicion is a cause of much sorrow in the world.

From the tone of your post I take you consider that as a negative development. Trust me it isn't, you're finally growing up.

Eve has caused me to re-evaluate certain areas of my views on political philosophy but hasn't really had any impact on my views about people in society as it currently is. My political views lean towards anarcho-libertarianism, so the ideal state for me is one in which there is no formal governing structures and certainly no formal legal system or police. I know that this will end up being a messy and/or dangerous place to live but I'm more than willing to swap neatness and security for genuine liberty.

My views have solidified over the years partly due to reflection on the thought of a controversial American philosopher by the name of Leo Strauss. Strauss thinks that Western liberal democracy has an inevitable tendency towards 'descending' into anarchy but he also thinks that the inevitable next step from anarchy is tyranny. Out of the bloody chaos will arise nihilistic tyrants who will secure their positions both by brute force and by offering the safety and community that people will crave. His primary example for this whole trend of the decandence of liberalism leading to nihilistic tyranny is the fall of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis. Now, details aside, I think his analysis has a lot going for it but I disagree with him on one key point. Strauss thinks that humans simply cannot, in general, be trusted to not **** each other over (and especially to not **** over the intellectuals - Strauss' own tribe). As such, he thinks the way to avoid the terrible consequences is to ensure that liberal democracies are controlled from behind the scenes by an intellectuall elite who will propagate various codes of conduct and ethics that will not be true but which the masses will take to be true, thus mitigating the dangers of giving them free rein.

Like Strauss, I don't believe in any objectively real values but I don't think his picture pans out fully because I also don't think that humans need fake values in order to not slaughter each other viciously. So, to summarise, Strauss and I both think that there are no real values but we disagree about how we think people would handle that realisation. Strauss thinks that genuine understanding of this shocking truth would unleash the worst actions mankind has to offer whereas I think that, in general, this realisation is a necessary one for human development and I trust humanity as a whole to get on with things in the absence of divine or state-mandated rules.

Obviously, playing eve was a bit of a wake-up call on that front.

Whilst I still have a general trust for the rest of humanity I must admit to having become rather more nervous about the initial results of removing morals and the legal system at the same time. I have been surprised by how many people in eve lack empathy for their fellows and relish causing them pain and discomfort, even when there is no direct benefit for themselves. Of course, the setup in eve amplifies any such tendencies and the player base is also narrow and self-selecting. But even so, I have to admit to being a little less comfortable with my views on liberty and values and a little more sympathetic to some of Strauss' fears.

numbers are cool?

Numbers are ok. But if your name is made entirely of numbers, you have other more significant issues.

EVE has just been preparing you for the real world.

Tell me you think EVE ruined your trust after you go buy a pack of 24 at some corner store at 11pm and the clerk "accidentally" charges you 300$ instead of 32$ on a credit card bill. (Thinking you wouldn't notice the price in the little terminal thing you swipe your card through). And otherwise, the whole world is a scam-circle-jerk.

Reminds you of contract scams doesn't it? Read 400million but it's actually 400k.

Call the agencies (Equifax, TransU, and...that other one that I can't remember) and ask them to put a credit-block on your card. They can set up a warning in the system that you, personally, must be contacted at a phone number you specify (and only at that number), and verify your identitiy before any charges can go through.

Great post. There's a lot of silly bravado about EVE. Either it's just a ******* game or it's a miniature laboratory of the human condition.

Guess what? It's a ******* game.

It says absolutely NOTHING about the human condition. First of all, the human condition is largely based on trust, and most of the time that works because in the real world a) permadeath holds, and b) identity is trackable. Neither is the case in EVE, so it doesn't say a damn thing about "what people are really like" or any such nonsense.

It's the abnormal conditions of EVE (no permadeath, no trackable identity) that bring about the abnormal behaviour. And why not? It's a roleplaying game.

Well thanks for the advice, it kind of is a funny story and could learn alot from it. Hopefully its not too off topic for the forums.

Well I usually keep tabs on finances alot through ATM machine reciepts. I was noticing alot of money was taken from it more then usual. So I thought I was hacked, and angry and messed up over, it can be hassle getting ne card I thought. So I call up the company and told them I thought I was hacked. So they go over my purchases. I had ordered from this company on friday, so he saiys this company then gas station then atm. I said ya those are my charges, he goes well you are not being hacked then. (He failed to mention that there were 12-20 purchases made not the 1 I had made.) So I live life with my money drastically being reduced.

A few weeks later, a letter from bank arrives. It is pretty thick, so I think the bank is mad at me, and not sure really why. So inside, I open the letter, and there are a TON of pos charges listed. I had no idea what those were and how they were made. I called the number on the bank statement. They said I needed a password, made one, which they quickly rejected. So I had to make an online account right then. On that it showed the companys name (culptrit) instead of pos charges. So I called them they were closed, so I wrote them an email, sayin card was stuck and they were making charges off of it. Go to bank, they said been too long since this happened wont deny any of them. You have to talk to comany.

They called me before they opened, and said they got the mail, and that I actually owe them money. They said people had ordered but their cards weren't charged for the purchase. So my two purchases werent charged and they were hoping I would pay for them.

I told then how my card was being charged 12-20 times a day from their company. He said uhm wait a moment, let me tell ya how credit cards company works. (tells me his wonderful story of taking family to walt disney world, making purchases and CC company denying the card) He said that applied to me, the CC would cancel my card if that happened. I said well dude the CC company thought it was perfectly normal for me to order food 12-20 times a day from you, and didnt cancel my card. He said well I see, we wil return you money once we get it straightened out, and I could get a few free orders. (Have had 1 so far.)

Also funny I emailed him, but he doesnt respond to them. Call him up he says he tried emailing back, with outlook, So I suppose I never recieved them.

Well hopefully it gets sorted out. Would be really nice. I still dont know how it happened, never heard of this before, so wanted to tell as well, not everything means you CC was hacked, sometimes this could happen as well.

I'd say EVE didn't destroy your psyche in any way, it has in fact made you a better person. There is NOTHING WRONG with carefully protecting your interests in real life, even if it borders on paranoia. That is how you avoid getting screwed over by the shady mechanic, or the con-artist "investor" or the slimy car dealer.

At least where I live, in the United States, my experience has been that people are afraid to exercise their rights as consumers, or even as employees, because they feel they will lose the deal, or face some other sort of retaliation. These things do happen, and those fears can be justified. That is why it is very important to educate yourself, not just on your rights, but what your alternatives are when someone violates those rights. If you don't do these things, all the caution and/or paranoia in the world won't protect you indefinitely.

So if EVE is teaching you to be more cautious in your dealings with people, and encouraging you to educate yourself in how to protect yourself from scams and the like, even if that doesn't immediately extend into the real world for you, these are good things.

When this change happens to you IRL, some people might look at you differently, even friends ("...Wait, you're actually going to READ the contract...?"), but really that's ok. Chances are they just don't understand, but they might one day, when they find they really should have read something before they signed and get screwed because they didn't. All you gotta tell them is "I'm just protecting everyone's interests by making sure there are no errors." Or something to that effect, and they'll probably shrug and leave you alone.